Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Student Alienation, Academic Achievement, and WebCT Use

The current investigation sought to understand the relationships between college student alienation, academic achievement, and use of WebCT. Fifty-three students enrolled in an undergraduate educational psychology course provided three types of data: 1) self-rating of eight Likert scale alienation items, 2) academic achievement measured with four types of multiple choice questions evaluating mastery of course content, and 3) use of WebCT defined as total number of Hits, Articles Posted, and Articles Read. Findings suggest that peer alienation was associated with increased WebCT use; learning alienation and course alienation were associated with low WebCT use. Learning alienation demonstrated an inverse relation to academic achievement. In most cases, significant predictive relationships between academic achievement and student use of WebCT were curvilinear.
Decomposing the Higman-Sims graph into double Petersen graphs

It has been known for some time that the Higman-Sims graph can be decomposed into the disjoint union of two Hoffman-Singleton graphs. In this paper we establish that the Higman-Sims graph can be edge decomposed into the disjoint union of 5 double-Petersen graphs, each on 20 vertices. It is shown that in fact this can be achieved in 36960 distinct ways. It is also shown that these different ways fall into a single orbit under the automorphism group HS of the graph. 2000 Mathematics Subject Classification: 68P25, 94A60.
Low-Dose Aspirin and Upper Gastrointestinal Bleeding in Primary Versus Secondary Cardiovascular Prevention: A Population-Based, Nested Case–Control Study

Background—The benefit–risk profile of low-dose aspirin in primary prevention of cardiovascular disease is unclear. We sought to quantify upper gastrointestinal bleeding (UGIB) risk associated with low-dose aspirin in secondary versus primary prevention patients. Methods and Results—We performed a population-based nested case–control study using The Health Improvement Network (THIN) Database between 2000 and 2007. We identified 2049 cases of UGIB and 20 000 controls, frequency-matched to the cases on age, sex, and calendar year, who were subdivided into primary (without previous cardiovascular disease) and secondary (with previous cardiovascular disease) prevention populations. We estimated the relative risk of UGIB associated with the use of low-dose aspirin by multivariate logistic regression. The UGIB risk in patients taking low-dose aspirin relative to nonusers was significantly higher in the primary (adjusted relative risk, 1.90; 95% confidence interval, 1.59–2.26) than in the secondary (relative risk, 1.40; 95% confidence interval, 1.14–1.72; P value for the difference=0.0014) prevention cohort. However, as the baseline risk of UGIB was lower in the primary than in the secondary prevention cohort, numbers needed to harm per 1 year of low-dose aspirin use were 601 and 391 for primary and secondary prevention, respectively. Conclusions—The relative risk of UGIB in patients taking low-dose aspirin is higher when used for primary than for secondary cardiovascular disease prevention, but this difference is more than compensated by the lower baseline risk in the primary prevention population. Such estimates are important for an assessment of the net clinical benefit in primary prevention.
Subcutaneous Panniculitis-like T-cell Lymphoma: A Clinicopathologic, Immunophenotypic, and Molecular Study of 22 Asian Cases According to WHO-EORTC Classification

Subcutaneous panniculitis-like T-cell lymphoma (SPTL) is defined as a rare cytotoxic α/β T-cell lymphoma characterized by primary involvement of subcutaneous tissue mimicking panniculitis and a predominant CD3+/CD4−/CD8+ phenotype in 2005 World Health Organization-European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer (WHO-EORTC) classification for cutaneous lymphomas. We presented a detailed study of SPTL, describing clinicopathologic, immunophenotypic, and molecular features of 22 cases in China. Strict diagnostic criteria according to the WHO-EORTC definition were applied to the diagnosis of all SPTL cases. Besides the common features described before, unusual CD4+/CD8− and CD4−/CD8− T-cell phenotypes were noted in 2 of our cases, respectively. CD30 was negative in all cases and CD56 was focally positive in 2 cases. Mortality in cases with angioinvasion (75%) was significantly higher than that in cases without angioinvasion (14.3%). Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infection was detected in 1 immunocompetent patient by in situ hybridization. The frequency of rearranged TCRB, TCRG, and TCRD genes detected by BIOMED-2 multiplex polymerase chain reaction tubes was 80%, 67%, and 13%, respectively, with a total clonality detection rate of 100%. Clinical follow-up was available in 18 patients, ranging from 6 to 80 months. Most patients obtained complete or partial remission after therapy including one accompanied with EBV infection; 5 patients died: 3 of disease progression, 1 of severe infection, and 1 of complications caused by diabetes and hypertension. We conclude that SPTL as a cytotoxic lymphoma derived from α/β T cell has a predominant CD4−/CD8+ phenotype, but unusual CD4+/CD8− and CD4−/CD8− phenotypes do exist. Owing to its indolent clinical course and relatively high survival rate, SPTL should be differentiated from cutaneous γ/δ T-cell lymphoma. EBV is generally absent in SPTL but can rarely be detected especially in Asian population. Angioinvasion is a poor prognostic factor in SPTL.
Slowly Progressing Type 1 Diabetes: Persistence of Islet Cell Autoantibodies is Related to Glibenclamide Treatment

Background: Several experimental studies in rats have demonstrated that sulfonylurea treatment increases autoantigen expression in B-cells. This phenomenon may be deleterious for the preservation of residual beta cell function in patients with slowly progressing type 1 diabetes or latent autoimmune diabetes of adult (LADA). Aim/hypothesis: The aim of the present study was to evaluate whether the exclusion of glibenclamide in the treatment of ICA positive type 2 diabetic patients may diminish or halt the humoral autoimmune response against B-cells as well as improve metabolic control and insulin secretion. Subjects and methods: Fourteen type 2 diabetic patients with pancreatic autoimmunity (ICA+ and GABA+) and treated with insulin and glibenclamide (duration of disease 2.0 - 2.2, range 0.1-7 years and age 53 - 12.5, range 36-75 years) were studied. Patients were randomly assigned to two treatment groups, Group 1: insulin monotherapy (n = 8, age 53 - 6.4 years) (Exclusion of glibenclamide) and, Group 2: insulin plus glibenclamide (n = 6, age 53.5 - 16.9 ) (Unmodified treatment). Both groups were investigated at the beginning of the study and after one year for the following parameters: ICA and anti-GAD65 antibodies, fasting glucose and fasting C-peptide. Results: In group 1, six out of eight patients became ICA negative while all patients in group 2 remained ICA positive (p = 0.0097). Fasting glucose concentrations improved in group 1 (4.6 - 2.8) in relation to group 2 (11.5 - 5.5, p = 0.0023) after one year of treatment. No differences were found for anti-GAD antibodies and fasting C-Peptide between the groups. Conclusions: These data show that exclusion of glibenclamide in the treatment of ICA+ type 2 diabetic patients partially decreases specific autoimmunity against endocrine pancreatic cells and improves metabolic control. This may reflect decreased expression of B-cell autoantigens suggesting that insulin monotherapy is a better choice for the treatment of LADA.
Identification and Characterization of Stretch-Activated Ion Channels in Pollen Protoplasts 1

Pollen tube growth requires a Ca gradient, with elevated levels of cytosolic Ca at the growing tip. This gradient’s magnitude oscillates with growth oscillation but is always maintained. Ca influx into the growing tip is necessary, and its magnitude also oscillates with growth. It has been widely assumed that stretch-activated Ca channels underlie this influx, but such channels have never been reported in either pollen grains or pollen tubes. We have identified and characterized stretch-activated Ca channels from Lilium longiflorum pollen grain and tube tip protoplasts. The channels were localized to a small region of the grain protoplasts associated with the site of tube germination. In addition, we find a stretch-activated K channel as well as a spontaneous K channel distributed over the entire grain surface, but neither was present at the germination site or at the tip. Neither stretch-activated channel was detected in the grain protoplasts unless the grains were left in germination medium for at least 1 h before protoplast preparation. The stretch-activated channels were inhibited by a spider venom that is known to block stretch-activated channels in animal cells, but the spontaneous channel was unaffected by the venom. The venom also stopped pollen tube germination and elongation and blocked Ca entry into the growing tip, suggesting that channel function is necessary for growth.
Memory performance on the Auditory Inference Span Test is independent of background noise type for young adults with normal hearing at high speech intelligibility

Listening in noise is often perceived to be effortful. This is partly because cognitive resources are engaged in separating the target signal from background noise, leaving fewer resources for storage and processing of the content of the message in working memory. The Auditory Inference Span Test (AIST) is designed to assess listening effort by measuring the ability to maintain and process heard information. The aim of this study was to use AIST to investigate the effect of background noise types and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) on listening effort, as a function of working memory capacity (WMC) and updating ability (UA). The AIST was administered in three types of background noise: steady-state speech-shaped noise, amplitude modulated speech-shaped noise, and unintelligible speech. Three SNRs targeting 90% speech intelligibility or better were used in each of the three noise types, giving nine different conditions. The reading span test assessed WMC, while UA was assessed with the letter memory test. Twenty young adults with normal hearing participated in the study. Results showed that AIST performance was not influenced by noise type at the same intelligibility level, but became worse with worse SNR when background noise was speech-like. Performance on AIST also decreased with increasing memory load level. Correlations between AIST performance and the cognitive measurements suggested that WMC is of more importance for listening when SNRs are worse, while UA is of more importance for listening in easier SNRs. The results indicated that in young adults with normal hearing, the effort involved in listening in noise at high intelligibility levels is independent of the noise type. However, when noise is speech-like and intelligibility decreases, listening effort increases, probably due to extra demands on cognitive resources added by the informational masking created by the speech fragments and vocal sounds in the background noise.
Antipsychotic treatment, prolactin, and breast tumorigenesis.

BACKGROUND Over the last decades prolactin (PRL) has gained attention for its possible role in breast tumorigenesis. As all antipsychotics (although differences with respect to PRL elevation are large) have the propensity to induce hyperprolactinemia (HPRL), questions have arisen concerning the influence of PRL-elevating antipsychotic medications on breast cancer risk. SUBJECTS AND METHODS A literature search (until January 2016), using the MEDLINE database, was conducted for English-language published clinical studies to identify and synthesize data of the current state of knowledge concerning the relationship between HPRL, breast cancer risk (factors) and antipsychotic medication. RESULTS Results of human prospective studies evaluating the relationship between pre-diagnostic circulating PRL levels and breast cancer risk are limited, equivocal and only correlational. Associations between higher circulating PRL levels and other breast cancer risk factors than nulliparity and hormone therapies mostly have been negative for both pre-and postmenopausal women. Until today, no causal link between (chronic) administration of antipsychotics and breast tumorigenesis in humans has been demonstrated. Finally, several reports describe mechanisms of cancer protection with the PRL hormone as well as with antipsychotic medication. CONCLUSION The role of PRL in breast carcinogenesis therefore remains unclear, unconfirmed, yet controversial. Antipsychotics should not be withhold for breast cancer prevention reasons to patients in need of this sometimes life-saving medication, even if classical breast cancer risk factors are present.
[ARCHAEOLOGY AND COMPARATIVE LINGUISTICS IN CHINA AND THE PHILIPPINES] The vocabulary of cereal cultivation and the phylogeny of East Asian languages

This study investigates some important terms of cereal agriculture in the five languagefamilies of East Asia, in an attempt to gain some insights into processes of cereal domestication, demographic expansions and the formation of language families. The principal findings are: • There is some evidence that the proto-Austronesians cultivated wet rice, albeit without elaborate irrigation techniques; • Two words for rice are uniquely shared by Sino-Tibetan and Austronesian, with sound correspondences; • A word for ‘Setaria italica', a millet, is possibly shared by Chinese and Austronesian. • There is no evidence for agricultural words uniquely shared by Austroasiatic and Austronesian (Austric).
Examination of Cyberbullying Experiences among Turkish Students from Different School Types

The purpose of this study was to examine the nature of cyberbullying experiences among public and private school students in Turkey. One hundred eighty-three participants between the ages of 14 and 15 were recruited for the study. Participants were asked to respond to questionnaires measuring demographic information, usage frequency of Internet-mediated communication tools (IMCT), and cyberbullying experience (as a victim and as a bully). Participants who reported cyberbullying victimization were also asked how they felt and whether they sought help after such experiences. Results indicated that public school students were more likely than private school students to report being cyberbullies and cybervictims despite that private school students were more likely than public school students to report more frequent usage of IMCT. The findings of the logistic regression analyses indicated that usage frequency of IMCT was a significant predictor of cyberbullying/victimization for public school students but not for private school students. While victims from private school revealed that they did not mind the cyberbullying experience because they thought it was a joke, victims from public school reported that they felt angry when they experienced cyberbullying. Both public and private schools indicated that friends were their first choice for help.
Under Consideration for Publication in J. Functional Programming a Functional Toolkit for Morphological and Phonological Processing, Application to a Sanskrit Tagger

We present the Zen toolkit for morphological and phonological processing of natural languages. This toolkit is presented in literate programming style, in the Pidgin ML subset of the Objective Caml functional programming language. This toolkit is based on a systematic representation of finite state automata and transducers as decorated lexical trees. All operations on the state space data structures use the zipper technology, and a uniform sharing functor permits systematic maximum sharing as dags. A particular case of lexical maps is specially convenient for building invertible morphological operations such as inflected forms dictionaries, using a notion of differential word. As a particular application, we describe a general method for tagging a natural language text given as a phoneme stream by analysing possible euphonic liaisons between words belonging to a lexicon of inflected forms. The method uses the toolkit methodology by constructing a non-deterministic transducer, implementing rational rewrite rules, by mechanical decoration of a trie representation of the lexicon index. The algorithm is linear in the size of the lexicon. A coroutine interpreter is given, and its correctness and completeness are formally proved. An application to the segmentation of Sanskrit by sandhi analysis is demonstrated.
Timing of Developmentally Programmed Excision and Circularization of Paramecium Internal Eliminated Sequences

ABSTRACT Paramecium internal eliminated sequences (IESs) are short AT-rich DNA elements that are precisely eliminated from the germ line genome during development of the somatic macronucleus. They are flanked by one 5′-TA-3′ dinucleotide on each side, a single copy of which remains at the donor site after excision. The timing of their excision was examined in synchronized conjugating cells by quantitative PCR. Significant amplification of the germ line genome was observed prior to IES excision, which starts 12 to 14 h after initiation of conjugation and extends over a 2- to 4-h period. Following excision, two IESs were shown to form extrachromosomal circles that can be readily detected on Southern blots of genomic DNA from cells undergoing macronuclear development. On these circular molecules, covalently joined IES ends are separated by one copy of the flanking 5′-TA-3′ repeat. The similar structures of the junctions formed on the excised and donor molecules point to a central role for this dinucleotide in IES excision.
Ghrelin Improves Endothelial Function in Patients With Metabolic Syndrome

Background— Metabolic syndrome importantly accelerates the atherosclerotic process, the earliest event of which is endothelial dysfunction. Ghrelin, a gastric peptide with cardiovascular actions, has been shown to inhibit proatherogenic changes in experimental models. This study therefore investigated whether ghrelin administration might beneficially affect endothelial function in metabolic syndrome. Methods and Results— Endothelium-dependent and -independent vasodilator responses to intra-arterial infusion of increasing doses of acetylcholine and sodium nitroprusside (SNP), respectively, were assessed by strain-gauge plethysmography before and after local administration of human ghrelin (200 &mgr;g/min). During saline, the vasodilator response to acetylcholine was significantly blunted (P=0.008) in patients with metabolic syndrome (n=12, 5 female) compared with controls (n=12, 7 female), whereas the vasodilator response to SNP was not different between groups (P=0.68). In patients with metabolic syndrome, basal plasma ghrelin was significantly lower than in controls (P=0.02). In these patients, ghrelin infusion markedly increased intravascular concentrations of the peptide (P<0.001) and resulted in a potentiation of the vasodilator response to acetylcholine (P=0.001 versus saline) but not to SNP (P=0.22). This effect was likely related to enhanced nitric oxide bioavailability because, in a group of patients with metabolic syndrome (n=6, 2 female), ghrelin had no effect on the vasodilator response to acetylcholine (P=0.78 versus saline) after nitric oxide inhibition by NG-monomethyl-l-arginine. Conclusions— These findings indicate that ghrelin reverses endothelial dysfunction in patients with metabolic syndrome by increasing nitric oxide bioactivity, thereby suggesting that decreased circulating levels of the peptide, such as those found in these patients, might play a role in the pathobiology of atherosclerosis.
Rotational atherectomy followed by drug-eluting stent implantation in calcified coronary lesions.

AIMS Little information is available on the outcome after rotational atherectomy (RA) followed by drug-eluting stent (DES) implantation in calcified coronary lesions. The aim of this study was to evaluate the outcome of patients with severe lesion calcification undergoing RA followed by implantation of DES. METHODS AND RESULTS Ninety-five patients with 96 de novo severely calcified lesions were included. Twenty-nine patients (30.5%) had diabetes mellitus and seven patients (7.4%) had chronic renal failure. The total stent length per lesion was 48.4+/-24.9 mm. Procedural success rate was 95.8%. The incidence of cumulative major adverse cardiac events, defined as death, myocardial infarction (MI) and target vessel revascularisation (TVR), was 15.8% at the mean follow-up period of 14.7 months (range 6.0-57.7). Death occurred in four patients (4.2%). Non Q-wave MI occurred in 3 patients (3.2%) and Q-wave MI occurred in two patients (2.1%). The rate of target lesion revascularisation (TLR) was 9.5%. The rate of TVR was 11.6%. Two definite (2.1%) and 2 possible (2.1%) stent thromboses were observed. CONCLUSIONS RA followed by DES implantation in severely calcified coronary lesions appears to be feasible including high rate of procedural success and low-incidence of TLR considering this complex lesion subset.
Strong association of antiepithelial cell antibodies with HLA-DR3 or DR7 phenotype in patients with recurrent oral ulcers.

BACKGROUND Previous studies showed that antiepithelial cell antibodies (anti-ECA) were present in 71% (15/21) of patients with recurrent oral ulcers (ROU) and that there was a strong association of human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-DRw9 with ROU in Chinese patients. In this study, we assessed anti-ECA in a larger group of Chinese patients with ROU (n = 88) in order to further investigate the association of anti-ECA with HLA-DR and -DQ antigens. METHODS The anti-ECA in the sera of ROU patients were detected by an indirect immunofluorescence technique with rat esophagus as the substrate, and the HLA-DR and -DQ antigens in ROU patients were typed by a standard microcytotoxicity assay using Terasaki's oriental tray. RESULTS The rate of anti-ECA positivity was significantly higher (p < 0.0001) in ROU patients (68%) than in healthy control subjects (0%). Furthermore, the rate of anti-ECA positivity in patients with major or minor oral ulcers (72%) was significantly higher (29%) than that in patients with herpetiform ulcers (p < 0.05). There was a significant increase in the frequency of DR3 or DR7 antigen expression (p < 0.0001, pc [p corrected] < 0.001, relative risk [RR] = 4.3, etiologic fraction = 0.41) in anti-ECA-positive ROU patients compared with the corresponding frequencies in healthy control subjects. There was also a significant increase in the frequency of DR7 or DRw9 antigen expression (p < 0.005, pc < 0.05, RR = 4.7, etiologic fraction = 0.45) compared to healthy controls. CONCLUSIONS Because only DR3 or DR7 antigen occurred more frequently in anti-ECA-positive than in anti-ECA-negative ROU patients (p < 0.0007, pc < 0.05, RR = 19.6, etiologic fraction = 0.51), we concluded that the gene coding for DR3 or DR7 antigen may contribute to the presence of anti-ECA in Chinese patients with ROU.
Trading height for education in the marriage market

Several empirical studies point out the relevance of individuals' physical attributes—such as height, weight, beauty—in the labor market. In the same way, physical characteristics may affect lifetime prospects through their impact on the selection of a partner in the marriage market. We analyzed to what extent an individual's height and weight (arguably affecting physical attractiveness, as documented in many studies) are related to lifetime economic outcomes through the marriage market, investigating whether individual height and weight affect the probability of marrying with a “high‐quality partner,” measuring quality as the partner's educational attainment or as the partner's prospective labor income.