Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Severe physical punishment and mental health problems in an economically disadvantaged population of children and adolescents.

OBJECTIVE To estimate the prevalence of severe physical punishment of children/adolescents in a low-income community, and to examine child mental health problems as a potential correlate. METHOD This study is a Brazilian cross-sectional pilot study of the World Studies of Abuse in Family Environments. A probabilistic sample of clusters including all eligible households (women aged 15-49 years, son/daughter < 18 years) was evaluated. One mother-child pair was randomly selected per household (n = 89; attrition = 11%). Outcome (severe physical punishment of children/adolescents by mother/father) was defined as shaking (if age <or= 2 years), kicking, choking, smothering, burning/scalding/branding, beating, or threatening with weapon. Three groups of potential correlates were examined: child/adolescent (age, gender, physical/mental health); mother (education, unemployment, physical/mental health, harsh physical punishment in childhood, marital violence); father (unemployment, drunkenness). Severe marital violence was defined as kicking, hitting, beating or use of /threat to use a weapon. The following standardized questionnaires were applied by trained interviewers: World Studies of Abuse in Family Environments Core Questionnaire, Child Behavior Checklist, Self-Report Questionnaire. RESULTS Outcome prevalence was 10.1%. Final logistic regression models identified two correlates: maternal harsh physical punishment in childhood (total sample, OR = 5.3, p = 0.047), and child/adolescent mental health problems (sub-sample aged 4-17 years, n = 67, OR = 9.1, p = 0.017). CONCLUSIONS Severe physical punishment of children/adolescents is frequent in the studied community. The victims have a higher probability of becoming future perpetrators. When intrafamilial violence occurs, child/adolescent mental health may be compromised.
Guidelines for Acquiring and Reporting Clinical Neurospectroscopy

Abstract Since the advent of CPT 76390 in 1998, magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) of the brain, or neurospectroscopy, has moved from the realm of academic research into that of the clinical world. All major MR manufacturers have aided in the endeavor by automating neurospectroscopy so that it no longer requires an MR physicist and is a push-button technique that can be run by technologists just as a typical MR sequence. Thousands of studies have demonstrated the clinical efficacy of neurospectroscopy, and there are many medical reviews of how this technique can be applied across a wide range of neurologic disorders. However, few studies address the practical issue of acquiring and reporting neurospectroscopy in a clinical practice. Based on clinical experience at three different sites across the country and nearly two decades of applications training for technologists and radiologists at international clinical neurospectroscopy courses, the guidelines described in this article demonstrate proven protocols for clinical diagnosis and outline the strategies involved in acquiring, interpreting, and reporting clinical neurospectroscopy successfully. A standard operating procedure used across the three sites is described and high reproducibility across different platforms is shown.
Understanding How Healthy Workplaces Are Created: Implications for Developing a National Health Service Healthy Workplace Program

The workplace is an important setting for promoting health and well-being. We sought to understand how successful workplace health and well-being programs were developed and implemented to inform the development of a program for a National Health Service (NHS) hospital. Case studies of successful healthy workplace programs with 34 semi-structured employee interviews informed 12 interviews with NHS staff. Interviews were thematically analyzed using Nvivo. Themes were fed back to participants for further clarification and validation. Healthy workplace programs were characterized by senior management endorsement; collective sense of ownership; presence of visible “quick wins”; and a sense that participation was easy and fun, not mandated. Programs evolved organically, allowing trust to be built and activities to be developed with employees. Interviews with NHS staff suggested a lack of belief in the possibility of change in their workplace due to time and workload pressures, and a sense of an “us and them” relationship with management, as well as environmental barriers. A consistent pattern of how the conditions for a healthy workplace can be created, which map onto the results from the NHS ward staff, suggest that without creating an enabling environment for health-promoting behaviors, workplace programs will have poor uptake and retention.
C-Nap1, a Novel Centrosomal Coiled-Coil Protein and Candidate Substrate of the Cell Cycle–regulated Protein Kinase Nek2

Nek2 (for NIMA-related kinase 2) is a mammalian cell cycle–regulated kinase structurally related to the mitotic regulator NIMA of Aspergillus nidulans. In human cells, Nek2 associates with centrosomes, and overexpression of active Nek2 has drastic consequences for centrosome structure. Here, we describe the molecular characterization of a novel human centrosomal protein, C-Nap1 (for centrosomal Nek2-associated protein 1), first identified as a Nek2-interacting protein in a yeast two-hybrid screen. Antibodies raised against recombinant C-Nap1 produced strong labeling of centrosomes by immunofluorescence, and immunoelectron microscopy revealed that C-Nap1 is associated specifically with the proximal ends of both mother and daughter centrioles. On Western blots, anti–C-Nap1 antibodies recognized a large protein (>250 kD) that was highly enriched in centrosome preparations. Sequencing of overlapping cDNAs showed that C-Nap1 has a calculated molecular mass of 281 kD and comprises extended domains of predicted coiled-coil structure. Whereas C-Nap1 was concentrated at centrosomes in all interphase cells, immunoreactivity at mitotic spindle poles was strongly diminished. Finally, the COOH-terminal domain of C-Nap1 could readily be phosphorylated by Nek2 in vitro, as well as after coexpression of the two proteins in vivo. Based on these findings, we propose a model implicating both Nek2 and C-Nap1 in the regulation of centriole–centriole cohesion during the cell cycle.
Deletions in the Repertoire of Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato DC3000 Type III Secretion Effector Genes Reveal Functional Overlap among Effectors

The γ-proteobacterial plant pathogen Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato DC3000 uses the type III secretion system to inject ca. 28 Avr/Hop effector proteins into plants, which enables the bacterium to grow from low inoculum levels to produce bacterial speck symptoms in tomato, Arabidopsis thaliana, and (when lacking hopQ1-1) Nicotiana benthamiana. The effectors are collectively essential but individually dispensable for the ability of the bacteria to defeat defenses, grow, and produce symptoms in plants. Eighteen of the effector genes are clustered in six genomic islands/islets. Combinatorial deletions involving these clusters and two of the remaining effector genes revealed a redundancy-based structure in the effector repertoire, such that some deletions diminished growth in N. benthamiana only in combination with other deletions. Much of the ability of DC3000 to grow in N. benthamiana was found to be due to five effectors in two redundant-effector groups (REGs), which appear to separately target two high-level processes in plant defense: perception of external pathogen signals (AvrPto and AvrPtoB) and deployment of antimicrobial factors (AvrE, HopM1, HopR1). Further support for the membership of HopR1 in the same REG as AvrE was gained through bioinformatic analysis, revealing the existence of an AvrE/DspA/E/HopR effector superfamily, which has representatives in virtually all groups of proteobacterial plant pathogens that deploy type III effectors.
Graft-versus-host disease in children who have received a cord-blood or bone marrow transplant from an HLA-identical sibling. Eurocord and International Bone Marrow Transplant Registry Working Committee on Alternative Donor and Stem Cell Sources.

BACKGROUND Umbilical-cord blood as an alternative to bone marrow for hematopoietic stem-cell transplantation may lower the risk of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). METHODS We studied the records of 113 recipients of cord blood from HLA-identical siblings from the period from 1990 through 1997 and compared them with the records of 2052 recipients of bone marrow from HLA-identical siblings during the same period. The study population consisted of children 15 years of age or younger. We compared the rates of GVHD, hematopoietic recovery, and survival using Cox proportional-hazards regression to adjust for potentially confounding factors. RESULTS Recipients of cord blood were younger than recipients of bone marrow (median age, 5 years vs. 8 years; P<0.001), weighed less (median weight, 17 kg vs. 26 kg; P<0.001), and were less likely to have received methotrexate for prophylaxis against GVHD (28 percent vs. 65 percent, P<0.001). Multivariate analysis demonstrated a lower risk of acute GVHD (relative risk, 0.41; P=0.001) and chronic GVHD (relative risk, 0.35; P=0.02) among recipients of cord-blood transplants. As compared with recovery after bone marrow transplantation, the likelihood of recovery of the neutrophil count and the platelet count was significantly lower in the first month after cord-blood transplantation (relative risk, 0.40 [P<0.001], and relative risk, 0.20 [P<0.001]), respectively. Mortality was similar in the two groups (relative risk of death in the recipients of cord blood, 1.15; P=0.43). CONCLUSIONS Recipients of cord-blood transplants from HLA-identical siblings have a lower incidence of acute and chronic GVHD than recipients of bone marrow transplants from HLA-identical siblings.
Attention, Uncertainty, and Free-Energy

We suggested recently that attention can be understood as inferring the level of uncertainty or precision during hierarchical perception. In this paper, we try to substantiate this claim using neuronal simulations of directed spatial attention and biased competition. These simulations assume that neuronal activity encodes a probabilistic representation of the world that optimizes free-energy in a Bayesian fashion. Because free-energy bounds surprise or the (negative) log-evidence for internal models of the world, this optimization can be regarded as evidence accumulation or (generalized) predictive coding. Crucially, both predictions about the state of the world generating sensory data and the precision of those data have to be optimized. Here, we show that if the precision depends on the states, one can explain many aspects of attention. We illustrate this in the context of the Posner paradigm, using the simulations to generate both psychophysical and electrophysiological responses. These simulated responses are consistent with attentional bias or gating, competition for attentional resources, attentional capture and associated speed-accuracy trade-offs. Furthermore, if we present both attended and non-attended stimuli simultaneously, biased competition for neuronal representation emerges as a principled and straightforward property of Bayes-optimal perception.
Conjunctival chlamydial 16S ribosomal RNA expression in trachoma: is chlamydial metabolic activity required for disease to develop?

BACKGROUND Nucleic acid amplification testing frequently detects conjunctival Chlamydia trachomatis infection in subjects without clinical signs of trachoma. It is unclear whether such subjects are actually infected. We measured chlamydial 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) expression, a marker of chlamydial metabolic activity, in comparison with the quantitation of a chlamydial DNA target in subjects exposed to trachoma. METHODS Subjects from 2 Gambian villages where trachoma was endemic were examined. Conjunctival samples were tested for the presence of C. trachomatis DNA using a quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay for the omp1 gene and for the expression of C. trachomatis 16S rRNA using a 1-step, real-time reverse-transcriptase PCR assay. RESULTS A total of 248 people were examined. The prevalence of clinically active trachoma was 16.9%. C. trachomatis was detected in 19.8% and 6.8% of subjects by the omp1 and 16S rRNA assays, respectively. For subjects with positive results for both tests, the number of copies of 16S rRNA was approximately 100-fold greater than the number of copies of the omp1 gene. In samples from subjects in whom the omp1 gene was detected in the absence of 16S rRNA, typically only a few copies of omp1 were present. The expression of 16S rRNA was strongly associated with the presence of clinical signs of active trachoma. CONCLUSIONS The use of 16S rRNA expression for the detection of chlamydial metabolic activity appears to usefully discriminate established infections from the inoculation of the conjunctiva with dead or subviable organisms, which probably occurs frequently in settings in which trachoma is endemic. The data support conclusions from primate challenge studies that live Chlamydiae species or antigens derived from them are needed to provoke the clinical signs of disease.
Evaluation of the contrast between tissues and thermal lesions in rabbit in vivo produced by high intensity focused ultrasound using fast spin echo MRI sequences

In this paper the goal was to measure the contrast to noise ratio (CNR) of fast spin echo (FSE) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) sequences in detecting thermal lesions created by high intensity focused ul-trasound (HIFU) in rabbit kidney, liver, heart, and brain and lamb pancreas. A spherically focused transducer was used which is navigated inside MRI by a custom made positioning device. A simple simu-lation model was developed which predicts the CNR for the two FSE MRI sequences. The maximum con-trast measured with T1-W FSE ranges from 10 to 25. For all 5 tissues of interest if one uses TR between 400 and 500 ms the contrast is maximized. The T1 and T2 value of lesion depends strongly on the host tissue and is always lower than the host tissue. The greater the difference in T1 value, the greater the CNR. The simulated model for predicting the CNR was proven successful. The CNR measured with T2-W FSE varies between 12 and 15 for all 5 tissues. With T2-W FSE if one uses TE between 40 and 50 ms, the contrast is maximized.
Design of Q-shift complex wavelets for image processing using frequency domain energy minimization

This paper proposes a new method of designing finite-support wavelet filters, based on minimization of energy in key parts of the frequency domain. In particular this technique is shown to be very effective for designing families of filters that are suitable for use in the shift-invariant dual-tree complex wavelet structure that has been developed by the author recently, and has been shown to be important for a range of image processing applications. The dual-tree structure requires most of the wavelet filters to have a well-controlled group delay, equivalent to one quarter of a sample period, in order to achieve optimal shift invariance. The proposed new design technique allows this requirement to be included along with the usual smoothness and perfect reconstruction properties to yield wavelet filters with a unique combination of features: linear phase, tight frame, compact spatial support, good frequency domain selectivity with low sidelobe levels, approximate shift invariance, and good directional selectivity in two or more dimensions.
Racial Bias in American Foster Care: The National Debate

In disproportionately high numbers, Native American and African American children find themselves in the American foster care system. Empirical data establish that these children are removed from their families at greater rates than other races and stay in foster care longer, where they are often abused, neglected, and then severed from their families forever. For the past few decades, a vigorous debate has raged regarding whether these children are actually at greater risk for maltreatment if left at home or are just targets of discrimination in a hegemonic institution. Although the research previously showed no racial differences in child maltreatment rates, the latest Congressional study has found that African American and Native American children are at greater risk for child maltreatment than children of other races. Despite the caution with which researchers have interpreted the data and implicated future policies, scholars are asking whether, as a society, we are protecting or destroying children from these historically disempowered races. Foster care laws offer little practical guidance because the overarching legal standards are too vague or not consistently applied. Systems thinking, however, provides one useful framework for uncovering points in the foster care system where unintended bias manifests and potential leverage points to exert pressure and effect change. A systems thinking approach also reveals that the foster care system’s primary motivation is simply perpetuating itself; accordingly, to achieve meaningful reform, public policy makers in the U.S. must closely examine this billion-dollar, publicly-funded bureaucracy and the racial disparities it routinely fosters.
Self-Perception of Competence by Iranian Children

The purpose of this study was to study the responses of Iranian elementary school children to the Perceived Competence Scale for Children. The items were translated with minor changes in wording to make them more comprehensible to Iranian children. The scale was administered to 199 children ages 9 to 11 in Grades 4 to 5 in four elementary schools from two socioeconomically different districts in Shiraz. Analysis showed satisfactory internal reliability. Intercorrelations among 28 items were factor analyzed using principal component analysis followed by both varimax and oblimin rotations. Three factors emerged with both rotations: Cognitive Competence, Social Competence, and Physical Competence. Sex differences were not significant for factor scores except that girls rated themselves as significantly more socially competent than boys did.
Effects of local α2‐adrenergic receptor blockade on adipose tissue lipolysis during prolonged systemic adrenaline infusion in normal man

During prolonged adrenaline infusion, lipolysis peaks within 30 min and thereafter tends to decline, and we hypothesized that the stimulation of local adipose tissue α2‐adrenergic receptors accounts for this decline. The lipolytic effect of a prolonged intravenous adrenaline infusion combined with local infusion of the α2‐blocker phentolamine in superficial and deep abdominal subcutaneous adipose tissue and in preperitoneal adipose tissue was studied in seven healthy subjects. The interstitial glycerol concentration in the three adipose tissue depots was measured by the microdialysis method. Regional adipose tissue blood flow was measured by the 133Xe clearance technique. Regional glycerol output (lipolytic rate) was calculated from these measurements and simultaneous measurements of arterial glycerol concentrations. Adrenaline infusion increased lipolysis in all three depots (data previously published). Phentolamine infusion did not augment lipolysis in the subcutaneous depots while it increased the lipolytic rate in the preperitoneal depot. It is concluded that α2‐adrenergic receptors do not have a significant effect on subcutaneous adipose tissue lipolysis during high circulating adrenaline concentrations, and the decrease in lipolysis in subcutaneous adipose tissue under prolonged adrenaline stimulation is thus not attributed to α2‐adrenergic receptor inhibition of lipolysis. However, in the preperitoneal adipose tissue depot, α2‐adrenergic receptor tone plays a role for the lipolytic rate obtained during prolonged adrenaline stimulation.
Temporal evolution of pump beam self-focusing at the High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program

[1] On 4 February 2005 the High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) facility was operated at 2.85 MHz to produce artificial optical emissions in the ionosphere while passing through the second electron gyroharmonic. All-sky optical recordings were performed with 15 s integration, alternating between 557.7 and 630 nm. We report the first optical observations showing the temporal evolution of large-scale pump wave self-focusing in the magnetic zenith, observed in the 557.7 nm images. These clearly show that the maximum intensity was not reached after 15 s of pumping, which is unexpected since the emission delay time is <1 s, and that the optical signature had intensified in a much smaller region within the beam after 45 s of pumping. In addition, adjacent regions within the beam lost intensity. Radar measurements indicate a plasma depletion of ∼1% near the HF reflection altitude. Ray tracing of the pump wave through the plasma depletion region, which forms a concave reflecting radio wave mirror, reproduces the optical spatial morphology. A radio wave flux density gain of up to ∼30 dB may occur. In addition, the ray trace is consistent with the observed artificial optical emissions for critical plasma frequencies down to ∼0.5 MHz below the pump frequency.
Clinicopathology of gout in growing layers induced by high calcium and high protein diets

1. An experiment was conducted to test the independent and combined effects of high dietary calcium and protein concentrations on the induction of visceral gout in growing birds of a layer strain. 2. One hundred and sixty healthy birds were randomly divided into 4 groups at 35 d of age. The different groups were given 4 diets containing normal or high concentrations of dietary calcium or crude protein in a 2 × 2 factorial experiment for 30 d. The diets contained normal calcium (Ca) and crude protein (CP) (NCNP, 8·5 g Ca/kg and 175 g CP/kg), high calcium and normal protein (HC, 36·3 g Ca/kg and 175 g CP/kg), normal calcium and high protein (HP, 8·8 g Ca/kg and 245 g CP/kg) or high calcium and high protein (HCHP, 36·8 g Ca/kg and 242 g CP/kg), respectively. 3. Typical visceral gout was induced by the HCHP diet. The HCHP and HC diet caused severe kidney damage. The HP diet did not cause kidney damage, but significantly increased plasma uric acid and inorganic phosphorus concentrations. 4. The HC diet significantly increased plasma uric acid, calcium and sodium, but significantly decreased plasma inorganic phosphorus, potassium and magnesium concentrations. The HCHP diet significantly increased plasma uric acid, calcium and sodium. 5. Urine volumes were significantly higher on the HCHP and HC diets than on the control. The growers raised on HC and HCHP diets had significantly higher total quantity of 24 h urinary excretion of uric acid, calcium, magnesium, inorganic phosphorus and potassium and a significantly lower 24 h urinary excretion of sodium. The growers fed on the HP diet had a higher 24 h urinary excretion of uric acid and inorganic phosphorus than the control. 6. It is concluded that growing layer birds should not be fed on layer rations.