Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Benign biliary strictures associated with recurrent pyogenic cholangitis: treatment with expandable metallic stents.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to determine the long-term effectiveness of expandable metallic stents in benign biliary strictures associated with recurrent pyogenic cholangitis and the differences in primary patency of the various types of stents deployed. SUBJECTS AND METHODS During a 20-month period, 26 metallic stents (19 Gianturco-Rosch Z stents and seven Strecker stents) were used to treat benign biliary strictures associated with recurrent pyogenic cholangitis in 23 patients (11 men and 12 women; mean age, 42 years; range, 30-78 years). Insertion routes were percutaneous transhepatic biliary drainage tracts for 16 stents, T-tube tracts for seven stents, and retrograde endoscopic routes for three stents. The deployed locations were common hepatic or common bile ducts for 11 stents, right or left hepatic ducts for 10 stents, and segmental ducts for five stents. RESULTS The initial technical success rate was 100%. Two stents in one patient migrated spontaneously. Primary stent patency for the remaining 24 stents was 34 months (range, 3-58 months). Primary stent patency of the Gianturco-Rosch Z and Strecker stents was 50 and 10 months, respectively (p < .05). Primary stent patency for the intrahepatic and extrahepatic ducts was 50 and 18 months, respectively (p = .05). Primary patency rates for all stents at 6, 12, 24, and 36 months were 92%, 75%, 67%, and 46%, respectively. The causes of stent obstruction were recurrent stone or sludge in eight stents and epithelial hyperplasia in five stents. CONCLUSION We believe that metallic stent placement is not an effective long-term treatment technique for benign biliary stricture associated with recurrent pyogenic cholangitis.
Speaker emotion can affect ambiguity production

Does speaker emotion affect degree of ambiguity in referring expressions? We used referential communication tasks preceded by mood induction to examine whether positive emotional valence may be linked to ambiguity of referring expressions. In Experiment 1, participants had to identify sequences of objects with homophonic labels (e.g., the animal bat, a baseball bat) for hypothetical addressees. This required modification of the homophones. Happy speakers were less likely to modify the second homophone to repair a temporary ambiguity (i.e., they were less likely to say … first cover the bat, then cover the baseball bat …). In Experiment 2, participants had to identify one of two identical objects in an object array, which required a modifying relative clause (the shark that's underneath the shoe). Happy speakers omitted the modifying relative clause twice as often as neutral speakers (e.g., by saying Put the shark underneath the sheep), thereby rendering the entire utterance ambiguous in the context of two sharks. The findings suggest that one consequence of positive mood appears to be more ambiguity in speech. This effect is hypothesised to be due to a less effortful processing style favouring an egocentric bias impacting perspective taking or monitoring of alignment of utterances with an addressee's perspective.
Medical students writing on death, dying and palliative care: a qualitative analysis of reflective essays

Background Medical students and doctors are becoming better prepared to care for patients with palliative care needs and support patients at the end of life. This preparation needs to start at medical school. Objective To assess how medical students learn about death, dying and palliative care during a clinical placement using reflective essays and to provide insights to improve medical education about end-of-life care and/or palliative care. Methods Qualitative study in which all reflective essays written by third-year medical students in 1 year from a UK medical school were searched electronically for those that included ‘death’, ‘dying’ and ‘palliative care’. The anonymised data were managed using QSR NVivo 10 software, and a systematic analysis was conducted in three distinct phases: (1) open coding; (2) axial coding and (3) selective coding. Ethical approval was received. Results 54 essays met the inclusion criteria from 241 essays screened for the terms ‘death’, ‘dying’ or ‘palliative’; 22 students gave consent for participation and their 24 essays were included. Saturation of themes was reached. Three overarching themes were identified: emotions, empathy and experiential and reflective learning. Students emphasised trying to develop a balance between showing empathy and their emotional state. Students learnt a lot from clinical encounters and watching doctors manage difficult situations, as well as from their refection during and after the experience. Conclusions Reflective essays give insights into the way students learn about death, dying and palliative care and how it affects them personally as well as the preparation that is needed to be better equipped to deal with these kinds of experiences. Analysis of the essays enabled the proposal of new strategies to help make them more effective learning tools and to optimise students’ learning from a palliative care attachment.
Students making sense of informational text: Relations between processing and representation

Much of our understanding of children's reading has been based on research with narratives, where children can rely on relatively rich prior knowledge to make sense of the text. Far less work has been conducted on children's meaning construction processes for nonnarrative, informational texts about unfamiliar topics, such as those often encountered in school content areas. This research examines children's strategies for processing informational text to understand and remember new information. In Experiment 1, 4th‐ and 6th‐grade students thought aloud as they read an easier and a harder passage. They dictated a recall report after each passage. The think‐aloud protocols were analyzed for processing activities, including paraphrasing, elaborating, explaining, monitoring, and identifying and resolving problems. In general, processing tended to focus on the local, sentence level. Self‐explanations were prevalent throughout the protocols; however, they were differentially effective in promoting understanding.
Application of fuzzy control algorithms for electric vehicle antilock braking/traction control systems

The application of fuzzy-based control strategies has gained enormous recognition as an approach for the rapid development of effective controllers for nonlinear time-variant systems. This paper describes the preliminary research and implementation of a fuzzy logic based controller to control the wheel slip for electric vehicle antilock braking systems (ABSs). As the dynamics of the braking systems are highly nonlinear and time variant, fuzzy control offers potential as an important tool for development of robust traction control. Simulation studies are employed to derive an initial rule base that is then tested on an experimental test facility representing the dynamics of a braking system. The test facility is composed of an induction machine load operating in the generating region. It is shown that the torque-slip characteristics of an induction motor provides a convenient platform for simulating a variety of tire/road /spl mu/-/spl sigma/ driving conditions, negating the initial requirement for skid-pan trials when developing algorithms. The fuzzy membership functions were subsequently refined by analysis of the data acquired from the test facility while simulating operation at a high coefficient of friction. The robustness of the fuzzy-logic slip regulator is further tested by applying the resulting controller over a wide range of operating conditions. The results indicate that ABS/traction control may substantially improve longitudinal performance and offer significant potential for optimal control of driven wheels, especially under icy conditions where classical ABS/traction control schemes are constrained to operate very conservatively.
Developing Social Justice Leaders Through Chi Sigma Iota: A Phenomenological Exploration of Chapter Leader Experiences, Part 1

Using a phenomenological approach, the authors explored how outstanding large and small chapters of Chi Sigma Iota (CSI) engage in social justice activities that may promote leadership development among its members. Part 1 of this series of two articles explores this phenomenon from the perspective of Chapter Leaders (CLs). As social justice has been coined the fifth force in the counseling profession (Lee, 2012; Ratts, 2009), the authors provide insights into how social justice activities can enhance leadership development of student counselors and future counselor educators.
Constrained discriminative speaker verification specific to normalized i-vectors

This paper focuses on discriminative trainings (DT) applied to i-vectors after Gaussian probabilistic linear discriminant analysis (PLDA). If DT has been successfully used with non-normalized vectors, this technique struggles to improve speaker detection when i-vectors have been first normalized, whereas the latter option has proven to achieve best performance in speaker verification. We propose an additional normalization procedure which limits the amount of coefficient to discriminatively train, with a minimal loss of accuracy. Adaptations of logistic regression based-DT to this new configuration are proposed, then we introduce a discriminative classifier for speaker verification which is a novelty in the field.
Fluorine-free mixed amphiphilic polymers based on PDMS and PEG side chains for fouling release applications

Fluorine-free mixed amphiphilic block copolymers with mixtures of short side groups of polydimethyl siloxane (PDMS) and polyethylene glycol (PEG) were synthesized and studied for their ability to influence the surface properties and control the adhesion of marine organisms to coated surfaces. The settlement (attachment) and strength of adhesion of two different marine algae, the green seaweed Ulva and the diatom Navicula, were evaluated against the surfaces. It is known that hydrophobic coatings based on polydimethyl siloxane elastomers (PDMSe) are prone to protein adsorption and accumulation of strongly adherent diatom slimes, in contrast to PEG-based hydrophilic surfaces that inhibit protein adsorption and moderate only weak adhesion of diatoms. By incorporating both PDMS and PEG side chains into the polymers, the effect of incorporating both polar and non-polar groups on fouling-release could be studied. The dry surfaces were characterized by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and near-edge X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy (NEXAFS). The ability of these mixed amphiphilic polymers to reconstruct in water was examined using underwater bubble contact angle and dynamic water contact angle experiments. To understand more about surface reconstruction behavior, protein adsorption experiments were carried out with fluorescein isothiocyanate-labeled bovine serum albumin (BSA-FITC) on both dry and pre-soaked surfaces.
An evaluation of a group intervention for parents with aggressive young children: improvements in child functioning, maternal confidence, parenting knowledge and attitudes

This study evaluated the effectiveness of a group intervention with the mothers of aggressive, non‐compliant children (aged three to six years). The intervention consisted of a parenting program, Helping Encourage Affect Regulation. Mothers who attended the program were compared with a waitlist control group. The sample consisted of 35 children and their mothers. Post‐treatment assessment showed significant differences in parent‐reported externalizing behavior in children, parenting knowledge, sense of competence and attitudes towards parenting their child in the Helping Encourage Affect Regulation program compared with the waitlist control group Findings are discussed with a focus on the process of change that the group intervention is likely to have facilitated in the parents.
In situ augmentation of class I major histocompatibility antigen expression on immunogenic variants of a spontaneous murine mammary carcinoma.

The relationship between expression of cell surface glycoproteins encoded by the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) and immunogenicity of a recently obtained spontaneous murine mammary adenocarcinoma (designated CBA.SP1) was examined. Immunogenic and nonimmunogenic variant clones were isolated from a subclone of the parent tumor after treatment with the mutagen N-methyl-N'-nitro-N-nitrosoguanidine (MNNG) or the DNA hypomethylating agent and "gene activator," 5-aza-2'-deoxycytidine (5-aza-dCyd). All clones from the untreated tumor population were tumorigenic in normal syngeneic recipients. In contrast, immunogenic variant clones, isolated at high frequencies after drug treatment [ranging from 5% (5-aza-dCyd treated) to greater than 90% (MNNG treated)], were rejected in normal syngeneic mice but grew progressively in T-cell deficient nude mice. Consistent with our previous report (J. Natl. Cancer Inst., 75: 291, 1985), all 5-aza-dCyd induced immunogenic clones expressed elevated levels of class I (particularly Dk) MHC antigens. However some (three out of nine) nonimmunogenic clones also showed enhanced class I MHC expression, implying that not all high MHC expressors were immunogenic. In contrast to 5-aza-dCyd induced variants, only 50% of MNNG induced immunogenic variants showed elevated levels of Dk or Dk and Kk antigens in vitro. Strong augmentation of class I MHC antigens in situ was observed on all immunogenic, but not nonimmunogenic, clones following transplant into syngeneic mice; no increase in MHC expression on variants during progressive growth in athymic nude mice occurred. Although no class II (Ak or Ek) antigens were detected on the parent line or any of the immunogenic variants, a strong infiltration of host I-A bearing cells occurred during immune rejection of SP1 variants. These results are consistent with the hypothesis that induction of class I MHC antigen expression on certain low MHC expressing tumors, although not the sole requirement for immunogenicity, can facilitate immune rejection of the SP1 tumor and, conversely, that the reduced level of MHC observed in certain clinical cancers may significantly affect the immunological aspects of the tumor-host relationship.
Cultural drivers of high performing knowledge-intensive service organisations

Abstract Organisational culture is considered an important influence on performance, particularly for service firms that rely on values-driven social controls to enhance human interactions. Using a qualitative approach, we show how the modified Organisational Culture Profile developed by Sarros, Gray, Densten, and Cooper to assess Australian organisations provides a framework for exploring the cultural drivers of high performing knowledge-intensive service firms in New Zealand. Our study provides rich insights into how six key cultural dimensions – competitiveness, innovation, performance orientation, emphasis on rewards, supportiveness and social responsibility – are translated into strategic human resource management practices.
Complexity leadership theory: An interactive perspective on leading in complex adaptive systems

�Traditional, hierarchical views of leadership are less and less useful given the complexities of our modern world. Leadership theory must transition to new perspectives that account for the complex adaptive needs of organizations. In this paper, we propose that leadership (as opposed to leaders) can be seen as a complex dynamic process that emerges in the interactive “spaces between” people and ideas. That is, leadership is a dynamic that transcends the capabilities of individuals alone; it is the product of interaction, tension, and exchange rules governing changes in perceptions and understanding. We label this a dynamic of adaptive leadership, and we show how this dynamic provides important insights about the nature of leadership and its outcomes in organizational fields. We define a leadership event as a perceived segment of action whose meaning is created by the interactions of actors involved in producing it, and we present a set of innovative methods for capturing and analyzing these contextually driven processes. We provide theoretical and practical implications of these ideas for organizational behavior and organization and management theory.
Domain-Based Scoring in Divergent-Thinking Tests: Validation Evidence in an Occupational Sample

Although some evidence has been accrued for the validity of divergent-thinking tests, it has not been overwhelming. One problem with many of these studies is that they have not looked at divergent thinking in a population where creative problem solving is a requirement for performance. Another problem with many of these studies is that they have not focused on aspects of divergent thought that are most strongly related to performance in the domain at hand. Accordingly, in this study 1,818 organizational leaders were asked to complete a divergent-thinking measure. When performance indices obtained in this sample were correlated with scores on the divergent-thinking test, divergent thinking was found to predict performance, even when intelligence and expertise were taken into account. Furthermore, aspects of divergent thinking specifically related to leaders' creative problem-solving efforts, such as the use of principle-based alternatives, as well as complex and realistic alternatives, were found to be par.
Managing the Goal‐Setting Paradox: How to Get Better Results from High Goals and Be Happy

Many negotiation teachers share the same tip early on: negotiators who set higher goals “do better. ” It turns out that one of the most empirically supported “truths” about negotiation comes with a big “but. ” Negotiators who set higher goals are likely to feel worse. In other words, negotiators who set optimistic goals are likely to obtain better objective outcomes but worse subjective outcomes. We call this empirical finding the “goal-setting paradox. ” This article considers sources of and explanations for the goal-setting paradox and suggests how negotiators and negotiation teachers may better manage this paradox through mindfulness and other techniques.
Mechanisms of air‐sea CO2 flux variability in the equatorial Pacific and the North Atlantic

A global ocean general circulation model is used to estimate the magnitude of interannual variability in air‐sea fluxes of CO2 and O2 from 1980–1998 and to examine the controlling mechanisms. The global variability in the air‐sea flux of carbon (±0.5 × 1015 grams Carbon yr−1 (PgC yr−1)) is forced by changes of ΔpCO2 and wind speeds related to the El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) cycle in the equatorial Pacific. In contrast the air‐sea O2 flux is controlled by two regions: the equatorial Pacific and North Atlantic. The model captures much of the interannual variability of the CO2 flux observed at Bermuda, with some correlation with the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO) index. However, basin‐scale air‐sea CO2 flux anomalies are not correlated with the NAO due to a rapid neutralization of entrained DIC anomalies by biological uptake and export production in the subpolar gyre. CO2 flux variability estimates from our ocean model and the mean atmospheric inversion results of Bousquet et al. [2000] are in broad agreement in the equatorial Pacific, but not in the North Atlantic. This model suggests that the projection of air‐sea flux anomalies onto the large‐scale, mean air‐sea flux pattern in atmospheric inversions may lead to an overestimate of the flux variability in the extra‐tropics where the patterns of variability do not correspond to those of the mean flux.
Input patterns and pathways from the six semicircular canals to motoneurons of neck muscles. I. The multifidus muscle group.

1. The pattern of connections between the six semicircular canals and neck motoneurons of the multifidus muscle group was investigated by recording intracellular potentials from motoneurons in the upper cervical cord of anesthetized cats. 2. Synaptic potentials were recorded in motoneurons of the rectus capitis posterior (RCP) muscle at C1, the obliquus capitis inferior (OCI) muscle at C1 and C2, and the cervical multifidus muscle (Multi) at C4 in response to electrical stimulation of individual ampullary nerves of the six semicircular canals. Excitatory or inhibitory postsynaptic potentials (EPSPs or IPSPs, respectively) were evoked by separate stimulation of individual ampullary nerves in all of the neck motoneurons. Virtually all of the neck motoneurons received convergent inputs from the six ampullary nerves. 3. Motoneurons that supplied a single muscle had a homogeneous pattern of input from the six semicircular canals. There were two patterns of input from the six semicircular canals to motoneurons of the multifidus muscle group. RCP and Multi motoneurons were excited by stimulation of the bilateral anterior canal nerves (ACNs) and the contralateral lateral canal nerve (LCN) and inhibited by stimulation of the bilateral posterior canal nerves (PCNs) and the ipsilateral LCN. This input pattern is similar to that previously observed in other dorsal extensor muscles, whereas the other input pattern observed in OCI motoneurons is entirely new. OCI motoneurons at C1 and C2 were excited by stimulation of the ipsilateral ACN, PCN, and the contralateral LCN and inhibited by stimulation of the contralateral ACN, PCN, and the ipsilateral LCN. 4. Most postsynaptic potentials (PSPs) were disynaptic, but there were trisynaptic inhibitory connections between the contralateral ACN and PCN and OCI motoneurons, and between the contralateral PCN and RCP motoneurons. 5. The pathways for mediating these inputs from different semicircular canals to neck motoneurons were determined by making lesions in the lower medulla. Transection of the ipsilateral medial longitudinal fascicle (MLF) abolished the following potentials: all disynaptic PSPs in RCP motoneurons except the disynaptic EPSPs from the ipsilateral ACN, and in OCI motoneurons, disynaptic PSPs from the bilateral LCNs, and disynaptic IPSPs from the contralateral PCN. Complete bilateral section of the MLF did not affect the disynaptic EPSPs from the ipsilateral ACN in RCP motoneurons, the disynaptic EPSPs from the ipsilateral ACN and PCN in OCI motoneurons, nor the trisynaptic IPSPs from the contralateral ACN and PCN in COI motoneurons and from the contralateral PCN in RCP motoneurons. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)