Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Objective Assessment of Burn Scar Vascularity, Erythema, Pliability, Thickness, and Planimetry

BACKGROUND There is currently a lack of objective methods to assess scars. Objectives The objectives of this study were to (1) determine the pattern of scar formation up to 24 months after a burn, compare clinical and photographic scar assessment, and determine what percentage of scars became hypertrophic after a major trauma and (2) replace each clinical parameter of a clinical scar scale by objective measurements. METHODS Scars from 62 patients were evaluated from the acute phase up to 24 months after the burn, using photographs and clinical assessment during visits. Photographic planimetry helped estimate the percentage of scars that became hypertrophic. Thereafter, 69 patients had scars evaluated using clinical assessment and several instruments to evaluate pigmentation, erythema, pliability, thickness, and perfusion. The sensitivity and specificity of each instrument were determined regarding their ability to correlate with the parameters of hypertrophic and nonhypertrophic scars. Analysis of variance and Tukey's test were used in statistical analysis, with p < . 05 indicating significance. RESULTS Increased scar hypertrophy occurred between 6 and 12 months after the burn, and less than 30% of scars were hypertrophic at 18 to 24 months. Objective assessment of pliability and erythema, but not pigmentation, correlated significantly with clinical evaluation of hypertrophy. Hypertrophic scars had significantly higher perfusion than nonhypertrophic scars. A new scar rating system is proposed, based on the sensitivity and specificity of each instrument, to correlate with hypertrophic and nonhypertrophic scars. CONCLUSIONS Objective rating systems using reliable instruments can be used to replace subjective scar assessment. Larger multicenter prospective studies should test this new scale in scars due to other mechanisms of injury.
Political Talk Radio and Values: Finding Support for the Two-Value Political Ideology Model

This study found support for the Schwartz (1994) two-value political ideology model in relation to political talk radio (PTR) program choice. People who listened to liberal PTR hosts were found to be associated with “universalism. ” People who listened to conservative PTR hosts were found to be associated with “security. ” Additional values were also found to be associated with listening to liberal and conservative PTR hosts. In addition, discriminant analysis was used to develop a model which could predict PTR listening based on audience values. These findings add to the understanding of the uses and gratifications of listening to political talk radio.
Causality Between High-Performance Work Systems and Organizational Performance

Previous researchers have questioned whether the association between high-performance work systems (HPWS) and organizational performance indicates causality. Strategic human resource management theories, including the resource-based view of the firm and the behavioral perspective, have provided explanations linking human resource management practices to organizational performance. We add arguments based upon general systems theory to suggest a more complex relationship where performance provides feedback on HPWS in the form of information and resources. This feedback generates both the data and the slack resources needed to support an adaptive process of HPWS implementation. We test the causal associations between HPWS and performance using a large longitudinal data set with three time points. Findings showed that past HPWS positively contributes to later productivity as well as the reverse. The reciprocal relationship supports the need to extend strategic human resource management theory by considering productivity as an antecedent as well as an outcome of human resource management practices.
Undetectable basal ovarian stromal blood flow in infertile women is related to low ovarian reserve

To gain insight into the physiological significance of basal ovarian stromal blood flow and to assess whether its detection ability is related to ovarian reserve in infertility patients undergoing in vitro fertilization (IVF) – embryo transfer (ET) treatment. Thirty two consecutive infertile women scheduled for IVF-ET treatment were prospectively evaluated. Basal ovarian hormonal, ovarian volume and stromal blood flow studies were performed on day 3 of a natural cycle before treatment. The performer of the ultrasound studies was blinded to the clinical data. Women in the study were divided into two groups in accordance with estradiol level on the day of administration of human chorionic gonadotropin. Day-3 follicle-stimulating hormone and ovarian volume were significantly poorer in the women with low (group A) as compared with good (group B) ovarian reserve. Likewise, the numbers of follicles ≥14 mm in diameter, oocytes retrieved and embryos achieved were significantly lower in group A than group B. Six clinical pregnancies were obtained in group B, whereas no pregnancy was obtained in group A. Nine out of the 15 (60%) women in group A had undetectable basal stromal blood flow in at least one of the ovaries, whereas only one of the 17 (6%) women in group B had undetectable flow (p < 0.002). Basal stromal peak systolic blood flow velocity, pulsatility index and resistance index mean values did not differ significantly between the two groups. We conclude that undetectable basal ovarian stromal blood flow in at least one ovary is related to low ovarian reserve in infertile women undergoing IVF-ET. It seems that undetectable basal stromal blood flow is not solely a technical issue, but rather linked to the pathophysiology of ovarian aging.
Combining and comparing EEG, peripheral physiology and eye-related measures for the assessment of mental workload

While studies exist that compare different physiological variables with respect to their association with mental workload, it is still largely unclear which variables supply the best information about momentary workload of an individual and what is the benefit of combining them. We investigated workload using the n-back task, controlling for body movements and visual input. We recorded EEG, skin conductance, respiration, ECG, pupil size and eye blinks of 14 subjects. Various variables were extracted from these recordings and used as features in individually tuned classification models. Online classification was simulated by using the first part of the data as training set and the last part of the data for testing the models. The results indicate that EEG performs best, followed by eye related measures and peripheral physiology. Combining variables from different sensors did not significantly improve workload assessment over the best performing sensor alone. Best classification accuracy, a little over 90%, was reached for distinguishing between high and low workload on the basis of 2 min segments of EEG and eye related variables. A similar and not significantly different performance of 86% was reached using only EEG from single electrode location Pz.
The Experiences of Students from Refugee Backgrounds at Universities in Australia: Reflections on the Social, Emotional and Practical Challenges

The vast majority of refugees arriving in Australia are between the ages of 16 and 35 years, and some refugee youth are embarking on university education. While there has been research conducted on refugee youth experiences at secondary school there is little research about their experiences in university education. Most refugee youth have experienced a range of traumatic experiences that compound the difficulties in adjusting to a new country. Many of these youth have experienced disrupted schooling in the past and have to take on household duties that make secondary education difficult in their resettled countries. Currently, it is unknown to what extent these challenges are also experienced by refugee tertiary students and if there are other challenges that are unique to the university environment. This paper reports on the findings of a study undertaken with students from refugee backgrounds studying at university in Victoria and Western Australia, Australia. Focus groups and in-depth interviews were used in the study to capture the voices and perceptions of refugee students. The results reveal that refugee students experience a variety of difficulties and barriers to success that are often not recognized by universities.
Image tag refinement towards low-rank, content-tag prior and error sparsity

The vast user-provided image tags on the popular photo sharing websites may greatly facilitate image retrieval and management. However, these tags are often imprecise and/or incomplete, resulting in unsatisfactory performances in tag related applications. In this work, the tag refinement problem is formulated as a decomposition of the user-provided tag matrix D into a low-rank refined matrix A and a sparse error matrix E, namely D = A + E, targeting the optimality measured by four aspects: 1) low-rank: A is of low-rank owing to the semantic correlations among the tags; 2) content consistency: if two images are visually similar, their tag vectors (i.e., column vectors of A) should also be similar; 3) tag correlation: if two tags co-occur with high frequency in general images, their co-occurrence frequency (described by two row vectors of A) should also be high; and 4) error sparsity: the matrix E is sparse since the tag matrix D is sparse and also humans can provide reasonably accurate tags. All these components finally constitute a constrained yet convex optimization problem, and an efficient convergence provable iterative procedure is proposed for the optimization based on accelerated proximal gradient method. Extensive experiments on two benchmark Flickr datasets, with 25K and 270K images respectively, well demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed tag refinement approach.
Perspectives on Educational Language Policy and its Implementation in African Classrooms: A comparative study of Botswana and Tanzania

In these two African societies the role played in education by English, the ex-colonial language, is challenged by a national lingua franca: Setswana in the case of Botswana, and Kiswahili in the case of Tanzania. In examining debate over educational language policy in the two countries, I take into account political and economic differences, but I also identify parallels in the hierarchical evaluation of languages. In relation to the likely future direction of policy change, and in considering particularly the viability of English as a teaching medium, I argue that descriptions of classroom practice are necessary to inform effective educational language planning and I draw attention to two interactional patterns which are salient in classrooms in both Botswana and Tanzania, namely the use of bilingual codeswitching and reliance on teacher-centred recitation routines. My discussion links these patterns to the communicative needs of teachers and learners, in classrooms where English is a foreign language for the participants, and also to constraints on opportunities for teaching and learning. In my conclusion I argue that more creative and effective teaching and learning will be facilitated in Botswana and Tanzanian classrooms by pedagogies which are explicitly bilingual, and that this has implications for the official separation of languages which is the basis of present policy in both countries.
Some caveats in using the Rey 15-Item Memory Test to detect malingered amnesia.

A procedure devised to detect malingered amnesia has received increasing attention as a useful clinical method to identify exaggerated claims of memory impairment. However, none of the published studies regarding its utility has included subjects faking amnesia or genuine amnesics. In this study, we administered the Rey 15-1tem Memory Test to 76 subjects faking various mental disorders, 148 patients with amnesia, dementia, severe mental illness, or another neuropsychiatric disorder, and 80 normal control subjects. Performance was found to correlate highly with IQ (r = .55) and Mini-Mental State Examination scores (r = .81). Fewer than 15% of subjects faking mental disorders were identified by this procedure, and 27% of patients scored in the "malingering" range. Problems with the uncritical application of cutoffscores to detect malingering with this procedure are discussed.
Differential Regulation of Cytokine and Receptor Transcript Expression in Human Corneal and Limbal Fibroblasts by Epidermal Growth Factor, Transforming Growth Factor-a, Platelet-derived Growth Factor B, and Interleukin-lj8

Purpose. To explore further the significance of three patterns of cytokine dialogues that have been characterized between human corneal and limbal epithelial cells and fibroblasts. Methods. Northern hybridization of the transcript expression of type I cytokine receptors (EGFR, IL-1R, and PDGFR-/? ), type II cytokines (bFGF, LIF, and TGF-/51), and type III cyto-kines (HGF and KGF) by human corneal and limbal fibroblasts was conducted under the modulation of TGF-a, PDGF-BB, IL-IP, and EGF (type I cytokines). The mechanism of upregu-lation by IL-1/? was studied further with respect to proto-oncogene expression and under the treatment of cycloheximide and actinomycin D. Results. Results showed that EGF upregulated LIF and HGF but downregulated KGF and M-CSF. Unlike EGF, TGF-a upregulated additional EGFR, PDGFR-/? , bFGF, and TGF-/? 1, suggesting that although they share the same EGFR, TGF-a, which is produced by epithelium, is more effective in activating fibroblasts than EGF, which is present in tears. The upregulation of PDGF-BB was similar to that of TGF-a, except that it further stimulated IL-8, supporting their synergistic roles in promoting wound healing. Uniquely, IL-1/3 upregulated KGF expression by limbal fibroblasts more than corneal fibroblasts and IL-8 and M-CSF expression, but it downregulated PDGFR-/? In IL-1/9, the upregulation of cytokines and receptors was preceded by the upregulation of c-fos, c-jun, and c-myc, and it was inhibited by actinomycin D. Its upregulation of LIF was superinduced, but the upregulation of bFGF and KGF was inhibited, and that of the rest was not affected by cycloheximide. Conclusions. These findings suggest that epithelial cells under stress or injury (producing IL-1) might preferentially activate limbal epithelial stem cells indirectly by fibroblasts and simultaneously might promote inflammation during wound healing. Signals transmitted from mesenchyme to epithelia or vice versa constitute the basis of reciprocal epithelial-mesenchymal interactions, which are thought to play a vital role in embryonic development, postnatal mor-phogenesis, wound healing, and tumor metastasis of several epithelial tissues. In theory, these epithelial-mesenchymal interactions can be mediated by such signals as extracellular matrix components, cell membrane associated molecules, and soluble factors, i.e., cytokines. These three types of signals are not mutually exclusive because the action of one may be dependent on or mediated by the expression of others. 1 The normal ocular surface is covered by corneal, limbal, and conjunctival epithelia, each of which has a distinct differentiated phenotype; together they maintain ocular surface integrity. The limbal epithe-lium, situated between the corneal and conjunctival epithelium, is …
A Gender‐role Perspective of Coping and Burnout

Cette etude explore la relation entre la depression, le stress professionnel et les reactions positives chez du personnel scolaire des deux sexes. Les resultats indiquent que les hommes presentent un score significativement plus eleve que celui des femmes a l‘echelle de depersonnalisation du “Mas-lach Burnout Inventory”. Alors que les hommes sont plus que les femmes victimes de stress au travail et cela de facon significative, ils ont aussi une plus faible probabilite de faire appel a des techniques de compensation en particulier dans la qualite de Ieur vie quotidienne (les investissements dans les relations amicales et les activites culturelles). D'autres donnees suggerent que les femmes sont plus que les hommes capables d'utiliser des strategies susceptibles de contrecarrer l'effondrement. Chez les hommes, la depression releve a la fois du stress professionnel et des enfants: la presence d'enfants eleve significativement le niveau de depression d'un homme. This study examines the relationship between burnout, work stress, and coping in female and male school personnel. Results indicated that men, compared to women, scored significantly higher on depersonalisation, one of the subscales of the Maslach Burnout Inventory. Men were experiencing significantly greater work stress than women, but were less likely than their female counterparts to employ coping techniques, particularly with regard to their quality of daily life, investment in friends, and cultural activities. Further results suggested that women were better able to use coping strategies to reduce burnout than men. In men, burnout appeared to be a joint function of work stress and children, with the presence of children significantly raising a man's level of burnout.
Phase Light Curves for Extrasolar Jupiters and Saturns

We predict how a remote observer would see the brightness variations of giant planets similar to those in our solar system as they orbit their central stars. Our models are the first to use measured anisotropic scattering properties of solar system giants and the first to consider the effects of eccentric orbits. We model the geometry of Jupiter, Saturn, and Saturn's rings for varying orbital and viewing parameters, using scattering properties for the (forward scattering) planets and (backward scattering) rings as measured by the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft at 0.6-0.7 μm. Images of the planet with and without rings are simulated and used to calculate the disk-averaged luminosity varying along the orbit; that is, a light curve is generated. We find that the different scattering properties of Jupiter and Saturn (without rings) make a substantial difference in the shape of their light curves. Saturn-sized rings increase the apparent luminosity of a planet by a factor of 2-3 for a wide range of geometries, an effect that could be confused with a larger planet size. Rings produce asymmetric light curves that are distinct from the light curve that the planet would have without rings, which could resolve this confusion. If radial velocity data are available for the planet, the effect of the ring on the light curve can be distinguished from effects due to orbital eccentricity. Nonringed planets on eccentric orbits produce light curves with maxima shifted relative to the position of the maximum phase of the planet. Given radial velocity data, the amount of the shift restricts the planet's unknown orbital inclination and therefore its mass. A combination of radial velocity data and a light curve for a nonringed planet on an eccentric orbit can also be used to constrain the surface scattering properties of the planet and thus describe the clouds covering the planet. We summarize our results for the detectability of exoplanets in reflected light in a chart of light-curve amplitudes of nonringed planets for different eccentricities, inclinations, and azimuthal viewing angles of the observer.
No association between GSTT1, GSTM1, and GSTP1 gene polymorphism and risk of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in a population from Romania

Polymorphisms of the glutathione S-transferases (GSTs), which are involved in the cellular oxidative and antioxidant mechanisms of the xenobiotic substances and carcinogens, represents a factor that increases the risk of developing cancer. We aimed to determine in a case-control study (82 patients and 152 controls) a possible association between the GSTT1, GSTM1 and GSTP1 gene polymorphisms and susceptibility to non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) in a Romanian population. GTSs genotypes were obtained using the multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and the polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP). Increased frequencies of the GSTM1 null genotype were observed in the patients (51.22%) with NHL and in controls (56.58%). No associations were observed between GSTP1 Ile/Val + Val/Val and GSTM1 null genotypes and risk of NHL, while an increased risk for GSTT1 null genotype was noticed without statistical significance. We did not find differences for the combined GST gene polymorphisms and risk of NHL between patients and controls. Also, no differences between patients’ demographic and clinical characteristics and GTSs genotypes were detected (p>0.05, for all comparisons). Therefore, our research suggests that GSTM1, GSTT1, and GSTP1 genotypes do not contribute to the risk of developing NHL.
Education of prison inmates: course experience, motivation, and learning strategies as indicators of evaluation

Course experience, motivational beliefs, and self-regulated learning strategies may be considered to be important indicators of education quality. Inmates taking education in prison may also experience particular problems related to the learning environment and to their own learning difficulties. The present study investigated the level of these variables and the relationship between them among 534 inmates under education in Norwegian prisons. The results showed that the prison inmates are generally quite satisfied with the education quality, that they are highly motivated, and use appropriate learning strategies. However, many of them experience that problems such as lack of access to computer equipment and the security routines in prison interfere with their education. A structural equation modelling (SEM) analysis showed that motivational beliefs were mediators between course experience and self-regulated learning strategies. These findings were discussed with respect to improvement of the education quality in prisons and to theoretical issues with relevance beyond the prison context.
Transitions into and out of caregiving: Health and social characteristics of mid-age Australian women

Family caregiving is frequently associated with significant levels of physical, emotional and financial strain. This article examines the health effects of transitions into and out of caregiving in middle age. We conducted a secondary analysis of data from the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women's Health (ALSWH) to examine changes in caregiving status among middle-aged women over a 3-year period, and the correlates and outcomes of these changes. A total of 9,555 middle-aged Australian women were categorised according to caregiving status at two surveys 3 years apart, as Continuing (2.7%); Stopped (4.9%); Started (3.0%); and Never caregivers (89.4%). Analyses at each time point show poorer physical and emotional health, health service use, health behaviours and lower engagement in the paid workforce among all three caregiver groups, indicating that middle-aged women who are, have been, or will become family caregivers are in poorer health than women who do not have these roles. Middle-aged women in poor health tend to be selected into caregiving, probably because they are less engaged with the paid workforce. Poor health and disengagement from the paid workforce continue even when caregiving stops. Health care providers should be particularly conscious of the needs of middle-aged caregivers, who are likely to be in poor health even before they take on the role.