Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Right Ventricular Endomyocardial Fibrosis Presenting With Ventricular Tachycardia And Apical Thrombus - An Interesting Presentation

Endomyocardial fibrosis is a progressive disease of unknown origin affecting children and young adults. It involves inflow portion of right and/or left ventricle and apex. It may be associated with thrombus. Literature regarding right ventricular endomyocardial fibrosis with thrombus is scarce. Here we report a rare case of right ventricular endomyocardial fibrosis presenting as ventricular tachycardia and echocardiographic evidence of apical thrombus. Interestingly there was no pulmonary involvement or evidence of deep venous thrombosis. This case also underscores the importance of urgent echocardiography in diagnosis of obscure cases of ventricular tachycardia.
Fairness Perceptions of Work−Life Balance Initiatives: Effects on Counterproductive Work Behaviour

This study examined the impact of employees' fairness perceptions regarding organizational work−life balance initiatives on their performance of counterproductive work behaviour (CWB). Moderating effects of adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism were also explored. Quantitative data collected from 224 public sector employees demonstrated significant main and moderating effects of informational justice, adaptive perfectionism and maladaptive perfectionism on CWB. Adaptive perfectionism weakened the link between informational justice and CWB, while maladaptive perfectionism strengthened it. Qualitative data collected from 26 employees indicate that both the social exchange and job stress models are useful frameworks for understanding CWB in the context of work−life balance initiatives; CWB emerged as both a negative emotional reaction to unfairness and as a tool used by employees to restore equity in the exchange relationship with their employer. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Intradermal versus intramuscular hepatitis b re-vaccination in non-responsive chronic dialysis patients: a prospective randomized study with cost-effectiveness evaluation.

BACKGROUND It has been calculated that 30% of chronic uraemic patients fail to produce antibodies to HBsAg antigen after hepatitis B (HB) vaccination. Low-dose intradermal (i.d.) inoculations and supplementary intramuscular (i.m.) injections have been reported to improve the response rate in previous non-responder chronic uraemic patients, but no cost-effectiveness evaluations have been made about this issue. METHODS We re-vaccinated 50 chronic dialysis patients, who did not have any detectable anti-HBs antibody after a reinforced protocol of hepatitis B vaccine given by i.m. route, with hepatitis B recombinant DNA yeast vaccine (80 micrograms) by intradermal (25 patients) or intramuscular (25 patients) administration (randomly allocated). We used the same amount of HBsAg in order to exclude the confounding effect of the dose level administered on the immune response of uraemic patients. We studied, over a 20-month follow-up, the persistence of anti-HBs antibodies in our responder vaccinees. We made a comparison between the costs of our re-vaccination protocol and the other re-vaccination strategies that have been recently suggested. RESULTS One month after completion of re-vaccination protocol, seroconversion rates (100% vs 48%, P = 0.008) and proportion of patients who elicited protective anti-HBs titres (96% vs 40%, P = 0.0001) were significantly higher in i.d. compared to i.m. patients. The levels of anti-HBs expressed as geometric mean titres and 95% confidence intervals (GMT (95% CI)), were significantly increased in i.d. than in i.m. groups, 100 (44-187) vs 26 (14-52) mUI/ml (P = 0.018). At month 12, the seroconversion rates were 57 vs 14% in i.d. and i.m. groups respectively (P = 0.158); the seroprotection rate was higher in i.d. individuals in comparison with i.m. patients, 50 vs 0%, P = 0.072. At month 20, the seroconversion rates were 54 and 0% among i.d. and i.m. patients respectively (P = 0.055); the seroprotection rate was higher in i.d. than in i.m. group (30 vs 0%, P = 0.2). At month 20, the median anti-HBs titres in i.d. patients were 21 mUI/ml, and GMT (95% CI) were 20.9 (2-54) mUI/ml. No important general or local side-effects were observed. The cost of our schedule was $92 US whereas the costs of other re-vaccination protocols ranged between 138 and $807 US. CONCLUSIONS Our results show that the unresponsiveness to recombinant yeast-derived vaccine may be mostly reversed by repeated low-dose i.d. injections of the same agent. In spite of an equal amount of HBsAg received, i.d. hepatitis B re-vaccination shows higher immunogenicity compared to i.m. administration over a 20-month observation period. Cost-effectiveness analysis demonstrated that the intradermal administration of HB vaccine is the most clinically effective re-vaccination strategy; it is also the most unexpensive one. We strongly recommend low-dose intradermal inoculations in order to re-vaccinate chronic dialysis patients who fail to respond to hepatitis B vaccination.
La Conciencia Fonológica y la Lectura Inicial en Niños que Ingresan a Primer Año Básico

Este articulo describe redimiento en pruebas de conciencia fonologica de un grupo de 400 ninos que ingresaron al primer ano basico y su relacion con la lectura emergente. El 51,3% de la varianza en lectura emergente, del grupo total, se explico por el rendiminto en pruebas fonologicas. Se considera el desarrollo de la conciencia fonologica como una posible zona de desarrollo proximo de la lectura concencional. Solamente el 22.5% de los ninos se encontraban en dicho nivel.
[Illicit substances use by Portuguese adolescents].

OBJECTIVE To describe the prevalence of illicit drug consumption among adolescents and the motives that led these adolescents to try them. METHODS Cross-sectional study with 2,499 adolescents aged 17 years, based on a cohort called EPITeen, which was started in 2003/2004 with adolescents born in 1990 who studied in public and private schools of the city of Porto, Portugal. A new assessment was carried out in 2007/2008: 1,716 adolescents (79.5%) were recovered and 783 new participants were evaluated. Information about social and demographic characteristics, family and personal history of diseases and behaviours were obtained through self-administered structured questionnaires. The chi-square test was used to test the associations. The statistical analysis was performed in the program SPSS® version 17. RESULTS Of the adolescents, 14.6% had tried drugs at least once in their lives. The most tried illicit drug was cannabis (12.5%), followed by alcohol together with cannabis (5.5%) and tranquilizers (1.7%). The most cited reason for trying drugs was curiosity (77.5%). Friends were the most frequently cited form of obtaining drugs and the school was seen by 24.2% of the adolescents as a place where it was possible to buy cannabis. CONCLUSIONS The results support the need to intervene at an early age and suggest that this intervention should be integrated with strategies targeted at other risk behaviors, particularly in schools.
YARNsim: Simulating Hadoop YARN

Despite the popularity of the Apache Hadoop system, its success has been limited by issues such as single points of failure, centralized job/task management, and lack of support for programming models other than MapReduce. The next generation of Hadoop, Apache Hadoop YARN, is designed to address these issues. In this paper, we propose YARNsim, a simulation system for Hadoop YARN. YARNsim is based on parallel discrete event simulation and provides protocol-level accuracy in simulating key components of YARN. YARNsim provides a virtual platform on which system architects can evaluate the design and implementation of Hadoop YARN systems. Also, application developers can tune job performance and understand the tradeoffs between different configurations, and Hadoop YARN system vendors can evaluate system efficiency under limited budgets. To demonstrate the validity of YARNsim, we use it to model two real systems and compare the experimental results from YARNsim and the real systems. The experiments include standard Hadoop benchmarks, synthetic workloads, and a bioinformatics application. The results show that the error rate is within 10% for the majority of test cases. The experiments prove that YARNsim can provide what-if analysis for system designers in a timely manner and at minimal cost compared with testing and evaluating on a real system.
The Impact of Older Age and Sex on Motion Discrimination

Background/Study Context: Reports of age-related differences on motion discrimination tasks have produced inconsistent findings concerning the influence of sex. Some studies have reported that older women have higher thresholds than older men, with others finding that women have higher motion thresholds regardless of age group. Reports of the age at which declines in motion discrimination first occur also differ, with some studies reporting declines only in groups aged over 70 years, with others reporting that age-related decline occurs at a younger age. The current study aimed to determine whether the sex differences found occur because relative to men, women have greater difficulty extracting motion signals from noise (Experiment 1) or have greater difficulty making use of the available motion cues (Experiment 2) in these complex moving stimuli. In addition, the influence of these manipulations on groups aged under and over 70 years was explored. Methods: Motion discrimination measures were obtained using 39 older adults aged between 60 and 85 years (21 women) and 40 younger adults aged between 20 and 45 years (20 women). In Experiment 1, coherent motion and relative motion displacement thresholds were obtained. In Experiment 2, coherent motion thresholds were obtained for stimuli containing either 150 or 600 dots. Results: In Experiment 1, the older group had significantly higher thresholds on the relative motion displacement and coherent motion tasks than a younger group. No differences in motion sensitivity were found in the older groups aged under or over 70 years. Women regardless of age group had significantly higher thresholds than men on both tasks. In Experiment 2, the older group had higher coherence thresholds than the younger group, and the number of dots presented had no influence on thresholds, for the older group or older women specifically. In the younger group, women had higher coherence thresholds than men with presentation of 150 but not 600 dots. There were 51% of the older group who showed evidence of age-related decline on all the motion coherence tasks conducted, with half of these in each the group aged under and over 70 years. Conclusion: Difficulties with noise exclusion failed to explain the sex differences found. The increased number of motion cues present when a larger number of dots were included was sufficient to reduce coherence thresholds in younger women but not older men or women. In addition to age, developmental history and sex may provide further predictors in older individuals of decline on measures of motion discrimination.
Career Choice Factors for BSW Students: A 10-Year Perspective.

This article examines the major factors involved in choosing to enter social work for 746 undergraduate students studied over a 10-year period. Its findings suggest that, although altruism remains the touchstone for their choice, students are motivated by both service to others and job self-interest. The findings also indicate that the dimensions of motivation for choosing social work have not significantly changed over the last 10 years. The implications for these findings are also discussed.
Complete Conversion of Brain D2 Dopamine Receptors from the High‐ to the Low‐Affinity State for Dopamine Agonists, Using Sodium Ions and Guanine Nucleotide

Since previous work had shown that brain D2 3,4‐dihydroxyphenylethylamine (dopamine) receptors were only partly converted from their high‐affinity state to their low‐affinity state, we here tested whether it was possible to obtain a complete 100% conversion of these receptors into their low‐affinity state. It was first essential to resolve the components of [3H]spiperone binding to dopaminergic sites and nondopaminergic sites in rat striatal homogenates. In the presence of 50 μMS‐sulpiride (to occlude the dopaminergic sites), therefore, we first determined that the residual binding of [3H]spiperone (approximately 20%) was inhibited by serotonergic agonists much more effectively than dopamine or noradrenaline, thus identifying the serotonergic component of [3H]spiperone binding. Thus, dopamine (or ADTN) inhibited the binding of [3H]spiperone at a high‐affinity site (with dissociation constant of 10 nM dopamine), at a low‐affinity site (with dissociation constant of 2,000 nM dopamine), and at the serotonergic site (with dissociation constant of 50,000 nM dopamine). In the absence of sodium ions, the high‐affinity site was about 50% occupied by [3H]spiperone, and guanine nucleotide had no effect on this proportion. In the presence of 120 mM NaCl, however, the high‐affinity site was reduced to 15% and guanine nucleotide completely eliminated this high‐affinity site, 100% of the sites having been completely converted to their low‐affinity state. Using [3H]N‐propyl‐norapomorphine to label the high‐affinity state of the dopamine receptor, 50% conversion into the low‐affinity state occurred at 45 mM NaCl, 69 mM NaCl, and 202 mM KCl. We conclude that it is possible to convert brain D2 dopamine receptors completely into their low‐affinity state, in the presence of NaCl and a guanine nucleotide, providing that appropriate allowance is made for the serotonergic component of [3H]spiperone binding.
Fitting in organizational values

Purpose – The current leadership literature has paid little attention to understanding the intervening mechanism by which leaders influence followers. In order to partially bridge this gap, the article aims to present a value‐fit charismatic leadership theory which focusses on the key intervening mechanism – person‐organization values fit.Design/methodology/approach – The model was tested empirically on 180 participants, including 51 managers and 129 employees from 37 large‐scale companies in Taiwan.Findings – Based on the block regression analysis, the results showed that CEO charismatic leadership has both direct and indirect effects on employees’ extra effort to work, satisfaction with the CEO, as well as organizational commitment, which are mediated by employees’ perceived person‐organization values fit. The findings also provided evidence that the relationship between charismatic leadership and person‐organization values fit is significant. Furthermore, the analysis also showed the significant effect.
VISUAL AND INSTRUMENTAL EVALUATION OF ORANGE JUICE COLOR: A CONSUMERS' PREFERENCE STUDY

ABSTRACT This study was aimed at (1) finding out correlations between the instrumental and the sensory evaluation of color attributes (lightness, chroma and hue) in orange juices (OJs) and (2) evaluating consumer preferences on OJs color. Fresh hand squeezed OJs from five varieties of oranges were evaluated by image analysis (DigiEye System, VeriVide Ltd., Leicester, UK) and spectroradiometer. Eighteen trained panelists classified the OJs in increasing order of hue (yellowish–reddish), chroma (dull–vivid) and lightness (clear–dark) and scored the colorimetric parameters on a continuous scale of 10 cm, anchored at the ends. Hue and lightness were well correlated with the instrumental measurement but not chroma. One hundred eleven consumers were asked to order the five OJs according to their color liking. A significant preference (P < 0.05) was observed for the OJs with intermediate hue and lightness values (Valencia Midnight). Consumers' segmentation was also explored by cluster analyses. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS For the first time, the correlations between instrumental color parameters obtained with DigiEye and the sensory evaluation of color in orange juice (OJ) has been explored. These correlations have demonstrated that trained panelists can effectively evaluate orange juice hue and lightness. Small chroma differences (<2.96 CIELAB units) are not well appreciated by a trained panel and therefore would not be relevant for the industry. Consumers' preference for OJ color suggests that the preferred hues are the most orangish against other more reddish or yellowish ones. However, there are different segments of the population that show preference for more reddish hues.
Barren‐ground caribou (Rangifer tarandus groenlandicus) behaviour after recent fire events; integrating caribou telemetry data with Landsat fire detection techniques

Fire regimes are changing throughout the North American boreal forest in complex ways. Fire is also a major factor governing access to high‐quality forage such as terricholous lichens for barren‐ground caribou (Rangifer tarandus groenlandicus). Additionally, fire alters forest structure which can affect barren‐ground caribou's ability to navigate in a landscape. Here, we characterize how the size and severity of fires are changing across five barren‐ground caribou herd ranges in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, Canada. Additionally, we demonstrate how time since fire, fire severity, and season result in complex changes in caribou behavioural metrics estimated using telemetry data. Fire disturbances were identified using novel gap‐free Landsat surface reflectance composites from 1985 to 2011 across all herd ranges. Burn severity was estimated using the differenced normalized burn ratio. Annual area burned and burn severity were assessed through time for each herd and related to two behavioural metrics: velocity and relative turning angle. Neither annual area burned nor burn severity displayed any temporal trend within the study period. However, certain herds, such as the Ahiak/Beverly, have more exposure to fire than other herds (i.e. Cape Bathurst had a maximum forested area burned of less than 4 km2). Time since fire and burn severity both significantly affected velocity and relative turning angles. During fall, winter, and spring, fire virtually eliminated foraging‐focused behaviour for all 26 years of analysis while more severe fires resulted in a marked increase in movement‐focused behaviour compared to unburnt patches. Between seasons, caribou used burned areas as early as 1‐year postfire, demonstrating complex, nonlinear reactions to time since fire, fire severity, and season. In all cases, increases in movement‐focused behaviour were detected postfire. We conclude that changes in caribou behaviour immediately postfire are primarily driven by changes in forest structure rather than changes in terricholous lichen availability.
20. What’s all the Clicking About? A Study of Classroom Response System Use at the University of Toronto

Classroom response systems (clickers) are used in many courses at the University of Toronto (U of T), primarily to introduce interactive pedagogy and to engage students in lecture courses. We examined the use of clickers in various courses at U of T and interviewed over 30 instructors about their use of clickers in classes with a total enrolment of over 5,000 students. Students in these classes were surveyed about their perception of the value of this technology. The objectives of our study were to evaluate the logistics of using clickers, the pedagogical value and associated teaching strategies, and students’ perception of its efficacy in their learning. We discuss some of the successes and failures of using clickers as a teaching and learning tool.
Mothers of Sexually Abused Children and the Concept of Collusion: A Literature Review

ABSTRACT Recent literature is reviewed relating to mothers of incestuously abused children and the concept of collusion along three dimensions: the mother's psychological development and personality characteristics; the mother's response to the disclosure of the sexual abuse; and the mother's relationship with the victimized child. The recent research reveals that: mothers of children sexually abused within the family are not necessarily more disturbed psychologically than mothers of nonabused children; mothers respond in a number of ways to their children's sexual victimization; and most mothers believe that their children have been abused. Such findings pose a challenge to the notion of collusion, which persists as an explanatory concept in clinical practice. The possibility of a broader conceptualization is explored.
The Effects of Social Network Centrality on Group Satisfaction

Abstract : The purpose of this research was to identify how various social network centralities affect a person's satisfaction level. Simple degree centrality has been utilized to specify an individual's location in a network by measuring the number of direct links with other members in the organization (Brass & Burkhardt, 1992, 1993). This study examines how location in friendship, task, and avoidance networks affect an individual's satisfaction with the group. To determine the relationship between social network centrality and work group satisfaction, a longitudinal field study was conducted on 440 active duty enlisted military members in a leadership development training course. While most research has indicated a positive relationship between task or friendship network centrality and satisfaction (Kilduff, Krachardt, 1993), other research suggests otherwise (Brass, 1981). The results of this study are similarly inconclusive. Task centrality only predicted work group satisfaction in one of six time periods, however the relationship was negative. Similarly, friendship network centrality predicted satisfaction in two time period, with a negative relationship. Avoidance network centrality negatively predicted work group satisfaction in two periods. These inconsistent results suggest that the relationship between network position and attitudes such as satisfaction are dynamic. This paper proposes that researchers must not neglect the dynamic nature of social networks as well as the dynamic nature of attitudes, and how they interact to influence individuals within social networks.
Impedance characterization and modeling of electrodes for biomedical applications

A low electrode-electrolyte impedance interface is critical in the design of electrodes for biomedical applications. To design low-impedance interfaces a complete understanding of the physical processes contributing to the impedance is required. In this work a model describing these physical processes is validated and extended to quantify the effect of organic coatings and incubation time. Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy has been used to electrically characterize the interface for various electrode materials: platinum, platinum black, and titanium nitride; and varying electrode sizes: 1 cm/sup 2/, and 900 /spl mu/m/sup 2/. An equivalent circuit model comprising an interface capacitance, shunted by a charge transfer resistance, in series with the solution resistance has been fitted to the experimental results. Theoretical equations have been used to calculate the interface capacitance impedance and the solution resistance, yielding results that correspond well with the fitted parameter values, thereby confirming the validity of the equations. The effect of incubation time, and two organic cell-adhesion promoting coatings, poly-L-lysine and laminin, on the interface impedance has been quantified using the model. This demonstrates the benefits of using this model in developing a better understanding of the physical processes occurring at the interface in more complex, biomedically relevant situations.