Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Preconception serum 1,1,1-trichloro-2,2,bis(p-chlorophenyl)ethane and B-vitamin status: independent and joint effects on women's reproductive outcomes.

BACKGROUND Although preconception 1,1,1-trichloro-2,2,bis(p-chlorophenyl)ethane (DDT) exposure and B-vitamin deficiencies have each been shown to negatively affect human reproductive outcomes, little is known about their joint effect. OBJECTIVE We sought to examine whether B-vitamin sufficiency protects against adverse effects of DDT on clinical pregnancy (CP) and subclinical early pregnancy loss (EPL). DESIGN We measured preconception concentrations of plasma B vitamins (vitamin B-6, vitamin B-12, and folate) and serum total DDT [sum of p,p' and o,p' isomers of DDT and 1,1-dichloro-2,2-bis(p-chlorophenyl)ethylene] in 291 nulligravid women from Anhui, China, who were studied in 1996-1998. The women were followed prospectively from the time they stopped contraception until CP (gestational age ≥42 d) or 12 mo (whichever occurred first). EPL was identified by using daily urinary human chorionic gonadotropin. The women were categorized according to B-vitamin status (deficiency compared with sufficiency) and DDT concentration (high compared with low). RESULTS Of 291 study women, a total of 385 conceptions (31% of which ended in EPL) and 265 CPs occurred. Compared with women with adequate B-vitamins and low DDT, incidence rates of CP were reduced in women with B-vitamin deficiency and a high DDT concentration (P < 0.05 for all). Most notably, in women with sufficient vitamin B-12, DDT was not associated with the incidence of CP; in contrast, in women with vitamin B-12 deficiency, high DDT was associated with a lower incidence of CP (HR: 0.44; 95% CI: 0.23, 0.84); and the test for interaction was significant (P < 0.05). The odds of EPL decreased by 45% (95% CI: 21%, 62%) for each interquartile distance increase in folate in women with high DDT concentrations, and the test for interaction was significant (P = 0.006). CONCLUSIONS Our results provide suggestive evidence that vitamin B-12 and folate sufficiency may help protect against adverse reproductive effects of DDT exposure. Additional studies are needed to confirm our findings.
Hong Kong Words: Variation and Context.

The ideal description of a variety of English is one that is constructed within the terms of the variety itself. This paper discusses a number of issues involved in such a description in relation to the distinctive vocabulary of Hong Kong English. Attention to semantic and pragmatic relationships internal to the variety and the sociocultural context in which it operates is urged. These are illustrated with examples related to underlying definition, taxonomies, semantic opposition and the productivity of localised words.
Cost-Effective Methods for Isolation ofSalmonella enterica in the Clinical Laboratory

ABSTRACT Data from 8,717 fecal specimens indicate that primary inoculation of xylose lysine deoxycholate (XLD) agar may enhance the speed, but not the sensitivity, of isolation of Salmonella enterica over that achieved with Selenite enrichment only. Plating of Selenite broth onto both brilliant green and XLD agar offers no advantage over plating onto XLD alone.
Noninvasive Estimation of the Instantaneous First Derivative of Left Ventricular Pressure Using Continuous‐Wave Doppler Echocardiography

BackgroundThe complete continuous-wave Doppler mitral regurgitant velocity curve should allow reconstruction of the ventriculoatrial (VA) pressure gradient from mitral valve closure to opening, including left ventricular (LV) isovolumic contraction, ejection, and isovolumic relaxation. Assuming that the left atrial pressure fluctuation is relatively minor in comparison with the corresponding LV pressure changes during systole, the first derivative of the Doppler-derived VA pressure gradient curve (Doppler dP/dt) might be used to estimate the LV dP/dt curve, previously measurable only at catheterization (catheter dP/dt). Methods and ResultsThis hypothesis was examined in an in vivo mitral regurgitant model during 30 hemodynamic stages in eight dogs. Contractility and relaxation were altered by inotropic stimulation and hypothermia. The Doppler mitral regurgitant velocity spectrum was recorded along with simultaneously acquired micromanometer LV and left atrial pressures. The regurgitant velocity profiles were digitized and converted to VA pressure gradient curves using the simplified Bernoulli equation. The instantaneous dP/dt of the VA pressure gradient curve was then derived. The instantaneous Doppler-derived VA pressure gradients, instantaneous Doppler dP/dt, dP/dtmax, and −dP/dtmax were compared with corresponding catheter measurements. This method of estimating dP/dtmax, from the instantaneous dP/dt curve was also compared with a previously proposed Doppler method of estimating dP/dtmax using the Doppler-derived mean rate of LV pressure rise over the time period between velocities of 1 and 3 m/sec on the ascending slope of the Doppler velocity spectrum. Both instantaneous Doppler-derived VA pressure gradients (r = 0.95, p < O.OOOl) and Doppler dP/dt (r = 0.92, p < 0.0001) correlated well with corresponding measurements by catheter during systolic contraction and isovolumic relaxation (pooled data). The Doppler dP/dtmax (1,266 ± 701 mm Hg/sec) also correlated well (r = 0.94) with the catheter dP/dtmax (1,200 ± 573 mm Hg/sec). There was no difference between the two methods for measurement of dP/dtmax (p=NS). Although Doppler −dP/dt. was slightly lower than the catheter measurement (961 ± 511 versus 1,057540 mm Hg/sec, p < 0.01), the correlation between measurements by Doppler and catheter was excellent (r = 0.93, p < 0.0001). The alternative method ofmean isovolumic pressure rise (896 ± 465 mm Hg/sec) underestimated the catheter dP/dtmax, (1,200 ± 573 mm Hg/sec) significantly (on average, 25%; p < O.001). ConclusionsThe present study demonstrated an accurate and reliable noninvasive Doppler method for estimating instantaneous LV dP/dt, dP/dtma, and −dP/dtmax. (Circulation 1991; 83:2101—2110)
A Reliability Generalization of the Overexcitability Questionnaire–Two

Reliability generalization (RG) is a meta-analysis that combines and synthesizes reliability coefficients from different studies to ascertain the average observed reliability across studies. An RG study was conducted on previously reported data from 16 samples of the Overexcitability Questionnaire–Two (OEQII) with a combined N of 5,275. Cronbach’s alpha was found to be consistently higher on all OEQII subscales when scale variance was high and the sample consisted of adults. Sample size, gender composition of the sample, number of items from the subscale used, and location of sample (United States or a different county) had varying effects on observed alpha levels for each subscale. Suggestions are proposed for substantive research using the OEQII and for future psychometric research on the instrument.
Development and Preliminary Analysis of a Rubric for Culturally Responsive Research

Researchers and practitioners have struggled to promote optimal academic, behavioral, and postschool outcomes for historically marginalized youth from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. While there is a growing body of evidence-based interventions in special education, the extent to which these interventions are culturally responsive remains unexplored. Culturally responsive research (CRR) has gained increased attention in social sciences. The authors developed a 15-item rubric to evaluate the cultural responsiveness of research. They applied the rubric to six studies in transition education identified as high-quality intervention studies to determine the extent to which these met the criteria for CRR. Results from this analysis demonstrated that while none of the studies were indicative of CRR across all rubric items, strengths in question relevancy, sampling, participant description, and data collection strategies were noted.
Improved fast short-term wind power prediction model based on superposition of predicted error

Accurate prediction of short-term wind power is an effective way to rationally adjust the scheduling strategies and to improve the operation stability and economy of microgrid with wind turbines. A new improved prediction method which does not rely on any basic prediction methods is proposed based on analysis of a traditional wind power prediction procedure and in terms of strategy how to use a basic prediction method in wind power prediction procedure. By the proposed method, an additional error prediction model is built to predict the error of the predicted results by the traditional prediction method. And the predicted error value is added back to the predicted results mentioned above to reach the final predicted results. Taking Back propagation (BP) neural network as a basic prediction method, the proposed prediction method is validated by output power prediction of a real wind farm. Support vector machine (SVM) is chosen as another basic prediction method to test the versatility of the proposed improved prediction method. The simulation results show that the proposed wind power prediction method can improve the prediction accuracy by about eight percent. The proposed method does not involve the internal characteristics of any basic prediction methods or require any auxiliary methods, which is quite different from the traditional improved methods available and thus is more universal.
Television Portrayals and African-American Stereotypes: Examination of Television Effects when Direct Contact is Lacking

A self-administered survey questionnaire distributed to Japanese international (n = 83) and White (n = 166) students measured stereotypes of African Americans and vicarious contact (television) variables. Results supported process-oriented learning models of behavior, but not a cumulative effect model of cultivation. The study demonstrated that the media could affect one's impression of other races and further suggested that effects of mass media are more significant when direct information is limited. Implications of an influential role of television in stereotype formation were also discussed.
Non-backtracking random walks and a weighted Ihara's theorem

We study the mixing rate of non-backtracking random walks on graphs by looking at non-backtracking walks as walks on the directed edges of a graph. A result known as Ihara’s Theorem relates the adjacency matrix of a graph to a matrix related to non-backtracking walks on the directed edges. We prove a weighted version of Ihara’s Theorem which relates the transition probability matrix of a non-backtracking walk to the transition matrix for the usual random walk. This allows us to determine the spectrum of the transition probability matrix of a non-backtracking random walk in the case of regular graphs and biregular graphs. As a corollary, we obtain a result of Alon et al. in [1] that in most cases, a non-backtracking random walk on a regular graph has a faster mixing rate than the usual random walk. In addition, we obtain an analogous result for biregular graphs.
Strategy as Practice: Recursiveness, Adaptation, and Practices-in-Use

In this article, a social theory framework is developed to explain the common themes of recursive and adaptive practice underpinning the existing strategic management literature. In practice, there is a coexistent tension between recursive and adaptive forms of strategic action that spans multiple levels from macro-institutional and competitive contexts to within-firm levels of analysis to individual cognition. This tension may be better understood by examining how management practices are used to put strategy into practice. Such practices span multiple levels of context and are adaptable to their circumstances of use, serving to highlight both general characteristics and localized idiosyncrasies of strategy as practice. The article develops the concept of management practices-in-use into a research agenda and nine broad research questions that may be used to investigate empirically strategy as practice.
Performance Indicators and Widening Participation in UK Higher Education

We investigate the relationship between the widening participation performance indicators adopted in UK higher education (HE) and the government's objective of increasing overall HE participation rates. We critically assess the development of performance monitoring in HE and identify weaknesses in the current performance indicators from the perspective of the main stakeholders. We suggest the development of internal indicators and benchmarks by HE institutions together with extensions to the current national performance indicators that could improve their usefulness.
Personality and health‐protective behaviour

Over the last decades much research has been devoted to the analysis of psychosocial factors associated with the development of health problems. However, less attention has been paid to mechanisms explaining why people keep engaging in risky behaviours and do not develop, instead, those habits that could increase their quality of life. To answer these questions, two lines of research have been followed: the main hypothesis of the first line is that there are personality characteristics that predispose the development of certain patterns of behaviour. The second line is focused on the analysis of the psychological processes that, together with situational factors, explain what behaviour is initiated and how it is maintained or changed. The main purpose of this paper is to review these two lines of research: what their main contributions are and what the problems they face are. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Smart Residential Buildings as Learning Agent Organizations in the Internet of Things

Abstract Background: Smart buildings are one of the major application areas of technologies bound to embedded systems and the Internet of things. Such systems have to be adaptable and flexible in order to provide better services to its residents. Modelling such systems is an open research question. Herein, the question is approached using an organizational modelling methodology bound to the principles of the learning organization. Objectives: Providing a higher level of abstraction for understanding, developing and maintaining smart residential buildings in a more human understandable form. Methods/Approach: Organization theory provides us with the necessary concepts and methodology to approach complex organizational systems. Results: A set of principles for building learning agent organizations, a formalization of learning processes for agents, a framework for modelling knowledge transfer between agents and the environment, and a tailored organizational structure for smart residential buildings based on Nonaka’s hypertext organizational form. Conclusions: Organization theory is a promising field of research when dealing with complex engineering systems
A Hybrid Multi-criteria Semantic-Enhanced Collaborative Filtering Approach for Personalized Recommendations

Recommender systems aim to assist web users to find only relevant information to their needs rather than an undifferentiated mass of information. Collaborative filtering (CF) techniques are probably the most popular and widely adopted techniques in recommender systems. Despite of their success in various applications, CF-based techniques still encounter two major limitations, namely sparsity and cold-start problems. More recently, semantic information of items has been successfully used in recommender systems to alleviate such problems. Moreover, the incorporation of multi-criteria ratings in recommender systems can help to produce more accurate recommendations. Thereby, in this paper, we propose a hybrid Multi-Criteria Semantic-enhanced CF (MC-SeCF) approach. The MC-SeCF approach integrates the enhanced MC item-based CF and the item-based semantic filtering approaches to alleviate current limitations of the item-based CF techniques. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed MC-SeCF approach in terms of improving accuracy, as well as in dealing with very sparse data sets or cold-start items compared to benchmark item-based CF techniques.
Defining and Operationalizing Family Farming from a Sociological Perspective

G. Djurfeldt se demande de quelle maniere definir sociologiquement le travail familial au sein d'une exploitation agricole. Il analyse de facon critique le modele de R. Gasson et A. Errington elabore a cet effet. Il souligne les limites de cette approche. Il affirme que Gasson et Errington ne distinguent pas travail familial et gestion familiale des exploitations agricoles. Il propose un modele qui permet d'evaluer, au niveau des menages, d'une part, le temps de travail sur l'exploitation et le temps passe en dehors de l'exploitation et, d'autre part, la part du revenu des familles liee au travail agricole par rapport aux autres activites. A. Errington repond a Djurfeldt. Il estime que son approche est tres similaire a celle qu'il a elabore avec Gasson. Il considere que Djurfeldt ne prend toutefois pas en consideration les strategies de gestion des exploitations et qu'il n'offre pas un critere suffisant pour distinguer les differentes activites exercees par les agriculteurs
Making Sense of Violence: Perceived Meaningfulness as a Predictor of Audience Interest in Violent Media Content

Research on audience interest in violent media content is extended to include individuals' appreciation of certain types of violent portrayals as a meaningful and valuable reflection of reality. A sample of 482 German and U.S. adults aged 18–82 watched movie trailers that varied in pretest ratings of gore and meaningfulness, but were equivalent in suspense. As hypothesized, perceived levels of gore and meaningfulness interacted to predict individuals' reported likelihood of watching the full movie, such that a negative influence of gore on viewing likelihood was compensated at high levels of meaningfulness. These findings suggest that, in addition to other motivations such as suspense, some types of violent and even gory content might be sought as an opportunity for meaning-making.
Elevated inflammatory markers at preschool age precede persistent wheezing at school age

To cite this article: van de Kant KDG, Jansen MA, Klaassen EMM, van der Grinten CP, Rijkers GT, Muris JWM, van Schayck OCP, Jöbsis Q, Dompeling E. Elevated inflammatory markers at preschool age precede persistent wheezing at school age. Pediatr Allergy Immunol 2012: 23: 259–264.
Partners in Power: Governing the Self-sustaining Community

The language of community is widely diffused in both social theory and in public policy. Under New Labour it finds expression in obligations on health authorities and local councils to consult and collaborate with their communities in formulating and providing services. Yet such initiatives often treat community as an already existing entity, a proper noun that refers to a solid and stable reality. This article analyses the contemporary appeal of community and outlines some of the problems of trying to think of `it' in the abstract, as a reified essence. Instead, the article offers a different way of thinking about community, as an assemblage of artefacts - political rationales, expert discourses, administrative technologies and bodies - that constitute `its' manifold components in precise historical contexts. Drawing on Foucault's insights into governmentality, the article traces the discursive ways in which managers utilize these empirical resources in the specific setting of an urban regeneration scheme.
Cardiac autonomic regulation during exposure to auditory stimulation with classical baroque or heavy metal music of different intensities.

OBJECTIVES The effects of chronic music auditory stimulation on the cardiovascular system have been investigated in the literature. However, data regarding the acute effects of different styles of music on cardiac autonomic regulation are lacking. The literature has indicated that auditory stimulation with white noise above 50 dB induces cardiac responses. We aimed to evaluate the acute effects of classical baroque and heavy metal music of different intensities on cardiac autonomic regulation. STUDY DESIGN The study was performed in 16 healthy men aged 18-25 years. All procedures were performed in the same soundproof room. We analyzed heart rate variability (HRV) in time (standard deviation of normal-to-normal R-R intervals [SDNN], root-mean square of differences [RMSSD] and percentage of adjacent NN intervals with a difference of duration greater than 50 ms [pNN50]) and frequency (low frequency [LF], high frequency [HF] and LF/HF ratio) domains. HRV was recorded at rest for 10 minutes. Subsequently, the volunteers were exposed to one of the two musical styles (classical baroque or heavy metal music) for five minutes through an earphone, followed by a five-minute period of rest, and then they were exposed to the other style for another five minutes. The subjects were exposed to three equivalent sound levels (60-70dB, 70-80dB and 80-90dB). The sequence of songs was randomized for each individual. RESULTS Auditory stimulation with heavy metal music did not influence HRV indices in the time and frequency domains in the three equivalent sound level ranges. The same was observed with classical baroque musical auditory stimulation with the three equivalent sound level ranges. CONCLUSION Musical auditory stimulation of different intensities did not influence cardiac autonomic regulation in men.
Antisense Oligonucleotide to Cofilin Enhances Respiratory Burst and Phagocytosis in Opsonized Zymosan-stimulated Mouse Macrophage J774.1 Cells*

Phagocytes play a central role in the host defense system, and the relationship between the mechanism of their activation and cytoskeletal reorganization has been studied. We have previously reported a possible involvement of cofilin, an actin-binding protein, in phagocyte functions through its phosphorylation/dephosphorylation and translocation to the plasma membrane regions. In this work, we have obtained a new line of evidence showing an important role of cofilin in phagocyte functions using the mouse macrophage cell line J774.1 and an antisense oligonucleotide to cofilin. Upon stimulation with opsonized zymosan (OZ), cofilin was phosphorylated, and it accumulated around phagocytic vesicles. As the antisense oligonucleotide to cofilin, a 20-mer S-oligo corresponding to the sequence including the AUG translational initiation site was found to be effective. In the cells treated with the antisense oligonucleotide, the amount of cofilin was less than 30% of that in the control cells, and the level of F-actin was two or three times higher than that in the control cells before and throughout the cell activation. In the antisense oligonucleotide-treated cells, OZ-triggered superoxide production was three times faster than that in the control cells. Furthermore, phagocytosis of OZ was enhanced by the antisense. These results show that cofilin plays an essential role in the control of phagocyte function through regulation of actin filament dynamics.