Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Vocational Rehabilitation Counselors’ Identified Transition Competencies

Vocational rehabilitation (VR) professionals are critical partners in the transition process for students with disabilities; therefore, they are required to develop transition service delivery proficiencies. VR professional perceptions of transition competencies are seldom examined due to the perception that transition falls mainly on school-based professionals. In this study, VR professionals from three states were surveyed on their perceptions regarding transition competencies. Specifically, seven transition domain areas (i.e., Providing Career Planning and Counseling, Providing Career Preparation Experiences, Facilitating Allocation of Resources, Promoting Access and Opportunity for Student Success, Conducting Program Improvement Activities, Building and Maintaining Collaborative Partnerships, and Promoting Nonprofessional Supports and Relationships) were examined and reported across importance, preparedness, and frequency. Results showed that importance rankings were rated very high overall across all competencies (µ = 3.42). Preparedness was the next highest overall rating (µ = 2.77), and frequency in performing transition competencies was the lowest (µ = 2.55). Paired t tests also showed a significant difference between each of the pairs of ratings. In addition, the findings indicated that although all domains were identified as very important, respondents did not indicate they were as prepared or participated as frequently in these transition activities. Individual domain rankings and rationale as well as implications for practice are also discussed.
Psychometric testing of the Duke Activity Status Index in patients with heart failure

Background: Patients with heart failure (HF) experience difficulty performing activities of daily living. As impaired functional status is adversely associated with outcomes, it is important to accurately evaluate patient functional status. The Duke Activity Status Index (DASI) is a 12-item, self-administered questionnaire to measure functional status. However, its psychometric properties have not been determined in patients with HF. The purpose of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of the DASI in patients with HF. Methods and results: We used data from 297 patients with a diagnosis of HF (age 61±11 years, 31% female) for psychometric testing. Internal consistency reliability of the DASI was high (Cronbach’s alpha=0.86). Criterion-related validity was supported by significantly different DASI scores for each New York Heart Association classification. Construct validity was supported by significant correlation of DASI scores with health-related quality of life (r = −0.64), depressive symptoms (r = −0.44), and N-terminal B-type natriuretic peptide (r = −0.14). Conclusion: Our data support the psychometric properties of the DASI as a measure of functional status in patients with HF. This instrument can be used to evaluate functional status and enhance health care provider understanding of functional status related to daily living from the patient perspective.
Computing π(x): the combinatorial method

This article presents a self-contained description of the method proposed by Deleglise and Rivat — which has roots on earlier work by Meissel, by Lehmer, and by Lagarias, Miller and Odlyzko—to compute π(x), which is the number of primes not larger than x. To make life easier to programmers, the major parts of the computation of π(x) are also presented in algorithmic form. The more interesting low-level computational details are presented in the form of of C code snippets.
CONTEXTUAL WORD AND SYLLABLE PRONUNCIATION MODELS

This work focuses on the evaluation of models of syllable and word pronunciations constructed automatically using the Broadcast News corpus of radio and television news reports. Previous work [4] introduced the concept of extended-length decision tree models; here I report on ASR-independent assessment of these models. This study also discusses integration of static and dynamic pronunciation evaluation using the ROVER algorithm for combining hypotheses, and details the improvements of dynamic pronunciation evaluation on the 1998 DARPA Broadcast News test set. The new pronunciation models improve system robustness for speech that is not pre-planned and recorded under studio conditions; these models appear to represent both linguistic variation (as in spontaneous speech) and variation due to channel effects in telephone-bandwidth speech.
COMFORT LEVEL OF POST GRADUATE RESIDENTS WORKING IN DIFFERENT CLINICAL DOMAINS IN MANAGING COMMON OPHTHALMIC CONDITIONS.

BACKGROUND Ophthalmological conditions are frequently encountered in almost all clinical specialties. Assessing the adequacy of ophthalmology teaching in undergraduate medical education is important in order to diagnose and manage different ophthalmological conditions. The objective of this study was to determine the comfort level of post graduate residents working in different clinical domains in managing common ophthalmic conditions. METHODS A cross sectional survey involving 277 post graduate residents was carried out over a period of six months in both private and public tertiary care hospital. A questionnaire containing two sections and 17 variables in total were distributed among Medical Residents of different specialties except ophthalmology residents. Participants of the study were selected through consecutive non probability sampling. RESULTS Mean hours of classroom based ophthalmology instruction during undergraduate program was 59.38 hours (55.9) and mean hours of clinical based ophthalmology instruction during undergraduate program was 62.73 hours (60.8) 54% were either "not comfortable" or "somewhat comfortable" in managing common ophthalmic condition. Conclusion: Teaching hours in under graduate program meet or exceed requisite criteria. However graduating doctors generally feel that the time spent does not provide them with the comfort and skill level required to care for patients with ocular presentations.
Willingness to Intervene in Bullying Episodes Among Middle School Students

This study examined the associations among gender, empathy, attitudes toward bullying, willingness to intervene, and bullying within peer groups in a sample of sixth and seventh-grade students (N = 346; M Age = 12.22 years). Peer groups were identified via social network analysis using NEGOPY (Richards, 1995) and peer-group predictors were evaluated with multilevel modeling. Male peer-group willingness to intervene results indicated significant between-group variation (i.e., high ICC). Perspective-taking was associated with greater willingness to intervene within male peer groups after controlling for initial levels of willingness to intervene. Greater bullying perpetration within one’s peer group was highly predictive of less individual willingness to intervene. For females, willingness to intervene scores was not dependent on friendship group. This study suggests that bullying prevention programs that encourage students to intervene on behalf of victims might be efficacious for male students with friends who bully others at low rates.
Marital Conflict, Parent-Child Relations, and Youth Maladjustment

Contemporaneous and longitudinal associations among marital conflict, parentchild relationship quality, and youth maladjustment were examined using data from the National Survey of Families and Households.Analyses were based on 551 married families with a child age 5 to 11 years at Wave 1. The concurrent association between marital conflict and youth externalizing problems at both waves was mediated completely at Wave 1 and partially at Wave 2 by harsh discipline and parent-youth conflict. The concurrent association between marital conflict and internalizing problems at both waves was mediated partially through parent-youth conflict. Longitudinal mediating effects were detected through stable marital conflict over 5 years and through its connection with parent-youth conflict. Findings delineate areas of specificity and stability in marital conflict processes as children transition from middle childhood through adolescence.
Multiple Sclerosis: Pathogenesis and Treatment

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic inflammatory autoimmune demyelinating disease of the central nervous system. It affects approximately 400,000 people in the United States and onset is usually during young adulthood. There are four clinical forms of MS, of which relapsing remitting type is the most common. As the etiology of MS is unknown, finding a cure will remain challenging. The main mechanism of injury appears to be inflammation and 8 agents are now FDA approved to help control MS. These agents for relapsing forms of MS target different parts of the immune system, with the end goal of decreasing and avoiding further inflammation. No agents are FDA approved for the primary progressive version of MS. FDA approved agents include four preparations of interferon β (Avonex, Rebif, Betaseron and Extavia), glatiramer acetate (Copaxone), mitoxantrone (Novantrone), natalizumab (Tysabri) and fingolimod (Gilenya). There are several drug undergoing phase II and III trials. The heterogeneity of the MS disease process, individual patient response, and medication toxicities continue to challenge the treating physician.
Photodynamic Therapy: A Clinical Consensus Guide

BACKGROUND The American Society of Dermatologic Surgery (ASDS) periodically develops consensus documents for its members concerning various aspects of dermatologic surgery. Advances in photodynamic therapy (PDT) have been many and PDT use has been established in a variety of skin conditions. OBJECTIVE The ASDS board of directors proposed a committee of experts in the field to develop consensus documents on different treatments. An expert panel reviewed the literature on PDT and discussed the findings. The consensus was reached with evidence-based recommendations on different clinical applications for PDT. PATIENTS AND METHODS This consensus document includes discussions regarding PDT, including different photosensitizers and various light source activators, historical perspective, mechanism of action, various therapeutic indications and expected outcomes, pre- and post-care, and management of adverse outcomes. RESULTS Photodynamic therapy is highly effective for pre-cancerous lesions, superficial nonmelanoma skin cancers, inflammatory acne vulgaris and other conditions. New protocols including laser mediated PDT significantly improve results for several indications. CONCLUSION The ASDS consensus document on PDT will be helpful for educating members on safe and effective PDT for a variety of indications.
Emotion recognition ability in English among L1 and LX users of English

This article focuses on individual differences in emotion recognition ability among 356 first language (L1) and 564 foreign language (LX) users of English. Recognizing emotions can be particularly challenging in LX contexts. Depending on their linguistic profile, individuals may interpret input very differently, and LX learners and users have been found to perform significantly worse than native control groups (Rintell 1984) in tests of emotion recognition ability. In the present article, we investigate the effect of three independent variables, namely, L1 versus LX status, proficiency in English, and cultural background, on emotion recognition ability. We used an online survey in which participants had to identify the emotion portrayed by a native English-speaking actress in six audiovisual clips. Despite LX users having lower proficiency scores, English L1 users and LX users’ emotion recognition ability scores were broadly similar. A significant positive relationship was found between LX proficiency and emotion recognition ability. A similar but only marginally significant relationship emerged among L1 users. A significant effect of L1 culture was found on emotion recognition ability scores, with Asian LX users scoring significantly lower than European LX users. It thus seems that audiovisual input allows advanced LX users to recognize emotions in LX as well as L1 users. That said, LX proficiency and L1 culture do have an effect on emotion recognition ability.
Validez estructural de la escala de autorregulación del aprendizaje para estudiantes universitarios

El objetivo del estudio fue obtener evidencias de validez de la estructura interna del Cuestionario de Autorregulacion del Aprendizaje (Learning Self Regulation Questionnaire; LSRQ) y verificar la invarianza metrica comparada con un estudio previo. Los participantes fueron 237 estudiantes universitarios de los tres primeros ciclos academicos de una universidad privada, procedentes de tres ciudades del Peru (dos del norte y una de Lima). El analisis se realizo mediante un analisis factorial semiconfirmatorio, especificando como matriz de comparacion (a) la configuracion derivada de un estudio previo, y (b) la estimacion libre de las cargas factoriales. Los resultados indican que dos dimensiones representan satisfactoriamente la estructura del instrumento; pero la invarianza metrica respecto a un estudio previo no fue satisfactoria. La reespecificacion del modelo, mediante la eliminacion de dos items con problemas de complejidad factorial y la estimacion libre de los items, obtuvieron resultados satisfactorios. Se discuten estos resultados en el marco de la interpretacion de sus puntajes y la falta de invarianza metrica.
Risk perceptions, prevention and treatment seeking for sexually transmitted infections and HIV/AIDS among female sex workers in Kano, Nigeria.

We examined the risk perceptions, prevention and treatment seeking for HIV/AIDS/STIs of 124 female commercial sex workers from 52 randomly selected brothels in Kano, Nigeria using a descriptive cross sectional design. We analysed the data using Epi Info 3.5. 1. The mean age of the sex workers was 26.4 +/- 1.9 years, and most were indigenous Hausas (33.9%), single (50.8%) and had at least secondary school level of education (51.7%). Majority perceived that unprotected sexual intercourse (96.0%) is the commonest risk factor associated with STIs and HIV/AIDs acquisition. Surprisingly, 25.8% did not believe that any method protect against STIs and HIV/AIDS. The most common symptom reported was perineal itching (53.6%); and 60.7% with the symptoms continued to have unprotected sex. Alarmingly, 29.6% of the sex workers were HIV positive, and all continued with unprotected sexual intercourse with clients. Despite the sex workers' good perception and knowledge of HIV/AIDS/STIs prevention, they demonstrated unhealthy sex behaviour and treatment seeking. We recommend a peer education package that targets the workers and their clients, with focus on reducing risk behaviours associated with STIs and HIV transmission, safer sex; and treatment seeking.
Novel Hybrid Modulation Schemes Significantly Extending the Reactive Power Control Range of All Matrix Converter Topologies With Low Computational Effort

A novel approach based on indirect modulation, which significantly extends the reactive power control range for three-phase ac-ac matrix converters (MCs; applicable to all matrix topologies) and which is implementable with lowest computational effort, is proposed. This new method denoted as hybrid modulation facilitates the formation of reactive input current also for purely reactive load. The derivation of the modulation schemes, which rely on a decoupling of the output voltage and the reactive input current formation, is described in detail. Furthermore, the operating limits, i.e., the maximum reactive input current that could be formed for the given output voltage amplitude and load current amplitude, are determined. Finally, all theoretical considerations are verified by measurements taken on a 6.5-kW Very Sparse MC.
Chronic dietary tyrosine supplements do not affect mild essential hypertension.

The blood pressure and plasma norepinephrine response to oral tyrosine, the precursor of norepinephrine, supplementation (2.5 g t.i.d.) of regular meals was examined in 13 untreated patients with mild essential hypertension. Using a randomized double-blind crossover design, each 2-week treatment was followed by a 2-week supplement-free interval. Supine and standing blood pressure and plasma norepinephrine levels were measured at the beginning and end of each 2-week treatment. Plasma tyrosine levels increased (p less than 0.001) from 71.2 +/- 8.0 nM/ml at baseline to 152.8 +/- 17.4 nM/ml 2 hours after the tyrosine supplement. Blood pressure under control conditions was 144 +/- 3 Hg systolic, 91 +/- 2 mm Hg diastolic (109 +/- 2 mm Hg mean) after 30 minutes in the supine position and 148 +/- 4 mm Hg systolic, 102 +/- 3 mm Hg diastolic (117 +/- 3 mm Hg mean) after 5 minutes of standing. Plasma norepinephrine levels were 191 +/- 18 pg/ml in the supine subjects and 390 +/- 33 pg/ml in the standing subjects. No difference in systolic, diastolic, or mean blood pressure, heart rate, or plasma norepinephrine levels were seen between the beginning and end of each period or between groups. Individual changes in blood pressure showed no correlation with individual changes in norepinephrine levels. These results indicate that the addition of a tyrosine supplement to the usual diet of mild hypertensive subjects has no beneficial effect on blood pressure.
Rho‐associated protein kinase 1 (ROCK1) is increased in Alzheimer's disease and ROCK1 depletion reduces amyloid‐β levels in brain

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the leading cause of dementia and mitigating amyloid‐β (Aβ) levels may serve as a rational therapeutic avenue to slow AD progression. Pharmacologic inhibition of the Rho‐associated protein kinases (ROCK1 and ROCK2) is proposed to curb Aβ levels, and mechanisms that underlie ROCK2′s effects on Aβ production are defined. How ROCK1 affects Aβ generation remains a critical barrier. Here, we report that ROCK1 protein levels were elevated in mild cognitive impairment due to AD (MCI) and AD brains compared to controls. Aβ42 oligomers marginally increased ROCK1 and ROCK2 protein levels in neurons but strongly induced phosphorylation of Lim kinase 1 (LIMK1), suggesting that Aβ42 activates ROCKs. RNAi depletion of ROCK1 or ROCK2 suppressed endogenous Aβ40 production in neurons, and Aβ40 levels were reduced in brains of ROCK1 heterozygous knock‐out mice compared to wild‐type littermate controls. ROCK1 knockdown decreased amyloid precursor protein (APP), and treatment with bafilomycin accumulated APP levels in neurons depleted of ROCK1. These observations suggest that reduction of ROCK1 diminishes Aβ levels by enhancing APP protein degradation. Collectively, these findings support the hypothesis that both ROCK1 and ROCK2 are therapeutic targets to combat Aβ production in AD.
Role of Circadian Types and Depressive Mood on Sleep Quality of Shift Work Nurses

ResultszzThere were significant relationships between sleep quality and circadian types (r=-0.160, p<0.001), and depressive mood (r=0.438, p<0.001). In addition, the circadian types was significantly correlated with depressive mood (r=-0.236, p< 0.001). Depressive mood showed mediating effect between circadian types and sleep quality (β=0.424, p<0.001). Evening type subjects showed higher scores in depressive mood and sleep quality than morning type ones. ConclusionzzThese results suggest that depression and circadian rhythm management in nurses with evening type would contribute to the prevention of sleep disturbance.
CD 40 L-Adjuvanted DNA / Modified Vaccinia Virus Ankara Simian Immunodeficiency Virus SIV 239 Vaccine Enhances SIV-Specific Humoral and Cellular Immunity and Improves Protection against a Heterologous SIVE 660 Mucosal Challenge

It remains a challenge to develop a successful human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) vaccine that is capable of preventing infection. Here, we utilized the benefits of CD40L, a costimulatory molecule that can stimulate both dendritic cells (DCs) and B cells, as an adjuvant for our simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) DNA vaccine in rhesus macaques. We coexpressed the CD40L with our DNA/SIV vaccine such that the CD40L is anchored on the membrane of SIV virus-like particle (VLP). These CD40L containing SIV VLPs showed enhanced activation of DCs in vitro. We then tested the potential of DNA/SIV-CD40L vaccine to adjuvant the DNA prime of a DNA/modified vaccinia virus Ankara (MVA) vaccine in rhesus macaques. Our results demonstrated that the CD40L adjuvant enhanced the functional quality of anti-Env antibody response and breadth of anti-SIV CD8 and CD4 T cell responses, significantly delayed the acquisition of heterologous mucosal SIV infection, and improved viral control. Notably, the CD40L adjuvant enhanced the control of viral replication in the gut at the site of challenge that was associated with lower mucosal CD8 immune activation, one of the strong predictors of disease progression. Collectively, our results highlight the benefits of CD40L adjuvant for enhancing antiviral humoral and cellular immunity, leading to enhanced protection against a pathogenic SIV. A single adjuvant that enhances both humoral and cellular immunity is rare and thus underlines the importance and practicality of CD40L as an adjuvant for vaccines against infectious diseases, including HIV-1.
Successful Care of a Young Female with ADD/ADHD & Vertebral Subluxation: A Case Study

Objective: This case is being presented to emphasize the important role that Chiropractors play in the treatment of children diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder. Clinical Features: A mother brought her seven year-old daughter in for evaluation. Her primary concerns were the attention and focusing problems she was having in school, hyperactive behavior, sleep disturbances and her aggressive, negative behaviour toward her sister. Intervention and outcome: Examination included postural assessment and the protocols of the Torque Release Chiropractic technique were employed to determine the location of vertebral subluxations. The mother filled out a behavioural and personality assessment as well as a general health history form. During the course of her chiropractic care, her mother completed a weekly monitor of the child’s sleeping and appetite patterns as well as various behavioural traits, rating them on a 1-10 scale. The patient began receiving Chiropractic adjustments for the correction of her vertebral subluxations three times a week. She also received Craniosacral therapy in conjunction with her chiropractic adjustments. The mother and child were instructed on dietary changes and nutritional supplements that would support neurological function. Resources were also given to the mother that taught visual and kinesthetic communication techniques. Over the course of her 90-day treatment schedule, improvements were noted on the daughter’s weekly behavioural assessments. The mother noticed an overall change in her attitude as well as specific tasks. Conclusion: Up to six million children display symptoms and learning disabilities that are labeled as ADD/ADHD and are subsequently put on medications that have not been proven safe and effective, and also have serious side effects. Research shows that many of these children are pre-disposed to addictive and obsessive/compulsive disorders due to a genetic variant and that the medications can launch them into more dangerous behaviours and substance abuse. 1