Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Major Brain Endocannabinoid 2-AG Controls Neuropathic Pain and Mechanical Hyperalgesia in Patients with Neuromyelitis Optica

Recurrent myelitis is one of the predominant characteristics in patients with neuromyelitis optica (NMO). While paresis, visual loss, sensory deficits, and bladder dysfunction are well known symptoms in NMO patients, pain has been recognized only recently as another key symptom of the disease. Although spinal cord inflammation is a defining aspect of neuromyelitis, there is an almost complete lack of data on altered somatosensory function, including pain. Therefore, eleven consecutive patients with NMO were investigated regarding the presence and clinical characteristics of pain. All patients were examined clinically as well as by Quantitative Sensory Testing (QST) following the protocol of the German Research Network on Neuropathic Pain (DFNS). Additionally, plasma endocannabinoid levels and signs of chronic stress and depression were determined. Almost all patients (10/11) suffered from NMO-associated neuropathic pain for the last three months, and 8 out of 11 patients indicated relevant pain at the time of examination. Symptoms of neuropathic pain were reported in the vast majority of patients with NMO. Psychological testing revealed signs of marked depression. Compared to age and gender-matched healthy controls, QST revealed pronounced mechanical and thermal sensory loss, strongly correlated to ongoing pain suggesting the presence of deafferentation-induced neuropathic pain. Thermal hyperalgesia correlated to MRI-verified signs of spinal cord lesion. Heat hyperalgesia was highly correlated to the time since last relapse of NMO. Patients with NMO exhibited significant mechanical and thermal dysesthesia, namely dynamic mechanical allodynia and paradoxical heat sensation. Moreover, they presented frequently with either abnormal mechanical hypoalgesia or hyperalgesia, which depended significantly on plasma levels of the endogenous cannabinoid 2-arachidonoylglycerole (2-AG). These data emphasize the high prevalence of neuropathic pain and hyperalgesia in patients with NMO. The degree of mechanical hyperalgesia reflecting central sensitization of nociceptive pathways seems to be controlled by the major brain endocannabinoid 2-AG.
The Relationship Among Perceived Coaching Behaviors, Perceptions of Ability, and Motivation In Competitive Age-Group Swimmers

Based on Barter's competence motivation theory, this study examined the relationships between perceived coaching behaviors and (a) perceptions of ability and (b) motivation in competitive age-group swimmers. Male and female athletes (N=312) assessed their coaches' behaviors and their own ability and motivation using self-report measures. Multivariate analyses indicated that significant relationships were found for males, females, 12–14-year-olds, and 15-18-year-olds. Variables contributing most importantly to the relationships differed depending upon gender and age group. In general, coaches who were perceived as giving more frequent information following desirable performances, and more frequent encouragement combined with information following undesirable performances, were associated with athletes who perceived higher levels of success, competence, enjoyment, and preference for optimally challenging activities. These results indicate that young athletes' self-perceptions and motivation are significantl.
Phenotypes of the N88S Berardinelli–Seip congenital lipodystrophy 2 mutation

Recently, two missense mutations (N88S, S90L) in the Berardinelli–Seip congenital lipodystrophy gene have been identified in autosomal dominant distal hereditary motor neuropathy and Silver syndrome. We report the phenotypic consequences of the N88S mutation in 90 patients of 1 large Austrian family and two unrelated German families. Variation in the clinical and electrophysiological phenotype enabled us to distinguish six subtypes. In 4.4%, the disorder was not penetrant. Twenty percent of the patients were subclinically affected; some of these patients could only be detected by pathological nerve conduction studies. A distal hereditary motor neuropathy type V phenotype characterized by predominant hand muscle involvement was found in 31.1%, whereas 14.5% showed typical Silver syndrome with amyotrophy of the small hand muscles and spasticity of the lower extremities. Moreover, the phenotype present in 20% was compatible with Charcot–Marie–Tooth disease. In 10%, the clinical diagnosis of pure or complicated hereditary spastic paraparesis was made. Electrophysiological studies showed an axonal neuropathy but also chronodispersion of compound motor action potentials and conduction blocks. Sensory nerve conduction studies were rarely pathological. Our study indicates that the dominant N88S mutation in the Berardinelli–Seip congenital lipodystrophy gene 2 leads to a broad spectrum of motor neuron disorders. Ann Neurol 2005;57:415–424
Mothers' abusive childhood predicts child abuse

To examine the intergenerational transmission of abuse, the study compared 25 mothers whose child had been under the supervision of the child protection services (CPS) with 25 mothers who had had no contact with the CPS. The groups were compared with respect to their own self-reported childhood abuse, their abuse of their own child and punitiveness. The data were gathered using interviews and files. There were no significant differences between the groups in self-reported childhood physical abuse, but the CPS mothers had experienced more childhood psychological abuse, especially rejection, accusations, terrorizing and corrupting. The groups did not differ in the self-reported physical or psychological abuse inflicted upon one's own child. In the total sample of 50 mothers, hierarchical regression analyses showed, however, that the mothers' childhood abuse experiences predicted their abuse of their own child. Punitiveness was best predicted by maternal childhood psychological abuse. The results thus provide evidence for the cycle of abuse model. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
A query on research methodology and ethics: defending Citizens Advice, its work and goals

This is a response to an article by Holgate et al., in which the authors argue that minority ethnic workers lack support and legal advice on employment problems; in particular they found the Citizens Advice Bureau network to be ‘not very successful’ and ‘ineffectual’. This response raises concerns about research methodology, including the integrity with which existing literature was cited and the rigour with which new data were generated and interpreted. This author uses her insight into Citizens Advice work to contextualize – and contest – some of the interpretations made by Holgate and colleagues. From a research ethics perspective, this case highlights the disparity of power between the researchers and the researched – and reiterates the impact of previous research on future research endeavours. While Open Access is good for those outside academia, those within must become more astute about the myriad contexts within which their published work might be mis/interpreted.
Central Cardiovascular Circuits Contribute to the Neurovascular Dysfunction in Angiotensin II Hypertension

Hypertension, a powerful risk factor for stroke and dementia, has damaging effects on the brain and its vessels. In particular, hypertension alters vital cerebrovascular control mechanisms linking neural activity to cerebral perfusion. In experimental models of slow-developing hypertension, free radical signaling in the subfornical organ (SFO), one of the forebrain circumventricular organs, is critical for the hormonal release and sympathetic activation driving the elevation in arterial pressure. However, the contribution of this central mechanism to the cerebrovascular alterations induced by hypertension remains uncertain. We tested the hypothesis that free radical production in the SFO is involved in the alterations in cerebrovascular regulation produced by hypertension. In a mouse model of gradual hypertension induced by chronic administration of subpressor doses of angiotensin II (AngII), suppression of free radicals in the SFO by overexpression of CuZn-superoxide dismutase (CuZnSOD) prevented the alteration in neurovascular coupling and endothelium-dependent responses in somatosensory cortex induced by hypertension. The SFO mediates the dysfunction via two signaling pathways. One involves SFO-dependent activation of the paraventricular hypothalamic nucleus, elevations in plasma vasopressin, upregulation of endothelin-1 in cerebral resistance arterioles and activation of endothelin type A receptors. The other pathway depends on activation of cerebrovascular AngII type 1 (AT1) receptors by AngII. Both pathways mediate vasomotor dysfunction by inducing vascular oxidative stress. The findings implicate for the first time the SFO and its efferent hypothalamic pathways in the cerebrovascular alterations induced by AngII, and identify vasopressin and endothelin-1 as potential therapeutic targets to counteract the devastating effects of hypertension on the brain.
Measurement Issues Concerning the Use of Inventories of Job Satisfaction

In spite of the fact that the JDI is one of the most widely used measures in the organizational sciences, there has been relatively little validation work done since Smith, Kendall, and Hulin's (1969) development of the JDI. This paper is an examination of the psychometric characteristics of the JDI and other inventories of job satisfaction across a sample of validation studies. Like most other measures in the behavioral sciences, the construct validity of these inventories is modest. Although this problem may minimize the applicability of certain statistical techniques with job satisfaction data, the problem can be corrected through the proper application of structural equation models. Although this problem may be corrected statistically, the need for collateral work on the further conceptual development of the job satisfaction construct is suggested.
Retrospective Measurement of Childhood Sexual Abuse: A Review of Instruments

In this comprehensive review of retrospective childhood sexual abuse (CSA) instruments, instruments from studies published between 1986 and 2001 are examined according to administration method, number and specificity of questions, CSA operational definitions, psychometric properties, and the use of scales. It was found that both self-administered and interview instruments range from the vagueness of a single question to the preciseness of multiple, specific questions. Furthermore, the review demonstrated that CSA instruments generally lack standardization. Many are developed for one-time use and others modified when reused. Descriptive CSA instruments have been preferred by researchers and primarily used to measure CSA dichotomously. However, little consensus exists as to how to operationally define CSA. One positive trend is the development of scales that measure CSA as an interval-level variable, allowing for more extensive psychometric data to be collected.
Some Factors Affecting the Occupational Expectations of Female Adolescents

Abstract Current theories of occupational choice are criticized for being more predictive for men than for women. In particular, they cannot explain why some young women expect to enter more traditional occupations for their own sex than they desire. This study of female adolescents investigated several factors proposed in the literature to be related to women′s occupational choice: maternal employment, gender self-concept, life roles orientation (career and family values), perception of gender discrimination in the workplace, and influence of significant others. Based on preliminary findings, cost of education necessary for desired and expected occupations was also included. Only influence of significant others and cost of education for expected occupation were found to discriminate between students who expected to enter their desired occupations and those who expected to enter more traditional occupations than desired. The implications of these findings for understanding occupational choice in young women are discussed.
The Best of Both Worlds? Effects of Attribute-Induced Goal Conflict on Consumption of Healthful Indulgences

Marketers commonly assume that health claims attached to otherwise unhealthful food stimulate consumption because such claims offer justification for indulgence and reduce guilt. This article proposes a generalized theory of healthful indulgences, identifying when and why people overconsume versus regulate food intake in response to health claims. Four studies demonstrate that not all health claims are created equal. The authors suggest that the nature of the food attributes the claims emphasize—namely, functional versus hedonic—determines the extent of consumption of the indulgence. Health claims featuring functional attributes (e.g., “extra antioxidants”) trigger high levels of health-goal accessibility, which, together with simultaneously accessible indulgence goals attached to the indulgence, results in goal conflict. This conflict leads to reduced consumption of the food. In contrast, health claims featuring hedonic attributes (e.g., “low fat”) render health goals less accessible while accentuating the pleasure dimension of the food, resulting in lower goal conflict and increased consumption of the food. Implications for the food industry and public policy makers are discussed.
Defensive Behavior in Organizations: A Preliminary Model

The literature on organizational politics has focused on the proactive promotion of self-interests but has neglected the reactive defense of self-interests. Defensive behaviors are argued to: (1) avoid action, via over-conforming, passing the buck, playing dumb, depersonalizing, smoothing and stretching, and stalling, (2) avoid blame via buffing, playing safe, justifying, scapegoating, misrepresenting, and escalating commitment, and (3) avoid change via resisting change and protecting turf. Organizational antecedents of defensiveness include bureaucratic rationality and various stressors, and individual antecedents include insecurity and anxiety, emotional exhaustion, work alienation, self-monitoring, and low self-efficacy. The effects of defensiveness on the individual, recipients, and organization are discussed, and directions for future research are presented.
How Do Places Matter? The Geography of Opportunity, Self-efficacy and a Look Inside the Black Box of Residential Mobility

The culture of poverty model implies that low-income individuals who acquired a low sense of efficacy will retain it, while the geography of opportunity model implies that that they will change if their opportunities improve. The Gautreaux Program moves low-income black families to the city or suburbs in a quasi-random procedure. Participants who moved to higher SES neighbourhoods had higher efficacy and felt safer, which mediated the neighbourhood effects on efficacy. This paper examines which experiences participants identify as having an influence on their sense of efficacy, and the ways those experiences have these effects.
Interpreting the Civil Rights Movement: Place, Memory, and Conflict

Produced over the past decade, monuments and museums dedicated to the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s have desegregated America's memorial landscape. Tracing a broad arc across the US South, the material elements of this landscape — historic markers, monuments, parks, registered buildings, and museums — present a distinct challenge to representations of an elite, white American past. This challenge, however, is offered in a distinctly gendered manner, inasmuch as the role of women in organizing and leading the movement is obscured. Further, the historical narratives concretized at these sites are mediated by conventions associated with civil rights historiography and the tourism development industry. The result is a complex, sometimes ironic landscape. Via the narratives they embed and the crowds they attract, these landscapes are co-constitutive with contemporary politics of representing the past in the United States. This paper offers an overview of current memorial practices and representations of the Civil Rights movement found at the country's major memorial landscapes.
Drowning in Words? Using Nudist to Assist in the Analysis of Long Interview Transcripts from Young Injecting Drug Users

This paper describes the analysis, using the software package NUDIST 2.3, of interview data from a qualitative study of young drug injectors and their risk of HIV/AIDS. The aims and processes of the study are briefly described, and the method of analysis detailed. NUDIST 2.3 is a sophisticated computer software system for managing, organising and supporting qualitative data analysis. The data for this study consisted of word for word transcripts of 105 90-minute interviews: the management and organisation of this quantity of data was a formidable task in itself, and this will be described, as will the development of initial coding frames (with cautionary tales) and the process by which increasing levels of analytic abstraction were generated. Reliability and validity has been held by some researchers to be irrelevant to qualitative research, but this is not the position adopted by this study. The paper ends with a discussion on reliability and validity and how such issues were addressed in the analysis.
Pure cortical ependymoma: A rare entity

Ependymomas are mostly infratentorial, intraventricular tumor, accounting for 2-9% of all central nervous system tumors. Supratentorial pure cortical ependymoma are extremely rare tumor with definite ependymal morphology and uncertain histogenesis. They are mostly low grade tumor and are cured with resection, rendering them favorable prognosis. Our case is of 14-year-old female presenting with headache and convulsion of short duration. She underwent gross total excision of the tumor without radiation therapy and her follow-up is uneventful.
Working with Gypsy and Traveller offenders

Gypsy and Traveller communities have a marginalized status in the UK, facing specific problems such as low levels of literacy, poor health outcomes and high levels of homelessness. There has been very little research into Traveller offenders’ experiences of probation, or, for that matter, of their experiences in the criminal justice system generally. In light of this, Thames Valley probation commissioned the ‘Working with Gypsies and Travellers’ study to explore the needs of Gypsy and Traveller offenders subject to probation supervision. This article highlights some of the core findings from this research, drawing on the suggestions and insights of officers and of Travellers themselves to make constructive recommendations for best-practice. Addressing the needs of Gypsy and Traveller offenders does not require large scale expenditure by the probation service. However, improved socio-cultural awareness combined with a number of modest adaptations in provision could lead to improved outcomes for this group.
The Natural History of Complex Regional Pain Syndrome

ObjectiveComplex regional pain syndrome (CRPS) is a severe chronic pain condition characterized by sensory, autonomic, motor, and dystrophic signs and symptoms. This study was undertaken to expand our current knowledge of the evolution of CRPS signs and symptoms with duration of disease. MethodThis was a retrospective, cross-sectional analysis using data extracted from a patient questionnaire to evaluate the clinical characteristics of CRPS at different time points of disease progression. Data from the questionnaire included pain characteristics and associated symptoms. It also included autonomic, motor, and dystrophic symptoms and also initiating events, ameliorating and aggravating factors, quality of life, work status, comorbid conditions, pattern of pain spread, family history, and demographics. Comparisons were made of different parameters as they varied with disease duration. ResultsA total of 656 patients with CRPS of at least 1-year duration were evaluated. The average age of all participants was 37.5 years, with disease duration varying from 1 to 46 years. The majority of participants were white (96%). A total of 80.3% were females. None of the patients in this study demonstrated spontaneous remission of their symptoms. The pain in these patients was refractory showing only modest improvement with most current therapies. DiscussionThis study shows that although CRPS is a progressive disease, after 1 year, the majority of the signs and symptoms were well developed and although many variables worsen over the course of the illness, the majority demonstrated only moderate increases with disease duration.
The Developmental Functions of Emotions: An Analysis in Terms of Differential Emotions Theory

A substantial body of theoretical literature testifies to the evolutionary functions of emotions. Relatively little has been written about their developmental functions. This article discusses the developmental functions of emotions from the perspective of differential emotions theory (DET; Izard, 1977, 1991). According to DET, although all the emotions retain their adaptive and motivational functions across the lifespan, different sets of emotions may become relatively more prominent in the different stages of life as they serve stage-related developmental processes. In the first section, we present a brief overview of relevant aspects of the theory. In the second section, we discuss how emotions play a central role in helping the individual achieve developmental milestones and tasks during four major periods of life: Infancy, toddler through preschool years, middle to late childhood, and adolescence. The underlying thesis of this article is that emotions play a central role in stimulating social cogniti.
Trust, Social Capital, Civil Society, and Democracy

The importance of trust has long been emphasised by social and political theorists from Locke and Tocqueville to Putnam and civil society theorists. However, individual survey data casts substantial doubt on this powerful tradition of thought. There is little evidence of (1) an overlap between social and political trust, (2) a syndrome of trust and membership of voluntary organizations, and (3) the existence of trusting/distrusting dispositions among individuals. However, at the aggregate national level there is evidence to support the theory, and the author concludes that the classic theory is correct but needs modification and qualification.
Creating good citizens in China: comparing Grade 7–9 school textbooks, 1997–2005

Ideological indoctrination is explicit and pervasive in China, with the school curriculum used to mould the spirit and character of adolescents, fulfilling ideological and political purposes. But the exact content varies over time. Comparing two versions of textbooks published in 1997 and 2005, this paper depicts the continuities and change in the curricular discourses centred on the notion of ‘good citizen’. While keeping the official status of socialism and the Party leadership untouched, the new textbooks soften the presentation and packaging of the ideological content, very much in tandem with the soft authoritarianism practised since the post‐Deng era when China has been deeply involved in the processes of marketisation, liberalisation and globalisation. The new textbooks also adopt a stance of greater reconciliation with human rights and global citizenship. While being granted more autonomy and rights, young citizens are still expected to shoulder the mission of national revival and socialist modern.
Enhancing Core Mathematics Instruction for Students at Risk for Mathematics Disabilities

CRA) approach (Hudson & Miller, 2006). As part of the CRA approach, a teacher might begin instruction with concrete examples (e.g., counting blocks) and then interweave pictorial representations (e.g., tally marks) and abstract symbols (e.g., numbers) as students grasp conceptual