Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Permissive Summer Temperatures of the 2010 European West Nile Fever Upsurge

Background In the summer of 2010, Europe experienced outbreaks of West Nile Fever (WNF) in humans, which was preceded by hot spells. The objective of this study was to identify potential drivers of these outbreaks, such as spring and summer temperatures, relative humidity (RH), and precipitation. Methods Pearson and lag correlations, binary and multinomial logistic regressions were used to assess the relationship between the climatic parameters and these outbreaks. Results For human morbidity, significant (<0.05) positive correlations were observed between a number of WNF cases and temperature, with a geographic latitude gradient: northern (“colder”) countries displayed strong correlations with a lag of up to four weeks, in contrast to southern (“warmer”) countries, where the response was immediate. The correlations with RH were weaker, while the association with precipitation was not consistent. Horse morbidity started three weeks later than in humans where integrated surveillance was conducted, and no significant associations with temperature or RH were found for lags of 0 to 4 weeks. Conclusions Significant temperature deviations during summer months might be considered environmental precursors of WNF outbreaks in humans, particularly at more northern latitudes. These insights can guide vector abatement strategies by health practitioners in areas at risk for persistent transmission cycles.
Students' perceptions of learning environments in Gonabad University of Medical Sciences

Background: recently, many changes have been made in medical education all over the world. For this reason, students’ perception of the educational environment has attracted attention. Goal of this research is to compare perception of the students who are passing training courses with the students who are passing theoretical courses and compare two genders and different fields of study in Gonabad University of Medical Sciences in 2011. methods: this research is cross-sectional in which 234 students of nursing and midwifery(98students), health(57 students), paramedicine(62students) and medicine(17 students) of Gonabad University of Medical Sciences participated. Data collection instrument was DREEM (Dundee Ready Educational Environment Measure). This standard questionnaire included 50 items in five fields of learning , students’ perceptions of atmosphere, students’ perceptions of teachers, students’ academic self-perception, students’ social self perception. The obtained data were analyzed after inclusion in software SPSS, version 20. Results: research findings showed that total mean of DREEM score for students was 108.52 out of 200. Students of theoretical course were more satisfied with learning environments than the training course students. This is statistically significant(P=0.003). There was no statistical difference between female and male students. There is significant relationship between nursing, midwifery and paramedicine(P=0.01). Conclusion: Generally, although students evaluated learning environment in university from Desirable, it is necessary to pay more attention to educational principles and create suitable educational environment for better learning of the students and the use of instruments such as DREEM can contribute to process of change in education.
Consumption Externalities, Habit Formation and Equilibrium Efficiency

We analyze the welfare properties of the competitive equilibrium in a capital accumulation model where individual preferences are subject to both habit formation and consumption spillovers. Using an additive specification for preferences, according to which the argument in the utility function is a linear combination of present and past values of own consumption and consumption spillovers, we analyze the circumstances under which these spillovers are a source of inefficiency. It is shown that consumption externalities have to interact with habits in order to generate an inefficient dynamic equilibrium. Finally, we characterize optimal tax policies aimed at restoring efficient decentralized paths. Copyright The editors of the "Scandinavian Journal of Economics", 2004 .
Approximation schemes for scheduling on parallel machines

We discuss scheduling problems with m identical machines and n jobs where each job has to be assigned to some machine. The goal is to optimize objective functions that solely depend on the machine completion times. As a main result, we identify some conditions on the objective function, under which the resulting scheduling problems possess a polynomial-time approximation scheme. Our result contains, generalizes, improves, simplifies, and unifies many other results in this area in a natural way.
A confirmatory factor analysis of the Observer Alexithymia Scale in treatment seeking alcohol-dependent patients

Confirmatory factor analyses evaluated the factorial validity of the Observer Alexithymia Scale (OAS) in an alcohol-dependent sample. Observation was conducted by clinical psychologists. All models examined were rejected, given their poor fit. Given the psychometric limitations of the OAS shown in this study, the OAS may not be the most appropriate measure to use early in treatment among alcohol-dependent individuals.
Accuracy of the ankle-brachial index using the SCVL®, an arm and ankle automated device with synchronized cuffs, in a population with increased cardiovascular risk

Objective To evaluate the accuracy of the ankle brachial index (ABI) measured with the SCVL® (“screening cardiovascular lab”; GenNov, Paris, France), an automated device with synchronized arm and ankle cuffs with an automatic ABI calculation. Methods Patients were consecutively included in a cardiovascular prevention unit if they presented with at least two cardiovascular risk factors. ABI measurements were made using the SCVL, following a synchronized assessment of brachial and ankle systolic pressure. These values were compared to the ABI obtained with the usual Doppler-assisted method. Results We included 157 patients. Mean age was 59.1 years, 56.8% had hypertension, 22.3% had diabetes mellitus, and 17.6% were current smokers. An abnormal ABI was observed in 17.2% with the SCVL and in 16.2% with the Doppler. The prevalence rates of an abnormal ABI by patient measured with each device, ie, 15.7% (confidence interval [CI] 0.95: [11.8; 20.4]) or 14.3% (CI 0.95: [10.7; 18.9]), did not differ. The coefficient of variation of Doppler and SCVL measures was 15.8% and 15.1%, respectively. The regression line between the two measurement methods was statistically significant. The value-to-value comparison also shows a difference of mean equal to 0.010 (CI 0.95: [−0.272; 0.291]) (r = −0.055). Reproducibility of ABI measurements with the SCVL showed a difference of mean equal to 0.009 (CI 0.95: [−0.203; 0.222]), without heteroscedasticity (r = −0.003). Conclusion The SCVL is a fast and easy to use automated oscillometric device for the determination of ABI. The use of this two-synchronized-cuff device correlates well with the gold standard Doppler ultrasound method and is reproducible. The SCVL may ease the screening for peripheral arterial disease in routine medical practice.
Leo the Late Bloomer

BEFORE VIEWING ACTIVITIES Share the book Leo the Late Bloomer with children. Then ask: "How do you think Leo felt about not being able to do the things his friends could do? "How do you think Leo’s parents felt at the beginning of the story? "What helped Leo learn to draw and write and speak? "How do you think Leo and his family felt at the end of the story? Encourage children to talk about some new skills they are working to master. Ask them to describe
Mild Cognitive Impairment in Parkinson's Disease

Background: To determ ine the frequency of m ild cognitive im pairm ent (M CI) of Parkinson’s disease (PD, PDMCI ) and its subtypes among non-dement ed PD patients, and to identify the influence of the age and presenting sym ptom on the development of PDMCI. Methods: A total 141 non-demented PD patients underwent a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment including attention, language, visuospatial, memory and frontal functions. PDMCI was defined by neuropsychological testing and was classified into five subtypes. Patients were divided into two groups (tremor vs. akinetic-rigid type) for presenting symptom and three groups according to the age. Neuropsychological performance of patients was compared with normative data. Results: Almost half (49.6%) of non-demented PD patients had impairment in at least one domain and can be considered as having PDMCI. Executive type of PDMCI was the most frequent and amnestic, visuospatial, linguistic and attention types followed in the order of frequency. The population of PDMCI was increasing as the age of disease onset was higher. Whereas the frequency of executive and amnestic types of PDMCI was comparable in younger group, executive type was the most frequent in older group. The patients with tremor dominant type performed worse on tests, particularly on attention test. Conclusions: MCI was common even in the early stage of PD and the subtype was diverse. Unlike MCI developing Alzheimer’s disease later, executive type of PDMCI was the most common. Age was an important risk factor for development of MCI in PD. The concept of MCI should be introduced in PD.
Boy and Girl Talk : A sociolinguistic study of international high school students' turn-taking patterns from a gender perspective

The aspect of gender and language has been thoroughly studied by sociolinguists. Research has however mainly focused on adults. This study investigates whether the concepts of male competitiveness and female cooperation are valid among Swedish high school students and if boys and girls use different turn-taking strategies when engaging in a conversation. Eight high school students participated in a conversation which was recorded. The topic, the justification for the existence of Systembolaget, which is a government run off-license, was chosen as it is a controversial subject on which young people have diversified opinions.Hedges, minimal responses, tag questions, interruptions and overlaps were categories used as parameters to quantify how cooperative or competitive the participants were. Categories were chosen as other sociolinguists have found that these are areas where men and women use language differently.The behaviours of the participants were also connected to Grice’s conversational maxims. The maxims serve as an explanation as to how turn-taking and turn-taking order took place in the recorded interaction.The concept of female cooperation and male competitiveness proved to be ambiguous, as the girls adopted cooperative strategies, such as hedges and minimal responses, as well as a more competitive strategy by using far more overlaps and interruptions than the participating boys did.
Working conditions and health: Evidence on inequalities in Spain

This thesis is concerned with the relationship between disability and working conditions. In the first two chapters we investigate how past and current working conditions, in conjunction with other socio-demographic variables, contribute to disability. We focus on differences by migrant status (first chapter) and by period or cohort (second chapter) specifically, by comparing successive cohorts of young people aged 25 to 34. In the third chapter we take up the opposite perspective and we analyse the effect of permanent disability on the working life of the individual. The main result of the first chapter is that migrant status – with differences among regions of origin – significantly affects both disability and the probability of being employed in a high-risk occupation. In spite of immigrants’ working conditions being objectively worse, they exhibit lower probability of becoming disabled than natives because the impact of such conditions on disability is much smaller in their case. Our results also suggest that not only the risks of illness and injury, widely recognized, involve higher rates of disability. Unskilled labour and employment instability are also associated with increased risks of disability and its impact is greatest among later-born cohorts, as the second chapter reveals. Attending to differences by cohort, job insecurity has a significant and huge impact on disability for all birth cohorts. By contrast, the effect of temporary employment “per se” is controversial without considering other factors, like the changes in Employment Protection Legislation motivated by the labour market reforms of the last two decades. Finally, the results of the third chapter show that only 10% of disabled people remain in the labour market after the occurrence of the disability. The potential disincentives to employment are controversial. While it is true that higher disability pensions are associated with lower probabilities of employment, it is also observed that, in general, wages and income decreases as a result of a disability, being the decision of remaining out of the labour market not entirely attributable to the worker and his pension level. Conversely, it is plausible that the alleged disincentives to employment come too, and largely, from the labour market. The wage gap between workers with and without IP are high and significant, and only in part can be explained by differences in productivity, so that the unexplained difference could be attributed to discrimination in the labour market against people with disability. The data sets employed in the three chapters have been elaborated from the Continuous Sample of Working Lives, known as the MCVL in Spanish (from "Muestra Continua de Vidas Laborales"), a Spanish administrative data set containing work histories of workers and pensioners available since 2004.
LD, Interpsonal Understanding, and Social Behavior in the Classroom

This study used Baron and Kenny's (1986) criteria for mediation to investigate the extent to which interpersonal understanding mediates the relation between learning disabilities (LD) and social adaptation in the classroom. Twenty-two children with and 22 children without a diagnosis of LD completed a semistructured developmental dinical interview measure of interpersonal understanding. They were also rated by their fourth- and fifth-grade teachers on a measure of sodal adaptation in the classroom. Interpersonal understanding and social adaptation in the classroom were found to be positively correlated. Children with LD exhibited less interpersonal understanding and sodal adaptation. Although this group difference on social adaptation was greatly reduced when interpersonal understanding was statistically controlled, it remained statistically significant. These results suggest that reduced social adaptation in the classroom and lower interpersonal understanding are both associated with a diagnosis of LD. However, they do not conclusively support the claim that interpersonal understanding mediates the relation between LD and social adaptation. Thus, whether the social difficulties of people with LD stem from the same complex phenomena that produce these people's learning problems remains an open question.
BMI percentile curves for Chinese children aged 7–18 years, in comparison with the WHO and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention references

Abstract Objective To establish BMI percentile curves that describe the contemporary BMI distribution among Chinese children, and to compare their BMI percentile curves with those in two recently developed international references: the WHO and the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (US CDC) growth references. Design A cross-sectional national survey. Setting Thirty provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in China. Subjects Nationally representative sample of 232 140 school students aged 7–18 years. Results BMI percentile curves were established using the LMS method, and were compared with the percentiles of the WHO and the US CDC references. BMI distributions and growth patterns in Chinese children were dramatically different from those in the two international reference populations. Compared with the international reference populations, younger Chinese boys (7–12 years of age) had higher values of the percentiles above the median and lower values of the percentiles below the median, suggesting that they had larger proportions of extreme BMI values in both directions. Chinese girls and older Chinese boys (15–18 years of age) had substantially lower BMI percentiles than their counterparts in the reference populations, particularly those high percentiles among older age groups. Conclusions The present study described the unique patterns of BMI curves at the national level, and these curves are useful as a reference for comparing different regions and for monitoring changes over time in Chinese children. Higher proportions of children with extreme values in both directions indicate that China is currently facing both an increasing level of obesity and a high level of undernutrition, simultaneously.
Protracted neurotoxicity from chlordane sprayed to kill termites.

Over 250 adults and children were exposed to chlordane when the wooden building surfaces and soil around an apartment complex were sprayed in 1987. Two hundred-sixteen adults had neurobehavioral functions measured and completed questionnaires for symptom frequency, mood status, confounding factors, and medical, rheumatic, and respiratory disorders in 1994. Measurements included simple and choice reaction time, balance, blink reflex latency, color vision, cognitive, perceptual motor, memory, and recall functions. We analyzed 216 exposed and 174 referent adults. Age, educational level, weight, height, and gender ratio were similar for the exposed and referent groups. Performance of balance, reaction times, Culture Fair, digit symbol, verbal recall, and trail-making were significantly impaired in exposed persons compared to referents. Mood-state scores were elevated, as were the frequencies of respiratory, neurobehavioral, and rheumatic symptoms. In contrast, long-term memory function was similar in both groups, consistent with its status before exposure. There was no identified bias or confounding factors. Chlordane exposure was associated with protracted impairment of neurophysiological and psychological functions. The central nervous system is the most important target of chlorinated cyclodiene insecticides. Human exposure should be prohibited. Imagesp690-a
Speech-language pathology teletherapy in rural and remote educational settings: Decreasing service inequities

Abstract Purpose: The objectives of this study were to investigate the efficacy of a speech-language pathology teletherapy program for children attending schools and early childcare settings in rural New South Wales, Australia, and their parents’ views on the program’s feasibility and acceptability. Method: Nineteen children received speech-language pathology sessions delivered via Adobe Connect®, Facetime© or Skype© web-conferencing software. During semi-structured interviews, parents (n = 5) described factors that promoted or threatened the program’s feasibility and acceptability. Result: Participation in a speech-language pathology teletherapy program using low-bandwidth videoconferencing improved the speech and language skills of children in both early childhood settings and primary school. Emergent themes related to (a) practicality and convenience, (b) learning, (c) difficulties and (d) communication. Conclusion: Treatment outcome data and parental reports verified that the teletherapy service delivery was feasible and acceptable. However, it was also evident that regular discussion and communication between the various stakeholders involved in teletherapy programs may promote increased parental engagement and acceptability.
Psychology : mind, brain & culture

Psychology: The Study of Mental Processes and Behavior. Research Methods in Psychology. Biological Bases of Mental Life and Behavior. Sensation and Perception. Learning. Memory. Thought and Language. Intelligence. Consciousness. Motivation. Emotion, Stress, and Coping. Personality. Physical and Cognitive Development. Social Development. Psychological Disorders. Treatment of Psychological Disorders. Attitudes and Social Cognition. Interpersonal Processes. Glossary. References. Photo Credits. Text and Illustration Credits. Indexes.
Responses of patients with neoplastic diseases to influenza virus vaccine

Little information is available concerning influenza immunization in patients with malignancies receiving chemotherapy. A large number of ambulatory patients are receiving chemotherapy for metastatic disease as well as adjuvant chemotherapy for microscopic disease, and they should be considered at higher risk for complications should they contract influenza. Seventeen oncology patients and 15 control subjects were given bivalent influenza vaccine (A/NJ/ 76‐A/Vic/75) and their serologic responses were monitored. Although their responses were less than controls, nearly 50% of the oncology patients had a greater than fourfold rise in antibody titer, suggesting that a humoral antibody response could be achieved in spite of their underlying disease and immunosuppressive chemotherapy. No adverse reactions or deterioration of patient's clinical status were noted with vaccination. We conclude that significant antibody titer responses can be achieved in this population of patients. Cancer 42:2244–2247, 1978.
Aggregate formation and the impairment of long‐term synaptic facilitation by ectopic expression of mutant huntingtin in Aplysia neurons

Huntington's disease (HD) is caused by an expansion of a polyglutamine (polyQ) tract within huntingtin (htt) protein. To examine the cytotoxic effects of polyQ‐expanded htt, we overexpressed an enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP)‐tagged N‐terminal fragment of htt with 150 glutamine residues (Nhtt150Q‐EGFP) in Aplysia neurons. A combined confocal and electron microscopic study showed that Aplysia neurons expressing Nhtt150Q‐EGFP displayed numerous abnormal aggregates (diameter 0.5–5 µm) of filamentous structures, which were formed rapidly (approximately 2 h) but which were sustained for at least 18 days in the cytoplasm. Furthermore, the overexpression of Nhtt150Q‐EGFP in sensory cells impaired 5‐hydroxytryptamine (5‐HT)‐induced long‐term synaptic facilitation in sensori‐motor synapses without affecting basal synaptic strength or short‐term facilitation. This study demonstrates the stability of polyQ‐based aggregates and their specific effects on long‐term synaptic plasticity.
RPE at Relative Intensities after 12 Weeks of Resistance-Exercise Training by Older Adults

The constant-RPE tracking model monitors progress over the course of exercise training. During aerobic exercise, prior work using this model has demonstrated similar relative intensities pre- and posttraining, while the absolute workload increases posttraining. However, the prediction equation associated with these changes has not been examined during resistance training. 22 men and 27 women (M age 64 yr.) participated in a 12-wk. resistance training. Orientation determined resistances associated with RPEs of 4, 5–6, 7–8, and 9 on the OMNI-Resistance Exercise Scale for each of seven exercises for each participant. Individuals trained 3 days a week for 12 wk. Linear regression was used to calculate percent of 1-repetition maximum (%1-RM) at RPE 4, 6, and 8 for the exercises. Paired sample t tests, comparing pre- and posttraining %1-RMs at each RPE, indicated that posttraining %1-RMs were higher for RPE 4 and 6 for each exercise, while at RPE 8, results were significant for only 3 exercises. Thus for at least the RPE 4 and 6, the constant RPE tracking model is appropriate for resistance exercise; however, the equation of prediction appears to differ from that for aerobic exercise. Development of a new prediction equation may be necessary to track relative strength in older adults.