Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Long-Term (>10 Years) Clinical Outcomes of First-in-Human Biodegradable Poly-l-Lactic Acid Coronary Stents: Igaki-Tamai Stents

Background— The purpose of this study was to evaluate the long-term safety of the Igaki-Tamai stent, the first-in-human fully biodegradable coronary stent made of poly-l-lactic acid. Methods and Results— Between September 1998 and April 2000, 50 patients with 63 lesions were treated electively with 84 Igaki-Tamai stents. Overall clinical follow-up (>10 years) of major adverse cardiac events and rates of scaffold thrombosis was analyzed together with the results of angiography and intravascular ultrasound. Major adverse cardiac events included all-cause death, nonfatal myocardial infarction, and target lesion revascularization/target vessel revascularization. During the overall clinical follow-up period (121±17 months), 2 patients were lost to follow-up. There were 1 cardiac death, 6 noncardiac deaths, and 4 myocardial infarctions. Survival rates free of all-cause death, cardiac death, and major adverse cardiac events at 10 years were 87%, 98%, and 50%, respectively. The cumulative rates of target lesion revascularization (target vessel revascularization) were 16% (16%) at 1 year, 18% (22%) at 5 years, and 28% (38%) at 10 years. Two definite scaffold thromboses (1 subacute, 1 very late) were recorded. The latter case was related to a sirolimus-eluting stent, which was implanted for a lesion proximal to an Igaki-Tamai stent. From the analysis of intravascular ultrasound data, the stent struts mostly disappeared within 3 years. The external elastic membrane area and stent area did not change. Conclusion— Acceptable major adverse cardiac events and scaffold thrombosis rates without stent recoil and vessel remodeling suggested the long-term safety of the Igaki-Tamai stent.
Okul Yöneticilerindeki Adalet ve Liyakat ile Öğretmenlerdeki Sadakat ve Gayret Arasindaki İlişki * The Relationship between the Justice and Merit of School Administrators on the One Hand and the Loyalty and Effort of Teachers on the Other

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between work effort and organizational loyalty of teachers and merit of administrators and perceived organizational justice at primary schools. The data were obtained through scales that was administrated to 315 teachers in 42 state primary schools in Ankara. Research showed that the justice perceived at schools via “Organizational Justice Scale”, the merit perceived in administrators via “Ability Scale”, the loyalty perceived in teachers via “Affective Commitment Scale” and the effort perceived in teachers is calculated via “Work Effort Scale”. In the analyses of the data, means, standard deviation, Pearson Moments Product Correlation Coefficient and regression analysis were used. The results of the research showed that perceived organizational justice and merit in administrators are related to institutional loyalty and work effort in teachers. The results of regression analysis indicated that merit and procedural justice estimate loyalty; distributing justice, merit, and organizational justice estimate effort.
The role of the JAK-STAT pathway and related signal cascades in telomerase activation during the development of hematologic malignancies

Telomerase, comprising a reverse transcriptase protein (TERT) and an RNA template, plays a critical role during senescence and carcinogenesis; however, the mechanisms by which telomerase is regulated remain to be elucidated. Several signaling pathways are involved in the activation of TERT at multistep levels. The JAK-STAT pathway is indispensable for mediating signals through growth factor and cytokine receptors during the development of hematopoietic cells, and its activity is frequently upregulated in hematological malignancies. Here, we review the role of the JAK-STAT pathway and related signaling cascades in the regulation of telomerase in hematological malignancies.
Housing, Home Production, and the Equity and Value Premium Puzzles

We test if a standard representative agent model with a home-production sector can resolve the equity premium or value premium puzzles. In this model, agents value market consumption and a home consumption good that is produced as an aggregate of the stock of housing, home labor, and a labor-augmenting technology shock. We construct the unobserved quantity of the home consumption good by combining observed data with restrictions of the model. We test the first-order conditions of the model using GMM. The model is rejected by the data; it cannot explain either the historical equity premium or the value premium.
Effects of a Long-Term Participatory Action Research Project on Science Teachers' Professional Development.

This paper describes the potential of long-term co-operation between science educators and science teachers concerning the teachers’ continuous professional development, based on Participatory Action Research in science education. The discussion is based on a sixyear case study observing a group of about ten German chemistry teachers by chemistry educators from the university. Substantial changes in teachers’ professional habits and views were found. These findings will be theoretically framed within the Pedagogical Content Knowledge (PCK) debate, a model representing three different modes of action research and the Interconnected Model of Teachers’ Professional Growth (IMTPG). The following discussion will provide an explanation of the changes in the teachers’ professional attitudes and views. This is based on a description of overcoming the participatory approach by addressing essential elements of teacher emancipation. Consequences for classical approaches of in-service teacher training are discussed.
Estructura de la Memoria Operativa : Comparando diferentes modelos en la infancia

Working Memory (WM) is an active memory system responsible for the temporary storage and concurrent processing of information. Different authors have considered WM as a complex but unitary system, whereas others have suggested that the system is multidimensional. In this line, the model developed by Baddeley and Hitch (1974) is one of the most well known; it proposes two modality-specific components the phonological loop and the visuo-spatial sketchpad and a supervisory executive system the central executive. This paper contributes to the debate on WM structure by investigating three groups of children of different ages and assessing different models using confirmatory factor analysis. The Working Memory Assessment Battery Test (Alloway, 2007; Injoque-Ricle, Calero, Alloway & Burin, 2011) was administered to 180 monolingual Spanish-speaking children. The three age groups consisted of 6-, 8-, and 11-year-old children (n = 60 participants per group). The results suggest that the WM structure is not uniform across the different age groups tested, showing progressive differentiation and specialization during childhood. This structure would appear to form between the ages of 6 and 8 years and become more complex as adolescence is approached.
Sexual Arousal Patterns of Bisexual Men

There has long been controversy about whether bisexual men are substantially sexually aroused by both sexes. We investigated genital and self-reported sexual arousal to male and female sexual stimuli in 30 heterosexual, 33 bisexual, and 38 homosexual men. In general, bisexual men did not have strong genital arousal to both male and female sexual stimuli. Rather, most bisexual men appeared homosexual with respect to genital arousal, although some appeared heterosexual. In contrast, their subjective sexual arousal did conform to a bisexual pattern. Male bisexuality appears primarily to represent a style of interpreting or reporting sexual arousal rather than a distinct pattern of genital sexual arousal.
BH3‐in‐groove dimerization initiates and helix 9 dimerization expands Bax pore assembly in membranes

Pro‐apoptotic Bax induces mitochondrial outer membrane permeabilization (MOMP) by forming oligomers through a largely undefined process. Using site‐specific disulfide crosslinking, compartment‐specific chemical labeling, and mutational analysis, we found that activated integral membrane Bax proteins form a BH3‐in‐groove dimer interface on the MOM surface similar to that observed in crystals. However, after the α5 helix was released into the MOM, the remaining interface with α2, α3, and α4 helices was rearranged. Another dimer interface was formed inside the MOM by two intersected or parallel α9 helices. Combinations of these interfaces generated oligomers in the MOM. Oligomerization was initiated by BH3‐in‐groove dimerization, without which neither the other dimerizations nor MOMP occurred. In contrast, α9 dimerization occurred downstream and was required for release of large but not small proteins from mitochondria. Moreover, the release of large proteins was facilitated by α9 insertion into the MOM and localization to the pore rim. Therefore, the BH3‐in‐groove dimerization on the MOM nucleates the assembly of an oligomeric Bax pore that is enlarged by α9 dimerization at the rim.
Examining the Impact of Self-Admitted Technical Debt on Software Quality

Technical debt refers to incomplete or temporary workarounds that allow us to speed software development in the short term at the cost of paying a higher price later on. Recently, studies have shown that technical debt can be detected from source code comments, referred to as self-admitted technical debt. Researchers have examined the detection, classification and removal of self-admitted technical debt. However, to date there is no empirical evidence on the impact of self-admitted technical debt on software quality. Therefore, in this paper, we examine the relation between self-admitted technical debt and software quality by investigating whether (i) files with self-admitted technical debt have more defects compared to files without self-admitted technical debt, (ii) whether self-admitted technical debt changes introduce future defects, and (iii) whether self-admitted technical debt-related changes tend to be more difficult. We measured the difficulty of a change using well-known measures proposed in prior work such as the amount of churn, the number of files, the number of modified modules in a change, as well as the entropy of a change. An empirical study using five open source projects, namely Hadoop, Chromium, Cassandra, Spark and Tomcat, showed that: (i) there is no clear trend when it comes to defects and self-admitted technical debt, although the defectiveness of the technical debt files increases after the introduction of technical debt, (ii) self-admitted technical debt changes induce less future defects than none technical debt changes, however, (iii) self-admitted technical debt changes are more difficult to perform, i.e., they are more complex. Our study indicates that although technical debt may have negative effects, its impact is not only related to defects, rather making the system more difficult to change in the future.
Toward Solving the Problem of Problem Solving

Teaching is replete with problem solving. Problem solving as a skill, however, is seldom addressed directly within music teacher education curricula, and research in music education has not examined problem solving systematically. A framework detailing problem-solving component skills would provide a needed foundation. I observed problem solving that occurred during 49 video-recorded lessons taught by six renowned artist teachers. When a solution to a problem came about as the result of both teacher and student involvement, I identified the problem-solving behaviors that were differentiable as performed by teacher or student. Five components, synonymous with problem-solving behaviors observed in other fields, emerged as identifiable behaviors that contributed to problem solution: establish goals, evaluate, conceive and consider options, apply principles, and decide and act. To confirm this model, I coded every observable behavior within 18 full-length lessons. Almost every on-task behavior was describable in terms of the proposed problem-solving framework.
A Critical, Rhetorical Analysis of Man Therapy

To address high numbers of suicides by men in America, the mental health promotion campaign Man Therapy attempts to destigmatize mental health as staunchly opposed to masculinity through overtly humorous constructions of therapy designed for hegemonically masculine men. Through a critical analysis of the campaign, including the interactive website, modeled as the fictitious office of Dr. Rich Mahogany, this project addresses the influences of humor within the confines of hegemonic masculinity, mental health, and suicide. The goal of the analysis is to better understand, through a critical deconstruction, the ways in which Man Therapy successfully combats stigma in men’s mental health, while at the same time, perhaps, reifying hegemonic discourses that have the potential to abject parts of the target audience.
Imaging Brain Function With EEG: Advanced Temporal and Spatial Analysis of Electroencephalographic Signals

Electroencephalography. - Frequency analysis. - Time-frequency analysis. - Wavelets. - Single-trial evoked potentials: Wavelet denoising. - Basic concepts for spatial analysis. - Image sampling based on spatiotemporal spectral analysis. - Allocortical ECoG images formed by learning. - Neocortical ECoG images formed by learning. - ECoG and EEG images in higher cognition. - Synthesis.
Biscuit: A Framework for Near-Data Processing of Big Data Workloads

Data-intensive queries are common in business intelligence, data warehousing and analytics applications. Typically, processing a query involves full inspection of large in-storage data sets by CPUs. An intuitive way to speed up such queries is to reduce the volume of data transferred over the storage network to a host system. This can be achieved by filtering out extraneous data within the storage, motivating a form of near-data processing. This work presents Biscuit, a novel near-data processing framework designed for modern solid-state drives. It allows programmers to write a data-intensive application to run on the host system and the storage system in a distributed, yet seamless manner. In order to offer a high-level programming model, Biscuit builds on the concept of data flow. Data processing tasks communicate through typed and data-ordered ports. Biscuit does not distinguish tasks that run on the host system and the storage system. As the result, Biscuit has desirable traits like generality and expressiveness, while promoting code reuse and naturally exposing concurrency. We implement Biscuit on a host system that runs the Linux OS and a high-performance solid-state drive. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach and implementation with experimental results. When data filtering is done by hardware in the solid-state drive, the average speed-up obtained for the top five queries of TPC-H is over 15x.
Noise in Integrate-and-Fire Neurons: From Stochastic Input to Escape Rates

We analyze the effect of noise in integrate-and-fire neurons driven by time-dependent input and compare the diffusion approximation for the membrane potential to escape noise. It is shown that for time-dependent subthreshold input, diffusive noise can be replaced by escape noise with a hazard function that has a gaussian dependence on the distance between the (noise-free) membrane voltage and threshold. The approximation is improved if we add to the hazard function a probability current proportional to the derivative of the voltage. Stochastic resonance in response to periodic input occurs in both noise models and exhibits similar characteristics.
Surface-modified gatifloxacin nanoparticles with potential for treating central nervous system tuberculosis

A new nanocarrier is developed for the passage of gatifloxacin through the blood–brain barrier to treat central nervous system tuberculosis. Gatifloxacin nanoparticles were prepared by nanoprecipitation using poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) 502 and polysorbate 80 or Labrafil as surface modifiers. The evaluation of in vivo blood–brain barrier transport was carried out in male Wistar rats using rhodamine-loaded PLGA nanoparticles prepared with and without the surface modifiers. At 30 and 60 minutes after administration, nanoparticle biodistribution into the brain (hippocampus and cortex), lungs, and liver was studied. The results obtained from the cerebral cortex and hippocampus showed that functionalization of rhodamine nanoparticles significantly increased their passage into the central nervous system. At 60 minutes, rhodamine concentrations decreased in both the lungs and the liver but were still high in the cerebral cortex. To distinguish the effect between the surfactants, gatifloxacin-loaded PLGA nanoparticles were prepared. The best results corresponded to the formulation prepared with polysorbate 80 with regard to encapsulation efficiency (28.2%), particle size (176.5 nm), and ζ-potential (−20.1 mV), thereby resulting in a promising drug delivery system to treat cerebral tuberculosis.
Assessment of Pharmacists Knowledge, Attitude and Practices Regarding Herbal Drug Information Services

Rational: Research suggests that increased consumption of herbal drugs is raising important public health concerns such as safety issues that may involve adverse effects and herb-drug interactions. The main objective of this study is to investigate the role of Pharmacists in herbal drug information dissemination. Method: We investigated the demographics, knowledge, attitude and practices regarding herbal drug information and regulatory laws among Pharmacists living in the six (6) States that constitute the Niger-Delta region of Nigeria. A total of 300 self-administered questionnaires were distributed to Pharmacists aged 21 years and above. Findings: About half of the respondents (48.72 %) were Hospital based Pharmacists. Knowledge of herbal drugs was 46.33 % while 64 . 0 % showed positive attitude towards its use. Most of the information on herbal drugs were sourced from the internet (23.08 %) while 53.48 % were aware of the laws and regulations controlling herbal drugs in Nigeria. 88.64 % were in favour of the establishment of a National Herbal Drug Research and Development Agency and 55.68 % strongly agreeing to the setting up of a Herbal Drug Information Centre. Conclusion: The availability of herbal drug information services will not only enhance the performance of the Pharmacists, but will also add value to the life of the patients.
Age and gender differences: Understanding mature online users with the online purchase intention model

Abstract This study examines how demographic factors and different antecedents of mature online users relate to their purchase intention. Results obtained from a survey of about 400 respondents in Hong Kong and analyzed with a structural equation model indicate that security has a direct relationship only with purchase intention, whereas attitude is linked with innovativeness, usefulness, ease of purchase and online purchase intention, and attitude performs full mediation between usefulness and online purchase intention. Users aged 41–50 have a higher perceived ease of purchasing than older users (aged 51–70), and males have stronger personal innovativeness and perceived usefulness than females. This research makes a contribution to the understanding of mature users’ online purchase intention; it also provides significant implications of segmentation and marketing strategies and supports the view that online marketers should formulate different strategies to enhance mature users’ online experience and treat various kinds of users differently.
Practice of Epidemiology Methods of Covariate Selection : Directed Acyclic Graphs and the Change-in-Estimate Procedure

Four covariate selection approaches were compared: a directed acyclic graph (DAG) full model and 3 DAG and change-in-estimate combined procedures. Twenty-five scenarios with case-control samples were generated from 10 simulated populations in order to address the performance of these covariate selection procedures in the presence of confounders of various strengths and under DAG misspecification with omission of confounders or inclusion of nonconfounders. Performance was evaluated by standard error, bias, square root of the mean-squared error, and 95% confidence interval coverage. In most scenarios, the DAG full model without further covariate selection performed as well as or better than the other procedures when the DAGs were correctly specified, as well as when confounders were omitted. Model reduction by using change-in-estimate procedures showed potential gains in precision when the DAGs included nonconfounders, but underestimation of regression-based standard error might cause reduction in 95% confidence interval coverage. For modeling binary outcomes in a case-control study, the authors recommend construction of a ‘‘conservative’’ DAG, determination of all potential confounders, and then change-in-estimate procedures to simplify this full model. The authors advocate that, under the conditions investigated, the selection of final model should be based on changes in precision: Adopt the reduced model if its standard error (derived from logistic regression) is substantially smaller; otherwise, the full DAG-based model is appropriate.
Absent Multiple Kernel Learning

Multiple kernel learning (MKL) optimally combines the multiple channels of each sample to improve classification performance. However, existing MKL algorithms cannot effectively handle the situation where some channels are missing, which is common in practical applications. This paper proposes an absent MKL (AMKL) algorithm to address this issue. Different from existing approaches where missing channels are firstly imputed and then a standard MKL algorithm is deployed on the imputed data, our algorithm directly classifies each sample with its observed channels. In specific, we define a margin for each sample in its own relevant space, which corresponds to the observed channels of that sample. The proposed AMKL algorithm then maximizes the minimum of all sample-based margins, and this leads to a difficult optimization problem. We show that this problem can be reformulated as a convex one by applying the representer theorem. This makes it readily be solved via existing convex optimization packages. Extensive experiments are conducted on five MKL benchmark data sets to compare the proposed algorithm with existing imputation-based methods. As observed, our algorithm achieves superior performance and the improvement is more significant with the increasing missing ratio.