Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Measuring compliance with drug regimens after renal transplantation: comparison of self-report and clinician rating with electronic monitoring

Nonadherence to immunosuppressants in renal transplant recipients is a major factor affecting graft survival, but it is difficult to detect accurately in clinical practice. Adherence was measured in 153 adult renal transplant recipients using self-report questionnaires and interview, clinician rating, and cyclosporine levels. The sensitivity and specificity of these measures were determined by comparison with electronic monitoring in a randomly selected subsample of 58 subjects. Measures of adherence in current clinical use do not perform well when tested against electronic monitoring. Self-report at a confidential interview was the best measure of adherence for the detection of both missed doses and erratic timing of medication. However, the use of a confidential interview is not directly applicable to a clinical setting. Further research on how best to facilitate disclosure in clinical settings may be the best way to develop adherence measures for use in routine practice.
The Politics of Consumption/The Consumption of Politics

As consumer culture pervades the social life of citizens in America and Europe, it becomes increasingly important to clarify the relationship between consumption and citizenship. With this in mind, faculty and students at the University of Wisconsin organized a conference titled “The Politics of Consumption/The Consumption of Politics. ” Held in October 2006, the meeting provided a forum for leading scholars to discuss the interplay of markets, media, politics, and the citizen-consumer. Revised and expanded versions of the papers they presented are collected in this volume with the goal of advancing this emerging area of inquiry. It is our hope that the essays and research papers we have collected here help define the next wave of theory building and research inquiry on the intersections of consumer culture, civic culture, and mass culture.
Fast parking control of mobile robots: a motion planning approach with experimental validation

This paper presents a solution to the general parking problem of nonholonomic mobile robots based on motion planning and tracking controller design. A new global tracking controller is first proposed to achieve global uniformly asymptotic stability and local exponential convergence. The parking problem is then transformed into a tracking one by adding a redesigned virtual trajectory to the original trajectory, thus guaranteeing practical stability with exponential convergence. Further improvement in parking performance is obtained through linearization and pole-placement methods. One feature of our approach is that fast convergence in parking and tracking can be treated at the same time without switching between two controllers. Moreover, a tuning function is used to enhance parking performance. With the proposed framework, various tracking controllers given in the literature can be adopted to handle parking problems. The effectiveness of the proposed methods is verified by several interesting experiments including parallel parking and back-into-garage parking.
Importance of Life Skills Training for Corporate Sector

Human resources with positive attitudes towards life and work and germane skills for advanced knowledge economy that are publicly responsible and accountable is becoming important in today's high momentum humanity. It is important that we mobilize skills such as personal management and people management skills which are necessary for adequate functioning which help us to steer our life towards more positive behavior and wellbeing. Specifically, life skills are termed as psycho social skills which empower individuals to flourish and prosper in competitive world and adapt to milieus in which we live in certain aspects such as behavioral, cognitive, social and intrapersonal. Corporate Life Skills training assists both individuals and small teams in your workplace to addressing issues affecting their work performance. This paper is conceptual papers which discuss the importance of Life skills training, which is an emerging concept in the corporate sector.
School Programs and Teacher Practices of Parent Involvement in Inner-City Elementary and Middle Schools

This study uses data from 171 teachers in 8 inner-city elementary and middle schools to examine the connections between school programs of parent involvement, teachers' attitudes, and the practices that teachers use to involve parents of their own students. Patterns are examined at 2 levels of schooling (elementary and middle), in different academic subjects, under various classroom organizations (self-contained, semi-departmentalized, departmentalized), and under different levels of shared support for parent involvement by the teachers and significant other groups. Each of these variables has important implications for the types and strengths of school programs and teachers' practices of parent involvement. The results add to the validation of Epstein's typology of 5 types of school and family connections. The data used in this study were collected as the first step in a 3-year action research process in which the sampled schools are engaged. The process is outlined in terms that any school can follow to improve programs and practices of parent involvement.
A Behaviorally Oriented Study Skills Program.

A study skills program should have low time requirements, raise the student’s GPA, and create durable behaviors. Twenty-four male sophomore cadets at the USAF Academy were placed in one of two groups by their rank-order place on a list of academically deficient students. The experimental group and the control group both received normal directive counseling. The experimental group received a behaviorally oriented study skills program requiring two hours of supervisory time and minimal behavior recording and showed a mean increase of . 54 GPA points; the control group showed an increase of . 02 at the end of the semester. The results indicate this program satisfied the basic requirement of study skills training.
Acoustic Cue Weighting by Adults with Cochlear Implants: A Mismatch Negativity Study

Objectives: Formant rise time (FRT) and amplitude rise time (ART) are acoustic cues that inform phonetic identity. FRT represents the rate of transition of the formant(s) to a steady state, while ART represents the rate at which the sound reaches its peak amplitude. Normal-hearing (NH) native English speakers weight FRT more than ART during the perceptual labeling of the /ba/–/wa/ contrast. This weighting strategy is reflected neurophysiologically in the magnitude of the mismatch negativity (MMN)—MMN is larger during the FRT than the ART distinction. The present study examined the neurophysiological basis of acoustic cue weighting in adult cochlear implant (CI) listeners using the MMN design. It was hypothesized that individuals with CIs who weight ART more in behavioral labeling (ART users) would show larger MMNs during the ART than the FRT contrast, and the opposite would be seen for FRT users. Design: Electroencephalography was recorded while 20 adults with CIs listened passively to combinations of 3 synthetic speech stimuli: a /ba/ with /ba/-like FRT and ART; a /wa/ with /wa/-like FRT and ART; and a /ba/wa stimulus with /ba/-like FRT and /wa/-like ART. The MMN response was elicited during the FRT contrast by having participants passively listen to a train of /wa/ stimuli interrupted occasionally by /ba/wa stimuli, and vice versa. For the ART contrast, the same procedure was implemented using the /ba/ and /ba/wa stimuli. Results: Both ART and FRT users with CIs elicited MMNs that were equal in magnitudes during FRT and ART contrasts, with the exception that FRT users exhibited MMNs for ART and FRT contrasts that were temporally segregated. That is, their MMNs occurred significantly earlier during the ART contrast (~100 msec following sound onset) than during the FRT contrast (~200 msec). In contrast, the MMNs for ART users of both contrasts occurred later and were not significantly separable in time (~230 msec). Interestingly, this temporal segregation observed in FRT users is consistent with the MMN behavior in NH listeners. Conclusions: Results suggest that listeners with CIs who learn to classify phonemes based on formant dynamics, consistent with NH listeners, develop a strategy similar to NH listeners, in which the organization of the amplitude and spectral representations of phonemes in auditory memory are temporally segregated.
Definitions, Criteria and Global Classification of Mast Cell Disorders with Special Reference to Mast Cell Activation Syndromes: A Consensus Proposal

Activation of tissue mast cells (MCs) and their abnormal growth and accumulation in various organs are typically found in primary MC disorders also referred to as mastocytosis. However, increasing numbers of patients are now being informed that their clinical findings are due to MC activation (MCA) that is neither associated with mastocytosis nor with a defined allergic or inflammatory reaction. In other patients with MCA, MCs appear to be clonal cells, but criteria for diagnosing mastocytosis are not met. A working conference was organized in 2010 with the aim to define criteria for diagnosing MCA and related disorders, and to propose a global unifying classification of all MC disorders and pathologic MC reactions. This classification includes three types of ‘MCA syndromes’ (MCASs), namely primary MCAS, secondary MCAS and idiopathic MCAS. MCA is now defined by robust and generally applicable criteria, including (1) typical clinical symptoms, (2) a substantial transient increase in serum total tryptase level or an increase in other MC-derived mediators, such as histamine or prostaglandin D2, or their urinary metabolites, and (3) a response of clinical symptoms to agents that attenuate the production or activities of MC mediators. These criteria should assist in the identification and diagnosis of patients with MCAS, and in avoiding misdiagnoses or overinterpretation of clinical symptoms in daily practice. Moreover, the MCAS concept should stimulate research in order to identify and exploit new molecular mechanisms and therapeutic targets.
Overt and Relational Victimization in Latinos and European Americans: Measurement Equivalence Across Ethnicity, Gender, and Grade Level in Early Adolescent Groups

This study examined the factorial invariance and construct validity equivalence of a self-report of victimization and exclusion (SVEX) for Latino and European American early adolescent participants (fifth and sixth grades; mean age 11.3). The instrument included an expanded set of relational victimization items that more thoroughly tapped exclusion behaviors relevant to developmental and cross-cultural use. Confirmatory factor analyses techniques demonstrated acceptable (partial) factorial invariance across ethnic groups, fifth and sixth graders, and across gender. Linkages between the SVEX scores, peer nominations, internalizing indices, and three demographic variables also supported construct validity equivalence for the SVEX. Findings supported a two-factor model similar to that of Crick and colleagues (e.g., Crick & Grotpeter, 1995) and suggested that the instrument provided an acceptable level of equivalence for overt and relational victimization forms across these groups.
New Ki-67-equivalent murine monoclonal antibodies (MIB 1-3) generated against bacterially expressed parts of the Ki-67 cDNA containing three 62 base pair repetitive elements encoding for the Ki-67 epitope.

BACKGROUND The monoclonal antibody Ki-67 reacts with a human nuclear cell proliferation-associated antigen that is expressed in all cells that are not in G0. Recently, we could demonstrate that Ki-67 detects a double band in Western blots of proliferating cells with apparent molecular weights of 345 kilodaltons and 395 kilodaltons, respectively. Furthermore, initial molecular biologic data favored the view that the epitope detected by Ki-67 might be encoded by a repetitive 66 bp element. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN In order to verify this assumption, parts of the Ki-67 cDNA were bacterially expressed, and the fusion proteins obtained were used to elicit new monoclonal antibodies. The specificities of the new reagents were tested by immunohistochemistry, Western blot, and enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay techniques. RESULTS The somatic cell fusions revealed a number of antibodies with immunoreactivities comparable to Ki-67. Three antibodies, designated MIB 1-3, were further characterized. Besides the fact that their immunostaining reactivity is identical with that of Ki-67, all new antibodies react in Western blots with native Ki-67 antigen. Furthermore, Western blot and competitive binding assays by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay clearly demonstrate that MIB 1 and MIB 3, like the original Ki-67 antibody, react with an epitope that is encoded by the 66 bp repetitive element mentioned above. MIB 2, however, reacts with an epitope distinct from this latter structure. In addition, after antigen unmasking by microwave treatment, MIB 1 and MIB 3 detect the Ki-67 antigen in paraffin sections. CONCLUSIONS Our results demonstrate that it is possible to use bacterially expressed parts of the Ki-67 antigen as immunogen to elicit antibodies that react with the native antigen. While MIB 1 and MIB 3 detect the same or a very similar epitope as the original antibody Ki-67, MIB 2 clearly differs in its fine specificity. Our results provide a circle of evidence that the cDNA sequence thus far determined encodes for the Ki-67 antigen. Furthermore, the new antibodies may become powerful tools for routine histopathology and for further functional characterization of the Ki-67 antigen.
Quantitative analysis of the novel depsipeptide anticancer drug Kahalalide F in human plasma by high-performance liquid chromatography under basic conditions coupled to electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry.

Kahalalide F (KF) is a novel cyclic depsipeptide anticancer drug, which has shown anticancer activity both in vitro and in vivo especially against human prostate cancer cell lines. To characterize the pharmacokinetics of KF during a phase I clinical trial in patients with androgen refractory prostate cancer, a method was developed and validated for the quantitative analysis of KF in human plasma using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) coupled to positive electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (ESI-MS/MS). Microbore reversed-phase liquid chromatography (LC) performed with mobile phases containing trifluoroacetic acid, an additive commonly used for separating peptides, resulted in substantial suppression of the signal for KF on ESI-MS/MS. An alternative approach employing a basic mobile phase provided an excellent response for KF when detected in the positive ion mode. Plasma samples were prepared for LC MS/MS by solid-phase extraction on C(18) cartridges. The LC separation was performed on a Zorbax Extend C(18) column (150 x 2.1 mm i.d., particle size 5 micro m) with acetonitrile -10 mM aqueous ammonia (85 : 15, v/v) as the mobile phase, at a flow-rate of 0.20 ml min(-1). A butyric acid analogue of KF was used as the internal standard. The lower limit of quantitation (LLQ) using a 500 micro l sample volume was 1 ng ml(-1) and the linear dynamic range extended to 1000 ng ml(-1). The inter-assay accuracy of the assay was -15.1% at the LLQ and between -2.68 and -9.05% for quality control solutions ranging in concentration from 2.24 to 715 ng ml(-1). The inter-assay precision was 9.91% or better at these concentrations. The analyte was stable in plasma under all relevant conditions evaluated and for a period of 16 h after reconstituting plasma extracts for LC analysis at ambient temperature.
Effects of variable encoding and spaced presentations on vocabulary learning.

] examined the applicability of the encoding variability hypothesis and the spacing phenomenon to vocabulary learning in five experiments. I manipulated encoding variability by varying the number of potential retrieval routes to the word meanings, using a one-sentence context condition, a three-sentence context condition, and a no-context (definitions-only) control condition. I evaluated the spacing effect by presenting each word with or without intervening words. The results provided no evidence that the opportunity to establish multiple retrieval routes by means of contextual information is helpful to vocabulary learning, a conclusion supported unequivocally by all five experiments. By contrast, spaced presentations yielded substantially higher levels of learning than did massed presentations. I discuss the results largely in terms of educational concerns, including the utility of the learning-from-context approach to vocabulary learning. In the experiments reported in this article, 1 investigated the applicability of two principles derived from traditional verbal learning research—variable encoding and the spacing effect—to a real-world activity, vocabulary learning. More specifically, the principal questions under investigation were whether vocabulary learning would be enhanced by (a) the opportunity to establish multiple retrieval routes to word meanings and (b) spaced rather than massed presentations of the to-be-learned information.
Inhibition of Cytokine-induced Matrix Metalloproteinase 9 Expression by Peroxisome Proliferator-activated Receptor α Agonists Is Indirect and Due to a NO-mediated Reduction of mRNA Stability*

Rat renal mesangial cells express high levels of matrix metalloproteinase 9 (MMP-9) in response to inflammatory cytokines such as interleukin 1β (IL-1β). We tested whether ligands of the peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPARα) could influence the cytokine-induced expression of MMP-9. Different PPARα agonists dose-dependently inhibited the IL-1β-triggered increase in gelatinolytic activity mainly by decreasing the MMP-9 steady-state mRNA levels. PPARα agonists on their own had no effects on MMP-9 mRNA levels and gelatinolytic activity. Surprisingly, the reduction of MMP-9 mRNA levels by PPARα activators contrasted with an amplification of cytokine-mediated MMP-9 gene promoter activity and mRNA expression. The potentiation of MMP-9 promoter activity functionally depends on an upstream peroxisome proliferator-responsive element-like binding site, which displayed an increased DNA binding of a PPARα immunopositive complex. In contrast, the IL-1β-induced DNA-binding of nuclear factor κB was significantly impaired by PPARα agonists. Most interestingly, in the presence of an inducible nitric-oxide synthase (iNOS) inhibitor, the PPARα-mediated suppression switched to a strong amplification of IL-1β-triggered MMP-9 mRNA expression. Concomitantly, activators of PPARα potentiated the cytokine-induced iNOS expression. Using actinomycin D, we found that NO, but not PPARα activators, strongly reduced the stability of MMP-9 mRNA. In contrast, the stability of MMP-9 protein was not affected by PPARα activators. In summary, our data suggest that the inhibitory effects of PPARα agonists on cytokine-induced MMP-9 expression are indirect and primarily due to a superinduction of iNOS with high levels of NO reducing the half-life of MMP-9 mRNA.
Accuracy and consistency of responses from persons with cognitive impairment

This study examines the ability of persons with cognitive impairment (n = 111) to provide consistent and accurate responses to questions about demographic characteristics and basic preferences. Persons with cognitive impairment were interviewed twice within a week using a parallel interview to determine stability and accuracy of responses. Family caregivers were interviewed once within the same time period. In general persons with mild to moderate cognitive impairment (i.e. MMSE scores from 13-26) were accurate and reliable in their ability to respond to questions about demographics and basic preferences. These results add further support to past findings that persons with cognitive impairment can be active participants in both research and practice.
Correlation of epigenetic change and identification of risk factors for oral submucous fibrosis

Background DNA methylation of certain genes is an epigenetic change that is essential for tumorigenesis. Oral submucous fibrosis (OSF) is a precancerous condition of oral mucosa with inflammation and progressive fibrosis of the lamina propria and deeper connective tissue. The hypermethylation of E-cadherin and cyclooxygenase 2 (COX-2) in chronic inflammation may demonstrate a mild lesion/mutation at epigenetic levels. This study compares the hypermethylation status of E-cadherin and COX-2 genes in patients with oral cancer and patients with OSF and also aims to identify risk factors for the development of OSF. Methods DNA was extracted from blood samples of 50 healthy subjects, 50 patients with OSF and 60 patients with oral cancer. Methylation-specific polymerase chain reaction for E-cadherin and COX-2 was performed on these samples and the products were analyzed on 2% agarose gel. Surveys about oral health habits and clinical periodontal examinations in patients with OSF and healthy subjects were also conducted by well-trained dentists, and logistic regression was performed to identify risk factors for OSF. Results Hypermethylation of E-cadherin and COX-2 was observed in 36% and 22% of oral cancer samples, respectively. In patients with OSF, the rates were 52% and 30%, and in healthy controls the rates were 4% and 6%. Hypermethylation was shown to be correlated between the 3 groups with statistical significance (p<0.01). Methylation of CpG islands in E-cadherin and COX-2 occurred more frequently in patients with OSF than in the control group, but less frequently than in patients with oral cancer. In the logistic regression analysis, smoking, brushing more than twice daily, periodontal probing depth and plaque index were identified as 4 major risk factors for OSF. Conclusions These data confirm that E-cadherin and COX-2 expressions are related to OSF. The epigenetic changes presented in patients with chronic inflammation might demonstrate an irreversible destruction in the tissues or organs similar to the effects of cancer. Chronic OSF was significantly associated with hypermethylation, a cancer risk factor.