Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Effect of Augmented Reality Treatment on Learning, Cognitive Load, and Spatial Visualization Abilities

OF DISSERTATION THE EFFECT OF AUGMENTED REALITY TREATMENT ON LEARNING, COGNITIVE LOAD, AND SPATIAL VISUALIZATION ABILITIES This study investigated the effects of Augmented Reality (AR) on learning, cognitive load and spatial abilities. More specifically, it measured learning gains, perceived cognitive load, and the role spatial abilities play with students engaged in an astronomy lesson about lunar phases. Research participants were 182 students from a public university in southeastern United States, and were recruited from psychology research pool. Participants were randomly assigned to two groups: (a) Augmented Reality and Text Astronomy Treatment (ARTAT); and (b) Images and Text Astronomy Treatment (ITAT). Upon entering the experimental classroom, participants were given (a) Paper Folding Test to measure their spatial abilities; (b) the Lunar Phases Concept Inventory (LPCI) pre-test; (c) lesson on Lunar Phases; (d) NASA-TLX to measure participants’ cognitive load; and (e) LPCI post-test. Statistical analysis found (a) no statistical difference for learning gains between the ARTAT and ITAT groups; (b) statistically significant difference for cognitive load; and (c) no significant difference for spatial abilities scores.
The transcriptional activity of Neurog3 affects migration and differentiation of ectopic endocrine cells in chicken endoderm

Neurog3 is expressed transiently in pancreatic endocrine progenitors where it is responsible for activating a transcription factor cascade which eventually defines the mature endocrine cells. However, the mechanism by which Neurog3 regulates different aspects of the endocrine differentiation program is less clear. In this report we used in ovo electroporation to investigate how manipulation of Neurog3 protein activity affected migration, differentiation and fate determination. We found that changes in the onset of Neurog3 expression only had minor effect on differentiation. However increasing the transcriptional activity of Neurog3 by fusing it to VP16 or co‐electroporating with Ep300 caused the electroporated cells to migrate rather than differentiate. In contrast, reducing the transcriptional activity of Neurog3 by deleting parts of the activation domain, by fusing Neurog3 to the engrailed repressor domain, or co‐electroporating with Hdac1 greatly increased the proportion of glucagon expressing cells. Developmental Dynamics 239:1950–1966, 2010. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Perception in Disparity: An Efficient Navigation Framework for Autonomous Vehicles With Stereo Cameras

Stereo cameras are widely used in autonomous vehicles as environmental perception sensors because of their availability and low cost. However, efficiently utilizing the obtained disparity images to generate a desirable local path for the vehicle still remains a challenging problem. In this paper, we present a novel navigation framework for autonomous vehicles equipped with stereo cameras, featuring finishing all of the perception and path planning tasks directly within the disparity space. Comparing with the popular 3-D counterpart, disparity is a projected geometric space that contains more primitive information directly computed from the stereo images. Furthermore, disparity image is a more compact representation for large field of 3-D Cartesian space, which makes perception and path finding in longer distance possible. The proposed framework is composed of three modules, namely, local disparity map building, slope analysis and obstacle detection, and path planning. Two important properties concerning the motion and slope in disparity space are presented for the first time, i.e., the motion model and the slope model in disparity space. With the motion model, the framework first fuses consecutive disparity maps to construct a more reliable and complete local map. Then, a novel slope analysis method called V-Intercept is developed based on the slope model. It can efficiently analyze slopes and obstacles, generating a reasonable cost map directly from the disparity image. Finally, the obstacles in the cost map are expanded properly, and a customized A* search algorithm is performed to find a reasonable path in disparity space. The experimental results show that our framework works well under various kinds of environments. The resulting system can efficiently perceive and plan on a much larger range and react to obstacles further beyond the traditional Cartesian-based method.
Is intraocular pressure in myotonic dystrophy patients spuriously low?

BACKGROUND Ocular hypotony is a common unexplained feature of myotonic dystrophy type 1. Spuriously low applanation tonometric readings can be caused by thin corneas, flat corneal curvature and corneal edema. OBJECTIVES To determine whether structure abnormalities of the cornea cause spuriously low readings in applanation tonometry. METHODS We utilized a TMS-2N corneal topographer, a NonconRobo SP-6000 Specular microscope and a Corneo-Gage Plus 1A Pachymeter to examine seven patients with DM1 and eight healthy controls. Intraocular pressure, central corneal thickness, and endothelial cell density were measured, and simulated keratometry readings were made. Cornea guttata and irregularity of corneal topography patterns were also sought. RESULTS The mean intraocular pressure was 9.86 +/- 1.29 mmHg for all patients (intraocular operated and non-operated eyes) and 12.88 +/- 1.89 mmHg for the controls (P=0.000021, two-tailed t-test). Central corneal thickness was 530.57 +/- 35.30 micron for all patients and 535.00 +/- 39.62 micron for the controls (P=0.75, two-tailed t-test). Endothelial cell density was 3164 +/- 761 cells/ mm2 for all patients and 3148 +/- 395 cells/mm2 for the controls (P=0.94, two-tailed t-test). Simulated keratometry readings were similar in both groups when the operated eyes were excluded. Cornea guttata and irregularity of corneal topography patterns were also noted in the study group. CONCLUSIONS Corneal thickness, corneal curvature and corneal hydration were within normal limits and thus were not the cause for the low applanation tonometry reading in DM1. The presence of cornea guttata and irregularity of corneal topography patterns in DM1 warrants further investigation.
Maximal Τ -critical Linear Hypergraphs 1

A construction using finite affine geometries is given to show that the maximum number of edges in a τ -critical linear hypergraph is (1−o(1))τ2. This asymptotically answers a question of Roudneff [14], Aharoni and Ziv [1]. 1 This copy was printed on November 16, 2001. Submitted to Graphs and Combinatorics
The Joint Enterprise of Social Justice Teacher Education

Background/Context Responding to the challenges of the demographic imperative and calls for greater program coherence, social justice teacher education programs aim to integrate social justice in the professional preparation of teachers. Such programs intend to improve the preparation of teachers to teach students from diverse backgrounds, and in doing so they strive to keep the moral and ethical purposes of teaching and schooling at the center of teachers’ preparation. Purpose This study examines two social justice teacher education programs to explore teacher educators’ conceptions of social justice and the conditions that appear to support their joint enterprise. Research Design Findings presented are based on a year-long qualitative case study. Data sources include interviews with teacher education faculty and a review of program and course documents. Findings Grounded in communities of practice theory and a theory of social justice, I found that faculty conceptions of justice varied from an emphasis on meeting the needs of individuals to a concern with broader structural inequities. The mutual engagement of faculty appeared to be supported by external resources that provided structure and expertise, the selection of faculty with commitments to social justice and collaboration, and formal and informal opportunities to collaborate. Conclusions/Recommendations This study has implications for both practice and research in teacher education. In terms of practice, this study suggests that social justice teacher education relies on more than the efforts of individual teacher educators. Teacher education programs aiming to integrate social justice may benefit from implementing structures that enable faculty to work together in both defining and enacting such a vision of teaching and learning. The dimensions of social justice articulated by Mills and SJSU faculty offer teacher educators with a way of conceptualizing justice that attends to a core concept in the field—the goal of attending to individual student's needs—and to a less common concept of justice as tied to alleviating oppression.
Autocrine/paracrine sphingosine‐1‐phosphate fuels proliferative and stemness qualities of glioblastoma stem cells

Accumulating reports suggest that human glioblastoma contains glioma stem‐like cells (GSCs) which act as key determinants driving tumor growth, angiogenesis, and contributing to therapeutic resistance. The proliferative signals involved in GSC proliferation and progression remain unclear. Using GSC lines derived from human glioblastoma specimens with different proliferative index and stemness marker expression, we assessed the hypothesis that sphingosine‐1‐phosphate (S1P) affects the proliferative and stemness properties of GSCs. The results of metabolic studies demonstrated that GSCs rapidly consume newly synthesized ceramide, and export S1P in the extracellular environment, both processes being enhanced in the cells exhibiting high proliferative index and stemness markers. Extracellular S1P levels reached nM concentrations in response to increased extracellular sphingosine. In addition, the presence of EGF and bFGF potentiated the constitutive capacity of GSCs to rapidly secrete newly synthesized S1P, suggesting that cooperation between S1P and these growth factors is of central importance in the maintenance and proliferation of GSCs. We also report for the first time that S1P is able to act as a proliferative and pro‐stemness autocrine factor for GSCs, promoting both their cell cycle progression and stemness phenotypic profile. These results suggest for the first time that the GSC population is critically modulated by microenvironmental S1P, this bioactive lipid acting as an autocrine signal to maintain a pro‐stemness environment and favoring GSC proliferation, survival and stem properties. GLIA 2014;62:1968–1981
Demographic Understanding of Volunteerism

A large sample of volunteers from a midwestern city chapter of the American Red Cross were studied to identify demographic correlates of the reasons given for volunteering. The findings suggest that the reasons people give for doing volunteer work are conditioned by their age, sex, and marital status. Implications for volunteer programs and future research are discussed. Studies of volunteers have explored a wide range of social background characteristics, role characteristics, health, and personality variables in predicting voluntary participation (Anderson and Moore, 1974:120; Smith, Macaulay et al., 1980; Smith, 1975; Smith, Reddy, and Baldwin, 1972). These studies have been helpful in describing how certain variables affect the incidence of volunteerism (Anderson and Moore, 1974; Zakour et al., 1985) but they do not shed much light on the motives of individuals who volunteer. Traditional studies of volunteers have primarily distinguished between volunteers and non-volunteers while ignoring individual reasons for volunteering. Research has uncovered many reasons for volunteering -"to serve one's community," "to help others," "to make friends," "to obtain job training and skills," to name just a few (Action, 1969; 1974; Independent Sector, 1981; Gallup Polls, 1983, King and Gillespie; 1981, Sills, 1957). Few researchers,
A Model of the Ventral Visual System Based on Temporal Stability and Local Memory

The cerebral cortex is a remarkably homogeneous structure suggesting a rather generic computational machinery. Indeed, under a variety of conditions, functions attributed to specialized areas can be supported by other regions. However, a host of studies have laid out an ever more detailed map of functional cortical areas. This leaves us with the puzzle of whether different cortical areas are intrinsically specialized, or whether they differ mostly by their position in the processing hierarchy and their inputs but apply the same computational principles. Here we show that the computational principle of optimal stability of sensory representations combined with local memory gives rise to a hierarchy of processing stages resembling the ventral visual pathway when it is exposed to continuous natural stimuli. Early processing stages show receptive fields similar to those observed in the primary visual cortex. Subsequent stages are selective for increasingly complex configurations of local features, as observed in higher visual areas. The last stage of the model displays place fields as observed in entorhinal cortex and hippocampus. The results suggest that functionally heterogeneous cortical areas can be generated by only a few computational principles and highlight the importance of the variability of the input signals in forming functional specialization.
Myogenic tone and reactivity of rat ophthalmic artery in acute exposure to high glucose and in a type II diabetic model.

PURPOSE To evaluate the effect of acute exposure to high glucose on myogenic tone and reactivity of the rat ophthalmic artery and to compare the observations with that in ophthalmic artery from a diabetic rat model. METHODS Ophthalmic arteries from Sprague-Dawley rats were pressurized at 70 mmHg in an arteriograph, and outer diameter was monitored. Myogenic tone was assessed over a range of intraluminal pressures in the presence and absence of high glucose or mannitol. The effects of high glucose on reactivity to carbachol and phenylephrine were determined. Arteries from type II diabetic BBZDR/Wor rats and age-matched control rats were evaluated for myogenic tone and reactivity. RESULTS Myogenic tone was enhanced by 25 mM, but decreased by 40 mM, glucose and was not affected by mannitol. Constriction to phenylephrine was not affected by 25 mM, but was decreased by 40 mM glucose, and carbachol-mediated dilation was unaffected. Effects of high glucose were not observed in the absence of endothelium. Miconazole, a nonselective inhibitor of cytochrome-P450 enzymes or dihydro-ouabain, an inhibitor of Na+,K+-ATPase blocked the effect of 40 mM but not 25 mM glucose. Arteries from diabetic rats showed decreased myogenic tone compared with control arteries, and this decrease was not observed in the absence of endothelium. CONCLUSIONS Acute exposure to high glucose has a concentration- and endothelium-dependent effect on the myogenic tone of rat ophthalmic artery. Attenuation of tone by high glucose is probably due to the activation of smooth muscle Na+,K+-ATPase by endothelial cytochrome-P450 metabolite. Pressure-mediated autoregulation in ophthalmic artery in type II diabetic BBZDR/Wor rat operates at lower resistance, probably due to hyperglycemia.
Multicenter Prevention Trial of Slowly Progressive Type 1 Diabetes with Small Dose of Insulin (the Tokyo Study)

Abstract: In 1996, we designed a randomized multicenter study to assess the effects of small doses of insulin on beta cell failure in slowly progressive type 1 diabetes (the Tokyo Study). We report here the preliminary results of this study. Glutamic acid decarboxylase 65 antibody (GADA)‐positive patients were randomly divided into 2 groups: one group received insulin (Ins group), the other a sulfonylurea (SU group). Fifty‐four patients (24 Ins group, 30 SU group) were analyzed at the end of a 4‐year period. All patients underwent a 75 g oral‐glucose test (O‐GTT) every 6‐12 months. The insulin‐dependent stage was defined based on an integrated value of serum C‐peptide levels on O‐GTT (∑CPR; sum of CPR at 0, 30, 60, 90, and 120 min) below 4.0 ng/mL. The ∑CPR in the SU group decreased progressively from 22.0 ± 10.6 to 11.3 ± 7.5 ng/mL over the 48‐month period (p < 0.001 vs. baseline). The ∑CPR in the Ins group was unchanged. Among the SU group, 30% of subjects (9/30) progressed to IDDM, while 8.3% of Ins group subjects (2/24) progressed to IDDM (p= 0.087). With regard to the subjects who had a preserved C‐peptide response (∑CPR ≥ 10 ng/mL), the proportion of SU group subjects who progressed to IDDM was significantly higher than that of the Ins group (7/28, 25% vs. 0/21, 0%, p= 0.015). Among subjects with a high GADA titer (≥0 U/mL), 9/14 (64.3%) of the SU group, but only 2/16 (12.5%) of the Ins group, developed IDDM (p= 0.0068). As to those with a high GADA titer and a preserved C‐peptide response, SU group subjects progressed to IDDM (7/12, 58.3%) more frequently than Ins group subjects (0/14, 0%) (p= 0.0012). In summary, our results suggest that small doses of insulin effectively prevent beta cell failure in slowly progressive type 1 diabetes. We recommend avoiding SU treatment and instead administering insulin to NIDDM patients with high GADA titer.
IUTAM SCALING LAWS IN ICE MECHANICS AND ICE DYNAMICS UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA FAIRBANKS JUNE

Based on the premise that large-scale failure of sea ice is governed by fracture mechanics, recently validated by Dempsey's in-situ tests, the paper1 presents simplified analytical solutions for (1) the load capacity of floating ice plate subjected to vertical load and (2) the horizontal force exerted by an ice plated moving against a fixed structure. The solutions reveal size effects of ice thickness, structure diamete.r and, in the case of a finite floe, the floe size. For vertical loading, the results agree with previous sophisticated numerical fracture simulations. The results contrast with the predictions of material strength or plasticity theories, which exhibit no size effect on the nominal strength of structure. The results on size effect are supported "oy recent numerical simulations and comparisons with field observations.
Reproducibility and clinical value of 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography in recurrent melanoma

The purpose of this study was to assess the reproducibility and clinical impact of positron emission tomography (PET) with 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) in patients with (suspected) recurrent melanoma. The clinical value of PET was prospectively measured in 58 consecutive patients referred for PET because of unresolved clinical questions after conventional work-up. Diagnostic understanding and therapy choice by referring physicians were evaluated before, directly after, and 6 months after PET. Observer agreement of PET readings was measured with respect to various parameters (interpretation, number and localization of lesions, ‘clinically decisive’ metastases), using intra-class correlation coefficients. FDG PET improved diagnostic understanding in 33 cases (57%). In six patients (10%), diagnostic understanding was solely based on PET information. According to the attending clinicians, PET contributed to a positive change of planned treatment in 23 patients (40%) and increased confidence in the chosen treatment in 23 (40%). Observer agreement of PET readings was very high (intra-class correlation coefficients were between 0.87 and 0.94). The diagnostic value related especially to the whole-body scan technique and the superior specificity, compared to conventional work-up. It is concluded that, in problematical cases with (suspected) recurrent melanoma, 18F-FDG PET had considerable impact on diagnostic understanding and management. Together with the excellent observer reliability, these results justify further studies to determine the optimal place of PET in routine diagnostic algorithms in recurrent melanoma.
Free anterolateral thigh flap and masseter nerve transfer for reconstruction of extensive periauricular defects: Surgical technique and clinical outcomes

Radical tumor ablation in the periauricular area often results in extensive soft tissue defects, including facial nerve sacrifice, bone and/or dura defects. Reconstruction of these defects should aim at restoring facial reanimation, wound closure, and facial and neck contours. We present our experience using free anterolateral thigh flap (ALT) in combination with masseter nerve to facial nerve transfer in managing complex defects in the periauricular area.
The structure of information pathways in a social communication network

Social networks are of interest to researchers in part because they are thought to mediate the flow of information in communities and organizations. Here we study the temporal dynamics of communication using on-line data, including e-mail communication among the faculty and staff of a large university over a two-year period. We formulate a temporal notion of "distance" in the underlying social network by measuring the minimum time required for information to spread from one node to another - a concept that draws on the notion of vector-clocks from the study of distributed computing systems. We find that such temporal measures provide structural insights that are not apparent from analyses of the pure social network topology. In particular, we define the network backbone to be the subgraph consisting of edges on which information has the potential to flow the quickest. We find that the backbone is a sparse graph with a concentration of both highly embedded edges and long-range bridges - a finding that sheds new light on the relationship between tie strength and connectivity in social networks.
The prevalence, attainment and progress of severely inattentive, hyperactive and impulsive young children

Some children exhibit inattentive, and perhaps also hyperactive and Impulsive behaviour In the classroom at a very frequent and severe level. These behavioural characteristics are reflected in the criteria for the diagnosis of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Children with ADHD have been found to achieve lower grades at school than their peers. This study investigated the extent to which pupils with severe ADHD symptoms, but not necessarily diagnosed with the condition, were at risk of similar academic outcomes. The effect of different teaching and classroom management strategies on the concentration and attention of these children were also explored. The reading and mathematics achievements of a large sample of pupils were assessed at the start of reception, the end of reception and then again at the end of key stage 1. Class teachers assessed the behaviour of these pupils at the end of reception using a rating scale based upon the diagnostic criteria for ADHD in Version 4 of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 1994). The proportion of children with severe ADHD symptoms was found to be similar to previous estimates of the prevalence of children with each sub-type of ADHD derived from teacher assessments, but higher than the rates of prevalence of ADHD published by the American Psychiatric Association (1994). The reading and mathematics attainment and value-added of children with severe ADHD symptoms were found to be educationally and statistically significantly lower than their peers. The data replicated previous studies that had investigated the achievement of children with ADHD.