Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Expression of BDNF and Nogo-A after singular and repetitive mild traumatic brain injury in rats

Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) potentially causes long-lasting cognitive deficits, emotional difficulties and behavioral disturbances. Owing to a lack of observable damages following mTBI, the early diagnosis and long-term impact of the insult are limited. In the present study, we assessed the effects of singular and repetitive experimental mTBI (smTBI and rmTBI) in rats on the cognitive, motor function and anxiety-like behavior as well as the time-point changes of BDNF and Nogo-A within 24 days following injuries. Experimental brain injury was induced using a concussive head trauma with a weight-drop device. The single and repetitive mTBI injured rats and shamoperated rats were tested for cognitive, motor function and anxiety-like behavior at 1, 7 and 14 days post-trauma. The results showed that smTBI rats showed impaired cognitive, motor function and anxiety-like behavior within one week after injuries. rmTBI resulted in motor functional impairment of rats within one week while the cognitive deficits and anxiety behavior lasted until two weeks after the injury. Furthermore, brain BDNF peaked at day 2 in smTBI hippocampus CA1 sections and at day 4 for rmTBI rats. Meanwhile, the hippocampus Nogo-A significantly decreased at day 4 in smTBI rats and at day 8 for rmTBI rats. Likewise, BDNF and Nogo-A fluctuated at each time point tested in secondary motor cortex M2-1 of the rat post-smTBI and rmTBI. In conclusion, the time-course change of BDNF and Nogo-A might provide clues for the early diagnosis and treatment of single and repetitive mild TBI.
Perceived Contingency of Parental Reinforcements, Parent-Child Relations, and Locus of Control

To determine the relationships among perceived contingency of parental reinforcements, parent-child relations, and locus of control, 100 university students (53 females and 47 males) completed questionnaires. In general, subjects with an internal orientation perceived their parents as contingently punishing. This finding holds most clearly for males and fathers. No relationships between perceived contingency of parental rewards and locus of control were found. Also, little evidence of a relationship between perceived parent-child relations and locus of control was obtained. Parents perceived as contingently punishing were also perceived as loving while parents perceived as noncontingently punishing were seen as rejecting. Many other significant relationships between parent-child relations measures and perceived contingency of parental reinforcement measures were obtained. These relationships differed by sex and parent. The contingency and locus of control results were discussed in terms of Seligman, Maier, and Solomon's (1971) interpretation of learned helplessness.
A study of Thread Level Parallelism on mobile devices

Mobile devices continue to increase the number of cores in an attempt to meet the needs of performance-demanding applications. However, the increasing number of cores does not necessarily translate into performance gain and/or power reduction. In this paper we investigate how multi-core mobile devices are utilized by applications. Our results demonstrate that mobile applications are utilizing less than 2 cores on average, which shows that multi-cores are generally underutilized by today's mobile applications. Unless application developers can significantly improve core utilization, further increasing core counts will result in little gain.
Oppositional Child Behavior and Parental Locus of Control

Explores an attitudinal variable that might hamper parent training programs, the maladaptive assumption that a parent cannot influence her or his child. The Parent Locus of Control Scale (PLOC) was tested for reliability and subsequently used with a large sample of clinic-referred, oppositional children. The PLOW demonstrated adequate test-retest reliability, internal consistency, and validity with criterion measures of child coerciveness (clinic status, noncompliance, negative talk, cry/yell, and timeout resistance). An external locus of control regarding parenting may be partially a result of raising a difficult child. Fortunately, PLOW scores were not associated with treatment dropout, and those families that successfully completed a standardized parenting program displayed a more internal locus of control following treatment. Implications for future research are discussed.
The Relationship Between Electrically Evoked Compound Action Potential and Speech Perception: A Study in Cochlear Implant Users With Short Electrode Array

Objectives: To determine the extent to which electrically evoked compound action potential (ECAP) measurements were related with speech perception performance in implant users with a short electrode array and to investigate the relationship between ECAP measures and performance according to specific devices. Design: Prospective study. Setting: Tertiary referral center. Patients: Seventeen Hybrid cochlear implant users were tested in this study. Subjects were divided into 2 groups: 8 using the Nucleus Hybrid M and 9 using the Nucleus Hybrid RE. In addition, 21 Nucleus Freedom long electrode implant (CI24RE) users also were tested to compare with the results of the old device (CI24M). Main Outcome Measures: ECAP growth functions were recorded using either an interphase gap (IPG) of 8 or 45 &mgr;s. We then calculated the slope of the growth function and changes in sensitivity with IPG. For each subject, these measures were compared with performance on tests of word recognition. Results: The changes in sensitivity using 2 IPGs showed no correlation with the results of word recognition test in Hybrid cochlear implant users. In contrast, relatively strong correlations have been found between the slope of ECAP growth functions and performance on word recognition test. Additionally, when we separate the results of Hybrid M and RE, the slopes of ECAP growth functions from only Hybrid RE CI recipients were significantly correlated with speech performance. The slopes of ECAP growth function in CI24RE users with long electrode also were significantly correlated with performance. However, comparing between 2 independent correlations in RE devices, correlation was higher in Hybrid RE group. Conclusion: The results presented in this article support the view that slope of the ECAP growth can show significant correlation to performance with a cochlear implant. Furthermore, these results suggest that the strength of the correlation may be related to the specific device. These results suggest that ECAP measures may be useful in developing a test to predict outcomes with the implant.
Carotid intimo-medial thickness: A predictor for cardiovascular disorder in patients with polycystic ovarian syndrome in the South Indian population

Background: Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a common endocrine problem, which is now recognized as not only a reproductive but also a metabolic disorder with long-term effects on women's health, it has a prevalence of 5–10% in India. Among PCOS, it has been reported to have a higher incidence of cardiovascular disorders. Epidemiological studies have demonstrated an association between an increase in the carotid intimo-medial wall thickness (CIMT) and cardiovascular dysfunction. The objective of this study was to compare the CIMT of PCOS with normal women. Materials and Methods: The cross-sectional case-control study was conducted in a tertiary care Hospital in South India. Fifty-four subjects with polycystic ovarian disease and 54 healthy women were enrolled into the study. PCOS was diagnosed by Rotterdam criteria, 2003. Both groups of women were investigated with CIMT and cardiovascular dysfunction. Results: The mean age of women with PCOS and controls were 24.4 ± 5.3 and 27.7 ± 6.0, respectively, whereas body mass index was significantly higher in PCOS than controls group. Mean carotid IMT was significantly higher in PCOS subjects (0.51 ± 0.078) than control subjects (0.44 ± 0.06). Conclusion: Higher CIMT values were observed in PCOS group compared to control group indicating the importance for measuring CIMT in women with PCOS to predict the risk of cardiovascular dysfunction (CVD).
Nonsocial Play in Preschoolers: Necessarily Evil?

RUBIN, KENNETH H. Nonsocial Play in Preschoolers: Necessarily Evil? CHLD DEVELOPMENT, 1982, 53, 651-657. It has been suggested that children who play on their own, without interacting with peers, may be at risk for social, cognitive, and social-cognitive problems. Recently, however, the children's play literature has revealed that some forms of nonsocial activity are constructive and adaptive. In this study the social, cognitive, and social-cognitive correlates of nonsocial play were examined. 122 4-year-olds were observed for 20 min during free play. They were also administered a role-taking test and tests of social and impersonal problemsolving skills. Sociometric popularity and social competence (as rated by teachers) were also assessed. Analyses indicated that nonsocial-functional (sensorimotor) and dramatic activities generally correlated negatively with the measures of competence. Parallel-constructive activities generally correlated positively with the various measures of competence.
Quantitative evaluation of sway as an indicator of functional balance in post-traumatic brain injury.

The test of sway, using different conditions of stance with measurements of the average radial deviation of the center of pressure and its path length of sway per unit of time, has been shown to be a useful clinical tool in determining balance problems in traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients. Normative values were established to determine if an individual patient's sway values fell within the normal range (mean +/- 2SD). The tests have shown good test-retest reliability for TBI patients. In addition, it has been shown that the sensitivity of the test is sufficient to identify changes in patients' performances as their clinical conditions change. It has been demonstrated that the different stance conditions of the battery of tests become progressively more difficult to perform (from comfortable stance, eyes open and eyes closed, through narrow stance, eyes open and eyes closed, to tandem stance with right or left foot forward, eyes open and eyes closed). By using these subtests, it is easy to distinguish between the performances of able-bodied patients and TBI patients with very mild balance problems. The validity of the measure has been documented by correlating the sway performance with clinical functional performance tests. The test performance also correlates with the patient's own assessment of his or her gait difficulties. The limited data available suggest that the test of sway relates difficulties in static balance to the frequency of falls. Finally, subtests permit identification of specific problems in maintaining balance as a basis for therapeutic intervention. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Risk of Cardiovascular and All-Cause Mortality: Impact of Impaired Health-Related Functioning and Diabetes

OBJECTIVE There is an established link between health-related functioning (HRF) and cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality, and it is known that those with diabetes predominantly die of CVD. However, few studies have determined the combined impact of diabetes and impaired HRF on CVD mortality. We investigated whether this combination carries a higher CVD risk than either component alone. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS The Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle (AusDiab) study included 11,247 adults aged ≥25 years from 42 randomly selected areas of Australia. At baseline (1999–2000), diabetes status was defined using the World Health Organization criteria and HRF was assessed using the SF-36 questionnaire. RESULTS Overall, after 7.4 years of follow-up, 57 persons with diabetes and 105 without diabetes had died from CVD. In individuals with and without diabetes, HRF measures were significant predictors of increased CVD mortality. The CVD mortality risks among those with diabetes or impaired physical health component summary (PCS) alone were similar (diabetes only: hazard ratio 1.4 [95% CI 0.7–2.7]; impaired PCS alone: 1.5 [1.0–2.4]), while those with both diabetes and impaired PCS had a much higher CVD mortality (2.8 [1.6–4.7]) compared with those without diabetes and normal PCS (after adjustment for multiple covariates). Similar results were found for the mental health component summary. CONCLUSIONS This study demonstrates that the combination of diabetes and impaired HRF is associated with substantially higher CVD mortality. This suggests that, among those with diabetes, impaired HRF is likely to be important in the identification of individuals at increased risk of CVD mortality.
Item Discrimination: When More Is Worse

High item discrimination can be a symptom of a special kind of measurement disturbance introduced by an item that gives persons of high ability a special advantage over and above their higher abilities. This type of disturbance, which can be interpreted as aform of item "bias," can be encouraged by methods that routinely interpret highly discriminating items as the "best" items on a test and may be compounded by procedures that weight items by their discrimination. The type of measurement disturbance described and illustrated in this paper occurs when an item is sensitive to individual differences on a second, undesired dimension that is positively correlated with the variable intended to be measured. Possible secondary influences of this type include opportunity to learn, opportunity to answer, and test wiseness.
Ibudilast in relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis

Background: Ibudilast is a phosphodiesterase inhibitor influencing inflammation and neurodegeneration in multiple sclerosis (MS). This study evaluated the safety, tolerability, and effects on MRI parameters of 2 different doses of ibudilast in relapsing forms of MS. Methods: In this multicenter, double-blind, phase 2 trial, patients with relapsing MS and gadolinium-enhancing lesions were randomly assigned 1:1:1 to receive 30 or 60 mg ibudilast or placebo every day for 12 months. The primary endpoint was the cumulative number of newly active lesions on bimonthly brain MRI over 12 months. Secondary endpoints included relapse rate, change in Expanded Disability Status Scale (EDSS) score, T2-hyperintense and T1-hypointense lesion volumes, and percent brain volume change (PBVC). Results: A total of 297 patients were randomized in 19 centers. During the first 12 months, the mean number of active lesions and relapse rate did not differ between treatment arms. A reduction in PBVC (p = 0.04) was found in the 60-mg group (0.8%) compared with placebo (1.2%). Post hoc analysis showed a reduction in the proportion active lesions that evolved into persistent black holes for the 60-mg (0.14; p = 0.004) and 30-mg (0.17; p = 0.036) groups compared with the placebo group (0.24). Over 2 years, there were fewer patients (p = 0.026) with confirmed progression on the EDSS. Treatment with ibudilast was generally safe and well tolerated. Conclusion: Ibudilast showed no beneficial effect on the rate of newly active lesions and relapses. However, preliminary evidence suggests that ibudilast seems to act in a neuroprotective fashion as measured by 2 independent MRI outcomes, with a possible beneficial clinical effect on disability progression. Classification of evidence: This interventional study provides Class III evidence on the effect of ibudilast on disease activity.
AEROBIC SALIVARY BACTERIA IN WILD AND CAPTIVE KOMODO DRAGONS

During the months of November 1996, August 1997, and March 1998, saliva and plasma samples were collected for isolation of aerobic bacteria from 26 wild and 13 captive Komodo dragons (Varanus komodoensis). Twenty-eight Gram-negative and 29 Gram-positive species of bacteria were isolated from the saliva of the 39 Komodo dragons. A greater number of wild than captive dragons were positive for both Gram-negative and Gram-positive bacteria. The average number of bacterial species within the saliva of wild dragons was 46% greater than for captive dragons. While Escherichia coli was the most common bacterium isolated from the saliva of wild dragons, this species was not present in captive dragons. The most common bacteria isolated from the saliva of captive dragons were Staphylococcus capitis and Staphylococcus caseolyticus, neither of which were found in wild dragons. High mortality was seen among mice injected with saliva from wild dragons and the only bacterium isolated from the blood of dying mice was Pasteurella multocida. A competitive inhibition enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay revealed the presence of anti-Pasteurella antibody in the plasma of Komodo dragons. Four species of bacteria isolated from dragon saliva showed resistance to one or more of 16 antimicrobics tested. The wide variety of bacteria demonstrated in the saliva of the Komodo dragon in this study, at least one species of which was highly lethal in mice and 54 species of which are known pathogens, support the observation that wounds inflicted by this animal are often associated with sepsis and subsequent bacteremia in prey animals.
Deconstructing disengagement: analyzing learner subpopulations in massive open online courses

As MOOCs grow in popularity, the relatively low completion rates of learners has been a central criticism. This focus on completion rates, however, reflects a monolithic view of disengagement that does not allow MOOC designers to target interventions or develop adaptive course features for particular subpopulations of learners. To address this, we present a simple, scalable, and informative classification method that identifies a small number of longitudinal engagement trajectories in MOOCs. Learners are classified based on their patterns of interaction with video lectures and assessments, the primary features of most MOOCs to date. In an analysis of three computer science MOOCs, the classifier consistently identifies four prototypical trajectories of engagement. The most notable of these is the learners who stay engaged through the course without taking assessments. These trajectories are also a useful framework for the comparison of learner engagement between different course structures or instructional approaches. We compare learners in each trajectory and course across demographics, forum participation, video access, and reports of overall experience. These results inform a discussion of future interventions, research, and design directions for MOOCs. Potential improvements to the classification mechanism are also discussed, including the introduction of more fine-grained analytics.
Detection Evolution with Multi-order Contextual Co-occurrence

Context has been playing an increasingly important role to improve the object detection performance. In this paper we propose an effective representation, Multi-Order Contextual co-Occurrence (MOCO), to implicitly model the high level context using solely detection responses from a baseline object detector. The so-called (1st-order) context feature is computed as a set of randomized binary comparisons on the response map of the baseline object detector. The statistics of the 1st-order binary context features are further calculated to construct a high order co-occurrence descriptor. Combining the MOCO feature with the original image feature, we can evolve the baseline object detector to a stronger context aware detector. With the updated detector, we can continue the evolution till the contextual improvements saturate. Using the successful deformable-part-model detector [13] as the baseline detector, we test the proposed MOCO evolution framework on the PASCAL VOC 2007 dataset [8] and Caltech pedestrian dataset [7]: The proposed MOCO detector outperforms all known state-of-the-art approaches, contextually boosting deformable part models (ver. 5) [13] by 3.3% in mean average precision on the PASCAL 2007 dataset. For the Caltech pedestrian dataset, our method further reduces the log-average miss rate from 48% to 46% and the miss rate at 1 FPPI from 25% to 23%, compared with the best prior art [6].
MRI substrates of sustained attention system and cognitive impairment in pediatric MS patients

Objective: To explore the structural and functional integrity of the sustained attention system in patients with pediatric multiple sclerosis (MS) and its effect on cognitive impairment. Methods: We enrolled 57 patients with pediatric MS and 14 age- and sex-matched healthy controls (HCs). Patients with >3 abnormal tests at neuropsychological evaluation were classified as cognitively impaired (CI). Sustained attention system activity was studied with fMRI during the Conners Continuous Performance Test (CCPT). Structural integrity of attention network connections was quantified with diffusion tensor (DT) MRI. Results: Within-group analysis showed similar patterns of recruitment of the attention network in HCs and patients with pediatric MS. Diffuse network DT MRI structural abnormalities were found in patients with MS. During CCPT, with increasing task demand, patients with pediatric MS showed increased activation of the left thalamus, anterior insula, and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and decreased recruitment of the right precuneus compared to HCs. Thirteen patients (23%) were classified as CI. Compared to cognitively preserved patients, CI patients with pediatric MS had decreased recruitment of several areas located mainly in parietal and occipital lobes and cerebellum and increased deactivation of the ACC, combined with more severe structural damage of white matter tracts connecting these regions. Conclusions: Our results suggest that the age-expected level of sustained attention system functional competence is achieved in patients with pediatric MS. Inefficient regulation of the functional interaction between different areas of this system, due to abnormal white matter integrity, may result in global cognitive impairment in these patients.
The influence of changes in marital status on developmental trajectories of alcohol use in young adults.

OBJECTIVE Multiple group latent curve analysis was used to assess the impact of changes in marital status on alcohol use trajectories in young adults and to test if these effects varied across ethnicity and gender. METHOD Four years of data were obtained from a sample of young adults (N = 4,052; 54% male) drawn from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Alcohol use and marital status were assessed once per year and covariates included age, gender, education and ethnicity. RESULTS Latent curve models indicated that there was an overall nonlinear negative alcohol use trajectory across the four time points and that becoming married was reliably associated with an added down-turn to this trajectory. Multiple group models indicated that there was an interaction between ethnicity and marital status in the prediction of alcohol growth trajectories, but there was no interaction with gender. CONCLUSIONS Becoming married for the first time exerted a unique effect on the overall developmental trajectory of alcohol use over time. This effect held for both ethnic groups but was reliably stronger for white compared to black respondents. This interaction may be attributable to lower levels of alcohol use reported by black respondents, or may be related to individual differences in reactivity to social influences by blacks relative to whites.