Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Metronidazole-Resistant Helicobacter pylori Is More Prevalent in Patients with Nonulcer Dyspepsia than in Peptic Ulcer Patients in a Multiethnic Asian Population

ABSTRACT The trend of increasing prevalence of antibiotic resistance among Helicobacter pylori strains has been suggested as a cause of the failure of treatment of H. pylori infections. In this study, 120 of 211 antral biopsy specimens from patients with dyspeptic symptoms were found to harbor H. pylori. The isolates from the 120 specimens were tested by the agar dilution method, and 38 (31.7%) were found to be metronidazole resistant. Among the 211 subjects, 81 of 115 (70.4%) patients with peptic ulcer (PU) were infected with H. pylori, whereas 39 of 96 (40.6%) patients with nonulcer dyspepsia (NUD) were infected with H. pylori. Interestingly, significantly more NUD patients than PU patients harbored metronidazole-resistant H. pylori (22 of 39 [56.4%] and 16 of 81 [19.8%], respectively; P < 0.001). A similar pattern was also observed among NUD patients of different ethnicities but not between male and female patients (23 of 78 [29.5%] and 15 of 42 [35.7%], respectively; P = 0.54). In the posttreatment follow-up, five of six patients who had positive urea breath test results, indicating treatment failure, were NUD patients. Of these, four harbored metronidazole-resistant H. pylori strains. This further illustrates the relevance of metronidazole-resistant H. pylori in NUD patients. The significantly higher percentage of metronidazole-resistant H. pylori isolates in NUD patients may be attributed to the protection offered by the mucus layer of the nonulcerated stomach to the bacteria that reside below it, resulting in organism exposure to sublethal concentrations of metronidazole and leading to the induction of metronidazole resistance. The results demonstrate that the H. pylori isolates colonizing NUD patients are more likely to be resistant to metronidazole. It will therefore be useful to reevaluate the use of metronidazole in the treatment of NUD patients infected with H. pylori.
Nonallopatric and parallel origin of local reproductive barriers between two snail ecotypes

Theory suggests that speciation is possible without physical isolation of populations (hereafter, nonallopatric speciation), but recent nonallopatric models need the support of irrefutable empirical examples. We collected snails (Littorina saxatilis) from three areas on the NW coast of Spain to investigate the population genetic structure of two ecotypes. Earlier studies suggest that these ecotypes may represent incipient species: a large, thick‐shelled ‘RB’ ecotype living among the barnacles in the upper intertidal zone and a small, thin‐shelled ‘SU’ ecotype living among the mussels in the lower intertidal zone only 10–30 m away. The two ecotypes overlap and hybridize in a midshore zone only 1–3 m wide. Three different types of molecular markers [allozymes, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and microsatellites] consistently indicated partial reproductive isolation between the RB and the SU ecotypes at a particular site. However, each ecotype was related more closely to the other ecotype from the same site than to the same ecotype from another site further along the Galician coast (25–77 km away). These findings supported earlier results based solely on allozyme variation and we could now reject the possibility that selection produced these patterns. The patterns of genetic variation supported a nonallopatric model in which the ecotypes are formed independently at each site by parallel evolution and where the reproductive barriers are a byproduct of divergent selection for body size. We argue that neither our laboratory hybridization experiments nor our molecular data are compatible with a model based on allopatric ecotype formation, secondary overlap and introgression.
Regeneration of olfactory afferent axons in the locust brain

The insect olfactory system consists of thousands of sensory neurons on each antenna, which project into the primary olfactory center, the glomerular antennnal lobe. There, they form synapses with local interneurons and projection neurons, which relay olfactory information to the second‐order olfactory center, the mushroom body. Olfactory afferents of adult locusts (Locusta migratoria) were axotomized by crushing the base of the antenna. We studied the resulting degeneration and regeneration in the antennal lobe by size measurements, anterograde dye labeling through the antennal nerve, and immunofluorescence staining of cell surface markers. Within 3 days postcrush, the antennal lobe size was reduced by 30% and from then onward regained size back to normal by 2 weeks postinjury. Concomitantly, anterograde labeling revealed regenerating afferents reaching the antennal lobe by day 4 postcrush, and reinnervating the olfactory neuropil almost back to normal within 2 weeks. Regenerated fibers were directed precisely into the antennal lobe, where they reinnervated glomeruli. As a remarkable exception, a few regenerating fibers projected erroneously into the mushroom body on a pathway that is normally chosen by second‐order projection neurons. Regenerating afferents expressed the cell surface proteins lachesin and fasciclin I. The antennal lobe neuropil expressed the cell surface marker semaphorin 1a. In conclusion, axonal regeneration in the locust olfactory system appears to be possible, precise, and fast, opening the possibility of future functional and mechanistic studies. J. Comp. Neurol. , 2012. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Underlying Policy Assumptions of Charter School Reform: The Multiple Meanings of a Movement

Based on interviews with more than 50 policy makers in six states, this article examines the politics of charter school reform and argues that the bipartisan support for these more autonomous schools masks often opposing viewpoints regarding the purpose of this reform. The authors identify three salient and conflicting themes that emerge from policy makers’ explanations of their support for charter schools. The first theme was voiced by policy makers who see charter schools as the beginning of the end of government-run public education and the forefront of a move toward vouchers. The second theme was articulated by policy makers who are committed to a system of public education, but who see charter school reform as a “last chance” to save that system. And the third theme arose in interviews with policy makers who see charter schools as one of many, but not necessarily the central, reform that could strengthen the public schools. Thus, the authors write that charter school reform embodies less of a consensus of views about the future of public education than a fragile bargain between political adversaries who all seek to prove they favor educational reform, but for different reasons and toward different ends.
On the Structure of Verbal Short-term Memory and its Functional Role in Sentence Comprehension: Evidence from Neuropsychology

Abstract We present a case of a patient with a disorder of short-term memory. BO has a reduced span (2 to 3 items), no recency effect in free recall, and rapid forgetting in Brown-Peterson tasks, establishing her as a patient with impaired short-term verbal memory functions. She shows no effect of either phonological similarity or word length in recall of auditory or written word lists, but some recency effect under recall-from-end conditions and better performance on Brown-Peterson tasks in an unfilled than in a filled condition. This pattern of performance is interpreted as being consistent with a primary disturbance of the articulatory rehearsal processes of S.T. M. and possibly some impairment of the phonological store (using Baddeley's 1986 terminology). Her aphasic disturbance—apraxia of speech—is also consistent with a disturbance of articulatory rehearsal. BO shows a retained ability to extract phonology from print, including an ability to apply sublexical grapheme-phoneme correspondences, thus ind.
PERSPECTIVE: Representations of Islam and Muslims in Psychological Publications

A review was conducted of 1,354 abstracts in the PsycINFO database containing the terms Islam, Muslim and/or Moslem. These were analyzed in terms of article type (e.g., empirical works), publication type (e.g., book), topic (e.g., health, education), tone toward Islam (i.e., positive, negative, balanced), place of publication (e.g., United States), and religious background of author (assessed on the basis of 1st author name). It was concluded that Islam remains the focus of only a small proportion of the total number of published works; that 19.9% of abstracts represented comments, advice, and observations rather than data-driven research; that 7.2% adopted a negative tone toward Islam (compared with 12.9% that were positive); and that few publications have investigated attitudes toward Muslim populations.
Enabling a Tradeoff between Completion Time and Decoding Delay in Instantly Decodable Network Coded Systems

This paper studies the complicated interplay of the completion time (as a measure of throughput) and the decoding delay performance in instantly decodable network coded (IDNC) systems over wireless broadcast erasure channels with memory. We propose two new algorithms that enable a tradeoff for an improved balance between completion time and decoding delay of broadcasting a block of packets. We first formulate the IDNC packet selection problem that improves the balance between completion time and decoding delay as a statistical shortest path (SSP) problem. However, since finding such packet selection policy using the SSP technique is computationally complex, we employ its geometric structure to find some guidelines and use them to propose two efficient heuristic packet selection algorithms for broadcast erasure channels with a wide range of memory conditions. It is shown that each one of the two proposed algorithms is superior for a specific range of memory conditions. Furthermore, we show that the proposed algorithms achieve an improved fairness in terms of the decoding delay across all receivers.
Cognition Within and Between Organizations: Five Key Questions

This special issue of Organization Science taps into the burgeoning work on managerial and organizational cognition. In the last 15 years, there has been a decided “cognitive turn” within organizational studies as researchers increasingly explore the relationships among mind, management, and organization. The early groundwork established by the Carnegie School of organizational theory, the success of modern cognitive science, and the recent diffusion of social constructionism within organizational studies have all contributed to this growing interest in cognitive research. Researchers are now exploring the cognitive underpinnings of such diverse organizational phenomena as job attitudes, performance appraisals, managerial decision making, environmental sensemaking, organizational learning, and interorganizational belief systems. Few areas of contemporary organizational science remain untouched by a cognitive agenda. In this short paper, we introduce the special issue by discussing the issue's focus and hi.
Structure Elucidation of Procyanidins Isolated from Rhododendron formosanum and Their Anti-Oxidative and Anti-Bacterial Activities

Rhododendron formosanum is an endemic species distributed in the central mountains of Taiwan. In this study, the biological activities of major procyanidins isolated from the leaf extract of R. formosanum were investigated. Four compounds, including two procyanidin dimers, procyanidin A1 (1) and B3 (2), and two procyanidin trimmers, procyanidin C4 (4) and cinnamtannin D1 (5), were isolated and identified on the basis of spectroscopic data. The structure of a new procyanidin dimer, rhodonidin A (3), was elucidated by 2D-NMR, CD spectrum and MS. The procyanidin trimmers and rhodonidin A are reported for the first time in Ericaceae. The biological activities of these procyanidins were evaluated using anti-bacterial and anti-oxidative assays. Only the new compound 3 demonstrated strong anti-bacterial activity against Staphylococcus aureus at an MIC value of 4 μg/mL. All compounds showed pronounced antioxidant activities and the activities are enhanced as the amount of OH groups in procyanidins increased. In conclusion, the pleiotropic effects of procyanidins isolated from the leaves of R. formosanum can be a source of promising compounds for the development of future pharmacological applications.
On Comparability of Multiple Antenna Channels

Partial ordering relations, first developed by Shannon and Csiszar for discrete memoryless channels, can be used for comparing certain information-theoretic properties of channels. In this paper we extend their ideas to multiple antenna channels and introduce three partial ordering relations that enable us to compare multiple antenna channels in different senses, namely, strong sense, weak sense, and capability sense, that give insight into the analytical behavior of mutual information and coding performance of these channels. We provide sufficient conditions for transitivity of all three relations for three classes of channels: additive white Gaussian noise channels, flat-fading channels with full channels state information (CSI) at the receiver, and flat-fading channels with no CSI. These conditions are easily expressed in terms of the channel parameters such as the line-of-sight and scattering components of the channel. Moreover, these conditions show how the line-of-sight and scattering components of a channel affect the mutual information and coding performance of the channel. For example, in the presence of CSI at the receiver, the mutual information is monotonically increasing with respect to the variations of the line-of-sight component in certain geometrical directions. Index Terms Capacity, multiple antenna, mutual information, partial ordering, Rayleigh, Rician. ∗This work was supported in part by Texas Instruments Leadership University Program.
A Probabilistic Framework for Reserve Scheduling and ${\rm N}-1$ Security Assessment of Systems With High Wind Power Penetration

We propose a probabilistic framework to design an N-1 secure day-ahead dispatch and determine the minimum cost reserves for power systems with wind power generation. We also identify a reserve strategy according to which we deploy the reserves in real-time operation, which serves as a corrective control action. To achieve this, we formulate a stochastic optimization program with chance constraints, which encode the probability of satisfying the transmission capacity constraints of the lines and the generation limits. To incorporate a reserve decision scheme, we take into account the steady-state behavior of the secondary frequency controller and, hence, consider the deployed reserves to be a linear function of the total generation-load mismatch. The overall problem results in a chance constrained bilinear program. To achieve tractability, we propose a convex reformulation and a heuristic algorithm, whereas to deal with the chance constraint we use a scenario-based-approach and an approach that considers only the quantiles of the stationary distribution of the wind power error. To quantify the effectiveness of the proposed methodologies and compare them in terms of cost and performance, we use the IEEE 30-bus network and carry out Monte Carlo simulations, corresponding to different wind power realizations generated by a Markov chain-based model.
Depression and Sexual Desire: An Exploratory Study in Psychiatric Patients

The purpose of this article was to study the relation between depression and its effect on the sexual desire in psychiatric patients. The sample comprised 89 patients from the Psychiatric and Mental Health Department of Alto Ave's Hospital Center, Entidade Pública Empresarial. The obtained results in this exploratory study revealed that depressive symptomatology severity is directly related with sexual desire. Variables gender, age, and working status, as well as, sociocultural levels indicated important and significant differences between patients.
Getting it right from the start? The influence of early school entry on later achievements in mathematics

SUMMARY There has been a growing public concern in the UK about falling standards in numeracy over the 1990s. A little-examined assumption of successive governments has been that providing high quality teaching of numeracy from an early age leads to the raising of standards, to be judged in national and international terms. One goal of the project to be described here was to evaluate critically this assumption. This was achieved through a case study of the development of learning and teaching of numeracy in two, contrasting European contexts — England and Slovenia — in order to search for the explanations for observed differences in international performance at nine years (TIMSS, 1997). This paper will focus on the development of high and low-attaining six and seven-year-olds' arithmetic knowledge and calculation strategies in the two contexts and in relation to existing policy and practice. Several standardised and non-standardised instruments designed for the study were applied, using both oral and written tasks. Two-way analysis of variance showed six-year-old English pupils to score significantly higher than Slovene preschoolers for a test of basic arithmetic yet by seven years there were no significant differences and thereafter the Slovene pupils forged ahead. For a standardised arithmetic test (BAS) English six and seven-year-olds scored significantly higher yet by eight years there were no significant differences between the countries. Mental calculation tasks also showed that by the end of the Slovene children's first year at school there was little difference in accuracy between the two groups. Furthermore, unlike their English counterparts, Slovene children were beginning to use recall of fact strategies. By eight years, as data from the larger project showed, there appeared to be no benefits to accrue from the English early school entry. These results are discussed in the light of broader educational and cultural differences.
Representation or Participation?

Abstract The uses of the popular microblogging service Twitter for political purposes have been discussed by scholars and political pundits alike. While suggestions have been made that the conversational aspects of the microblog could serve to instigate online deliberation between equals, rather few studies have investigated such claims empirically. This paper presents such an empirical study, based on a large-scale data set of tweets concerning the 2011 Danish parliamentary election. By combining state-of-the-art data collection and analysis techniques with theoretically informed matters for discussion, we provide an assessment of political Twitter activity among high-end users of the microblog during a one-month period leading up to the election. Identifying a series of user types, fi ndings indicate that while the bulk of the studied activity bares characteristics of a representative public sphere, traces of a participatory public sphere were also discerned.
Psycholinguistics and the Teaching of Reading

The Elementary School Journal Volume 79, Number 5 ? 1979 by The University of Chicago 001 3-5984/79/7905-0001$00.75 What is really happening when the book says, ". -. if I knew," and the student reads, ". if I had known"? Should a student be corrected for reading, ". before finally deciding on Syracuse," when the book actually says, ". before he finally decided to go to Syracuse"? Why do children add words as they read, as in these examples in which the words in parentheses were added by students: "Then he climbed (over) the fence" and "First turn the (egg) carton upside down"? The students who read these passages were using their knowledge of their language as an integral part of the reading process. As the examples illustrate, students bring a wealth of information to the reading process. Scholars in psycholinguistics who are studying the relationship between children's knowledge of their language and the process of reading have identified a number of insights into the process that may be useful to reading teachers.
MiR-15b Targets Cyclin D1 to Regulate Proliferation and Apoptosis in Glioma Cells

Aim. To investigate the role and mechanism of miR-15b in the proliferation and apoptosis of glioma. Methods. The miR-15b mimics were transfected into human glioma cells to upregulate the miR-15b expression. Cyclin D1 was determined by both western blotting analysis and luciferase reporter assay. Methylthiazol tetrazolium (MTT) and flow cytometry were employed to detect the cell proliferation, cell cycle, and apoptosis. Results. Overexpression of miR-15b inhibits proliferation by arrested cell cycle progression and induces apoptosis, possibly by directly targeting Cyclin D1. Both luciferase assay and bioinformatics search revealed a putative target site of miR-15b binding to the 3′-UTR of Cyclin D1. Moreover, expression of miR-15b in glioma tissues was found to be inversely correlated with Cyclin D1 expression. Enforced Cyclin D1 could abrogate the miR-15b-mediated cell cycle arrest and apoptosis. Conclusions. Our findings identified that miR-15b may function as a glioma suppressor by targeting the Cyclin D1, which may provide a novel therapeutic strategy for treatment of glioma.
Health-related quality of life in primary care patients with mental disorders. Results from the PRIME-MD 1000 Study.

OBJECTIVE To determine if different mental disorders commonly seen in primary care are uniquely associated with distinctive patterns of impairment in the components of health-related quality of life (HRQL) and how this compares with the impairment seen in common medical disorders. DESIGN Survey. SETTING Four primary care clinics. SUBJECTS A total of 1000 adult patients (369 selected by convenience and 631 selected by site-specific methods to avoid sampling bias) assessed by 31 primary care physicians using PRIME-MD (Primary Care Evaluation of Mental Disorders) to make diagnoses of mood, anxiety, alcohol, somatoform, and eating disorders. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES The six scales of the Short-Form General Health Survey and self-reported disability days, adjusting for demographic variables as well as psychiatric and medical comorbidity. RESULTS Mood, anxiety, somatoform, and eating disorders were associated with substantial impairment in HRQL. Impairment was also present in patients who only had subthreshold mental disorder diagnoses, such as minor depression and anxiety disorder not otherwise specified. Mental disorders, particularly mood disorders, accounted for considerably more of the impairment on all domains of HRQL than did common medical disorders. Finally, we found marked differences in the pattern of impairment among different groups of mental disorders just as others have reported unique patterns associated with different medical disorders. Whereas mood disorders had a pervasive effect on all domains of HRQL, anxiety, somatoform, and eating disorders affected only selected domains. CONCLUSIONS Mental disorders commonly seen in primary care are not only associated with more impairment in HRQL than common medical disorders, but also have distinct patterns of impairment. Primary care directed at improving HRQL needs to focus on the recognition and treatment of common mental disorders. Outcomes studies of mental disorders in both primary care and psychiatric settings should include multidimensional measures of HRQL.