Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Collocation solution of the Korteweg–de Vries equation using septic splines

Numerical solutions for the Korteweg–de Vries equation based on the collocation method using septic splines as element shape functions are set up. A linear stability analysis of the scheme shows the method to be unconditionally stable. A test problem concerning the development and motion of solitons is used to validate the method. The numerical scheme is compared with other published methods and shown to be accurate and efficient.
Gastric inhibitory polypeptide-dependent cortisol hypersecretion--a new cause of Cushing's syndrome.

BACKGROUND Corticotropin-independent nodular adrenal hyperplasia is a rare cause of Cushing's syndrome, and the factors responsible for the adrenal hyperplasia are not known. METHODS We studied a 48-year-old woman with Cushing's syndrome, nodular adrenal hyperplasia, and undetectable plasma corticotropin concentrations in whom food stimulated cortisol secretion. RESULTS Cortisol secretion had an inverse diurnal rhythm in this patient, with low-to-normal fasting plasma cortisol concentrations and elevated postprandial cortisol concentrations that could not be suppressed with dexamethasone. The cortisol concentrations increased in response to oral glucose (4-fold increase) and a lipid-rich meal (4.8-fold increase) or a protein-rich meal (2.6-fold increase), but not intravenous glucose. The infusion of somatostatin blunted the plasma cortisol response to oral glucose. Intravenous infusion of gastric inhibitory polypeptide (GIP) for one hour increased the plasma cortisol concentration in the patient but not in four normal subjects. Fasting plasma GIP concentrations in the patient were similar to those in the normal subjects; feeding the patient test meals induced increases in plasma GIP concentrations that paralleled those in plasma cortisol concentrations. Cell suspensions of adrenal tissue from the patient produced more cortisol when stimulated by GIP than when stimulated by corticotropin. In contrast, adrenal cells from normal adults and fetuses or patients with cortisol-producting or aldosterone-producing adenomas responded to corticotropin but not to GIP. CONCLUSIONS Nodular adrenal hyperplasia and Cushing's syndrome may be food-dependent as a result of abnormal responsiveness of adrenal cells to physiologic secretion of GIP. "Illicit" (ectopic) expression of GIP receptors on adrenal cells presumably underlies this disorder.
Development of Generic Competencies: Impact of a Mixed Teaching Approach on Students' Perceptions

Accounting education in recent years has emphasized the need for developing generic competencies and, to this end, has advocated various pedagogies other than the traditional lecture format. The Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (Canada) started an award-winning program, Vire, Tuelle & Associates (VTA), which uses a mixed teaching approach to develop students' generic competencies in preparation for the Chartered Accountant designation. This questionnaire-based study asked students to rate this approach at the end of their training in the mock firm (VTA) and while they were trainees in an accounting firm. It also asked the office supervisors to assess their trainees' competency levels during the training period. It was found that the mixed approach program significantly enhanced the development/improvement of all 32 generic competencies investigated. After a few months' work as CA trainees, students had not substantially changed their views of the usefulness of VTA activities for the development of their competencies. Students' perceptions of some benefits of the mixed approach differed significantly according to accounting work experience and prior academic performance. The office supervisors generally viewed the UQTR trainees as being highly competent or excellent. This study provides educators, schools and professional accounting bodies with feedback on the mixed approach to help them develop similar programs.
Inmate Assimilation

Several explanatory variables derived from the importation and deprivation models of imprisonment are employed in a multivariate design in an attempt to assess the relative predictive strengths of both perspectives. Data obtained from two juvenile correctional facilities in the Southeast, one male and one female, are used in the analysis. The findings indicate that the deprivation model is the better predictor of prisonization for males. For females, variables from both models appear to have a significant impact. For both males and females, the merger of the two models explains more of the variation in prisonization than any one taken separately. The implications of these findings are discussed.
Student Attitudes toward Statistics at Augsburg College

Macnaughton argued that the primary goal of an introductory statistics course should be to give students "a lasting appreciation for the value of statistics. " Schau designed a reliable instrument for measuring changes in individual student attitudes called SATS: Survey of Attitudes Toward Statistics. It measures attitudes on four scales: difficulty, affect, cognitive competence and value. In using SATS at other schools, students saw less value in statistics after taking the course than they did before taking the course. This paper presents the results of the SATS survey at Augsburg College. Even though 61% of Augsburg students saw more value in statistics after their course than before, this difference was not statistically significant. These students had a statistically significant increase in their feeling of cognitive competence after their course even though they found it more difficult than expected.
Lipoprotein (a) is associated with basal insulin levels in patients with type 2 Diabetes Mellitus.

BACKGROUND It has not been clearly established whether insulin resistance/deficiency leads directly to atherogenesis or through its association with other risk factors such as lipoprotein(a) [Lp(a)]. OBJECTIVE This project aimed at studying the association between basal insulin, lipids and lipoprotein(a) levels in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. METHODS Fasting blood samples were analyzed for Insulin, Lipoprotein(a), total cholesterol (TC), triglycerides (TG), low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), glucose and glycosylated hemoglobin (HbA1c) levels in 60 patients with type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (DM) and 28 healthy subjects. We divided patients into two groups based on basal insulin levels: > or = 10 microIU/ml and < 10 microIU/ml. RESULTS Insulin levels were higher in diabetic versus control individuals [p < 0.05]. TC (p< 0.01), LDL-C (p< 0.05), TC/HDL ratio (p< 0.01) and TG levels (p< 0.05) were higher and HDL- C levels were significantly lower (p < 0.001) in both diabetic groups as compared to control. Lp(a) levels were significantly higher in both diabetic groups, when compared to the control group. Lp(a) levels were significantly lower in diabetics with basal insulin > or =10 microIU/ml when compared to those with basal insulin < 10 microIU/ml (p < 0.05). Regression analysis revealed a significant relationship of Lp(a) with insulin levels (r = 0.262, p < 0.05) and Insulin Glucose ratio (r = 0.257, p < 0.05). CONCLUSION Lp(a) levels correlate inversely with insulin levels in Type 2 diabetic patients. Lp(a) may be one of the cardiovascular risk factor in type 2 diabetic patients with longer duration of DM.
Emoticons convey emotions without cognition of faces: an fMRI study

In this paper, we describe the brain activities that are associated with emoticons by using functional MRI (fMRI). In communication over a computer network, we use abstract faces such as computer graphics (CG) avatars and emoticons. These faces convey users' emotions and enrich their communications. In particular, when we see some abstract faces, we feel that they are more vivid and lively than photorealistic faces. However, the manner in which these faces influence the mental process is as yet unknown. In this research, we conducted an experiment by using fMRI for the most abstract faces? emoticons. The experimental results show that emoticons convey emotions without the cognition of faces. This result is very important in order to promote an understanding of how abstract faces affect our behaviors.
Power and Politics of Language Use: A Survey of Hedging Devices in Political Interviews

One tactful strategy in political rhetoric is hedging which is associated with vagueness and innuendos. Despite the studies that address hedging in academic discourse and conversation analysis, studies that investigate hedges in relation to political power, face, and politeness are tremendously few. To this aim, four political interviews were selected from CNN and BBC websites on the basis of the diversity of topics and the popularity of the interviewees and analyzed following a combination of the existing taxonomies of hedges. The results of this analysis revealed an inverse relationship between the frequency of downtoners and the degree of political power. The use of hedges in political interviews also contributes to the implementation of positive as well as negative politeness strategies.
Large-sample hydrology: a need to balance depth with breadth

A holy grail of hydrology is to understand catchment processes well enough that models can provide detailed simulations across a variety of hydrologic settings at multiple spatiotemporal scales, and under changing environmental conditions. Clearly, this cannot be achieved only through intensive place-based investigation at a small number of heavily instrumented catchments, or by empirical methods that do not fully exploit our understanding of hydrology. In this opinion paper, we discuss the need to actively promote and pursue the use of a "large catchment sample" approach to modeling the rainfall–runoff process, thereby balancing depth with breadth. We examine the history of such investigations, discuss the benefits (improved process understanding resulting in robustness of prediction at ungauged locations and under change), examine some practical challenges to implementation and, finally, provide perspectives on issues that need to be taken into account as we move forward. Ultimately, our objective is to provoke further discussion and participation, and to promote a potentially important theme for the upcoming Scientific Decade of the International Association of Hydrological Sciences entitled Panta Rhei.
Needs and Preferred Style of Supervision Among Israeli School Counselors at Different Stages of Professional Development

The study aimed to identify differential needs for supervision and preferred roles and style of supervision among 202 Israeli school counselors with varied experience levels. Results of multivariate analysis of variance procedures indicated that counselors with 7 or fewer years of experience consistently expressed significantly higher needs on all but one of the items studied, compared with more experienced counselors and counselor supervisors. The counselor supervisors were also different from the more experienced counselors. By contrast, in respect of roles and style of supervision, there was more agreement across all 4 levels of experience; all counselors placed important values on the counseling, process, and personalization components, suggesting a basic need for growth-oriented supervision.
Pericytes in the macrovascular intima: possible physiological and pathogenetic impact.

The frequently observed de-endothelialization of venous coronary bypass grafts prepared using standard methods exposes subendothelial prothrombotic cells to blood components, thus endangering patients by inducing acute thromboembolic infarction or long-term proliferative stenosis. Our aim was to gain deeper histological and physiological insight into these relations. An intricate network of subendothelial cells, characterized by histological features specific for true pericytes, was detected even in healthy vessels and forms, coupled to the luminal endothelium, a second leaflet of the macrovascular intima. These cells, and particularly those in the venous intima, express enormous concentrations of tissue factor and can recruit additional amounts of up to the 25-fold concentration within 1 h during preincubation with serum (intimal pericytes of venous origin activate 30.71 +/- 4.07 pmol coagulation factor x.min(-1). 10(-6) cells; n = 15). Moreover, decoupled from the endothelium, they proliferate rapidly (generation time, 15 +/- 2.1 h, n = 8). Central regions of atherosclerotic plaques, as well as of those of restenosed areas of coronary vein grafts, consist almost completely of these cells. In stark contrast with the prothrombogenicity of the intimal pericytes, intact luminal endothelium recruits high concentrations of thrombomodulin (CD 141) specifically within its intercellular junctions, activates Protein C rapidly (42 +/- 5.1 pmol/min.10(6) venous endothelial cells at thrombin saturation; n = 15), can thus actively prevent coagulatory processes, and never expresses histologically detectable and functionally active tissue factor. Given this strongly prothrombotic potential of the intimal pericytes and their overshooting growth behavior in endothelium-denuded vascular regions, they may play important roles in the development of atherosclerosis, thrombosis, and saphenous vein graft disease.
Arterial O 2 content and tension in regulation of cardiac output and leg blood flow during exercise in humans

Roach, Robert C. , Maria D. Koskolou, José A. L. Calbet, and Bengt Saltin. Arterial O2 content and tension in regulation of cardiac output and leg blood flow during exercise in humans. Am. J. Physiol. 276 (Heart Circ. Physiol. 45): H438–H445, 1999. —A universal O2 sensor presumes that compensation for impaired O2 delivery is triggered by low O2 tension, but in humans, comparisons of compensatory responses to altered arterial O2 content (CaO2) or tension (PaO2) have not been reported. To directly compare cardiac output (Q̇TOT) and leg blood flow (LBF) responses to a range of CaO2 and PaO2, seven healthy young men were studied during two-legged knee extension exercise with control hemoglobin concentration ([Hb] 5 144.4 6 4 g/l) and at least 1 wk later after isovolemic hemodilution ([Hb] 5 115 6 2 g/l). On each study day, subjects exercised twice at 30 W and on to voluntary exhaustion with an FIO2 of 0.21 or 0.11. The interventions resulted in two conditions with matched CaO2 but markedly different PaO2 (hypoxia and anemia) and two conditions with matched PaO2 and different CaO2 (hypoxia and anemia 1 hypoxia). PaO2 varied from 46 6 3 Torr in hypoxia to 95 6 3 Torr (range 37 to .100) in anemia (P , 0.001), yet LBF at exercise was nearly identical. However, as CaO2 dropped from 190 6 5 ml/l in control to 132 6 2 ml/l in anemia 1 hypoxia (P , 0.001), Q̇TOT and LBF at 30 W rose to 12.8 6 0.8 and 7.2 6 0.3 l/min, respectively, values 23 and 47% above control (P , 0.01). Thus regulation of Q̇TOT, LBF, and arterial O2 delivery to contracting intact human skeletal muscle is dependent for signaling primarily on CaO2, not PaO2. This finding suggests that factors related to CaO2 or [Hb] may play an important role in the regulation of blood flow during exercise in humans.
Autoethnographic Journeys in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education

In this article, the author describes how the methodological approach of autoethnography enabled her to interrogate the philosophical underpinnings of the learning and teaching practices that she espoused as a university academic. This critical questioning was provoked through her interactions with postgraduate students from a range of contexts and academic traditions in a School of Education in a university in the United Kingdom. Through personal reflections and conversations with her ‘selves' on her teaching and on her supervisory relationships with doctoral researchers, the author strives to show how she reduced her reliance on familiar ideas and changed the shape of her teaching through questioning her ‘selves’, beliefs and values. The value of autoethnography in enabling this critical exploration when working in an international European higher education context is highlighted. An aim is to encourage greater use of this methodological approach in European higher education research to enable greater sensitivity to our diverse constituencies.
Rethinking Climate Change, Conflict and Security

This special issue of Geopolitics presents a series of critical interventions on the links between global anthropogenic climate change, conflict and security. In this introduction, we situate the special issue by providing an assessment of the state of debate on climate security, and then by summarising the eight articles that follow. We observe, to start with, that contemporary climate security discourse is dominated by a problematic ensemble of policy-led framings and assumptions. And we submit that the contributions to this issue help rethink this dominant discourse in two distinct ways, offering both a series of powerful critiques, plus new interpretations of climate-conflict linkages which extend beyond Malthusian orthodoxy.
Solitary pulmonary nodular lung adenocarcinoma: correlation of histopathologic scoring and patient survival with imaging biomarkers.

PURPOSE To evaluate the usefulness of histopathologic scoring for survival prediction in patients with solitary pulmonary nodular (SPN) lung adenocarcinomas and to correlate the histopathologic scoring with the results of computed tomography (CT) and fluorine 18 fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography (PET)/CT. MATERIALS AND METHODS This retrospective study was institutional review board approved and the requirement for informed consent was waived. A total of 148 patients with SPN lung adenocarcinoma underwent PET/CT and CT. Correlations between histopathologic scores estimated by using two predominant histologic subtypes from each surgically resected specimen and the mass of the nodule at CT or maximum standardized uptake value (SUV(max)) at PET/CT were assessed. Disease-free survival (DFS) was estimated by using the Kaplan-Meier method, and the log-rank test was used to evaluate differences in each histopathologic subtype. RESULTS In 135 (91%) patients, tumors had a mixed subtype. The most frequently observed histologic subtypes, in decreasing order, were acinar (51%), lepidic (18%), solid (10%), and papillary (9%). DFS rates at 5 years were higher than 90% for the group of patients with nodules that showed the lepidic growth pattern, and 50% for patients with nodules that showed the micropapillary pattern. The pathologic score proved to be a significant predictor of DFS (P < .001). Both SUV(max) and the mass of the nodule were closely correlated with pathologic score. CONCLUSION Pathologic scoring appears to help predict DFS in patients with SPN lung adenocarcinoma and shows close correlation with imaging biomarkers including the mass of the nodule at CT and SUV(max) at PET/CT.
Genome-scale metabolic reconstruction and constraint-based modelling of the Antarctic bacterium Pseudoalteromonas haloplanktis TAC125.

The Antarctic strain Pseudoalteromonas haloplanktis TAC125 is one of the model organisms of cold-adapted bacteria and is currently exploited as a new alternative expression host for numerous biotechnological applications. Here, we investigated several metabolic features of this strain through in silico modelling and functional integration of -omics data. A genome-scale metabolic model of P. haloplanktis TAC125 was reconstructed, encompassing information on 721 genes, 1133 metabolites and 1322 reactions. The predictive potential of this model was validated against a set of experimentally determined growth rates and a large dataset of growth phenotypic data. Furthermore, evidence synthesis from proteomics, phenomics, physiology and metabolic modelling data revealed possible drawbacks of cold-dependent changes in gene expression on the overall metabolic network of P. haloplanktis TAC125. These included, for example, variations in its central metabolism, amino acid degradation and fatty acid biosynthesis. The genome-scale metabolic model described here is the first one reconstructed so far for an Antarctic microbial strain. It allowed a system-level investigation of variations in cellular metabolic fluxes following a temperature downshift. It represents a valuable platform for further investigations on P. haloplanktis TAC125 cellular functional states and for the design of more focused strategies for its possible biotechnological exploitation.
Change in Myself-As-a-Learner Scale (MALS) scores as pupils transfer to and progress through secondary school

Longitudinal changes in pupils’ academic self-perception (as measured by Myself-As-a-Learner Scale [MALS]) were investigated between Year 6 and Year 10. The possibility of there being gender and attainment differences was also explored. There was a significant drop in mean MALS scores between Years 6 and 7. There was a further drop between Years 7 and 8 but this was small and not statistically significant. MALS scores remained largely stable between Years 7 and 10. Girls scored lower than boys on this measure and this difference reached significance in the Years 6 to 7 data. The results showed that higher attaining pupils (as measured by the Key Stage 2 levels in English, Maths and Science) had higher average MALS scores. Implications for the standardisation arrangements of the MALS test are discussed, with particular reference to the desirability to include norms to incorporate attainment, age and sex.
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY AND FIRM PROFITABILITY : MECHANISMS AND EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE 1

Do information technology investments improve firm profitability? If so, is this effect because such investments help improve sales, or is it because they help reduce overall operating expenses? How does the effect of IT on profitability compare with that of advertising and of research and development? These are important questions because investments in IT constitute a large part of firms’ discretionary expenditures, and managers need to understand the likely impacts and mechanisms to justify and realize value from their IT and related resource allocation processes. The empirical evidence in this paper, derived using archival data from 1998 to 2003 for more than 400 global firms, suggests that IT has a positive impact on profitability. Importantly, the effect of IT investments on sales and profitability is higher than that of other discretionary investments, such as advertising and R&D. A significant portion of the impact of IT on firm profitability is accounted for by ITenabled revenue growth, but there is no evidence for the effect of IT on profitability through operating cost reduction. Taken together, these findings suggest that firms have had greater success in achieving higher profitability through IT-enabled revenue growth than through IT-enabled cost reduction. They also provide important implications for managers to make allocations among discretionary expenditures such as IT, advertising, and R&D. With regard to IT expenditures, the results imply that firms should accord higher priority to IT projects that have revenue growth potential over those that focus mainly on cost savings. 1