Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Correlation of invalidation with symptom severity and health status in fibromyalgia.

OBJECTIVE Invalidation is a new construct in health psychology, especially in diseases with inherently invisible symptoms such as FM. It can potentially affect both the quality of life and disease severity in patients with FM. This study aimed to investigate the correlation of illness invalidation with health status and symptom severity in FM. METHODS A total of 112 consecutive patients with FM referred to the rheumatology clinic were enrolled. Invalidation was measured by the Illness Invalidation Inventory (3*I). To measure patient status and progress of FM, the Revised Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire (FIQR) was used and patients' quality of life was assessed by the 12-item Short Form Health Survey (SF-12). Multiple linear regression analyses were performed and Spearman's correlations were calculated. RESULTS All the patients were female and aged between 18 and 61 years. No significant differences in discounting and lack of understanding between various sources of invalidation were found. The strongest correlation was observed between FIQR symptom score and discounting by work (r = 0.519, P < 0.05). Multiple linear regression analyses revealed that only discounting from the spouse significantly predicted FIQR total scores of FM patients [P = 0.03 (CI 0.28, 10.64)]. CONCLUSION Discounting correlated more strongly with SF-12 subscales and FIQR domains than did lack of understanding. The current study revealed that active negative social responses and the source of invalidation are important in predicting symptom severity and quality of life in FM.
Multipotential stem cells from the adult mouse brain proliferate and self-renew in response to basic fibroblast growth factor

It has been established that the adult mouse forebrain contains multipotential (neuronal/glial) progenitor cells that can be induced to proliferate in vitro when epidermal growth factor is provided. These cells are found within the subventricular zone of the lateral ventricles, together with other progenitor cell populations, whose requirements for proliferation remain undefined. Using basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF), we have isolated multipotential progenitors from adult mouse striatum. These progenitors proliferate and can differentiate into cells displaying the antigenic properties of astrocytes, oligodendrocytes, and neurons. The neuron-like cells possess neuronal features, exhibit neuronal electrophysiological properties, and are immunoreactive for GABA, substance P, choline acetyl-transferase, and glutamate. Clonal analysis confirmed the multipotency of these bFGF-dependent cells. Most significantly, subcloning experiments demonstrated that they were capable of self- renewal, which led to a progressive increase in population size over serial passaging. These results demonstrate that bFGF is mitogenic for multipotential cells from adult mammalian forebrain that possess stem cell properties.
Metrics for estimating validity, reliability and bias in peer assessment

Peer assessment is a widespread way of evaluating and rating the quality of a work in the field of education. Although itresults to be a very effective learning instrument, it is subjected to possible problems of reliability, validity and somepotential biases. Most works that study and try to solve these problems are focused on specific cases and the statistics formeasuring reliability, validity or bias are global, that is, they give a measure of these values for the whole process, but theydo not allow an individual study. In this work the approach is different. It proposes some metrics for reliability and validityof each reviewer, as well as an approximation to the possible biases that may appear in the assessment process, so that thereview process can be itself assessed. An analogy between the work of a reviewer in a process of peer assessment and theoperation of an automatic classifier is proposed. This has allowed us to leverage the usual measures in evaluating thequality of automatic classifiers to establish the quality of peer assessment. The reviewers are characterized by obtainingtheir confusion matrices and six new indicators: success rate (which estimates the validity); agreement degree (as a measureof reliability); assessment median and its interquartile range (for the estimation of central tendency and restriction of rangebiases); and average distance to diagonal and its standard deviation (to determine possible leniency and harshness biases). This method provides indicators of the reviewer’s task and the detection of different profiles, so that the teacher can assessthe work of the students as reviewers and introduce some correction mechanisms in the final assessment of the works. Apractical example of application to an engineering degree is provided to illustrate the potential of the method.
P21-activated kinase 4 overexpression in metastatic gastric cancer patients.

INTRODUCTION P21-activated kinase 4 (PAK), a subfamily of serine/threonine kinases originally known as a regulator of cytoskeletal dynamics and cell motility, has recently been revealed to play a key role in oncogenic signaling pathways. We studied the frequency and clinical features of PAK4-overexpressed metastatic gastric cancer. PATIENTS AND METHODS PAK4 overexpression was screened by Western blot in 18 human gastric cancer cell lines. Immunohistochemical staining of PAK4 protein was performed in tumor specimens of 49 metastatic gastric cancer patients who received palliative capecitabine/cisplatin as first-line treatment. RESULTS PAK4 protein overexpression was detected strongly in five gastric cell lines (AGS, MGK-28, MKN-74, SNU-216, SNU-601) and weakly in four cell lines (KATOIII, MKN-1, SNU-620, and SNU-719). PAK4 knockdown by small interfering RNA induced apoptosis in PAK4-overexpressed AGS gastric cancer cells. Immunohistochemical staining revealed PAK4 overexpressions in 4 (8.1%) of 49 metastatic gastric cancer specimens. None of the four patients with PAK4(+) responded to capecitabine/cisplatin chemotherapy, and PAK4(+) gastric cancer patients had a trend of poorer survival compared with PAK(-)(P = .876). CONCLUSIONS We demonstrated PAK4 overexpression in a subset of gastric cancer patients, implicating a role in gastric cancer tumorigenesis. Its prognostic significance and efficacy as a drug target should be further studied.
Habitat Degradation and Seasonality Affect Physiological Stress Levels of Eulemur collaris in Littoral Forest Fragments

The littoral forest on sandy soil is among the most threatened habitats in Madagascar and, as such, it represents a hot-spot within a conservation hot-spot. Assessing the health of the resident lemur fauna is not only critical for the long-term viability of these populations, but also necessary for the future re-habilitation of this unique habitat. Since the Endangered collared brown lemur, Eulemur collaris, is the largest seed disperser of the Malagasy south-eastern littoral forest its survival in this habitat is crucial. In this study we compared fecal glucocorticoid metabolite (fGCM) levels, a measure of physiological stress and potential early indicator of population health, between groups of collared brown lemurs living in a degraded forest fragment and groups occurring in a more preserved area. For this, we analysed 279 fecal samples collected year-round from 4 groups of collared brown lemurs using a validated 11-oxoetiocholanolone enzyme immunoassay and tested if fGCM levels were influenced by reproductive stages, phenological seasons, sex, and habitat degradation. The lemurs living in the degraded forest had significantly higher fGCM levels than those living in the more preserved area. In particular, the highest fGCM levels were found during the mating season in all animals and in females during gestation in the degraded forest. Since mating and gestation are both occurring during the lean season in the littoral forest, these results likely reflect a combination of ecological and reproductive pressures. Our findings provide a clear indication that habitat degradation has additive effects to the challenges found in the natural habitat. Since increased stress hormone output may have long-term negative effects on population health and reproduction, our data emphasize the need for and may add to the development of effective conservation plans for the species.
TAM-based external factors related to ERP solutions acceptance in organizations

To improve the efficiency and effectiveness of ERP solutions use, understanding of critical success factors of ERP solutions assimilation in organizations is crucial. The technology acceptance model (TAM) proposed by Davis (1989) has been the most widely used model for researching user acceptance and usage of IT/IS. The purpose of this paper is to extend the original TAM with groups of external factors which impact actual ERP system use. First, we focus on ERP system use in companies’ maturity phase. Second, we expose and examine three groups of external factors which influence ERP usage. The model was empirically tested using data collected from a survey of ERP users in 44 organizations. Survey data have been collected from ERP users who have been exposed to an ERP system which has operated for more than one year. The proposed research model was analyzed using the PLS approach.
Communication in Genetic Counseling: Cognitive and Emotional Processing

The profession of genetic counseling has received limited guidance from theoretical models in how to communicate complex health information so that clients can actively use the information. In this study of a national sample of 145 genetic counselors conducting sessions with simulated clients, we apply two different approaches for analyzing and describing verbal health communication. The Roter interaction analysis system (RIAS) and linguistic inquiry word count (LIWC) were used to identify evidence of communication behaviors consistent with tenets of the social cognitive processing model (SCPM). These tools revealed descriptive evidence of counselor facilitation of client emotional processing and, to a lesser extent, facilitation of client cognitive processing and understanding. Conversely, descriptive analysis of client communication revealed evidence of cognitive processing, but less affective processing. Second, we assessed whether genetic counselor facilitative communication predicted simulated client responses consistent with the cognitive and emotional processing inherent in SCPM. These analyses revealed that counselor attempts to promote emotional expression and client insight were positively associated with client word usage indicative of expression of negative affect and cognitive processing. This study is the first to our knowledge to apply RIAS and LIWC in tandem and gives us a description of current practices within genetic counseling within a theoretical framework. Additionally, it provides suggestions for education and communication goals to improve providers' responses to patient emotions as well as skills to engender patient understanding and personal meaning-making of complex medical information.
Identifying emerging security concepts using software artifacts through an experimental case

The development of secure software systems is an increasingly important research topic in software engineering. Several authors have proposed methods, techniques and tools to software development practices in order to identify and/or mitigate security threats. These methods and techniques are based in traditional software engineering artifacts, such as Use Cases, Activity Diagrams and Domain Models. However, the lack of scientific evidence of the quality or efficiency of these methods, leads us to question if this approach is necessary for software security experts. This article proposes an experimental approach to explore if software development artifacts are relevant when making security decisions in software development, and how are they used. We have designed a survey in order to ask these questions to software security and architecture experts. We used the Constant Comparison Method in order to find emerging security theories about software artifacts, grounded in the answers of the experts. Our results add experimental evidence into the use and usefullness of software development artifacts in helping to reduce security vulnerabilities in practice, from the experts point of view. Our results add experimental evidence into the use and usefulness of software development artifacts to evaluate the security from the point of view of the experts. Our evidence suggests that not all software artifacts are equally useful in the design of secure architectures , considering the "Use Cases" and "Class Diagrams" as the most useful artifacts according to our respondents. Also, our evidence suggest that experts do not agree in the importance of analyzing security concerns through the whole software life cycle, nor in the abstraction level required for this task.
Série Scientifique Scientific Series Managing the Risk of It Outsourcing Managing the Risk of It Outsourcing

CIRANO Le CIRANO est une corporation privée à but non lucratif constituée en vertu de la Loi des compagnies du Québec. Le financement de son infrastructure et de ses activités de recherche provient des cotisations de ses organisations-membres, d=une subvention d=infrastructure du ministère de l=Industrie, du Commerce, de la Science et de la Technologie, de même que des subventions et mandats obtenus par ses équipes de recherche. La Série Scientifique est la réalisation d=une des missions que s=est données le CIRANO, soit de développer l=analyse scientifique des organisations et des comportements stratégiques. CIRANO is a private non-profit organization incorporated under the Québec Companies Act. Its infrastructure and research activities are funded through fees paid by member organizations, an infrastructure grant from the Ministère de l=Industrie, du Commerce, de la Science et de la Technologie, and grants and research mandates obtained by its research teams. The Scientific Series fulfils one of the missions of CIRANO: to develop the scientific analysis of organizations and strategic behaviour. Ce document est publié dans l=intention de rendre accessibles les résultats préliminaires de la recherche effectuée au CIRANO, afin de susciter des échanges et des suggestions. Les idées et les opinions émises sont sous l=unique responsabilité des auteurs, et ne représentent pas nécessairement les positions du CIRANO ou de ses partenaires. This paper presents preliminary research carried out at CIRANO and aims to encourage discussion and comment. The observations and viewpoints expressed are the sole responsibility of the authors. They do not necessarily represent positions of CIRANO or its partners. L'impartition des services informatiques, même si elle peut entrainer de nombreux bénéfices, implique un risque. Comme tout type d'investissement, ce risque doit être évalué et géré. Cet article propose un cadre d'analyse pour le risque d'impartition des services informatiques, et évalue ce cadre à l'aide d'une étude de cas. Ce cas présente deux décisions d'impartition de services informatiques, dans le domaine de l'assurance. Le niveau de risque de chaque décision est évalué et les mécanismes permettant de gérer ce risque sont présentés. Les résultats montrent que, en détaillant les facteurs de risque et les événenents correspondants, il est possible de cibler les éléments les plus risqués et de réduire le risque à un niveau acceptable. While it can bring several benefits, IT outsourcing entails some risks. As it is the case in other types of investments or business ventures, the risk associated to an IT outsourcing …
Social class and psychiatric practice: a revision of the Hollingshead and Redlich model.

In 1958, Hollingshead and Redlich demonstrated that there were major differences in mental health care for lower-class patients: they primarily received low-intervention treatments from nonprofessional staff. The authors report a follow-up study initiated by F.C. Redlich that reveals new trends at the community mental health center (CMHC) serving the region studied by Hollingshead and Redlich. More than half of the lower-class patients who sought evaluation at this CMHC were discharged without a treatment assignment. Many lower-class patients, however, gained access to the CMHC's psychotherapy unit. Most of these patients were women, employed, and diagnosed as psychoneurotic. The authors conclude that the effect of social class on psychiatric care is less complete than Hollingshead and Redlich originally demonstrated.
Parity Check Matrix Recognition from Noisy Codewords

We study recovering parity check relations for an unknown code from intercepted bitstream received from Binary Symmetric Channel in this paper. An iterative column elimination algorithm is introduced which attempts to eliminate parity bits in codewords of noisy data. This algorithm is very practical due to low complexity and use of XOR operator. Since, the computational complexity is low, searching for the length of code and synchronization is possible. Furthermore, the Hamming weight of the parity check words are only used in threshold computation and unlike other algorithms, they have negligible effect in the proposed algorithm. Eventually, experimental results are presented and estimations for the maximum noise level allowed for recovering the words of the parity check matrix are investigated.
Protective Effects of Rooibos (Aspalathus linearis) and/or Red Palm Oil (Elaeis guineensis) Supplementation on tert-Butyl Hydroperoxide-Induced Oxidative Hepatotoxicity in Wistar Rats

The possible protective effects of an aqueous rooibos extract (Aspalathus linearis), red palm oil (RPO) (Elaeis guineensis), or their combination on tert-butyl-hydroperoxide-(t-BHP-)induced oxidative hepatotoxicity in Wistar rats were investigated. tert-butyl hydroperoxide caused a significant (P < 0.05) elevation in conjugated dienes (CD) and malondialdehyde (MDA) levels, significantly (P < 0.05) decreased reduced glutathione (GSH) and GSH : GSSG ratio, and induced varying changes in activities of catalase, superoxide dismutase, glutathione peroxidase, and glutathione reductase in the blood and liver. This apparent oxidative injury was associated with histopathological changes in liver architecture and elevated levels of serum alanine aminotransferase (ALT), aspartate aminotransferase (AST), and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH). Supplementation with rooibos, RPO, or their combination significantly (P < 0.05) decreased CD and MDA levels in the liver and reduced serum level of ALT, AST, and LDH. Likewise, changes observed in the activities of antioxidant enzymes and impairment in redox status in the erythrocytes and liver were reversed. The observed protective effects when rooibos and RPO were supplemented concomitantly were neither additive nor synergistic. Our results suggested that rooibos and RPO, either supplemented alone or combined, are capable of alleviating t-BHP-induced oxidative hepatotoxicity, and the mechanism of this protection may involve inhibition of lipid peroxidation and modulation of antioxidants enzymes and glutathione status.
An Evolutionary Approach To Inter-Session Network Coding

Whereas the theory and application of optimal network coding are well studied for the single-session multicast scenario, there is no known optimal network coding strategy for a more general connection problem where there are more than one session and receivers may demand different sets of information. Though there have been a number of recent studies that demonstrate various utilities of network coding in the multi- session scenario, they rely on very restricted classes of codes in terms of the coding operations allowed and/or the location of decoding. In this paper, we propose a novel inter-session network coding strategy for a general connection problem. Our coding strategy allows fairly general random linear coding over a large finite field, in which decoding is done at receivers and the mixture of information at interior nodes is controlled by evolutionary mechanisms. We demonstrate how our coding strategy may surpass existing end-to-end pairwise XOR coding schemes in terms of effectiveness and practicality.
Improved tissue sections for medical liver biopsies: a comparison of 16 vs 18 g biopsy needles using digital pathology

Background Most medical liver biopsies in the UK are now taken in radiology departments using 18 g biopsy needles. Subjectively, the resulting biopsies are narrow and fragile. Aim To compare the quality of liver biopsy tissue sections obtained from 16 and 18 g biopsy needles. Method Fifty consecutive routine medical liver biopsies obtained with 16 and 18 g needles, processed identically in the same laboratory, were measured using digital pathology software. We recorded their fragmentation, length, width, area and number of portal tracts. Results Biopsies obtained with 16 g needles more often resulted in an intact core in tissue sections than those with 18 g needles (71% vs 24%, p<0.001) and were significantly wider (average width of tissue 0.88 vs 0.53 mm, p<0.001). The average total area of tissue per pass was 11.38 mm2 compared with 8.34 mm2 (p<0.001). The number of complete portal tracts per length of biopsy was very variable, but double for 16 vs 18 g biopsies. Routinely taking two passes with the 18 g needle compensated for the reduced area, but the resulting liver in tissue sections was fragmented and distorted. Conclusions Our results support the routine use of 16 g rather than 18 g biopsy needles for routine ultrasound-guided medical liver biopsies. A second pass should be considered if the first biopsy core is short, especially for investigation of disease stage.
Interleukin‐dependent modulation of HLA‐DR expression on CD4 and CD8 activated T cells

Interleukins (IL) regulate differentT‐cell surface Ag known as activation markers that have distinct functional roles. In this paper, while studying the influence of some cytokines(IL‐12, IL‐2 and IL‐4) on the expression of several markers [CD69,CD25, CD26, CD3, human leukocyte antigen (HLA‐DR), CD45R0] in in vitro activated human T lymphocytes, we observed two groups of donors responding to phytohaemagglutinin (PHA) activation with high or low HLA‐DRAg expression. We also found that CD4 and CD8 populations had different HLA‐DR densities under PHA activation (particularly the high HLA‐DR‐expressing group). Interleukins, in a dose‐dependent manner (IL‐2 partially), upregulated these HLA‐DR levels. In 5 day cultures, IL‐12and IL‐2 enhanced the CD8/CD4 ratio of activated T cells, which was responsible, in part, for the IL‐dependent HLA‐DR upregulation. IL‐12 and IL‐2 also upregulated the HLA‐DR expression at the molecular level on CD8, and IL‐12 downregulated it on CD4 cells. It seems that IL‐4 upregulated HLA‐DR by shortening the mitogen‐dependent regulation kinetics. We hypothesize that the different effect of each IL on HLA‐DR expression might be related to the regulation of the dose of antigenic peptide presentation and, thus, also influence TH1/TH2 dominance.
O-Band III–V-on-Amorphous-Silicon Lasers Integrated With a Surface Grating Coupler

In this letter, we report on the design, fabrication, and performance of a hetero-integrated III-V/silicon distributed-feedback (DFB) laser in the O-band, with improved integration compatibility with the existing silicon photonics platforms. This structure uses amorphous silicon deposited at a low temperature (350 °C) to efficiently couple light from the III-V region into a thin silicon-on-insulator waveguide, without disrupting other existing silicon components. Continuous-wave regime is achieved at 25 °C, while lasing threshold and maximum output power in the waveguides are 50 mA and 33.6 mW, respectively. The maximum power coupled into a single-mode fiber at one end of the DFB is up to 4.7 mW.