Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A qualitative validation study of Korean American college student development

The purpose of this study was to validate the model of Asian American psychosocial development proposed by Kodama, McEwen, Liang and Lee (2002) as it applies to 1.5 and second-generation Korean American college students, while also exploring the role of religion in psychosocial development for these students. This study utilized a qualitative methodology using a narrative approach. Six students from one private, medium-sized institution in the southeastern United States participated in this study. In particular, the researcher investigated four aspects of the participants’ psychosocial development: the concept of students’ experiences being balanced between two cultures; the concept of their identities being central to their identities; their emotional expression and control; and their orientation as related to interdependence and autonomy. Interview data generally supported the development model. Participants reported their identities were balanced between Korean and White American culture, with different locations for different aspects of their identities. Participants stated feeling separate from Korean international students, White American students and thirdand fourth-generation Korean American students, while also describing differences between themselves and their parents, who they admire greatly. Participants noted their identities were strongly connected to their purpose at this time, while male participants showed more emotional expression than female participants when recounting their stories. At this stage of their lives, participants show strong signs of interdependence with their families, although they reported some establishment of autonomy from their culture of origin. Basketball played a significant role in the identity development of several male participants, while none of the participants reported that religion played a significant role in their lives. Results of this study have importance for faculty and staff members. Significant findings to inform practice include: Korean Americans appear to be open to discussing their experiences with elders; relationships with parents are multi-faceted and highly significant; their relationships with other peer groups outside of their 1.5/second-generation cohort is complex and can be a source of conflict; and sports appear to play a significant role in Korean American male identity development. INDEX WORDS: Asian American college students, Korean American college students, 1.5 generation, second generation, student development theory, psychosocial development theory, religion, qualitative, narrative inquiry A QUALITATIVE VALIDATION STUDY OF KOREAN AMERICAN COLLEGE STUDENT DEVELOPMENT
Human and Monkey Striatal Interneurons Are Derived from the Medial Ganglionic Eminence But Not from the Adult Subventricular Zone

In adult rodent and monkey brains, newly born neurons in the subventricular zone (SVZ) in the wall of the lateral ventricle migrate into the olfactory bulb (OB) via the rostral migratory stream (RMS). A recent study reported that interneurons are constantly generating in the adult human striatum from the SVZ. In contrast, by taking advantage of the continuous expression of Sp8 from the neuroblast stage through differentiation into mature interneurons, we found that the adult human SVZ does not generate new interneurons for the striatum. In the adult human SVZ and RMS, very few neuroblasts were observed, and most of them expressed the transcription factor Sp8. Neuroblasts in the adult rhesus monkey SVZ–RMS–OB pathway also expressed Sp8. In addition, we observed that Sp8 was expressed by most adult human and monkey OB interneurons. However, very few Sp8+ cells were in the adult human striatum. This suggests that neuroblasts in the adult human SVZ and RMS are likely destined for the OB, but not for the striatum. BrdU-labeling results also revealed few if any newly born neurons in the adult rhesus monkey striatum. Finally, on the basis of transcription factor expression, we provide strong evidence that the vast majority of interneurons in the human and monkey striatum are generated from the medial ganglionic eminence during embryonic developmental stages, as they are in rodents. We conclude that, although a small number of neuroblasts exist in the adult human SVZ, they do not migrate into the striatum and become mature striatal interneurons.
Uses of Community Treatment Orders in New Zealand: Early Findings

Objective: To assess the uses of Community Treatment Orders (CommTOs) in New Zealand. Method: A retrospective study of patients' records held by the regional administrator of mental health legislation and a survey of psychiatrists attending a conference in Dunedin. Results: Males under Community Treatment Orders (CommTOs) outnumbered females 6:4; a high proportion were considered to have a major psychotic disorder; and one fifth remained under a CommTO for more than a year without inpatient care. Among the psychiatrists, there was a high level of agreement that, when used appropriately, the benefits of CommTOs outweigh their coercive impact on the patients; the most strongly supported indicator for use was the promotion of compliance with medication. The rate of use of CommTOs in Otago is remarkably similar to the rate in Victoria, Australia. Conclusions: Records suggest that a significant proportion of patients under CommTOs are not soon readmitted; and many clinicians in New Zealand consider CommTOs to be a useful strategy for managing the community care of long-term patients with schizophrenia and major affective disorders.
- 1-Prefrontal neuronal activity encodes spatial target representations sequentially updated following nonspatial target-shift cues

We examined prefrontal neuronal activity while monkeys performed a sequential target-shift task, in which, after a positional cue indicated the initial saccade target among eight peripheral positions, the monkeys were required to internally shift the target by one position on every flash of a target-shift cue. The target-shift cue appeared in the center zero to three times within a single trial, and was always the same in shape, size and color. We found selective neuronal activity related to the target position: when the target-shift cue implied the target shift to particular peripheral positions, neurons exhibited early-dominant and late-dominant activity during the following delay period. The early-dominant target-selective activity emerged early in the delay just after the presentation of the target-shift cue, while the late-dominant activity gradually built up toward the end of the delay. Since the target-shift cue was not related to any specific target location, the early-dominant target-selective activity could not be a mere visual response to the target-shift cue. We suggest that the early-dominant activity reflects the transitory representation for the saccade target that was triggered by the nonspatial target-shift cue, whereas the late-dominant activity reflects the target representation in the spatial working memory or the preparatory set for the possible impending saccade, being repeatedly updated during sequential target shifts.
Food choices, perceptions of healthiness, and eating motives of self-identified followers of a low-carbohydrate diet

Background Low-carbohydrate (LC) diets have gained substantial media coverage in many Western countries. Little is, however, known about the characteristics of their followers. Objective The article analyses how those who report following an LC diet differ from the rest of the population in their background, food choices, weight reduction status, as well as food-related perceptions and motives. The data are a part of the Health Behaviour and Health among the Finnish Adult Population survey collected in spring 2012 (n=2,601), covering 15- to 64-year-old Finns. Results Seven per cent of the respondents identified themselves as followers of the LC diet. Gender and education were not associated with following an LC diet. The youngest respondents were the least likely to follow such a diet. The LC diet group preferred butter but also vegetables more commonly than the other respondents and were less likely to use vegetable bread spreads. The followers of the LC diet and the other respondents agreed about the healthiness of whole grain, vegetable oils, vegetables, and fruits and berries, and of the harmfulness of white wheat. Compared to the other respondents, the LC diet group was less likely to regard eating vegetable/low-fat products as important, more likely to regard eating healthy carbohydrates, and the health and weight-managing aspects of foods, as important and placed less value on sociability and pleasures connected to food. The results showed varying food choices among the followers of the LC diet: some even reported that they were not avoiding carbohydrates, sugars, and white wheat in their diet. Conclusions Planners of nutrition policies should follow-up on new diets as they emerge and explore the food choices and motives of their followers and how these diets affect the food choices of the whole population.
Disturbed Expression of Splicing Factors in Renal Cancer Affects Alternative Splicing of Apoptosis Regulators, Oncogenes, and Tumor Suppressors

Background Clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) is the most common type of renal cancer. One of the processes disturbed in this cancer type is alternative splicing, although phenomena underlying these disturbances remain unknown. Alternative splicing consists of selective removal of introns and joining of residual exons of the primary transcript, to produce mRNA molecules of different sequence. Splicing aberrations may lead to tumoral transformation due to synthesis of impaired splice variants with oncogenic potential. In this paper we hypothesized that disturbed alternative splicing in ccRCC may result from improper expression of splicing factors, mediators of splicing reactions. Methodology/Principal Findings Using real-time PCR and Western-blot analysis we analyzed expression of seven splicing factors belonging to SR proteins family (SF2/ASF, SC35, SRp20, SRp75, SRp40, SRp55 and 9G8), and one non-SR factor, hnRNP A1 (heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein A1) in 38 pairs of tumor-control ccRCC samples. Moreover, we analyzed splicing patterns of five genes involved in carcinogenesis and partially regulated by analyzed splicing factors: RON, CEACAM1, Rac1, Caspase-9, and GLI1. Conclusions/Significance We found that the mRNA expression of splicing factors was disturbed in tumors when compared to paired controls, similarly as levels of SF2/ASF and hnRNP A1 proteins. The correlation coefficients between expression levels of specific splicing factors were increased in tumor samples. Moreover, alternative splicing of five analyzed genes was also disturbed in ccRCC samples and splicing pattern of two of them, Caspase-9 and CEACAM1 correlated with expression of SF2/ASF in tumors. We conclude that disturbed expression of splicing factors in ccRCC may possibly lead to impaired alternative splicing of genes regulating tumor growth and this way contribute to the process of carcinogenesis.
Control of a hybrid asymmetric multilevel inverter for competitive medium-voltage industrial drives

In symmetric multilevel inverters, there is a tradeoff between the output quality and the reliability and efficiency of the converter. New asymmetric and hybrid solutions, using different voltages and devices in various parts of the inverter, promise significant improvements for medium-voltage industrial drives. This paper investigates such a hybrid asymmetric nine-level inverter. It consists of a three-phase three-level integrated gate-commutated thyristor inverter (main inverter), with a two-level insulated-gate bipolar transistor H-bridge (subinverter) in series with each phase. To keep the power part simple and the efficiency high, the subinverters have no feeding from the net and can only supply reactive power. This is a very interesting solution in terms of power quality, efficiency, reliability, and cost. But the nonsupplied intermediate-circuit capacitors form an unstable system. This paper proposes a control method to stabilize their voltages. Power balancing is guaranteed by varying the common-mode voltage, using an online nonlinear model-predictive controller. The controller predicts the system evolution as a function of the control inputs. A cost function of system and control quantities is iteratively minimized in real time, to find the optimal control to apply to the system. Simulations and measurements demonstrate stable behavior in steady state and during transients. Precharging of the nonsupplied capacitors is also an issue to consider. This paper proposes a startup method that charges them in parallel with the supplied ones, without any additional equipment. Measurements show its successful application in the proposed drive system.
Systematic mapping study on software engineering for sustainability (SE4S)

Background/Context: The objective of achieving higher sustainability in our lifestyles by information and communication technology has lead to a plethora of research activities in related fields. Consequently, Software Engineering for Sustainability (SE4S) has developed as an active area of research. Objective/Aim: Though SE4S gained much attention over the past few years and has resulted in a number of contributions, there is only one rigorous survey of the field. We follow up on this systematic mapping study from 2012 with a more in-depth overview of the status of research, as most work has been conducted in the last 4 years. Method: The applied method is a systematic mapping study through which we investigate which contributions were made, which knowledge areas are most explored, and which research type facets have been used, to distill a common understanding of the state-of-the-art in SE4S. Results: We contribute an overview of current research topics and trends, and their distribution according to the research type facet and the application domains. Furthermore, we aggregate the topics into clusters and list proposed and used methods, frameworks, and tools. Conclusion: The research map shows that impact currently is limited to few knowledge areas and there is need for a future roadmap to fill the gaps.
TCP-nets-Introducing Variable Importance Tradeoffs into CP-nets

The ability to make decisions and to assess potential courses of action is a corner-stone of many AI applications. Typically, this ability requires explicit information about the decision-maker’s preferences. In many applications, preference elicitation is a serious bottleneck. The user either does not have the time, the knowledge, or the expert support required to specify complex multi-attribute utility functions. In such cases, a method that is based on intuitive, yet expressive, preference statements is required. In this paper we suggest the use of TCP-nets, an enhancement of CP-nets, as a tool for representing, and reasoning about qualitative preference statements. We present and motivate this framework, define its semantics, and study various computational aspects of reasoning with TCP-nets. Finally, we show how to perform constrained optimization efficiently given a TCP-net.
Effects of Oral L-Carnitine Supplementation on Lipid Profile, Anemia, and Quality of Life in Chronic Renal Disease Patients under Hemodialysis: A Randomized, Double-Blinded, Placebo-Controlled Trial

In patients on maintenance hemodialysis several factors reduce the body stored carnitine which could lead to dyslipidemia, anemia, and general health in these patients. We evaluated the effect of oral L-carnitine supplementation on lipid profiles, anemia, and quality of life (QOL) in hemodialysis patients. In a randomized, double-blinded, placebo-controlled trial, end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients on hemodialysis received either L-carnitine 1 g/d (n = 24) or placebo (27 patients) for 16 weeks. At the end of the study, there was a significant decrease in triglyceride (−31.1 ± 38.7 mg/dL, P = 0.001) and a significant increase in HDL (3.7 ± 2.8 mg/dL, P < 0.001) levels in the carnitine group. Decrease in total cholesterol (−6.6 ± 16.0 mg/dL, P = 0.075) and increase in hemoglobin (0.7 ± 1.7 g/dL, P = 0.081) concentrations in the carnitine group were not significant. There was no statistically significant changes in LDL in any group (P > 0.05). Erythropoietin dose was significantly decreased in both the carnitine (−4750 ± 5772 mg, P = 0.001) and the placebo group (−2000 ± 4296 mg, P < 0.05). No improvement was observed in QOL scores of two groups. In ESRD patients under maintenance hemodialysis, oral L-carnitine supplementation may reduce triglyceride and cholesterol and increase HDL and hemoglobin and subsequently reduce needed erythropoietin dose without effect on QOL.
Distance properties of expander codes

The minimum distance of some families of expander codes is studied, as well as some related families of codes defined on bipartite graphs. The weight spectrum and the minimum distance of a random ensemble of such codes are computed and it is shown that it sometimes meets the Gilbert-Varshamov (GV) bound. A lower bound on the minimum distances of constructive families of expander codes is derived. The relative minimum distance of the expander code is shown to exceed the product bound, i.e., the quantity /spl delta//sub 0//spl delta//sub 1/ where /spl delta//sub 0/ and /spl delta//sub 1/ are the minimum relative distances of the constituent codes. As a consequence of this, a polynomially constructible family of expander codes is obtained whose relative distance exceeds the Zyablov bound on the distance of serial concatenations.
Hand Rehabilitation Following Stroke: A Pilot Study of Assisted Finger Extension Training in a Virtual Environment

Abstract Background and Purpose: The purpose of this pilot study was to investigate the impact of assisted motor training in a virtual environment on hand function in stroke survivors. Participants: Fifteen volunteer stroke survivors (32–88 years old) with chronic upper extremity hemiparesis (1–38 years post incident) took part. Method: Participants had 6 weeks of training in reach-to-grasp of virtual and actual objects. They were randomized to one of three groups: assistance of digit extension provided by a novel cable orthosis, assistance provided by a novel pneumatic orthosis, or no assistance provided. Hand performance was evaluated at baseline, immediately following training, and 1 month after completion of training. Clinical assessments included the Wolf Motor Function Test (WMFT), Box and Blocks Test (BB), Upper Extremity Fugl-Meyer Test (FM), and Rancho Los Amigos Functional Test of the Hemiparetic Upper Extremity (RLA). Biomechanical assessments included grip strength, extension range of motion and velocity, spasticity, and isometric strength. Results: Participants demonstrated a significant decrease in time to perform functional tasks for the WMFT (p = .02), an increase in the number of blocks successfully grasped and released during the BB (p = .09), and an increase for the FM score (p = .08). There were no statistically significant changes in time to complete tasks on the RLA or any of the biomechanical measures. Assistance of extension did not have a significant effect. Discussion and Conclusion: After the training period, participants in all 3 groups demonstrated a decrease in time to perform some of the functional tasks. Although the overall gains were slight, the general acceptance of the novel rehabilitation tools by a population with substantial impairment suggests that a larger randomized controlled trial, potentially in a subacute population, may be warranted.
Sam-Pointed Domain Containing Ets Transcription Factor in Luminal Breast Cancer Pathogenesis

We previously described frequent overexpression of Sam-pointed domain containing Ets transcription factor (SPDEF), also known as PDEF, in human breast cancer, and suggested a role for this transcription factor in breast tumor progression. To seek evidence in support of this hypothesis, the MCF-12A breast epithelial cell line was transfected with an SPDEF expression plasmid or with control vector plasmid and the transfected cells tested for their tumorigenic growth in vivo. The data showed that SPDEF expression in MCF-12A cells induced accelerated tumor growth in severe combined immune deficient mice compared with vector-transfected MCF-12A cells. Furthermore, Gene Expression Omnibus and Oncomine databases were mined to determine any correlation between SPDEF expression levels and clinical outcome. High SPDEF expression correlated with poor overall survival of patients with estrogen receptor+ breast cancer, in three independent data sets. In contrast, little correlation was observed between SPDEF expression and cancer relapse or remote metastases. SPDEF expression was further found to be restricted to tumors arising in the luminal epithelial lineage including estrogen receptor+ luminal subtype breast tumors, Her2/neu-positive tumors, and apocrine carcinomas. In contrast, little SPDEF expression was found in the basal subtype of breast tumors. Based on these results, we hypothesize that SPDEF has a function in the specification of the progenitor cells of the luminal epithelial lineage that become targets of oncogenesis in luminal breast cancer. (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2009;18(6):1899–903)
Intervening TNF-α via PPARγ with Gegenqinlian Decoction in Experimental Nonalcoholic Fatty Liver Disease

This paper is to explore the effect and mechanism of Gegenqinlian decoction on experimental nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) in vivo and in vitro. The final aim is to make clear whether Gegenqinlian decoction would impact NAFLD through improving PPARγ to suppress inflammation and regulate lipid. The data in this research suggested that Gegenqinlian decoction is a potent way to manage NAFLD through improving PPARγ to regulate lipid and suppress inflammation.
A review of platelet secretion assays for the diagnosis of inherited platelet secretion disorders

Summary Measurement of platelet granule release to detect inherited platelet secretion disorders (IPSDs) is essential for the evaluation of patients with abnormal bleeding and is necessary to distinguish which granule sub-types are affected and whether there is abnormal granule bio-synthesis or secretion. The radioactive serotonin incorporation and release assay, described before 1970, is still considered the “gold standard” test to assess platelet δ-granule release, although is unsuitable for clinical diagnostic laboratories. Luciferin-based assays, such as lumiaggregometry, are the most widely performed alternatives, although these methods do not distinguish defects in δ-granule biosyn-thesis from defects in secretion. Platelet α-granule release is commonly evaluated using flow cytometry by measuring surface exposure of P-selectin after platelet activation. However, this assay has poor sensitivity for some α-granule disorders. Only few studies have been published with more recently developed assays and no critical reviews on these methods are available. In this review, we describe the rationale for developing robust and accurate laboratory tests of platelet granule release and describe the characteristics of the currently available tests. We identify an unmet need for further systematic evaluation of new assays and for standardisation of methodologies for clinical diagnostic laboratories.