Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Difference in Bone Mineral Density Change at the Lateral Femoral Cortices according to Administration of Different Bisphosphonate Agents

Background To retrospectively assess whether the response of subtrochanteric lateral cortex (STLC) is different according to the bisphosphonate agents in terms of bone mineral density (BMD) change. Methods A total of 149 subjects, who had 2- to 4-year interval follow-up of BMD using dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA), were included in this retrospective study divided into following 3 groups: control group (no consumption of any anti-osteoporotic drugs, n=38), alendronate group (naïve alendronate users, n=48), risedronate group (naïve risedronate users, n=63). BMD was measured at the STLC and subtrochanteric medial cortex (STMC) in each patient by drawing rectangular ROIs at the bone cortices. The percent change of BMD at the STLC were compared between the aforementioned 3 groups by using analysis of covariance model to control five independent variables of age, body mass index, percent change of STMC, hip axis length, time interval between DXA examinations. Results The least square mean values±standard deviation of the percent change of BMD in the control, alendronate, and risedronate groups were 1.46±1.50, 2.23±1.26, and 6.96±1.11, respectively. The risedronate group showed significantly higher change of BMD percentage compared with the control (adjusted P=0.012) or alendronate (adjusted P=0.016) groups. Conclusions The percent change of BMD at the STLC in the risedronate user group was greater than the alendronate and control groups. The implication of these changes needs to be further verified.
Renormalisation of φ 4 -theory on noncommutative R 2 in the matrix base

As a ﬁrst application of our renormalisation group approach to non-local matrix models [hep-th/0305066], we prove (super-) renormalisability of Euclidean two-dimensional noncommutative φ 4 -theory. It is widely believed that this model is renormalisable in momentum space arguing that there would be logarithmic UV/IR-divergences only. Although momentum space Feynman graphs can indeed be computed to any loop order, the logarithmic UV/IR-divergence appears in the renormalised two-point function—a hint that the renormalisation is not completed. In particular, it is impossible to deﬁne the squared mass as the value of the two-point function at vanishing momentum. In contrast, in our matrix approach the renormalised N -point functions are bounded every-where and nevertheless rely on adjusting the mass only. We achieve this by introducing into the cut-oﬀ model a translation-invariance breaking regulator which is scaled to zero with the removal of the cut-oﬀ. The na¨ıve treatment without regulator would not lead to a renormalised theory.
Combination of support vector machines using genetic programming

This paper describes the combination of support vector machine (SVM) classifiers using Genetic Programming (GP) for gender classification problem. In our scheme, individual SVM classifiers are constructed through the learning of different SVM kernel functions. The predictions of SVM classifiers are then combined using GP to develop Optimal Composite Classifier (OCC). In this way, the combined decision space is more informative and discriminant. OCC has shown improved performance than that of optimized individual SVM classifiers using grid search. Another advantage of our GP combination scheme is that it automatically incorporates the issues of optimal kernel function and model selection to achieve high performance classification model. The classification performance is reported by using Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) Curve. Experiments are conducted under various feature sets to show that OCC is more informative and robust as compared to their individual SVM classifiers. Specifically, it attains high margin of improvement for small feature sets.
An Examination of Kindergarten Oral Language for African American Students: Are There Meaningful Differences in Comparison to Peers?

Understanding differences in oral language abilities is vital, particularly for children from low-income homes and minority children who are at an increased risk for academic failure because of differences or deficits in language use or exposure before they enter school. The purpose of this study was to investigate oral language performance, including receptive and expressive vocabulary, grammar, and sentence imitation, among a diverse group of kindergarten students (n = 503). Using hierarchical linear modeling, we examined the contributions of student race (African American or non–African American), student socioeconomic status (SES), and school-wide SES to oral language performance. In separate analyses, we found significant absolute effects of both race and individual SES. However, when analyzed simultaneously, only race was a significant predictor for all measures. We also found that both identification as African American and school-wide SES were significant predictors of oral language performance. We discuss implications for practice and future research.
Integrating User eXperience Practices into Software Development Processes: Implications of Subjectivity and Emergent Nature of UX

Many software companies face challenges in their work with User eXperience (UX) and how to integrate UX practices into existing development processes. A better understanding of these challenges can help researchers and practitioners better address them. Existing research does not analyse UX challenges in relation to other software quality characteristics including usability. In this empirical study, we have interviewed 17 practitioners from eight software development companies. Their responses are coded and analysed with thematic analysis. We report 11 challenges that practitioners face in their work with UX. Some of these challenges partly overlap with those reported in existing literature about usability or software quality characteristics. In contrast to these overlaps, the participants of our study either view many of the challenges unique to UX, or more severe than for usability or other quality characteristics. Although at a superficial level challenges with UX and other quality characteristics overlap, we differentiate these challenges at a deeper level through two main aspects of UX: subjectivity and emergent nature. In particular, we identify at least five issues that are essential to the very nature of UX, and add at least seven extra difficulties to the work of practitioners. These difficulties can explain why practitioners perceive the challenges to be more severe than for other quality characteristics. Our findings can be useful for researchers in identifying industrially relevant research areas and for practitioners to learn from empirically investigated challenges and base their improvement efforts on such knowledge. Investigating the overlaps can help finding research areas not only for enhancing practice of UX but also software quality in general. It also makes it easier for practitioners to spot, better understand as well as find mitigation strategies for UX challenges.
STARNET: an integrated services broadband optical network with physical star topology

We propose a new broadband local area network, STARNET, based on a physical passive star topology. STARNET implements both a packet network and a high-speed WDM circuit interconnect, which are simultaneously available to every node of the network and operate independently. As a result, STARNET supports very diverse types of traffic in an optimal way. Each node requires only two lasers and its structure permits to effectively achieve frequency stabilization for the whole network. An effort toward an experimental demonstration of a 4-node, 3 Gbit/s per node, FDDI-compatible (at the packet network level) STARNET is currently in progress at Optical Communication Research Laboratory, Stanford University.
Mediating Role of Motivation between Incentives and Employeesâ€™ Job Performance: A Conceptual Paper

The paper examines the relationships among incentives, motivation and performance conceptually. The study used theoretical and empirical studies report in deriving the relevant hypotheses related to the variables. Therefore, the paper discusses the relationships and hypothesised the relationships between the variables. It was hypothesised that all the direct relationships in the framework are positive and motivation mediates the relationship between incentives and job performance.
Grade Retention and Borderline Intelligence: The Social-Emotional Cost

This retrospective study examines the impact of grade retention in a sample of students with borderline intellectual functioning. Data were collected as part of a 7-year study of 142 children ages 6-17 with intelligence test scores between 71 and 85. Thirty-two students in the study were retained in the second or third year of the study. A comparison group matched on gender, grade, and school grades was formed from the larger sample. The groups were indistinguishable in terms of their reported social-emotional and behavioral functioning. The results indicate that following retention there were no significant differences in academic performance between the retained and nonretained groups. However, the retained group was reported to experience significantly more depressive symptoms than the nonretained group. Following grade retention, 26 of the 32 retained students had depression scores above the clinical cut off. One year after grade retention, students in the retained group continued to have high levels of depressive symptoms. These results are discussed in the context of existing grade retention research, and implications for students with borderline intellectual functioning are considered. The practice of grade retention is on the rise across the United States. Although rates of grade
Elementary Mathematics Teachers' Perceptions and Lived Experiences on Mathematical Communication.

Mathematical thinking skills and meaningful mathematical understanding are among the goals of current mathematics education. There is a wide consensus among scholars about the purpose of developing mathematical understanding and higher order thinking skills in students. However, how to develop those skills in classroom settings is an area that still needs attention. Fostering mathematical communication in classroom settings is a strategy to develop students thinking skills by mathematical talk, discussion and activities. The purpose of the study is to explore teachers’ perceptions and lived experiences about using mathematical communication in their classrooms. The study is qualitative and employed a phenomenological approach to gain in-depth insight about the nature of mathematical communication in the classroom setting. Participants were experienced elementary school mathematics teachers. They discussed about the concepts associated with, strategies to enhance, purposes and benefits and application of mathematical communication as well as impact of mathematical communication on thinking skills, during the interviews. The findings are expected to provide a basis for discussion about using mathematical communication to foster students’ higher order thinking skills and mathematical understanding.
Dependence of hypoxic cellular calcium loading on Na(+)-Ca2+ exchange.

Na(+)-Ca2+ exchange has been shown to contribute to reperfusion- and reoxygenation-induced cellular Ca2+ loading and damage in the heart. Despite the fact that both [Na+]i and [Ca2+]i have been documented to rise during ischemia and hypoxia, it remains unclear whether the rise in [Ca2+]i occurring during hypoxia is linked to the rise in [Na+]i via Na(+)-Ca2+ exchange before reoxygenation and how this relates to cellular injury. Single electrically stimulated (0.2 Hz) adult rat cardiac myocytes loaded with Na(+)-sensitive benzofuran isophthalate (SBFI), the new fluorescent probe, were exposed to glucose-free hypoxia (PO2 less than 0.02 mm Hg), and SBFI fluorescence was monitored to index changes in [Na+]i. Parallel experiments were performed with indo-1-loaded cells to index [Ca2+]i. The SBFI fluorescence ratio (excitation, 350/380 nm) rose significantly during hypoxia after the onset of ATP-depletion contracture, consistent with a rise in [Na+]i. At reoxygenation, the ratio fell rapidly toward baseline levels. The indo-1 fluorescence ratio (emission, 410/490 nm) also rose only after the onset of rigor contracture and then often showed a secondary rise early after reoxygenation at a time when [Na+]i fell. The increase in both [Na+]i and [Ca2+]i, seen during hypoxia, could be markedly reduced by performing experiments in Na(+)-free buffer. These experiments suggested that hypoxic Ca2+ loading is linked to a rise in Na+i via Na(+)-Ca2+ exchange. To show that Na(+)-Ca2+ exchange activity was not fully inhibited by profound intracellular ATP depletion, cells were exposed to cyanide, and then buffer Na+ was abruptly removed after contracture occurred. The sudden removal of buffer Na+ would be expected to stimulate cell Ca2+ entry via Na(+)-Ca2+ exchange. A large rapid rise in the indo-1 fluorescence ratio ensued, which was consistent with abrupt cell Ca2+ loading via the exchanger. The effect of reducing hypoxic buffer [Na+] on cell morphology after reoxygenation was examined. Ninety-five percent of cells studied in a normal Na(+)-containing buffer (144 mM NaCl, n = 38) and reoxygenated 30 minutes after the onset of hypoxic rigor underwent hypercontracture. Only 12% of cells studied in Na(+)-free buffer (144 mM choline chloride, n = 17) hypercontracted at reoxygenation (p less than 0.05). Myocytes were also exposed to hypoxia in the presence of R 56865, a compound that blocks noninactivating components of the Na+ current. R 56865 blunted the rise in [Na+]i typically seen after the onset of rigor, suggesting that Na+ entry may occur, in part, through voltage-gated Na+ channels. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Patch occupancy of North American mammals: is patchiness in the eye of the beholder?

Aim Intraspecific variation in patch occupancy often is related to physical features of a landscape, such as the amount and distribution of habitat. However, communities occupying patchy environments typically exhibit non‐random distributions in which local assemblages of species‐poor patches are nested subsets of assemblages occupying more species‐rich patches. Nestedness of local communities implies interspecific differences in sensitivity to patchiness. Several hypotheses have been proposed to explain interspecific variation in responses to patchiness within a community, including differences in (1) colonization ability, (2) extinction proneness, (3) tolerance to disturbance, (4) sociality and (5) level of adaptation to prevailing environmental conditions. We used data on North American mammals to compare the performance of these ‘ecological’ hypotheses and the ‘physical landscape’ hypothesis. We then compared the best of these models against models that scaled landscape structure to ecologically relevant attributes of individual species.
The Possible Effect of Clinical Recovery on Regional Cerebral Blood Flow Deficits in Fibromyalgia: A Prospective Study with Semiquantitative SPECT

Objectives: Regional deficits in cerebral blood flow have been reported in a few studies of fibromyalgia; however, there is no information on the effects of treatment and clinical recovery on these abnormalities. We evaluated the effects of amitriptyline treatment and consequent clinical recovery on cerebral blood flow changes in fibromyalgia. Methods: We assessed cerebral blood flow with a semiquantitative functional brain mapping technique of single-photon emission computed tomography in 14 patients with primary fibromyalgia before and after 3 months of amitriptyline treatment. Patients were followed by visual analog scale, tender point count, and Beck Depression Inventory for clinical improvement. Results: There was statistically significant improvement in visual analog scale and tender point count after treatment. Beck Depression Inventory did not change significantly. Statistically significant blood flow increase in bilateral hemithalami and basal ganglia and decrease in bilateral temporal, left temporooccipital, and right occipital lobes were observed on single-photon emission computed tomography after treatment. Conclusions: We speculate that these findings could indicate that deficits in cerebral blood flow in fibromyalgia improve parallel to clinical recovery.
The World Federation of Societies of Biological Psychiatry (WFSBP) Guidelines for the Biological Treatment of Bipolar Disorders: Update 2009 on the Treatment of Acute Mania

These updated guidelines are based on a first edition that was published in 2003, and have been edited and updated with the available scientific evidence until end of 2008. Their purpose is to supply a systematic overview of all scientific evidence pertaining to the treatment of acute mania in adults. The data used for these guidelines have been extracted from a MEDLINE and EMBASE search, from the clinical trial database clinicaltrials.gov, from recent proceedings of key conferences, and from various national and international treatment guidelines. Their scientific rigor was categorised into six levels of evidence (A–F). As these guidelines are intended for clinical use, the scientific evidence was finally asigned different grades of recommendation to ensure practicability.
A hybrid multi-objective optimization procedure using PCX based NSGA-II and sequential quadratic programming

Despite the existence of a number of procedures for multi-objective optimization using evolutionary algorithms, there is still the need for a systematic and unbiased comparison of different approaches on a carefully chosen set of test problems. In this paper, a hybrid approach using PCX based NSGA- II and sequential quadratic programming (SQP) is applied on 19 benchmark test problems consisting of two, three and five objectives. PCX-NSGA-II is used as a population based algorithm where SQP is used as a local search procedure. A population based approach helps in finding the non-dominated set of solutions with a good spread, whereas SQP improves the obtained set of non-dominated solutions locally. The results obtained by the present approach shows mixed performance on the chosen test problems.
Intrauterine Exposure to Dexamethasone Impairs Proliferation But Not Neuronal Differentiation in the Dentate Gyrus of Newborn Common Marmoset Monkeys

Glucocorticoids applied prenatally alter birth weight and the maturation of the lungs. Moreover, glucocorticoids impair neuronal proliferation and differentiation in the hippocampal dentate gyrus. In the present study proliferation and neuronal differentiation in the dentate gyrus were studied in newborn common marmoset monkeys which were intrauterinely exposed to the synthetic glucocorticoid dexamethasone (DEX). Pregnant marmoset monkeys received DEX (5 mg/kg body weight) daily either during early (days 42–48) or late (days 90–96) pregnancy. In the hippocampi of newborn monkeys immunohistochemistry was performed with markers of proliferation (Ki‐67), apoptosis (in situ tailing) as well as early and late neuronal differentiation (calretinin and calbindin). Both after early and late intrauterine exposure to DEX, proliferation of dentate gyrus cells was significantly decreased (P < 0.05). The density of apoptotic neurons was not altered by DEX treatment. Quantification of calretinin‐ and calbindin‐immunoreactive neurons showed no significant differences between DEX‐exposed and control animals. In conclusion, the proliferation of putative precursor cells but not the differentiation into mature cells was impaired in the dentate gyrus of newborn marmosets exposed intrauterinely to DEX.
Adolescent time attitude scale (ATAS) scores and academic outcomes in secondary school females in New Zealand

Multiple associations between time-related variables and several educational outcomes have been established previously. Of these time-related variables, the majority have focused on attitudes and perceptions related to the future, but not to the present or the past. This paper examined the psychometric properties of a multidimensional measure of time attitudes, and whether time attitudes were related to several academic variables and to attitudes to teachers and towards school. A total of 579 students at an all-female New Zealand high school completed the adolescent time attitude scale (ATAS). Results from the confirmatory factor analysis showed that the six-factor ATAS model had acceptable fit indices with robust internal consistency estimates for each of the factors in that model. Time attitudes had no meaningful relationships with GPA, academic self-ranking or wagging/cutting school, but were related to attitudes toward school and teacher. However, time attitude profiles had meaningful relationships to all variables except wagging school.
Voice is Not Enough: The Importance of Influence in Political Trust and Policy Assessments

Procedural justice researchers have long argued that giving people a voice in decision-making proceedings leads to heightened satisfaction with the outputs of those processes and enhanced compliance with decisions. More recently, this concept has been applied to the political arena with the suggestion that simply having a voice in the proceedings may not be enough. Similarly, the attitudes of external efficacy and political trust have long been linked. Integrating these two lines of research to incorporate important lessons about the dimensionality of external efficacy, I argue that giving people a voice in politics is not a universal remedy for ailing democracy. A voice that is perceived to have no influence can be more detrimental than not perceiving a voice at all. Moving out of the experimental setting by using survey data collected in a 2001 study of attitudes toward municipal government, I examine the impact that perceptions of voice and influence have on feelings of policy satisfaction and political trust. Findings suggest that perceptions of voice and influence do indeed have an impact on feelings of political trust and policy satisfaction. Neither political trust nor policy satisfaction responds positively to perceptions of increased voice alone. Believing that citizen voice, loud or quiet, has an influence is important. Feelings of policy satisfaction and political trust are increased only when respondents believe citizens had both increased voice and influence.