Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The effect of local delivery of PDGF-BB on attachment of human periodontal ligament fibroblasts to periodontitis-affected root surfaces--in vitro.

BACKGROUND/AIMS The purpose of this study was to determine at what concentration does platelet-derived growth factor-BB (PDGF-BB) provide for optimal stimulation of human periodontal ligament fibroblasts (PDL) to adhere to periodontitis affected root surfaces. METHOD 80 root dentine specimens were prepared from extracted periodontally diseased teeth obtained from patients ranging in age between 35 to 60 years. The root dentine specimens were associated with the subgingival area opposing the periodontal pocket for each extracted tooth. 10 healthy root dentine specimens were obtained from teeth extracted for orthodontic reasons and served as controls. The specimens were distributed into 9 groups (10 specimens in each). In group 1, PDL fibroblasts were cultured on the specimen surface of a diseased treated control. In group 2, PDL fibroblasts were cultured on the specimen surface of a healthy control. In groups 3 to 9, PDL fibroblasts were cultured on a pre-treated specimen surface with concentrations ranging from 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200 and 300 ng/ml PDGF-BB, respectively. After 24 h incubation, the media were removed, specimens were fixed, processed for SEM viewing and photographed at 750x. Fibroblast adherence was measured by counting number of cells within a standard test area and cell morphology was scored. RESULTS Findings suggest dentine specimens pretreated with 5, 10 and 20 ng/ml PDGF-BB were not significantly different in number of adherent cells from the diseased treated control. However, at concentrations of 50, 100, 200 and 300 ng/ml, a highly significant increase in number of adherent fibroblasts was detected when compared to the diseased treated control. At these concentrations, the cell morphology was comparable to that of the healthy control. CONCLUSIONS PDGF-BB in concentrations equal to or greater than 50 ng/ml demonstrates a significant stimulation of PDL cells adherence to periodontal diseased root surfaces. Since the higher concentrations resulted in similar effects as obtained by 50 ng/ml, it may therefore be considered that this concentration provides for optimal stimulation of human periodontal ligament fibroblasts (PDL) to adhere to periodontitis-affected root surfaces.
Crowd event recognition using HOG tracker

The recognition in real time of crowd dynamics in public places are becoming essential to avoid crowd related disasters and ensure safety of people. We present in this paper a new approach for Crowd Event Recognition. Our study begins with a novel tracking method, based on HOG descriptors, to finally use pre-defined models (i.e. crowd scenarios) to recognize crowd events. We define these scenarios using statistics analysis from the data sets used in the experimentation. The approach is characterized by combining a local analysis with a global analysis for crowd behavior recognition. The local analysis is enabled by a robust tracking method, and global analysis is done by a scenario modeling stage.
Psycho‐social factors influencing practice of total quality management in some Nigerian organizations

Purpose – To identify some psychological and social variables that could enhance employees' adoption of total quality management (TQM) in an organization that chooses to implement the management philosophy.Design/methodology/approach – A survey research was conducted, using 418 middle management staff, randomly drawn from some TQM and non‐TQM courier organizations in Nigeria. Respondents received standardized scales measuring perception of their leaders' leadership styles, organizational reward system and self‐report of personality attributes (psychological variables), along with items measuring gender, age, job tenure and level of education (social variables). They also responded to questionnaire items measuring the extent to which they practice TQM.Findings – Correlation analysis show that higher level of maintenance leadership style along with lower level of performance leadership style, low levels of extraversion and neuroticism, higher level of education and shorter job tenure enhance subordinates' p.
Small-Mindedness Writ Large: On the Migrations and Manners of Prejudice

Globalisation is not only about commercial goods. It is also about the migration from centres of cultural authority of increasingly standardised but locally inflected forms of racism and other varieties of prejudice. It is often marked by disclaimers that, while appearing to mask racist attitudes with reason and etiquette, actually accentuate their destructive implications by rendering them rhetorically palatable, especially within the intimate spaces of local and national society. Using examples from Italy and elsewhere, I suggest that both racism and its associated disclaimers have migrated together, reflecting the powerful expansion of a global hierarchy of value as well as of intimate forms of resistance to that hierarchy. I suggest that such ‘polite’ racism is ultimately more dangerous than its more brutish variants because it appropriates legitimacy from collective notions of high civilisational standards. In this sense, immigrants of European origin in countries such as Italy may face its negative consequences with particular force precisely because they phenotypically resemble the host population and therefore represent, for the far right, a threat of racial and cultural miscegenation in an age of declining local birthrates.
ERK8 is a negative regulator of O-GalNAc glycosylation and cell migration

ER O-glycosylation can be induced through relocalisation GalNAc-Transferases from the Golgi. This process markedly stimulates cell migration and is constitutively activated in more than 60% of breast carcinomas. How this activation is achieved remains unclear. Here, we screened 948 signalling genes using RNAi and imaging. We identified 12 negative regulators of O-glycosylation that all control GalNAc-T sub-cellular localisation. ERK8, an atypical MAPK with high basal kinase activity, is a strong hit and is partially localised at the Golgi. Its inhibition induces the relocation of GalNAc-Ts, but not of KDEL receptors, revealing the existence of two separate COPI-dependent pathways. ERK8 down-regulation, in turn, activates cell motility. In human breast and lung carcinomas, ERK8 expression is reduced while ER O-glycosylation initiation is hyperactivated. In sum, ERK8 appears as a constitutive brake on GalNAc-T relocalisation, and the loss of its expression could drive cancer aggressivity through increased cell motility. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.01828. 001
Handwriting Remediation: A Comparison of Computer-Based and Traditional Approaches

Abstract This study compared the effectiveness of computer-based handwriting exercises (Lally & Macleod, 1982) with traditional instruction in the remediation of handwriting difficulties. Thirty-six students in Grades 4 to 6 with poor handwriting received one of three different instructional methods. In Method 1, students performed computer-based handwriting exercises using the Apple Graphics Tablet, an electronic pen, and the computer monitor to track visible and invisible letters. In Method 2, conventional instruction was provided using pencil, paper, plastic overlays, and felt pens to copy and trace letter forms. In Method 3, conventional instruction using tracing and copying was provided through the computer using the Touch Window and a stylus pen. Several measures were used to assess improvement in performance. The results indicated that the traditional group using pen and paper demonstrated significant improvements from pretest to posttest on five measures, and the computer groups on two measures. T.
Evidence appears limited for group-based social skills training for school-age children with Autism Spectrum Disorders, but this review may not tell the whole story

Abstracted from: White, S. W. , Keonig, K. , & Scahill, L. (2007). Social skills development in children with autism spectrum disorders: A review of the intervention research. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 37, 1858–1868. Source of funding: National Institutes of Mental Health Childhood Neuropsychiatric Disorders Training Grant; Organization for Autism Research.
Picturing Need: Images of Overseas Aid and Interpretations of Cultural Difference

The use of images by overseas aid agencies for the purpose of raising funds is common in the media in western societies. This paper reports a qualitative study of the ways that people in Britain view such photographs, how they interpret Jthem and how they respond tohthiem. The accounts given by respondents reveal that this involves individuals in making sense not just of visual material, but of a social world in which need is defined and met. That is, picturing need and articulating one's response to it is part of an imaginary (constructive) relationship through which the social world and the speaker are together made sensible. This is consistent with a theoretical position which holds that looking at photographs is both discursively and non-discursively ordered. Seeing is therefore understood as a cultural activity, through which social differences and moral imperatives are jointly and severally made to reappear.
National numeracy initiatives in England and Wales: a comparative study of policy

The introduction of the National Numeracy Strategy (NNS) in England has had a very significant effect on the teaching of numeracy in English primary schools. The NNS, however, does not apply in Wales where the Welsh Office decided to adopt a less prescriptive approach and encouraged local education authorities (LEAs), in partnership with their schools, to develop their own, locally based, numeracy initiatives. This article outlines the way in which recent numeracy policies have developed in England and Wales and compares their main strands. The article suggests that the decision not to adopt the NNS in Wales was potentially one of the most significant educational policy decisions taken in Cardiff during recent years. The article also highlights the fact that these parallel approaches offer an ideal opportunity for evaluating the impact and effectiveness of such alternative strategies as levers for large-scale reform, and that such examination could usefully inform future policy-making both within and beyond the curricular and geographical limits of the contexts considered here.
Management, Structure and Perceived Positive Outcomes of Hospital Alliances: An Exploratory Multinational Study

Pooling resources, knowledge and technologies is a necessity in the health sector. Many hospitals do so through alliances with compatible establishments, which have been studied from the organizational perspective for many years. However, many alliances are reported to fail and the conditions which could foster their success are still not well known. The aim of this exploratory study was to identify the administrative and governance structures of hospital alliances associated with reported positive outcomes. A questionnaire was mailed to hospital administrators and directors from Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Canada. Administrative and governance practices were ascertained and correlated with reported outcomes. Management practices pertaining to initiation, formalization, steering and operations of alliances were correlated with financial, treatment and corporate outcomes. Characteristics significantly linked to perceived positive alliance outcomes include: clearly defined targets and their monitoring, governance by executive management and involving the board of directors, rather formal coordination mechanisms, a project champion and a written contract including conflict resolution mechanisms.
Improving online gesture recognition with template matching methods in accelerometer data

Template matching methods using Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) have been used recently for online gesture recognition from body-worn motion sensors. However, DTW has been shown sensitive under the strong presence of noise in time series. In sensor readings, labeling temporal boundaries of daily gestures precisely is rarely achievable as they are often intertwined. Moreover, the variation in daily gesture execution always exists. Therefore, here we propose two template matching methods utilizing the Longest Common Subsequence (LCSS) to improve robustness against such noise for online gesture recognition. Segmented LCSS utilizes a sliding window to define the unknown boundaries of gestures in the continuous coming sensor readings and detects efficiently a possibly shorter gesture within it. WarpingLCSS is our novel variant of LCSS to determine occurrences of gestures without segmenting data and performs one order of magnitude faster than the Segmented LCSS. The WarpingLCSS requires low-resource settings to process new arriving samples, thus it is suitable for real-time gesture recognition implemented directly on the small wearable devices. We compare our methods with the existing template matching methods based on Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) on two real-world gesture datasets from arm-worn accelerometer data. The results demonstrate that the LCSS approaches outperform the existing template matching approaches (about 12% in accuracy) in the dataset that suffers from boundary noise and execution variation.
Promoting Science Literacy with English Language Learners Through Instructional Materials Development: A Case Study

Abstract In spite of reform efforts, opportunities for all students to learn science remain illusive. Recent studies indicate that science curricula do not meet students' learning needs. Research-based curricula focusing on science inquiry with English language learners (ELLs) have yet to be developed. To encourage development of appropriate science materials, this paper discusses the learning needs of specific groups of ELLs and their teachers. First, we describe our research with groups of fourth-grade ELLs and their teachers, including perspectives of inquiry with teachers who shared their students' languages and cultures and features of materials developed to integrate science and literacy instruction. Next, we present student achievement results using the materials. Finally, we discuss the importance of materials enabling all students to learn science through inquiry.
Rituximab for refractory Wegener's granulomatosis: report of a prospective, open-label pilot trial.

RATIONALE Standard therapy for Wegener's granulomatosis is fraught with substantial toxicity and not always effective. B lymphocytes have been implicated in the pathogenesis of Wegener's granulomatosis. Their depletion has been proposed as salvage therapy for refractory disease. Earlier encouraging reports are confounded by concomitant immunosuppressive medications and include only limited available biomarker data. OBJECTIVES To evaluate the efficacy and safety of rituximab for remission induction in refractory Wegener's granulomatosis. METHODS A prospective open-label pilot trial was conducted with 10 patients monitored for 1 yr. Included were patients with active severe antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody (ANCA)-associated vasculitis, ANCA positivity, and resistance to (or intolerance of) cyclophosphamide. The remission induction regimen consisted of oral prednisone (1 mg/kg/d) and four weekly infusions of rituximab (375 mg/m(2)). Prednisone was tapered and discontinued over 5 mo. Failure to achieve remission, a clinical flare in the absence of B lymphocytes, and inability to complete the glucocorticoid taper were considered treatment failures. MAIN RESULTS Three women and seven men (median age, 57 yr; range, 25-72 yr) were enrolled. All had ANCA reacting with proteinase-3. The median activity score at enrollment was 6 (range, 5-10). All patients tolerated rituximab well, achieved swift B-lymphocyte depletion and complete clinical remission (activity score, 0) by 3 mo, and were tapered off glucocorticoids by 6 mo. Five patients were retreated with rituximab alone for recurring/rising ANCA titers according to protocol. One patient experienced a clinical flare after B lymphocyte reconstitution. CONCLUSION In this cohort, rituximab was a well-tolerated and effective remission induction agent for severe refractory Wegener's granulomatosis.
High Speed Thermal Imaging applied to a Long Pulse Resonant Converter Modulator for Power device Reliability Assessment

This paper considers the design of a modulator supply for RF tube applications. The supply is based on direct modulation of a series resonant parallel loaded power supply. The main aim of this work is to monitor semiconductor losses of the IGBT modules through calorimetry and the device temperature using high speed thermal imaging, during the pulse. The paper provides an overview of the technology and design used on the test rig prototype under study. The final experimental rig layout designed for internal device temperature and loss measurement will be presented. The overall goal of the work is to identify the limitations and reliability of the modulator technology proposed.
Discretized Boundary Equation Method for Two-Dimensional Scattering Problems

A unified approach, named discretized boundary equation (DBE) method, is introduced for two-dimensional (2-D) scattering problems. It is based on the discretization of field expressions for one or two components of the scattered field. The DBEs can be used either on the object surface to obtain the solution directly or on the truncation boundary of a finite difference (FD) or finite element (FE) mesh as termination conditions. This paper describes the general theory of the DBE method and key points or limitations for its implementation. A new on-surface formulation for the solution of scattering by perfectly conducting cylinders is presented as an application of the two-component version of the DBE method and validated through numerical examples. Mesh termination conditions for the FD or FE method are derived based on the one-component formulation of the DBE method and their equivalence and difference to the measured equation of invariance are discussed. In particular, the DBE obtained with the minimum norm least squares solution is investigated thoroughly and its validity and features are demonstrated through numerical results, generated together with the FD method, for scattering by cylinders with various material properties.
Epidemiology of Inflammatory Bowel Disease in Québec: Recent Trends

Background:Among 10 provinces in Canada, Québec has the second highest incidence of Crohn's disease (CD), based on data collected more than a decade ago. To date, there are no reports on the occurrence of ulcerative colitis (UC) and no updates on the occurrence of CD in Québec. We sought to describe trends in the annual incidence and prevalence of inflammatory bowel disease in Québec during 2001 to 2008. Methods:A population-based retrospective cohort study was conducted using the administrative health databases of Québec. IBD cases were identified using a validated case definition requiring at least 1 hospitalization or 4 physician claims within a 2-year period. Incident cases were defined as individuals who had been free of inflammatory bowel disease for at least 2 years before the 2-year time span of the case definition. Results:We identified 24,377 CD and 15,346 UC cases. The mean age at diagnosis was 39 and 46 years for CD and UC, respectively. There was a significant decline in the annual incidence from 2001 to 2008 for both CD (P < 0.003) and UC (P < 0.001). No significant change with time was found in pediatric cases. The point prevalence in 2008 was 277 CD and 164 UC cases per 100,000 population. The average incidence was 17.4 CD cases per 100,000 person-years and 10.1 UC cases per 100,000 person-years. There was no predominance of urban or rural cases for either CD or UC. Conclusions:During 2001 to 2008, annual incidence for both CD and UC declined in Québec. There was no significant change with time in incidence for pediatric cases.
Women’s Power and Community Resilience Rotating Savings and Credit Associations in Barbados and the Bahamas

Rotating Savings and Credit Associations or ROSCA are perceived by many in the Caribbean as derived from West Africa where they were a traditional (pre-colonial) means of accumulating and distributing resources. Brought to the Caribbean as part of the non-material culture of African people, ROSCAs were reestablished and adapted to the new social, economic, and political conditions. Also a challenge for Africanancestry peoples was the creation of new communities in a suppressive social environment where such communities were perceived as a threat to established colonial order. This paper is based on historic documents and two separate ethnographic studies involving more than a thousand direct interviews. Although the two studies in Barbados and the central Bahamas had different purposes, both documented that these associations emerged as historically and contemporarily important to women and a foundation of their communities. The findings argue that beginning during slavery ROSCAs were used by women to achieve power (agency) and in so doing provided resilience to their community.
EU external policy at the crossroads: The challenge of actorness and effectiveness

The goal of this Special Issue is to improve our conceptualisation and empirical understanding of EU actorness and effectiveness in International Relations. While the European Union aspires to play a greater global role, its actorness and effectiveness cannot be taken for granted given the nature of the EU as a multi-level and semi-supranational polity encompassing 28 Member States with diverse foreign policy preferences. The EU is presently at an important crossroad. On the one hand, its external policy stature and capacity have been boosted by institutional innovations and by the Union’s increased involvement in the full spectrum of international issues. On the other hand, a number of factors cast doubt on the EU’s real external policy actorness and effectiveness: slow and often only modest internal reforms, an increasing politicisation of formally ‘low politics’ issues, the prolonged sovereign debt crisis in the Eurozone, and a less favourable external environment, with the US shifting its focus to the Asia-Pacific region and emerging powers creating a more polycentric world order. In view of these changes and subsequent developments in the scholarly literature, our aim is to re-evaluate earlier conceptions of EU actorness. Central to this re-evaluation will be a shift in focus from notions of actorness to effectiveness. This introductory article will unpack and further elaborate the issues raised in this abstract by delineating the EU as an international actor in the empirical context, by reviewing the existing conceptual literature, defining and conceptualizing key notions and by providing an overview of the contributions to this Special Issue.
The Role of Class Teachers in a Key Secondary School in Shanghai

This paper reports on an investigation carried out in a ‘key’ secondary school in Shanghai. This investigation is set in the broader context of current developments in Chinese Education. Perhaps the first surprising discovery is that the affective aspects of education are seen as highly significant in these developments. Given the vast numbers involved and great regional differences, what is described here is likely to be only representative of the best practice. The particular focus of this paper is on the multifaceted role of the class teacher. The second surprise is that though there are great differences, not least in the politicization of education, there are striking parallels with English education and there are some instances where the class teacher’s practice as described here is in advance of many of their English counterparts.