Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Value of ultrasonography in the diagnosis of polycystic ovary syndrome – literature review

Abstract Polycystic ovary syndrome is a multi-factorial disease. Its etiopathogenesis has not been elucidated in detail. It is the most common endocrine disorder in women of child-bearing age. This disease entity is primarily characterized by disrupted ovulation and hyperan- drogenism, but the clinical picture can be diversified and symptom intensity can vary. Currently, the sonographic assessment of ovaries is one of the obligatory criteria for the diagnosis of PCOS according to the Rotterdam consensus (2003) and Androgen Excess & PCOS Society (2006). This criterion is determined by the presence of ? 12 follicles within the ovary with a diameter of 2–9 mm and/or ovarian volume ? 10 cm3. Such an ultrasound image in one gonad only is sufficient to define polycystic ovaries. The coexistence of polycystic ovaries with polycystic ovary syndrome is confirmed in over 90% of cases irrespective of ethnic factors or race. However, because of the commonness of ultrasound features of polycystic ovaries in healthy women, the inclusion of this sign to the diagnostic criteria of polycystic ovary syndrome is still questioned. The development of new technologies has an undoubted influence on the percentage of diagnosed polycystic ovaries. This process has caused an increase in the percentage of polycystic ovary diagnoses since the Rotterdam criteria were published. It is therefore needed to prepare new commonly accepted diagnostic norms concerning the number of ovarian follicles and the standardization of the technique in which they are counted. The assessment of anti-Müllerian hormone levels as an equivalent of ultrasound features of polycystic ovaries is a promising method. However, analytic methods have to be standardized in order to establish commonly accepted diagnostic norms.
Extended BSI for continuous EEG monitoring in carotid endarterectomy.

OBJECTIVE Carotid endarterectomy is a common procedure as a secondary prevention of stroke, and is often performed with selective shunting. Although various EEG parameters have been proposed to determine if the brain is at risk during carotid artery clamping, the common procedure is still the visual assessment of the EEG. Here, we propose an extension to the previously described brain symmetry index (BSI) [van Putten M, Peters J, Mulder S, de Haas J, Bruijninckx C, Tavy D. A brain symmetry index (BSI) for online EEG monitoring in carotid endarterectomy. Clin Neurophysiol 2004, 115(5), 1189-94. ], as an additional quantitative criterion for shunt need in carotid endarterectomy. METHODS An extension of the Brain Symmetry Index was implemented to capture both spatial (hemispheric) (sBSI) and temporal changes (tBSI) in the EEG. In this pilot study, the method is exemplified by simulation and by application to EEG records from 25 patients who underwent a carotid endarterectomy. RESULTS Simulations show that hemispheric asymmetry is captured by changes in sBSI, only, while temporal symmetry changes, not due to changes in hemispheric asymmetry, are reflected by changes in tBSI. Combinations of changes induced changes in both parameters. This was confirmed by analysis 25 EEG records. Unilateral EEG changes during test-clamping are reflected by DeltasBSI>0.05, diffuse changes by DeltatBSI>0.02 and combinations by simultaneous changes in both features. CONCLUSIONS In this pilot study, we present a doublet of quantitative EEG features, that in principle detects any change in the spectral characteristics of the EEG, decomposing the changes into a measure that captures spatial symmetry changes (sBSI), and a measure that quantifies diffuse temporal changes, that are not due to changes in spatial symmetry (tBSI). Both features are normalized with values ranging from [0-1], and can easily be implemented on-line to support the visual analysis of the EEG in the decision for selective shunting. SIGNIFICANCE Quantitative real-time EEG analysis will assist in the EEG interpretation for selective shunting in carotid endarterectomy.
Control of the gut microbiome by fecal microRNA

Since their discovery in the early 90s, microRNAs (miRNAs), small non-coding RNAs, have mainly been associated with posttranscriptional regulation of gene expression on a cell-autonomous level. Recent evidence has extended this role by adding inter-species communication to the manifold functional range. In our latest study [Liu S, et al., 2016, Cell Host & Microbe], we identified miRNAs in gut lumen and feces of both mice and humans. We found that intestinal epithelial cells (IEC) and Hopx+ cells were the two main sources of fecal miRNA. Deficiency of IEC-miRNA resulted in gut dysbiosis and WT fecal miRNA transplantation restored the gut microbiota. We investigated potential mechanisms for this effect and found that miRNAs were able to regulate the gut microbiome. By culturing bacteria with miRNAs, we found that host miRNAs were able to enter bacteria, specifically regulate bacterial gene transcripts and affect bacterial growth. Oral administration of synthetic miRNA mimics affected specific bacteria in the gut. Our findings describe a previously unknown pathway by which the gut microbiome is regulated by the host and raises the possibility that miRNAs may be used therapeutically to manipulate the microbiome for the treatment of disease.
The acceptance of newly introduced HR practices: Some evidence from Spain on the role of management behavior and organizational climate

Purpose - – HR practices are only effective if they are well accepted by employees. The purpose of this paper is to explore the effect of two forms of support on the acceptance of newly introduced HR practices (NHRPs): that of top managers and of supervisors. In addition, the authors analyze how these two forms of support work in conjunction with one another. The authors argue that a lack of consistency between the two impairs NHRP acceptance. The authors also explore variations in acceptance under different organizational climates. Design/methodology/approach - – The analysis is based on an original sample of 307 employees from nine multinational companies operating in Spain. Multilevel regression analysis is used to test the hypotheses. Findings - – The authors found that top management support, supervisor support, and innovation climate are all predictors of NHRP acceptance. The authors also found that low supervisor support reduces the effect of top management support. Finally, the authors found that innovation climate is not a substitute for management and supervisor support. Practical implications - – The findings suggest that top management and supervisor behavior is critical to gaining employee acceptance of NHRPs, no matter how well designed such practices are or how well they address the needs of the organization and its employees. The findings also indicate that top managers and supervisors should coordinate the introduction of NHRPs, since employees perceive support signals from these two agents not only individually but also in conjunction. Originality/value - – Recognizing that employee acceptance is an important determinant of the effectiveness of HR practices, the authors make a unique contribution to the literature by investigating some critical contextual enablers of acceptance.
Identification and characterization of the ‘missing’ terminal enzyme for siroheme biosynthesis in α-proteobacteria

It has recently been shown that the biosynthetic route for both the d1‐haem cofactor of dissimilatory cd1 nitrite reductases and haem, via the novel alternative‐haem‐synthesis pathway, involves siroheme as an intermediate, which was previously thought to occur only as a cofactor in assimilatory sulphite/nitrite reductases. In many denitrifiers (which require d1‐haem), the pathway to make siroheme remained to be identified. Here we identify and characterize a sirohydrochlorin–ferrochelatase from Paracoccus pantotrophus that catalyses the last step of siroheme synthesis. It is encoded by a gene annotated as cbiX that was previously assumed to be encoding a cobaltochelatase, acting on sirohydrochlorin. Expressing this chelatase from a plasmid restored the wild‐type phenotype of an Escherichia coli mutant‐strain lacking sirohydrochlorin–ferrochelatase activity, showing that this chelatase can act in the in vivo siroheme synthesis. A ΔcbiX mutant in P. denitrificans was unable to respire anaerobically on nitrate, proving the role of siroheme as a precursor to another cofactor. We report the 1.9 Å crystal structure of this ferrochelatase. In vivo analysis of single amino acid variants of this chelatase suggests that two histidines, His127 and His187, are essential for siroheme synthesis. This CbiX can generally be identified in α‐proteobacteria as the terminal enzyme of siroheme biosynthesis.
Effect of geomorphic channel restoration on streamflow and groundwater in a snowmelt‐dominated watershed

Reengineering of stream channels is a common approach used to restore hydrologic function in degraded landscapes, but there has been little published research analyzing its effectiveness. A key challenge for impact assessment is disentangling the effects of restoration from climate variability. Trout Creek, near Lake Tahoe, California, was reengineered to reestablish hydrologic connectivity between the stream and its former floodplain. Gauges located above and below the site, along with groundwater well measurements, were used to analyze prerestoration and postrestoration hydrology. Results show that restoration has a seasonal impact with statistically significant increases in streamflow during the summer recession period and decreased groundwater table depths across a wide range of streamflow conditions. Paired gauges and statistical models that are robust to serial autocorrelation demonstrate a feasible approach for assessing hydrologic restoration in regions where climate patterns lead to substantial within‐year and between‐years variation in streamflow.
Becoming a teacher in a gambling city: a case study of two pre-service teachers’ motivation for teaching in Macau

The present case study investigates the teaching motivation of two pre-service teachers studying in teacher education programs in a Macau university. The findings indicated that while Macau is a gambling center and abundant job opportunities are provided by casinos, both participants were highly motivated to improve the teaching and learning situation in Macau and bring positive changes to the Macau educational context. The findings also demonstrated the facilitative role of teachers and teacher educators in the formation of the motivation of student teachers. The study concludes with implications for enhancing the motivation of pre-service teachers, and the role of teacher education programs in Macau and other similar contexts.
A balanced memory‐based collaborative filtering similarity measure

Collaborative filtering recommender systems contribute to alleviating the problem of information overload that exists on the Internet as a result of the mass use of Web 2.0 applications. The use of an adequate similarity measure becomes a determining factor in the quality of the prediction and recommendation results of the recommender system, as well as in its performance. In this paper, we present a memory‐based collaborative filtering similarity measure that provides extremely high‐quality and balanced results; these results are complemented with a low processing time (high performance), similar to the one required to execute traditional similarity metrics. The experiments have been carried out on the MovieLens and Netflix databases, using a representative set of information retrieval quality measures. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
The Influence of Career, Burnout, and Play-teaching Efficacy on the Job Satisfaction of Childcare Teachers

빈도가 초임교사가 교직 07. ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of career, burnout, and play-teaching efficacy on the job satisfaction of childcare teachers. Participants of this study were 201 childcare teachers in work-site daycare centers from the Seoul and Kyonggi areas. Collected data were analyzed by one-way ANOVA, Pearson's product moment correlation, and multiple regression with SPSS ver. 13.0. Major results of this study were as follows. First, there were significant differences in total play-teaching efficacy and total job satisfaction according to childcare teacher's career. Second, there were significant positive correlations between childcare teachers' career and their play-teaching efficacy, and between childcare teachers' play-teaching efficacy and their job satisfaction. Also, there were significant negative correlations between childcare teachers' career and their burnout, between childcare teachers' burnout and their play-teaching efficacy, and between childcare teachers' burnout and their job satisfaction. Finally, the most powerful predictor on job satisfaction was burnout. Further, childcare teachers' burnout, play-teaching efficacy, and career explained their job satisfaction. This study primarily suggests that efforts heightening childcare teachers' play-teaching efficacy as well as reducing their burnout according to their career is important in enhancing their job
Análise do desempenho motor de crianças participantes de um programa de atividades físicas - DOI: 10.4025/reveducfis.v20i2.6070

This study investigated the motor skill performance of children within 5 and 6 years old (N=32) who attend physical activities systematically, and it’s relation to biological, familiar environment and motor practice characteristics. The participants were assessed using the Test of Gross Motor Development-2 (ULRICH, 2000). To investigate the physical activities participation and familiar environment a questionnaire design for the present study was used. Results show: (1) motor performance below average for the age gap; (2) better locomotor performance when compared to the objects control abilities; (3) similar performance in locomotor abilities between both genders and superior performance within boys for objects control abilities; (4) age, weekly frequency of practice, length of participating in the program and parent’s regularity in practicing physical activities do not influence the children’s motor performance; (5) existence of siblings, practice of physical activity simultaneous to attending the program and parent’s occupation showed influence on participant’s performance.
The power of MEN in cytokinesis

In budding yeast, the mitotic exit network (MEN) is a signaling pathway best known for its role in driving cells out of mitosis through activation of the conserved phosphatase Cdc14. However, work over the past few years show that MEN components and Cdc14 also have a direct role in promoting cytokinesis by acting upon components of the contractile actomyosin ring and cell separation machineries. In this review, we discuss the current view on the role of MEN kinases and Cdc14 in cytokinesis and comment on the cytokinesis-related function of MEN and Cdc14 orthologs in higher eukaryotes.
Lateral Graphene‐Contacted Vertically Stacked WS2/MoS2 Hybrid Photodetectors with Large Gain

A demonstration is presented of how significant improvements in all‐2D photodetectors can be achieved by exploiting the type‐II band alignment of vertically stacked WS2/MoS2 semiconducting heterobilayers and finite density of states of graphene electrodes. The photoresponsivity of WS2/MoS2 heterobilayer devices is increased by more than an order of magnitude compared to homobilayer devices and two orders of magnitude compared to monolayer devices of WS2 and MoS2, reaching 103 A W−1 under an illumination power density of 1.7 × 102 mW cm−2. The massive improvement in performance is due to the strong Coulomb interaction between WS2 and MoS2 layers. The efficient charge transfer at the WS2/MoS2 heterointerface and long trapping time of photogenerated charges contribute to the observed large photoconductive gain of ≈3 × 104. Laterally spaced graphene electrodes with vertically stacked 2D van der Waals heterostructures are employed for making high‐performing ultrathin photodetectors.
Somatosensory cortex dominated by the representation of teeth in the naked mole-rat brain

We investigated naked mole-rat somatosensory cortex to determine how brain areas are modified in mammals with unusual and extreme sensory specializations. Naked mole-rats (Heterocephalus glaber) have numerous anatomical specializations for a subterranean existence, including rows of sensory hairs along the body and tail, reduced eyes, and ears sensitive to low frequencies. However, chief among their adaptations are behaviorally important, enlarged incisors permanently exterior to the oral cavity that are used for digging, object manipulation, social interactions, and feeding. Here we report an extraordinary brain organization where nearly one-third (31%) of primary somatosensory cortex is devoted to the representations of the upper and lower incisors. In addition, somatosensory cortex is greatly enlarged (as a proportion of total neocortical area) compared with closely related laboratory rats. Finally, somatosensory cortex in naked mole-rats encompasses virtually all of the neocortex normally devoted to vision. These findings indicate that major cortical remodeling has occurred in naked mole-rats, paralleling the anatomical and behavioral specializations related to fossorial life.
Deliberative and Participatory Democracy in the UK

Research Highlights and Abstract This article: Provides an overview of the development of deliberative and participatory democracy in the UK. Critically analyses the success of consecutive UK national governments in fostering deliberative and participatory processes. Surveys the development of deliberative and participatory processes in the UK at sub-national and local level. Provides a starting point for comparative politics on deliberative and participatory democracy between the UK and other polities. This article responds to Michael Saward's call for a more context-specific approach to the study of democracy by exploring developments in, obstacles to, and prospects for, a more deliberative and participatory model of democracy in the UK. A review is undertaken first of the New Labour and coalition governments' attempts at constitutional reform, in order to assess the implications these efforts have had, and continue to have, for the institutionalisation of such a model of democracy. Despite proclamations of lofty ambition successive UK governments have wrapped themselves in the straightjacketing logic of the Westminster model of parliamentary government. As a consequence their actual proposals lack ambition and are often incoherent. The story told in this respect is therefore one of largely unrealised rhetoric. The ‘largely’ qualifier is included, however, in recognition of the space created by Labour's constitutional reforms for participation at the peripheries of governance. The second section of the article focuses on these spaces by, first, commenting briefly on whether the participatory aspirations of the architects of Scottish devolution have been realised before, second, examining the use of specific deliberative mechanisms—such as citizens'juries, deliberative polls and participatory budgeting—at varying locations within the political system and in public agencies and services. Evidence of democratic innovation is presented; however, any optimism on this front must be tempered, as the power-sharing potential of such mechanisms, and their capacity to move us towards a more comprehensive and joined-up deliberative system in the UK, is hampered by the lack of a facilitating institutional landscape. Finally, an overview is provided of the three remaining articles that make up this special section on deliberative and participatory democracy in the UK.
The Impact of NBTI Effect on Combinational Circuit: Modeling, Simulation, and Analysis

Negative-bias-temperature instability (NBTI) has become the primary limiting factor of circuit life time. In this paper, we develop a hierarchical framework for analyzing the impact of NBTI on the performance of logic circuits under various operation conditions, such as the supply voltage, temperature, and node switching activity. Given a circuit topology and input switching activity, we propose an efficient method to predict the degradation of circuit speed over a long period of time. The effectiveness of our method is comprehensively demonstrated with the International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS) benchmarks and a 65-nm industrial design. Furthermore, we extract the following key design insights for reliable circuit design under NBTI effect, including: 1) During dynamic operation, NBTI-induced degradation is relatively insensitive to supply voltage, but strongly dependent on temperature; 2) There is an optimum supply voltage that leads to the minimum of circuit performance degradation; circuit degradation rate actually goes up if supply voltage is lower than the optimum value; 3) Circuit performance degradation due to NBTI is highly sensitive to input vectors. The difference in delay degradation is up to 5× for various static and dynamic operations. Finally, we examine the interaction between NBTI effect, and process and design uncertainty in realistic conditions.
Sex Differences in Children's Conversation

Sex differences in children's conversation are explored to determine if they exist and, if so, when they emerge. Forty preschool children were randomly assigned to groups (female-female, female-male, male-male) and were audio-taped in conversation while playing. Transcripts of their conversations were analyzed for interruptions, overlaps, lapses, gaps and number of initiated unit-types. Significant differences between heterogeneous and homogeneous groups were found for interruptions. Boys interrupted girls 2 to 1. Conversational sex differences seem to be acquired early in life, developing in conjunction with general conversational skills.
Young Children Extend Novel Words at the Basic Level: Evidence for the Principle of Categorical Scope.

If young children approached the task of word learning with a specific hypothesis about the meaning of novel count nouns, they could make the problem of word learning more tractable. Six experiments were conducted to test children's hypotheses about how labels map to object categories. Findings indicated that (a) 3- and 4-year-olds function with an antithematic bias; (b) children do not reliably extend novel nouns to superordinate exemplars when perceptual similarity is controlled until approximately age 7; and (c) children expect novel nouns to label taxonomic categories at the basic level, even in the presence of a perceptually compelling distractor. Results are interpreted as supporting the principle of categorical scope (R. M. Golinkoff, C. B. Mervis, & K. Hirsh-Pasek, 1994).
How the Legacy of French Colonization has Shaped Divergent Levels of Economic Development in East Asia: A Time-Series Cross-National Analysis

Although many countries in East Asia have achieved high growth rates since the middle of the 20th century, former French colonies in the region have struggled to attain comparable levels of economic development. This article is an attempt to explain this variation in development through a cross-national analysis of economic growth in East Asia for the period from 1970 to 2007. Results suggest that the underperformance of former French colonies is attributable to their inheritance of colonial institutions that have been unfavorable for domestic investment, international trade, and educational attainment. Overall, conclusions lend support for the idea that long-term economic development should be understood in terms of path dependence, and that sustained economic growth requires a concerted effort to restructure growth-adverse institutional arrangements.