Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Macrophages Control Vascular Stem/Progenitor Cell Plasticity Through Tumor Necrosis Factor-&agr;–Mediated Nuclear Factor-&kgr;B Activation

Objective— Vascular lineage differentiation of stem/progenitor cells can contribute to both tissue repair and exacerbation of vascular diseases such as in vein grafts. The role of macrophages in controlling vascular progenitor differentiation is largely unknown and may play an important role in graft development. This study aims to identify the role of macrophages in vascular stem/progenitor cell differentiation and thereafter elucidate the mechanisms that are involved in the macrophage- mediated process. Approach and Results— We provide in vitro evidence that macrophages can induce endothelial cell (EC) differentiation of the stem/progenitor cells while simultaneously inhibiting their smooth muscle cell differentiation. Mechanistically, both effects were mediated by macrophage-derived tumor necrosis factor-&agr; (TNF-&agr;) via TNF-&agr; receptor 1 and canonical nuclear factor-&kgr;B activation. Although the overexpression of p65 enhanced EC (or attenuated smooth muscle cell) differentiation, p65 or TNF-&agr; receptor 1 knockdown using lentiviral short hairpin RNA inhibited EC (or rescued smooth muscle cell) differentiation in response to TNF-&agr;. Furthermore, TNF-&agr;–mediated EC differentiation was driven by direct binding of nuclear factor-&kgr;B (p65) to specific VE-cadherin promoter sequences. Subsequent experiments using an ex vivo decellularized vessel scaffold confirmed an increase in the number of ECs and reduction in smooth muscle cell marker expression in the presence of TNF-&agr;. The lack of TNF-&agr; in a knockout mouse model of vein graft decreased endothelialization and significantly increased thrombosis formation. Conclusions— Our study highlights the role of macrophages in directing vascular stem/progenitor cell lineage commitment through TNF-&agr;–mediated TNF-&agr; receptor 1 and nuclear factor-&kgr;B activation that is likely required for endothelial repair in vascular diseases such as vein graft.
O mentor! My mentor!

Having reached the end point of this issue, you should have developed a fairly good sense of the kinds of people who are involved in mentor-protege relationships in colleges and universities. You know a little about what brought them together, the kinds of work and play they experienced, and, from the proteges' perspectives, what was valued about the special rapport they shared. My job, then, is to weave together these random readings into some organized whole against which you can test your perceptions. My job, as I see it, is to define mentoring, to share some of the research surrounding the phenomena, and then to see if, as the contributors to this issue proclaim, mentoring really does "make a difference. "
Achievement Motivation Across Gender and Academic Level of Students at Islamic Institute of Education in China

The issue of achievement motivation plays a major role among language learners. It is usually defined as the learner’s orientation with regard to the goal of learning a second language. As a basic ingredient of L2 acquisition, achievement motivation has been considered significant since a long time. This paper aims at examining differences in achievement motivation among educational level and gender of students at Institute of Education in China, which provide Arabic language as the second language learning. They provide a three years education for diploma degree. Their aim is to create practical special talents who are competent for jobs in foreign affairs, foreign trade, international cultural communication, management of enterprises, press, publication, foreign language teaching and studies of foreign problems etc. The researchers have modified the achievement motivation questionnaire, which consists of 38 items divided into five domains: Perseverance, Competition, Self-confidence, Recognize the importance of time, the desire to master the work and enjoy it. The researcher has been selected a random sample of (229) Chinese students who are studying Arabic language in Islamic institutions in China. The results explain that Chinese students achieved a degree in Medium of achievement motivation. Male and female students differed significantly on achievement motivation. Female is better than male in achievement motivation in areas of perseverance, self-confidence, Recognize the importance of time, the desire to master the work and enjoy it. It shows also that there is significant difference among educational level on achievement motivation. Level 4 students are much better than other level of students in achievement motivation in areas of perseverance, Competition, self-confidence, the desire to master the work and enjoy it. This shows the development of the student’s achievement motivation thorough studies.
Prophylactic platelet transfusions in patients with blood malignancies: cost analysis of a randomized trial

This cost analysis uses data from a randomized trial comparing a no prophylaxis versus prophylactic platelet (PLT) transfusion policy (counts <10 × 109/L) in adult patients with hematologic malignancies. Results are presented for all patients and separately for autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) (autoHSCT) and chemotherapy/allogeneic HSCT (chemo/alloHSCT) patients.
The MADS Box Genes ABS, SHP1, and SHP2 Are Essential for the Coordination of Cell Divisions in Ovule and Seed Coat Development and for Endosperm Formation in Arabidopsis thaliana

Seed formation is a pivotal process in plant reproduction and dispersal. It begins with megagametophyte development in the ovule, followed by fertilization and subsequently coordinated development of embryo, endosperm, and maternal seed coat. Two closely related MADS-box genes, SHATTERPROOF 1 and 2 (SHP1 and SHP2) are involved in specifying ovule integument identity in Arabidopsis thaliana. The MADS box gene ARABIDOPSIS BSISTER (ABS or TT16) is required, together with SEEDSTICK (STK) for the formation of endothelium, part of the seed coat and innermost tissue layer formed by the maternal plant. Little is known about the genetic interaction of SHP1 and SHP2 with ABS and the coordination of endosperm and seed coat development. In this work, mutant and expression analysis shed light on this aspect of concerted development. Triple tt16 shp1 shp2 mutants produce malformed seedlings, seed coat formation defects, fewer seeds, and mucilage reduction. While shp1 shp2 mutants fail to coordinate the timely development of ovules, tt16 mutants show less peripheral endosperm after fertilization. Failure in coordinated division of the innermost integument layer in early ovule stages leads to inner seed coat defects in tt16 and tt16 shp1 shp2 triple mutant seeds. An antagonistic action of ABS and SHP1/SHP2 is observed in inner seed coat layer formation. Expression analysis also indicates that ABS represses SHP1, SHP2, and FRUITFUL expression. Our work shows that the evolutionary conserved Bsister genes are required not only for endothelium but also for endosperm development and genetically interact with SHP1 and SHP2 in a partially antagonistic manner.
Journal of Systems and Information Technology Prioritization of factors influencing employee adoption of e-government using the analytic hierarchy process

Prioritization of factors influencing employee adoption of e-government using the analytic hierarchy process Kriti Priya Gupta, Preeti Bhaskar, Swati Singh, Article information: To cite this document: Kriti Priya Gupta, Preeti Bhaskar, Swati Singh, "Prioritization of factors influencing employee adoption of e-government using the analytic hierarchy process", Journal of Systems and Information Technology, https://doi.org/10.1108/JSIT-04-2017-0028 Permanent link to this document: https://doi.org/10.1108/JSIT-04-2017-0028
Epidemiology and Diagnosis of Hypoparathyroidism.

CONTEXT Hypoparathyroidism is a disorder characterized by hypocalcemia due to insufficient secretion of PTH. Pseudohypoparathyroidism is a less common disorder due to target organ resistance to PTH. This report summarizes the results of the findings and recommendations of the Working Group on Epidemiology and Diagnosis of Hypoparathyroidism. EVIDENCE ACQUISITION Each contributing author reviewed the recent published literature regarding epidemiology and diagnosis of hypoparathyroidism using PubMed and other medical literature search engines. EVIDENCE SYNTHESIS The prevalence of hypoparathyroidism is an estimated 37 per 100 000 person-years in the United States and 22 per 100 000 person-years in Denmark. The incidence in Denmark is approximately 0.8 per 100 000 person-years. Estimates of prevalence and incidence of hypoparathyroidism are currently lacking in most other countries. Hypoparathyroidism increases the risk of renal insufficiency, kidney stones, posterior subcapsular cataracts, and intracerebral calcifications, but it does not appear to increase overall mortality, cardiovascular disease, fractures, or malignancy. The diagnosis depends upon accurate measurement of PTH by second- and third-generation assays. The most common etiology is postsurgical hypoparathyroidism, followed by autoimmune disorders and rarely genetic disorders. Even more rare are etiologies including parathyroid gland infiltration, external radiation treatment, and radioactive iodine therapy for thyroid disease. Differentiation between these different etiologies is aided by the clinical presentation, serum biochemistries, and in some cases, genetic testing. CONCLUSIONS Hypoparathyroidism is often associated with complications and comorbidities. It is important for endocrinologists and other physicians who care for these patients to be aware of recent advances in the epidemiology, diagnosis, and genetics of this disorder.
HotSpotter — Patterned species instance recognition

We present HotSpotter, a fast, accurate algorithm for identifying individual animals against a labeled database. It is not species specific and has been applied to Grevy's and plains zebras, giraffes, leopards, and lionfish. We describe two approaches, both based on extracting and matching keypoints or “hotspots”. The first tests each new query image sequentially against each database image, generating a score for each database image in isolation, and ranking the results. The second, building on recent techniques for instance recognition, matches the query image against the database using a fast nearest neighbor search. It uses a competitive scoring mechanism derived from the Local Naive Bayes Nearest Neighbor algorithm recently proposed for category recognition. We demonstrate results on databases of more than 1000 images, producing more accurate matches than published methods and matching each query image in just a few seconds.
Point-Based Planning for Multi-Objective POMDPs

Many sequential decision-making problems require an agent to reason about both multiple objectives and uncertainty regarding the environment's state. Such problems can be naturally modelled as multi-objective partially observable Markov decision processes (MOPOMDPs). We propose optimistic linear support with alpha reuse (OLSAR), which computes a bounded approximation of the optimal solution set for all possible weightings of the objectives. The main idea is to solve a series of scalarized single-objective POMDPs, each corresponding to a different weighting of the objectives. A key insight underlying OLSAR is that the policies and value functions produced when solving scalarized POMDPs in earlier iterations can be reused to more quickly solve scalarized POMDPs in later iterations. We show experimentally that OLSAR outperforms, both in terms of runtime and approximation quality, alternative methods and a variant of OLSAR that does not leverage reuse.
Collaborative Partnership in Age-Friendly Cities: Two Case Studies From Quebec, Canada

This article aims to explain the collaborative partnership conditions and factors that foster implementation effectiveness within the age-friendly cities (AFC) in Quebec (AFC-QC), Canada. Based on a community-building approach that emphasizes collaborative partnership, the AFC-QC implementation process is divided into three steps: (1) social diagnostic of older adults' needs; (2) an action plan based on a logic model; and (3) implementation through collaborations. AFC-QC promotes direct involvement of older adults and seniors' associations at each of the three steps of the implementation process, as well as other stakeholders in the community. Based on two contrasting case studies, this article illustrates the importance of collaborative partnership for the success of AFC implementation. Results show that stakeholders, agencies, and organizations are exposed to a new form of governance where coordination and collaborative partnership among members of the steering committee are essential. Furthermore, despite the importance of the senior associations' participation in the process, they encountered significant limits in the capacity of implementing age-friendly environments solely by themselves. In conclusion, we identify the main collaborative partnership conditions and factors in AFC-QC.
DETERMINATION OF THE POINT OF SUBJECTIVE EQUALITY IN THE CONSTANT METHOD PROCEDURE

(2) The arithmetic mean of the " doubtful " judgments . (3) The mean of Le and Lt may be used as an estimate of the PSE, if the two standard deviations a, and al are approximately equal. (4) When a least-square solution, with or without weights is used in computing Lg and LI, the PSE is located on the basis of the principle of equal likelihood. That is, the PSE is that stimulus value at which the probability of a judgment " greater" equals the probability of a judgment " less " . (5) The principle of equal likelihood can be applied to the normal graphic pro-
Observational Research in U.S. Classrooms: The Uses of the Classroom Observation Schedule to Improve Classroom Instruction

Systematic classroom observation methods have been widely used in the past several decades to investigate effective teaching practices (Brophy & Good, 1986; Stallings & Mohlman, 1988; Waxman, 1995; Waxman & Huang, 1999). One of the most important uses of the method has been to determine which teaching practices improve student learning (Waxman & Huang, 1999). Most classroom observation instruments typically focus on the teacher as the unit of measurement or observation, and thus they describe a variety of instructional behaviors in which teachers engage. There are limitations, however, with teacher-based classroom observation instruments. First, teacher-focused instruments suggest that teaching practices directly impact student outcomes, without acknowledging that student behaviors impact teacher behaviors as well. Another concern with teacher-focused observation systems is that they often ignore student behaviors that have a greater impact on student outcomes than teacher behaviors. Another limitation of teacher-based observation instruments is that they generally do not allow researchers to examine individual student behaviors, particularly differences by critical attributes such as student sex, ethnicity, or grouping classification (e.g., gifted/nongifted, resilient/nonresilient, monolingual/bilingual). A final concern with teacher-centered observation systems is that they are often very threatening to classroom teachers. Many teachers are reluctant to volunteer to participate in classroom observation research because they know the focus of attention is on the teachers and their instructional practices. This chapter describes the uses of a systematic classroom observation instrument, the Classroom Observation Schedule (COS), that was designed to address some of the previous concerns of classroom observation by specifically focusing on individual students rather than the teacher (Waxman, Wang, Lindvall, & Anderson, 1990a, 1990b).
Augmented Lagrangian Techniques for Solving Saddle Point Linear Systems

We perform an algebraic analysis of a generalization of the augmented Lagrangian method for solution of saddle point linear systems. It is shown that in cases where the (1,1) block is singular, specifically semidefinite, a low-rank perturbation that minimizes the condition number of the perturbed matrix while maintaining sparsity is an effective approach. The vectors used for generating the perturbation are columns of the constraint matrix that form a small angle with the null-space of the original (1,1) block. Block preconditioning techniques of a similar flavor are also discussed and analyzed, and the theoretical observations are illustrated and validated by numerical results.
On the Relation between Market and Analyst Forecast Inefficiencies

We examine the relation between market and analyst forecast inefficiencies. Using a common set of public information variables, we find 1) both abnormal stock returns and analyst earnings forecast errors are predictable; 2) while future analyst forecast errors are positively correlated with the predictable component of abnormal returns, future abnormal returns are not significantly correlated with the predictable component of forecast errors; 3) in contemporaneous regressions of stock returns on analyst forecast errors, removing the predictable component of analyst forecast errors results in higher coefficient estimates and R values; but in the reverse regressions, removing the predictable component of stock returns does not generate a similar effect. Our results suggest an asymmetric relation between market and analyst forecast inefficiencies, and that analyst forecasts embed more inefficiency than market pricing. This conclusion has important implications for capital markets research and portfolio management.
Effect of Ovarian Involvement on the Frequency of Luteinized Unruptured Follicle in Endometriosis

Objective: When we review the current literature on endometriosis and luteinized unruptured follicle (LUF), we see that most of the studies deal with only the association between LUF frequency and the severity of endometriosis. Our purpose was to evaluate the effect of ovarian involvement on LUF frequency in endometriosis and assess the relationship between endometriosis and LUF in infertile women. Study Design: This study is a prospective analysis covering a total of 126 infertile women between 22 and 35 years of age who underwent diagnostic laparoscopy from September 1995 to August 1997 in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Süleyman Demirel University, Isparta, Turkey. Endometriosis was diagnosed in 58 of these patients. All had received a revised American Fertility Society staging score at the time of the laparoscopic diagnosis. Diagnosis of LUF was made when the following criteria were fulfilled: absence of ultrasonic signs of ovulation, and absence of an ovulation ostium on the follicle by laparoscopy, despite increased serum progesterone. Statistical evaluation was performed using χ2 test and Fisher’s exact test where appropriate. Results: The prevalence of LUF in mild, moderate and severe endometriosis cases was 13.3, 41.2 and 72.7%, respectively. The LUF frequencies were 45.9% in 37 endometriosis patients with ovarian involvement, 9.5% in 21 cases without ovarian involvement, and 5.9% in 68 cases without endometriosis. A statistically significant difference was observed between the LUF rate in the group with ovarian involvement and that without involvement (χ2 = 8.06, p < 0.001). Conclusion: In summary, in this study we noted a significant increase in LUF frequency in endometriosis patients with ovarian involvement.
A Profile of Working Memory Ability in Poor Readers

Objective This study aimed to provide a comprehensive working memory profile of a group of children with established poor reading ability. Methods Participants included a group of established “poor readers” and a group of age‐ and gender‐matched controls with typically developing reading ability. The participants completed a comprehensive battery of assessments examining four components of working memory—the central executive, phonological loop, visuospatial sketchpad, and episodic buffer. Results As predicted, the poor reading group scored significantly lower than the typically developing reading group on measures of the phonological loop and central executive. There were no significant differences between the two groups on measures of the visuospatial sketchpad or episodic buffer. Contrary to predictions, a subgroup of poor readers with poor visuospatial working memory was not found, further highlighting the inconsistent findings in this area of working memory. Conclusions The results provide support for past research findings of deficits in the phonological loop and central executive of poor readers. The finding of typical episodic buffer functioning demonstrates the potential to draw on this relative strength in implementing interventions with poor readers. This implicates the importance of increasing awareness of specific working memory deficits in poor readers, and may guide future research into more effective teaching strategies and interventions for this population.
Working Papers in Economics and Statistics Understanding Risk Attitudes in Two Dimensions: an Experimental Analysis Understanding Risk Attitudes in Two Dimensions: an Experimental Analysis

Despite extensive studies, the nature of risk attitudes remains as one of the most vigorously discussed questions in economics and psychology. In the framework of expected utility theory, attitude towards risk originates in changes in marginal utility (the curvature of the utility function). Cumulative prospect theory (CPT) adds an additional dimension: the weighting of probabilities. By examining both dimensions, we strive to gain more insights on the nature of risk attitudes: what is the relation between the curvature of utility and probability weighting? How are these related to cognitive limitations? We ran a controlled laboratory experiment to answer these questions. Our findings suggest that the two dimensions capture different characteristics of individual risk attitudes. Though, most individuals are risk averse in both dimensions, the two dimensions show no significant correlation. In addition, only probability weighting is correlated with educational background and decision time. This suggests a relation between the convexity of probability weighting and cognitive limitations.