Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Can rehabilitation improve the health and well-being in Friedreich’s ataxia: a randomized controlled trial?

Objective: To determine the effectiveness of a six-week rehabilitation programme followed by a home exercise programme for Friedreich’s ataxia. Design: Randomized, delayed-start control single-blind trial. Setting: Outpatient rehabilitation centre. Subjects: Ambulant or non-ambulant individuals with Friedreich’s ataxia. Intervention: Participants were randomized to a six-week outpatient rehabilitation programme, immediately (intervention group) or after a six-week delayed-start (control group). The rehabilitation was followed by a six-week home exercise programme. Main measures: The primary outcome was the Functional Independence Measure. Other measures included the Friedreich Ataxia Impact Scale and the Friedreich Ataxia Rating Scale. Outcomes were administered at baseline, 6, 12 and 18 weeks. Results: Of 159 individuals screened, 92 were excluded and 48 declined to participate. A total of 19 participants were enrolled in the study. There was no significant difference in Functional Independence Measure change from baseline to six weeks in the intervention group (mean ± standard deviation, 2.00 ± 3.16) as compared to the control group (0.56 ± 4.06). Change in the Friedreich Ataxia Impact Scale body movement subscale indicated a significant improvement in health and well-being in the intervention group compared to the control group (P = 0.003). Significant within-group improvements in the Friedreich Ataxia Impact Scale and the motor domain of the Functional Independence Measure post-rehabilitation were not sustained post-home exercise programme. Conclusion: Our study indicates that rehabilitation can improve health and well-being in individuals with Friedreich’s ataxia; however, a larger study is required to have sufficient power to detect a significant change in the most sensitive measure of function, the motor domain of the Functional Independence Measure.
Mental Health Problems in Young Children: Self-Reports and Significant Others as Informants

Summary Although children may be the best source of information regarding their feelings and self-perceptions, there are severe limitations to self-report measures especially for young children. Therefore, it is advisable to complement the self-reports by information by parents and teachers. This research aims at the connection between the self-reports of children on different mental health measures including aspects of social integration and the reports of parents and teachers on mental health symptoms of children using the same or similar measures. In this context it is also investigated whether the use of recently developed pictorial self-report questionnaires effects the correspondence between the self-reports of children and the reports of parents and teachers. The following measures were administered to a sample of young school children and a sample of preschool children, their parents and/or their teachers: Pre-school Symptom Self-Report (PRESS) (Martini), TONI (Valla), Pictorial Scale of Perceived Competence and Social Acceptance for Young Children (Harter & Pike) in its German version by Asendorpf & van Aken, all three cartoon-like questionnaires of mental health aspects; Depression Test for Children (DTK) (Rossmann); and the Children’s Depression Scale for Classrooms (CDRSC) (Morris) for teachers. Although children as well as adults score consistently on different measures, there are almost no connections between the ratings of children and those of adults with regard to mental health. The results will be attributed to “informant variability”. Implications for therapeutic approaches will be discussed.
Teaching Communication in Clinical Clerkships: Models from the Macy Initiative in Health Communications

Medical educators have a responsibility to teach students to communicate effectively, yet ways to accomplish this are not well-defined. Sixty-five percent of medical schools teach communication skills, usually in the preclinical years; however, communication skills learned in the preclinical years may decline by graduation. To address these problems the New York University School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, and the University of Massachusetts Medical School collaborated to develop, establish, and evaluate a comprehensive communication skills curriculum. This work was funded by the Josiah P. Macy, Jr. Foundation and is therefore referred to as the Macy Initiative in Health Communication. The three schools use a variety of methods to teach third-year students in each school a set of effective clinical communication skills. In a controlled trial this cross-institutional curriculum project proved effective in improving communication skills of third-year students as measured by a comprehensive, multistation, objective structured clinical examination. In this paper the authors describe the development of this unique, collaborative initiative. Grounded in a three-school consensus on the core skills and critical components of a communication skills curriculum, this article illustrates how each school tailored the curriculum to its own needs. In addition, the authors discuss the lessons learned from conducting this collaborative project, which may provide guidance to others seeking to establish effective cross-disciplinary skills curricula.
Greater than X kb: a quantitative assessment of preservation conditions on genomic DNA quality, and a proposed standard for genome-quality DNA

Advances in biodiversity genomic sequencing will increasingly depend on the availability of DNA samples—and their quantifiable metadata—preserved in large institutional biorepositories that are discoverable to the scientific community. Improvements in sequencing technology constantly provide longer reads, such that longer fragment length, higher molecular weight, and overall “genome-quality” DNA (gDNA) will be desirable. Ideally, biorepositories should publish numerical scale measurements of DNA quality useful to the user community. However, the most widely used technique to evaluate DNA quality, the classic agarose gel, has yet to be quantified. Here we propose a simple and economical method using open source image analysis software to make gDNA gel images quantifiable, and propose percentage of gDNA “greater than X kb” as a standard of comparison, where X is a band from any widely used DNA ladder with desirably large band sizes. We employ two metadata standards (“DNA Threshold” and “Percent above Threshold”) introduced as part of the Global Genome Biodiversity Network (GGBN) Darwin Core extension. We illustrate the method using the traditionally used HindIII ladder and the 9,416 base-pair (bp) band as a standard. We also present data, for two taxa, a vertebrate (fish) and an invertebrate (crab), on how gDNA quality varies with seven tissue preservation methods, time since death, preservation method (i.e. buffers vs. cold temperatures), and storage temperature of various buffers over time. Our results suggest that putting tissue into a buffer prior to freezing may be better than directly into ultra-cold conditions.
Culture, Cognition, and Consent: Who Perceives What, and Why, in 'Acquaintance Rape' Cases

This paper uses the theory of cultural cognition to examine the debate over rape-law reform. Cultural cognition refers to the tendency of individuals to conform their perceptions of legally consequential facts to their defining group commitments. Results of an original experimental study (N = 1,500) confirmed the impact of cultural cognition on perceptions of fact in a controversial acquaintance-rape case. The major finding was that a hierarchical worldview, as opposed to an egalitarian one, inclined individuals to perceive that the defendant reasonably understood the complainant as consenting to sex despite her repeated verbal objections. The effect of hierarchy in inclining subjects to favor acquittal was greatest among women; this finding was consistent with the hypothesis that hierarchical women have a distinctive interest in stigmatizing rape complainants whose behavior deviates from hierarchical gender norms. The study also found that cultural predispositions have a much larger impact on outcome judgments than do legal definitions, variations in which had either no or a small impact on the likelihood subjects would support or oppose conviction. The paper links date-rape reform to a class of controversies in law that reflect symbolic status competition between opposing cultural groups, and addresses the normative implications of this conclusion.
Young people, media and sexual learning: rethinking representation

This paper outlines the ways in which media and cultural studies methodologies have been engaged with in order to conduct an investigation into the interplay between media and sexual learning in an Australian context. It brings ‘media practice’, ‘listening’ theory and ‘reparative reading’ together with interviews with Australian sexuality educators in order to consider how theoretical understandings of media's role in sexual learning might be productively reframed.
Comparison of Academically Average and Gifted Students' Self-Rated Ethical Sensitivity

This study examined the ethical sensitivity of 2 Finnish urban schools' 7th- to 9th-grade students (N = 249) with the Ethical Sensitivity Scale Questionnaire (ESSQ), based on Narvaez' (2001) operationalization of ethical sensitivity. Three research questions were formulated: (1) Are the psychometric properties of ESSQ scientifically valid? Are there any differences in the ethical sensitivity between (2) female and male and (3) academically average and gifted students? Results showed that psychometric properties of ESSQ were satisfactory for scientific work. According to the results, female students estimated their ethical skills higher than their male peers. This tendency was explained by the nature of items, which mostly measure caring ethics with emotional and social intelligence. Academically gifted students estimated their ethical skills higher than average ability students. This finding supported other researchers' notions that gifted students hold a privileged position in the maturation of moral thinking because of their precocious intellectual growth.
Sorcerer's Apprentices and the `Will to Figuration'

The article deals with Le Collège de Sociologie, an elective organization founded in 1937 by a group of French thinkers, among whom were Georges Bataille, Roger Caillois and Michel Leiris. It tries to show how the notion of `force' or of `power', constitutive to the `new mythology' the members of the Collège wanted to create, was in fact deeply ambivalent in nature. This ambivalence can be traced back to the internal ambiguities of the Durkheimian theory of the `collective effervescence', which is shown to have influenced not only the collegians' notion of the sacred, but also their conception of power. This ambiguous theoretical heritage is curiously reflected in the conflicting conceptions Bataille and Caillois held of the notion of power — one of the major controversies, which later led to the dissolution of the Collège. The thesis defended here is that the seeds of this controversy lie already in the internal ambiguities of the Durkheimian theory and that these ambivalences were in a certain manner reproduced not only in the dispute between Caillois and Bataille, but also in much of the contemporary social theory drawing its inspiration from the Durkheimian sociology of the sacred.
Nonsuicidal Self-Injury, Suicidal Behavior, and Their Co-occurrence as Viewed Through the Lens of the Interpersonal Theory of Suicide

Suicidal and nonsuicidal self-injurious behaviors represent perplexing yet highly prevalent public health problems. Though the behaviors are differentiable, they frequently co-occur. The nature of the association between them, however, remains poorly understood. The interpersonal theory of suicide (Joiner, 2005; Van Orden et al., 2010) offers one viable framework for enhancing our understanding in this domain. In this review, we provide an overview of the literature on nonsuicidal self-injury, its relation to suicidal behavior, and how the interpersonal theory of suicide conceptualizes this relationship. Alternative perspectives and future directions are also discussed.
Atterberg limits are not appropriate for peat soils

This paper reports on the challenges associated with the determination of the Atterberg limits for peat, fundamental issues regarding the appropriateness of Atterberg limit concepts applied to peat and peaty soils and their use in characterising the engineering behaviour of these materials. As demonstrated in the present study, different sample preparation methods and preloading of the peat material (which gives the organic solids some stress history because of their compressible nature) can result in significantly different Atterberg limit values being measured. The significance of reinforcement and scale effects related to the peat fibres for the thread-rolling method is investigated. It is concluded that the Atterberg limit tests are not appropriate for peat in that the deduced plastic range for the peat test material is notional and the calculated liquidity index values are not reliable indicators of its consistency. In assessing the likely engineering behaviour of peat material, a more useful suite of index tests is its natural water content, organic content, fibre content and degree of humification.
Hustling and Housing: Drug Users' Strategies to Obtain Shelter and Income in Hartford, Connecticut

Research has documented illicit drug users' participation in the informal and drug economies as a result of barriers in obtaining legitimate sources of work and income. Less research has explored ways drug users utilize income from various sources to obtain shelter and meet other basic needs. This paper draws on longitudinal qualitative interviews that were conducted with 65 active cocaine or heroin users in various housed or homeless statuses to explore participants' sources of income, work experiences, and strategies to secure housing and other basic needs. Results indicate that most participants did not receive cash welfare benefits, and few had any form of employment. Further, those who received federal housing subsidies often had no income to pay their part of the rent or other necessities. Participants reported engaging in a number of informal, illegal, and bartering relationships with drug using and non-drug using residents in order to obtain shelter and income. Insufficient social welfare and employment opportunities have created a context of scarcity in which drug using and non-drug using residents depend on each other to obtain shelter and other needs in ways prohibited by federal welfare and housing policies. A number of policy changes, including increasing access to and benefits levels of welfare and housing subsidies, employment programs for ex-offenders and tax incentives to increase employment opportunities, may increase drug users' housing stability.
Evaluation of a Grammar of French Determiners

Existing syntactic grammars of natural languages, even with a far from complete coverage, are complex objects. Assessments of the quality of parts of such grammars are useful for the validation of their construction. We evaluated the quality of a grammar of French determiners that takes the form of a recursive transition network. The result of the application of this local grammar gives deeper syntactic information than chunking or information available in treebanks. We performed the evaluation by comparison with a corpus independently annotated with information on determiners. We obtained 86% precision and 92% recall on text not tagged for parts of speech.
IQ A ND T HE V ALUES O F N ATIONS

Summary. The origin of values and preferences is an unresolved theoretical question in behavioural and social sciences. The Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis, derived from the Savanna Principle and a theory of the evolution of general intelligence, suggests that more intelligent individuals may be more likely to acquire and espouse evolutionarily novel values and preferences (such as liberalism and atheism and, for men, sexual exclusivity) than less intelligent individuals, but that general intelligence may have no effect on the acquisition and espousal of evolutionarily familiar values. Macro-level analyses show that nations with higher average intelligence are more liberal (have greater highest marginal individual tax rate and, as a result, lower income inequality), less religious (a smaller proportion of the population believes in God or considers themselves religious) and more monogamous. The average intelligence of a population appears to be the strongest predictor of its level of liberalism, atheism and monogamy.
Neonatal Survival After Prolonged Preterm Premature Rupture of Membranes Before 24 Weeks of Gestation

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate neonatal survival after prolonged preterm premature rupture of membranes (PROM) in the era of antenatal corticosteroids, surfactant, and inhaled nitric oxide. METHODS: A single-center retrospective cohort study of neonates born from 2002–2011 after prolonged (1 week or more) preterm (less than 24 weeks of gestation) rupture of membranes was performed. The primary outcome was survival to discharge. Neonates whose membranes ruptured less than 24 hours before delivery (n=116) were matched (2:1) on gestational age at birth, sex, and antenatal corticosteroid exposure with neonates whose membranes ruptured 1 week or more before delivery (n=58). Analysis used conditional logistic regression for categorical data and Wilcoxon signed rank test for continuous data. RESULTS: The prolonged preterm PROM exposed and unexposed cohorts had survival rates of 90% and 95%, respectively, although underpowered to assess the statistical significance (P=.313). Exposed neonates were more likely have pulmonary hypoplasia (26/58 exposed, 1/114 unexposed, P<.001), pulmonary hypertension (21/56 exposed, 10/112 unexposed, P<.001), and pulmonary air leak (21/58 exposed, 14/114 unexposed, P<.001). Gestational age at rupture (20.4 weeks exposed, 22.3 weeks unexposed, P=.189), length of rupture (3.7 weeks exposed, 6.4 weeks unexposed, P=.717), and lowest maximal vertical pocket before 24 weeks of gestation (0 cm exposed, 1.4 cm unexposed, P=.114) did not discriminate between survivors and nonsurvivors after exposure to prolonged preterm PROM. CONCLUSION: With antenatal steroid exposure and aggressive pulmonary management, survival to discharge after prolonged preterm PROM was 90%. Pulmonary morbidities were common. Of note, the data were limited to women who remained pregnant 1 week or longer after rupture of membranes. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: II
Academic self-concept and teachers perceptions of normal, mentally retarded, and learning disabled elementary students

The self-concepts of educable mentally impaired, learning disabled, and nonhandicapped children were assessed using the Student Self-Evaluation (SSE), Teacher Evaluation Scale (TES), and How I See Myself (HISM) test. A Groups × Age × Sex analysis of covariance, with IQ effects statistically controlled, was computed for each measure. On the SSE, the groups were significantly different, with nonhandicapped students having better self-concepts than learning disabled students, and learning disabled students having better self-concepts than educable mentally impaired students. Teacher estimates of self-concept (TES) indicated that nonhandicapped students have better self-concepts than have handicapped students. For the HISM scores, there was a Group × Sex interaction, but no significant main effects; there was no consistent pattern to the interactions. The results suggest that handicapped children, as a group, have a lower self-concept than have nonhandicapped children. Implications for educational programming and future research are offered.
From muscle balancing to capsular balancing MAASH technique for total hip arthroplasty (THA)

T study aims to assess the biocompatibility of new advanced fiber-reinforced composites (FRC) to be used for custommade cranial implants. Four new formulations of FRC were obtained using polymeric matrices (combinations of monomers bisphenol A glycidylmethacrylate (bis-GMA), urethane dimethacrylate (UDMA), triethylene glycol dimethacrylate (TEGDMA), hydroxyethyl methacrylate (HEMA)) and E-glass fibers (300 g/mp). Every FRC contains 65% E-glass and 35% polymeric matrix. Composition of polymeric matrices are: bis-GMA (21%), TEGDMA (14%) for FRC1; bis-GMA (21%), HEMA (14%) for FRC2; bis-GMA (3.5%), UDMA (21%), TEGDMA (10.5%) for FRC3 and bis-GMA (3.5%), UDMA (21%), HEMA (10.5%) for FRC4. Cytotoxicity test was performed on both human dental pulp stem cells and dermal fibroblasts. Viability was assessed by tetrazolium dye colorimetric assay. Subcutaneous implantation test was carried out on forty male Wistar rats, randomly divided into 4 groups, according to the FRC tested. Each group received subcutaneous dorsal implants. After 30 days, intensity of the inflammatory reaction, tissue repair status and presence of the capsule were the main criteria assessed. Both cell populations showed no signs of cytotoxicity following the FRC exposures. Among the FRC formulations, the best results were obtained with FRC3, followed by FRC2. FRC3 showed the mildest inflammatory reaction and this correlated both with the non-cytotoxic behavior and the presence of a well-organized fibrous capsule (Z=-3.16, p=0.002). The composite biomaterials developed may constitute an optimized alternative of the similar materials used for the reconstruction of craniofacial bone defects. According to our studies, we conclude that FRC3 is the best formulation regarding the biological behavior.
“Do We Believe in TripAdvisor?” Examining Credibility Perceptions and Online Travelers’ Attitude toward Using User-Generated Content

Recent press reports and complaints by hoteliers have called into question the credibility of travel-related user-generated content (UGC). Yet our understanding of the role of credibility perceptions in the context of UGC is limited, notwithstanding the rising interest in social media. Using an online survey of 661 travel consumers, this study applies the component-based structural equation modeling technique of partial least squares to examine online travelers’ perceptions of the credibility of UGC sources and how these perceptions influence attitudes and intentions toward UGC utilization in the travel planning process. The model also draws on the theory of homophily to make predictions about the antecedent of credibility. Results validate the Source Credibility Theory in the context of UGC but also accentuate the central mediating role of attitude. In addition, the study finds support for perceptual homophily as a critical determinant of both credibility and attitude. Theoretical and managerial implications are highlighted.
GENDER AND CHANGES IN SUPPORT OF PARENTS IN CHINA:

The Chinese traditionally have valued sons over daughters, depending on their sons to support them in old age. Recent changes, however, suggest a shift toward greater gender equality, with daughters also keeping elderly parents. The present study, undertaken in 1979 in the People's Republic of China, assessed attitudes of 48 university staff members toward financial support for aged parents and living arrangements in old age, with an emphasis on gender differences. We found that most sons and daughters gave financial support to their parents regularly and most men and women still believed adult children should share housing with their aged parents. In this sample, the sons assumed this responsibility far more than the daughters, and few of the respondents believed their parents should live with a daughter. However, when asked to project their own preferences in old age, sons thought they would prefer to live with a son, but daughters feel they would like to live with a daughter. These results are discussed in terms of two important cultural changes, the new marriage laws and the one-child policy, that were implemented at the time of the study.