Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The importance of the family context in inflammatory bowel disease.

BACKGROUND This study examines psychological correlates of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) to answer these questions: What is the association between individual and family stress levels and the patient's coping ability and severity of illness? How does the level of family functioning correlate with individual coping and illness severity? To what extent are patient and family beliefs about IBD related to symptomatology? METHODS Seventeen patients and 44 of their family members were studied intensively in an exploration of the psychological response to IBD. They completed a comprehensive battery of self-report questionnaires assessing stressful life events, coping related to the illness, and beliefs regarding IBD. Ratings of family functioning were made from videotaped family discussions about IBD. Treating physicians made independent ratings of past and current disease severity. RESULTS Surprisingly, recent disease activity was negatively correlated with family stress level (r = -0.794), but was not associated with patient stress level. However, impaired coping with IBD by affected individuals was directly correlated with both individual (r = 0.595) and family-wide (r = 0.724) reported stress levels. Disease severity was also found to be responsive to family communication style (r = 0.431) and to level of family agreement (r = 0.531) regarding the etiology and management of IBD. CONCLUSIONS These findings suggest that individual stress affects coping with IBD, whereas family-wide stress, communication style, and agreement about disease etiology and management are related to disease activity. The interrelationship of family and patient as well as individual coping with IBD should be evaluated in future studies.
Outage Probabilities of Orthogonal Multiple-Access Relaying Techniques With Imperfect Source-Relay Links

An outage probability that is independent of signaling schemes is theoretically derived in this paper for an orthogonal multiple-access relay channel (MARC) system, where the estimates of the information sequences sent from source nodes, regardless of whether or not they are correctly decoded at the relay, are exclusive-OR (XOR)-network-coded and forwarded by the relay to the destination. The MARC system described above is referred to as estimates-exploiting MARC (e-MARC) in this paper for convenience. Following the probability derivation of e-MARC, comparisons are then made with the outage probability of the orthogonal MARC with the Select Decode-and-Forward relaying strategy (MARC-SDF). It is found through simulations that when one of the source nodes is far away from both the relay and the destination, the e-MARC system is superior to MARC-SDF in terms of outage performance. We further numerically calculate the outage probabilities for two special cases, and compare them with the probability of e-MARC. Furthermore, the impact of the source correlation on the outage probability of the e-MARC system is also investigated.
60-GHz SOI CMOS traveling-wave amplifier with NF below 3.8 dB from 0.1 to 40 GHz

In this paper, the design and the results of a CMOS traveling-wave amplifier (TWA) optimized for minimum noise figure is presented. Design tradeoffs and optimization guidelines for maximum operation frequency, gain and minimum noise are discussed by means of analytical calculations and simulations. The MMIC is fabricated using digital 90-nm silicon on insulator (SOI) technology and requires a chip area of only 0.3 mm/sup 2/. At a supply voltage of 2 V and a supply current of 66 mA, a gain of 9.7 dB/spl plusmn/1.6 dB is measured over a frequency range from 10 to 59 GHz. Toward dc, the gain increases up to 16 dB. The unity gain cutoff frequency is 71 GHz. At 20 and 40 GHz, the circuit has a 1-dB output compression point of 12.5 and 9.5 dBm, respectively. From 0.1 to 40 GHz, a noise figure below 3.8 dB is measured. The results are achieved at source/load impedances of 50 /spl Omega/ and include the pad parasitics. To the author's knowledge, the TWA has by far the lowest noise figure achieved for a silicon-based amplifier with comparable bandwidth.
Bridge over troubled waters

ABSTRACT How can we explain that same-sex marriages have been approved in countries like Portugal (2010) and Spain (2005), where the majority of the population identifies with the catholic religion, when they are not recognised in countries with more liberal traditions? Assessing social, economic and legal changes this paper aims to explain the transformations on family, gender and public policies in Portugal in the context of the welfarestate. Two main lines of analysis are pursued. First, changes in practices, attitudes and laws, such as the approval of gay marriage in Portugal (2010), are discussed and related to social, economic and institutional processes. The remarkable fall of catholic marriage in Portugal and the huge growth of children born out of the wedlock, just in one decade (2000–2010), are only some of the examples of these transformations. Secondly, the development of social, family, care and gender equality policies are analysed in order to put the welfare pathway of change in perspective: from a late start in the 1970s and 1980s to the expanding coverage, highlighting welfare-state insufficiencies and limitations as well as, more recently, with ideological and financial pressures for retrenchment. Bridges and troubled relations between social practises, values and public policies are also debated. Our research results are based in data from several sources, namely, European Social Survey (2004, 2006, 2008, 2010), Eurostat and National Statistics.
Safety and Efficacy of Escitalopram in the Treatment of Premature Ejaculation: A Double-Blind, Placebo-Controlled, Fixed-Dose, Randomized Study

Purpose: To evaluate the efficacy and safety of most selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor drug, escitalopram, in delaying ejaculation in patients with premature ejaculation (PE). Materials and Methods: A total of 276 married men (mean age, 34.4 years) with PE were randomly assigned to receive 10 mg of escitalopram (n = 138; Group 1) or placebo (n = 138; Group 2) for 12 weeks. Pretreatment evaluation included history and physical examination, intravaginal ejaculatory latency time (IELT), International Index of Erectile Function (IIEF), and Meares-Stamey test. The efficacy of 2 treatments was assessed every 2 weeks during treatment, at the end of study, and in 3- and 6-month follow-up after cessation of treatment. Results: At the end of 12-week treatment, the escitalopram group had a 4.9-fold (95% confidence interval [CI], 3.14-6.12) increase of the geometric mean IELT, whereas after placebo, the geometric mean IELT did not increase significantly (1.4-fold increase; 95% CI, 0.86-1.68; P = 0.001). Baseline mean intercourse satisfaction domain values of IIEF 10 and 11 reached to 16 and 10 at 12-week treatment in Groups 1 and 2, respectively (P = 0.01). At the end of 6-month follow-up period, the geometric mean IELT in escitalopram and placebo group demonstrated 3.1- (95% CI, 2.16-4.4) and 1.3-fold (95% CI, 0.78-1.62) increase, respectively (P = 0.001). Three- and 6-month intercourse satisfaction domain values of IIEF were 15 and 14 in Groups 1 and 10 and 10 (P = 0.01) in Group 2, respectively. Mean number of adverse events was 22 for escitalopram and 9 for placebo (P = 0.04). Conclusions: Oral escitalopram is an effective treatment for PE with long-term benefit for the patient after it is withdrawn. Further studies are required to draw final conclusions on the efficacy of this drug in PE.
Academic women faculty: are they finding the mentoring they need?

BACKGROUND Although women comprise an increasing proportion of US medical school faculty, they are underrepresented at higher ranks. Lack of effective mentoring may contribute to this disparity. We examined the role of academic rank, research focus, parenting, and part-time work on mentoring importance, needs, and gaps. METHODS In 2009, women faculty members of Harvard Medical School and Harvard School of Dental Medicine were invited by e-mail to participate in a 28-item structured questionnaire. Descriptive statistics and adjusted logistic regressions were used to identify relevant themes. RESULTS Of the 1179 women faculty who responded, 54% had a mentor, and 72% without a mentor desired mentoring. The most important mentor characteristic identified was availability. Respondents endorsed most mentoring areas as important (range 51%-99%); 52% of respondents identified mentoring gaps (area important and unmet) in developing and achieving career goals and negotiation skills. Interest in mentorship for skills needed for advancement (research and lecturing skills and getting national recognition) was significantly associated with lower rank. Assistant professors were most likely to identify mentoring related to writing and publishing articles, whereas associate professors identified program development/strategic planning as important. Faculty who are parents identified gaps in finding collaborators and balancing work and family life. CONCLUSIONS This survey identified a desire for both comprehensive and targeted mentoring to address gaps that varied by faculty rank, research focus, parenting, and work time status. Strategies to enhance mentoring should address career stages and include a structured framework for assessing mentoring gaps.
Molecular Evidence of Genetic Heterogeneity in Wistar‐Kyoto Rats: Implications for Research With the Spontaneously Hypertensive Rat

Spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) and nonnotensive Wistar-Kyoto (“WKY”) rats are frequently employed in experimental studies of hypertension. Although both SHR and WKY rat strains have been presumed to be fully inbred, recent studies have revealed important biologic variability in WKY rats from different commercial sources. Genealogk evidence suggests that, in the United States, breeding stocks of WKY rats may have been distributed to major commercial suppliers as early as the F10 generation. To test the hypothesis that commercially available WKY rats are genetically heterogeneous, we performed deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) “fingerprint” analysis on genomic DNA of WKY rats from two of the largest vendors in the United States, Taconic Farms and Charles River Laboratories. We found molecular evidence of genetic variability not only among WKY rats from two different breeding facilities, but also among WKY rats within a single breeding facility (Taconic Farms). Although some studies have suggested the possibility of biologic variability in SHR from different sources, preliminary studies have not revealed molecular evidence of genetic heterogeneity in SHR from these vendors. In demonstrating genetic variability in WKY rats from different sources, the current study provides compelling evidence that rats designated WKY do not constitute an inbred strain. Accordingly, the results of studies in which SHR and WKY rats are compared might vary because of genetic heterogeneity in “the WKY rat control strain. ”
Mapping the Tonotopic Organization in Human Auditory Cortex with Minimally Salient Acoustic Stimulation

Despite numerous neuroimaging studies, the tonotopic organization in human auditory cortex is not yet unambiguously established. In this functional magnetic resonance imaging study, 20 subjects were presented with low-level task-irrelevant tones to avoid spread of cortical activation. Data-driven analyses were employed to obtain robust tonotopic maps. Two high-frequency endpoints were situated on the caudal and rostral banks of medial Heschl's gyrus, while low-frequency activation peaked on its lateral crest. Based on cortical parcellations, these 2 tonotopic progressions coincide with the primary auditory field (A1) in lateral koniocortex (Kl) and the rostral field (R) in medial koniocortex (Km), which together constitute a core region. Another gradient was found on the planum temporale. Our results show the bilateral existence of 3 tonotopic gradients in angulated orientations, which contrasts with colinear configurations that were suggested before. We argue that our results corroborate and elucidate the apparently contradictory findings in literature.
Interference Control Modulations Over Conscious Perception

The relation between attention and consciousness has been a controversial topic over the last decade. Although there seems to be an agreement on their distinction at the functional level, no consensus has been reached about attentional processes being or not necessary for conscious perception. Previous studies have explored the relation of alerting and orienting systems of attention and conscious perception, but the impact of the anterior executive attention system on conscious access remains unexplored. In the present study, we investigated the behavioral interaction between executive attention and conscious perception, testing control mechanisms both at stimulus-level representation and after error commission. We presented a classical Stroop task, manipulating the proportion of congruent and incongruent trials, and analyzed the effect of reactive and proactive control on the conscious perception of near-threshold stimuli. Reactive control elicited under high proportion congruent conditions influenced participants’ decision criterion, whereas proactive control elicited under low proportion congruent conditions was ineffective in modulating conscious perception. In addition, error commission affected both perceptual sensitivity to detect near-threshold information and response criterion. These results suggest that reactivation of task goals through reactive control strategies in conflict situations impacts decision stages of conscious processing, whereas interference control elicited by error commission impacts both perceptual sensitivity and decision stages of conscious processing. We discuss the implications of our results for the gateway hypothesis about attention and consciousness, as they showed that interference control (both at stimulus-level representation and after error commission) can modulate the conscious access of near-threshold stimuli.
Functional evidence for calcium‐induced calcium release in isolated rat vibrissal Merkel cell mechanoreceptors.

1. Single unit recordings were made from Merkel cell (sinus hair type I; St I) and sinus hair type II (St II) mechanoreceptors in isolated rat vibrissae. Responses were determined as the number of spikes evoked by controlled mechanical displacement of the hair shaft for 5 s every 30 s. 2. Superfusion of caffeine (10 mM) increased the responses of Merkel cell receptors by 50‐180% of control (mean +/‐ S.E.M., 64 +/‐ 12.6%, n = 6, P < 0.001). Similar concentrations of caffeine inhibited St II receptor responses by 20‐60% (mean +/‐ S.E.M., 35 +/‐ 8%, n = 5, P < 0.01). In both receptor types, caffeine induced a low‐frequency increase in spontaneous firing. 3. When Merkel cell receptor responses were completely blocked by superfusion of high Mg2+‐containing solution (to competitively block Ca2+ influx) caffeine had no effect when added after complete inhibition, but when added during partial inhibition of responses, the Mg2+‐induced inhibition was transiently reversed or halted. This suggests that Ca2+ influx was a prerequisite for the action of caffeine. 4. Ryanodine (1 microM) increased the responses of Merkel cell receptors to mechanical stimulation by 7‐60% (mean +/‐ S.E.M., 32 +/‐ 10.9 %, n = 5, P < 0.05) but had no effect on St II receptor responses. 5. The Ca2+‐induced Ca2+ release (CICR) inhibitor procaine inhibited St I receptor responses in a concentration‐dependent manner. Near‐maximal inhibition was attained with 100 microM procaine. In four St I units, mean responses were depressed to 25% of control values. When both procaine (100 microM) and caffeine (10 mM) were introduced together, no net effect was seen. The responses of St II receptors were little affected by up to 100 microM procaine superfusion. 6. It is concluded that the mechano‐electrical transduction process in St I receptors (but not St II) includes a CICR pathway. Taken with previous findings on the role of Merkel cells, it is likely that CICR is occurring in the Merkel cells.
In vivo Study to Evaluate the Protective Effects of Amifostine on Radiation-Induced Damage of Testis Tissue

Objective: To investigate the early protective effects of amifostine against radiation-induced damage on rat testis tissue. Methods: Eighty adult male Wistar rats were randomized to 4 groups: Saline solution was given to group A for control, 200 mg/kg amifostine (WR-2721) to group B, a single fraction of 6 Gy local irradiation to testes in group C and 200 mg/kg amifostine 15–30 min before 6 Gy testicular irradiation to group D. Animals were sacrificed 3 weeks after treatment and their testes were removed for macroscopic, microscopic and ultrastructural histopathological examination. Results: The weights, widths and lengths of testes in the last 3 groups had decreased significantly when compared with the control group, but the decrease in widths after irradiation was found to be significantly less only in the amifostine plus radiation group. There was a significant reduction of testis weights in relation to the individual body weights in the irradiated testes compared with the other groups (p < 0.005), while there was no significant change of testis weight/total body weight ratio in amifostine plus irradiation group. Spermatogonium A and primary spermatocyte counts were also less in the treatment groups, and primary spermatocyte numbers were significantly higher in amifostine plus radiation group when compared with radiation alone group (p < 0.005). Pretreatment with amifostine reduced the decrease of primary spermatocyte counts by a factor of 1.28. Electron microscopic analysis did not show any cytotoxic effect of amifostine alone, and furthermore, ultrastructural findings were normal with the addition of amifostine prior to irradiation, though there was damage in the radiation exposure group. Conclusion: Amifostine when given alone by itself appears to cause adverse alterations in testis tissue; however, it has a radioprotective effect on spermiogenetic cells when used prior to radiation.
What is “Right” in Hegel's Philosophy of Right?

I provide a thematic reconstruction of Hegel's positive concept of right. Against those who charge that Hegel denies any role to substantive political evaluation, I argue that the Philosophy of Right articulates a notion of the right to recognition (Anerkennung) as the central feature of the modern state. The concept of recognition, I contend, requires not just toleration of others but a more robust notion of respect for the “free personality” that is the philosophical ground of right. The right to recognition is, furthermore, intended to provide the foundation for a new form of ethical life (Sittlichkeit), Hegel's modern analogue to classical conceptions of civic virtue. In conclusion I examine briefly two objections that stand in the way of a contemporary rehabilitation of Hegelian political philosophy.
Augmenting Wikipedia with Named Entity Tags

Wikipedia is the largest organized knowledge repository on the Web, increasingly employed by natural language processing and search tools. In this paper, we investigate the task of labeling Wikipedia pages with standard named entity tags, which can be used further by a range of information extraction and language processing tools. To train the classifiers, we manually annotated a small set of Wikipedia pages and then extrapolated the annotations using the Wikipedia category information to a much larger training set. We employed several distinct features for each page: bag-of-words, page structure, abstract, titles, and entity mentions. We report high accuracies for several of the classifiers built. As a result of this work, a Web service that classifies any Wikipedia page has been made available to the academic community.
Class Struggle and the New Deal: Industrial Labor, Industrial Capital, and the State

In this reassessment of New Deal policymaking, Rhonda Levine argues that the major constraints upon and catalysts for Roosevelt's policies were rooted in class conflict. Countering neo-Marxist and state-centred theories, which focus on administrative and bureaucratic structures, she contends that too little attention has been paid to the effect of class struggle. Levine analyzes the balance of class forces during the Great Depression and the ways in which they shaped the formulation, implementation and consequences of federal policies.
MAP Estimation for Multiresolution Fusion in Remotely Sensed Images Using an IGMRF Prior Model

In this paper, we propose a model-based approach for the multiresolution fusion of satellite images. Given the high-spatial-resolution panchromatic (Pan) image and the low-spatial- and high-spectral-resolution multispectral (MS) image acquired over the same geographical area, the problem is to generate a high-spatial- and high-spectral-resolution MS image. This is clearly an ill-posed problem, and hence, we need a proper regularization. We model each of the low-spatial-resolution MS images as the aliased and noisy version of their corresponding high spatial resolution, i.e., fused (to be estimated) MS images. A proper aliasing matrix is assumed to take care of the undersampling process. The high-spatial-resolution MS images to be estimated are then modeled as separate inhomogeneous Gaussian Markov random fields (IGMRF), and a maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation is used to obtain the fused image for each of the MS bands. The IGMRF parameters are estimated from the available high-resolution Pan image and are used in the prior model for regularization purposes. Since the method does not directly operate on Pan pixel values as most of the other methods do, spectral distortion is minimum, and the spatial properties are better preserved in the fused image as the IGMRF parameters are learned at every pixel. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach over some existing methods by conducting experiments on synthetic data, as well as on the images captured by the QuickBird satellite.
Impact of smoking and smoking cessation on cardiovascular events and mortality among older adults: meta-analysis of individual participant data from prospective cohort studies of the CHANCES consortium

Objective To investigate the impact of smoking and smoking cessation on cardiovascular mortality, acute coronary events, and stroke events in people aged 60 and older, and to calculate and report risk advancement periods for cardiovascular mortality in addition to traditional epidemiological relative risk measures. Design Individual participant meta-analysis using data from 25 cohorts participating in the CHANCES consortium. Data were harmonised, analysed separately employing Cox proportional hazard regression models, and combined by meta-analysis. Results Overall, 503? 905 participants aged 60 and older were included in this study, of whom 37? 952 died from cardiovascular disease. Random effects meta-analysis of the association of smoking status with cardiovascular mortality yielded a summary hazard ratio of 2.07 (95% CI 1.82 to 2.36) for current smokers and 1.37 (1.25 to 1.49) for former smokers compared with never smokers. Corresponding summary estimates for risk advancement periods were 5.50 years (4.25 to 6.75) for current smokers and 2.16 years (1.38 to 2.39) for former smokers. The excess risk in smokers increased with cigarette consumption in a dose-response manner, and decreased continuously with time since smoking cessation in former smokers. Relative risk estimates for acute coronary events and for stroke events were somewhat lower than for cardiovascular mortality, but patterns were similar. Conclusions Our study corroborates and expands evidence from previous studies in showing that smoking is a strong independent risk factor of cardiovascular events and mortality even at older age, advancing cardiovascular mortality by more than five years, and demonstrating that smoking cessation in these age groups is still beneficial in reducing the excess risk.