Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Grey Matter Changes Associated with Heavy Cannabis Use: A Longitudinal sMRI Study

Cannabis is the most frequently used illicit drug worldwide. Cross-sectional neuroimaging studies suggest that chronic cannabis exposure and the development of cannabis use disorders may affect brain morphology. However, cross-sectional studies cannot make a conclusive distinction between cause and consequence and longitudinal neuroimaging studies are lacking. In this prospective study we investigate whether continued cannabis use and higher levels of cannabis exposure in young adults are associated with grey matter reductions. Heavy cannabis users (N = 20, age baseline M = 20.5, SD = 2.1) and non-cannabis using healthy controls (N = 22, age baseline M = 21.6, SD = 2.45) underwent a comprehensive psychological assessment and a T1- structural MRI scan at baseline and 3 years follow-up. Grey matter volumes (orbitofrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, insula, striatum, thalamus, amygdala, hippocampus and cerebellum) were estimated using the software package SPM (VBM-8 module). Continued cannabis use did not have an effect on GM volume change at follow-up. Cross-sectional analyses at baseline and follow-up revealed consistent negative correlations between cannabis related problems and cannabis use (in grams) and regional GM volume of the left hippocampus, amygdala and superior temporal gyrus. These results suggests that small GM volumes in the medial temporal lobe are a risk factor for heavy cannabis use or that the effect of cannabis on GM reductions is limited to adolescence with no further damage of continued use after early adulthood. Long-term prospective studies starting in early adolescence are needed to reach final conclusions.
Chocolate and Health-Related Quality of Life: A Prospective Study

Background Chocolate consumption has been associated with a short-term reduction in blood pressure and cholesterol, and improvement of insulin sensitivity; however, participants could not be aware of presenting hypertension or hypercholesterolemia. Moreover, the effect of chocolate on mental health is uncertain. This study assessed the association of regular chocolate consumption with the physical (PCS) and mental (MCS) components of health-related quality of life (HRQL). Materials and methods We analyzed data from a cohort of 4599 individuals recruited in 2008–2010 and followed-up once prospectively to January 2013 (follow-up mean: 3.5 years). Regular chocolate consumption was assessed at baseline with a validated diet history. HRQL was assessed with the SF-12 v.2 at baseline and at follow-up. Analyses were performed with linear regression and adjusted for the main confounders, including HRQL at baseline. Results At baseline, 72% of the study participants did not consume chocolate, 11% consumed ≤10 g/day and 17% >10 g/day. Chocolate consumption at baseline did not show an association with PCS and MCS of the SF-12 measured three years later. Compared to those who did not consume chocolate, the PCS scores were similar in those who consumed ≤10g/day (beta: -0.07; 95% confidence interval (95% CI): -0.94 to 0.80) and in those who consumed >10g/day (beta: 0.02; 95% CI:-0.71 to 0.75); corresponding figures for the MCS were 0.29; 95% CI: -0.67 to 1.26, and -0.57; 95%CI: -1.37 to 0.23. Similar results were found for sex, regardless of obesity, hypertension, hypercholesterolemia, diabetes or depression. Conclusions No evidence was found of an association between chocolate intake and the physical or mental components of HRQL.
Dispositional and Situational Differences in Motives to Engage in Organizational Citizenship Behaviors

This study analyzes the effects of dispositional and situational factors on different motives to engage in discretionary behaviors. Based on the work of Rioux and Penner (2001), we measure pro-social values, organizational concern, and impression management as motives to engage in discretionary behaviors. We then study, using analysis of variance on a sample of 192 employees coming from 15 services organizations in Chile, differences in these motives due to gender, affective commitment, and power distance. Results show that pro-social values are a stronger motive for women than for men, organizational concern motives are more important for employees that are affectively committed to the organization, and impression management motives are more important for employees with high power distance to their managers.
Accounting for the Delay in the Transition from Acute to Chronic Pain: Axonal and Nuclear Mechanisms

Acute insults produce hyperalgesic priming, a neuroplastic change in nociceptors that markedly prolongs inflammatory mediator-induced hyperalgesia. After an acute initiating insult, there is a 72 h delay to the onset of priming, for which the underlying mechanism is unknown. We hypothesized that the delay is due to the time required for a signal to travel from the peripheral terminal to the cell body followed by a return signal to the peripheral terminal. We report that when an inducer of hyperalgesic priming (monocyte chemotactic protein 1) is administered at the spinal cord of Sprague Dawley rats, priming is detected at the peripheral terminal with a delay significantly shorter than when applied peripherally. Spinally induced priming is detected not only when prostaglandin E2 (PGE2) is presented to the peripheral nociceptor terminals, but also when it is presented intrathecally to the central terminals in the spinal cord. Furthermore, when an inducer of priming is administered in the paw, priming can be detected in spinal cord (as prolonged hyperalgesia induced by intrathecal PGE2), but only when the mechanical stimulus is presented to the paw on the side where the priming inducer was administered. Both spinally and peripherally induced priming is prevented by intrathecal oligodeoxynucleotide antisense to the nuclear transcription factor CREB mRNA. Finally, the inhibitor of protein translation reversed hyperalgesic priming only when injected at the site where PGE2 was administered, suggesting that the signal transmitted from the cell body to the peripheral terminal is not a newly translated protein, but possibly a newly expressed mRNA.
Exploring folksonomy for personalized search

As a social service in Web 2.0, folksonomy provides the users the ability to save and organize their bookmarks online with "social annotations" or "tags". Social annotations are high quality descriptors of the web pages' topics as well as good indicators of web users' interests. We propose a personalized search framework to utilize folksonomy for personalized search. Specifically, three properties of folksonomy, namely the categorization, keyword, and structure property, are explored. In the framework, the rank of a web page is decided not only by the term matching between the query and the web page's content but also by the topic matching between the user's interests and the web page's topics. In the evaluation, we propose an automatic evaluation framework based on folksonomy data, which is able to help lighten the common high cost in personalized search evaluations. A series of experiments are conducted using two heterogeneous data sets, one crawled from Del.icio. us and the other from Dogear. Extensive experimental results show that our personalized search approach can significantly improve the search quality.
Red Meat Consumption during Adolescence among Premenopausal Women and Risk of Breast Cancer

Background: Adolescence may be a period of increased susceptibility to breast cancer due to regular division of undifferentiated cells that occurs between puberty and first birth. Red meat consumption during early adult life has been associated with breast cancer, but intake during adolescence has not been examined prospectively. We aimed to assess the relationship between red meat intake during adolescence and premenopausal breast cancer. Methods: We examined the incidence of invasive premenopausal breast cancer prospectively within the Nurses' Health Study II. A total of 39,268 premenopausal women who completed a validated 124-item food frequency questionnaire on their diet during high school, were followed for 7 years, from 1998 to 2005. Cox proportional hazards regression was used to estimate relative risks (RR) and 95% confidence intervals (95% CI). Results: 455 cases of invasive premenopausal breast cancer were diagnosed between 1998 and 2005. Compared with women in the lowest quintile of red meat intake during high school, the multivariate-adjusted RR for the highest quintile of intake was 1.34 (95% CI, 0.94-1.89; Ptrend = 0.05). A significant linear association was observed with every additional 100 g of red meat consumed per day (RR, 1.20; 95% CI, 1.00-1.43; P = 0.05). This association was more pronounced in hormone receptor–positive tumors (RR, 1.36; 95% CI, 1.08-1.70; P = 0.008) and was not significant in hormone receptor–negative tumors (RR, 0.99; 95% CI, 0.61-1.61, P = 0.97). Conclusion: Higher red meat intake in adolescence may increase the risk of premenopausal breast cancer. (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2008;17(8):2146–51)
Transformational Fallibilism and the Development of Understanding

Abstract This article argues that inquirers should adopt an active orientation to the limits of their knowledge, an approach referred to as “Transformational Fallibilism”. Drawing on the Popperian tradition, this approach treats the fallibility of knowledge as more than a philosophical nicety, rather seeing the questioning of claims, including those that have been successful, as a key way to improve the understandings of inquirers. This is illustrated with reference to the example of Newtonian and Einsteinian understandings of gravity and time in the natural sciences, and debates about the role of fathers in child-rearing in the social sciences. I compare this approach to that found within critical realism, arguing that while defenders of the latter acknowledge fallibility to some extent, certain of their arguments also place problematic limits on it. Examining Sayer’s work, I argue that his view that practically successful understandings reveal something about the structure of the world involves an overconfidence in these understandings. I suggest that Elder-Vass’s use of the idea of approximate truth involves a similar difficulty. By contrast, I argue for the importance of treating all elements of the understanding, including those bound up with practical successes, as potentially in need of reconstruction at any point.
Tumour necrosis factor gene polymorphisms and childhood wheezing

Tumour necrosis factor (TNF)-α is associated with childhood wheezing. A genetic predisposition to increased TNF-α production, influenced by single nucleotide gene polymorphisms, may be important. Frequencies of TNF-α-308G/A and lymphotoxin (LT)-α+252G/A polymorphisms were compared in 115 asthmatic children, 55 wheezy infants and 156 control school children from the UK. Genotype frequencies for the TNF-α-308 and LT-α+252 polymorphisms were significantly different from controls. Haplotype analysis showed that TNF-α-308G, LT-α+252A/TNF-α-308A, LT-α+252A was associated with a markedly increased risk for both asthma and infant wheezing. The TNF-α-308G, LT-α+252G/TNF-α-308G, LT-α+252A combination was protective for asthma and infant wheezing. These findings were confirmed by analysis of Caucasian data. Nasal TNF-α levels were measured in the infants during acute wheezing episodes and higher, but nonsignificant levels were produced in those with one or two LT-α+252A alleles. Unexpectedly, significantly lower nasal TNF-α levels were found in the presence of one or two TNF-α-308A alleles. TNF-α-308/LT-α+252 genotype combinations had a significant influence on nasal TNF-α levels. In conclusion, these findings may have implications for future early intervention studies by helping to identify infants at increased risk for wheezing and childhood asthma.
Efficient resource allocation with service guarantees in passive optical networks

Feature Issue on Passive Optical Network Architectures and TechnologiesWe propose and evaluate a resource allocation scheme for time-division multiplexing passive optical networks (PONs), which supports multiple service classes; dynamic bandwidth allocation for services with varying (in time) capacity demand; and bounded quality of service parameters for services with real-time requirements. Although several algorithms have been proposed in the literature considering several of the above objectives in isolation, our work focuses on the fundamental problem of trading-off between PON upstream channel utilization and strict delay and jitter bounds when supporting a dynamically changing mix of services with different requirements.
The connection between maternal employment and childhood obesity: inspecting the mechanisms

This paper investigates the channels through which maternal employment affects childhood obesity. We use time diaries and interview responses from the Child Development Supplement of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics which combines information on children’s time allocation, children’s BMI, and mother’s labor force participation. We find some evidence that supervision and nutrition play significant but small roles in the relationship between maternal employment and childhood obesity. Although the difference in the effect of maternal employment varies by mother’s education, we find few differences in the mechanisms by mother’s education.
Explaining Internet-Related Performance from the Alignment Point of View

This research addresses the question of explaining the Internet-related performance of a firm by relying on the Strategic Alignment Model. Following a contingent approach, the conceptual framework sheds light on the coherence between Internet use, business, organization and technology. The research model is applied to the main companies of the French tourism sector. The adopted methodology is based on a survey to which 131 firms have taken part. Using structural equation modeling, the proposed model is tested and data analysis reveals that there is a particularly significant relationship between the coherence of organizational designs and the Internet-related performance of the firm.
Metronidazole Vaginal Gel 1.3% in the Treatment of Bacterial Vaginosis: A Dose-Ranging Study

Objective Metronidazole vaginal gel (MVG) 0.75% is a US Food and Drug Administration–approved, 5-day treatment for bacterial vaginosis (BV). This study tested the hypothesis that a shorter treatment course at a higher dose (MVG 1.3%) would yield similar efficacy to 5 days of MVG 0.75%. Materials and Methods This phase 2, multicenter, randomized, controlled, investigator-blinded, dose-ranging study enrolled women with a clinical diagnosis of BV. Patients were assigned to MVG 1.3% once daily for 1, 3, or 5 days or MVG 0.75% once daily for 5 days. The therapeutic cure rate, requiring clinical and bacteriological cure, at the end-of-study visit was determined for the per-protocol population. A Kaplan-Meier analysis was used to estimate median time-to-symptom resolution. Results In total, 255 women (mean age = 35 y) were enrolled. The per-protocol population included 189 patients. The therapeutic cure rate was higher in the 1-day (13/43, 30.2%), 3-day (12/48, 25.0%), and 5-day (16/49, 32.7%) MVG 1.3% groups versus the MVG 0.75% group (10/49, 20.4%). Median time-to-resolution of fishy odor was shorter in the 3 MVG 1.3% groups versus the MVG 0.75% group. The 5-day MVG 1.3% group had the lowest rate of symptom return. No clinically important differences were observed in adverse events across treatment groups; most events were mild or moderate in intensity and considered unrelated to treatment. Similar results were found in the modified intent-to-treat population. Conclusions Metronidazole vaginal gel 1.3% applied once daily for 1, 3, or 5 days showed similar efficacy, safety, and tolerability as MVG 0.75% once daily for 5 days.
UvA-DARE ( Digital Academic Repository ) Forcing your luck : Goal-striving behavior in chance situations

Previous research suggests that desired endstates (i.e., goals) initiate a set of motivational processes supporting goal-attainment. For example, motivational intensity (e.g., effort investment) increases as distance to the goal decreases. The present studies investigate whether this goal-gradient can also be observed in chance determined situations, situations in which there is a desired endstate (i.e., winning) but in which increased effort investment does not support goal-attainment. Three studies provide consistent evidence for the goal-gradient in chance determined situations. We show that participants (in the lab and in a TV game show) invest more effort into goaldirected behavior the closer they get to the end of the game. The moderation of expectancy and value was, however, modest. Interestingly, participants’ self-reports suggest that their dynamic changes in behavior were unintentional and perceived as non-instrumental. Findings are related to theories of goal pursuit and illusory control, and contrasted to the principle of resource conservation, according to which such behavior should not occur.
Nuffield Centre for Experimental Social Sciences Discussion Paper Series Decision Costs in Legislative Bargaining: an Experimental Analysis Decision Costs in Legislative Bargaining: an Experimental Analysis

We conduct an experiment to assess the effects of different decision rules on the costs of decision making in a multilateral bargaining situation. Specifically , we compare the amount of costly delay observed in an experimental bargaining game under majority and unanimity rule. Our main finding is that individual subjects are more likely to reject offers under unanimity rule. This increased rejection rate, as well as the requirement that all subjects agree, leads to more costly delay. This result provides empirical support for a classic argument in favor of less-than-unanimity decision rules put forth by Buchanan and Tullock (1962).
The effects of visual proxemic information in video mediated communication

One of the simplest examples of non-verbal communication is that of proximity, i.e. the distance at which conversants stand (or sit) from each other when interacting. This is known to be guided by certain social rules which take into account personal relationships, culture, personality and the purpose of the discussion, violation of which leads to various psychological and behavioural effects.One such effect is persuasion. Sales people will tend to approach customers closer than other business people. Video has in the past been shown to lead to more effective negotiation and bargaining than audio only conditions in experimental tasks. So far though, it remains unknown whether or not similar effects of proximity exist within video-mediated communication --- or indeed even whether or not proximity can be conveyed through video. This study investigates the role of the proxemic information within the video image in a formal persuasion environment using both subjective and objective measures of attitude and behaviour.A simulation of a customer seeking financial advice from an advisor across a live video link had two proxemic conditions --- the image of the advisor appearing either very close or far away. Subjective impressions of both the task and technology were analysed by questionnaire and showed no subjective differences between conditions. Structural analysis of the dialogues however, indicated customers to be more interactive in the close condition. When the advisor appeared close the customer spoke more often, said more, took longer and made more instances of overlapping speech. The similarity between these results and those of familiarity studies are discussed and a hypothesis of perceived close proximity resulting in perceived familiarity is offered.The study shows that proxemic information is preserved in video conferencing and produces effects similar to those of face-to-face interactions but less pronounced. This is explained by the video conveying only visual proxemic information compared to the multimodal information available in face-to-face interaction.
Heating of galactic discs by infalling satellites

We develop an analytic model to calculate the rate at which galaxy discs are heated by dark matter substructures orbiting in their haloes. The model takes into account the internal structure, mass function and accretion rate of satellites expected in the ΛCDM cosmology, as well as the growth of the disc by accretion and mergers, but it ignores resonant heating of the disc and the dynamical effects of spiral arms and bars. We calibrate this model against N-body simulations and demonstrate that it is able to reproduce the N-body heating rates to within a factor of 3 in the majority of cases. Our model gives the distribution of disc scaleheights for galaxies of different luminosities. For L* spiral galaxies, it predicts a median disc thickness of only 5 per cent of the radial scalelength if substructure is the only source of heating. The median disc thickness increases to nearly 20 per cent of the radial scalelength when heating due to gravitational scattering of stars by molecular clouds is also included. The latter value is close to the thickness estimated observationally for the disc of the Milky Way galaxy. The distribution of disc thickness predicted by the model is also consistent with a recent observational determination for sub-L* galaxies by Bizyaev & Mitronova. Thus, the observed thickness of the stellar discs of spiral galaxies seems to be entirely compatible with the abundance of substructure in dark matter haloes predicted by the standard Λ-dominated cold dark matter model of structure formation. In an Ω0= 1 universe, our best model of galaxy formation produces similar scaleheights, a consequence of the fact that similar amounts of substructure are accreted by haloes during the lifetime of the disc in Ω0= 1 and 0.3, Λ0= 0.7 cold dark matter cosmologies.
Redox Control of Antioxidant and Antihepatotoxic Activities of Cassia surattensis Seed Extract against Paracetamol Intoxication in Mice: In Vitro and In Vivo Studies of Herbal Green Antioxidant

The therapeutic potential of Cassia surattensis in reducing free radical-induced oxidative stress and inflammation particularly in hepatic diseases was evaluated in this study. The polyphenol rich C. surattensis seed extract showed good in vitro antioxidant. C. surattensis seed extract contained total phenolic content of 100.99 mg GAE/g dry weight and there was a positive correlation (r > 0.9) between total phenolic content and the antioxidant activities of the seed extract. C. surattensis seed extract significantly (p < 0.05) reduced the elevated levels of serum liver enzymes (ALT, AST, and ALP) and relative liver weight in paracetamol-induced liver hepatotoxicity in mice. Moreover, the extract significantly (p < 0.05) enhanced the antioxidant enzymes and glutathione (GSH) contents in the liver tissues, which led to decrease of malondialdehyde (MDA) level. The histopathological examination showed the liver protective effect of C. surattensis seed extract against paracetamol-induced histoarchitectural alterations by maximum recovery in the histoarchitecture of the liver tissue. Furthermore, histopathological observations correspondingly supported the biochemical assay outcome, that is, the significant reduction in elevated levels of serum liver enzymes. In conclusion, C. surattensis seed extract enhanced the in vivo antioxidant status and showed antihepatotoxic activities, which is probably due to the presence of phenolic compounds.