Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Salicylate-induced changes in immediate-early genes in the hippocampal CA1 area

Studies have suggested that salicylate affects neuronal function via interactions with specific membrane channels/receptors. However, the effect of salicylate on activity and synaptic morphology of the hippocampal Cornu Ammonis (CA) 1 area remains to be elucidated. The activation of immediate-early genes (IEGs) was reported to correlate with neuronal activity, in particular activity-regulated cytoskeleton-associated protein and early growth response gene 1. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the expression of these IEGs, as well that of N-methyl D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor subunit 2B in rats following acute and chronic salicylate treatment. Protein and messenger RNA levels of all three genes were increased in rats following chronic administration of salicylate (300 mg/kg for 10 days), returning to baseline levels 14 days post-cessation of treatment. The transient upregulation of gene expression following treatment was accompanied by ultrastructural alterations in hippocampal CA1 area synapses. An increase in synaptic interface curvature was observed as well as an increased number of presynaptic vesicles; in addition, postsynaptic densities thickened and lengthened. In conclusion, the results of the present study indicated that chronic exposure to salicylate may lead to structural alteration of hippocampal CA1 neurons, and it was suggested that this process occurs through induced expression of IEGs via NMDA receptor activation.
Sensory Phenomena in Experimental Nerve Block

In the course of a series of blocks of the ulnar and lateral popliteal nerves of volunteers a study was made of the manner in which the responses of the subject to sensory stimulation become progressively altered and finally obliterated. These changes are described, together with the manner of recovery, and an account is given of various sensations induced by the blocking and the recovery processes. The relevant literature is briefly reviewed and possible factors involved in these phenomena are discussed.
Miniature synaptic transmission and BDNF modulate dendritic spine growth and form in rat CA1 neurones

The refinement and plasticity of neuronal connections require synaptic activity and neurotrophin signalling; their specific contributions and interplay are, however, poorly understood. We show here that brain‐derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) increased spine density in apical dendrites of CA1 pyramidal neurones in organotypic slice cultures prepared from postnatal rat hippocampal slices. This effect was observed also in the absence of action potentials, and even when miniature synaptic transmission was inhibited with botulinum neurotoxin C (BoNT/C). There were, however, marked differences in the morphology of individual spines induced by BDNF across these different levels of spontaneous ongoing synaptic activity. During both normal synaptic transmission, and when action potentials were blocked with TTX, BDNF increased the proportion of stubby, type‐I spines. However, when SNARE‐dependent vesicular release was inhibited with BoNT/C, BDNF increased the proportion of thin, type‐III spines. Our results indicate that BDNF increases spine density irrespective of the levels of synaptic transmission. In addition, miniature synaptic transmission provides sufficient activity for the functional translation of BDNF‐triggered spinogenesis into clearly defined morphological spine types, favouring those spines potentially responsible for coordinated Ca2+ transients thought to mediate synaptic plasticity. We propose that BDNF/TrkB signalling represents a mechanism of expression of both morphological and physiological homeostatic plasticity in the hippocampus, leading to a more efficient synaptic information transfer across widespread levels of synaptic activity.
Friendbook: A Semantic-Based Friend Recommendation System for Social Networks

Existing social networking services recommend friends to users based on their social graphs, which may not be the most appropriate to reflect a user's preferences on friend selection in real life. In this paper, we present Friendbook, a novel semantic-based friend recommendation system for social networks, which recommends friends to users based on their life styles instead of social graphs. By taking advantage of sensor-rich smartphones, Friendbook discovers life styles of users from user-centric sensor data, measures the similarity of life styles between users, and recommends friends to users if their life styles have high similarity. Inspired by text mining, we model a user's daily life as life documents, from which his/her life styles are extracted by using the Latent Dirichlet Allocation algorithm. We further propose a similarity metric to measure the similarity of life styles between users, and calculate users' impact in terms of life styles with a friend-matching graph. Upon receiving a request, Friendbook returns a list of people with highest recommendation scores to the query user. Finally, Friendbook integrates a feedback mechanism to further improve the recommendation accuracy. We have implemented Friendbook on the Android-based smartphones, and evaluated its performance on both small-scale experiments and large-scale simulations. The results show that the recommendations accurately reflect the preferences of users in choosing friends.
Apoptosis and B-cell lymphoma-2 of peripheral blood T lymphocytes and soluble fas in patients with allergic asthma.

STUDY OBJECTIVE s: The dysregulation of apoptosis and the expression of apoptosis-related molecules of allergen-reactive T lymphocytes have been suggested to play a key role in the development and maintenance of the inflammatory reactions in allergic asthma. Glucocorticoids are effective drugs for treating allergic inflammation. In this study, we investigated the effect of dexamethasone (DEX) on the apoptosis and B-cell lymphoma (Bcl)-2 expression of peripheral blood T lymphocytes as well as the soluble form of Fas (sFas) in allergic asthmatic patients. METHODS Peripheral blood lymphocytes from 41 allergic asthmatic patients and 30 age-matched and sex-matched control subjects were treated with 0.1 and 1 micro M DEX. The percentages of apoptosis and expression of the Bcl-2 molecule in T lymphocytes were assessed by flow cytometry. The plasma concentration of sFas was measured using the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. RESULTS DEX (0.1 and 1 micro M) could induce the apoptosis of T lymphocytes from allergic asthmatic patients and control subjects in a dose-dependent manner in vitro. The apoptotic susceptibility of T lymphocytes to DEX and the plasma sFas concentration were significantly higher in allergic asthmatics. The ex vivo expression of Bcl-2 was significantly lower in the T lymphocytes of asthmatic patients than in those of the control subjects. However, DEX did not have any significant effect on the expression of Bcl-2 in vitro. CONCLUSIONS The T lymphocytes of asthmatic patients have higher apoptotic susceptibility to DEX treatment in vitro and a lower expression of the Bcl-2 molecule.
Velocity-Correction Projection Methods for Incompressible Flows

We introduce and study a new class of projection methods---namely, the velocity-correction methods in standard form and in rotational form---for solving the unsteady incompressible Navier--Stokes equations. We show that the rotational form provides improved error estimates in terms of the H1-norm for the velocity and of the L2-norm for the pressure. We also show that the class of fractional-step methods introduced in [S. A. Orsag, M. Israeli, and M. Deville, J. Sci. Comput. , 1 (1986), pp. 75--111] and [K. E. Karniadakis, M. Israeli, and S. A. Orsag, J. Comput. Phys., 97 (1991), pp. 414--443] can be interpreted as the rotational form of our velocity-correction methods. Thus, to the best of our knowledge, our results provide the first rigorous proof of stability and convergence of the methods in those papers. We also emphasize that, contrary to those of the above groups, our formulations are set in the standard L2 setting, and consequently they can be easily implemented by means of any variational approximation techniques, in particular the finite element methods.
Interviewing rape complainants: Police officers' perceptions of interview format and quality of evidence

This study explored police perceptions of video recording rape complainant interviews for investigative and evidential purposes. Officers (N¼136) rated the accuracy of one of three mock transcripts of a rape complainant video interview: A ‘standard interview’ containing inappropriately closed and leading questions; a ‘structured interview’ with open and appropriately closed questions and a ‘cognitive interview’ (CI) containing the CI mnemonics. Officers’ in the standard condition rated the complainant as less accurate and that they were less likely to proceed with charges than in the structured and CI conditions. Officers cited the main advantages of video interviewing as improved forensic quality and interviewing practices, and the ability to use the interview as good evidence. Officers’ rated the ideal characteristics of the complainant’s video interview similarly when used for investigative compared to evidential purposes. These findings suggest video recording complainant interviews may be one way of improving quality resolutions in rape cases.
Bourdieu, Technique And Technology

This paper examines the place of technology in Pierre Bourdieu's social theory, and argues for the relevance of Bourdieu's thought to the study of technology. In moving from an examination of the status of technology in Bourdieu's work through to his broad approach to social practice and his widely cited concept of habitus, it is argued that technologies are crystallizations of socially organized action. As such, they should be considered not as exceptional or special phenomena in a social theory, but rather as very much like other kinds of social practices that recur over time. Ultimately, through the use of Bourdieu's concepts of habitus, field, and capital, we are able to overcome the binary divisions such as technology/society and subject/object that have plagued technology studies.
Comparison of Corneal Biomechanical Characteristics After Surface Ablation Refractive Surgery and Novel Lamellar Refractive Surgery

Purpose: To investigate and compare corneal biomechanical changes in the form of corneal hysteresis (CH) and corneal resistance factor (CRF) after small-incision lenticule extraction (SMILE) and laser-assisted subepithelial keratectomy (LASEK). Methods: In this retrospective observational study, patients who underwent either SMILE (36 eyes, 21 patients) or LASEK (35 eyes, 19 patients) were included. Data were collected preoperatively and at 1 and 3 months postoperatively, which included corneal topography and Ocular Response Analyzer values of CH, CRF, and intraocular pressure (IOP). Differences between both surgical groups and the relationships between variables were evaluated. Results: CH, CRF, Goldmann IOP, and corneal compensated IOP after surgery were significantly lower than the preoperative values (P < 0.05) in both surgical groups. Lenticule thickness (LT) correlated with &Dgr;CRF (&Dgr; = postoperative − preoperative value) in the SMILE group (r = −0.513, P = 0.001), but the ablation depth (AD) and &Dgr;CRF showed no correlation in the LASEK group (r = −0.297, P = 0.083). In the SMILE group, &Dgr;CRF/LT (−0.036 ± 0.01) and &Dgr;CH/LT (−0.021 ± 0.01) values were significantly lower than &Dgr;CRF/AD (−0.048 ± 0.02) and &Dgr;CH/AD (−0.026 ± 0.02) values in the LASEK group (P < 0.05). Conclusions: Both SMILE and LASEK alter corneal biomechanical strength. However, the changes induced by SMILE are more predictable than those induced by LASEK. In terms of per unit tissue removed, SMILE seems to have less effect on corneal biomechanics than LASEK, which may be due to preservation of the stiffer anterior stroma.
Epidemiology of Pregnancy-Associated ICU Utilization in Texas: 2001 - 2010

Background ICU admission is uncommon among obstetric patients. Nevertheless, the epidemiology of ICU utilization is considered to be a useful proxy for study of severe maternal morbidity and near-miss events. However, there is paucity of population-level studies in obstetric patients in the United States. Methods The Texas Inpatient Public Use Data File and state-based reports were used to identify pregnancy-associated hospitalizations and those involving admission to ICU (n = 158,410) for the years 2001 - 2010. The clinical characteristics, outcomes, and the overall incidence and temporal trends of ICU admission were examined and stratified analyses of pregnancy outcomes were performed in specific categories of pregnancy-associated hospitalizations. In addition, ICU utilization among hospitalizations with maternal complications and organ dysfunction was evaluated. Results Chronic comorbidities (9.7%) and presence of organ dysfunction (6.2%) were uncommon among ICU admissions, with 26.5% having high severity of illness. The incidence of ICU admission was 39.0 per 1,000 pregnancy-associated hospitalizations-years. Marked variability was found in ICU admission both across pregnancy outcomes (ranging from 0.6 per 1,000 abortions-years to 85.9 per 1,000 stillbirths-years) and categories of pregnancy-associated hospitalizations (ranging from 32.1 per 1,000 delivery hospitalizations-years to 144.8 per 1,000 postpartum hospitalizations-years). The incidence of ICU admission rose 68% among pregnancy-associated hospitalizations and for all examined subgroups, except abortion. Preeclampsia/eclampsia (23.3%) and obstetric hemorrhage (6.9%) were the most common maternal complications among ICU admissions. Four hundred fourteen women (0.3%) died, while 97.6% were discharged home. Conclusions This study documents the highest incidence of ICU utilization in obstetric patients in the US to date. The findings suggest low threshold for obstetric ICU admissions in the state and do not support comparative use of ICU utilization as surrogate measure for populations’ burden of severe maternal morbidity and near-miss events. Nevertheless, the demonstrated tremendous heterogeneity in ICU utilization across examined subgroups identifies new high-risk groups of obstetric patients that would benefit from heightened clinician vigilance and timely ICU triage and care. Further studies are needed to inform reduction in avoidable variability in ICU utilization to both enhance maternal, fetal, and neonatal outcomes and to improve resource allocation.
Inclusive education in Spain: how do skills, resources, and supports affect regular education teachers’ perceptions of inclusion?

This study examined regular education teachers’ perceptions of inclusion in elementary and secondary schools in Spain and how these perceptions may differ depending on teaching experience, skills, and the availability of resources and supports. Stratified random sampling procedures were used to draw a representative sample of 336 general education teachers (68 kindergarten, 133 elementary, and 135 secondary teachers) from the province of Alicante. The results indicated the acceptance of the principles of inclusion, although teacher skills, time, material resources, and personal supports for inclusion were deemed insufficient. Kindergarten and elementary teachers showed more positive perceptions of inclusion than secondary education teachers, and so did teachers with more personal supports and material resources than those with less supports and resources. The results are discussed in terms of its implications for practice in order to promote more inclusive classrooms in Spain.
Phonetic equivalence in the acquisition of /l/ by Spanish–English bilingual children*

Spanish [l] is characterized as clear, and is associated with a high second formant (F2) frequency and a large difference between F2 and the first formant (F1) frequencies. In contrast, English [l] is darker (with a lower F2 and a relatively smaller F2–F1 difference) and also exhibits contextual variation due to an allophonic velarization rule that further darkens [l] postvocalically. We aimed to determine if Spanish–English bilingual children evidence these differences productively, in a manner comparable to that of monolinguals, or if they produce an [l] that is intermediate to that of Spanish and English monolinguals. We acoustically analyzed [l] productions of seven Spanish–English bilingual, seven Spanish monolingual, and seven English monolingual children. Results showed that the bilinguals had similar prevocalic F2 and F2–F1 values for [l] in both languages, comparable to those of Spanish monolinguals, but significantly higher than those of English monolinguals. The bilinguals also produced English (but not Spanish) [l] with significantly lower postvocalic F2 and F2–F1 values. We assume that the bilinguals have a merged phonetic category for prevocalic [l] but not postvocalic [l], and further, that they maintain separate grammars, allowing the allophonic velarization rule to apply in English but not Spanish.
How does mood operate in an impression formation task? An information integration approach.

The present study is concerned with the processes mediating the impact of mood on impression formation. Four assumptions are distinguished: (1) mood as a prime for the generation and/or association of additional information, (2) mood as a cue for the change of meaning of incoming stimuli, (3) mood as a direct source of information, and (4) mood as a cue for selective weighing of incoming stimuli, These mediating processes assumptions are specified in terms of information integration theory A pattern of hypotheses is derived which allows to examine what mechanisms underlie the impact of mood in an impression formation task. The results confirm the mood congruency effect and show that mood congruent judgments are mediated neither by change of meaning nor by selective weighing of incoming information. Also the explanation by additionally activated information primed by mood was not supported, However, the findings indicate that mood serves as a direct source of information to be incorporated into the judgment together with the presented information: (1) parameter estimations show that the global impression depenh on the person's current mood, whereas the scale values and the weights of the traits presented are independent of the mood state, (2) judgments of single traits are more influenced by mood than judgments of pairs, (3) medium traits are more affected than extreme traits and (4) the negativity effect is more pronounced in a good mood than in a bad mood. The final judgment is an averaging process of a mood-dependent global impression and of mood-independent stimulus information. Implications of these findings for current mood and social judgment models are discussed.
Quality Assurance in an International Higher Education Area: A summary of a case-study approach and comparative analysis

Transparency and comparability of higher education institutions especially in terms of their academic programmes and research activities are important issues for today’s working environment. This paper is an overview of a recently completed PhD thesis which outlines examples of selected Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries (Austria, Germany, Finland, the UK, the USA and Canada) with their different approaches to implementing a quality assurance system. These case studies are compared through peer-reviewed country reports and interviews with national and international experts. Based on this comparative study, useful recommendations are provided to create a functioning quality assurance system within an international higher education area.
(Morpho)syntactic comprehension in agrammatic aphasia: Evidence from Greek

Background: A number of hypotheses have been formulated to account for comprehension data in agrammatic aphasia. They explain deficits in comprehending specific structures, such as semantically reversible non-canonical sentences, for example, Trace Deletion Hypothesis (TDH, Grodzinsky, 1986, 1990, 1995), or functional categories, for example, Tree Pruning Hypothesis (TPH, e.g., Friedmann, 2006); Tense Underspecification Hypothesis (TUH, Wenzlaff & Clahsen, 2004, 2005); Interpretable Features’ Impairment Hypothesis (IFIH; e.g., Varlokosta et al., 2006). Several studies, however, report evidence contradicting these theories (e.g., Caramazza, Capasso, Capitani, & Miceli, 2005; Dickey, Milman, & Thompson, 2008) and propose new accounts to explain the comprehension deficits in agrammatic aphasia, for example, Distributed Morphology Account (DMA, Dickey et al., 2008). Aims: Against the background above, this study investigates the ability of three Greek-speaking agrammatic individuals to comprehend a wide range of structures and functional categories: semantically reversible (canonical) active and (non-canonical) passive sentences, Complementizer Phrase, subject-verb Agreement, Tense, and Aspect. Methods & Procedures: We administered: (a) two sentence-picture matching tasks to test comprehension of reversible active and passive sentences, and Tense; (b) a sentence grammaticality judgement task to test judgement of Tense, Aspect, and subject-verb Agreement; and (c) a picture-pointing task to test comprehension of Complementizer Phrase. Outcomes & Results: (a) Two of the three agrammatic participants performed at chance on reversible passive sentences and above chance on active sentences. The third participant performed equally high on the two sentence types. Two participants performed at chance on Tense comprehension and one above chance. (b) The three participants were selectively or across-the-board impaired in judgement of Agreement, Tense, and Aspect. One of the two selectively affected participants had chance performance on Aspect and above chance performance on Agreement and Tense. The other one performed at chance on Aspect and Tense, and above chance on Agreement. The third participant's performance was equally poor on all three categories. (c) All three agrammatic participants performed above chance on the comprehension of Complementizer Phrase. Conclusions: In comprehension/judgement, canonical and non-canonical sentences do not dissociate in all agrammatic speakers, while functional categories associated with the verb morphology may be compromised in the face of relatively well-preserved categories that are located higher in the syntactic hierarchy. All three agrammatic participants support the DMA, and two of them support the TDH. Instead, none of them provided support to the TPH, TUH, and IFIH.
FGF-2 Angiogenesis in Bone Regeneration Within Critical-Sized Bone Defects in Rat Calvaria

Objective:This study examined the effect of basic fibroblast growth factor (FGF)-2 with an absorbable collagen sponge on angiogenesis and bone regeneration in rat calvarial critical-sized bone defects using microcomputed tomography. Methods:Forty 7-week-old male Fischer rats were used. The symmetrical critical-sized calvarial bone defects (5 mm diameter) were created. An absorbable collagen sponge with or without FGF-2 (0.1% or 0.3%) was implanted into each bone defect. Results:Blood vessel and bone volumes were significantly higher in the 0.3% FGF-2 group compared with the control and 0.1% FGF-2 groups on day 28. Significantly more osteoblast- and osteoclast-like cells were seen in the 0.3% FGF-2 group. Conclusions:Thus, FGF-2 increased blood vessel and bone formation in rat calvarial critical-sized bone defects.