Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
EL EFECTO RELATIVO DE LA EDAD EN EL BALONMANO DE ÉLITE MASCULINO EN ESPAÑA [The relative age effect in the Spanish elite male handball]

The birth in different quarters of the year involved differences regarding maturational development in handball players, which may influence the selection, development and consolidation in the elite in handball. This study sought to investigate the relative age effect in elite male handball players in Spain. To do this, data of birth and specific position of 586 players were analyzed, who participe in the League ASOBAL in seasons between 2003-04 and 2008-09. Comparisons and differences were studied by 2 tests and Z. Analysis of results revealed a higher percentage of players born in the first quarter, significant differences were confirmed in spanish players. Specifically, the highest percentages of players born in the first months of the year were the specific positions of the first offensive line and the goalkeeper. In conclusion, the results seem to confirm a relative effect of age on the players analyzed. The nationality and specific positions have a significant relationship with this. Keys words: RAE, professional, birth date, detection, selection, talent.
Compartmentalization established by claudin-11-based tight junctions in stria vascularis is required for hearing through generation of endocochlear potential

Claudins are cell adhesion molecules working at tight junctions (TJs) that are directly involved in compartmentalization in multicellular organisms. The cochlea includes a rather peculiar compartment filled with endolymph. This compartment is characterized by high K+ concentration (∼150 mM) and a positive endocochlear potential (∼90 mV; EP), both indispensable conditions for cochlear hair cells to transduce acoustic stimuli to electrical signals. These conditions are thought to be generated by the stria vascularis, which is adjacent to the endolymph compartment. The stria vascularis itself constitutes an isolated compartment delineated by two epithelial barriers, marginal and basal cell layers. Because TJs of basal cells are primarily composed of claudin-11, claudin-11-deficient (Cld11-/-) mice were generated with an expectation that the compartmentalization in stria vascularis in these mice would be affected. Auditory brainstem response measurements revealed that Cld11-/- mice suffered from deafness; although no obvious gross morphological malformations were detected in Cld11-/- cochlea, freeze-fracture replica electron microscopy showed that TJs disappeared from basal cells of the stria vascularis. In good agreement with this, tracer experiments showed that the basal cell barrier was destroyed without affecting the marginal cell barrier. Importantly, in the endolymph compartment of Cld11-/- cochlea, the K+ concentration was maintained around the normal level (∼150 mM), whereas the EP was suppressed down to ∼30 mV. These findings indicated that the establishment of the stria vascularis compartment, especially the basal cell barrier, is indispensable for hearing ability through the generation/maintenance of EP but not of a high K+ concentration in the endolymph.
Time-Frequency Energy Distributions Meet Compressed Sensing

In the case of multicomponent signals with amplitude and frequency modulations, the idealized representation which consists of weighted trajectories on the time-frequency (TF) plane, is intrinsically sparse. Recent advances in optimal recovery from sparsity constraints thus suggest to revisit the issue of TF localization by exploiting sparsity, as adapted to the specific context of (quadratic) TF distributions. Based on classical results in TF analysis, it is argued that the relevant information is mostly concentrated in a restricted subset of Fourier coefficients of the Wigner-Ville distribution neighboring the origin of the ambiguity plane. Using this incomplete information as the primary constraint, the desired distribution follows as the minimum -norm solution in the transformed TF domain. Possibilities and limitations of the approach are demonstrated via controlled numerical experiments, its performance is assessed in various configurations and the results are compared with standard techniques. It is shown that improved representations can be obtained, though at a computational cost which is significantly increased.
The Durable Effects of Short-Term Programs on Student Leadership Development.

Research involving students (N=612) at a large, research-extensive university who participated in voluntary short-term leadership programs showed an increase in leadership capacity, even when measured three months later. A popular assessment tool, the Socially Responsible Leadership Scale (SRLS), was used. Not all leadership competency scores showed significant increase after training, which may indicate that some leadership capacities may be more amenable than others to development through short-term programs. However, most competency scores displayed stronger relationships with each other after training, suggesting that training fostered a more integrated understanding of leadership. In addition, the analysis suggested the need for further study of the SRLS.
The Politics of One-Sided Adjustment in Africa

Over the course of the past two decades, discussions of the economic liberalization sweeping Africa have proliferated. At the center of this discussion is the impact of structural adjustment programs. Indeed, the political, economic, and social implications of adjustment have been one of the most debated topics of our times. Strongly defended by the International Financial Institutions (IFIs) and Western donor governments and criticized by those who dismiss the market superiority approach inherent in the policy, adjustment has set the terms of debate over economic development in Africa and acquired hegemonic status. In "The Politics of One-Sided Adjustment in Africa," published in the Journal of Black Studies, my senior colleague, Professor Daniel Tetteh Osabu-Kle, provided a critical and provocative analysis of adjustment in Africa with two ambitious goals: to critique the dominant neoliberal economic prescriptions and to outline a radical transformative alternative agenda. "The Politics of OneSided Adjustment in Africa" is written in response to neoliberal optimism about the efficacy of their policies, challenges the optimistic interpretations and prognosis of neoliberal policies, and takes the Bretton Woods Institutions, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank to task for their emphasis on the ideology of free trade and the magic of the price mechanism. In a broad sense, Osabu-Kle's analysis challenges the prevalent Western orthodoxy of adjustment that has been articulated and reproduced to the extent that it has become, in Ernesto Laclau and Chantal
An HRP‐TMB ultrastructural study of rubral afferents in the rat

The projections from the deep cerebellar nuclei and the sensorimotor cortex to the red nucleus were studied in the rat using anterograde transport of horseradish peroxidase conjugated with wheat germ agglutinin (HRP‐WGA). The anterogradely transported HRP‐WGA was visualized ultrastructurally by using a modification of the tetramethylbenzidine (TMB) histochemical technique of Carson and Mesulam ('82). Following injection of HRP‐WGA into the sensorimotor cortex, ultrastructural examination of anterograde labeling in the ipsilateral red nucleus revealed labeled synaptic terminals located on small‐diameter dendrites of the parvocellular region. These terminals made asymmetrical contacts and contained round vesicles. HRP‐WGA placement in the nucleus lateralis resulted in anterograde labeling of synaptic terminals which made asymmetrical contacts with small‐ to medium‐sized dendrites of the parvocellular red nucleus. Similar placements in the nucleus interpositus gave rise to anterograde labeling of synaptic terminals which made asymmetrical contacts with somata and proximal dendrites of magnocellular neurons. In addition, retrograde labeling of magnocellular neurons was also observed following HRP‐WGA placements in the nucleus interpositus. Anterogradely labeled interpositorubral synaptic terminals were located on retrogradely labeled rubrocerebellar neurons. The rat red nucleus thus receives topographically organized afferents which are characterized by their specificity in location at the cellular level.
Mental health among UK inner city non-heterosexuals: the role of risk factors, protective factors and place

Background. Sexual minorities experience excess psychological ill health globally, yet the UK data exploring reasons for poor mental health among sexual minorities is lacking. This study compares the prevalence of a measure of well-being, symptoms of common mental disorder (CMD), lifetime suicidal ideation, harmful alcohol and drug use among inner city non-heterosexual and heterosexual individuals. It is the first UK study which aims to quantify how much major, everyday and anticipated discrimination; lifetime and childhood trauma; and coping strategies for dealing with unfair treatment, predict excess mental ill health among non-heterosexuals. Further, inner city and national outcomes are compared. Methods. Self-report survey data came from the South East London Community Health study (N = 1052) and the Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Survey (N = 7403). Results. Adjustments for greater exposure to measured experiences of discrimination and lifetime and childhood trauma had a small to moderate impact on effect sizes for adverse health outcomes though in fully adjusted models, non-heterosexual orientation remained strongly associated with CMD, lifetime suicidal ideation, harmful alcohol and drug use. There was limited support for the hypothesis that measured coping strategies might mediate some of these associations. The inner city sample had poorer mental health overall compared with the national sample and the discrepancy was larger for non-heterosexuals than heterosexuals. Conclusions. Childhood and adult adversity substantially influence but do not account for sexual orientation-related mental health disparities. Longitudinal work taking a life course approach with more specific measures of discrimination and coping is required to further understand these associations. Sexual minorities should be considered as a priority in the design and delivery of health and social services.
Graph based tweet entity linking using DBpedia

Twitter has became an invaluable source of information, due to his dynamic nature with more than 400 million tweets posted per day. Determining what an individual post is about can be a non trivial task because his high contextualization and his informal nature. Named Entity Linking (NEL) is a subtask of information extraction that aims to ground entity mentions to their corresponding node in a Knowledge Base (KB), which requires a disambiguation step, because many resources can be matched to the same entity that lead to synonymy and polysemy problems. To overcome these problems, especially in the context of short text, we present a novel system for tweet entity linking based on graph centrality and DBpedia as knowledge base. Our approach relies on the assumption that related entities tend to appear in the same tweet as tweets are topic specific. Also, we address the problem of irregular name mentions. Finally, to show the effectiveness of our system we evaluate it using a real twitter dataset and compare it to a well known state-of-the-art named entity linking system for short text.
Cancer Risk in Children and Young Adults Conceived by In Vitro Fertilization

OBJECTIVES: Studies conducted so far have found no statistically significant increased risk for cancer among children who are born after in vitro fertilization (IVF). METHODS: We followed 26 692 children who were born after IVF during the years 1982–2005 by using the Swedish Cancer Register and compared the number of children who had cancer and were born after IVF with children who were not conceived by IVF. Adjustment was made for year of birth. RESULTS: Maternal age, parity, smoking, subfertility, previous miscarriages, BMI, and multiple births did not significantly affect cancer risk in offspring. High birth weight, premature delivery, and the presence of respiratory diagnoses and low Apgar score were risk factors for cancer. We identified 53 cases of cancer in children who were born after IVF against 38 expected cases: 18 of them with hematologic cancer (15 of them acute lymphoblastic leukemia), 17 with eye or central nervous system tumors, and 12 with other solid cancers. There were 6 cases of Langerhans histiocytosis against 1.0 expected. The total cancer risk estimate was 1.42 (95% confidence interval: 1.09–1.87). CONCLUSIONS: We found a moderately increased risk for cancer in children who were conceived by IVF. Putative intermediary factors could be preterm birth and neonatal asphyxia.
Situational Influences on Team Helping Norms: Case Study of a Self-directed Team

A case study investigated the behavioral characteristics of a self-directed work team, and properties of the team’s task situation that may have influenced team behavior. Results indicate that helping among team members was the most prominent group norm, and also suggest various situational factors may have encouraged helping behavior, including task flexibility, low task interdependence, asynchronous demand variability, and the lack of formal performance measures. Implications for future research and management practice are discussed. The paper contributes toward a better understanding of the behavioral characteristics of effective teams and the influence of task situation on team behavior.
Centralized feedback-driven rate allocation mechanism for CSMA/CA-based wireless mesh networks

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) based on commodity 802.11 radios exhibit extreme unfairness, including starvation, in the presence of backlogged traffic sources. While the underlying reasons for this performance degradation are well understood, yet only a few of the proposed solutions are compatible with the current generation of closed 802.11 firmware/hardware. Most existing proposals limit sources to their fair share through a distributed rate control mechanism, in the process incurring a significant overhead to enable such local computation of fair rates. In prior work we validated the feasibility of centralized rate control in WMNs, assuming knowledge of network topology and link interference. In this work we remove this requirement and propose a zero-overhead centralized rate controller. This controller can be implemented at traffic aggregation points such as gateway routers. Its response is driven by a feedback-based mechanism, allowing it to adapt to changes in network and traffic conditions. Simulations show that our controller can improve the fairness metrics by a factor of 3 over networks without any rate control, and is within 2% of the fairness metrics achieved by a centralized controller with omniscient knowledge of network topology and link interference.
Comparative evaluation of serum superoxide dismutase and glutathione levels in periodontally diseased patients: an interventional study.

BACKGROUND Periodontal disease is an immune-inflammatory disease characterized by connective tissue breakdown, loss of attachment, and alveolar bone resorption. Under normal physiological conditions, a dynamic equilibrium is maintained between the reactive oxygen species (ROS) and antioxidant defense capacity. Oxidative stress occurs when this equilibrium shifts in favor of ROS. Oxidative stress is thought to play a causative role in the pathogenesis of periodontal diseases. AIM The present study was designed to estimate and compare the superoxide dismutase (SOD) and glutathione (GSH) levels in the serum of periodontitis, gingivitis, and healthy individuals before and after nonsurgical periodontal therapy. MATERIALS AND METHODS The present study was conducted in the Department of Periodontics, A. B. Shetty Memorial Institute of Dental Sciences, Deralakatte, Mangalore. The study was designed as a single blinded interventional study comprising 75 subjects, inclusive of both sexes and divided into three groups of 25 patients each. Patients were categorized into chronic periodontitis, gingivitis, and healthy. The severity of inflammation was assessed using gingival index and pocket probing depth. Biochemical analysis was done to estimate the SOD and GSH levels before and after nonsurgical periodontal therapy. RESULTS obtained were then statistically analyzed using ANOVA test and paired t-test. RESULTS The results showed a higher level of serum SOD and GSH in the healthy group compared to the other groups. The difference was found to be statistically significant (P < 0.0001). The post-treatment levels of SOD were statistically higher than the pre-treatment levels in periodontitis and gingivitis group.
Cancer Incidence in Patients with Atypical Endometrial Hyperplasia Managed by Primary Hysterectomy or Fertility-sparing Treatment.

AIM To compare the risk of developing endometrial carcinoma (EC) in young women with atypical endometrial hyperplasia (AEH) undergoing fertility-sparing management compared to women treated by primary hysterectomy. PATIENTS AND METHODS In this multicentric retrospective study, 111 patients with a diagnosis of AEH by endometrial biopsy were included. EC incidence was compared in two groups: 32 patients treated with fertility-sparing management and 79 older patients treated with primary hysterectomy. RESULTS The rates of EC diagnosed by pathology of hysterectomy specimens were comparable between the groups. The probability of developing EC at 12, 24 and 36 months were 14%, 21% and 26%, respectively, in patients managed conservatively, and 29%, 37% and 37%, respectively, in patients treated with primary hysterectomy. CONCLUSION Fertility-sparing management of AEH does not increase the risk of diagnosing EC from the hysterectomy specimen.
Automated immunoassay methods for ferritin: recovery studies to assess traceability to an international standard

Abstract Background: Ferritin standardisation is problematical due to the heterogeneity of ferritin isoforms and the antibodies used in its immunoassay, and the lack of a reference measurement procedure. We investigated the performance of the 1st (liver), 2nd (spleen) and 3rd (recombinant) International Standards (ISs) for ferritin in major assays. Methods: The ferritin in a serum pool ‘spiked’ with either the 2nd or 3rd IS for ferritin was measured by 52 laboratories using five automated methods and the recovery of the target values calculated. A smaller serum pool was ‘spiked’ with the 1st IS for a limited recovery exercise. The ferritin values of five serum samples were also measured and recalculated relative to the ISs. Results: Recoveries of each of the 2nd and 3rd ISs were 90%–110% for four of five methods; recoveries of the 1st IS were 104% and 111% for two of three methods claiming traceability to this IS. One method significantly over-recovered each of the IS (124%–155%). Recalculating the ferritin values of the serum samples relative to the IS reduced the overall inter-method agreement, largely because of the anomalous over-recovery of the IS by one method. Conclusions: The use of the 3rd IS to standardise assays will minimise assay drift due to manufacturers adopting a ‘harmonisation’ approach in which the calibration is adjusted to conform to overall mean values. Standardisation against the current IS also ensures compliance with the European Union In-Vitro Diagnostic Directive which requires traceability of assay calibrators to reference materials of a higher order. Assay drift may result in poor sensitivity and specificity in the diagnosis of iron status, and would require laboratories to continually re-evaluate reference intervals. Clin Chem Lab Med 2008;46:1450–7.
Lesbian Motherhood: Identity and Social Support

This article explores the relationship between lesbian identity, social support and lesbian mothers' ability to cope with the stress of a heterosexual and homophobic environment. Interviews with 31 lesbian mothers revealed that social support was obtained from a variety of sources, both lesbian and nonlesbian. The women had strong, positive lesbian identities and were open about their lesbianism, although selective about coming out. They had and used stress-mediating resources and were successfully adapting to their social environments. The implications for social work practice are presented.
#universitycrisis: The Impact of Social Media Type, Source, and Information on Student Responses Toward a University Crisis

Universities have every reason to avoid damaging their reputations through mismanaged crises. Moreover, universities have the moral duty to protect their students from harm by effective communication in a time of crisis. Social media have evolved into the fastest and most direct means to communicate with student populations. In this study, we experimentally tested the use of Twitter and Facebook as crisis communication media at a university. We further observed the effects of the communication source (university or dean) and the crisis information (instructing or adapting) on secondary communication by the students (e.g., sharing the message and leaving a reaction). The role of the dean as an information source seemed to incite action by students. We also found some counterintuitive effects, particularly with regard to the type of crisis information communicated on Facebook or Twitter, by the dean or the university.
Combining Support Vector Regression and Ant Colony Optimization to Reduce NOx Emissions in Coal-Fired Utility Boilers

Combustion optimization has recently demonstrated its potential to reduce NOx emissions in high capacity coal-fired utility boilers. In the present study, support vector regression (SVR), as well as artificial neural networks (ANN), was proposed to model the relationship between NOx emissions and operating parameters of a 300 MW coal-fired utility boiler. The predicted NOx emissions from the SVR model, by comparing with that of the ANN-based model, showed better agreement with the values obtained in the experimental tests on this boiler operated at different loads and various other operating parameters. The mean modeling error and the correlation factor were 1.58% and 0.94, respectively. Then, the combination of the SVR model with ant colony optimization (ACO) to reduce NOx emissions was presented in detail. The experimental results showed that the proposed approach can effectively reduce NOx emissions from the coal-fired utility boiler by about 18.69% (65 ppm). A time period of less than 6 min was requir.