Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Knowledge about the association between periodontal diseases and diabetes mellitus: contrasting dentists and physicians.

BACKGROUND There is a strong body of evidence that supports the relationship between periodontal diseases and diabetes mellitus (DM). Many patients are unaware of the effects of diabetes on oral health. Whether health care providers are applying the information about the link between DM and periodontal diseases in their practices depends on the levels of their knowledge of such valuable information. Therefore, the aims of this study are to evaluate the knowledge of dental and medical practitioners concerning the effects of diabetes on periodontal health and to find out if the practitioners are aware of the bidirectional relationship between periodontal diseases and DM. METHODS This was a cross-sectional survey of randomly selected general practitioners practicing in Kuwait. Participants were asked about specific periodontal complications that they believed patients diagnosed with diabetes were more susceptible to, and their awareness of the bidirectional relationship between diabetes and periodontal diseases was evaluated. RESULTS A total of 510 general practitioners (232 physicians and 278 dentists) participated in the study. There were no significant differences between the two groups regarding mean ages, sex distributions, and years in practice. Only 50% of all study participants believed that patients with diabetes were more susceptible to tooth loss because of periodontal diseases than were individuals without diabetes. Dentists were significantly more aware of gingival bleeding, tooth mobility, and alveolar bone resorption than were physicians. Factors significantly associated with having knowledge about the effects of diabetes on periodontal health in logistic regression analyses were older age, female sex, and the dental profession. CONCLUSION The knowledge about the association between periodontal diseases and DM should be increased among dental and medical practitioners to effectively prevent, manage, and control diabetes and periodontal diseases.
Cyclic Deformation Behaviour of Three Austenitic Cast CrMnNi TRIP/TWIP Steels with Various Ni Content

This study presents the cyclic deformation behaviour of three high‐alloyed austenitic cast steels which are characterized by different chemical compositions leading to different austenite stabilities and stacking fault energies. Thus, depending on the chemical composition different deformation mechanisms arise which have a significant influence on the cyclic deformation behaviour and life time relations.
In depth analysis of the mechanism of action of metal-dependent sigma factors: characterization of CorE2 from Myxococcus xanthus

Extracytoplasmic function sigma factors represent the third pillar of signal-transduction mechanisms in bacteria. The variety of stimuli they recognize and mechanisms of action they use have allowed their classification into more than 50 groups. We have characterized CorE2 from Myxococcus xanthus, which belongs to group ECF44 and upregulates the expression of two genes when it is activated by cadmium and zinc. Sigma factors of this group contain a Cys-rich domain (CRD) at the C terminus which is essential for detecting metals. Point mutations at the six Cys residues of the CRD have revealed the contribution of each residue to CorE2 activity. Some of them are essential, while others are either dispensable or their mutations only slightly affect the activity of the protein. However, importantly, mutation of Cys174 completely shifts the specificity of CorE2 from cadmium to copper, indicating that the Cys arrangement of the CRD determines the metal specificity. Moreover, the conserved CxC motif located between the σ2 domain and the σ4. 2 region has also been found to be essential for activity. The results presented here contribute to our understanding of the mechanism of action of metal-dependent sigma factors and help to define new common features of the members of this group of regulators.
Does Style of Thinking Make Differences in Consumer Judgments on Brand Extensions

Category similarity and benefit similarity have been identified as two important factors that determine a brand extension’s success. However, which of these two factors has a greater impact on consumers’ evaluations has received little attention. This study posits that the relative advantages are moderated by people’s style of thinking – holistic versus analytic. Specifically, analytic (holistic) thinkers have more favorable evaluations about benefit-similarity (category-similarity) extensions than category-similarity (benefit-similarity) extensions. Results from an experimental design supported this proposed hypotheses. Keywords: Style of Thinking, Culture, Brand Extension, Benefit Similarity, Category Similarity To cite this document: Shin-Shin Chang, "Does Style of Thinking Make Differences in Consumer Judgments on Brand Extensions? ", Contemporary Management Research, Vol.10, No.2, pp.165-178, 2014. Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi. org/10.7903/cmr.12002
OVERVIEW OF THE ADULT TREATMENT PANEL (ATP) III GUIDELINES

Although medical evidence suggests that the mortality rates for cardiovascular disease can be significantly reduced by lowering blood cholesterol levels, cardiovascular disease ranks as the leading cause of mortality in the United States. Approximately 100 million American adults have total blood cholesterol levels of 200 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL) and higher, and about 40 million of these have levels of 240 mg/dL or higher. Individuals with total blood cholesterol levels of 240 mg/dL or higher are at increased risk for coronary heart disease (CHD). Since 1988, the National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP) has issued guidelines identifying lowdensity lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C) as the primary target of cholesterol therapy. The initial guidelines, Adult Treatment Panel (ATP) I, outlined a strategy for primary prevention of CHD in persons with high levels of LDL-C, defined at that time as 160 mg/dL or higher, or those with borderline-high LDL-C and multiple risk factors. ATP II restated the importance of this approach as well as recommending the intensive management of LDL-C in persons with established CHD. For such patients, ATP II set a new, lower LDL-C goal of 100 mg/dL or lower. Like its predecessors, ATP III, issued in May 2001, emphasizes the role of diet and exercise in decreasing the risk for developing CHD. Unlike the earlier versions, the revised guidelines advocate a more aggressive approach to testing and management of LDLC, with a new focus on CHD prevention in persons with multiple risk factors. Key features of ATP III include:
Temporal perspective and parental intention to accept the human papillomavirus vaccination for their daughter.

OBJECTIVE A school-based vaccination programme to prevent infection with the human papillomavirus (HPV), the virus that causes cervical cancer, began in October 2008 in England. The present study evaluated the role of temporal perspective in the formation of attitudes and intentions towards the vaccine. DESIGN A cross-sectional correlational survey of 245 parents of 11-12-year-old girls. METHODS Parents read a passage about the HPV vaccine containing information about benefits and concerns parents might have about the vaccine. They then completed a thought listing task and measures of attitude, vaccine efficacy, anticipated regret, intention, and consideration of future consequences. RESULTS Parents with higher consideration of future consequences generated more positive relative to negative thoughts, held more positive attitudes, higher response efficacy, reported higher anticipated regret about not vaccinating their daughters and held more positive intentions. Mediation analyses suggested that the influence of thoughts generated on intention to vaccinate was partially mediated by attitude, perceived vaccine efficacy, and anticipated regret if the vaccine were not taken up. CONCLUSION Messages emphasizing efficacy of vaccination and anticipated regret are likely to promote vaccination uptake.
ARBITER: Arterial Biology for the Investigation of the Treatment Effects of Reducing Cholesterol: A Randomized Trial Comparing the Effects of Atorvastatin and Pravastatin on Carotid Intima Medial Thickness

Background—Whether marked LDL reduction to levels well below 100 mg/dL would further reduce the burden of cardiovascular disease is controversial. We compared the effects of 2 statins with widely differing potencies for LDL reduction (pravastatin 40 mg/d and atorvastatin 80 mg/d) on carotid intima-media thickness (CIMT). Methods and Results—This was a single-center, randomized, clinical trial of 161 patients (mean age, 60 years; 71.4% male; 46% with known cardiovascular disease) that met National Cholesterol Education Program (NCEP) II criteria for lipid-lowering therapy. The effects of atorvastatin (80 mg/d; n=79) and pravastatin (40 mg/d; n=82) on CIMT were compared using blinded, serial assessments of the far wall of the distal common carotid artery. Baseline CIMT and other characteristics were similar between study groups. As anticipated, atorvastatin was substantially more potent for LDL reduction after 12 months: in the atorvastatin group, LDL cholesterol was 76±23 mg/dL after 12 months (−48.5%); LDL cholesterol was 110±30 mg/dL in the pravastatin group (−27.2%;P <0.001). Atorvastatin induced progressive CIMT regression over 12 months (change in CIMT, −0.034±0.021 mm), whereas CIMT was stable in the pravastatin group (change of 0.025± 0.017 mm;P =0.03). Conclusions—Marked LDL reduction (<100 mg/dL) with a high-potency statin provides superior efficacy for atherosclerosis regression at 1 year. This early effect on CIMT, a surrogate for clinical benefit, suggests that marked LDL reduction with synthetic statins may provide enhanced reduction in clinical coronary event rates.
Energy Detection of Unknown Signals in Fading and Diversity Reception

A comprehensive performance analysis of the energy detector over fading channels with single antenna reception or with antenna diversity reception is developed. For the no-diversity case and for the maximal ratio combining (MRC) diversity case, with either Nakagami-m or Rician fading, expressions for the probability of detection are derived by using the moment generating function (MGF) method and probability density function (PDF) method. The former, which avoids some difficulties of the latter, uses a contour integral representation of the Marcum-Q function. For the equal gain combining (EGC) diversity case, with Nakagami-m fading, expressions for the probability of detection are derived for the cases L =2,3,4 and L >; 4, where L is the number of diversity branches. For the selection combining (SC) diversity, with Nakagami-m fading, expressions for the probability of detection are derived for the cases L =2 and L >; 2. A discussion on the comparison between MGF and PDF methods is presented. We also derive several series truncation error bounds that allow series termination with a finite number of terms for a given figure of accuracy. These results help quantify and understand the achievable improvement in the energy detector's performance with diversity reception. Numerical and simulation results are also provided.
Atrioventricular valves of the mouse: III. Collagenous skeleton and myotendinous junction

Background: The leaflet tissue of the mouse atrioventricular (AV) valves contains a system of wavy collagen bundles that organize like tendons, orientate along lines of tension, and constitute an essential component of the valve tissue. The organization of these bundles is different in the two AV valves, reflecting differences in the anatomy of the entire valvular complex. Further insights into this kind of organization are needed to gain a complete understanding of the functional anatomy of the mouse AV valves.
Human Cytosolic Extracts Stabilize the HIV-1 Core

ABSTRACT The stability of the HIV-1 core in the cytoplasm is crucial for productive HIV-1 infection. Mutations that stabilize or destabilize the core showed defects on HIV-1 reverse transcription and infection. We developed a novel and simple assay to measure the stability of in vitro-assembled HIV-1 CA-NC complexes. The assay allowed us to demonstrate that cytosolic extracts strongly stabilize the HIV-1 core. Interestingly, stabilization of in vitro-assembled HIV-1 CA-NC complexes is not due solely to macromolecular crowding, suggesting the presence of specific cellular factors that stabilize the HIV-1 core. By using our novel assay, we measured the abilities of different drugs, such as PF74, CAP-1, IXN-053, cyclosporine, Bi2 (also known as BI-2), and the peptide CAI, to modulate the stability of in vitro-assembled HIV-1 CA-NC complexes. Interestingly, we found that PF74 and Bi2 strongly stabilized HIV-1 CA-NC complexes. On the other hand, the peptide CAI destabilized HIV-1 CA-NC complexes. We also found that purified cyclophilin A destabilizes in vitro-assembled HIV-1 CA-NC complexes in the presence of cellular extracts in a cyclosporine-sensitive manner. In agreement with previous observations using the fate-of-the-capsid assay, we also demonstrated the ability of recombinant CPSF6 to stabilize HIV-1 CA-NC complexes. Overall, our findings suggested that cellular extracts specifically stabilize the HIV-1 core. We believe that our assay can be a powerful tool to assess HIV-1 core stability in vitro.
Misregulation of Sex-Lethal and Disruption of Male-Specific Lethal Complex Localization in Drosophila Species Hybrids

A major model system for the study of evolutionary divergence between closely related species has been the unisexual lethality resulting from reciprocal crosses of Drosophila melanogaster and D. simulans. Sex-lethal (Sxl), a critical gene for sex determination, is misregulated in these hybrids. In hybrid males from D. melanogaster mothers, there is an abnormal expression of Sxl and a failure of localization of the male-specific lethal (MSL) complex to the X chromosome, which causes changes in gene expression. Introduction of a Sxl mutation into this hybrid genotype will allow expression of the MSL complex but there is no sequestration to the X chromosome. Lethal hybrid rescue (Lhr), which allows hybrid males from this cross to survive, corrects the SXL and MSL defects. The reciprocal cross of D. simulans mothers by D. melanogaster males exhibits underexpression of Sxl in embryos.
Semantic Similarity for Detecting Recognition Errors in Automatic Speech Transcripts

Browsing through large volumes of spoken audio is known to be a challenging task for end users. One way to alleviate this problem is to allow users to gist a spoken audio document by glancing over a transcript generated through Automatic Speech Recognition. Unfortunately, such transcripts typically contain many recognition errors which are highly distracting and make gisting more difficult. In this paper we present an approach that detects recognition errors by identifying words which are semantic outliers with respect to other words in the transcript. We describe several variants of this approach. We investigate a wide range of evaluation measures and we show that we can significantly reduce the number of errors in content words, with the trade-off of losing some good content words.
Some improvements on multipartite table methods

This paper presents an unified view of most previous table-lookup-and-addition methods: bipartite tables, SBTM, STAM and multipartite methods. This new definition allows a more accurate computation of the error entailed by these methods. Being more general, it also allows an exhaustive design space exploration which has been implemented, and leads to tables smaller than previously published ones by up to 50%. Some results have been synthesised for Virtex FPGAs, and are discussed.
Sparsity-Aware Possibilistic Clustering Algorithms

In this paper, two novel possibilistic clustering algorithms are presented, which utilize the concept of sparsity. The first one, called sparse possibilistic c-means, exploits sparsity and can deal well with closely located clusters that may also be of significantly different densities. The second one, called sparse adaptive possibilistic c-means, is an extension of the first, where now the involved parameters are dynamically adapted. The latter can deal well with even more challenging cases, where, in addition to the above, clusters may be of significantly different variances. More specifically, it provides improved estimates of the cluster representatives, while, in addition, it has the ability to estimate the actual number of clusters, given an overestimate of it. Extensive experimental results on both synthetic and real datasets support the previous statements.
Determining the Levels of Volatile Organic Pollutants in Urban Air Using a Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry Method

The paper presents the application of a method based on coupled gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, using an isotopically labelled internal standard for the quantitative analysis of benzene (B), toluene (T), ethyl benzene (E), and o-, m-, p-xylenes (X). Their atmospheric concentrations were determined based on short-term sampling, in different sites of Cluj-Napoca, a highly populated urban centre in N-W Romania, with numerous and diversified road vehicles with internal combustion engines. The method is relatively inexpensive and simple and shows good precision and linearity in the ranges of 7–60 μg/m3 (B), 13–90 μg/m3 (T), 7–50 μg/m3 (E), 10–70 μg/m3 (X-m,p), and 20–130 μg/m3 (X-o). The limits of quantitation/detection of the method LOQ/LOD are of 10/5 μg/m3 (Xo), 5/3 μg/m3 (B, E, X-m,p), and of 3/1 μg/m3 (T), respectively.
Cellular Solids: The mechanics of foams: basic results

Introduction and synopsis Almost any solid can be foamed. Techniques now exist for making three-dimensional cellular solids out of polymers, metals, ceramics and even glasses. Manmade foams, manufactured on a large scale, are used for absorbing the energy of impacts (in packaging and crash protection) and in lightweight structures (in the cores of sandwich panels, for instance); their efficient use requires a detailed understanding of their mechanical behaviour. Even when the primary use is not mechanical – when the foam is used for thermal insulation, or flotation, or as a filter, for example – the strength and fracture behaviour are still important. Nature, too, uses cellular materials on a large scale. Often the primary function is mechanical, as with wood (to support the tree) or cancellous bone (to give the animal a light, stiff, frame). In other cases it may not be: the shape of the cells in leaf and stalk, or in cork and sponge, may be dictated by the need to optimize fluid transport or thermal insulation or surface area, but even here the mechanical properties are important because the cells still support the structure. And there is the consuming subject of food. Bread – The Staff of Life – and many other starch-based foods are foams. Foaming with yeast or CO 2 gives the tough, leathery starch a crisp crunchiness which is attractive to bite on and chew (mechanical operations); but it also makes transporting the product more difficult because its crushing strength is reduced.
Group field theory and simplicial gravity path integrals: A model for Holst-Plebanski gravity

In a recent work, a dual formulation of group field theories as non-commutative quantum field theories has been proposed, providing an exact duality between spin foam models and non-commutative simplicial path integrals for constrained BF theories. In light of this new framework, we define a model for 4d gravity which includes the Immirzi parameter γ. It reproduces the Barrett-Crane amplitudes when γ = ∞, but differs from existing models otherwise; in particular it does not require any rationality condition for γ. We formulate the amplitudes both as BF simplicial path integrals with explicit non-commutative B variables, and in spin foam form in terms of Wigner 15j-symbols. Finally, we briefly discuss the correlation between neighboring simplices, often argued to be a problematic feature, for example, in the Barrett-Crane model.
Enhanced endothelial progenitor cell mobilization and function through direct manipulation of hypoxia inducible factor‐1α

Endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) play a significant role in physiological and pathological hypoxia resistance and neovascularization processes. The ability to mobilize EPCs from bone marrow usually indicates a prognostic endpoint of several vascular diseases. Thus, it is of great value to study possible approaches for activating functional EPCs. The mobilization/homing of EPCs from bone marrow is signalled by stromal‐derived factor‐1 (SDF‐1), which is regulated by the hypoxia‐inducible factor‐1α (HIF‐1α). This study investigated the effects of directly manipulating HIF‐1α on human EPCs in vitro. EPCs were isolated from human umbilical cord blood. Lentiviral vectors carrying HIF‐1α and shRNA targeting HIF‐1α were constructed for gene modification of the EPCs. Results demonstrated that after overexpression of HIF‐1α by lentiviral transfection, the proliferative capacity of EPCs was elevated while the apoptosis was inhibited and vice versa. On the other hand, the expression of angiogenic‐related cytokines including SDF‐1 was upregulated on both gene and protein levels when EPCs were transfected with HIF‐1α. These results indicate that direct HIF‐1α manipulation over human EPCs is an effective method to promote EPC function and mobilization, thus suggest that drugs or reagents that elevate HIF‐1α expression are capable of treating ischemic diseases. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Direct Participation and Employee Learning at Work

The creation of a learning environment at work has been seen as an essential concomitant of the growth of an advanced economy. This article explores the implications of direct participation for different types of employee learning, drawing upon the British Skills and Employment Surveys of 2006 and 2012. It confirms that direct participation is strongly associated with enhanced learning opportunities at work but finds important differences in the benefits of specific forms of direct participation. Moreover, direct participation was found to be particularly important for those in less favorable work contexts with respect to technological level and skill.