Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impact of television advertisement on unhealthy weight control behaviors and eating disorders: mediating role of body image

This research is conducted to analysis the impact of Television Advertisement on Unhealthy Weight Control Behaviors and Eating Disorder with the mediating role of Body Image. The research is conducted to analyze the mediating impact of body image satisfaction on the relation of other variables. This research is conducted from the urban population of Rawalpindi and Islamabad. A Total of 280 questionnaires were floated in the population, out of which 267 were received back. The data was analyzed by employing correlation dn regression analysis. The results showed that body image partially mediates the relationship between Television Advertisement and Unhealthy Weight Control Behaviors and fully mediate the relationship between Television Advertisement and Eating Disorder. This research will help marketers to analyze the dynamics of advertisement and also in understanding the negative outcomes of their certain practices. Nasir, et al. (2017). Television Advertisements & Body Image 43
High EGFR and low p-Akt expression is associated with better outcome after nimotuzumab-containing treatment in esophageal cancer patients: preliminary clinical result and testable hypothesis

The epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) is widely overexpressed in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) and it results is associated with a poor prognosis. Identifying the subgroup of ESCC patients who are sensitive to EGFR-targeted therapy is a key point to facilitate its medical use. We retrospectively analyzed 32 ESCC patients treated with the combination of nimotuzumab (h-R3) and radiotherapy (RT) or chemoradiotherapy (CRT). Expression of EGFR and phosphorylated proteins associated with EGFR signaling pathway, i.e. p-Akt and p-Erk, were assessed with immunohistochemistry (IHC) for all patients. Correlations between these proteins' expression levels and overall survival (OS) were assessed. High expression of EGFR, p-Akt and p-Erk was detected in 53.1% (17/32), 54.8% (17/31) and 59.4% (19/32) of tumors respectively. No significant differences in OS were found between high EGFR, p-Akt and p-Erk expression groups and their respective counterparts. Of note, significantly better overall survival was observed in patients with coexistence of high EGFR expression and low p-Akt expression (p = 0.030). Our data allowed us to put forward a hypothesis that high EGFR and low p-Akt expression may predict a clinical benefit of EGFR antagonists such as nimotuzumab combined with RT or CRT. This can be discussed in the terms of oncogene addiction and synthetic lethality concepts. This hypothesis can be further tested in larger groups of patients.
Effects of excitotoxin exposure on metabolic rate of primary hippocampal cultures: application of silicon microphysiometry to neurobiology

Increasing evidence implicates glutamate receptor over-stimulation in the neurotoxicity associated with a host of metabolic insults, including seizures and hypoxia-ischemia. To begin to understand more completely the role of energy metabolism in the mechanism of neuron death following excitatory amino acid exposure, we investigated the effects of kainic acid exposure on metabolic rate in cultured hippocampal cells using a recently developed silicon microphysiometer. The device gives a continual real-time measure of metabolism in relatively small numbers of cells, as assessed by efflux of protons generated at least in part by ATP hydrolysis and lactic acid production. In the first half of this report, we characterize the feasibility of using this device for measuring cellular metabolism in hippocampal cultures. Metabolic rate in both astrocytes and neurons was readily detectable, with a high signal-to-noise ratio. The rate was proportional to the number of cells and was sensitive to metabolic enhancement or depression. We then utilized this device to study metabolic responses to the excitotoxin kainic acid. We observed a receptor-mediated, dose-dependent increase in metabolic rate upon stimulation by kainic acid, with an EC50 of approximately 100 microM. Exposure to toxic levels of kainic acid for 10 min produced an initial elevation (for 2 hr) in metabolic rate and then a gradual decline in metabolism over the next 8 hr that preceded a measurable loss of cell viability. This study further delineates a time window for the onset of kainic acid-induced damage. The results clearly show the feasibility of using silicon microphysiometry for assessing metabolism of brain cultures and for exploring the relationship between metabolism and synaptic activation.
Parental mediation of US youths’ exposure to televised relational aggression

Abstract Exposure to televised relational aggression can negatively influence youths’ well-being. Research shows that parent–child interactions about media – parental mediation – can alter children’s responses to media exposure. Therefore, this study explored the relation between US parents’ perceptions of relational aggression in the media, parental mediation, and the responses of their pre-adolescent and adolescent children to relational aggression exposure. Results revealed that parents’ attitudes toward and perceptions of the amount of relational aggression on television were associated with parental mediation efforts. Parental mediation was positively associated with relational aggression among girls. Findings suggest that parental mediation may be related to an increase in relational aggression among pre-teen and teenage girls.
Early attachment predicts emotion recognition at 6 and 11 years old

This paper reports on findings from a sample of 63 children at 6 years old, and 49 children at 11 years old, all from the same cohort who had been observed with mother in the Strange Situation at 1-year-old. At 6 and 11 years, the children responded to the task of providing verbal labels for line-drawn (caricatures of) emotion faces. The faces comprised the six basic emotions identified as such by Darwin (sadness, happiness, anger, fear, surprise, and disgust) as well as a neutral face and two more complex (blended) emotions (mischievousness and disappointment). Infant–mother attachment was linked significantly with children's emotion judgments 5 years and, to a lesser extent, 10 years after the Strange Situation assessment. Results are discussed in terms of the long-term but attenuating influence of early learning experiences in the relationship with mother, and implications for how we think about the functioning of internal working models of attachment.
Juvenile Administration of Concomitant Methylphenidate and Fluoxetine Alters Behavioral Reactivity to Reward- and Mood-Related Stimuli and Disrupts Ventral Tegmental Area Gene Expression in Adulthood

There is a rise in the concurrent use of methylphenidate (MPH) and fluoxetine (FLX) in pediatric populations. However, the long-term neurobiological consequences of combined MPH and FLX treatment (MPH + FLX) during juvenile periods are unknown. We administered saline (VEH), MPH, FLX, or MPH + FLX to juvenile Sprague Dawley male rats from postnatal day 20 to 34, and assessed their reactivity to reward- and mood-related stimuli 24 h or 2 months after drug exposure. We also assessed mRNA and protein levels within the ventral tegmental area (VTA) to determine the effect of MPH, FLX, or MPH + FLX on the extracellular signal-regulated protein kinase-1/2 (ERK) pathway—a signaling cascade implicated in motivation and mood regulation. MPH + FLX enhanced sensitivity to drug (i.e., cocaine) and sucrose rewards, as well as anxiety (i.e., elevated plus maze)- and stress (i.e., forced swimming)-eliciting situations when compared with VEH-treated rats. MPH + FLX exposure also increased mRNA of ERK2 and its downstream targets cAMP response element-binding protein (CREB), BDNF, c-Fos, early growth response protein-1 (Zif268), and mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), and also increased protein phosphorylation of ERK2, CREB, and mTOR 2 months after drug exposure when compared with VEH-treated rats. Using herpes simplex virus-mediated gene transfer to block ERK2 activity within the VTA, we rescued the MPH and FLX-induced behavioral deficits seen in the forced-swimming task 2 months after drug treatment. These results indicate that concurrent MPH + FLX exposure during preadolescence increases sensitivity to reward-related stimuli while simultaneously enhancing susceptibility to stressful situations, at least in part, due to long-lasting disruptions in ERK signaling within the VTA.
The analysis of programming competency in test driven development

Agile development consist of method such as eXtreme Programming and Scrum. Agile was formalized in 2001 by a group of software development practitioners. Agile is not a tool or a single methodology but it is a philosophy. Test driven development or test first approach is one of the approaches in Agile. Test first is a development process with the implementation of test cases before production code. The objective of this research are twofold; one is to study the implementation of test first over test last in Malaysian education domain, two is to investigate the effects of the differences in programming competency on product quality in test driven development. Experiment results indicated that high and moderate programming competency with test first approach produced low code complexity and coupling between object (CBO) for test first was better for all programming competency. However, test last for low and mixed competency produced more lines of code (LOC). In addition, the lack of cohesion in methods (LCOM) results for all programming competency were varied.
Navigating Norms: Charting Gender-Based Violence Prevention and Sexual Health Rights Through Global-Local Sport for Development and Peace Relations in Nicaragua

International non-governmental organizations (INGOs) funding sport for development and peace (SDP) programs are drawn to the promise of such initiatives for young women in global South countries such as Nicaragua to promote their sexual and reproductive health rights (SRHR) and prevent gender-based violence (GBV). While “international” feminist norms in support of “girl power” tend to be advocated by INGOs, gender norms in Nicaragua emphasize "machismo’ that tend to uphold male domination. Based on a case study of international-regional-local NGO relations as they “play out” in Nicaragua, this paper connects international relations studies that explore the conditions through which norm change “happens” with postcolonial feminist participatory action research (PFPAR). To conclude, we discuss how to better understand the tensions of "norms in conflict’ in SDP, with a particular focus on the pressures for local NGOs to accommodate—and connect—their contextual circumstances to the demands of transnational partners and the rising focus of Western donor organizations on “measurable” outcomes.
A new collision resolution mechanism to enhance the performance of IEEE 802.11 DCF

The medium-access control (MAC) protocol is one of the key components in wireless local area networks (WLANs). The main features of a MAC protocol are high throughput, good fairness, energy efficiency, and support priority guarantees, especially under distributed contention-based environment. Based on the current standardized IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function (DCF) protocol, this paper proposes a new efficient collision resolution mechanism, called GDCF. Our main motivation is based on the observation that 802.11 DCF decreases the contention window to the initial value after each success transmission, which essentially assumes that each successful transmission is an indication that the system is under low traffic loading. GDCF takes a more conservative measure by halving the contention window size after c consecutive successful transmissions. This "gentle" decrease can reduce the collision probability, especially when the number of competing nodes is large. We compute the optimal value for c and the numerical results from both analysis and simulation demonstrate that GDCF significantly improve the performance of 802.11 DCF, including throughput, fairness, and energy efficiency. In addition, GDCF is flexible for supporting priority access by selecting different values of c for different traffic types and is very easy to implement it, as it does not requires any changes in control message structure and access procedures in DCF.
Fable II: Design of a modular robot for creative learning

Robotic systems have a high potential for creative learning if they are flexible, accessible and engaging for the user in the experimental process of building and programming robots. In this paper we describe the Fable modular robotic system for creative learning which we develop to enable and motivate anyone to build and program their own robots. The Fable system consists of self-contained modules equipped with sensors and actuators, which users can use to easily assemble a wide range of robots in a matter of seconds. The robots are user-programmable on several levels of abstraction ranging from a simple visual programming language to powerful conventional ones. This paper provides an overview of the design of Fable for different user groups and an evaluation of critical issues when we attempt to integrate the system into an everyday teaching context.
Advanced Glycation End Products Subspecies-Selectively Induce Adhesion Molecule Expression and Cytokine Production in Human Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells

Advanced glycation end products (AGEs) are proteins or lipids that become glycated after exposure to diverse reducing sugars. Accumulation of AGEs induces diabetes complications. Microinflammation is a common major mechanism in the pathogenesis of diabetic vascular complications. Activation of monocytes/macrophages and T cells plays roles in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis. The activation of T cells requires the enhanced expression of adhesion molecules on monocytes. AGEs activate monocytes by engaging the receptor for AGE (RAGE); however, little is known about the profile of agonist activity of diverse AGE moieties on monocytes. We investigated the effect of four distinct AGE subtypes (AGE-modified bovine serum albumin; AGE-2, AGE-3, AGE-4, and AGE-5) at concentrations ranging from 0.1 to 100 μg/ml on the expression of intercellular adhesion molecule-1, B7.1, B7.2, and CD40 on monocytes and its impact on the production of interferon-γ and tumor necrosis factor-α in human peripheral blood mononuclear cells. Among the AGEs examined, AGE-2 and AGE-3 selectively induced adhesion molecule expression and cytokine production. Antagonism experiments using antibodies against adhesion molecules demonstrated that cell-to-cell interaction between monocytes and T/natural killer cells was involved in AGE-2- and AGE-3-induced cytokine production. AGE-2 and AGE-3 up-regulated the expression of RAGE on monocytes. The effects of AGE-2 and AGE-3 were inhibited by nuclear factor-κB and p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase inhibitors. These results indicated that AGE-2 and AGE-3 activated monocytes via RAGE, leading to the up-regulation of adhesion molecule expression and cytokine production.
Ambiguity, Information Quality and Credit Risk

This paper studies the implications of ambiguity for the credit spreads. We consider two ways of incorporating ambiguity into the Due and Lando [2001] model of credit spreads under incomplete information. We begin by examining the credit spreads in a setting where news about the asset value are of an uncertain quality. In this setting, ambiguity-averse investors act as if they take the worst-case assessment of quality. Thus, they react more strongly to bad news than to good news. As a result, changes in the information environment can lead to a widening of credit spreads and implied default intensities, even if rm fundamentals do not change. If the underlying asset value dynamics are also ambiguous, then the ambiguity-averse investors in the secondary debt market act as if the drift rate of the underlying asset value is lower than it actually is. We calibrate the two competing models to match the observed increase in credit spreads after August 9, 2007. Comparing the implications of the two models for return volatilities, we nd that ambiguity about the underlying asset value dynamics is better able to match the patterns observed in the data.
The Transcriptome of Nacobbus aberrans Reveals Insights into the Evolution of Sedentary Endoparasitism in Plant-Parasitic Nematodes

Within the phylum Nematoda, plant-parasitism is hypothesized to have arisen independently on at least four occasions. The most economically damaging plant-parasitic nematode species, and consequently the most widely studied, are those that feed as they migrate destructively through host roots causing necrotic lesions (migratory endoparasites) and those that modify host root tissue to create a nutrient sink from which they feed (sedentary endoparasites). The false root-knot nematode Nacobbus aberrans is the only known species to have both migratory endoparasitic and sedentary endoparasitic stages within its life cycle. Moreover, its sedentary stage appears to have characteristics of both the root-knot and the cyst nematodes. We present the first large-scale genetic resource of any false-root knot nematode species. We use RNAseq to describe relative abundance changes in all expressed genes across the life cycle to provide interesting insights into the biology of this nematode as it transitions between modes of parasitism. A multigene phylogenetic analysis of N. aberrans with respect to plant-parasitic nematodes of all groups confirms its proximity to both cyst and root-knot nematodes. We present a transcriptome-wide analysis of both lateral gene transfer events and the effector complement. Comparing parasitism genes of typical root-knot and cyst nematodes to those of N. aberrans has revealed interesting similarities. Importantly, genes that were believed to be either cyst nematode, or root-knot nematode, “specific” have both been identified in N. aberrans. Our results provide insights into the characteristics of a common ancestor and the evolution of sedentary endoparasitism of plants by nematodes.
Regulation of Notch1 and Dll4 by Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor in Arterial Endothelial Cells: Implications for Modulating Arteriogenesis and Angiogenesis

ABSTRACT Notch and its ligands play critical roles in cell fate determination. Expression of Notch and ligand in vascular endothelium and defects in vascular phenotypes of targeted mutants in the Notch pathway have suggested a critical role for Notch signaling in vasculogenesis and angiogenesis. However, the angiogenic signaling that controls Notch and ligand gene expression is unknown. We show here that vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) but not basic fibroblast growth factor can induce gene expression of Notch1 and its ligand, Delta-like 4 (Dll4), in human arterial endothelial cells. The VEGF-induced specific signaling is mediated through VEGF receptors 1 and 2 and is transmitted via the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase/Akt pathway but is independent of mitogen-activated protein kinase and Src tyrosine kinase. Constitutive activation of Notch signaling stabilizes network formation of endothelial cells on Matrigel and enhances formation of vessel-like structures in a three-dimensional angiogenesis model, whereas blocking Notch signaling can partially inhibit network formation. This study provides the first evidence for regulation of Notch/Delta gene expression by an angiogenic growth factor and insight into the critical role of Notch signaling in arteriogenesis and angiogenesis.
Endovascular interventional neuroradiologic procedures: who is performing them, how often, and where? A survey of academic and nonacademic radiology practices.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE In this report, the authors assess practice patterns at both academic and nonacademic centers regarding the treatment of aneurysms with Guglielmi detachable coils (GDCs), thrombolysis of the carotid-vertebral arteries, and stent placement with angioplasty of the carotid arteries. METHODS A neurovascular radiology survey was sent to 102 directors of neuroradiology fellowship programs in the United States and Canada ("academic centers"). The survey was also sent to senior members of the American Society of Neuroradiology (three per state) who were not affiliated with fellowship programs ("nonacademic centers"). RESULTS Fifty-seven surveys from academic practices and 70 surveys from nonacademic practices were returned. A total of 4361 procedures (2283 GDC; 949 thrombolysis; 1129 stent placement) were performed; 84% were performed at academic centers and 16% at nonacademic centers. Ninety percent of GDC, 71% of thrombolysis, and 82% of stent placement procedures were performed at academic centers. Seven academic and three nonacademic centers performed 48% of all GDC procedures; eight academic and four nonacademic centers performed 45% of all thrombolysis procedures; eight academic centers performed 50% of all stent placement procedures. A total of 544/4361 (12%) procedures were performed by nonradiologists. At academic centers, 14% of procedures were performed by nonradiologists; participation by nonradiologists was greatest for carotid stent placement (24% of procedures). At nonacademic centers, only 5% of procedures were performed by nonradiologists. CONCLUSION According to this survey, most endovascular interventional neuroradiologic procedures are performed at academic centers; given the survey population, this study likely identifies the lower limit of participation by nonradiologists (12%). Performance of these procedures is concentrated in relatively few centers, and these data raise questions about the overall use of intraarterial thrombolytic therapy for acute infarction.
CS224N Final Project: QA

We extend existing question answering (QA) system to deal with words that are unseen or do not have enough examples during training. Instead of learning word embedding from scratch for a specific QA dataset, we decompose the embedding into two components: The first captures the general semantic meaning of a word and can be trained using readily available large corpuses. The second component reweights the general embedding so that it is optimized for our QA tasks. The advantage is twofold. First, the number of parameters to learn using the QA dataset does not grow linearly with the size of the vocabulary. Second, the system can be easily generalized to unseen words by borrowing the knowledge from outside corpuses.
Finding Disjoint Paths in Expanders Deterministically and Online

We describe a deterministic, polynomial time algorithm for finding edge-disjoint paths connecting given pairs of vertices in an expander. Specifically, the input of the algorithm is a sufficiently strong d-regular expander G on n vertices, and a sequence of pairs s<sub>i</sub>, t<sub>i</sub> (1lesilesr) of vertices, where, r=Theta(nd log d/log n), and no vertex appears more than d/3 times in the list of all endpoints s1, t1,. ,s<sub>r</sub>,t<sub>r</sub>. The algorithm outputs edge-disjoint paths Q<sub>1</sub>,. ,Q<sub>r</sub>, where Q<sub>i</sub> connects s<sub>i</sub> and t<sub>i</sub>. The paths are constructed online, that is, the algorithm produces Q<sub>i</sub> as soon as it gets s<sub>i,</sub> t<sub>i</sub> and before the next requests in the sequence are revealed. This improves in several respects a long list of previous algorithms for the above problem, whose study is motivated by the investigation of communication networks. An analogous result is established for vertex disjoint paths in blowups of strong expanders.