Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Topical maxacalcitol for the treatment of psoriasis vulgaris: a placebo‐controlled, double‐blind, dose‐finding study with active comparator

1α, 25‐Dihydroxy‐22‐oxacalcitriol (maxacalcitol) is a vitamin D3 analogue which displays approximately 10 times greater efficacy at suppressing keratinocyte proliferation in vitro than calcipotriol and tacalcitol. To determine clinical efficacy, a phase II double‐blind, randomized, left vs. right, concentration–response study was performed with once‐daily topical maxacalcitol in patients with mild to moderate chronic plaque psoriasis. Primary efficacy parameters were psoriasis severity index (PSI) based on sum of scores for erythema, scaling and induration and investigators' overall assessment of patients' response to therapy at 8 weeks of treatment. One hundred and forty‐four patients participated. All concentrations of maxacalcitol ointment (6, 12.5, 25 and 50 μg/g) were significantly more effective at reducing PSI than placebo (P < 0.01), with greatest effect noted for maxacalcitol 25 μg/g. Calcipotriol ointment 50 μg/g once daily as active comparator had a similar effect. Marked improvement or clearance of psoriasis was greatest for maxacalcitol 25 μg/g (55% of subjects) which compared favourably with calcipotriol (46%). Improvement continued throughout the study period, with no plateau at week 8. Investigators' and patients' side preference (secondary efficacy parameters) rated maxacalcitol more effective than placebo and 25 μg/g maxacalcitol better than calcipotriol (P < 0.05 for investigators' assessment). Twelve patients withdrew from the study due to adverse events, of which four were judged to be due to study medication. This study indicates that once‐daily maxacalcitol ointment is effective in the management of plaque psoriasis, with greatest effect noted at 25 μg/g. As no response plateau was noted at 8 weeks, these data suggest that further benefit might be obtained if maxacalcitol ointment were applied for longer. Finally, investigators' overall assessment and side preference suggest that maxacalcitol 25 μg/g may be more effective than once‐daily calcipotriol.
Viscoelastic stress relaxation during static stretch in human skeletal muscle in the absence of EMG activity

The present study sought to investigate the role of EMG activity during passive static stretch. EMG and passive resistance were measured during static stretching of human skeletal muscle in eight neurologically intact control subjects and six spinal cord‐injured (SCI) subjects with complete motor loss. Resistance to stretch offered by the hamstring muscles during passive knee extension was defined as passive torque (Nm). The knee was passively extended at 5o/s to a predetermined final position, where it remained stationary for 90 s (static phase) while force and integrated EMG of the hamstring muscle were recorded. EMG was sampled for frequency domain analysis in a second stretch maneuver in five control and three SCI subjects. There was a decline in passive torque in the 90‐s static phase for both control and SCI subjects, P<0.05. Although peak passive torque was greater in control subjects, P<0.05, there was no difference in time‐dependent passive torque response between control (33%) and SCI (38%) subjects. Initial and final 5‐s IEMG ranged from 1.8 to 3.4 μ V.s and did not change during a stretch or differ between control and SCI subjects. Frequency domain analysis yielded similar results in both groups, with an equal energy distribution in all harmonics, indicative of ‘white noise’. The present data demonstrate that no measurable EMG activity was detected in either group during the static stretch maneuver. Therefore, the decline in resistance to static stretch was a viscoelastic stress relaxation response.
Path-Normalized Optimization of Recurrent Neural Networks with ReLU Activations

We investigate the parameter-space geometry of recurrent neural networks (RNNs), and develop an adaptation of path-SGD optimization method, attuned to this geometry, that can learn plain RNNs with ReLU activations. On several datasets that require capturing long-term dependency structure, we show that path-SGD can significantly improve trainability of ReLU RNNs compared to RNNs trained with SGD, even with various recently suggested initialization schemes.
Improvements in cognitive performance for schoolchildren in Zaire, Africa, following an iron supplement and treatment for intestinal parasites.

Tested 47 first-year primary school children at a mission school in rural Zaire for cognitive ability with the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC) adopted to the language of Kituba. Within a day of this test, each child was evaluated for blood hemoglobin (Hgb) level and the presence of intestinal parasites. Half of the children received an iron supplement (20 mg Fe) for 30 days and those children positive for the intestinal parasites of ankylostome or ascaris were randomly selected to receive either a vermifuge treatment or placebo. All of the children were again evaluated medically and cognitively 4 weeks after the initiation of treatment. Using discriminant analysis, performance on the Mental Processing Composite of the K-ABC 1 month after treatment in combination with increases in blood Hgb resulted in the successful classification of 74% in terms whether a child had received both iron supplement and vermifuge treatment (p = .007). With respect to our home evaluation for each child, factors related to the nutritional and economic well-being of the home environment proved a reliable marker for Simultaneous Processing ability. However, the present findings also suggest that over the short-term, changes in blood Hgb that accompany both vermifuge and iron supplement treatment together can improve certain aspects of cognitive ability, perhaps by means of heightened attentional capacity.
Tides of Consent: How Public Opinion Shapes American Politics

Tides of Consent: How Public Opinion Shapes American Politics. By James A. Stimson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 206p. $55.00 cloth, $16.99 paper. The main goal of James A. Stimson's book is to show how the dynamics of public opinion impinge on the the American political process. This is a broad and potentially difficult task, particularly for such a succinct text. Nevertheless, I believe the book achieves its objectives quite convincingly.
Marital Stability and Spouses' Shared Time

Given the prominence of marital dissolution in American life in recent decades, it is important to understand what contributes to or deters it. This article focuses on spouses' shared leisure activities as a possible deterrent. An “attachment hypothesis”— that spouses' shared leisure time is a form of pleasurable interaction that strengthens the attachment between them and helps prevent marital break-up at the time and into the future—is tested in the context of controls for a variety of hypotheses. The empirical tests are supportive of the attachment hypothesis and suggest that, because couples with children have less shared leisure time, children can contribute to marital break-up as well as help prevent it.
How Science Texts and Hands-on Explorations Facilitate Meaning Making: Learning from Latina/o Third Graders.

In this study, we examined opportunities for reasoning and meaning making that read-alouds of children's literature science information books and related hands-on explorations offered to young Latina/o students in an urban public school. Using a qualitative, interpretative framework, we analyzed classroom discourse and children's writing and drawing in a 3rd grade class during five instructional days that focused on the same science topic (earthworms and their features, behaviors, habitat, etc.) and included read-aloud sessions of print and digital books on earthworms along with observations and experiments with real earthworms. We identified ways in which dialogically shared read-alouds of children's literature science books on earthworms became tools for children's meaning making that involved a variety of types of reasoning (causal, teleological, comparative, analogical) in the form of questions, statements, or mini-stories, and how the teacher mediated the children's engagement in reasoning. We also identified unique opportunities that hands-on explorations offered children to extend their ideas about earthworms, sprinkle their reasoning with playfulness, imbue affect in their meaning making, exhibit sensitivity to suffering and personal connections, and consider ethical treatment of animals. The study findings highlight the synergistic relationship between informational texts and hands-on explorations and point to the significance and usefulness of incorporating both in science instruction so that we maximize the richness of children's learning experiences by offering them multiple access points and pathways via the assets they bring to the classroom and the ones they co-construct with their teacher and peers. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Res Sci Teach 51: 1246–1274, 2014.
Head Over the Heart or Heart Over the Head? Cognitive Experiential Self‐Theory and Extralegal Heuristics in Juror Decision Making1

Cognitive experiential self-theory (CEST), which maintains that information can be processed in both an experiential (emotional) and a rational mode. Experiential processing fosters a reliance on heuristic cues. Previous research has demonstrated that juror verdicts are influenced by a variety of extralegal heuristics, including a defendant attractiveness cue. This research examined whether experiential processing would produce a defendant-attractiveness/leniency effect. Before awarding monetary damages in a civil trial, participants were motivated to think either rationally or experientially and were shown a photograph of either a high- or low-attractiveness defendant. Experiential mode participants awarded significantly lower damages to the plaintiff when the defendant was attractive, but the attractiveness-leniency effect was not operative for rational mode participants.
The Cognitive Psychology of Knowledge: Basic Research Findings and Educational Implications

This article reviews empirical findings that implicate personal knowledge in human information processing. It cites findings in relation to intelligence, automaticity, learning, schemata activation, analogical processing, problem solving, reading, and cognitive development, and indicates ways in which the impact of prior knowledge typically is not obvious to a teacher, and ways in which prior knowledge can, at times, disrupt the learning process (especially via misconception and know-it-all effects). Educational implications, especially the Matthew effect, are discussed
Effects of exercise training on thermoregulatory responses and blood volume in older men.

We assessed the effects of aerobic and/or resistance training on thermoregulatory responses in older men and analyzed the results in relation to the changes in peak oxygen consumption rate (VO(2 peak)) and blood volume (BV). Twenty-three older men [age, 64 +/- 1 (SE) yr; VO(2 peak), 32.7 +/- 1.1 ml. kg(-1). min(-1)] were divided into three training regimens for 18 wk: control (C; n = 7), aerobic training (AT; n = 8), and resistance training (RT; n = 8). Subjects in C were allowed to perform walking of ~10,000 steps/day, 6-7 days/wk. Subjects in AT exercised on a cycle ergometer at 50-80% VO(2 peak) for 60 min/day, 3 days/wk, in addition to the walking. Subjects in RT performed a resistance exercise, including knee extension and flexion at 60-80% of one repetition maximum, two to three sets of eight repetitions per day, 3 days/wk, in addition to the walking. After 18 wk of training, VO(2 peak) increased by 5.2 +/- 3.4% in C (P > 0.07), 20.0 +/- 2.5% in AT (P < 0.0001), and 9.7 +/- 5.1% in RT (P < 0.003), but BV remained unchanged in all trials. In addition, the esophageal temperature (T(es)) thresholds for forearm skin vasodilation and sweating, determined during 30-min exercise of 60% VO(2 peak) at 30 degrees C, decreased in AT (P < 0.02) and RT (P < 0.02) but not in C (P > 0.2). In contrast, the slopes of forearm skin vascular conductance/T(es) and sweat rate/T(es) remained unchanged in all trials, but both increased in subjects with increased BV irrespective of trials with significant correlations between the changes in the slopes and BV (P < 0.005 and P < 0.0005, respectively). Thus aerobic and/or resistance training in older men increased VO(2 peak) and lowered T(es) thresholds for forearm skin vasodilation and sweating but did not increase BV. Furthermore, the sensitivity of the increase in skin vasodilation and sweating at a given increase in T(es) was more associated with BV than with VO(2 peak).
Musical expression: an observational study of instrumental teaching

Research has shown that both music students and teachers think that expression is important. Yet, we know little about how expression is taught to students. Such knowledge is needed in order to enhance teaching of expression. The aim of this study was thus to explore the nature of instrumental music teaching in its natural context, with a focus on expression and emotion. Lessons featuring five music teachers and 12 students were video-filmed, transcribed, content analyzed, and coded into categories of feedback and language use. Results suggested that the focus of teaching was mainly on technique and on the written score. Lessons were dominated by talk, with the teacher doing most of the talking. Issues concerning expression and emotion were mostly dealt with implicitly rather than explicitly, although some teachers used a variety of strategies to enhance expression. Although there were individual differences among teachers, a common feature was the lack of clear goals, specific tasks, and systematic teaching patterns.
Schwarzschild solution in brane induced gravity

The metric of a Schwarzschild solution in brane induced gravity in five dimensions is studied. We find a nonperturbative solution for which an exact expression on the brane is obtained. We also find a linearized solution in the bulk and argue that a nonsingular exact solution in the entire space should exist. The exact solution on the brane is highly nontrivial as it interpolates between different distance scales. This part of the metric is enough to deduce an important property--the Arnowitt-Deser-Misner canonical formalism (ADM) mass of the solution is suppressed compared to the bare mass of a static source. This screening of the mass is due to nonlinear interactions which give rise to a nonzero curvature outside the source. The curvature extends away from the source to a certain macroscopic distance that coincides with the would-be strong interaction scale. The very same curvature shields the source from strong coupling effects. The four-dimensional law of gravity, including the correct tensorial structure, is recovered at observable distances. We find that the solution has no van Dam-Veltman-Zakharov discontinuity and show that the gravitational field on the brane is always weak, in spite of the fact that the solution is nonperturbative.
Attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder: diagnostic assessment methods used by advanced practice registered nurses.

BACKGROUND Children presenting with symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) have become highly prevalent in primary care practice; however, advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs) diagnostic methods used to identify and diagnose this disorder are greatly understudied. AIM This study aimed to identify APRNs recognition and diagnostic practices of children who were suspected of having an ADHD diagnosis. It also addressed APRNs comfort levels with treating and diagnosing ADHD, along with certain diagnostic methods and their perceived accuracy of these methods. METHODS This nonexperimental exploratory research study used a self-administered questionnaire to gather information about diagnostic methods used by APRNs who diagnose children with ADHD, treat the disorder, or did both. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION The questionnaires identified that the APRNs were following the American Academy of Pediatrics diagnostic guidelines for diagnosing ADHD in children more closely than other health care providers (pediatricians and family physicians). The results of this study also indicated that most APRNs were very comfortable to comfortable making an ADHD diagnosis (52.5%), and 64.4% reported the same level of comfort with treating ADHD. These findings indicate that the majority of APRNs surveyed who works with children are comfortable with diagnosing and treating ADHD.
Baseline conditions and subtractive logic in neuroimaging

Discrepancies in the patterns of cortical activation across studies may be attributable, in part, to differences in baseline tasks, and hence, reflect the limits of the subtractive logic underlying much of neuroimaging. To assess the extent of these effects, three of the most commonly used baseline conditions (rest, tone monitoring, and passive listening) were compared using phoneme discrimination as the experimental task. Eight participants were studied in a fMRI study with a 4.1 T system. The three baseline conditions systematically affected the amount of activation observed in the identical phoneme task with major affects in Broca's area, the left posterior superior temporal gyrus, and the left and right inferior parietal regions. Two central findings were: 1) a differential effect of baseline within each region, with the rest baseline condition producing the greatest amount of activation and the passive listening condition producing the least, and 2) systematic baseline task activation in the inferior parietal regions. These results emphasize the relativity of activation patterns observed in functional neuroimaging, and the necessity to specify the baseline processes in context to the experimental task processes. Hum. Brain Mapping 14:228–235, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Joseph Schwab, curriculum, curriculum studies and educational reform

The ‘Practical 1’ paper combines Schwab’s abiding concern, for the nature and quality of educational experience with another abiding concern, for how we think about what we do. The Practical 1 is the first of a set of four ‘practical’ essays. These in turn are the product of his thinking about college education and his ideas on the principles of scientific inquiry applied to education in the Practical 1. What Schwab said about education was considered provocative at its time. What Schwab was doing has continuing value. He would, no doubt, say different things in the current educational environment but what he was doing as he said them would remain close to the original.
Severe Aortic Stenosis with Impaired Left Ventricular Function and Clinical Heart Failure: Results of Valve Replacement

SUMMARY Nineteen patients, aged 58-80 years, with severe isolated aortic valve stenosis, severely reduced ejection fraction and clinical heart failure underwent aortic valve replacement between January 1970 and April 1977. Ten had concomitant coronary artery disease (all underwent additional coronary bypass surgery), 17 had angina pectoris and four had syncope. Aortic valve area index was 0.32 ± 0.03 cm2/m2 (mean ± SEM); left ventricular (LV) end-diastolic volume index was 117 i 9 ml/mi and LV ejection fraction was 0.37 i 0.02. There were four operative deaths and one late death. The follow-up time ranged from six to 74 months (38 ± 6 months). Actuarially determined three-year survival is 74 ± 10%; the expected five-year survival is the same. One patient had a serious cerebrovascular accident. Of the remaining survivors, seven were initially Functional Class IV and six Class III; currently, six are Class I and seven Class II (New York Heart Association classifications). The cardiothoracic ratio has decreased from 0.54 ± 0.03 to 0.49 ± 0.03. Repeat hemodynamic evaluation has been performed in 10 patients, 22 + 6 months after surgery. In these 10 patients, the aortic valve gradient decreased from 55 ± 7 to 11 ± 1.3 mm Hg; LV end-diastolic pressure from 22 ± 2.4 to 9 ± 1.9 mm Hg; LV end-diastolic volume index from 119 ± 16 ml/M2 to 107 ± 11 ml/m2. LV ejection fraction has increased dramatically from 0.34 ± 0.03 to 0.63 ± 0.05 and mean velocity of circumferential fiber shortening from 0.57 ± 0.08 to 1.3 ± 0.18 circ/sec.The encouraging long-term survival, improved functional class and the marked improvement in left ventricular function that occurred in our patients indicate that all patients with severe aortic stenosis in clinical heart failure should be offered aortic valve replacement.
Whose Story is it Anyway?

The role of women in family business is relatively under-investigated. This article illuminates complex relationships in a family business context, putting the family at the heart of the research as opposed to an individual owner-manager. It draws on narrative accounts of establishing a family business, as told by the founders and by the succeeding generation in three family businesses. Some of the existing literature conceptualizes women in family business as marginalized through the forces of patriarchy or paternalism. The narratives presented in this article point to alternative gender discourses and practices, and to evidence of clear resistance to patriarchy. In so doing it begins to identify the conditions under which patriarchy might be challenged in family businesses.
Warm Pool Heat Budget and Shortwave Cloud Forcing: A Missing Physics?

Ship observations and ocean models indicate that heat export from the mixed layer of the western Pacific warm pool is small (<20 watts per square meter). This value was used to deduce the effect of clouds on the net solar radiation at the sea surface. The inferred magnitude of this shortwave cloud forcing was large (≈ – 100 watts per square meter) and exceeded its observed value at the top of the atmosphere by a factor of about 1.5. This result implies that clouds (at least over the warm pool) reduce net solar radiation at the sea surface not only by reflecting a significant amount back to space, but also by trapping a large amount in the cloudy atmosphere, an inference that is at variance with most model results. The excess cloud absorption, if confirmed, has many climatic implications, including a significant reduction in the required tropics to extrattropics heat transport in the oceans.
Fostering children’s working theories: pedagogic issues and dilemmas in New Zealand

Working theories and learning dispositions are key learning outcomes in the early childhood curriculum in New Zealand. However, while there has been a focus on learning dispositions in recent years, less is known about the development of children’s working theories or the pedagogy to support this. The aim of this study was to explore children’s working theories in action in a number of Playcentre settings. The authors were interested in children’s problem‐seeking and ‐solving, theorising, acting and interactions as they engaged in everyday inquiries and conversations with others. This paper discusses some of the dilemmas for educators, including defining and recognising working theories, and deciding what to respond to, and how to respond. When attention was paid to the subtle nuances of moment‐to‐moment interactions it provided new insights into pedagogy. The findings have implications for early childhood educators as they seek to develop episodes of sustained shared thinking and support the development of children’s working theories over time.
First results from HerMES on the evolution of the submillimetre luminosity function

We have carried out two extremely deep surveys with SPIRE, one of the two cameras on Herschel, at 250 μm, close to the peak of the far-infrared background. We have used the results to investigate the evolution of the rest-frame 250-μm luminosity function out to z = 2. We find evidence for strong evolution out to z ≃ 1 but evidence for at most weak evolution beyond this redshift. Our results suggest that a significant part of the stars and metals in the universe today were formed at z ≤ 1.4 in spiral galaxies.