Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Initial scrotal incision for unilateral nonpalpable testis.

PURPOSE We investigated use of initial scrotal incision for the management of unilateral nonpalpable testis. MATERIALS AND METHODS Scrotal incision followed by laparoscopy was performed in a consecutive series of 40 boys with unilateral impalpable testis. RESULTS Initial scrotal incision revealed 22 scrotal nubbins and 4 extra-abdominal testes among the 40 patients. Of 13 patients with intra-abdominal testis 6 had a looping vas that was dissected to the internal ring via the scrotal incision, and the incision was used for orchiopexy in 12. Laparoscopy detected 1 case of intra-abdominal vanished testis but falsely diagnosed 6 additional cases based upon blind-ending vas and vessels despite a known scrotal nubbin. It also detected 13 intra-abdominal testes but was inconclusive in 14 cases in which vas and vessels exited the internal ring, not including the 4 patients with extra abdominal testes who did not undergo laparoscopy. CONCLUSIONS Scrotal incision may be sufficient to diagnose testicular loss when a nubbin is encountered, and can detect an extra abdominal testis not palpated with the patient under anesthesia. The incision is used for orchiopexy in those patients with a testis that can be brought to the scrotum in a single stage. Laparoscopy potentially can be reserved for cases in which no nubbin is found and in all cases when a patent processus vaginalis is encountered.
Possible Determinants of Social Dominance among Adolescent Girls

Abstract Little research has been conducted on the possible determinants of dominance in adolescent girls. However, popularity seems largely to reflect a girl's appearance. In this study 50 upper-middle-class girls, 15 to 18 years old, were ranked by 200 classmates of each sex on various traits reputed to be social prerogatives (leadership, popularity, winning disputes, and possessing a positive self-concept) or bodily expressions (standing erect, being relaxed, and maintaining eye contact) of dominance status. Girls who exhibited these signs of dominance were perceived as fashionable, attractive, and well groomed. Athletic ability showed some relation to dominance but intelligence did not. Factor analyses confirmed this intelligence and dominance emerged as separate factors in each sex's perception of the girls. These results suggest that adolescent girls, like boys, compete for dominance in the ethological sense. Boys seem to strive for social success mainly through competence in athletics, and girls th.
The Impact of Treatment

P remature ovarian failure is defined as gonadal failure before the age of 40 and it is a common condition, affecting I per cent of women I. Tragically, the diagnosis is often delayed and women affected may experience amenorrhoea for several years without receiving medical help. Sub-optimal peak bone mass may result in young women. Chromosomal analysis is needed in those under 30 years of age because of the risk of germ cell tumour. A recent development is the possibility of pregnancy using egg donation, the success rate varying between 25 and 40 per cent depending on the age of the donor. Mary Birdsall ,provides a comprehensive account of chis procedure and the screening of recipients and donors. This important innovation offers hope to many relatively young women who wish to conceive but find they are infertile because of menopause. The ethics of ovum donation will be discussed in a later issue. The best predictor of fracture risk is bone mineral density measurement at sites such as the femoral neck, radius and lumbar spine. This test should be available to general practitioners to
Can homomorphic encryption be practical?

The prospect of outsourcing an increasing amount of data storage and management to cloud services raises many new privacy concerns for individuals and businesses alike. The privacy concerns can be satisfactorily addressed if users encrypt the data they send to the cloud. If the encryption scheme is homomorphic, the cloud can still perform meaningful computations on the data, even though it is encrypted. In fact, we now know a number of constructions of fully homomorphic encryption schemes that allow arbitrary computation on encrypted data. In the last two years, solutions for fully homomorphic encryption have been proposed and improved upon, but it is hard to ignore the elephant in the room, namely efficiency -- can homomorphic encryption ever be efficient enough to be practical? Certainly, it seems that all known fully homomorphic encryption schemes have a long way to go before they can be used in practice. Given this state of affairs, our contribution is two-fold. First, we exhibit a number of real-world applications, in the medical, financial, and the advertising domains, which require only that the encryption scheme is "somewhat" homomorphic. Somewhat homomorphic encryption schemes, which support a limited number of homomorphic operations, can be much faster, and more compact than fully homomorphic encryption schemes. Secondly, we show a proof-of-concept implementation of the recent somewhat homomorphic encryption scheme of Brakerski and Vaikuntanathan, whose security relies on the "ring learning with errors" (Ring LWE) problem. The scheme is very efficient, and has reasonably short ciphertexts. Our unoptimized implementation in magma enjoys comparable efficiency to even optimized pairing-based schemes with the same level of security and homomorphic capacity. We also show a number of application-specific optimizations to the encryption scheme, most notably the ability to convert between different message encodings in a ciphertext.
Forced vital capacity paired with Framingham Risk Score for prediction of all-cause mortality

Forced vital capacity (FVC) measures lung function and predicts coronary heart disease (CHD); whether it provides additive prediction over CHD risk factors has not been established. We examined whether FVC adds to the prediction of all-cause mortality provided by Framingham Risk Score (FRS) alone. We examined 5,485 (61.1 million projected) nonsmoking adults from the USA who were aged 20–79 yrs. Subjects were from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, were without obstructive lung disease, had FVC measurements and had ≤12 yrs (mean 8.8 yrs) mortality follow-up. We performed Cox regression analysis to examine whether FVC and forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1) (categorised as low ≤85% predicted, borderline 86–94% predicted and normal ≥95% predicted) within FRS groups (10-yr risk of cardiovascular disease low <10%, intermediate 10–20%, high 20%) predict mortality. Receiver operator characteristic analysis examined whether FVC and FEV1 added to the prediction provided by FRS. Low-, intermediate- and high-risk FRS groups had 79.5% (n = 4,361), 10.1% (n = 555) and 10.4% (n = 569) persons, respectively. Only the intermediate FRS group showed a graded increase in mortality (10.7, 18.2 and 42.8% per 1,000 person-yrs from highest to lowest FVC categories, respectively); those with low FVC had an almost three-fold greater risk of mortality (hazard ratio 2.64; p<0.01) than those with normal FVC. FVC provided incremental additive value for predicting mortality in addition to FRS for only this group (area under curve 0.65 versus 0.58; p<0.05). Similar results were obtained for FEV1. Evaluation of lung function may be useful to improve risk stratification in persons with intermediate CHD risk where it adds to prediction of mortality over global risk assessment.
Amino acid metabolism during the anabolic phase of severely burned patients: with special reference to sulphur amino acids

Abstract. Owing to the high content of cyst(e)ine and sulphated mucopolysaccharides in skin tissues, an increased demand for sulphur amino acids could be expected during the anabolic phase in severely burned patients. As a marker for sulphur amino acid deficiency, leucocyte glutathione, methionine and taurine concentrations and urinary excretion of sulphur amino acids and inorganic sulphate were followed in five severely burned patients during a 5‐month period (1–6 months post injury). Reduced leucocyte concentrations of glutathione, methionine and taurine, and decreased urinary excretion of inorganic sulphate, methionine, cyst(e)ine and taurine were observed, and were most pronounced 2 or 3 months after injury. Simultaneously a minor decrease in urinary output and leucocyte concentration of branched‐chain amino acids and serine were also found, whereas normal levels of glycine, threonine, and glutamine were registered. The episode of limited availability of sulphur amino acids coincides with the period of most intensive collagen and keratin resynthesis of burned skin tissue.
An investigation into the incidence of auto‐immune disorders in patients with lichen sclerosus and atrophicus

Patients with lichen sclerosus and atrophicus have an increased incidence of organ specific antibodies, and these patients and their relatives have a significantly higher incidence of associated autoimmune diseases than a control population. The incidence of other auto‐immune diseases in patients with lichen sclerosus is highest when the onset is between the ages of 41 and 6o years, but is not related to the duration or site of the lesions.
The molecular revolution in ectomycorrhizal ecology: peeking into the black‐box

Molecular tools have now been applied for the past 5 years to dissect ectomycorrhizal (EM) community structure, and they have propelled a resurgence in interest in the field. Results from these studies have revealed that: (i) EM communities are impressively diverse and are patchily distributed at a fine scale below ground; (ii) there is a poor correspondence between fungi that appear dominant as sporocarps vs. those that appear dominant on roots; (iii) members of Russulaceae, Thelephoraceae, and/or non‐thelephoroid resupinates are among the most abundant EM taxa in ecosystems sampled to date; (iv) dissimilar plants are associated with many of the same EM species when their roots intermingle — this occurs on a small enough spatial scale that fungal individuals are likely to be shared by dissimilar plants; and (v) mycoheterotrophic plants have highly specific fungal associations. Although, these results have been impressive, they have been tempered by sampling difficulties and limited by the taxonomic resolution of restriction fragment length polymorphism methods. Minor modifications of the sampling schemes, and more use of direct sequencing, has the potential to solve these problems. Use of additional methods, such as in situ hybridization to ribosomal RNA or hybridization coupled to microarrays, are necessary to open up the analysis of the mycelial component of community structure.
Prediction of body density from simple anthropometric measurements in college-age men and women.

Five skinfold, 13 circumference and 8 bone diameter measurements were made on college age men and women to determine the best combination of measurements to predict body density as measured by underwater weighing. For the men ( N = 53), mean body density was 1.0646 g/ml ( SD zz 0.0138); 15.3% body fat. The triceps and scapula skinfolds and abdomen and forearm circumferences resulted in R = . 89; Sey zz . 0066 g/ ml. The best combination of skinfolds or circumferences resulted in identical multiple correlations of R zz . 86. For the women ( N zz 69 ), mean body density was 1.034 ( SD = 0.0152 ) ; 25.6% body fat. The highest multiple correlation to predict density was obtained by use of iliac and scapula skinfolds, elbow diameter, and thigh girth (R = .84; Sey zz .0086 g/ml). The prediction equation based on circumferences was more accurate for predicting density in women ( R zz .80; Sey = .0094) than the best combination of skinfolds (R = .77; Sey zz .0100). For the men, the equation based on circumferences was as accurate for predicting density as the equation based only on skinfolds ( R zz .86; Sey = .0072 ) . The best combination of circumferences to predict density in the men includes the arm, abdomen and forearm; for the women, the same three measurements are used including the thigh girth. Since the circumference regression equations were as accurate in terms of predicting body density as skinfolds, and almost as good compared to other combinations of measurements, the equations based on simple circumferences could be used instead of skinfolds to accurately predict the criterion body density. Anthropometric body measurements have been particularly useful to estimate the fat and non-fat components of the human body, since the measurements are easily obtained and prediction equations using these measurements give a dependable estimate of body density as determined by more complex techniques. For young men, Brožek and Keys ( 1951), Pascale et al. (1956), and Sloan (1967) found that two or three skin
Platelet morphology and IPF during treatment with haemodialysis

During treatment with HD PLT interaction with the dialysis membrane results in activation and adhesion on the membrane surface and release of platelet-derived factors. In case of PLT activation increased amounts of degranulated PLTs are present in peripheral blood circulation. Degranulated PLTs are less viable and demonstrate a shortened life span. Increased turnover of PLTs might reveal increased amounts of immature PLTs with increased RNA content.
A Qualitative Study of Urban Hispanic Youth in an After-School Program

Based on a diverse sample of 11 urban Hispanic youth, the career, educational, and cultural domains of developmental adjustment were investigated through a triangulation of interview data and field notes within the context of delivering an after-school program. Consensual qualitative research (CQR) and content analysis were used to explore how youth constructed meaning within these domains and experienced their participation in the program. The CQR results yielded five domains of categories and subcategories, while four themes emerged from the analysis of field notes. By synthesizing this corpus of data, directions for future research and implications for practice are discussed.
A phase II clinical study of combining FOLFIRI and bevacizumab plus erlotinib in 2nd-line chemotherapy for patients with metastatic colorectal cancer

Abstract We conducted an open-label single-arm phase II study by combining irinotecan (FOLFIRI) and bevacizumab (BV) plus erlotinib (ER) in 2nd-line chemotherapy for patients with metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC). Eligible mCRC patients received 1st-line standard chemotherapy but still had progressive disease. They were given FOLFIRI plus BV at 2.5 mg/kg on day 1 per 2-week cycle, and daily 150 mg ER. The primary endpoint is progression-free survival (PFS). A total of 122 patients enrolled in the study. Among them, 55.7% were male patients and median age was 58.4 years (29–72 years). Median PFS was 7.1 months (95% CI 4.3–10.2). Median overall survival (OS) was 13.5 months (95% CI 9.7–16.4). No patients had complete responses, 24 patients had partial response (19.6%) and 59 had stable disease (48.4%). The most frequent adverse event (AE) was rash, with 66 patients (54.1%) had grade 3/4 rash. Other frequent grade 3/4 AEs were fatigue (n = 36, 29.5%), bleeding (n = 31, 25.4%), neutropenia (n = 23, 18.9%), and platelets (n = 14, 11.5%). Combining FOLFIRI and BV plus ER in 2nd-line chemotherapy is efficient to treat mCRC patients with acceptable safety.
Common aetiology for diverse language skills in 41/2-year-old twins

Multivariate genetic analysis was used to examine the genetic and environmental aetiology of the interrelationships of diverse linguistic skills. This study used data from a large sample of 4½-year-old twins who were tested on measures assessing articulation, phonology, grammar, vocabulary, and verbal memory. Phenotypic analysis suggested two latent factors: articulation (2 measures) and general language (the remaining 7), and a genetic model incorporating these factors provided a good fit to the data. Almost all genetic and shared environmental influences on the 9 measures acted through the two latent factors. There was also substantial aetiological overlap between the two latent factors, with a genetic correlation of 0·64 and shared environment correlation of 1·00. We conclude that to a large extent, the same genetic and environmental factors underlie the development of individual differences in a wide range of linguistic skills.
The Evaluation of Teaching in Choral Rehearsals

Seven rehearsal excerpts demonstrating research-identified teaching skills were presented to university music majors (N = 89) for ratings and comments. The excerpts focused on the conductor/teacher and were selected from previously taped choral rehearsals of two contrasting pieces across one complete semester. Numerical ratings from 1 to 10 were assigned by subjects to 10 categories of student and teacher behavior: time use, musicianship, accuracy of presentation, student attentiveness, student performance quality, enthusiasm, intensity, pacing, personality, and overall effectiveness. Comparisons of the characteristics of the highest-rated excerpt with the highest-rated showed that the highest-rated excerpt contained less off-task student behavior, a higher percentage of approvals, more eye contact, more activity changes, and that the average length of both teacher and student activities was from 5-6 seconds. Subjects' comments revealed that the highest-rated excerpt received the most positive comments and the lowest-rated received the most negative comments. For the highest-rated excerpt, the most positive comments were for student attentiveness, enthusiasm, pacing, and overall teaching effectiveness; and for the lowest-rated, the most negative comments were for student attentiveness, pacing, and overall teaching effectiveness.
When Language Fails: Using Expressive Arts to Facilitate Being-with When Working with Survivors of Mass Trauma

When Language Fails: Using Expressive Arts to Facilitate Being-with When Working with Survivors of Mass Trauma Adam Harrison The following program is an eight-week trauma-focused expressive arts group protocol designed for clinicians who wish to work with survivors of mass trauma but with whom they do not share a common language. The protocol is structured so that the clinicians can facilitate the group through pantomime and demonstration so that there is a decreased dependence on locating and maintaining translating resources. The protocol was designed by drawing upon the strengths and bridging the weaknesses of several current trauma-focused expressive arts protocols as well as using Hobfoll et al.'s (2007) meta-analysis of the general principles necessary for effective trauma-focused therapy interventions. Ease of use, transportability, and cost of materials were also taken into consideration during the development of this protocol. The result is a largely non-verbal, culturally sensitive protocol that incorporates the promotion of a sense of safety, calmness, community, self-efficacy, connectedness, and hope while working through traumatic events individually and as a group for less than $500.
An Exploratory Study of the Effects of a Self-Instructional Programme Utilising the Pitch Master on Pitch Discrimination and Pitch Accuracy in Performance of Young Trombonists

Students in an experimental group received training in aural/oral perception through the use of a pitch discrimination programme which utilised a technological innovation, the TAP Pitch Master. Trombonists who received the five-hour aural/oral instructional programme with the Pitch Master made significantly greater pre-test to post-test gains on two measures of pitch performance devised by the investigator than did trombonists who received only their regular band instruction. It was concluded that the instructional programme utilising the Pitch Master was effective in improving pitch accuracy in young trombonists' performance.
Terminal RNA Replication Elements in Human Parechovirus 1

ABSTRACT To define structural elements critical for RNA replication in human parechovirus 1 (HPeV1), a replicon with chloramphenicol acetyltransferase as a reporter gene and an infectious virus cDNA clone have been used. It was observed that there are cis-acting signals required for HPeV1 replication located within the 5′-terminal 112 nucleotides of the genome and that these include two terminal stem-loops, SL-A and SL-B, together with a pseudoknot element. Significant disruption of any of these structures impaired both RNA replication and virus growth. In view of the similarity in terminal structures to several picornaviruses, such as cardioviruses and hepatoviruses, the insights generated in this work are of wider significance for understanding picornavirus replication.
The significance of biochemical and molecular sample integrity in brain proteomics and peptidomics: Stathmin 2‐20 and peptides as sample quality indicators

Comparisons of transcriptional and translational expression in normal and abnormal states are important to reach an understanding of pathogenesis and pathophysiology. Maintaining the biochemical, molecular, and structural sample integrity is essential for correct sample comparisons. We demonstrate that both proteins and neuropeptides, including their PTMs, are subjected to massive degradation in the brain already 1 min postmortem. Further, markers for determining the integrity and status of a biological sample were identified. The protein fragment stathmin 2‐20 correlated well with the general level of postmortem degradation and may serve as a sample quality indicator for future work, both in animal and human postmortem brains. Finally, a novel method for preventing degradation of proteins and peptides in postmortem tissue is presented using rapid and uniform conductive heat transfer on tissue prior to the actual sample preparation procedures, which enables the relatively low‐abundant neuropeptides to remain intact, minimizes degradation of proteins by proteolysis, and conserves the PTMs of the neuropeptides.
ON uNCONSCiOuS MOraliTY: ThE EFFECTS OF uNCONSCiOuS ThiNkiNG ON MOral dECiSiON MakiNG

In this article, we argue that when making moral decisions, unconscious thought can lead to more utilitarian moral decisions (approving of harmful actions that maximize good consequences), compared to conscious thought and immediate decision making. Therefore, we presented participants with a complex version of the well-known footbridge dilemma. In immediate decision conditions, participants made decisions what to do in this dilemma immediately. In conscious thought conditions, participants consciously thought about what to do for 3 minutes and then made their decisions. In unconscious thought conditions, participants were distracted for 3 minutes, and next made their decisions. As expected, participants who thought unconsciously about the dilemma were more willing to make utilitarian decisions than participants who thought consciously or who made an immediate decision. The current findings provide a new perspective on the social psychology of moral decision making and further insight into unconscious thinking.