Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Tau-Positive Fine Granules in the Cerebral White Matter: A Novel Finding Among the Tauopathies Exclusive to Parkinsonism-Dementia Complex of Guam

We examined the autopsied brains of cases of 6 types of tauopathy: parkinsonism-dementia complex of Guam (PDC), corticobasal degeneration (CBD), progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP), Pick disease, Alzheimer disease (AD), and myotonic dystrophy together with Guamanian controls. Light microscopy sections of these brains were examined using anti-tau antibodies. Tau-positive fine granules (TFGs) were globe-shaped, and 3 to 6 μm in diameter, were observed predominantly in the frontal white matter in 30 of the 35 patients with PDC. However, no TFGs were found in association with PSP, myotonic dystrophy, Pick disease, AD, or CBD. Western blot analysis of frozen brain tissue taken from the PDC cases revealed that the frontal cortex was hyperphosphorylated and contained 6 tau isoforms (3R + 4R tau). However, in the present study, it was revealed that the novel TFGs in the white matter of patients with PDC was composed of 4R tau. Western blot analysis of sarkosyl-insoluble tau from the white matter of the PDC cases showed 2 major bands of 60 and 64 kDa and one minor band of 67 kDa. After dephosphorylation, these bands resolved into one major band of 4-repeat (4R) tau isoform and 3 minor bands of 3-repeat (3R) and 4R tau isoforms. Moreover, the TFGs observed in cases in which the number of neurofibrillary tangles (NFTs) was higher than the threshold level were not correlated with the presence of cortical NFTs. In conclusion, these novel TFGs were found almost exclusively in PDC brains and could therefore be considered as a characteristic neuropathologic marker of this particular tauopathy. The TFGs were hyperphosphorylated tau-positive structures that may be formed by a different mechanism from that used to produce cortical NFTs.
The development of directives among Norwegian and Hungarian children: an example of communicative style in culture

A great deal of interest has developed in the last few years in studying children's linguistic routines in interaction as a means toward understanding child cognitive development (see for example Mitchell-Kernan & Ervin-Tripp 1977). In this study we hope to extend the parameters of this line of research to include cross- cultural investigation. We also hope to shift the focus of investigation away from concentration on children's routinized usage of linguistic form to concentration on children's strategies in their total communicative behavior, both linguistic and non-linguistic.
Contrasting Patterns of Cognitive Abilities of 9- and 10-Year-Olds With Williams Syndrome or Down Syndrome

Comparative cognitive strengths and weaknesses of 9- and 10-year-old children with Williams syndrome or Down syndrome were examined. From an original sample of 21 children with Williams syndrome and 25 children with Down syndrome, 13 pairs of children with Williams or Down syndrome were individually matched for chronological age and total points earned on the McCarthy Scales of Children's Abilities (MSCA). All of the unmatched children with Williams syndrome earned more total points than any of the unmatched children with Down syndrome, suggesting that the general cognitive ability distributions for Williams syndrome and Down syndrome are not equivalent. Performance of the matched pairs of participants on both the MSCA (domain and subtest) and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R) was contrasted. Participants with Williams syndrome showed comparative strengths in the Verbal and Memory domains, whereas children with Down syndrome showed a comparative strength in the Perceptual-Performance do.
Exporting Methodologies: The Reflective Approach in Teacher Training

In the field of English language teaching there seems to be a generalised tendency to accept and use teaching methodologies and textbooks in certain contexts that have been developed in and for a different context. Recently, this rather unquestioning use of methodologies has been challenged (see, for example, Holliday, 1994), with authors pointing out that what might be suitable for one situation might not be equally so for a different one. Thus, it would seem to be more fruitful to try to establish the appropriateness of what has been imported and, if necessary, make the suitable changes and adaptations, so as to make most of the methodology. This is precisely the aim of the present paper, which explores the extent to which a reflective approach to teacher training is suitable for teaching undergraduate students a course in methodology at the University of Alcalá in Spain, and, if not, what kind of changes will make it more fruitful in this specific context.
The AUXIN RESPONSE FACTOR 2 gene of Arabidopsis links auxin signalling, cell division, and the size of seeds and other organs

Control of seed size involves complex interactions among the zygotic embryo and endosperm, the maternally derived seed coat, and the parent plant. Here we describe a mutant in Arabidopsis, megaintegumenta (mnt), in which seed size and weight are dramatically increased. One factor in this is extra cell division in the integuments surrounding mnt mutant ovules, leading to the formation of enlarged seed coats. Unusually for integument mutants, mnt does not impair female fertility. The mnt lesion also has pleiotropic effects on vegetative and floral development, causing extra cell division and expansion in many organs. mnt was identified as a mutant allele of AUXIN RESPONSE FACTOR 2 (ARF2), a member of a family of transcription factors that mediate gene expression in response to auxin. The mutant phenotype and gene expression studies described here provide evidence that MNT/ARF2 is a repressor of cell division and organ growth. The mutant phenotype also illustrates the importance of growth of the ovule before fertilization in determining final size of the seed.
An Application of the Feferman-Vaught Theorem to Automata and Logics for Words over an Infinite Alphabet

We show that a special case of the Feferman-Vaught composition theorem gives rise to a natural notion of automata for finite words over an infinite alphabet, with good closure and decidability properties, as well as several logical characterizations. We also consider a slight extension of the Feferman-Vaught formalism which allows to express more relations between component values (such as equality), and prove related decidability results. From this result we get new classes of decidable logics for words over an infinite alphabet.
Psychoanalytic Conceptualizations of the Internal Object in an ADHD Child

Several factors contribute to the dearth of psychoanalytic treatments and conceptualizations of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The author argues that psychoanalysis can contribute to standard treatments of such children. The prerequisites are the child's interest in change and the analyst's insight as to the legitimate aims of such treatments: to help the child discover his inner world and the connections between emotions, thought processes, and symptoms. The patient's reception of interventions varies. Sometimes, he is open to the verbal content of words. Other times, he reacts mainly to nonverbal aspects of the analyst's communication such as tone of voice, dress, or demeanor. The motor behind these vacillations is the present state of the child's internal object. When it is harsh, unyielding, and ridiculing, interventions are taken as assaults that must be defended at. Only in moments when it is welcoming and benevolent can the child use the intervention for building up his ego. The child's so-called semiotic capacity is related to the shifting state of the internal object. This has repercussions on both transference and countertransference. The discussion is illustrated by a six-and-a-half-year-old boy in child psychoanalysis while being in remedial and pharmacological treatment.
Language Characteristics of Children with ADHD

Language characteristics of 11 children with attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and 11 typically developing children ages 6 to 8 were compared in terms of semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic language skills. Children were tested on the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R), the Test of Language Development-2 Primary (TOLD-2), and the Test of Pragmatic Language (TOPL). Samples of children's language were collected during free play with an adult conversational partner using the Pragmatic Protocol. Results indicated that there was no difference between the two groups on receptive vocabulary as measured by the PPVT-R. Children with ADHD performed worse than typically developing children on the sentence imitation, word articulation, speaking quotient, and overall speech and language quotient subtests of the TOLD-2 Primary. Children with ADHD produced more inappropriate pragmatic behaviors in conversational interactions, although their pragmatic knowledge as measured by the TOPL did not differ from that of the normally developing children. Results are discussed in terms of the relative strengths and weaknesses in the communication skills of children with ADHD.
Atomistic modeling of mechanical properties of polycrystalline graphene

We performed molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to investigate the mechanical properties of polycrystalline graphene. By constructing molecular models of ultra-fine-grained graphene structures, we studied the effect of different grain sizes of 1–10 nm on the mechanical response of graphene. We found that the elastic modulus and tensile strength of polycrystalline graphene decrease with decreasing grain size. The calculated mechanical proprieties for pristine and polycrystalline graphene sheets are found to be in agreement with experimental results in the literature. Our MD results suggest that the ultra-fine-grained graphene structures can show ultrahigh tensile strength and elastic modulus values that are very close to those of pristine graphene sheets.
Integrating Caring Theory With Nursing Practice and Education: Connecting With What Matters

Theory-based nursing practice positively influences many outcomes in healthcare organizations. As a response to limited human and economic resources, a college of nursing and a for-profit healthcare organization worked in partnership to develop a project that focused on developing and demonstrating the value of a dedicated education unit grounded in caring theory. The authors describe the development of the project, initial outcomes, and the relevance to nursing administration.
Understanding the over-time evolution of living standard determinants in transitional countries: evidence from Azerbaijan

Based on two household surveys, this article investigates the over-time evolution of the determinants of living standards in Azerbaijan during the transition from a centrally planned economy to a market economy. Quintile regression is used to estimate the relative importance of inter-temporal changes in individual, household, and environmental factors to household expenditures from 1995 to 2002. Results highlight systematic differences in the effect of some factors over the investigated period. Some tendencies uncovered at the beginning of the reforms – for instance, the strong positive effect of renting land – disappeared completely as reforms progressed over time. In contrast, several new factors – such as the strong positive effect of a young age of the household head, and the strong negative effect of having more women in the household – emerged over time as new significant predictors of living standards. Yet, the influence of other factors – for example, the strong negative effect of having a large number of dependents in the household – remained fairly stable inter-temporally. In addition, three variables – namely, university education, a large number of dependents in the household, and location – were found to be specifically important for improving the living standards of households in the poorest quintile. These findings suggest that the emphasis of poverty reduction policies in Azerbaijan should focus on improving the quality of, and access to, university education, developing an effective social protection system, and reducing regional disparities.
STAR ‐ Laplacian Spectral Kernels and Distances for Geometry Processing and Shape Analysis

In geometry processing and shape analysis, several applications have been addressed through the properties of the spectral kernels and distances, such as commute‐time, biharmonic, diffusion, and wave distances. Our survey is intended to provide a background on the properties, discretization, computation, and main applications of the Laplace‐Beltrami operator, the associated differential equations (e.g., harmonic equation, Laplacian eigenproblem, diffusion and wave equations), Laplacian spectral kernels and distances (e.g., commute‐time, biharmonic, wave, diffusion distances). While previous work has been focused mainly on specific applications of the aforementioned topics on surface meshes, we propose a general approach that allows us to review Laplacian kernels and distances on surfaces and volumes, and for any choice of the Laplacian weights. All the reviewed numerical schemes for the computation of the Laplacian spectral kernels and distances are discussed in terms of robustness, approximation accuracy, and computational cost, thus supporting the reader in the selection of the most appropriate method with respect to shape representation, computational resources, and target application.
The Role of Flexibility and Conformational Selection in the Binding Promiscuity of PDZ Domains

In molecular recognition, it is often the case that ligand binding is coupled to conformational change in one or both of the binding partners. Two hypotheses describe the limiting cases involved; the first is the induced fit and the second is the conformational selection model. The conformational selection model requires that the protein adopts conformations that are similar to the ligand-bound conformation in the absence of ligand, whilst the induced-fit model predicts that the ligand-bound conformation of the protein is only accessible when the ligand is actually bound. The flexibility of the apo protein clearly plays a major role in these interpretations. For many proteins involved in signaling pathways there is the added complication that they are often promiscuous in that they are capable of binding to different ligand partners. The relationship between protein flexibility and promiscuity is an area of active research and is perhaps best exemplified by the PDZ domain family of proteins. In this study we use molecular dynamics simulations to examine the relationship between flexibility and promiscuity in five PDZ domains: the human Dvl2 (Dishevelled-2) PDZ domain, the human Erbin PDZ domain, the PDZ1 domain of InaD (inactivation no after-potential D protein) from fruit fly, the PDZ7 domain of GRIP1 (glutamate receptor interacting protein 1) from rat and the PDZ2 domain of PTP-BL (protein tyrosine phosphatase) from mouse. We show that despite their high structural similarity, the PDZ binding sites have significantly different dynamics. Importantly, the degree of binding pocket flexibility was found to be closely related to the various characteristics of peptide binding specificity and promiscuity of the five PDZ domains. Our findings suggest that the intrinsic motions of the apo structures play a key role in distinguishing functional properties of different PDZ domains and allow us to make predictions that can be experimentally tested.
Phosphorus Limitation Enhances Biofilm Formation of the Plant Pathogen Agrobacterium tumefaciens through the PhoR-PhoB Regulatory System

ABSTRACT The plant pathogen Agrobacterium tumefaciens forms architecturally complex biofilms on inert surfaces. Adherence of A. tumefaciens C58 was significantly enhanced under phosphate limitation compared to phosphate-replete conditions, despite slower overall growth under low-phosphate conditions. Replacement of Pi with sn-glycerol-3-phosphate and 2-aminoethylphosphonate yielded similar results. The increase in surface interactions under phosphate limitation was observed in both static culture and continuous-culture flow cells. Statistical analysis of confocal micrographs obtained from the flow cell biofilms revealed that phosphate limitation increased both the overall attached biomass and the surface coverage, whereas the maximum thickness of the biofilm was not affected. Functions encoded on the two large plasmids of A. tumefaciens C58, pTiC58 and pAtC58, were not required for the observed phosphate effect. The phosphate concentration at which increased attachment was observed triggered the phosphate limitation response, controlled in many bacteria by the two-component regulatory system PhoR-PhoB. The A. tumefaciens phoB and phoR orthologues could only be disrupted in the presence of plasmid-borne copies of the genes, suggesting that this regulatory system might be essential. Expression of the A. tumefaciens phoB gene from a tightly regulated inducible promoter, however, correlated with the amount of biofilm under both phosphate-limiting and nonlimiting conditions, demonstrating that components of the Pho regulon influence A. tumefaciens surface interactions.
Crime in Urban Post-Disaster Environments: A Methodological Framework from New Orleans

This paper considers the interrelationship between residential occupancy status, blight, and crime. An analytical frame is provided for a fine-scale analysis that is sufficiently flexible to capture both spatial and temporal dynamism in field-collected data. Unlike other works linking crime to evidence of disorder within neighborhoods, this paper considers this relationship in terms of neighborhoods affected by an external event (natural disaster), which results in more dynamic spatial and temporal patterns as the neighborhood is in a state of flux. As a result, new means of data collection and analysis are required, as any fine-scale relationship is longitudinal as well as cross sectional. The focus here is on the interrelationship of post-disaster residential occupancy, building conditions, and crime incidence for the Holy Cross neighborhood of New Orleans as it recovers from Hurricane Katrina. Results suggest that crime is inversely related to the amount of activity on a recovering street.
Neuropsychology in Alzheimer's disease and other dementia research

Purpose of review This review describes a variety of neuropsychological dementia studies published between January 2004 and June 2005. In selecting articles for description in the present paper, our goal was not a comprehensive review of what is an enormous and growing literature, but rather to select and describe individual interesting studies from a sufficient range of dementia-related topics to permit illustration of some of the important questions for which a neuropsychological perspective aids in the understanding of dementias. Recent findings Findings in the studies reviewed include a variety of different topics. Some of the themes include the following: (a) Alzheimer's disease is the most common cause of dementia, but a large body of research documents that there are important cognitive differences among various types of dementia, (b) the emerging research is also important in demonstrating the need for more sensitive clinical screening measures, (c) cognitive data are strongly predictive of functional decline, and (d) subtle declines in verbal learning appear to precede clinical Alzheimer's disease. Summary Neuropsychological data are key to progress in understanding and developing more effective treatments for Alzheimer's disease and other dementia. For instance, efforts to identify early markers of dementia will be a key component to development of early intervention strategies.
Demand for Crash Insurance, Intermediary Constraints, and Risk Premia in Financial Markets

We propose a new measure of financial intermediary constraints based on how the intermediaries manage their tail risk exposures. Using a unique dataset for the trading activities in the market of deep out-of-the-money S&P 500 put options, we identify periods when the variations in the net amount of trading between financial intermediaries and public investors are likely to be mainly driven by shocks to intermediary constraints. We then infer tightness of intermediary constraints from the quantities of option trading during such periods. We show that a tightening of intermediary constraint according to our measure is associated with increasing option expensiveness, higher risk premia for a wide range of financial assets, deterioration in funding liquidity, and deleveraging of broker-dealers.
Quantitative analysis of gel electrophoretograms by image analysis and least squares modeling

A computer‐aided quantitative method for a complex analysis of gel electrophoretograms is presented. The analysis consists of several steps: (i) determination of the background image by methods of mathematical morphology and its subtraction from the gel image, (ii) selection of an appropriate part of the gel lane including curved lanes and lanes with a nonuniform width, (iii) computation of the lane densitogram by averaging several lane‐parallel scans, (iv) decomposition of the lane densitogram into component bands using a data selecting algorithm and Marquardt's minimizer. Several different functions for component bands are utilized. It is shown that the densitogram can be decomposed into component bands with reasonable accuracy only if an appropriate model function is chosen. The algorithms are tested on several different gel electrophoretograms which show typical features as a nonuniform background, curved lanes, an asymmetrical band shape and a superposition of small bands on the shoulders of big ones. It is shown that overlapped bands are best approximated by an asymmetrical Gaussian curve and an asymmetrical Gauss‐Cauchy function. Linear response to the serial dilution of the protein sample is tested.
Long-term biological variability of galectin-3 after heart transplantation

Abstract Background: Galectin-3 is an emerging biomarker of heart failure and of myocardial fibrosis risk. Monitoring of galectin-3 is essential during treatment with galectin-3 inhibitors. The aim of our study was to assess long-term biological variability in a specific group of unhealthy subjects. Methods: The biological variability of galectin-3 was measured in a group of 44 patients after heart transplantation (HTx). Six samples were taken from each patient during a 12-month period. Galectin-3 was measured with an Abbott Architect automated immunoassay. Results: Intraindividual (CVi) and interindividual (CVg) variabilities were calculated together with the reference change value (RCV), the log-normal RCV for increase (RCV+), and the log-normal RCV for decrease (RCV–). The CVi, CVg, RCV, RCV+, and RCV– were 28.2%, 35.6%, 78.6%, 116%, and –53.7%, respectively. The index of individuality was 0.79. Conclusions: The concentrations of galectin-3 in patients followed 12 months after HTx fluctuated around the homeostatic point, with CVi of approximately 28%. RCVs of +116% (log-normal increase) and –54% (log-normal decrease) mean that the concentration of galectin-3 would need to approximately double or decrease by half to indicate a new process.