Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Preventing Heart Disease in the 21st Century: Implications of the Pathobiological Determinants of Atherosclerosis in Youth (PDAY) Study

We could prevent 90% of heart attacks. Such a claim would have seemed outrageous in the 1960s, as the coronary heart disease (CHD) epidemic reached new heights and accounted for one third of all deaths in the United States and most other developed countries.1 The identification of conditions that predicted the probability of CHD (known as “risk factors”) stimulated hope that modification of these risk factors would reduce the frequency of CHD. Long before this idea was validated in clinical trials, individual physicians2,3 and voluntary health agencies4 began in the 1960s to promote the concept to the public. Many individuals accepted the idea, and many physicians adopted the recommendations in their practices. The US CHD mortality rate declined to approximately half its former level by 1990.5 The associated favorable changes in risk factors accounted for about half of this decline, whereas improved treatment of CHD accounted for the other half.6 The extent and severity of atherosclerosis also declined during this period.7,8 CHD mortality continued to decline after 1990 but at a slower rate, and CHD remained the leading cause of death in the United States.9 A convergence of evidence from diverse sources in the last 2 decades now indicates that the claim that we can prevent 90% of CHD should no longer be thought of as outrageous but as achievable. For example, the absence of the major established CHD risk factors at 50 years of age has been shown to indicate a 90% lower lifetime risk (to age 95 years) for men and a 79% lower risk for women.10,* Subjects in several large cohorts without any of the major risk factors who were followed up for 16 to 22 years had 77% to 92% lower (men) or 79% lower (women) …
Ecological Barriers and Social Forces in Childhood Asthma Management: Examining Routines of African American Families Living in the Inner City

Objective. Asthma affects African American children at unprecedented rates. Researchers have examined the context in which African American families live and experience illness, and suggest that ecological barriers contribute to poor health. In this paper, the authors examine the social forces underlying these ecological barriers and what African American parents living in the inner city do to manage their children's asthma amidst these challenges. Methods. African American parents of children aged 5 to 12 years diagnosed with persistent asthma living in the inner city were interviewed using a semistructured interview guide. Grounded theory analysis identified recurrent themes in the interview data. Findings. Parents identified four adaptive routines they use to manage their children's asthma: (1) give young children with asthma responsibility for medication use; (2) monitor the availability of the school nurse; (3) manage air quality; and (4) frequently clean the home. These routines are described as adaptive because parents navigate ecological barriers and social forces within their daily context to manage their children's asthma. Implications. The authors argue that the first step in reducing the impact of ecological barriers is understanding African Americans’ sociohistorical context.
An Examination of the Benefits, Limitations, and Challenges of Conducting Randomized Experiments With Principals

Purpose: The past decade has seen considerable debate about how to best evaluate the efficacy of educational improvement initiatives, and members of the educational leadership research community have entered the debate with great energy. Throughout this debate, the use of randomized experiments has been a particularly contentious subject. This study examines the potential benefits, limitations, and challenges involved in using experiments to evaluate professional development for principals. Approach: We present a case study of an experimental evaluation of a professional development program for principals. The case study is grounded in key themes in recent debates about the use of experiments in educational research, scholarship on challenges in conducting experiments, and experimental studies involving principals. Setting and Sample: The case study was conducted in an urban school district with 48 principals. Implications for Research: The experimental component of the study allowed us to form a trustworthy summary inference about whether or not a professional development program had an overall effect on principals. However, the experiment did not illuminate why or how the program failed to influence principal practice. Using descriptions of the intended curriculum for principals, professional development attendance records, and interview data, we developed an understanding of why the program failed to achieve its intended goals. Based on our experiences, we support continued advocacy of research designs that bring rich evidence to bear about causal mechanisms, implementation conditions, potential measures of delivery of and adherence to treatment protocols, and measures of participants’ exposure to treatment.
Another step closer to measuring the ghosts in the nursery: preliminary validation of the Trauma Reflective Functioning Scale

The aim of this study was to examine preliminary evidence of the validity of the Trauma Reflective Functioning Scale and to investigate reflective functioning (RF) and attachment in pregnant women with histories of trauma, with a particular focus on the capacity to mentalize regarding trauma and its implications for adaptation to pregnancy and couple functioning. The Adult Attachment Interview was used to assess attachment, unresolved trauma and mentalization (measured as RF) regarding relationships with attachment figures (RF-G) and trauma (RF-T) in 100 pregnant women with histories of abuse and neglect. The majority (63%) of women had insecure attachment states of mind and approximately half were unresolved regarding trauma. Furthermore, the majority of women manifested deficits specific to RF-T. Their RF-T was significantly lower than their RF-G; the findings indicate that women with histories of childhood abuse and neglect do not manifest a generic inhibition of reflectiveness, but a collapse of mentalization specific to trauma. Low RF-T, indicative of difficulty in considering traumatic experiences in mental state terms, was associated with difficulty in investment in the pregnancy and lack of positive feelings about the baby and motherhood. In addition, low RF-T was also associated with difficulties in intimate relationships. Results of a regression analysis with RF indicated that RF-T was the best predictor of investment in pregnancy and couple functioning. In sum, the study provides preliminary evidence that RF-T can be reliably measured and is a valid construct that has potential usefulness for research and clinical practice. It highlights the importance of mentalization specifically about trauma and suggests that it is not the experience of trauma per se, but the absence of mentalization regarding trauma that is associated with difficulties in close relationships and in making the transition to parenthood.
A Revision of Bloom's Taxonomy: An Overview

EĞITIM HEDEFLERI TAKSONOMISI (THE TAXONOMY OF EDUCATIONAL OBJECTIVES) egitim sonucunda ogrencilerden ogrenmeleri beklenen veya umulan seyleri siniflandirmak icin kullanilan bir taksonomidir (siniflandirma sistemi). Bu taksonomi, ayni egitim hedeflerinin her birini olcen soru bankalarini olusturmak icin, cesitli universitelerin fakulteleri arasinda test sorularinin degisimini kolaylastirmanin bir yolu olarak gelistirilmistir. Daha sonra, Chicago Universitesi Sinavlar Dairesi muduru olan Benjamin S. Bloom bu taksonominin yillik kapsamli sinavlari hazirlamada is yukunu azaltacagini ileri surmustur. Bloom kendisinin bu girisimine yardimci olmasi icin, birlesik devletlerin her yerinde defalarca ayni problemle karsilasan bircok olcme degerlendirme uzmaninin katildigi bir grup olusturdu. Bu grup yapilan calismalarla ilgili ilerlemeyi gozden gecirmek, duzeltme yapmak ve bir sonraki adimlari planlamak icin 1949 yilinin basinda iki kez toplandi. Onlarin sonuc taslagi 1956 yilinda “Taxonomy of Educational Objectives: The Classification of Educational Goals. Handbook I: Cognitive Domain” basligi adi altinda yayinlandi (Bloom, Engelhart, Furst, Hill, & Krathwohl, 1956). Bundan boyle, bu Orijinal Taksonomi olarak anilacaktir. Bu taksonominin revizyonu 45 yil sonra ayni tarzda gelistirilmistir (Anderson, Krathwohl, et al., 2001). Bundan boyle bu Revize Edilmis Taksonomi olarak anilacaktir. Bloom orijinal taksonomiye bir olcme aracindan daha fazlasi olarak bakiyordu. Bloom orijinal taksonominin asagidaki boyutlarda hizmet edebilecegine inaniyordu: • Insanlar, konular ve sinif seviyeleri arasindaki iletisimi kolaylastirmak icin ogrenme hedefleriyle ilgili ortak bir dil; • Belli bir ders veya mufredat programinin genis kapsamli egitimsel hedeflerinin (ornegin, bu hedefler ulusal, eyalet ve bolgesel standartlarin icinde bulunur) ozel amacini belirlemek icin bir temel; • Bir unite, ders veya mufredat programindaki egitimsel hedefler, aktiviteler ve degerlendirmelerinin uyumunu belirlemenin bir yolu ve • Belirli egitimsel ders veya mufredat programinin sinirlanmis boyutlarinin cesitlendirilebilmesine karsin bir dizi egitim imkânlariyla ilgili genis bir bakis acisi (panorama) olarak;
A Nonlinear $L _{1}$-Norm Approach for Joint Image Registration and Super-Resolution

This letter proposes a nonlinear L 1-norm approach for joint image registration and super-resolution (SR). Image SR is the fusion of multiple low-resolution (LR) images to produce a high-resolution (HR) image. Conventional SR algorithms are sensitive to the initial registration error and outliers in the LR images. In view of this, we present a new SR method to address these problems using L 1-norm optimization in joint image registration and HR image reconstruction. Experimental results show that the proposed method is effective in handling these issues in the HR image reconstruction.
The Leukocyte Integrin Gene CD11d Is Repressed by Gut-enriched Kruppel-like Factor 4 in Myeloid Cells*

The myeloid-specific leukocyte integrin CD11d encodes the αD subunit for the αDβ2 receptor. A yeast one-hybrid screen showed that a longer isoform of gut-enriched Kruppel-like factor 4 (GKLF) we term GKLFa interacts with the CD11d promoter. Purified GST-GKLFa protein was shown to bind within the –61 to –44 region that overlaps a binding site for the CD11d transcriptional activators Sp1 and transforming growth factor β-inducible early gene-1 (TIEG1). Transfection of GKLF/GKLFa in myeloid cells reduced CD11d promoter activity, whereas, down-regulation of GKLF/GKLFa with small interfering RNAs led to up-regulation of CD11d expression. Differentiation of myeloid cells with phorbol ester led to activation of the CD11d promoter and reduced occupancy of the promoter by GKLF/GKLFa but an increased occupancy by TIEG1 in vivo. Binding of GKLF/GKLFa, Sp1, and TIEG1 to the CD11d promoter in vivo is dependent on their zinc finger DNA binding domains. GKLFa physically associates with the histone deacetylases (HDAC) 1 and 2, and both HDACs are bound to the CD11d promoter in vivo but released after exposure of myeloid cells to phorbol ester suggesting that GKLF/GKLFa recruits HDACs to effect repression.
Evaluation of the reliability of the Nidek MK-2000 microkeratome for laser in situ keratomileusis.

PURPOSE To evaluate the performance of the Nidek MK-2000 microkeratome in corneal flap creation for laser in situ keratomileusis (LASIK) in Asian eyes and the simplicity of its use for the beginner. METHODS A prospective study of 200 Asian eyes was performed. The corneal flaps were created using the Nidek MK-2000 microkeratome 130-microm and 160-microm thickness plates with 8.5- and 9.5-mm suction rings. Ease of obtaining suction was evaluated and measurements were done for flap thickness, flap diameter, hinge size, and hinge-to-center-of-pupil distance. RESULTS Subjectively, even in small eyes, the procedure of obtaining the required suction and creating a good flap was easy and reliable with the Nidek MK-2000 microkeratome. Average flap thickness was 120.52 +/- 16.49 microm (range, 84 to 162 microm) for the 130-microm thickness plate with the 8.5-mm suction ring. Mean flap diameter was 9.16 +/- 0.43 mm, mean hinge size was 4.96 +/- 0.36 mm, and mean hinge-to-center-of-pupil distance was 4.16 +/- 0.28 mm. With the 9.5-mm suction ring, mean flap thickness was 122.06 +/- 18.54 microm (range, 84 to 149 microm), mean flap diameter was 9.85 +/- 0.35 mm, mean hinge size was 5.28 +/- 0.36 mm, and mean hinge-to-center-of-pupil distance was 4.49 +/- 0.27 mm. For the 160-microm plate with a 8.5-mm suction ring, the flap thickness was 172.71 +/- 27.49 microm (range, 121 to 203 microm), flap diameter was 9.13 + 0.37 mm, mean hinge size was 5.02 +/- 0.29 mm and mean hinge-to-center-of-pupil distance was 4.21 +/- 0.29 mm. There were no complications of corneal flap creation. CONCLUSION The Nidek MK-2000 microkeratome was effective, safe, and reliable, even in small eyes.
Effect of oral erythromycin on patients with diabetic gastroparesis.

BACKGROUND Abnormal gastrointestinal motility is a well recognized complication of diabetes mellitus, and disordered gastric emptying may hamper glycemic control. The objects of this study were to investigate the effect of oral erythromycin on gastric emptying and to evaluate the effect of corrected gastric emptying on glycemic control in patients with diabetic gastroparesis. METHODS Twenty patients of Type II (non-insulin-dependent) diabetes mellitus with typical symptoms of gastroparesis and delayed solid phase gastric emptying were studied. There were 18 males and 2 females, aged 49 to 72 years. Erythromycin (erythromycin estolate) was given orally at a dose of 250 mg, 3 times daily, 30 minutes before each meal. Radionuclide-labelled solid phase gastric emptying and fasting blood sugar (FBS) were studied after one day of erythromycin therapy, and again after 2 weeks of the therapy. The half time of gastric emptying (GETt1/2) represented the time needed for 50 percent of the initial radioactivity to leave the stomach, and was used to express the gastric emptying status. RESULTS The GETt1/2 decreased from 198.0 +/- 58.9 minutes at baseline to 139.1 +/- 67.6 minutes following one day of erythromycin therapy (p < 0.01), and to 137.1 +/- 71.2 minutes after two weeks of treatment (vs. baseline p < 0.01). The FBS decreased from 159.0 +/- 40.2 mg/dl at baseline to 149.0 +/- 38.5 mg/dl following one day of therapy (p = 0.12, NS), and to 139.2 +/- 39.8 mg/dl after two weeks of treatment (vs. baseline p < 0.02). CONCLUSIONS It was concluded that erythromycin is an effective prokinetic agent for diabetic gastroparesis, and that corrected gastric emptying may improve glycemic control.
In-field High Throughput Phenotyping and Cotton Plant Growth Analysis Using LiDAR

Plant breeding programs and a wide range of plant science applications would greatly benefit from the development of in-field high throughput phenotyping technologies. In this study, a terrestrial LiDAR-based high throughput phenotyping system was developed. A 2D LiDAR was applied to scan plants from overhead in the field, and an RTK-GPS was used to provide spatial coordinates. Precise 3D models of scanned plants were reconstructed based on the LiDAR and RTK-GPS data. The ground plane of the 3D model was separated by RANSAC algorithm and a Euclidean clustering algorithm was applied to remove noise generated by weeds. After that, clean 3D surface models of cotton plants were obtained, from which three plot-level morphologic traits including canopy height, projected canopy area, and plant volume were derived. Canopy height ranging from 85th percentile to the maximum height were computed based on the histogram of the z coordinate for all measured points; projected canopy area was derived by projecting all points on a ground plane; and a Trapezoidal rule based algorithm was proposed to estimate plant volume. Results of validation experiments showed good agreement between LiDAR measurements and manual measurements for maximum canopy height, projected canopy area, and plant volume, with R2-values of 0.97, 0.97, and 0.98, respectively. The developed system was used to scan the whole field repeatedly over the period from 43 to 109 days after planting. Growth trends and growth rate curves for all three derived morphologic traits were established over the monitoring period for each cultivar. Overall, four different cultivars showed similar growth trends and growth rate patterns. Each cultivar continued to grow until ~88 days after planting, and from then on varied little. However, the actual values were cultivar specific. Correlation analysis between morphologic traits and final yield was conducted over the monitoring period. When considering each cultivar individually, the three traits showed the best correlations with final yield during the period between around 67 and 109 days after planting, with maximum R2-values of up to 0.84, 0.88, and 0.85, respectively. The developed system demonstrated relatively high throughput data collection and analysis.
TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative TRACE: Tennessee Research and Creative Exchange Exchange

Background: Metabolomics is an emerging high-throughput approach to systems biology, but data analysis tools are lacking compared to other systems level disciplines such as transcriptomics and proteomics. Metabolomic data analysis requires a normalization step to remove systematic effects of confounding variables on metabolite measurements. Current tools may not correctly normalize every metabolite when the relationships between each metabolite quantity and fixed-effect confounding variables are different, or for the effects of random-effect confounding variables. Linear mixed models, an established methodology in the microarray literature, offer a standardized and flexible approach for removing the effects of fixed-and random-effect confounding variables from metabolomic data. Findings: Here we present a simple menu-driven program, “ MetabR ” , designed to aid researchers with no programming background in statistical analysis of metabolomic data. Written in the open-source statistical programming language R, MetabR implements linear mixed models to normalize metabolomic data and analysis of variance (ANOVA) to test treatment differences. MetabR exports normalized data, checks statistical model assumptions, identifies differentially abundant metabolites, and produces output files to help with data interpretation. Example data are provided to illustrate normalization for common confounding variables and to demonstrate the utility of the MetabR program. Conclusions: We developed MetabR as a simple and user-friendly tool for implementing linear mixed model-based normalization and statistical analysis of targeted metabolomic data, which helps to fill a lack of available data analysis tools in this field. The program, user guide, example data, and any future news or updates related to the program may be found at http://metabr.r-forge.r-project.org/.
UK Fiscal Policy Sustainability, 1955–2006

We test for fiscal policy sustainability in the UK over the period 1955–2006. We find evidence of sustainability with three structural breaks, respectively occurring in the early 1970s, early 1980s and late 1990s. UK fiscal policy was not sustainable between 1973 and 1981. Within the fiscal regimes correction of fiscal disequilibrium occurs through adjustments in public revenue. Changes in fiscal regimes, however, occur through shifts in public expenditure. UK authorities do not react to relatively small deficits but correct exceedingly large deficits relatively fast. Finally, the recent financial crisis may have caused a substantial deterioration of UK fiscal dynamics.
Holistic, Instance-Level Human Parsing

Object parsing -- the task of decomposing an object into its semantic parts -- has traditionally been formulated as a category-level segmentation problem. Consequently, when there are multiple objects in an image, current methods cannot count the number of objects in the scene, nor can they determine which part belongs to which object. We address this problem by segmenting the parts of objects at an instance-level, such that each pixel in the image is assigned a part label, as well as the identity of the object it belongs to. Moreover, we show how this approach benefits us in obtaining segmentations at coarser granularities as well. Our proposed network is trained end-to-end given detections, and begins with a category-level segmentation module. Thereafter, a differentiable Conditional Random Field, defined over a variable number of instances for every input image, reasons about the identity of each part by associating it with a human detection. In contrast to other approaches, our method can handle the varying number of people in each image and our holistic network produces state-of-the-art results in instance-level part and human segmentation, together with competitive results in category-level part segmentation, all achieved by a single forward-pass through our neural network.
Magnetic resonance imaging and ultrasound in the assessment of the fetal central nervous system

Abstract Ultrasound is the screening modality of choice for evaluation of the fetal central nervous system (CNS). However, in cases of difficult diagnosis further fetal investigation is desirable. Due to ultrafast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques artifacts from fetal motions are minimized. MRI involves no exposure to radiation and hence appears to be safe. Due to the better soft tissue contrast, additional investigation by MRI may extend the sonographic diagnosis of fetal CNS-anomalies. Ultrasound and MRI are complementary imaging methods in the evaluation of the fetal CNS. The most important indications for ultrasound are screening for CNS anomalies and serial assessment of the dynamic of the disorder. The most important indications for fetal MRI are the “second opinion” and investigation by fetal MRI instead of postpartum MRI (especially in cases of planned postpartum intervention). In this article the indications and limitations of ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging in the evaluation of the fetal CNS are discussed.
RDP4: Detection and analysis of recombination patterns in virus genomes

RDP4 is the latest version of recombination detection program (RDP), a Windows computer program that implements an extensive array of methods for detecting and visualising recombination in, and stripping evidence of recombination from, virus genome sequence alignments. RDP4 is capable of analysing twice as many sequences (up to 2,500) that are up to three times longer (up to 10 Mb) than those that could be analysed by older versions of the program. RDP4 is therefore also applicable to the analysis of bacterial full-genome sequence datasets. Other novelties in RDP4 include (1) the capacity to differentiate between recombination and genome segment reassortment, (2) the estimation of recombination breakpoint confidence intervals, (3) a variety of ‘recombination aware’ phylogenetic tree construction and comparison tools, (4) new matrix-based visualisation tools for examining both individual recombination events and the overall phylogenetic impacts of multiple recombination events and (5) new tests to detect the influences of gene arrangements, encoded protein structure, nucleic acid secondary structure, nucleotide composition, and nucleotide diversity on recombination breakpoint patterns. The key feature of RDP4 that differentiates it from other recombination detection tools is its flexibility. It can be run either in fully automated mode from the command line interface or with a graphically rich user interface that enables detailed exploration of both individual recombination events and overall recombination patterns.