Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The effect of mode of data collection and of non-response on reported alcohol consumption: a split-sample study in Switzerland.

AIMS To examine (a) effects of different modes of data collection on the reporting of alcohol consumption and non-response rate, and (b) differences in reported consumption between respondents and non-respondents. DESIGN Two versions of a health questionnaire survey were assigned to two random samples, one version to each sample. Version 1 consisted of a telephone interview without alcohol questions, followed by a mailed questionnaire with alcohol questions. Version 2 consisted of a telephone interview with alcohol questions, followed by a mailed questionnaire without alcohol questions. SETTING Participants were recruited randomly in eight Swiss cantons. PARTICIPANTS Five hundred and thirty-seven (404) respondents to the telephone interview (and subsequent mailed questionnaire) with version 1, and 451 (360) with version 2. MEASUREMENTS Alcohol-use variables derived from a quantity-frequency measure. RESULTS Respondents to the mailed questionnaire (version 2) did not differ significantly in alcohol consumption from non-respondents. Response rate was not affected by inclusion of alcohol questions, but respondents asked by telephone about their alcohol use were more often abstainers and less often hazardous drinkers than respondents to the mailed question. CONCLUSION The study gives no indication that interviews are refused because alcohol consumption is a questionnaire topic, but suggests that postal questionnaires give slightly greater disclosure of alcohol consumption.
Activation and injury of Clostridium perfringens spores by alcohols

The activation properties of Clostridium perfringens NCTC 8679 spores were demonstrated by increases in CFU after heating in water or aqueous alcohols. The temperature range for maximum activation, which was 70 to 80 degrees C in water, was lowered by the addition of alcohols. The response at a given temperature was dependent on the time of exposure and the alcohol concentration. The monohydric alcohols and some, but not all, of the polyhydric alcohols could activate spores at 37 degrees C. The concentration of a monohydric alcohol that produced optimal spore activation was inversely related to its lipophilic character. Spore injury, which was manifested as a dependence on lysozyme for germination and colony formation, occurred under some conditions of alcohol treatment that exceeded those for optimal spore activation. Treatment with aqueous solutions of monohydric alcohols effectively activated C. perfringens spores and suggests a hydrophobic site for spore activation.
Making Decisions under Ambiguity: Judgment Bias Tasks for Assessing Emotional State in Animals

Judgment bias tasks (JBTs) are considered as a family of promising tools in the assessment of emotional states of animals. JBTs provide a cognitive measure of optimism and/or pessimism by recording behavioral responses to ambiguous stimuli. For instance, a negative emotional state is expected to produce a negative or pessimistic judgment of an ambiguous stimulus, whereas a positive emotional state produces a positive or optimistic judgment of the same ambiguous stimulus. Measuring an animal’s emotional state or mood is relevant in both animal welfare research and biomedical research. This is reflected in the increasing use of JBTs in both research areas. We discuss the different implementations of JBTs with animals, with a focus on their potential as an accurate measure of emotional state. JBTs have been successfully applied to a very broad range of species, using many different types of testing equipment and experimental protocols. However, further validation of this test is deemed necessary. For example, the often extensive training period required for successful judgment bias testing remains a possible factor confounding results. Also, the issue of ambiguous stimuli losing their ambiguity with repeated testing requires additional attention. Possible improvements are suggested to further develop the JBTs in both animal welfare and biomedical research.
Autophagy favors Brucella melitensis survival in infected macrophages

This study investigated the role of autophagy in the survival of the invasive bacterium Brucella melitensis strain 16M in murine macrophages. Here, Brucella melitensis 16M was found to trigger autophagosome formation, enhance autophagy flux and increase the expression level of the autophagy marker protein LC3-II. When autophagy was pharmacologically inhibited by 3-methyladenine (3-MA), Brucella replication efficiency was significantly decreased (p < 0.05). These results suggest that autophagy favors Brucella melitensis 16M survival in murine macrophages.
Integrative Taxonomy of the Micrura alaskensis Coe, 1901 Species Complex (Nemertea: Heteronemertea), with Descriptions of a New Genus Maculaura gen. nov. and Four New Species from the NE Pacific

Micrura alaskensis Coe, 1901 is a common intertidal heteronemertean known from eastern and northwest Pacific (Alaska to Ensenada, Mexico and Akkeshi, Japan, respectively). It is an emerging model system in developmental biology research. We present evidence from morphology of the adults, gametes, and sequences of cytochrome c oxidase subunit I and 16S rRNA genes that it is not one, but a complex of five, cryptic species. All five of these species co-occur at least in part of their geographic range (e.g. southern Oregon). Preliminary cross-hybridization experiments suggest that at least some of these species are reproductively isolated. The five species share characteristics of adult morphology (e.g. accessory buccal glands) and at least four are known to possess a unique larval morphotype—pilidium maculosum. We propose that these characters define a new genus, Maculaura gen. nov., which contains the following five species: Maculaura alaskensis comb. nov., Maculaura aquilonia sp. nov., Maculaura cerebrosa sp. nov., Maculaura oregonensis sp. nov., and Maculaura magna sp. nov. It is unclear which of the five species Coe originally encountered and described. We chose to retain the name “alaskensis” for the species that current researchers know as “Micrura alaskensis”, although, presently, it is only known from Washington and Oregon, and has not been collected from Alaska. Maculaura aquilonia sp. nov. is the only member of the genus we have encountered in Alaska, and we show that it also occurs in the Sea of Okhotsk, Russia.
Patients’ quality of life: A comparison of patient and nurse perceptions

patient’s unique needs requires nurses and patients to have a similar understanding of a patients’ QoL. This study aimed to identify: (a) the level of agreement between patients and nurses about cancer patients’ QoL; and (b) variables that may affect the level of agreement between them. Cancer patients (n = 117) and nurses (n = 49) from a public hospital were invited separately to complete the World Health Organisation Quality of Life Brief (WHOQoL-BREF) questionnaire. This assesses QoL in physical, psychological, social relationship and environmental domains, or dimensions. Intraclass correlation coefficients (ICC) revealed a moderate agreement between nurses’ and patients’ scores in the physical QoL domain but lower agreement on other domains. A paired t-test identified patients’ QoL domain scores were significantly higher than that of nurses in social relationship and environmental domains. Multivariate analysis using standard multiple regression analysis demonstrated that agreement between patients and nurses was higher: (a) in the physical QoL domain with nurses who have greater clinical experience with cancer patients; (b) in the social relationship QoL domain when patients are treated in outpatient departments. These results imply that differences exist between patients’ and nurses’ perceptions about cancer patients’ QoL and nurses tend to underestimate patients’ QoL in social relationship and environmental domains. Higher clinical experience with cancer patients may contribute toward a better understanding by nurses of cancer patients’ QoL.
Bone morphogenetic protein‐9 induces epithelial to mesenchymal transition in hepatocellular carcinoma cells

Epithelial‐mesenchymal transition (EMT) is an important mechanism to initiate cancer invasion and metastasis. Bone morphogenetic protein (BMP)‐9 is a member of the transforming growth factor (TGF)‐β superfamily. It has been suggested to play a role in cancer development in some non‐hepatic tumors. In the present study, two hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) lines, HLE and HepG2, were treated with BMP‐9 in vitro, and phenotypic changes and cell motility were analyzed. In situ hybridization (ISH) and immunohistochemical analyses were performed with human HCC tissue samples in order to assess expression levels of BMP‐9. In vivo, BMP‐9 protein and mRNA were expressed in all the tested patients to diverse degrees. At the protein level, mildly positive (1 + ) BMP‐9 staining could be observed in 25/41 (61%), and moderately to strongly positive (2 + ) in 16/41 (39%) of the patients. In 27/41 (65%) patients, the BMP‐9 protein expression level was consistent with the mRNA expression level as measured by ISH. In those patients with 2 + protein level, nuclear pSmad1 expression in cancer cells was also significantly increased. Expression of BMP‐9 was positively related to nuclear Snail expression and reversely correlated to cell surface E‐cadherin expression, although this did not reach statistical significance. Expression levels of BMP‐9 were significantly associated with the T stages of the investigated tumors and high levels of BMP‐9 were detected by immunofluorescence especially at the tumor borders in samples from an HCC mouse model. In vitro, BMP‐9 treatment caused a reduction of E‐cadherin and ZO‐1 and an induction of Vimentin and Snail expression. Furthermore, cell migration was enhanced by BMP‐9 in both HCC cell lines. These results imply that EMT induced by BMP‐9 is related to invasiveness of HCC.
Patent indicators: a window to pharmaceutical market success

Pharmaceutical success in the market is the best reward for pharmaceutical investors undergoing the lengthy, costly and risky process of pharmaceutical Research and Development (R&D). Drugs with high market revenues trigger fierce competition between pharmaceutical enterprises, as is demonstrated by the increasing Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) cases focusing on seizing the best-selling products. On the other hand, patents, as the best shield for innovative drugs against generic drugs, become a powerful weapon for pharmaceutical enterprises to win the substantial returns generated by market exclusivity. Patents seem to be directly responsible for the commercial success of new medicines. In this context, it is of great significance to find out the empirical associations between pharmaceutical commercial success and patents. By comprehensively analysing 127 drugs marketed in the USA and their 621 American patents, this article identifies the evidence to link various patent indicators with pharmaceutical sales in actual market.
Towards Fine-Grained Adaptation of Exploration/Exploitation in Information Retrieval

Lookup and exploratory search tasks can be distinguished using individuals' information search behaviour. Previous work, however, has treated these search tasks as belonging to homogeneous categories, ignoring the specific information needs between users and even between search sessions for the same user. In this work, we avoid this dichotomy by considering each search task to exist on a spectrum between lookup and exploratory. In doing so, our approach aims to dynamically adapt exploration and exploitation in a manner commensurate with the user's individual requirements for each search session. We present a novel study design together with a regression model for predicting the optimal exploration rate based on simple metrics from the first iteration, such as clicks and reading time, that can be collected without special hardware. We perform model selection based on the data collected from a user study and show that predictions are consistent with user feedback.
Transnational community in the making: Russian-Jewish immigrants of the 1990s in Israel

Drawing on integrated analysis of Israeli statistics and social research (including a 2001 survey among 800 Russian Israelis), this article explores the birth of a transnational community of Russian Jews living in Israel and in other branches of the post-Soviet diaspora. The theoretical focus of the paper is the relationship between transnationalism and immigrant integration in the host country. It is shown that, due to its timing and composition, the Russian immigration of the 1990s was transnational at the outset. Transnational activities among Russian Israelis lie mainly in the socio-cultural realm and are intertwined with cultural separatism from the host society. During the 1990s, Russian-speakers, making 20 per cent of the Jewish population in Israel, have created a thriving subculture of their own. It is shown that reliance on co-ethnic networks plays a double role in the life of Israeli Russians. On the one hand, it empowers the weakest and the least integrated segments of the Russian community, attenuating their dependency on the host society. Yet, at the same time, it hampers economic success and social integration of many other immigrants, and reinforces cultural conflict between the newcomers and old-timers in Israel.
Focus sensitivity in Hungarian adults and children

Focus sentences in Hungarian are claimed to express exhaustive identification by a syntactic-semantic operator in standard generative descriptions, but there are also arguments against this view. Our study aimed to gather empirical evidence for the exhaustive interpretation of focus sentences and to explore developmental changes with age. Two groups of children (mean ages 6;3 and 10;8 years) and a group of adults participated in a picture-sentence verification task that systematically varied sentence and context types. Adults showed a marked sensitivity for focus as a group, but focus sensitivity was not evident in either group of children. All participant groups were remarkably inconsistent in distinguishing neutral and focus sentences. In spite of the measurable sensitivity to focus in adults, the pattern of the results contradicts the predictions of the syntactic-semantic operator model concerning exhaustive interpretation, and urges further research.
Reading Preferences of Pupils with Visual Impairment

Braille readers were invited to submit their views on issues relating to their reading habits. Interpretation of the resulting data provides valuable Insights into the materials and services which blind pupils currently use; and their responses give pointers to the ways in which resources could be developed so that these children and young people have better access to the literature enjoyed by their sighted peers.
Telomere length in interstitial lung diseases.

BACKGROUND Interstitial lung disease (ILD) is a heterogeneous group of rare diseases that primarily affect the pulmonary interstitium. Studies have implicated a role for telomere length (TL) maintenance in ILD, particularly in idiopathic interstitial pneumonia (IIP). Here, we measure TL in a wide spectrum of sporadic and familial cohorts of ILD and compare TL between patient cohorts and control subjects. METHODS A multiplex quantitative polymerase chain reaction method was used to measure TL in 173 healthy subjects and 359 patients with various ILDs, including familial interstitial pneumonia (FIP). The FIP cohort was divided into patients carrying TERT mutations, patients carrying SFTPA2 or SFTPC mutations, and patients without a proven mutation (FIP-no mutation). RESULTS TL in all cases of ILD was significantly shorter compared with those of control subjects (P range: .038 to < .0001). Furthermore, TL in patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) was significantly shorter than in patients with other IIPs (P = .002) and in patients with sarcoidosis (P < .0001). Within the FIP cohort, patients in the FIP-telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT) group had the shortest telomeres (P < .0001), and those in the FIP-no mutation group had TL comparable to that of patients with IPF (P = .049). Remarkably, TL of patients with FIP-surfactant protein (SFTP) was significantly longer than in patients with IPF, but similar to that observed in patients with other sporadic IIPs. CONCLUSIONS The results show telomere shortening across all ILD diagnoses. The difference in TL between the FIP-TERT and FIP-SFTP groups indicates the distinction between acquired and innate telomere shortening. Short TL in the IPF and FIP-no mutation groups is indicative of an innate telomere-biology defect, while a stress-induced, acquired telomere shortening might be the underlying process for the other ILD diagnoses.
Prevalence of food allergy and perceptions on food allergen labeling in school foodservice among Korean students

Purpose: Prevalence of food allergy and perceptions on food allergen labeling in school foodservice among elementary, middle, and high school students were investigated in Korea. Methods: A total of 1,000 elementary, middle, and high schools were selected in 16 cities and provinces of Korea and students attending the schools were surveyed using a questionnaire modified from the Korean International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood questionnaire in July 2012. Responses from 27,679 students were used for data analysis. Results: The ratio of the students who had experienced food allergy was 12.6%; 7.6% of the responding students had food allergy reactions last 12 months and 6.8% of the students had been diagnosed for food allergy by doctors. Eggs, milk, peach, and crabs were the most frequent allergenic foods for the elementary school 1st graders, 5th graders, middle, and high school students, respectively, who had experienced food allergy last 12 months. The students with food allergy read menus more frequently and were more interest in food allergen labeling in school foodservice than their counterparts. Both of the student groups with and without food allergy perceived food allergen labeling important for the students with food allergy and their parents. Conclusion: The prevalence of food allergy and major allergenic foods varied by school years. The Korean students had positive perception on allergic food labeling in school foodservice. An effective food allergen labeling system for school foodservice should be developed and implemented that reflects prevalence, symptoms, and food allergens among Korean students. (Allergy Asthma Respir Dis 2013;1:227-234)
Emotive Factors that Make Photographs Memorable

Abstract Fleeting exposure to photographic images in newspapers, magazines, advertisements and elsewhere is part of everyday life. Some of these images stick in our memory while we quickly forget others. This article reviews previous research, provides a theoretical model and presents new findings to elucidate emotive influences that make photographs memorable. Earlier research identified pleasantness and arousal as the main emotions elicited by photographs. The new study used an experimental design that manipulated level of emotion (anxiety) before viewing photographs. Specifically, participants either received or did not receive emotive priming before viewing a set of fifty-seven photographs, each exposed for six seconds. They rated each photograph on emotive measures immediately after exposure and recalled as many photographs as possible after viewing the full set. The findings show that emotion induced by priming affected both emotive appraisal and which photographs viewers recalled. Anxious viewers were more likely to appraise photographs as unpleasant, with higher recall of photographs appraised as unpleasant. All viewers recalled more photographs appraised as arousing rather than quiescent. The findings are consistent with a model of emotion and memory that has relevance to understanding the reception of photographs throughout the social sciences and humanities.
Coherence and connectedness in the development of discourse production

This paper discusses discourse components in writing, especially the relationship between coherence and connectedness, and examines connectedness in children 's written essays and narratives. Developmental trends were observed in the number of local sentence-to-sentence connectiom children wrote between adjacent sentences and in the type ofconnective device used. Essays by sixth and eighth graders showed a higher proportion of local connections than did those by second and fourth graders, and the local connections changed from a majonty ofreference connections in second grade essays to an increasing use of complex syntactic connections in eighth grade essays. Text form also influenced writing. The level of connectedness was higher in narratives than in essays. The narrative form also influenced the type of connective device used, especially in the writing of younger children. Writing from each grade level was modeled, and the developmental differences are described in Computer simulations äs differences in procedures used to scan and retrieve Information from memory.
A Dynamic Multivariate Heavy-Tailed Model for Time-Varying Volatilities and Correlations

We propose a new class of observation-driven time-varying parameter models for dynamic volatilities and correlations to handle time series from heavy-tailed distributions. The model adopts generalized autoregressive score dynamics to obtain a time-varying covariance matrix of the multivariate Student t distribution. The key novelty of our proposed model concerns the weighting of lagged squared innovations for the estimation of future correlations and volatilities. When we account for heavy tails of distributions, we obtain estimates that are more robust to large innovations. We provide an empirical illustration for a panel of daily equity returns.
Genetic variation of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) in bipolar disorder

Background Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) influences neuronal survival, proliferation and plasticity Three family-based studies have shown association of the common Valine (Val) allele of the Val66Met polymorphism of the BDNF gene with susceptibility to bipolar disorder. Aims To replicate this finding. Method We genotyped the Val66Met polymorphism in our UK White bipolar case-control sample (n=3062). Results We found no overall evidence of allele or genotype association. However, we found association with disease status in the subset of 131 individuals that had experienced rapid cycling at some time (P=0.004). We found a similar association on re-analysis of our previously reported family-based association sample (P<0.03, one-tailed test). Conclusions Variation at the Val66Met polymorphism of BDNF does not play a major role in influencing susceptibility to bipolar disorder as a whole, but is associated with susceptibility to the rapid-cycling subset of the disorder.