Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Amoxicillin Pharmacokinetics in (Preterm) Infants Aged 10 to 52 Days: Effect of Postnatal Age

The pharmacokinetic parameters of amoxicillin were determined in 32 newborn infants aged 10 to 52 days (mean postnatal age, 24.7 ± 12.4 days) to improve amoxicillin dosing in this age group. Amoxicillin plasma concentrations were determined using reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography in surplus plasma samples from routine gentamicin assays. Amoxicillin pharmacokinetic parameters (mean ± SD) were as follows: first-order elimination constant (Kel) = 0.27 ± 0.10 h−1, volume of distribution corrected for body weight (V/W) = 0.66 ± 0.27 L/kg, total body clearance corrected for body weight (CL/W) = 0.18 ± 0.10 Lkg−1h−1, and elimination half-life (t½) = 3.0 ± 1.3 hours. Amoxicillin body clearance was approximately twofold greater in our patients compared with published values in younger neonates (mean postnatal age, 0.76 ± 1.57 days). Simulation studies using the observed amoxicillin pharmacokinetic data suggest an amoxicillin dose of 40 mg/kg administered every 8 hours in infants older than 9 days postnatal age, independent of gestational age and postconceptional age, to achieve satisfactory target plasma amoxicillin concentrations less than 140 mg/L and time above minimum inhibitory concentration of at least 40%. Prospective evaluation of this suggested new dosage regimen is necessary before implementation in the care of ill neonates.
Using diaries to explore the characteristics of work‐related gossip: Methodological considerations from exploratory multimethod research

This paper examines the methodological considerations of diary methods, as used in exploratory multimethod research into the characteristics and function of gossip in nursing and health care organizations. There has, in the past, been a dearth of empirical research into the nature and role of gossip in organizations. Gossip is a disparate phenomenon, difficult to define, conceptually complex and resistant to paradigmatic summing up. However, research agendas are emerging in relation to gossip as both a social phenomenon, and also as an important aspect of organizational communication. This paper contributes to this emerging literature, arguing that diary methods offer a solution to the problems of researching the often private, unseen and unheard worlds of gossip in organizations. It is also argued that diary methods alone are insufficient, and that eclectic, multimethod research designs are necessary in order to manage the challenges associated with capturing and preserving the elusive nature of gossip.
Teachers' Use of a Verbally Governed Algorithm and Student Learning

The effects of instructing teachers in the use of a verbally governed algorithm to solve students’ learning problems were measured. The teachers were taught to analyze students’ responses to instruction using a strategic protocol, which included a series of verbally governed questions. The study was designed to determine whether the instructional method would affect the number of verbally governed decisions which the teachers made as well as the number of academic objectives achieved by the teachers’ students. A multiple baseline design across three teachers and six students was used to measure the effectiveness of the instructional procedures. The results indicated that the teachers’ students achieved significantly more learning objectives when they used a verbally governed algorithm to solve instructional problems. Applications to teaching of research findings from the basic and applied sciences of behavior require teachers that can function as strategic scientists. In other words, teachers need to analyze the learning problems of individual children and know when and how to apply relevant and tested tactics from the literature. This is the hallmark of differentiated instruction or therapy by evidence-based applied behavior analysis. The identification of effective tactics requires the location of the possible source of the problem as well as the selection of a tactic that is most likely to remediate the problem. Both of these steps require the teacher to complete a contingency analysis of the components of instruction (Greer, 2002; Greer, 2004; Greer, Keohane & Healy 2003; Greer & Keohane 2004;). The pursuit of solutions to particular learning problems involves many of the repertoires that Skinner (1957) characterized as the verbal behavior of scientists. The research that we report here consists of a functional analysis of the relation of these teacher repertoires to students’ learning as well as a basic conceptual analysis (Catania, 1998) of some of the verbal repertoires used by scientists. Hall & Broden (1968) characterized teachers as researchers early on in the applied literature. It
Maternal alcohol consumption during pregnancy and semen quality in the male offspring: two decades of follow-up.

BACKGROUND Concurrent alcohol exposure has been associated with reduced fecundity, but no studies have estimated the effect of prenatal alcohol exposure on male fecundity. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between maternal alcohol consumption during pregnancy, semen quality and levels of reproductive hormones in young, adult men. METHODS From a Danish pregnancy cohort established in 1984-1987, 347 sons were selected for a follow-up study conducted in 2005-2006. Semen and blood samples were analyzed for conventional semen characteristics and reproductive hormones, respectively, and results were related to prospectively self-reported information on maternal alcohol consumption during pregnancy. RESULTS The sperm concentration decreased with increasing prenatal alcohol exposure. The adjusted mean sperm concentration among sons of mothers drinking >or=4.5 drinks per week during pregnancy was 40 (95% CI: 25-60) millions/ml. This concentration was approximately 32% lower compared with men exposed to <1.0 drink per week, who had a sperm concentration of 59 (95% CI: 44-77) millions/ml. The semen volume and the total sperm count were also associated with prenatal alcohol exposure; sons prenatally exposed to 1.0-1.5 drinks per week had the highest values. No associations were found for sperm motility, sperm morphology or any of the reproductive hormones, including testosterone. CONCLUSIONS These results indicate that prenatal exposure to alcohol may have a persisting adverse effect on Sertoli cells, and thereby sperm concentration. If these associations are causal they could explain some of the reported differences between populations and long-term changes in semen quality.
Impact of left ventricular afterload on longitudinal dyssynchrony in patients with severe aortic stenosis and preserved ejection fraction.

BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to investigate whether patients with severe aortic stenosis (AS) and preserved ejection fraction (EF) have dyssynchrony and whether it improves after aortic valve replacement (AVR). METHODS AND RESULTS We studied 30 consecutive patients with severe AS and preserved EF undergoing AVR. For baseline comparison, we studied 17 EF-matched patients with mild-to-moderate AS, and 18 EF-matched normal volunteers. Longitudinal dyssynchrony was determined as the standard deviation for time-to-peak speckle-tracking strain in apical 4- and 2-chamber views at the basal- and mid-levels. Radial and circumferential dyssynchrony was determined as the difference for time-to-peak strain between the anteroseptum and posterior wall from the mid-left ventricular (LV) short-axis view. Each of the myocardial functions was also evaluated by averaging each peak systolic strain. Longitudinal dyssynchrony and function in patients with severe AS was significantly worse than in the patients with mild-to-moderate AS and the controls (94 ± 46 vs. 66 ± 18 ms* and 52 ± 17 ms*, and 12.5 ± 3.7% vs. 16 ± 3.5%* and 18.7 ± 3.7%*, respectively, *P<0.05, vs. severe AS). In contrast, radial and circumferential dyssynchrony were similar for the 3 groups. Importantly, the dyssynchrony of patients with severe AS significantly improved after AVR from 94 ± 46 ms to 68 ± 22 ms (P<0.005). CONCLUSIONS Significant longitudinal dyssynchrony was present in patients with severe AS and preserved EF, and it improved after AVR.
Cleavage of the Junin Virus Nucleoprotein Serves a Decoy Function To Inhibit the Induction of Apoptosis during Infection

ABSTRACT The regulation of apoptosis during infection is an important factor for host survival and, in some cases, also for the virus life cycle. At the same time, mechanisms to prevent the induction of apoptosis have been observed in numerous viral pathogens, but until now the role of apoptosis during arenavirus infection has not been investigated. Junin virus (JUNV) belongs to the New World arenavirus serogroup of the Arenaviridae and is the causative agent of Argentine hemorrhagic fever. We have demonstrated that infection with JUNV in cell culture does not induce apoptosis but leads to cleavage of the nucleoprotein (NP) into discrete products resembling caspase cleavage events. Similar specific NP degradation patterns were also observed in NP-transfected cell lines, and a closer examination of the sequence of NP showed several putative caspase cleavage motifs. Point mutations that abolished these cleavage motifs were consistent with the loss of certain cleavage products. Consistent with these data, further studies showed that treatment with a caspase inhibitor also reduced NP cleavage, indicating that the observed cleavage events were occurring as a result of caspase activity with NP as a substrate. Finally, we showed that expression of NP suppresses the cleavage of caspase 3 in cells treated with an apoptosis activator. Based on these findings, we propose that NP functions as a decoy substrate for caspase cleavage in order to inhibit the induction of apoptosis in JUNV-infected cells.
Intimate Partner Violence Among Hispanic Females

Abstract Intimate partner violence poses a major public health and social problem with serious criminal justice, health and social-related consequences. However, little is known about the etiology of intimate partner violence among young people, especially minority youth. Using the Hispanic Stress Inventory, we examine intimate partner violence among Hispanics, particularly Mexican American adolescent females. Understanding and identifying issues related to intimate partner violence is crucial for developing and implementing effective policies and programs encompassing both public health and criminal justice approaches specific to this rapidly growing population of young people.
WAVELET ANALYSIS OF THE POTENTIAL FIELDS OF ELASTICITY : A REMOTE SENSING TOOL TO MONITOR STEAM CAP MIGRATIONS ?

A technology based upon analyses of InSAR surveys of incremental deformations over an operating geothermal field is emerging that might serve to monitor steam cap migrations on a timescale of weeks. Based upon theory developed in Horowitz and Hornby (in prep.), one can compute a harmonic potential field that has dilatational sources and sinks from 3 component surface displacement increment surveys. In the context of a water-steam fluid in porous rocks, steam filled material will have significantly different bulk moduli from water-filled material. In the presence of a regional stress field, changes in the pore-filling will appear as dilatational sources or sinks. There are commercial InSAR satellites in operation (e.g. Canada's Radarsat-1 and Radarsat-2), and a research system (ALOS PALSAR from Japan) is in orbit with L-band capabilities that can penetrate vegetation canopies. Imaging geometries may be problematic for computing three component displacement surveys over any given area, but we have successfully solved for the 3component field in the case of afterslip from the 2003 Bam, Iran earthquake. We believe that this technology might be a cost-effective and higher sampling rate alternative/supplement to microgravity surveying for monitoring the migration of steam caps in an operating geothermal field.
How distinctive are Canadian research methods

This paper addresses the question of the distinctiveness of Canadian research methods by looking first at the broad pattern of methods used in empirical articles published in leading Canadian journals from the 1960s, how these have changed over time, and how they have differed between Francophone and Anglophone Canada. Issues of U.S. influence raised by the earlier Canadianization debate are also addressed. It is found that, for the more recent period, gender differences that cut across these “national” divisions have been the more salient. The net effect is that the total Canadian pattern has something in common with that recorded for other countries, although at a more detailed level there are specifically Canadian or Quebecois effects. Reasons for the similarities and differences are discussed.
Accuracy of bone assessments for verifying age in adolescents - application in sport

Background. Cheating often occurs in sports that are defined by age when older participants compete by falsifying their true age. In some cases administrators have responded by implementing a programme that attempts to establish true age by measuring the skeletal age of competitors. However, because the technique has not been validated in this context there is a risk that competitors who are the correct age may have been unfairly excluded from competition based on these tests. Objective. To determine whether this technique has sufficient precision to be used effectively to identify ‘age cheats’. Methods. Twenty-three males (14 - 18 years) volunteered for the study. Their skeletal age was determined by means of an X-ray assessment of the hand and wrist undertaken by nine experienced radiologists. Results. The coefficient of variation of skeletal age for each subject predicted by the different radiologists ranged from 0% to 3.8%. The average difference between the chronological and skeletal ages was -0.5 years (95% confidence interval: -0.9 - -0.1 years), with a maximum underprediction of 2.4 years and maximum over-prediction of 0.9 years. The magnitude of the error in the prediction did not seem to be related to either the mass or stature percentile of the subjects. Conclusion. The technique of assessing skeletal age in an attempt to identify sports participants who are older than the prescribed age limit lacks the necessary precision. Until such time as an objective biological method is available to predict age more accurately, sport administrators should rather develop structures that can verify the accuracy of birth certificates.
Indexing of Motion Capture Data for Efficient and Fast Similarity Search

As motion capture systems are increasingly used for motion tracking and capture, and more and more surveillance cameras are installed for security protection, more and more motion data, including 3D motion data becomes available, making it important to index motion data for quick retrieval of similar motions. This paper proposes a simple and efficient tree structure for indexing motion data with dozens of attributes. Feature vectors are extracted for indexing by using singular value decomposition (SVD) properties of motion data matrices. By having similar motions with large variations indexed together, searching for similar motions of a query needs only one node traversal at each tree level, and only one feature needs to be considered at one tree level. Experiments with real hand gestures, arm motions and full body motions show that the majority of irrelevant motions can be pruned while retrieving all similar motions, and the traversal of an indexing tree for a querytakes only a few microseconds.
Vortex: Variation-aware training for memristor X-bar

Recent advances in development of memristor devices and cross-bar integration allow us to implement a low-power on-chip neuromorphic computing system (NCS) with small footprint. Training methods have been proposed to program the memristors in a crossbar by following existing training algorithms in neural network models. However, the robustness of these training methods has not been well investigated by taking into account the limits imposed by realistic hardware implementations. In this work, we present a quantitative analysis on the impact of device imperfections and circuit design constraints on the robustness of two popular training methods - “close-loop on-device” (CLD) and “open-loop off-device” (OLD). A novel variation-aware training scheme, namely, Vortex, is then invented to enhance the training robustness of memristor crossbar-based NCS by actively compensating the impact of device variations and optimizing the mapping scheme from computations to crossbars. On average, Vortex can significantly improve the test rate by 29.6% and 26.4%, compared to the traditional OLD and CLD, respectively.
Gender issues in the GCSE ORAL English examination: Part II

Abstract. In a previous paper we analysed the interpersonal skills shown by fifteen girls and boys participating in group discussions as part of the General Certificate of Secondary Education English oral examination. In this paper we report a subsequent stage of the research, in which teachers were asked to assess the performance of the pupils who had participated in the group discussions, using the guidelines set out by the examining board. We found that teachers tended to use different criteria to assess the contributions of boys and girls. They were very appreciative of the boys’ efforts to be cooperative group members and rewarded them for this, despite the fact that it was the girls who had enabled the boys to contribute competently and effectively. Teachers appeared to judge the girls by stricter criteria than they applied to the boys. Furthermore the male assessor appeared to perceive and evaluate the conversational skills of the boys and girls differently from the female teachers. We conclude tha.
Perceiving The Male Versus The Female Face

This study of the perceptual processes in rating the good-lookingness of male compared to female faces finds that more refined distinctions and discriminations, more extreme positive and negative ratings, and more consensus occur for female than for male faces. Facial expression (e.g., smiling) affects the rating of female more than male faces, The results uniformly support the view that facial appearance is a more heavily weighted element in the response to women than to men.
Investigation on Electrostatic Discharge Robustness of Gate-All-Around Silicon Nanowire Transistors Combined With Thermal Analysis

In this letter, we investigate the robustness of silicon-on-insulator-based gate-all-around silicon nanowire transistors (GAA SNWTs) subject to electrostatic discharge (ESD) stress by thermal analysis and transmission line pulse measurements. The thermal conductance modeling shows that heat dissipation, from channel to substrate through gate oxide, gate electrode, and buried oxide, dominates the thermal failure mechanism and thus the intrinsic ESD performance in GAA SNWTs. Accordingly, a new GAA SNWT is proposed and fabricated. A record failure current density of 18.8 mA/ $\mu \text{m}$ is achieved at a nanowire diameter of 5 nm and a gate length of 500 nm. The impact of device parameters on ESD performance is also studied to give the guidance for the future ESD design with silicon nanowire transistors.
The role of primary cilia in the development and disease of the retina

The normal development and function of photoreceptors is essential for eye health and visual acuity in vertebrates. Mutations in genes encoding proteins involved in photoreceptor development and function are associated with a suite of inherited retinal dystrophies, often as part of complex multi-organ syndromic conditions. In this review, we focus on the role of the photoreceptor outer segment, a highly modified and specialized primary cilium, in retinal health and disease. We discuss the many defects in the structure and function of the photoreceptor primary cilium that can cause a class of inherited conditions known as ciliopathies, often characterized by retinal dystrophy and degeneration, and highlight the recent insights into disease mechanisms.
Loss aversion in the eye and in the heart: The autonomic nervous system's responses to losses

The common view in psychology and neuroscience is that losses loom larger than gains, leading to a negativity bias in behavioral responses and Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) activation. However, evidence has accumulated that in decisions under risk and uncertainty individuals often impart similar weights to negative and positive outcomes. We examine the role of the ANS in decisions under uncertainty, and its consistency with the behavioral responses. In three studies, we show that losses lead to heightened autonomic responses, compared to equivalent gains (as indicated by pupil dilation and increased heart rate) even in situations where the average decision maker exhibits no loss aversion. Moreover, in the studied tasks autonomic responses were not associated with risk taking propensities. These results are interpreted by the hypothesis that losses signal the subjective importance of global outcome patterns. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Evaluating On-Demand Data Collection with Mobile Elements in Wireless Sensor Networks

Exploring mobility to accomplish the data collection in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) has become the focus of recent studies, which can improve the energy efficiency of sensor nodes by shifting the data forwarding task from them to mobile elements (MEs). However, the data collection latency in this case can be much higher. We consider an on-demand data collection scenario in this paper, in which sensor nodes broadcast service requests when their buffer is about to be full. On receiving such requests, the ME moves toward the sensor nodes to collect data, and uploads the data to the sink when possible. An M/G/1 queue-based analytical model is presented, and analytical results on several important system performance metrics are derived. Furthermore, we propose an improved service scheme, which combines requests whenever they are in proximity. The work is evaluated through extensive simulations, which validate the accuracy of our model. The efficacy of the proposed service scheme to improve the system performance is also verified.
Diversity within Police Forces in Europe: A Case for the Comprehensive View

This article argues that the police are a particularly interesting public institution to study with respect to the incorporation of diversity within organizations. It is the first in presenting empirical data on diversity in a wide selection of police forces in Europe, which leads to the conclusion that the general level of diversity (defined in terms of gender, migrant background, and sexual orientation) is low and diminishes as police officers' rank increases, although changes can be observed during the last decade. In a search for answers, the article offers a brief overview of academic literature in the field of police diversity policies, and identifies two important research gaps: most studies do not touch upon all three relevant policy areas (i.e. recruitment, retention, and promotion), and comparative studies are rare. Given these findings, a comprehensive view is proposed that might structure future comparative studies.