Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Allergic FcεRI‐ and pseudo‐allergic MRGPRX2‐triggered mast cell activation routes are independent and inversely regulated by SCF

While allergic mast cell (MC) degranulation occurs by FcεRI aggregation and varies in strength among subjects, the analogous pseudo‐allergic route was recently uncovered to proceed via MRGPRX2. Here, we examine interindividual variability in skin MC responses to FcεRI triggering vs those evoked by MRGPRX2. While population‐based variability is comparable between the routes, FcεRI‐ and MRGPRX2‐stimulated pathways are completely independent from each other, and responsiveness to one has therefore no predictive value for the other. Conversely, degranulation triggered by compound 48/80 is highly correlated to the process elicited by substance P. MRGPRX2 mRNA shows pronounced population‐based variability (coefficient of variation 102.9%). Surprisingly, stem cell factor (SCF) as the MC‐supportive mediator par excellence potently inhibits pseudo‐allergic degranulation, while it simultaneously promotes allergic stimulation via FcεRI. We conclude that SCF can have selective MC‐dampening functions. Clinically, the data imply that subjects highly reactive in one pathway are not automatically hyper‐responsive in terms of the alternative route.
Role of H‐2 Gene Products in the Function of T Helper Cells from Normal and Chimeric Mice in Vivo 1

The decisive role played by the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) in T cell recognition is now well established. MHC determinants affect a spectrum of T cell functions, including cell-mediated lympholysis (CML) against virus-infected or hapten-modified target cells (Shearer et al. 1975, Zinkernagel & Doherty 1975), collaborative interactions with specific B lymphocytes (Kindred & Shreffler, 1972, Katz et al. 1973), proliferative responses to antigen-pulsed macrophages in vitro (Rosenthal & Shevach 1973) and the expression of delayed-type hypersensitivity (DTH) (Miller et al. 1976). By these parameters, most workers have concluded that T cells fail to recognize antigen presented in association with foreign MHC determinants. This has led to the notion that the T cell repertoire is restricted to recognition of antigen complexed to "self" MHC determinants.
The impact of a ward‐based mindfulness programme on recorded aggression in a medium secure facility for women with learning disabilities

Mindfulness is the practice of focusing attention effectively/purposefully, in a non‐judgemental manner, on current circumstances (Kabat‐Zinn, 2009; Crane, 2009). It has been increasingly used as a tool for managing a range of difficulties associated with personal suffering, including stress and chronic pain, as well as some aspects of mental disorder. In this study the practice of mindfulness was introduced to a medium secure ward for female patients with learning disabilities in the form of twice‐weekly, 30‐minute group sessions. Proxy measures of institutional aggression namely the number of observations (Obs), physical interventions (PI), and seclusions (Sec) were recorded at baseline (during the month prior to the introduction of the mindfulness sessions and at two months and six months following the introduction of the sessions). Friedman's Analysis of Variance and post‐hoc analyses using Wilcoxon's Signed Ranks showed a significant reduction at six months. The potential influence of basic mindfulness practice sessions in reducing aggression is discussed.
Sur la variabilité de la fréquence des formes dans un corpus

SUR LA VARIABILITE DE LA FREQUENCE DES FORMES DANS UN CORPUS P. L. etudie la distribution de la frequence d'une forme dans un corpus divise en plusieurs fragments. Contrairement aux pratiques courantes dans ce domaine, il propose d'utiliser les formules de la distribution hyper- geometrique, en choisissant le corpus entier comme norme des fragments. Ces choix conduisent au calcul d'un indicateur probabiliste valide sur toute l'etendue de la gamme des frequences. Le calcul de cet indicateur pour chaque forme du vocabulaire permet de delimiter deux sous-ensembles de formes : celui des formes specifiques et celui des formes de base, et d'attribuer a chaque fragment ses propres specificites lexicales.
Modeling and simulation verification and validation challenges

Modeling and simulation play increasingly important roles in modern life. They contribute to our understanding of how things function and are essential to the effective and efficient design, evaluation, and operation of new products and systems. Modeling and simulation results provide vital information for decisions and actions in many areas of business and government. Verification and validation (V&V) are processes that help to ensure that models and simulations are correct and reliable. Although significant advances in V&V have occurred in the past 15 years, significant challenges remain that impede the full potential of modeling and simulation made possible by advances in computers and software. This article identifies major modeling and simulation V&V challenges and indicates how they are being addressed.
Stamm gastrostomy for postoperative gastric decompression in gynecologic oncology patients.

OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to report our experience with Stamm gastrostomy for postoperative gastric decompression on a gynecologic oncology service. METHODS This was an observational study over the 9-year period ending in October 2000. A 24 French MIC gastrostomy with the Stamm technique was used. Criteria for a gastrostomy are outlined in the text and tubes placed for palliation were excluded. Patients were followed to determine length of open drainage, time to removal, related complications, and those who may have benefited. RESULTS A total of 167 patients had 174 nonpalliative gastrostomy tubes placed. Nine percent of the patients had related complications with a major complication rate of 2%. Overall, approximately one-third of the patients appeared to benefit from the gastrostomy tube. CONCLUSION The results support the safety and efficacy of the MIC gastric tube in patients undergoing extensive gynecologic cancer surgery which is likely to impact the function of the gastrointestinal tract.
Procedural Justice for Victims and Offenders?: Exploring Restorative Justice Processes in Australia and the US

Sociolegal research indicates that when citizens perceive that legal processes and procedures are fair, both positive and negative legal outcomes will be viewed as acceptable. However, little is known about perceptions of fairness in informal contexts such as in restorative justice (RJ) practices and with victims (and offenders) who participate in these programs. Drawing on interviews with key actors engaged in post-conviction RJ programs for serious crimes in Australia and the USA, this paper asks, do post-conviction therapeutic RJ programs for violent crimes enhance procedural justice for victims and offenders? The data reveal that RJ is compatible with procedural justice for both victims and offenders. Specifically, RJ aids in correcting the harms created by the formal criminal justice system and, thus, satisfies and even greatly enhances procedural justice goals for both victims and offenders.
ANGIE: a new framework for speech analysis based on morpho-phonological modelling

This paper describes a new system for speech analysis, ANGIE, which characterizes word substructure in terms of a trainable grammar. ANGIE capture morpho-phonemic and phonological phenomena through a hierarchical framework. The terminal categories can be alternately letters or phone units, yielding a reversible letter-to-sound/sound-to-letter system. In conjunction with a segment network and acoustic phone models, the system can produce phonemic-to-phonetic alignments for speech waveforms. For speech recognition, ANGIE uses a one-pass bottom-up best-first search strategy. Evaluated in the ATIS domain, ANGIE achieved a phone error rate of 36%, as compared with 40% achieved with a baseline phone-bigram based recognizer under similar conditions. ANGIE potentially offers many attractive features, including dynamic vocabulary adaptation, as well as a framework for handling unknown words.
The Globalization of Beauty: How is Ideal Beauty Influenced by Globally Published Fashion and Beauty Magazines?

The current research examined the portrayal of female beauty worldwide through a content analysis of 5577 female models in four top beauty and fashion magazines from 12 countries/regions. Different magazines used different standards to frame stories and select models, suggesting that the image of beauty was more a result of the editorial rooms than derived from objective standards. North American and European magazines dominated the beauty standards. Asian countries were relatively independent particularly in terms of sexual frames and sexual model selections. Magazines distributed in Latin America and South Africa were in danger of being assimilated into the Western norms of beauty.
Impact of high temperatures on hospital admissions: comparative analysis with previous studies about mortality (Madrid).

BACKGROUND Heat wave prevention plans are traditionally implemented according to a temperature limit above which mortality begins to rise. Although these prevention plans are obviously designed to avoid deaths, it is also necessary to establish the impact of extreme temperatures on hospital admissions in order to put hospital alert plans into action for dealing with people affected by heat wave victims. METHODS We used data on daily emergency admissions between May and September, from 1995 to 2000, in the Hospital General Universitario Gregorio Marañón in Madrid. The causes for admission were considered as 'organic' (International Classification of Diseases, ICD-9: 1-799), circulatory (ICD-9: 390-459) and respiratory (ICD-9: 460-519). We stratified them according to the following age groups: all ages, from 0 to 10, 18 to 44, 45 to 64, 65 to 74 and above 75 years. The methodology used was Autorregresive Integrated Moving Average (ARIMA) modelling, including variables related to atmospheric pollution, seasonality and trends. RESULTS The results show that the temperature above which hospital admissions soar coincides with the temperature limit above which mortality sharply rises, which, in turn, coincides with percentile 95 of the maximum daily temperature series for summer months. The pattern of hospital admissions is completely different from that of mortality. The rise in hospital admissions due to all causes and age groups is clearly smaller than that detected for mortality. DISCUSSION These results suggest that people die rapidly from circulatory diseases before they can be admitted to hospital. This datum is vital with regard to implementing prevention plans prior to the arrival of the heat wave, if they are to effectively reduce mortality.
Sustained High Quality of Life in a 5-Year Long Term Follow-up after Successful Ablation for Supra-Ventricular Tachycardia. Results from a large Retrospective Patient Cohort

INTRODUCTION The ablation of supraventricular tachycardias (SVT) using radiofrequency energy (RF) is a procedure with a high primary success rate. However, there is a scarcity of data regarding the long term outcome, particularly with respect to quality of life (QoL). METHODS AND RESULTS In this retrospective single-center study, 454 patients who underwent ablation of SVT between 2002 and 2007 received a detailed questionnaire addressing matters of QoL. The questionnaire was a modified version of the SF-36 Health Survey questionnaire and the Symptom Checklist--Frequency and Severity Scale.After a mean follow up of 4.5+/-1.3 years, 309 (68.1%) of the contacted 454 patients (269 female, 59.2%, mean age 58+/-6.5) completed the questionnaire. Despite of 27% of relapses in the study group, 91.7% considered the procedure a long-term success. The remainder of patients experienced no change in (3.7%) or worsening of (4.7%) symptoms. There were no significant differences between the various types of SVT (p=1). QoL in patients with Atrio-Ventricular Nodal Reentry Tachycardia (AVNRT) and Atrio-Ventricular Reentry Tachycardia (AVRT) improved significantly (p<0.0005 respectively p<0.043), whereas QoL in patients with Ectopic Atrial Tachycardia (EAT) showed a non-significant trend towards improvement. Main symptoms before ablation, such as tachycardia (91.5%), increased incidence of tachycardia episodes over time (78.1%), anxiety (55.5%) and reduced physical capacity in daily life (52%) were significantly improved after ablation (p<0.0001). CONCLUSION The high acute ablation success of SVT persists for years in long term follow up and translates into a significant improvement of QoL in most patients.
Nano-Bio-Technology and Sensing Chips: New Systems for Detection in Personalized Therapies and Cell Biology

Further advances in molecular medicine and cell biology also require new electrochemical systems to detect disease biomarkers and therapeutic compounds. Microelectronic technology offers powerful circuits and systems to develop innovative and miniaturized biochips for sensing at the molecular level. However, microelectronic biochips proposed in the literature often do not show the right specificity, sensitivity, and reliability required by biomedical applications. Nanotechnology offers new materials and solutions to improve the surface properties of sensing probes. The aim of the present paper is to review the most recent progress in Nano-Bio-Technology in the area of the development of new electrochemical systems for molecular detection in personalized therapy and cell culture monitoring.
Quest and Identity Development: Re-Examining Pathways for Existential Search

This article examines key assumptions underlying quest as a mature religious orientation rooted in existential struggles. Quest is posited by Batson and his colleagues to be an inherently meaningful search in the face of life's challenges. Moreover, Quest is seen to operate across the lifespan independently of the developmental search for identity. Accordingly, quest's relationships with key variables should be mediated by personal meaning but not by identity development. Wong's Personal Meaning Profile and Adams's Extended Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status were used to explore mediation of the relationship between quest (as measured by the Quest scale) and spiritual well-being (as measured by the Spiritual Well-Being Scale [SWBS]). The Quest-SWBS relation was partially mediated by personal meaning and identity development in a sample of 160 university students. These results and their implications for quest are discussed in light of Marcia's identity status theory and Wong's model of personal meaning.
Subjective norms, attitudes and intentions of Finnish consumers in buying organic food

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to test the extension of the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) in an organic food buying context.Design/methodology/approach – The relationships between subjective norms and attitudes and intention to buy organic food were studied by applying structural equation modelling.Findings – The proposed modified model of the TPB model fitted the data better than the original model, implying that in the organic food‐buying context the role of subjective norms differs from the original theory of planned behaviour. In buying organic food subjective norms affected buying intention indirectly through attitude formation. In addition, results showed that the modified TPB model predicts intention to buy organic food better than the original model. Based on the results, it can be said that consumers' intentions to buy organic food can be predicted with their attitudes (R2=0.558), which can further be predicted by subjective norms (R2=0.374), and that behavioural intentions reliably p.
The Marital Satisfaction Scale: Development of a Measure for Intervention Research.

This study reviews the development of the Marital Satisfaction Scale (MSS). The MSS was designed to assess one's level of satisfaction toward his or her own marriage. Marital satisfaction was defined as an attitude of greater or lesser favorability toward one's own marital relationship. Measurement of the perception of one's marriage by means of an attitude scale was the focus of the effort. Design objectives for developing the measure were to generate a new set of items, to utilize a single-item style with an easy scoring system, to guard against contamination by marital conventionalization and social desirability, and to provide items which could reflect attitudinal change likely to occur as a result of marital intervention. Research results indicate that the instrument has very high internal consistency, sufficient test-retest reliability and validity, and a low degree of contamination with social desirability.
Infrared propagator corrections for constant deceleration

We derive the propagator for a massless, minimally coupled scalar on a D-dimensional, spatially flat, homogeneous and isotropic background with arbitrary constant deceleration parameter. Our construction uses the operator formalism by integrating the Fourier mode sum. We give special attention to infrared corrections from the nonzero lower limit associated with working on finite spatial sections. These corrections eliminate infrared divergences that would otherwise be incorrectly treated by dimensional regularization, resulting in off-coincidence divergences for those special values of the deceleration parameter at which the infrared divergence is logarithmic. As an application we compute the expectation value of the scalar stress–energy tensor.
Insiders and Outsiders: The Dynamics of Development of Bungalow Tourism on the Islands of Southern Thailand

Erik Cohen is an Associate Professor and Chairman of the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The research on which this paper is based was supported in 1979 by a grant of Stgtung Volkswagenwerk and in 1980 by the Harry S Truman Institute at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Their support is hereby gratefully acknowledged. An earlier version of the paper waspresented to the 4lsi Annual Meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology, Edinburgh, April 12-17, 1981.
Acute exacerbations of COPD: is inflammation central to prevention and treatment strategies?

Acute exacerbations (AE) represent one of the hallmarks of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). They are characterised by increased from baseline dyspnoea, cough and sputum production and/or purulence, variably associated with fever and systemic symptoms. As in stable COPD, airway inflammation is an important part of the disease underlying the clinical manifestations. Studies on airway inflammation in AE by means of invasive methodologies (e.g. fiberoptic bronchoscopy with bronchial biopsy and/or bronchoalveolar lavage) are difficult due to clinical, practical and ethical issues. New and less- (sputum) or non-invasive methodologies (exhaled markers) are becoming increasingly applied also to the study of AE in COPD. The overall data on airway inflammation during AE seems to indicate an "acute on chronic" picture of inflammation, with increased proportions of inflammatory cells in tissue and lavage/sputum samples and with the change in the proportions of some of the cell types, such as a substantial increase in the numbers of eosinophils. Cytokines and inflammatory mediators involved in AE seem to be those related to PMN chemotaxis (IL-8 and LT) and those related to eosinophilic inflammation. A more precise categorisation of the event causing AE (e.g. viral vs. bacterial), and of the baseline patients' characteristics (e.g. severe vs. mild-moderate stage) associated with a wider application of well-standardised non-invasive methodologies could bring us in the future better clues on the pattern of airway inflammation during AE.
Legal institutions, nonspeaking recipiency and participants' orientations

In this article, I explore the question of what constitutes a participant's orientation to gender within conversation analysis (CA), suggesting that CA's notion of participant orientation may be too narrow and restrictive to adequately capture the significance of gender as an organizing principle of institutions. The data that I analyze are drawn from legal settings, specifically a Canadian criminal trial dealing with sexual assault. Significant to an investigation of talk-in-interaction in such contexts is the fact that participants' orientations to the talk are not only discernible in the talk's local sequential properties but also in the (nonlocal) assessments and judgments of the nonspeaking recipients, the jury or judge. Indeed, a turn-by-turn analysis of these proceedings shows that conversational participants were not explicitly orienting to gender, but rather were orienting to the type of trial they were involved in (i.e., a sexual assault trial) and to the positioning of the accused as a possible agent of sexual acts of aggression. Nonetheless, orientations to or understandings of gender were made explicit in the judge's decision and thus seemed extremely significant to the outcome of the court's proceedings.
Galaxy evolution at low redshift? I. Optical counts ?

We present bright galaxy number counts in the blue (16 < BJ < 21) and red (15 < R < 19:5) passbands, per- formed over 145 sq. degrees, both in the northern and south- ern galactic hemispheres. The work was conducted on Schmidt plates digitized with the MAMA machine, and individually cal- ibrated using an adequate number of CCD sequences. We nd a relatively large density of bright galaxies implying a \high" normalization of the local luminosity function. Our counts and colour distributions exhibit no large departure from what stan- dard no-evolution models predict to magnitudes BJ < 21, re- moving the need for evolution of the non-dwarf galaxy popu- lation in the optical, out to z 0:2. This result disagrees with that of Maddox et al. (1990) on the APM catalog. We show that the APM and similar catalogs may be affected by a systematic magnitude scale error which would explain this discrepancy.
Effects of Phosphate Solubilizing Microorganisms and Phosphorus Chemical Fertilizer on Yield and Yield Components of Barely (Hordeum vulgare L.)

The effect of seed inoculation by phosphate solubilizing microorganisms and different levels of phosphorus chemical fertilizer on yield and yield components of barley (Karoon x Kavir cultivar) was studied in Experimental Farm of College of Agronomy and Animal Sciences, University of Tehran during 2006-2007 growing seasons. The experimental treatments were arranged in split plot factorial based on a complete randomized block design with four replications. Three phosphorus fertilizer levels of 0 (control), 30 and 60 kg/ha were allocated to the main plots and three levels of Phosphate solubilizing bacteria of 0 (control), Pseudomonas petida accessions number 9 and 41 along with two levels of Mycorrhiza: with and without Mycorrhiza (control) were assigned to the subplots in a factorial combination. Sole application of bacteria (accession 9) produced the maximum biological yield, while the application of the same bacteria along with Mycorrhiza achieved the maximum one thousand seed weight. Seed inoculation with sole bacteria positively affected the number of the seeds per kernel. Application of Mycorrhiza along with bacteria significantly increased leaf chlorophyll content. According to the results of this experiment, application of bacteria (accession 41) in absence of any chemical phosphorus fertilizer had an appropriate performance and could increase biomass production to an acceptable level, so it could be considered as a suitable substitute for chemical phosphorous fertilizer in organic agricultural systems.