Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Failure to Replicate a Genetic Association May Provide Important Clues About Genetic Architecture

Replication has become the gold standard for assessing statistical results from genome-wide association studies. Unfortunately this replication requirement may cause real genetic effects to be missed. A real result can fail to replicate for numerous reasons including inadequate sample size or variability in phenotype definitions across independent samples. In genome-wide association studies the allele frequencies of polymorphisms may differ due to sampling error or population differences. We hypothesize that some statistically significant independent genetic effects may fail to replicate in an independent dataset when allele frequencies differ and the functional polymorphism interacts with one or more other functional polymorphisms. To test this hypothesis, we designed a simulation study in which case-control status was determined by two interacting polymorphisms with heritabilities ranging from 0.025 to 0.4 with replication sample sizes ranging from 400 to 1600 individuals. We show that the power to replicate the statistically significant independent main effect of one polymorphism can drop dramatically with a change of allele frequency of less than 0.1 at a second interacting polymorphism. We also show that differences in allele frequency can result in a reversal of allelic effects where a protective allele becomes a risk factor in replication studies. These results suggest that failure to replicate an independent genetic effect may provide important clues about the complexity of the underlying genetic architecture. We recommend that polymorphisms that fail to replicate be checked for interactions with other polymorphisms, particularly when samples are collected from groups with distinct ethnic backgrounds or different geographic regions.
Fingertip Injuries in Children: Epidemiology, Financial Burden, and Implications for Prevention

Background: Although fingertip injuries are common, there is limited literature on the epidemiology and hospital charges for fingertip injuries in children. This descriptive study reports the clinical features of and hospital charges for fingertip injuries in a large pediatric population treated at a tertiary medical center. Methods: Our hospital database was queried using International Classification of Diseases, Revision 9 (ICD-9) codes, and medical records were reviewed. Frequency statistics were generated for 1807 patients with fingertip injuries who presented to the emergency department (ED) at Boston Children’s Hospital (BCH) between 2005 and 2011. Billing records were analyzed for financial data. Results: A total of 1807 patients were identified for this study; 59% were male, and the mean age at time of injury was 8 years. Most commonly, injuries occurred when a finger was crushed (n = 831, 46%) in a door or window. Average length of stay in the ED was 3 hours 45 minutes, 25% of cases needed surgery, and, on average, patients had more than 1 follow-up appointment. About one-third of patients were referred from outside institutions. The average ED charge for fingertip injuries was $1195 in 2014, which would amount to about $320 430 each year (in 2014 dollars) for fingertip injuries presenting to BCH. Conclusion: Fingertip injuries in children are common and result in significant burden, yet are mostly preventable. Most injuries occur at home in a door or window. Although these patients generally heal well, fingertip injuries pose a health, time, and financial burden. Increased awareness and education may help to avoid these injuries.
The Value of Information in Monotone Decision Problems

February 2001 This paper studies decision problems under uncertainty where a decision-maker observes an imperfect signal about the true state of the world. We analyze the information preferences and information demand of such decision-makers, based on properties of their payoff functions. We restrict attention to "monotone decision problems," whereby the posterior beliefs induced by the signal can be ordered so that higher actions are chosen in response to higher signal realizations. Monotone decision problems are frequently encountered in economic modeling. We provide necessary and sufficient conditions for all decision makers with different classes of payoff functions to prefer one information structure to another. We also provide conditions under which two decision-makers in a given class can be ranked in terms of their marginal value for information and hence information demand. Applications and examples are given. Working Papers Index
Conscientiousness and achievement motivation predict performance

A prospective survey was conducted to identify predictors of university students' grade point average (GPA) using separate samples of female (N = 472) and male (N = 142) students over 9 months. Big five personality traits and achievement motivation were measured. Correlations show that conscientiousness (C) and achievement motivation explained variation in GPA. Latent variable structural equation modelling showed that the effect of C on GPA is fully mediated by achievement motivation for both female and male students. Invariant factor and structural mediation models across the female and male groups are also reported. Finally, the mediation model is shown to remain significant after scholastic achievement is controlled. The findings are interpreted within the framework of Neo‐Socioanalytic theory. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
THE FAMILIAL TRANSMISSION OF CRIMINAL CONVICTIONS

This article examines the familial transmission of criminal convictions in families in the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development. Our main analyses focus on the 344 families in the Cambridge Study with two or more children. Criminal convictions were highly familial because convictions in a parent increased the risk of convictions in a child. Correlations between siblings were stronger in same-sex siblings (.45 to .50) than in opposite-sex ones (.27). Sibling correlations did not vary by birth order. Convictions of mothers and father correlated . 55. Parent-child correlations were about the same as within-generation correlations between siblings. LISREL models were used to assess whether the effect of parental convictions on child convictions was direct or mediated through the quality of the family environment (i.e., supervision. child rearing, and family size). The best fitting LISREL models suggested a direct effect of parental convictions on child convictions, without any mediation by family environment. These data on fill biological siblings, however, did not permit separate estimation of family environmental versus genetic effects. One environmental effect appeared, however—a socialization effect among siblings; in families with three sons, there appeared to be mutual influence of one sibling on another. Also, regression models based on the boys suggested that family environmental variables did add to parental criminality.
Biochemical markers of bone turnover in paget's disease of bone

Although the measurement of total alkaline phosphatase activity in serum is a valid index to assess the activity of Paget's disease of bone and to monitor treatment efficacy, this marker may lack sensitivity in some cases. Among the various markers of bone formation and resorption that have been developed, serum bone specific alkaline phosphatase and procollagen I N‐terminal peptide (PINP) for formation, urinary N‐telopeptide (NTX) and α‐C‐telopeptide (CTX) for bone resorption have emerged as the most sensitive ones, and may be useful in the management of pagetic patients. We have recently shown that the β‐isomerization of type I collagen CTX is impaired in pagetic bone matrix characterized by the existence of woven bone, as compared to normal lamellar bone matrix. This abnormality results in a preferential urinary excretion of nonisomerized (α‐CTX) over β‐isomerized (β‐CTX) that can be measured with specific immunoassays. Patients with active Paget's disease of bone are characterized by an abnormally high α/β‐CTX ratio which goes down to the normal range after bisphosphonate therapy, probably reflecting the lamellar structure of newly formed bone matrix in pagetic skeletal sites after treatment.
Urban High School Students' Academic Communities and Their Effects on Mathematics Success

This article reports findings from a study exploring the roles of peer influences in cultivating urban high school students' academic success in mathematics. While the literature describing family/school influences on the academic achievement of students of color is compelling, much of it suggests that urban students' peer groups do not support academic achievement. This study of high school students sought to link their academic behaviors to a historical tradition of intellectual networks within their communities. The ways in which students' peer groups, families, and school communities fostered their mathematics success are discussed with the aim of helping researchers and educators gain a more complete vision of urban students' achievement.
Collaborative Writing in L2 Contexts: Processes, Outcomes, and Future Directions

Collaborative writing is the joint production of a text by two or more writers. Despite the widespread use of collaborative writing in the world outside the second language (L2) classroom, the use of collaborative writing tasks in L2 classes, to date, seems relatively limited. The overarching aim of this article is to suggest that collaborative writing activities, if carefully designed and monitored, may form an optimal site for L2 learning. The article begins by providing a brief theoretical rationale for collaborative writing, drawing on both cognitive and sociocultural theories. It then reviews the small number of published studies that have investigated collaborative writing in different L2 contexts. This review provides empirical evidence that working jointly on producing a written text provides opportunities for language learning, but that factors such as task type, L2 proficiency, and the relationships that the learners form affect these opportunities and may also affect language-learning gains. The chapter then considers new directions in implementing collaborative writing: online collaboration via wikis. The article concludes by highlighting the factors that need to be considered in order to maximize the language-learning potentials of collaborative writing in face-to-face and online modes.
Determinants of Pro-Environmental Behaviors

Research teams in five countries (France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, UK) developed in common a comparative study on individual attitudes and behaviors towards the environment, and on the importance of environmental issues in the media of these countries. The sample was composed of 742 subjects, teachers and engineers. Results presented here focus on a cross-countries comparison of the media analysis and the questionnaire data. Important differences are observed between the level of pro-environmental behaviors and the nature of their determinants.
Male Managers' Attitudes Toward Working Women

Women constitute an essential part of this country’s manpower resources. According to the U.S. Department of Labor (1970), 43 out of every 100 women 16 years of age and over are in the labor force. The number of women in the labor force has been steadily increasing for the last 25 years, with the percentage of married women in the labor force increasing 244% from 1940 to 1964. Furthermore, many of the women in the labor force
RUPTURES ET CONTINUITES ENTRE PHYSIQUE ET MATHÉMATIQUE À PROPOS DE LA CARACTÉRISTIQUE DES DIPÔLES ÉLECTRIQUES LINÉAIRES

Les professeurs de sciences physiques s'etonnent souvent des difficultes rencontrees par leurs eleves dans la mise en œuvre de connaissances mathe­ matiques. Parallelement, les enseignants de mathematiques sont convaincus que les notions qu'ils enseignent sont spontanement transferables en physique. En nous appuyant sur un exemple, celui de l'etude experimentale de la loi d'Ohm, nous montrons que l'analyse de ces difficultes met en evidence une absence de reperes pour penser les continuites et les ruptures entre les deux disciplines et nous proposons un modele articule autour des notions de "cadre de rationalite" et de "registre semiotique" qui permet d'analyser les processus de conceptualisa tion par une approche inter-didactique.
Sensitive Topics and Reluctant Respondents Demonstrating a Link between Nonresponse Bias and Measurement Error

Survey researchers have long speculated that there may be a link between nonresponse and measurement error—that is, people likely to become nonrespondents to a survey are also likely to make poor reporters if they do take part. Still, there is surprisingly little evidence of such a link. It could be that nonresponse is generally the product of one set of factors and reporting errors, the product of an unrelated set, or both nonresponse and reporting errors may be item-specific so that no general relationship between the two is likely to emerge. Our study examined a situation in which we thought there would be a link between response propensities and the propensity to give inaccurate answers. We asked samples of voters and nonvoters to take part in a survey that included items about voting. Past research shows that nonvoters misreport that fact and that they are less likely than voters in general to take part in surveys. We thought we could heighten the differences between voters and nonvoters in both response rates and levels of misreporting if we characterized the survey as being about politics. However, only nonresponse biases were larger when the topic of the survey was described as political, and this difference was only marginally significant. These two ways of framing the study had even smaller effects on estimates derived from other items in the questionnaire. The overall biases in estimates derived from the voting items are very substantial, and both nonresponse and measurement error contribute to them.
Editorial introduction downsizing and restructuring: Implications for stress and anxiety

The workplace environment has received considerable research attention, particularly its effects on individual well-being. It is well known that occupational demands can lead to stress and illness in workers. At the same time research has demonstrated that individuals obtain a sense of selfesteem, mastery and accomplishment through their jobs. Work also provides one with the opportunity to make meaningfui contacts with others and to develop a sense of camaraderie with one's fellow workers. While in the past, being well trained was often sufficient to obtain security in a life-long job or the promise of one, recent changes in the labor force have practically abolished jobs for life and with it the hope of job security. When workers were laid off in the past, they were mostly young, male, blue-collar workers. With the increasing sophistication of today's computers, middle income jobs are now also often affected. As a result of fiscal restraint and consolidation of products and services, many organizations are downsizing and thereby eliminating thousands of jobs. Many jobs that are disappearing now are those of higher paid, white-collar workers at the peak of their careers, many of whom work in large corporations. In the 1980s more than 1.5 million middle level management jobs were eliminated (Rifkin, 1995). Governments are also scaling back. In the U.S., between 1979 and 1993,454,000 public service jobs were lost. In the first
Adaptive Pilot Clustering in Heterogeneous Massive MIMO Networks

We consider the uplink of a cellular massive multiple-input multiple-output network. Acquiring channel state information at the base stations (BSs) requires uplink pilot signaling. Since the number of orthogonal pilot sequences is limited by the channel coherence, pilot reuse across cells is necessary to achieve high spectral efficiency. However, finding efficient pilot reuse patterns is non-trivial, especially in practical asymmetric BS deployments. We approach this problem using the coalitional game theory. Each BS has a few unique pilots and can form coalitions with other BSs to gain access to more pilots. The BSs in a coalition, thus, benefit from serving more users in their cells at the expense of higher pilot contamination and interference. Given that a cell's average spectral efficiency depends on the overall pilot reuse pattern, the suitable coalitional game model is in the partition form. We develop a low-complexity distributed coalition formation based on individual stability. By incorporating a BS intercommunication budget constraint, we are able to control the overhead in message exchange between the BSs and ensure the algorithm's convergence to a solution of the game called individually stable coalition structure. Simulation results reveal fast algorithmic convergence and substantial performance gains over the baseline schemes with no pilot reuse, full pilot reuse, or random pilot reuse pattern.
Development of the Student Opinion Survey

Development of the Student Opinion Survey is described in terms of construction of the initial item pool, sampling of items, formation of general and specific scales, and evaluation of psychometric properties. Internal consistency reliabilities, scale intercorrelations, and specific variances are reported, along with correlations with student characteristics and findings concerning convergent and divergent internal validity. From these data, and from data separately reported, it appears that the Student Opinion Survey is sufficiently reliable and valid for use in instructional diagnosis and, with due caution and supplementary information, in faculty personnel decisions.
Existence Of The Bid-Ask Spread In An Order Driven Market

A securities market is order driven 1~the limit orders of some public participants establish the prices at which others can trade by market order at any time when the market is open. The paper considers how, without market maker intermediation, a population of public investors separates into limit order and market order traders, and how the order driven market achieves an ecological balance between the suppliers and the demanders of immediacy. It also explains why a bid-ask spread is a natural property of an order driven market, even when the market comprises a large number of participants irrespective of the technology sustaining the market. The paper considers a stylized environment that enables the optimal bid and ask quotes to be solved for, and the bid-ask spread to be analyzed. We summarize empirical evidence concerning price determination in the order driven market, and discuss implications for market structure that are swggested by the analysis.
Activation of LTBP3 Gene by a Long Noncoding RNA (lncRNA) MALAT1 Transcript in Mesenchymal Stem Cells from Multiple Myeloma*

Background: Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are emerging as important regulators of gene expression and tumorigenesis. Results: MALAT1 promoted the activation effect of Sp1 on LTBP3 promoter. Conclusion: In mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), MALAT1 was critical for Sp1 transcriptional activation of LTBP3 that regulated the bioavailability of TGF-β. Significance: MALAT1 is a promising target for therapeutic intervention in multiple myeloma (MM). Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are emerging as important regulatory molecules in tumor suppressor and oncogenic pathways. However, the magnitude of the contribution of lncRNA expression to normal human tissues and cancers has not been investigated in a comprehensive manner. Here we explored the biology of the lncRNA MALAT1 and considered the potential significance in mesenchymal stem cells from myeloma patients. By using assays such as RNA interference, luciferase, chromatin immunoprecipitation, and RNA immunoprecipitation, we showed that in mesenchymal stem cells MALAT1 promoted the activation effect of the key transcription factor Sp1 on LTBP3 promoter by modulating recruitment of Sp1 to the LTBP3 gene that regulated the bioavailability of TGF-β in particular. Our data suggested that lncRNA MALAT1 directly interacted with Sp1 and LTBP3 promoter to increase expression of LTBP3 gene. The specificity and efficiency of activation were ensured by the formation of a stable complex between MALAT1 and the LTBP3 promoter, direct interaction of MALAT1 with Sp1, and recruitment of Sp1 to the promoter. In this study, we showed that the mechanism of transcriptional activation of LTBP3 promoter depended on MALAT1 initiated from neighboring gene LTBP3 and involved both the direct interaction of the Sp1 and promoter-specific activation. Our knowledge of the role of MALAT1 in cellular transformation is pointing toward its potential use as a biomarker and a target for novel therapeutic approaches in multiple myeloma.
Captured by the Discourse? The Socially Constitutive Power of New Higher Education Discourse in the UK

This paper addresses the extent to which academic staff are ‘captured’ by the discourse associated with the ‘new higher education’ (NHE) in the UK and identifies the factors which condition their ability to displace, negotiate, reconstruct and create alternative discourses. In addressing this task, the paper draws on data from a five-year ethnographic study of an English university, NewU, a single document from NewU published after that study, a comparative study of ‘new’ academics in England and Canada, and spontaneous textual data produced at a conference on higher education. The paper concludes that the dialogical nature of universities means that the impact of NHE discourse on organizational practices is mitigated as it is read and reacted to in varied ways: that academics are not fundamentally ‘captured’ by this discursive form. However, caution is advised in extending this argument too far.
Cardiac Autonomic Neuropathy in Diabetes

This review covers the epidemiology, pathophysiology, clinical presentation, and diagnosis of cardiac autonomic neuropathy (CAN) in diabetes and discusses current evidence on approaches to prevention and treatment of CAN. A 26-year-old woman with “brittle” type 1 diabetes and severe CAN experienced sudden cardiac death. She had a 16-year history of poor diabetes control presenting with wide blood glucose fluctuations, recurrent episodes of severe hypoglycemia, and hypoglycemia unawareness. Over time she developed persistent orthostatic hypotension with daily falls in systolic blood pressure ranging from 30–60 mmHg. These episodes had significant impact on her daily activities and required intermittent therapy with the α-1 agonist midodrine. Other complications included severe gastroparesis, refractory diarrhea, and painful diabetic peripheral neuropathy. Her last clinical examination revealed resting tachycardia with a fixed rate of 115 bpm, supine blood pressure of 110/78 mmHg, which dropped to 70/48 mmHg while standing, symmetrical absent pinprick and temperature discrimination in stocking distribution, and left Charcot joint. Her last pertinent laboratory findings were A1C 8.7%, creatinine 1.9 mg/dl, microalbumin/creatinine 496 mg/g, and hemoglobin 10.8 g/dl. CAN represents a significant cause of morbidity and mortality in diabetic patients and is associated with a high risk of cardiac arrhythmias and sudden death, possibly related to silent myocardial ischemia. Therefore, it has important clinical and prognostic relevance. Recent reports of major clinical trials undermine established thinking concerning glycemic control and cardiac risk. Thus, a review of this topic is both timely and important for physicians to better understand how to assess the complexity of conditions present in patients with diabetes in order to establish safe treatment targets. Diabetes affects more than 23 million people in the U.S. (www.diabetes.org) and an estimated 250 million worldwide (www.who.int/diabetes). Diabetic neuropathies, including CAN, are a common chronic complication of type 1 and type 2 diabetes and confer high morbidity …