Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Looking to the Future to Appreciate the Present

Both psychological research and conventional wisdom suggest that it can be difficult to attend to and derive enjoyment from the pleasant things in life. The present study examined whether focusing on the imminent ending of a positive life experience can lead to increased enjoyment. A temporal distance manipulation was used to make college graduation seem more or less close at hand. Twice a week over the course of 2 weeks, college students were told to write about their college life, with graduation being framed as either very close or very far off. As predicted, thinking about graduation as being close led to a significant increase in college-related behaviors and subjective well-being over the course of the study. The present research provides support for the counterintuitive hypothesis that thinking about an experience's ending can enhance one's present enjoyment of it.
Accounting, Prudential Regulation and Financial Stability: Elements of a Synthesis

What information about the financial condition of firms is conducive to efficient and stable operation of the financial system and of the economy more broadly? In this essay, we outline the contours of an ideal set of such information, identify existing gaps and propose a way forward to fill them. We argue that an ideal set should comprise two dimensions. As regards financial characteristics, it should cover three different types, viz: estimates of the current financial condition ("first-moment information"); estimates of risk profiles ("risk information"); and measures of the uncertainty surrounding both kinds of estimate ("measurement error information"). As regards the object of the analysis, it should cover information about both the individual firm ("micro information") and, suitably aggregated, the "system" as a whole ("macro information"). So far, efforts have mainly focused on micro information and, within it, on estimates of the current financial condition; by contrast, risk information has drawn attention only more recently and measurement error information has been largely neglected. We also note that, as regards micro information, significant differences in perspective between accounting standard setters and prudential supervisors have come to light. We examine the reasons for these differences and propose ways in which they could be reconciled. We propose a strategy based on two principles: first, in the long term, the "decoupling" of the objective of accurate financial reporting about the firm from that of instilling the desired degree of prudence in its behaviour; and second, a "parallel" process towards that objective so that at all points the prudential authorities can neutralise any undesirable implications for financial stability of changes in financial reporting standards. We stress that close cooperation between accounting standard setters and supervisory authorities is called for both in developing the final set of information and in implementing it.
Genetic neuroscience of mammalian learning and memory.

Our primary research interest is to understand the molecular and cellular mechanisms on neuronal circuitry underlying the acquisition, consolidation and retrieval of hippocampus-dependent memory in rodents. We study these problems by producing genetically engineered (i.e. spatially targeted and/or temporally restricted) mice and analysing these mice by multifaceted methods including molecular and cellular biology, in vitro and in vivo physiology and behavioural studies. We attempt to identify deficits at each of the multiple levels of complexity in specific brain areas or cell types and deduce those deficits that underlie specific learning or memory. We will review our recent studies on the acquisition, consolidation and recall of memories that have been conducted with mouse strains in which genetic manipulations were targeted to specific types of cells in the hippocampus or forebrain of young adult mice.
Effect of economic assets on sexual risk-taking intentions among orphaned adolescents in Uganda.

OBJECTIVES We examined the effect of economic assets on sexual risk-taking intentions among school-going AIDS-orphaned adolescents in rural Uganda. METHODS AIDS-orphaned adolescents from 15 comparable schools were randomly assigned to control (n = 133) or treatment (n = 127) conditions. Treatment participants received child savings accounts, workshops, and mentorship. This economic intervention was in addition to the traditional care and support services for school-going orphaned adolescents (counseling and school supplies) provided to both treatment and control groups. Adolescents in the treatment condition were compared with adolescents in the control condition at baseline and at 10 months after the intervention. RESULTS After control for sociodemographic factors, child-caregiver/parental communication, and peer pressure, adolescents in the economic intervention group reported a significant reduction in sexual risk-taking intentions compared with adolescents in the control condition. CONCLUSIONS The findings indicate that in Uganda, a country devastated by poverty and disease (including HIV/AIDS), having access to economic assets plays an important role in influencing adolescents' sexual risk-taking intentions. These findings have implications for the care and support of orphaned adolescents, especially in poor African countries devastated by poverty and sexually transmitted diseases.
Interdisciplinary-action-research: Post-earthquake interventions with older people in Chile

This article reflects on a methodological research proposal developed from the perspective of interdisciplinary action research in the context of fear-coping interventions for older people in seven rural areas of southern Chile, following the earthquake and tsunami of February 2010. First, we used interventions based on music and art therapy to gather information on their emotional condition. We not only identified high levels of psychological stress, but also that their strengths were related to the Chilean culture and folk traditions. The creative strategies used proved to be therapeutic and healing, since participants reported they were able to express their fears, giving new meaning to their experiences in a collective context. The results highlight the importance of engaging with community members in the production of knowledge, and in defining collectively the cultural pertinence of interventions. It concludes with a discussion about the possibility of replicating this proposal in post-disaster intervention contexts.
Identifying training needs for mainstream healthcare professionals, to prepare them for working with individuals with intellectual disabilities: a systematic review.

BACKGROUND Research suggests there is a high prevalence of physical and mental ill health among individuals with intellectual disabilities and that staff working in mainstream healthcare services lack knowledge, skills and positive attitudes in supporting this client group. This review aimed to locate, extract themes from and evaluate the current literature that had assessed the training needs of mainstream health professionals within this area. METHODS This review utilized a mixed-methods approach, with systematic elements used to locate and evaluate the literature (n = 13) and a narrative approach used to explore patterns and themes identified. The search was completed across four databases, using the search terms felt most likely to capture the relevant literature. RESULTS Three main themes of perceived training need were identified across a range of professional groups: general communication, knowledge/information and profession-specific needs. CONCLUSIONS This review highlights the existing themes of training needs as identified by mainstream healthcare staff. It would appear that it may be possible to produce a core training package, suitable across professions with elements that are profession specific and therefore tailored accordingly. Limitations of the literature are explored within this review, as are recommendations for the directions of future research.
SARS-related Virus Predating SARS Outbreak, Hong Kong

Using immunofluorescence and neutralization assays, we detected antibodies to human severe acute respiratory syndrome–associated coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and/or animal SARS-CoV–like virus in 17 (1.8%) of 938 adults recruited in 2001. This finding suggests that a small proportion of healthy persons in Hong Kong had been exposed to SARS-related viruses at least 2 years before the recent SARS outbreak.
Prescriber barriers and enablers to minimising potentially inappropriate medications in adults: a systematic review and thematic synthesis

Objective To synthesise qualitative studies that explore prescribers’ perceived barriers and enablers to minimising potentially inappropriate medications (PIMs) chronically prescribed in adults. Design A qualitative systematic review was undertaken by searching PubMed, EMBASE, Scopus, PsycINFO, CINAHL and INFORMIT from inception to March 2014, combined with an extensive manual search of reference lists and related citations. A quality checklist was used to assess the transparency of the reporting of included studies and the potential for bias. Thematic synthesis identified common subthemes and descriptive themes across studies from which an analytical construct was developed. Study characteristics were examined to explain differences in findings. Setting All healthcare settings. Participants Medical and non-medical prescribers of medicines to adults. Outcomes Prescribers’ perspectives on factors which shape their behaviour towards continuing or discontinuing PIMs in adults. Results 21 studies were included; most explored primary care physicians’ perspectives on managing older, community-based adults. Barriers and enablers to minimising PIMs emerged within four analytical themes: problem awareness; inertia secondary to lower perceived value proposition for ceasing versus continuing PIMs; self-efficacy in regard to personal ability to alter prescribing; and feasibility of altering prescribing in routine care environments given external constraints. The first three themes are intrinsic to the prescriber (eg, beliefs, attitudes, knowledge, skills, behaviour) and the fourth is extrinsic (eg, patient, work setting, health system and cultural factors). The PIMs examined and practice setting influenced the themes reported. Conclusions A multitude of highly interdependent factors shape prescribers’ behaviour towards continuing or discontinuing PIMs. A full understanding of prescriber barriers and enablers to changing prescribing behaviour is critical to the development of targeted interventions aimed at deprescribing PIMs and reducing the risk of iatrogenic harm.
An essential function of sphingolipids in yeast cell division

Ceramides are bioactive lipids and precursors to sphingolipids. They have been shown to take part in a wide variety of different physiological processes in eukaryotic organisms and are thought to be toxic at high concentrations. Ceramide is synthesized by condensation of the sphingoid base sphinganine and a fatty acyl CoA by ceramide synthases, a family of enzymes that differ in their specificity for the length of the acyl CoA substrate. We have engineered a yeast strain where the endogenous ceramide synthase has been replaced by one of the putative enzymes from cotton. As a result, the yeast strain produces C18 rather than C26 ceramides showing that the cotton protein is a bona fide ceramide synthase with specificity towards C18 acyl CoA. Strikingly, the accumulation of C18 ceramide is not toxic in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. This allows survival of the yeast after deletion of the normally essential AUR1 (inositol phosphorylceramide synthase) gene permitting us to address the essential roles of sphingolipids. Deletion of AUR1 allows cell growth, but leads to a defect in cytokinesis, which takes twice as long as in wild‐type strains. Nuclear division and recruitment of septins is apparently not affected, but cytokinesis is delayed and cell separation is incomplete.
Relationships Among Private Speech and Creativity in Head Start and Low—Socioeconomic Status Preschool Children

The purpose of this study was to explore Vygotsky's notion of private speech as a cognitive self-regulatory process and how it related to creativity measures among at-risk children. Thirty-two Head Start and state-funded Pre-K children completed the Torrance creativity test Thinking Creatively in Action and Movement (TCAM). The children's private speech was collected in an open play context and while children completed structured logical— mathematical activities. Results revealed that both originality and fluency creativity were related to self-direction private speech and grand total private speech. Findings support that cognitive self-regulating private speech may be related to creative thinking and that private speech may offer a method for assessing early creative thinking in children from various cultural and economic backgrounds.
Weakened Potential Vorticity Barrier Linked to Recent Winter Arctic Sea Ice Loss and Midlatitude Cold Extremes

A winter Eurasian cooling trend and a large decline of winter sea ice concentration (SIC) in the Barents–Kara Seas (BKS) are striking features of recent climate changes. The question arises as to what extent these phenomena are related. A mechanism is presented that establishes a link between recent winter SIC decline and midlatitude cold extremes. Such potential weather linkages are mediated by whether there is a weak north–south gradient of background tropospheric potential vorticity (PV). A strong background PV gradient, which usually occurs in North Atlantic and Pacific Ocean midlatitudes, acts as a barrier that inhibits atmospheric blocking and southward cold air intrusion. Conversely, atmospheric blocking is more persistent in weakened PV gradient regions over Eurasia, Greenland, and northwestern North America because of weakened energy dispersion and intensified nonlinearity. The small climatological PV gradients over mid- to high-latitude Eurasia have become weaker in recent decades as BKS air temperatures show positive trends due to SIC loss, and this has led to more persistent high-latitude Ural-region blocking. These factors contribute to increased cold winter trend in East Asia. It is found, however, that in years when the winter PV gradient is small the East Asian cold extremes can even occur in the absence of large negative SIC anomalies. Thus, the magnitude of background PV gradient is an important controller of Arctic–midlatitude weather linkages, but it plays no role if Ural blocking is not present. Thus, the “PV barrier” concept presents a critical insight into the mechanism producing cold Eurasian extremes and is hypothesized to set up such Arctic–midlatitude linkages in other locations.
Comparator bias: why comparisons must address genuine uncertainties

Researchers may believe – and patients and physicians may hope – that a particular treatment (perhaps because it is new) is better than other available treatments; but it may often turn out to be worse. When the British Medical Research Council’s controlled trial of streptomycin for pulmonary tuberculosis was conceived in 1946, none of the therapies used to treat the disease had been shown in controlled clinical trials to be useful; indeed, one controlled trial had shown gold salt therapy to do more harm than good. Although streptomycin was known to be useful in forms of tuberculosis which had previously always been fatal, there was uncertainty about how useful the new drug would be in pulmonary tuberculosis, from which patients often recovered after treatment with bed rest alone. Patients in the MRC trial were accordingly randomized either to bed rest alone, or to bed rest and streptomycin. The same reasoning is applicable when controlled trials are designed today. After considering systematic reviews of the relevant existing evidence, patients and their doctors must be substantially uncertain about which among the treatment options – including no active treatment – is preferable. This implies ensuring that no patient who agrees to participate in the trial will knowingly be disadvantaged, whichever one of the comparison treatments the patient is assigned to receive. Clinical trials are done to reduce uncertainties, and they should only be done if clinicians and their patients are uncertain which of the existing alternatives is preferable. This requirement is sometimes referred to as ‘the uncertainty principle’ or ‘equipoise’. If one or more of the treatments selected for the comparison in a trial is known to be worse than others, not only will some participants in the trial be denied effective treatment, but this ‘comparator bias’ will result in unfair tests of treatments. Even if other sources of bias have been well controlled in such studies, their results will mislead patients and their doctors. Unfortunately, comparator bias is sometimes deliberately introduced for just this purpose, usually with a view to showing that new treatments are preferable to existing alternatives.
Epidemiology and hepatitis C virus in Victoria

Parenterally transmitted non‐A, non‐B (NANB) hepatitis virus or hepatitis C virus is a common cause of both acute and chronic hepatitis. Using a recently developed enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assay we looked at the prevalence of antibodies to hepatis C virus (anti‐HCV) in a number of groups. People with haemophilia (75.6%) and intravenous drug users (61.9%) had the highest prevalence, while homosexual men attending a sauna (34.1%) and prisoners (30.8%) had a moderately high prevalence of anti‐HCV. A lower prevalence of antibody was detected in female prostitutes (10.4%), institutionalised mentally retarded subjects (9.5%), homosexual men requesting human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) testing through their local doctor (8.8%), dialysis patients (5.9%), renal transplant patients (6.9%), and patients referred from a sexually transmitted diseases clinic (6.2%). The lowest prevalence of anti‐HCV was recorded in women attending a provincial hospital for antenatal care (0.4%). The predominance of anti‐HCV in groups of people exposed to blood‐borne and sexually transmitted infections suggests that these routes may be primarily involved in the spread of hepatitis C virus infection.
A Population-Based Assessment of the Agreement Between Grading of Goniophotographic Images and Gonioscopy in the Chinese-American Eye Study (CHES)

Purpose To compare grading of goniophotographic images and gonioscopy in assessing the iridocorneal angle. Methods In a population-based, cross-sectional study, participants underwent gonioscopy and goniophotographic imaging during the same visit. The iridocorneal angle was classified as closed if the posterior trabecular meshwork could not be seen. A single masked observer graded the goniophotographic images, and each eye was classified as having angle closure based on the number of closed quadrants. Agreement between the methods was analyzed by calculating kappa (κ) and first-order agreement coefficient (AC1) statistics and comparison of area under receiver operating characteristic curves (AUC). Results A total of 4149 Chinese Americans (3994 eyes) were included in this study. The agreement for angle closure diagnosis between gonioscopy and EyeCam was moderate to excellent (κ = 0.60, AC1 0.90, AUC 0.76–0.80). Conclusions Detection of iridocorneal angle closure based on goniophotographic imaging shows moderate to very good agreement with angle closure assessment using gonioscopy.
Diagnosis and classification of female stress urinary incontinence by transperineal two-dimensional ultrasound.

OBJECTIVE This study was designed to evaluate the significance of transperineal two-dimensional ultrasound in the diagnosis and classification of female stress urinary incontinence (SUI). METHODS A total of 87 preoperative SUI patients (group A) from the Department of Gynecology of Peking University People's Hospital were included into this study. These patients were further divided into two groups (groups A1 and A2) according to the severity of their disease. In addition, during the same period, 72 age-matched women without SUI were enrolled into this study and assigned as the control group (group B). Through transperineal two-dimensional ultrasound technique, detrusor wall thickness (DWT) was measured in the resting state, the bladder neck descent (BND) was measured under the maximal valsalva maneuver, the proximal urethral rotation angle (α angle) and posterior vesicourethral angle (β angle) were measured, and the formation of the funnel-shaped urethra was observed. RESULTS Under the resting state, differences in DWT between groups A and B, as well as between groups A1 and A2, were not statistically significant (P> 0.05). The BND, α and β angles were significantly larger in group A than in group B under the maximal Valsalva maneuver; and the differences were statistically significant (P< 0.05). The formation rate of the funnel-shaped urethra was significantly higher in group A (94%) than in group B (3%), and the difference was statistically significant; while the difference between groups A1 and A2 was not statistically significant (P> 0.05). CONCLUSION Transperineal two-dimensional ultrasound can play an assistant role in the diagnosis of female SUI. However, its role in the assessment of the severity of SUI remains to be studied.
Evaluating an Accountability Mentoring Approach for School Counselors

School counselors are encouraged to use accountability in order to advocate for their programs and students, but many school counselors lack confidence to work with data. This project examined the effectiveness of an individualized mentoring intervention targeting data attitudes, self-efficacy, and behaviors. After participating in the intervention, four school counselors experienced more positive attitudes about accountability as well as increased self-efficacy and plans to engage in accountability activities. This article discusses implications for professional development.
Verification of operational weather forecasts from the POSEIDON system across the Eastern Mediterranean

Abstract. The POSEIDON weather forecasting system became operational at the Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR) in October 1999. The system with its nesting capability provided 72-h forecasts in two different model domains, i.e. 25- and 10-km grid spacing. The lower-resolution domain covered an extended area that included most of Europe, Mediterranean Sea and N. Africa, while the higher resolution domain focused on the Eastern Mediterranean. A major upgrade of the system was recently implemented in the framework of the POSEIDON-II project (2005–2008). The aim was to enhance the forecasting skill of the system through improved model parameterization schemes and advanced numerical techniques for assimilating available observations to produce high resolution analysis fields. The configuration of the new system is applied on a horizontal resolution of 1/20°×1/20° (~5 km) covering the Mediterranean basin, Black Sea and part of North Atlantic providing up to 5-day forecasts. This paper reviews and compares the current with the previous weather forecasting systems at HCMR presenting quantitative verification statistics from the pre-operational period (from mid-November 2007 to October 2008). The statistics are based on verification against surface observations from the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) network across the Eastern Mediterranean region. The results indicate that the use of the new system can significantly improve the weather forecasts.