Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impact of surgical parathyroidectomy on chronic kidney disease-mineral and bone disorder (CKD-MBD) – A systematic review and meta-analysis

For more than 6 decades, many patients with advanced chronic kidney disease (CKD) have undergone surgical parathyroidectomy (sPTX) for severe secondary hyperparathyroidism (SHPT) mainly based historical clinical practice patterns, but not on evidence of outcome.We aimed in this meta-analysis to evaluate the benefits and harms of sPTX in patients with SHPT. We searched MEDLINE (inception to October 2016), EMBASE and Cochrane Library (through Issue 10 of 12, October 2016) and website clinicaltrials.gov (October 2016) without language restriction. Eligible studies evaluated patients reduced glomerular filtration rate (GFR), below 60 mL/min/1.73 m2 (CKD 3–5 stages) with hyperparathyroidism who underwent sPTX. Reviewers working independently and in duplicate extracted data and assessed the risk of bias. The final analysis included 15 cohort studies, comprising 24,048 participants. Compared with standard treatment, sPTX significantly decreased all-cause mortality (RR 0.74 [95% CI, 0.66 to 0.83]) in End Stage Kidney Disease (ESKD) patients with biochemical and / or clinical evidence of SHPT. sPTX was also associated with decreased cardiovascular mortality (RR 0.59 [95% CI, 0.46 to 0.76]) in 6 observational studies that included almost 10,000 patients. The available evidence, mostly observational, is at moderate risk of bias, and limited by indirect comparisons and inconsistency in reporting for some outcomes (eg. short term adverse events, including documented voice change or episodes of severe hypocalcaemia needing admission or long-term adverse events, including undetectable PTH levels, risk of fractures etc.). Taken together, the results of this meta-analysis would suggest a clinically significant beneficial effect of sPTX on all-cause and cardiovascular mortality in CKD patients with SHPT. However, given the observational nature of the included studies, the case for a properly conducted, independent randomised controlled trial comparing surgery with medical therapy and featuring many different outcomes from mortality to quality of life (QoL) is now very strong.
Causes, Consequences, and Prevention of Burnout Among Substance Abuse Treatment Counselors: A Rural Versus Urban Comparison

Abstract Substance abuse counselors are vulnerable to burnout, which has negative repercussions for the counselor, employing organization, and clients. However, little is known about differences in counselor burnout from the counselors' perspective in rural versus urban treatment centers. In 2008, focus group data from 28 rural and urban counselors in a southern state were analyzed, revealing three burnout themes across all counselors: causes, consequences, and prevention. However, there were various differences between rural and urban counselors in subthemes, with only rural counselors citing office politics and low occupational prestige as causes of burnout. Only urban counselors reported responses endorsing the subthemes of role reversal, clients trying to choose their counselors, and changing jobs as consequences of burnout. All counselors cited coworker support, clinical supervision, and self-care as important strategies for managing burnout. In sum, context clearly matters as rural counselors cited more causes of burnout; yet, the implications of burnout are universal in that they often lead to poor quality clinical care. There is a continued need for greater understanding of addiction as a disease, which would reduce stigma, especially in rural areas, as well as increase the prestige and earning potential of the substance abuse counseling occupation.
Email as an Integration Device: A Study of Work Place Information Sharing

Being able to find relevant information is an important task for today’s organisational members, but how is this achieved when there are so many sources and tools to choose amongst? By interviewing thirteen IT professionals about their information seeking activities, we have analysed their needs, their sources, and their tools and made interesting and novel discoveries. Our findings suggest that social issues are important also in such a seemingly individual task as information seeking. Lack of social awareness in search tools made people use email as a way to integrate different information environments and be able to relate to fellow employees. These insights should be used to design future work place information seeking tools to benefit from the social interactions that exist in a corporate setting.
Electromyographic and Kinetic Analysis of Complex Training Variables

The use of complex training as a method of combining weight and plyometric exercises during the same training session is growing in popularity, despite limited scientific support for its efficacy. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of a set of high-load bench press exercises (BP) on a subsequent set of medicine ball power drop exercises (MBPD) via mean ground reaction force, maximum ground reaction force, and mean electromyography (EMGint). Ten male (19 ± 1.4 years) NCAA Division 1 basketball players with experience in weight and plyometric training performed plyometric exercises under 2 randomly determined conditions. One condition included a BP followed immediately by a MBPD. The other condition included only the MBPD. Mean ground reaction force, maximum ground reaction force, and EMGint were recorded during the MBPD for both conditions. Results indicated that no significant differences exist for mean ground reaction force, maximum ground reaction force, and EMGint for the pectoralis major and triceps muscles between the MBPD and the BP plus MBPD conditions. These results indicate there is no heightened excitability of the central nervous system. However, there also appears to be no disadvantage of performing high-load weight training and plyometric exercises in complex pairs. Therefore, complex training may be a useful training strategy because of the organizational advantages of performing weight and plyometric exercises in the same training session.
Of guns and geese: a meta-analytic review of the ‘weapon focus’ literature

Abstract Weapon focus is frequently cited as a factor in eyewitness testimony, and is broadly defined as a weapon-related decrease in performance on subsequent tests of memory for those elements of an event or visual scene concurrent to the weapon. This effect has been attributed to either (a) physiological or emotional arousal that narrows the attentional beam (arousal/threat hypothesis), or (b) the cognitive demands inherent in processing an unusual object (e.g. weapon) that is incongruent with the schema representing the visual scene (unusual item hypothesis). Meta-analytical techniques were applied to test these theories as well as to evaluate the prospect of weapon focus in real-world criminal investigations. Our findings indicated an effect of weapon presence overall (g= 0.53) that was significantly influenced by retention interval, exposure duration, and threat but unaffected by whether the event occurred in a laboratory, simulation, or real-world environment.
Labor Mobility within Currency Unions

We study the effects of labor mobility within a currency union suffering from nominal rigidities. When the demand shortfall in depressed region is mostly internal, migration may not help regional macroeconomic adjustment. When external demand is also at the root of the problem, migration out of depressed regions may produce a positive spillover for stayers. We consider a planning problem and compare its solution to the equilibrium. We find that the equilibrium is generally constrained inefficient, although the welfare losses may be small if the economy suffers mainly from internal demand imbalances.
Heritability of left ventricular mass in a large cohort of twins

Introduction Left ventricular hypertrophy is recognized as one of the most important independent predictors of adverse cardiovascular outcome. The aetiology of LVH includes a number of well-recognized causes but there is considerable interest in the genetics of cardiac muscle hypertrophy. We used a large prospective twin database in order to establish the heritability of left ventricular mass (LVM). Methods Normotensive twins were prospectively recruited. Demographic data were collected. The LVM was determined using the Penn formulae derived from data collected from echocardiography. Results A total of 376 Caucasian twin pairs (182 monozygotic and 194 dizygotic) aged 25–79 years were recruited. All subjects were normotensive with no significant differences in blood pressure (mean blood pressure: monozygotic twins, 132/83 mmHg; dizygotic twins, 131/82 mmHg) or body mass index between the monozygotic and dizygotic twins. The mean LVM for monozygotic twins was 140.9 g, compared with 140.2 g for dizygotic twins. Heritability estimates suggest that the genetic variance of LVM is 0.59 (95% confidence interval, 0.5–0.67). No common shared environmental effects were identified under this model. Conclusion Our data from the largest set of twin pairs studied to date show that LVM has a sizeable genetic basis that is probably polygenic. This result has important implications for the understanding of normal and abnormal cardiac morphology at the molecular level.
Attitudes toward Animals among Kindergarten Children: Species Preferences

ABSTRACT Attitudes toward animals are influenced by both animal traits (e.g., similarity to humans, aesthetic quality, size) and individual human attributes (e.g., gender, age, educational level, cultural factors). Although the examination of children's interest in animals, and their preference for different species, may evidence specific trends and help explain the development of attitudes, the vast majority of research has not considered children younger than 6 years. The present study was aimed at assessing preferences for a variety of animal species in a sample of 3–6 year-old Italian children, using a forced-choice task and visual aids (images of the animals). Pictures of 48 animal species, ranging from mammals to invertebrates, were presented to the children. Two photographic stimuli were simultaneously displayed and participants were asked to indicate their preference. Results show that the children preferred higher-order species, and domestic over wild animals. Apart from a few exceptions, invertebrates were the most disliked group of species among the children. Girls showed more negative and fear-related attitudes than the boys. Results are discussed taking into account different factors that may affect children's preferences for various animal species, that is, similarity to humans and aesthetical appeal. Greater knowledge on early attitudes toward animals has implications for promoting interest in animals and for building educational interventions for kindergarten children. This is particularly important in light of the growing use of different animals in educational and therapeutic contexts, as well as from an animal welfare perspective.
Leisure and education in Ghana: an exploratory study of university students’ leisure lifestyles

While many studies acknowledge universities as important facilitators in the pursuit of leisure activities, few studies shed light on how this setting limits participation. Moreover, relatively little attention has been paid to the role of leisure education in developing countries or non-Western societies. This study sought to explore leisure lifestyles among university students in Ghana. Using the University of Cape Coast as a case study, a questionnaire survey examined students’ leisure and free-time activities and the extent to which these were influenced by the university environment. The results show that the dominant obligations or preferences for leisure activities tended to be customary in nature. However, leisure participation was constrained by lack of time resulting from academic pressures. Implications are discussed in the context of leisure education in developing countries, with emphasis on the leisure and recreational management challenges facing universities.
Les comportements de citoyenneté organisationnelle : une étude empirique sur les relations avec l'engagement affectif, la satisfaction au travail et l'implication au travail

RESUME Ces dix dernieres annees, le theme des comportements de citoyennete organisationnelle a genere une abondante litterature. Malgre cela, le role des attitudes au travail reste mal compris. Une etude empirique a ete realisee sur un echantillon de 122 responsables d’agence bancaire pour examiner les relations empiriques entre les comportements de citoyennete organisationnelle, la satisfaction au travail, l’engagement affectif envers l’organisation et l’implication au travail. Les donnees empiriques montrent que l’engagement affectif envers l’organisation ne predit aucun comportement de citoyennete organisationnelle. La satisfaction au travail et l’implication au travail predisent respectivement l’altruisme et les vertus civiques. La contribution, les apports et les limites de cette recherche sont discutes.
The Circadian Clock in Arabidopsis Roots Is a Simplified Slave Version of the Clock in Shoots

The circadian oscillator in eukaryotes consists of several interlocking feedback loops through which the expression of clock genes is controlled. It is generally assumed that all plant cells contain essentially identical and cell-autonomous multiloop clocks. Here, we show that the circadian clock in the roots of mature Arabidopsis plants differs markedly from that in the shoots and that the root clock is synchronized by a photosynthesis-related signal from the shoot. Two of the feedback loops of the plant circadian clock are disengaged in roots, because two key clock components, the transcription factors CCA1 and LHY, are able to inhibit gene expression in shoots but not in roots. Thus, the plant clock is organ-specific but not organ-autonomous.
The Effects of Instruction Using Semantic Mapping on Vocabulary and Comprehension

Forty-four junior-high school students were randomly assigned to two vocabulary instruction treatments. One utilized context-rich three-sentence passages that were used as sources for target word definition. The other, the semantic mapping treatment, entailed learning new words by identifying the similarities and differences with related, known words. Results indicated significant main effects favoring the semantic mapping treatment on average weekly test scores, post treatment test scores, and a standardized measure of general vocabulary knowledge. These findings suggest that focus on word features in related, known words may be an effective instructional method to learning new vocabulary.
Political Awareness and its Implications on Participatory Behaviour

The analysis in this article centres around three questions: First, how well informed are Naga women voters about politics. Second, whether political interest, media exposure and political discussion have an impact on women’s level of political awareness. Third, whether women’s level of political awareness influences their participation in electoral activities. The results indicate that a majority of the women have moderate awareness about politics. Their level of political awareness is accounted for by their level of interest in politics, pattern of media use and frequency of political discussion. The result also reports a limited impact of political awareness on women’s participation in electoral activities.
Job Attitudes among Different Occupational Status Groups

An economic model is applied to employee attitudinal variables as a means of comparing the contribution of intrinsic and extrinsic job facets to overall job statisfaction for two occupational status groups. Surveyed were 577 skilled workers and 181 managers of an electronic manufacturing organization. The two occupational groups were significantly different with respect to the intrinsic-extrinsic composition of overall job satisfaction. Implications for management policy and organizational reward systems are discussed.
Teacher assessment and psychometric theory: a case of paradigm crossing?

Alternative assessment (as opposed to formal testing) is gaining a great deal of attention in current educational discussion. This article attempts to address some of the epistemic and practical issues facing alternative assessment, with particular reference to teacher assessment of spoken English as an additional language/second language (EAL/ESL) in the early years of primary (elementary) education in England and Wales. We first examine the claims made by advocates of alternative assessment in terms of validity and educational relevance. It is argued that such claims are founded on an uneasy articulation of different principles underpinning psychometric measurement and pedagogy. Next we look at some of the reasons why psychometric approaches may not provide an adequate response to pedagogic and policy developments. Then some of the theoretical and practical problems involved in teacher assessment of speaking, focusing on learners with EAL in primary education, are discussed. We focus on the importance of clarity about the epistemological bases of different types of assessment. Additionally, the article highlights the need to be alert to the ways in which political and ideological concerns - together with the influence of professional (teaching) culture - are influential in shaping the properties of assessment systems.
Adaptive real-time management of communication and computation resources

Complex distributed applications, including virtual environments, tele-medicine and video-on-demand, require quality of service (QoS) guarantees on the end-to-end transfer of information across a network. To generate, process and transfer such information in a manner satisfactory to each application requires the management of all the resources, both communication and computation-bound, along the ‘path’ from source to destination. Management of these resources is complicated by the fact that: (1) the quality of service requirements of each application can vary with time, and (2) the availability of each resource varies depending on the demands from (a potentially variable number of) competing applications. In many such situations, static resource allocation results in poor resource utilization and, hence, poor scalability of service. In order to support more applications and provide better overall quality of service, multiple resources must be managed in a coordinated manner. This work focuses on the system mechanisms and policies to maximize, or at least maintain, the quality of service for distributed, real-time applications, in situations where there are variable resource demands from applications. Efficient mechanisms and policies are needed to coordinate, allocate and adapt communication and computation resources at run-time, in order to meet real-time and other quality of service constraints. Consequently, this thesis describes: (1) the mechanisms used in the Dionisys quality of service infrastructure, that enable service to be monitored and adapted on behalf of each application, and (2) Dynamic Window-Constrained Scheduling (DWCS) of communication and computation resources. DWCS is designed to support real-time applications like those described above, with explicit loss and delay constraints. In certain situations, DWCS is provably optimal in terms of the service it provides to applications.
“Different than Us”: Othering, Orientalism, and US middle school students' discourses on Japan

This study critically examines the discourses of Japan as employed by young people in the United States. In particular, it analyses the free writings of US middle school students that were collected at three schools with different community environments (rural, urban, and suburban). The study identifies the features and styles of the discourse(s) that occur in the students' writings, examines the ways the discourse of Othering and Orientalism operate in these texts, and explores the specificity of contemporary American identity formation in relation to the imaginary boundary between Japan (“them”) and the United States (“us”).
Residents' attitudes toward tourism development in Shandong, China.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop and test the reliability of six tourism scales based on Ap and Crompton's research.Design/methodology/approach – In order to test the scale, the authors examine differences between genders' tourism beliefs, tourism evaluation, and perceptions of the impact of tourism throughout Shandong China. The sampling frame in this study includes residents over 18 years of age and living more than a year in Shandong Province. As an experimental study, a convenience sampling method is employed to select samples. The sample distribution of each of the 17 cities of Shandong Province equals the multiplied products of the total samples (760) and the percentage of its population in the total population of Shandong.Findings – The tourism scale is shown to be reliable. The data illustrate the benefits and challenges of an emerging destination within an emerging national tourism product. In Shandong, residents acknowledged tourism's positive social benefits such as better shop.
Expectations of romantic relationships: A comparison between homosexual and heterosexual men with regard to Baxter's criteria

According to Baxter (1986) every relationship has rules which must be followed. If at least one of these rules is broken, it gives the individual the right to breakup the relationship. Baxter identified 8 such rules or criteria. The aim in the present study was to investigate whether or not the expectations of romantic relationships held by homosexual men can be linked to Baxter’s criteria. Data were obtained through a questionnaire addressed to 31 homosexual men and 50 heterosexual men. Results indicated that Baxter’s criteria can be linked to expectations of romantic relationships held by men regardless of sexual orientation, and that age and experience are more reliable predictors than is sexual orientation.
Assessing the impact of job involvement on performance

Purpose – The hypothesized relationship between the attitude of job involvement and performance has received limited support. In 2002, Diefendorff et al. proposed that previous attempts to confirm this relationship were flawed, and subsequently found support for job involvement's criterion‐related validity. The present study seeks to provide another test of job involvement's association with performance.Design/methodology/approach – Data were gathered using a field sample combined within a longitudinal design. Hypotheses were tested using correlation and hierarchical regression.Findings – Employees’ self‐reported job involvement significantly predicted certain supervisor performance ratings above and beyond work centrality.Research limitations/implications – The psychological environment may have been disrupted by the public announcement that the focal organization had been acquired by an international firm shortly before data collection began.Practical implications – Encouraging greater job involvement m.
The Assessment of Intimate Partner Violence in Spanish Women

We aimed to analyze the internal consistency and construct validity of the Spanish version of the Index of Spouse Abuse (ISA) in a representative sample of 8,995 women attending general practice in Spain in 2006-2007. The factor structure analysis shows that the ISA measures four intimate partner violence (IPV) dimensions: emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, and controlling behavior. Cronbach alpha ranges from . 82 (sexual factor) to . 94 (emotional). Construct validity analysis shows that IPV is associated with poorer self-perceived health, higher psychological distress, and lower tangible social support. The ISA can help make more visible forms of gender violence in the intimate relationship that sometimes are not recognized as such, like sexual violence or controlling behavior. This can contribute to the development of specific interventions for women experiencing IPV, considering the specificities of the violent acts experienced.