Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Changes with Age and with Exclusion of Vision in Performance at an Aiming Task

Forty industrial workers between 20 and 60 years of age took part in the experiment. Each sat facing a display in an enclosure. His task was to locate targets with a pointer, under two conditons: when he was able to make whatever use he chose of direct vision, and wearing a pair of red goggles through which only the diplay could be seen. On the average, those over 40 years of age took more time than younger subjects over those portions of the task which were concerned with the initiation of a fresh action. When unable to make use of vision the older had far greater difficulty in locating the targets and attempted to supplement tactile and kinesthetic cues by making postural adjustments, turning their heads and often their bodies in the direction of the target at which they were aiming. These findings are discussed in relation to an earlier observation of the greater tendency for older people to look at what they are doing.
Look & touch: gaze-supported target acquisition

While eye tracking has a high potential for fast selection tasks, it is often regarded as error-prone and unnatural, especially for gaze-only interaction. To improve on that, we propose gaze-supported interaction as a more natural and effective way combining a user's gaze with touch input from a handheld device. In particular, we contribute a set of novel and practical gaze-supported selection techniques for distant displays. Designed according to the principle gaze suggests, touch confirms they include an enhanced gaze-directed cursor, local zoom lenses and more elaborated techniques utilizing manual fine positioning of the cursor via touch. In a comprehensive user study with 24 participants, we investigated the potential of these techniques for different target sizes and distances. All novel techniques outperformed a simple gaze-directed cursor and showed individual advantages. In particular those techniques using touch for fine cursor adjustments (MAGIC touch) and for cycling through a list of possible close-to-gaze targets (MAGIC tab) demonstrated a high overall performance and usability.
Breast Tissue Composition and Its Dependence on Demographic Risk Factors for Breast Cancer: Non-Invasive Assessment by Time Domain Diffuse Optical Spectroscopy

Background Breast tissue composition is recognized as a strong and independent risk factor for breast cancer. It is a heritable feature, but is also significantly affected by several other elements (e.g., age, menopause). Nowadays it is quantified by mammographic density, thus requiring the use of ionizing radiation. Optical techniques are absolutely non-invasive and have already proved effective in the investigation of biological tissues, as they are sensitive to tissue composition and structure. Methods Time domain diffuse optical spectroscopy was performed at 7 wavelengths (635-1060 nm) on 200 subjects to derive their breast tissue composition (in terms of water, lipid and collagen content), blood parameters (total hemoglobin content and oxygen saturation level), and information on the microscopic structure (scattering amplitude and power). The dependence of all optically-derived parameters on age, menopausal status, body mass index, and use of oral contraceptives, and the correlation with mammographic density were investigated. Results Younger age, premenopausal status, lower body mass index values, and use of oral contraceptives all correspond to significantly higher water, collagen and total hemoglobin content, and lower lipid content (always p < 0.05 and often p < 10-4), while oxygen saturation level and scattering parameters show significant dependence only on some conditions. Even when age-adjusted groups of subjects are compared, several optically derived parameters (and in particular always collagen and total hemoglobin content) remain significantly different. Conclusions Time domain diffuse optical spectroscopy can probe non-invasively breast tissue composition and physiologic blood parameters, and provide information on tissue structure. The measurement is suitable for in vivo studies and monitoring of changes in breast tissue (e.g., with age, lifestyle, chemotherapy, etc.) and to gain insight into related processes, like the origin of cancer risk associated with breast density.
The Educational Achievement of Brazilian Adolescents

Most studies find a positive correlation between family cultural capital and educational achievement. As compelling as the evidence on the advantages of family cultural capital for educational achievement is, most studies have focused on countries characterized by having a large middle class and high levels of income, not addressing societies with high levels of social inequality. Importantly, few studies have examined whether schools interact with families in determining the relationship between cultural capital and educational achievement. The goal of this article is to examine how cultural capital is associated with achievement in Brazil, one of the most unequal countries in the world. Using data from the 2006 Program for International Student Assessment (PISA), results from multilevel models show that the science and reading achievement gaps associated with cultural capital are magnified in Brazilian schools, an important finding given that the country is an already highly stratified society.
The dreaming child: dreams, religion and religious education

Dreaming is an integral part of human life. Whilst psychology has generated extensive knowledge and understanding about dreams, it was in religious contexts that they were originally understood. This relationship between dreams and religion is still evident in contemporary society in the scriptures of the Abrahamic faiths, which narrate dreams which God/Allah sent to convey messages to the dreamers. This article argues that discussion about dreams in Religious Education (RE) can be a valuable way of addressing aspects of both learning about religion and learning from religion. Previous arguments for the discussion of dreams in RE have justified the claims based on the relevance of dreaming to children, that is because all children dream, they can relate to the topic. This article draws on recent empirical research which shows that some children report dreams in which God appeared, and dreams which they believe God/Allah sent to extend that argument. The fact that some children experience these ‘divine dreams’ adds relevance and poignancy to a topic on dreams in RE. Teachers can, through sensitive management, lead discussions about dreams in such a way that not only fulfils syllabi’s criteria but does so in a meaningful way. The difficulties and perceived difficulties of such discussions are outlined in more depth than has previously been done. The article concludes that the topic is a valuable one for the RE classroom.
Does Hospital Disaster Preparedness Predict Response Performance During a Full-scale Exercise? A Pilot Study

Abstract Introduction The assessment of hospital disaster preparedness and response performance is a way to find and remove possible gaps and weaknesses in hospital disaster management effectiveness. The aim of this pilot study was to test the association between the level of preparedness and the level of response performance during a full-scale hospital exercise. Method This pilot study was conducted in a hospital during a full-scale exercise in the Piedmont region of Italy. The preparedness evaluation was conducted by a group of three experts, three days before the exercise, and the response evaluation was conducted during the exercise. The functional capacity module was used for preparedness evaluation, and the response performance of the “command and control” function of the hospital was evaluated by nine semiquantitative performance indicators. Results The preparedness of the chosen hospital was 59%, while the response performance was evaluated as 70%. The hospital staff conducted Simple Triage and Rapid Transport (START) triage while they received 61 casualties, which was 90% correct for the yellow group and 100% correct for the green group. Conclusion This pilot study showed that it is possible to use standardized evaluations tools, to simultaneously assess the relationship between preparedness elements and response performance measures. An experimental study including a group of hospitals, also using more comprehensive evaluation tools, should be done to evaluate the correlation between the level of preparedness and the response performance of a hospital, and the impact of hospital disaster planning, on the outcome of disasters victims. DjalaliA, CarenzoL, RagazzoniL, AzzarettoM, PetrinoR, Della CorteF, IngrassiaPL. Does hospital disaster preparedness predict response performance during a full-scale exercise? A pilot study. Prehosp Disaster Med. 2014;29(4):1-7.
Speech Intelligibility Potential of General and Specialized Deep Neural Network Based Speech Enhancement Systems

In this paper, we study aspects of single microphone speech enhancement (SE) based on deep neural networks (DNNs). Specifically, we explore the generalizability capabilities of state-of-the-art DNN-based SE systems with respect to the background noise type, the gender of the target speaker, and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Furthermore, we investigate how specialized DNN-based SE systems, which have been trained to be either noise type specific, speaker specific or SNR specific, perform relative to DNN based SE systems that have been trained to be noise type general, speaker general, and SNR general. Finally, we compare how a DNN-based SE system trained to be noise type general, speaker general, and SNR general performs relative to a state-of-the-art short-time spectral amplitude minimum mean square error (STSA-MMSE) based SE algorithm. We show that DNN-based SE systems, when trained specifically to handle certain speakers, noise types and SNRs, are capable of achieving large improvements in estimated speech quality (SQ) and speech intelligibility (SI), when tested in matched conditions. Furthermore, we show that improvements in estimated SQ and SI can be achieved by a DNN-based SE system when exposed to unseen speakers, genders and noise types, given a large number of speakers and noise types have been used in the training of the system. In addition, we show that a DNN-based SE system that has been trained using a large number of speakers and a wide range of noise types outperforms a state-of-the-art STSA-MMSE based SE method, when tested using a range of unseen speakers and noise types. Finally, a listening test using several DNN-based SE systems tested in unseen speaker conditions show that these systems can improve SI for some SNR and noise type configurations but degrade SI for others.
Social work and linguistic systems: Marking possession in Canadian English

Abstract The system of stative possession has been subject to variation and change since at least the Early Modern period, with have got rising in frequency in British and Antipodean varieties of English. In Canadian English, as represented by data from the largest city, Toronto, have predominates. Nonetheless, the full set of constraints previously reported for this variable are operative, corroborating the longitudinal maintenance of linguistic factors across time and space (Kroch, 1989). At the same time, variation among possessive forms is conditioned by robust sociolinguistic patterns. Have is correlated with education and with female speakers, whereas less-educated men favor have got and got. Such findings demonstrate that the domination of one form or another in a variable system can be the result of historical accident, in this case a founder effect at a particular point in history, and that the social value of forms is a product of local circumstances at the time of change.
Frequency of co‐teaching in different teacher categories

Co‐teaching – or the use of more than one teacher in a classroom – has been commonly recommended as a means to promote inclusive education. The aim of the present study was to survey the actual frequency of co‐teaching among different teacher categories in the comprehensive school level in one Finnish city. The data were collected through a questionnaire answered by two representative samples of teachers including 117 resource room teachers in the first survey, and 317 teachers of various teacher categories in the second. The results showed that co‐teaching was a widespread phenomenon among resource room teachers and special class teachers but less frequent among other teacher groups. Overall, it was used only infrequently, typically from two to three hours a week. On a weekly basis it was implemented by every second special education teacher, every third classroom teacher and every sixth subject teacher. A comparison with a study from the early 1980s confirmed that the relative popularity of co‐teaching had increased only slightly during the years. Although co‐teaching is used sparsely, the teachers reported almost uniquely positive experiences obtained from it. It is argued that the promotion of co‐teaching needs additional incentives if it is hoped to make it more common.
Estrogen Inhibits Renal Cell Carcinoma Cell Progression through Estrogen Receptor-β Activation

Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) originates in the lining of the proximal convoluted tubule and accounts for approximately 3% of adult malignancies. The RCC incidence rate increases annually and is twofold higher in males than in females. Female hormones such as estrogen may play important roles during RCC carcinogenesis and result in significantly different incidence rates between males and females. In this study, we found that estrogen receptor β (ERβ) was more highly expressed in RCC cell lines (A498, RCC-1, 786-O, ACHN, and Caki-1) than in breast cancer cell lines (MCF-7 and HBL-100); however, no androgen receptor (AR) or estrogen receptor α (ERα) could be detected by western blot. In addition, proliferation of RCC cell lines was significantly decreased after estrogen (17-β-estradiol, E2) treatment. Since ERβ had been documented to be a potential tumor suppressor gene, we hypothesized that estrogen activates ERβ tumor suppressive function, which leads to different RCC incidence rates between males and females. We found that estrogen treatment inhibited cell proliferation, migration, invasion, and increased apoptosis of 786-O (high endogenous ERβ), and ERβ siRNA-induced silencing attenuated the estrogen-induced effects. Otherwise, ectopic ERβ expression in A498 (low endogenous ERβ) increased estrogen sensitivity and thus inhibited cell proliferation, migration, invasion, and increased apoptosis. Analysis of the molecular mechanisms revealed that estrogen-activated ERβ not only remarkably reduced growth hormone downstream signaling activation of the AKT, ERK, and JAK signaling pathways but also increased apoptotic cascade activation. In conclusion, this study found that estrogen-activated ERβ acts as a tumor suppressor. It may explain the different RCC incidence rates between males and females. Furthermore, it implies that ERβ may be a useful prognostic marker for RCC progression and a novel developmental direction for RCC treatment improvement.
CUORE project: implementation of the 10-year risk score

Purpose: The Italian national prevention plan 2005–2008 included 10-year cardiovascular risk (10-CR) assessment of the general population aged 35–69 years using the CUORE project risk score. General practitioners (GPs) were encouraged to collect data on risk factors and 10-CR and to contribute to the Cardiovascular Risk Observatory (CRO). The aim is to demonstrate feasibility and effectiveness of 10-CR assessment as a first step to implement primary preventive actions at the individual level. Methods: Data were collected using CUORE.EXE software, easily and freely downloadable by GPs from the CUORE project website (www.cuore.iss.it). CRO provides a web platform to analyse and compare data on 10-CR and risk factors at regional and national levels with the aim of supporting health policy decision processes. Results: From January 2007 to May 2010, 2,858 GPs downloaded cuore.exe; 139,269 CR assessments on 117,345 persons were sent to CRO. CR mean was 3.0% in women, 8.3% in men; 30% of men and 65% of women were at lower risk (CR < 3%), 9.2% of men and 0.4% of women were at high risk (CR ≥ 20%). Among those with at least two risk assessments (n = 5,948), 8% (95% CI 7–9%) shifted to a lower risk class after 1 year. Systolic blood pressure mean levels decreased by 1.6 mmHg (95% CI 1.2–2.1 mmHg), diastolic blood pressure by 0.9 mmHg (95% CI 0.5–1.3 mmHg), total cholesterol by 5.6 mg/dl (95% CI 4.3–6.8 mg/dl), and smokers prevalence by 3.5% (95% CI 2.5–4.6%); high-density lipoprotein cholesterol increased in women by 1 mg/dl (95% CI 0.5–1.4 mg/dl). Conclusions: Data demonstrate that 10-CR assessment can be the first step to implement preventive actions in primary care.
Biological Processes Associated with Breast Cancer Clinical Outcome Depend on the Molecular Subtypes

Purpose: Recently, several prognostic gene expression signatures have been identified; however, their performance has never been evaluated according to the previously described molecular subtypes based on the estrogen receptor (ER) and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2), and their biological meaning has remained unclear. Here we aimed to perform a comprehensive meta-analysis integrating both clinicopathologic and gene expression data, focusing on the main molecular subtypes. Experimental Design: We developed gene expression modules related to key biological processes in breast cancer such as tumor invasion, immune response, angiogenesis, apoptosis, proliferation, and ER and HER2 signaling, and then analyzed these modules together with clinical variables and several prognostic signatures on publicly available microarray studies (>2,100 patients). Results: Multivariate analysis showed that in the ER+/HER2− subgroup, only the proliferation module and the histologic grade were significantly associated with clinical outcome. In the ER−/HER2− subgroup, only the immune response module was associated with prognosis, whereas in the HER2+ tumors, the tumor invasion and immune response modules displayed significant association with survival. Proliferation was identified as the most important component of several prognostic signatures, and their performance was limited to the ER+/HER2− subgroup. Conclusions: Although proliferation is the strongest parameter predicting clinical outcome in the ER+/HER2− subtype and the common denominator of most prognostic gene signatures, immune response and tumor invasion seem to be the main molecular processes associated with prognosis in the ER−/HER2− and HER2+ subgroups, respectively. These findings may help to define new clinicogenomic models and to identify new therapeutic strategies in the specific molecular subgroups.
Transplantation of bone mesenchymal stem cells promotes angiogenesis and improves neurological function after traumatic brain injury in mouse

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) has emerged as a leading cause of mortality and morbidity worldwide. Transplantation of bone mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) has emerged as a promising treatment for various central nervous system diseases. This study aims to evaluate the effect of BMSCs transplantation by intravenous injection on neurological function and angiogenesis of the TBI mice. C57BL/6 male mice were randomly divided into four groups: control, sham, TBI, and BMSC. Functional neurological evaluation was performed 1, 4, 7, 14, and 21 days after TBI using neurological severity scores. The impairment of learning and memory in mice was evaluated 14 days after TBI by Morris water maze experiment. Mice were sacrificed 14 days after TBI, and then brain sections were stained by terminal deoxyribonucleotidyl transferase (TDT)-mediated dUTP-digoxigenin nick end labeling staining to assess brain neuronal apoptosis. Immunohistochemistry was conducted to evaluate caspase-3 activity and identify vascular distribution and microvessel density. Protein and mRNA levels of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and angiogenin-1 (Ang-1) in brain tissues were analyzed by Western blot and quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction, respectively. BMSCs transplantation promoted recovery of neurological function, ameliorated impairment of learning and memory, attenuated neuronal apoptosis, and diminished caspase-3 activation in mice after TBI. Also, BMSCs transplantation upregulated expressions of VEGF and Ang-1 and promoted the formation of microvessels in brain tissues after TBI. Our study demonstrated the important role of BMSCs transplantation in TBI mouse and indicated that the underlying mechanism was through promoting angiogenesis and improving neurological function. This provides a novel and effective strategy for cell-based therapy in the treatment of TBI.
Pole-zero modelling of speech for use in nasality based speaker recognition.

In this bachelor thesis we performed a comparison betweendifferent methods of fitting pole-zero filters to data, andtheir usefulness for nasality-based speaker recognition inparticular. It is believed that nasality has low intra-speakervariation and high inter-speaker variation, and that polezerofilters are good at capturing the nasal characteristics.We describe to the extent possible, the theory underpinningthe various methods, and then compare them in variousways. We used simulated speech data, to see to whatextent the methods provided good estimates of the true filters,when noise had been introduced afterwards. Anotherway we compared the methods was to determine how wellthey perform with respect to classifying real speech data,when various features had been extracted with help fromthe computed filters.Our results were that the all-pole method was superior tothe other methods that we considered, at speaker recognitionon nasal phonemes, contradicting our hypothesis.
(Self) hypnosis in the prevention of burnout and compassion fatigue for caregivers: theory and induction

Caregivers are particularly at risk of compassion fatigue and burnout. Empathy, activity of mirror neurons and mirroring increase the risks. Some research has been done on the relationship between hypnotizability and empathy. In the prevention of burnout and compassion fatigue a positive approach with increase of ‘compassion satisfaction’ and ‘resilience’ makes sense. Hypnosis with its emphasis on mobilizing positive resources and positive psychology is helpful at different levels of intervention. (Self) hypnosis is integrated in strategies for self care, setting boundaries and increasing inner strength and resilience. In hypnosis attitude changes can be made with promotion of compassion satisfaction and job engagement. Resource development is also part of the hypnotic work. After initial training in hypnosis, caregivers can help themselves further in remaining more resilient and keeping positively engaged, enjoying compassion satisfaction. Copyright © 2009 British Society of Experimental & Clinical Hypnosis. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Incorporating Aging Failures in Power System Reliability Evaluation

This paper presents a method for incorporating aging failures in power system reliability evaluation. It includes development of a calculation approach with two possible probability distribution models for unavailability of aging failures and implementation in reliability evaluation. The defined unavailability of aging failures has a consistent form as that for repairable failure. This allows aging failures to be easily included in existing reliability evaluation techniques and tools. Differences between the two models using normal and Weibull distributions have been discussed. The BC Hydro north metro system was used as an example to demonstrate an application of the proposed method and models. The results indicate that aging failures have significant impacts on system reliability, particularly for an "aged" system. Ignoring aging failures in reliability evaluation of an aged power system will result in an overly underestimation of system risk and most likely a misleading conclusion in system planning.