Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Clonidine‐induced growth hormone secretion in chronic schizophrenia

ABSTRACT– – Clonidine (0.15 mg intravenously), an alpha‐adrenergic receptor agonist, was administered to 13 male chronic schizophrenics, who had been withdrawn from chronic neuroleptic therapy, and to 18 normal male controls. There was no significant difference in growth hormone (GH) response between the two groups. There was no significant correlation between duration of psychosis, duration of neuroleptic therapy or length of neuroleptic withdrawal and GH response. These results suggest that postsynaptic alpha‐adrenergic receptor function in the hypothalamic‐pituitary axis is unaltered in chronic schizophrenia or by prior chronic neuroleptic therapy.
Higher Medicare SNF care utilization by dual-eligible beneficiaries: can Medicaid long-term care policies be the answer?

OBJECTIVE To examine outcomes associated with dual eligibility (Medicare and Medicaid) of patients who are admitted to skilled nursing facility (SNF) care and whether differences in outcomes are related to states' Medicaid long-term care policies. DATA SOURCES/COLLECTION We used national Medicare enrollment data and claims, and the Minimum Data Set for 890,922 community-residing Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries who were discharged to an SNF from a general hospital between July 2008 and June 2009. STUDY DESIGN We estimated the effect of dual eligibility on the likelihood of 30-day rehospitalization, becoming a long-stay nursing home resident, and 180-day survival while controlling for clinical, demographic, socio-economic, residential neighborhood characteristics, and SNF-fixed effects. We estimated the differences in outcomes by dual eligibility status separately for each state and showed their relationship with state policies: the average Medicaid payment rate; presence of nursing home certificate-of-need (CON) laws; and Medicaid home and community-based services (HCBS) spending. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Dual-eligible patients are equally likely to experience 30-day rehospitalization, 12 percentage points more likely to become long-stay residents, and 2 percentage points more likely to survive 180 days compared to Medicare-only patients. This longer survival can be attributed to longer nursing home length of stay. While higher HCBS spending reduces the length-of-stay gap without affecting the survival gap, presence of CON laws reduces both the length-of-stay and survival gaps. CONCLUSIONS Dual eligibles utilize more SNF care and experience higher survival rates than comparable Medicare-only patients. Higher HCBS spending may reduce the longer SNF length of stay of dual eligibles without increasing mortality and may save money for both Medicare and Medicaid.
The K-Segment of Maize DHN1 Mediates Binding to Anionic Phospholipid Vesicles and Concomitant Structural Changes1[W][OA]

Dehydrins (DHNs; late embryogenesis abundant D11 family) are a family of intrinsically unstructured plant proteins that accumulate in the late stages of seed development and in vegetative tissues subjected to water deficit, salinity, low temperature, or abscisic acid treatment. We demonstrated previously that maize (Zea mays) DHNs bind preferentially to anionic phospholipid vesicles; this binding is accompanied by an increase in α-helicity of the protein, and adoption of α-helicity can be induced by sodium dodecyl sulfate. All DHNs contain at least one “K-segment,” a lysine-rich 15-amino acid consensus sequence. The K-segment is predicted to form a class A2 amphipathic α-helix, a structural element known to interact with membranes and proteins. Here, three K-segment deletion proteins of maize DHN1 were produced. Lipid vesicle-binding assays revealed that the K-segment is required for binding to anionic phospholipid vesicles, and adoption of α-helicity of the K-segment accounts for most of the conformational change of DHNs upon binding to anionic phospholipid vesicles or sodium dodecyl sulfate. The adoption of structure may help stabilize cellular components, including membranes, under stress conditions.
Excitotoxicity upregulates SARM1 protein expression and promotes Wallerian-like degeneration of retinal ganglion cells and their axons.

PURPOSE This study investigated the role of sterile alpha/Armadillo/Toll-Interleukin receptor homology domain 1 protein (SARM1) in Wallerian-like degeneration of retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) and their axons after inducing excitotoxicity. METHODS To induce excitotoxicity, kainic acid (KA) was injected into the vitreous humor of B6.Cg-Tg(Thy1-YFP)HJrs/J mice. Control mice received PBS. At 24, 48, and 72 hours after injection, degeneration of RGCs and their axons in the retina was determined by fundus imaging, and axonal degeneration in the optic nerves was determined by fluorescence microscopy. SARM1 protein levels were determined by Western blot analysis and SARM1 tissue localization was determined by immunohistochemistry. Causal role of SARM1 in KA-mediated degeneration of RGCs and their axons was determined by treating the eyes with KA along with Sarm1 silencer siRNA. RESULTS Fundus imaging and microscopic analysis indicated that KA promoted Wallerian-like degeneration of RGCs and axons in KA-treated eyes, but not in PBS-treated eyes. Quantitative analysis indicated a significant increase in degeneration of RGCs and their axons in KA-treated injected eyes, but not in PBS-treated eyes. Compared with low levels of SARM1 protein in retinal protein extracts, retinal cross sections, and optic nerve from PBS-treated eyes, SARM1 protein levels were increased in KA-treated eyes. Finally, treatment of eyes with KA along with a Sarm1 silencer siRNA attenuated KA-mediated degeneration of RGCs and their axons significantly. CONCLUSIONS Results presented in this study, for the first time, show that KA-mediated upregulation of SARM1 protein promotes Wallerian-like degeneration of RGCs and their axons.
The parameterless self-organizing map algorithm

The parameterless self-organizing map (PLSOM) is a new neural network algorithm based on the self-organizing map (SOM). It eliminates the need for a learning rate and annealing schemes for learning rate and neighborhood size. We discuss the relative performance of the PLSOM and the SOM and demonstrate some tasks in which the SOM fails but the PLSOM performs satisfactory. Finally we discuss some example applications of the PLSOM and present a proof of ordering under certain limited conditions.
Developmental Trends in Emotion Regulation: A Systematic Review with Implications for Community Mental Health

The ability to regulate how emotions are experienced is central to psychological well-being. Developmental changes in emotion regulation (ER) strategies are unclear in the literature. Thus, a systematic review of the research literature was conducted in order to (a) describe normative ER development across childhood, adolescence, and emerging adulthood, (b) describe the patterns and processes of specific ER strategies, and (c) identify and describe the influence of specific individual factors on ER. Fifty-five studies were identified that examined key ER strategies across development. The findings highlight the importance of facilitating adaptive ER strategies among children and youth.
On-line trust perception: What really matters

Trust is an essential ingredient in our daily activities. The fact that these activities are increasingly carried out using the large number of available services on the Internet makes it necessary to understand how users perceive trust in the online environment. A wide body of literature concerning trust perception and ways to model it already exists. A trust perception model generally lists a set of factors influencing a person trusting another person, a computer, or a website. Different models define different set of factors, but a single unifying model, applicable to multiple scenarios in different settings, is still missing. Moreover, there are no conclusions on the importance each factor has on trust perception. In this paper, we review the existing literature and provide a general trust perception model, which is able to measure the trustworthiness of a website. Such a model takes into account a comprehensive set of trust factors, ranking them based on their importance, and can be easily adapted to different application domains. A user study has been used to determine the importance, or weight, of each factor. The results of the study show evidence that such weight differs from one application domain (e.g. e-banking or e-health) to another. We also demonstrate that the weight of certain factors is related to the users knowledge in the IT Security field. This paper constitutes a first step towards the ability to measure the trustworthiness of a website, helping developers to create more trustworthy websites, and users to make their trust decisions when using on-line services.
Autophagy and immunity – insights from human herpesviruses

The herpesviruses are a family of double-stranded DNA viruses that infect a wide variety of organisms. Having co-evolved with their hosts over millennia, herpesviruses have developed a large repertoire of mechanisms to manipulate normal cellular processes for their own benefit. Consequently, studies on these viruses have made important contributions to our understanding of fundamental biological processes. Here we describe recent research on the human herpesviruses that has contributed to our understanding of, and interactions between, viruses, autophagy, and the immune system. The ability of autophagy to degrade proteins located within the nucleus, the site of herpesvirus latency and replication, is also considered.
Photo-induced protonation/deprotonation in the GFP-like fluorescent protein Dronpa: mechanism responsible for the reversible photoswitching

Recently, reversible photoswitching in bulk samples or in individual molecules of Dronpa, a mutant of a green fluorescent protein (GFP)-like fluorescent protein, has been demonstrated. Intense irradiation at 488 nm changed Dronpa in a dim protonated form, and weak irradiation at 405 nm restored it to the bright deprotonated form. Here, we report on the mechanism of photoswitching of Dronpa by means of ensemble and single-molecule spectroscopy. Ensemble spectroscopy shows that the photoswitching can be described, in first approximation, by a three-state model including a deprotonated (B), a protonated (A_1), and a photoswitched protonated (A_2) forms of the chromophore. While the B and the A_1 forms are in a ground state acid–base equilibrium, the B and the A_2 forms are reversibly photoswitched upon irradiation with 488 and 405 nm light. At the single-molecule level, the on-times in fluorescence intensity trajectories excited at 488 nm decrease with increasing the excitation power, consistent with the photoswitching from the B to A_2 form. The on-times agree well with expected values, which are calculated based on the ensemble spectroscopic properties of Dronpa. The fluorescence trajectory obtained with simultaneous dual-color excitation at 488 and 405 nm demonstrates reversible photoswitching between the B and the A_2 forms at the single-molecule level. The efficiency of the photoswitching from the A_2 to B form increased with increasing the excitation power of the 405 nm light. Our results demonstrate that Dronpa holds its outstanding photoswitching properties, based on a photo-induced protonation/deprotonation process, even at the single-molecule level.
Languages of Science in the Era of Nation-state Formation: The Israeli Universities and Their (non)Participation in the Revival of Hebrew

This paper presents sociological analysis of the linguistic and cultural identity of two of Israel's most influential and high-ranked universities during their formative years, that were also the de facto formative years of the Israeli state-in-the-making (1924–1948). We argue that the influence of external universal factors on a nation-state was sometimes crucial long before the period characterised by social scientists as an era of globalisation. Influenced by European nationalism, the leaders of the Zionist movement emphasised the importance of the restoration of Hebrew as a national language. In various European national movements the universities played a central role in the revival or creation of a national culture: the language, the national epic, the folklore were all cultivated and nurtured by the universities. This was not the case in the Jewish renaissance: the cultural revolution took place outside academia. The most cardinal phenomenon in this context – the revival of the Hebrew language – had almost no connection whatsoever with academic bodies. The phenomenon discussed in this essay should not be underestimated by historians and sociologists, especially provided the fact that Israel is traditionally perceived as one of the most successful and impressive instances of nation building in the 20th century.
Arenas of comfort and conflict: peer relationship events and young people's educational attainment

ABSTRACT Previous research suggests that developments in young people's peer relationships may either compound or alleviate the adverse impacts of other major life changes during adolescence. We explored this proposition with respect to young people's educational attainment upon leaving high school, using longitudinal data from a large cohort of Australian secondary school students (n = 1612) who have taken part in the Our Lives research study between the ages of 12/13 and 19/20 years. Our analysis focused on the role of peer relationship events such bullying, friendship problems, falling in love, and breaking up with someone. Bullying and romantic involvement were associated with lower odds of receiving a competitive tertiary entrance rank at the end of high school. However, close, resilient friendships – in which status and identity conflicts may be more easily tolerated and resolved – may help to offset the role of these other events. As well as reviewing the consequences of our findings for young people's educational and occupational trajectories in the longer-term, we highlight their implications for future research and policy in this area.
Maternal obesity and pregnancy complications: A review

Obesity in women of reproductive age is increasing at an unprecedented rate in western societies. Maternal obesity is associated with an unequivocal increase in maternal and fetal complications of pregnancy. Excessive maternal weight gain in pregnancy also appears to be an independent risk factor, regardless of prepregnancy weight. Few guidelines exist regarding appropriate weight gain in pregnancy in obese women. We review the association of maternal obesity with pregnancy complications. We also suggest that appropriate diet and lifestyle intervention can enable women with severe prepregnancy obesity to safely achieve quite strict targets for limited weight gain in pregnancy.
Degrees of freedom of large planar wireless networks embedded in a 3D domain

It is shown using first physical principles and without relying on stochastic fading channel models, that the number of spatial degrees of freedom available in planar wireless networks embedded in a three-dimensional propagation environment is limited by the spatial size of the cut that divides the environment into two parts. Specifically, in the case of propagation inside a cylinder of height h and base area n, containing n communicating source-destination node pairs, the number of available channels is at most proportional to h√n and hence, as the number of nodes increases, the per-user information capacity must follow an inverse square-root of n law.
Influence of housing system and design on bone strength and keel bone fractures in laying hens

The main objectives of the study were to provide an accurate assessment of current levels of old breaks in end-of-lay hens housed in a variety of system designs and identify the important risk factors. Sixty-seven flocks housed in eight broad subcategories were assessed at the end of the production period. Within each flock, the presence of keel fractures was determined and the tibia, humerus and keel bones dissected for measurement of breaking strength. For each house, variations in internal design and perching provision were categorised and the effective heights of the differing structures recorded. All systems were associated with alarmingly high levels of keel damage although variation in mean prevalence between systems was evident with flocks housed in furnished cages having the lowest prevalence (36 per cent) despite also having significantly weaker bones and flocks housed in all systems equipped with multilevel perches showing the highest levels of damage (over 80 per cent) and the highest severity scores.
The Potential of Humor as a Trigger for Emotional Engagement in Outdoor Education

This article examines the relevance of humor to student engagement in outdoor education. A sociocultural framework is applied to this examination, based on a view of learning as constructed, cognitive, embodied, and affective. A set of affordances of outdoor education as a contextually situated learning activity is identified along with related abilities of adolescent students to interact with these characteristics. The argument, advanced through an examination of the literature, is that outdoor education provides teaching and learning affordances that are different from traditional school-based education, and the ability of students to engage with these affordances is influenced by a range of affective factors. Furthermore, humor acts as an influential variable in learning environments, thus providing a trigger for increasing students’ emotional engagement with the immediate task or topic. The primary proposition is that a capacity to knowingly perceive and productively engage with humorous moments can provide a pedagogical trigger for the emotional engagement of participants. In particular, we outline how humor is likely to influence student–student, student–teacher, and individual–context learning-related interactions.
Design and validation of a Photographic Expressive Persian Grammar Test for children aged 4–6 years

Syntax has a high importance among linguistic parameters, and syntax-related problems are the most common in language disorders. Therefore, the present study aimed to design a Photographic Expressive Persian Grammar Test for Iranian children in the age group of 4–6 years and to determine its validity and reliability. First, the target morphosyntactic structures among Persian-speaking 4–6-year-old children were extracted, and items related to each structure were designed. After both content and face validity were determined and modifications were applied, the initial version of the test was performed on 100 children. The final version of the test was performed on 400 eligible, typically-developing children selected using the random (cluster) method. Psychometric properties investigated in this study include construct validity (convergent validity and age and gender discriminative validity) and reliability (test–retest, inter-rater, and internal consistency). Content validity of each item was between 0.8 and 1, and content validity of the whole scale was 0.86. Exploration of construct validity suggested that age and gender affect the test scores. Convergent validity was found to be significant. Results of test–retest, and inter-rater reliability were significantly correlated and the test was found to have high internal consistency. The Photographic Expressive Persian Grammar Test with 40 items is the first reliable and valid scale that exclusively and accurately evaluates morphosyntactic characteristics of 4–6-year-old Persian-speaking children.
Intrathecal Fentanyl-Induced Pruritus Is More Severe in Combination With Procaine Than with Lidocaine or Bupivacaine

Background and Objectives Fentanyl is used as an additive to prolong intrathecal anesthesia with both lidocaine and low-dose bupivacaine in the outpatient setting to minimize voiding or discharge delays. Pruritus is the most common side effect. When using procaine as a substitute for lidocaine, we perceived an increased frequency and severity of pruritus. We compared prospectively the frequency and severity of itching with combinations of fentanyl with lidocaine, bupivacaine, and procaine. Methods After institutional review board approval, 135 patients requesting neuraxial anesthesia were asked to evaluate the presence and severity (using a 100 point verbal pruritus score [VPS]) of itching 30 minutes after injection of their spinal anesthetic, on arrival to the postanesthesia care unit (PACU), and at the time of resolution of their block. Choice of anesthetic drug and dose and the use of intravenous sedation was left to the discretion of the attending and resident anesthesiologist. Results Thirty-three patients received lidocaine and fentanyl, 47 received bupivacaine and fentanyl, and 55 received procaine and fentanyl. In the lidocaine group, 21% of patients experienced pruritus compared with 55% of the bupivacaine group and 55% of the procaine group (P = .003). The average VPS at 30 minutes postblock was 18.4 in the procaine group compared with 0 and 5.5 in the lidocaine and bupivacaine groups (P = .06). On admission to the PACU, it was 37 compared with 16 and 20 for lidocaine and bupivacaine, respectively (P = .006). Conclusion Procaine produces a higher frequency of pruritus than that seen with lidocaine-fentanyl combinations and a greater severity of pruritus than seen with lidocaine-fentanyl and bupivacaine-fentanyl spinal anesthesia.
Role of the chromatin landscape and sequence in determining cell type-specific genomic glucocorticoid receptor binding and gene regulation

Abstract The genomic loci bound by the glucocorticoid receptor (GR), a hormone-activated transcription factor, show little overlap between cell types. To study the role of chromatin and sequence in specifying where GR binds, we used Bayesian modeling within the universe of accessible chromatin. Taken together, our results uncovered that although GR preferentially binds accessible chromatin, its binding is biased against accessible chromatin located at promoter regions. This bias can only be explained partially by the presence of fewer GR recognition sequences, arguing for the existence of additional mechanisms that interfere with GR binding at promoters. Therefore, we tested the role of H3K9ac, the chromatin feature with the strongest negative association with GR binding, but found that this correlation does not reflect a causative link. Finally, we find a higher percentage of promoter–proximal GR binding for genes regulated by GR across cell types than for cell type-specific target genes. Given that GR almost exclusively binds accessible chromatin, we propose that cell type-specific regulation by GR preferentially occurs via distal enhancers, whose chromatin accessibility is typically cell type-specific, whereas ubiquitous target gene regulation is more likely to result from binding to promoter regions, which are often accessible regardless of cell type examined.