Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Short‐term exposure to oleandrin enhances responses to IL‐8 by increasing cell surface IL‐8 receptors

One of the first steps in host defence is the migration of leukocytes. IL‐8 and its receptors are a chemokine system essential to such migration. Up‐regulation of these receptors would be a viable strategy to treat dysfunctional host defence. Here, we studied the effects of the plant glycoside oleandrin on responses to IL‐8 in a human monocytic cell line.
Accuracy of Noninvasive and Invasive Point-of-Care Total Blood Hemoglobin Measurement in an Outpatient Setting

Abstract Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine the accuracy of noninvasive hemoglobin measurement using pulse CO–oximetry (Pronto® SpHb®, Masimo Corp.) and a commonly used, invasive, point–of–care, automated spectrophotometer (HemoCue 201+®, HemoCue, Inc.), in comparison with hemoglobin measurements obtained from a laboratory hematology analyzer (measuring total blood hemoglobin) in the outpatient setting. Methods: Adult patients presenting to an outpatient research clinic were tested for total blood hemoglobin measurement by 3 methods: noninvasive pulse CO–oximetry (SpHb®), finger–stick blood sample on a point–of–care device, and venous sample on a laboratory hematology analyzer (reference device). Bias and standard deviation (SD) of SpHb® and HemoCue 201+® compared with the values obtained with the laboratory hematology analyzer were calculated and Bland–Altman graphs were generated. Results: Samples from 152 subjects were assessed (average age, 46 years; 69% female). The bias ± SD compared with the reference method was −0.5 ± 1.0 g/dL for SpHb® and 0.3 ± 1.0 g/dL for HemoCue 201+®. The Bland–Altman plots assessing agreement of the test methods to the reference method had limits of agreement of +2.5 to 1.5 g/dL for SpHb® and +1.7 to 2.3 g/dL for HemoCue 201+®. A noninvasive measurement could not be obtained in 4 subjects after 2 attempts (2.5% failure rate), whereas the HemoCue 201+® measurements were obtained for all subjects. Conclusion: Noninvasive SpHb® testing had bias and SD similar to those of HemoCue 201+®. Because SpHb® measurement is noninvasive, it may offer additional patient and provider benefits.
The relation between education, knowledge and action for better waste management in Poland

In recent years a significant increase in municipal solid waste (MSW) amount has been noted in Poland, and yet there is no fully efficient system for its treatment. Undertaking projects for rational MSW management requires considering both technical facilities and social barriers (waste reduction, re-use and segregation in households). In Poland, attempts to educate and mobilise society to segregate recyclables have not yet produced satisfactory results. Society’s awareness in this field needs to be raised. The purpose of this study was to determine the level of knowledge and understanding about MSW management and the relationship between knowledge possessed and actions undertaken for various residential age groups in two Polish provinces. In all groups, 30% of the respondents showed a satisfactory level of knowledge, whilst an equally small number of individuals had undertaken actions for MSW management at home; people with a higher level of knowledge undertook such actions slightly more often. No significant differences between the provinces were found, but residents of town, where waste segregation has been introduced simultaneously with an information campaign, showed a higher level of knowledge. The study points to the need to further educate people about MSW, and to encourage the teaching of pro-environmental attitudes.
“Charging” and “Blowing Out”: Patterns and Cultures of GHB Use in Melbourne, Australia

Recent increases in the use of gamma hydroxybutyrate (GHB) in club and rave settings have been associated with a series of acute health problems including overdose. Drawing upon research recently completed in Melbourne, Australia among a sample of young club and rave patrons, this article explores the knowledge, attitudes and related “risk-behaviors” of individuals who use GHB, as well as the various cultures and contexts surrounding its use. A mixed quantitative and qualitative research design was utilized, comprising a detailed survey (N=923) and semistructured interviews (N=24). Almost all survey respondents reported to have consumed illicit drugs in the past, with around half reporting “lifetime” use of GHB. A quarter reported using GHB in the past year. GHB related harms were widely reported with 22% of GHB users reporting to have overdosed on the drug at least once. The article closes with recommendations for GHB specific prevention and harm reduction strategies.
Motivation for English language learning: a study of Hong Kong vocational students

The aim of the present study is to explore the motivational factors of Hong Kong vocational students in learning English. A qualitative case study approach was employed with a combination of surveys with self-completion questionnaire, semi-structured interviews and diary notes. The research, which was carried out in two phases from September to June 2005-6 in one academic year, had the objective of examining whether there was any change of motivation for learning English. Ten students from a vocational institute were selected for the interviews, each were interviewed twice. They were also invited to write diaries, and to record their daily English activities. The data collected were used to triangulate with the interview findings when analyzing the results. The study was initiated by students’ differences in learning attitudes and the variations in their standard of English. Research on motivation for, and attitudes towards learning English reveal that instrumental and intrinsic motivations often apply to secondary school and tertiary-level learners, but prior to this study the research did not extend to vocational students in Hong Kong. The findings show that vocational students not only have strong instrumental motivation for learning English but also have intrinsic motivation. It was apparent that in the process of their learning English, participants regarded English as a functional language which was tied up with their career. This finding is the same as that of previous research on attitudes towards learning English of Hong Kong students. In addition, vocational students’ motivation for learning English was found to be influenced and encouraged by many factors, particularly significant others, such as parents. The present study will enable English teachers to have a greater understanding of vocational students’ motives for learning English. This could help to improve teaching strategies, teaching materials and language policies; and, thus, enhance more effective learning of English in the vocational setting of Hong Kong.
Trusting What You’re Told

If children were little scientists who learn best through firsthand observations and mini-experiments, as conventional wisdom holds, how would a child discover that the earth is round - never mind conceive of heaven as a place someone might go after death? Overturning both cognitive and commonplace theories about how children learn, "Trusting What You're Told" begins by reminding us of a basic truth: Most of what we know we learned from others. Children recognize early on that other people are an excellent source of information. And so they ask questions. But youngsters are also remarkably discriminating as they weigh the responses they elicit. And how much they trust what they are told has a lot to do with their assessment of its source. "Trusting What You're Told" opens a window into the moral reasoning of elementary school vegetarians, the preschooler's ability to distinguish historical narrative from fiction, and the six-year-old's nuanced stance toward magic: skeptical, while still open to miracles. Paul Harris shares striking cross-cultural findings, too, such as that children in religious communities in rural Central America resemble Bostonian children in being more confident about the existence of germs and oxygen than they are about souls and God. We are biologically designed to learn from one another, Harris demonstrates, and this greediness for explanation marks a key difference between human beings and our primate cousins. Even Kanzi, a genius among bonobos, never uses his keyboard to ask for information: he only asks for treats.
Teacher Perceptions of Elementary Children's Internalizing Symptoms When Experiencing Parental Wartime Military Deployment

Teacher Perceptions of Elementary Children’s Internalizing Symptoms When Experiencing Parental Wartime Military Deployment by Letitia Andria Henson MA, Alliant International University 1995 BA, University of Rochester, 1993 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Psychology
Renal insufficiency in elderly cancer patients: International Society of Geriatric Oncology clinical practice recommendations.

BACKGROUND Elderly cancer patients commonly have renal function decline. This warrants particular caution during the administration of renally excreted cancer drugs or those with established nephrotoxicity. DESIGN An International Society for Geriatric Oncology task force was formed to discuss treatment recommendations for this group of patients. RESULTS Before drug therapy, the assessment and optimization of hydration status and evaluation of renal function is required. Serum creatinine alone is insufficient as a means of evaluating renal function, and creatinine clearance should at least be calculated in every patient by the abbreviated modification of diet in renal disease or Cockcroft-Gault equations. In the extremes of obesity and cachexia and at very high and low creatinine values, no single tool is really accurate. In these patients, the best estimate of glomerular filtration rate is provided by direct methods such as (51)Cr-EDTA or inulin measurement. Within each drug class, preference may be given to agents less likely to be influenced by renal clearance, which are minimally nephrotoxic, or for which appropriate methods of prevention for renal toxicity exist. Coadministration of known nephrotoxic drugs should be avoided or minimized. CONCLUSIONS Future trials should be designed to present data in a way that allows evaluation of the contribution of renal function to toxicity and efficacy.
AlGaN/GaN HEMTs on Silicon With Hybrid Schottky–Ohmic Drain for RF Applications

In this paper, the AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistors on a low resistivity Si substrate with the hybrid drain structure for RF applications are analyzed in detail, based on measurements, TCAD simulation, model extraction, and delay time calculation of the transistors. Owing to the E-field redistribution of the Schottky extension, both the leakage current and the breakdown voltage can be improved. Also, the enhanced RF performance can be attributed to the reduced transit time and increased transconductance, resulting from the increased electron velocity and reduced drain depletion width. With a 3-μm extension length and a 0.2-μm gate length, fT and fMAX of transistors can be improved from 32.7 to 49.9 GHz (52.6%) and from 35.8 to 49.2 GHz (37.4%), respectively, with ON-OFF ratio enhancement by four orders of magnitude. The breakdown voltage was improved from 21 to 38 V (80.9%).
Applied Economics Workshop Business 33610 Spring Quarter 2012 "the Effects of Democratization on Economic Policy: Evidence from China" the Effects of Democratization on Economic Policy: Evidence from China * (preliminary Draft)

This study investigates the effect of the introduction of elections on public goods and redistribution in the context of rural China. Our study collects a unique survey to document the history of political reforms and economic policies in 217 villages for the years 1980-2005. To establish causality, we exploit the staggered timing of the introduction of elections. Our results show that elections increase public goods expenditure by 27%, and farmland by 20-27% for median village households. The increase in public goods is paralleled by an increase in local taxes and the change in land allocation is paralleled by a reduction in income inequality. In addition, elections reduce the enforcement of unpopular upper-government policies such as family planning and the expropriation of village land. We argue that these empirical findings provide strong support for the characterization of democracy in recent theories of democratization. * We thank Yunnan Guo, Yiqing Xu, Ting Han for excellent research assistance. We are grateful to the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture and their team of surveyors and field workers, and in particular, to Wu Zhigang for his crucial role in our field work and data collection. We acknowledge financial support
Landolt-Börnstein, Astronomy and Astrophysics

Application of the spectral subtraction technique to the Ca ii H & K and Hǫ lines in a sample of chromospherically active binaries ⋆ Abstract. We present new spectroscopic observations in the Ca ii H & K line region for a sample of 28 chromo-spherically active binary systems (RS CVn and BY Dra classes), with different activity levels. By using the spectral subtraction technique (subtraction of a synthesized stellar spectrum constructed from reference stars of similar spectral type and luminosity class) we obtain the active-chromosphere contribution to the Ca ii H & K lines and to the Hǫ line when it is present. We have compared the emission equivalent widths obtained with this technique with those obtained by reconstruction of the absorption line profile below the emission peak(s). The emissions arising from each individual star were obtained when it was possible to deblend the contribution of both components. The Ca ii line profiles corresponding to different seasons and orbital phases are analysed in order to determine the contribution of each component and to study the chromospheric activity variations. Send offprint requests to: D. Montes ⋆ Based on observations made with the Isaac Newton telescope operated on the island of La Palma by the Royal Green-wich Observatory at the Spanish Observatorio del Roque de Los Muchachos of the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias on behalf of the Science and Engineering Research Council of the United Kingdom and the Netherland Organization for Scientific Research, and with the 2.2 m telescope of the Centro As-tronómico Hispano-Alemán of Calar Alto (Almería, Spain) operated jointly by the Max Planck Institut für Astronomie (Hei-delberg) and the Spanish Comisión Nacional de Astronomía.
Apes have culture but may not know that they do

There is good evidence that some ape behaviors can be transmitted socially and that this can lead to group-specific traditions. However, many consider animal traditions, including those in great apes, to be fundamentally different from human cultures, largely because of lack of evidence for cumulative processes and normative conformity, but perhaps also because current research on ape culture is usually restricted to behavioral comparisons. Here, we propose to analyze ape culture not only at the surface behavioral level but also at the underlying cognitive level. To this end, we integrate empirical findings in apes with theoretical frameworks developed in developmental psychology regarding the representation of tools and the development of metarepresentational abilities, to characterize the differences between ape and human cultures at the cognitive level. Current data are consistent with the notion of apes possessing mental representations of tools that can be accessed through re-representations: apes may reorganize their knowledge of tools in the form of categories or functional schemes. However, we find no evidence for metarepresentations of cultural knowledge: apes may not understand that they or others hold beliefs about their cultures. The resulting Jourdain Hypothesis, based on Molière’s character, argues that apes express their cultures without knowing that they are cultural beings because of cognitive limitations in their ability to represent knowledge, a determining feature of modern human cultures, allowing representing and modifying the current norms of the group. Differences in metarepresentational processes may thus explain fundamental differences between human and other animals’ cultures, notably limitations in cumulative behavior and normative conformity. Future empirical work should focus on how animals mentally represent their cultural knowledge to conclusively determine the ways by which humans are unique in their cultural behavior.
Biomechanical simulation of needle insertion into cornea based on distortion energy failure criterion.

PURPOSE This paper is mainly about biomechanical behavior of needle insertion into cornea, and proposes a failure criterion to simulate the insertion process which has attracted considerable attention due to its importance for the minimally invasive treatment. METHODS In the process of needle insertion into cornea, tiny and complex insertion force is generated due to contact between needle and soft tissue. Based on the distortion energy theory, there is proposed a failure criterion of corneal material that can solve contact problem between rigid body and biological tissue in insertion simulation, where Cauchy stress of corneal material is the key to numerical calculation. A finite element model of in vivo cornea is built, and the cornea constrained by sclera is simplified to two layers containing epithelium and stroma. Considering the hyper-viscoelastic property of corneal material, insertion simulation is carried out. RESULTS By insertion experiment, the insertion force increases with insertion depth accompanying obvious fluctuations. Different insertion forces are generated at different speeds. The punctured locations are obvious in the force-displacement curves. The results of insertion simulation are generally consistent with experimental data. Maps of von Mises stress reflect the tissue injury of the cornea during insertion process, and punctured status corresponds to the point in the curves. CONCLUSIONS The ability of this study to reproduce the behavior of needle insertion into cornea opens a promising perspective for the control of robotic surgery operation as well as the real-time simulation of corneal suture surgery.
Detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis directly from sputum by using a prototype automated Q-beta replicase assay

We have adapted an assay for the direct detection of Mycobacterium tuberculosis using a prototype automated instrument platform in which probes are amplified with Q-beta replicase. The assay was based on amplification of specific detector probe following four cycles of background reduction (reversible target capture) in a closed disposable pack. The assay signal was the time required for fluorescence to exceed background levels (response time [RT]). RT was inversely related to the number of M. tuberculosis rRNA target molecules in the sample. Equivalent signals and noises were observed in assays containing either sputum or buffer. All mock samples containing > or = 10 CFU of M. tuberculosis responded in the assay (average RT, 13.91 min), while most (83%) samples containing as many as 10(7) CFU of Mycobacterium avium gave no response during a 25-min amplification reaction. The samples containing M. avium which did respond had an average RT of 17.04 min. Seventy-five percent (167 of 223) of samples containing no target gave no responses; the remaining 25% had an average RT of 15.53 min. Eighty-three frozen sputum samples were tested to develop a candidate cutoff RT for the assay prior to more extensive clinical testing. After resolution of discrepant results and with a 14-min RT cutoff, 30 of 38 M. tuberculosis-positive samples were positive by the assay; 1 of 45 negative samples responded within 14 min. Assay sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negatives predictive values in this pilot study were 79, 98, 97, and 85%, respectively.
Internalization and Trafficking of Nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae in Human Respiratory Epithelial Cells and Roles of IgA1 Proteases for Optimal Invasion and Persistence

ABSTRACT Nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae (NTHI) is a leading cause of opportunistic infections of the respiratory tract in children and adults. Although considered an extracellular pathogen, NTHI has been observed repeatedly within and between cells of the human respiratory tract, and these observations have been correlated to symptomatic infection. These findings are intriguing in light of the knowledge that NTHI persists in the respiratory tract despite antibiotic therapy and the development of bactericidal antibodies. We hypothesized that intracellular NTHI avoids, escapes, or neutralizes the endolysosomal pathway and persists within human respiratory epithelial cells and that human IgA1 proteases are required for optimal internalization and persistence of NTHI. Virtually all strains encode a human IgA1 protease gene, igaA, and we previously characterized a novel human IgA1 protease gene, igaB, that is associated with disease-causing strains and is homologous to the IgA1 protease that is unique to pathogenic Neisseria spp. Here, we show that NTHI invades human bronchial epithelial cells in vitro in a lipid raft-independent manner, is subsequently trafficked via the endolysosomal pathway, and is killed in lysosomes after variable durations of persistence. IgaA is required for optimal invasion. IgaB appears to play little or no role in adherence or invasion but is required for optimal intracellular persistence of NTHI. IgaB cleaves lysosome-associated membrane protein 1 (LAMP1) at pHs characteristic of the plasma membrane, early endosome, late endosome, and lysosome. However, neither IgA1 protease inhibits acidification of intracellular vesicles containing NTHI. NTHI IgA1 proteases play important but different roles in NTHI invasion and trafficking in respiratory epithelial cells.
Spatial analysis of solar type III events associated with narrow band spikes at metric wavelengths

The spatial association of narrow band metric radio spikes with type III bursts is analyzed. The analysis addresses the question of a possible causal relation between the spike emission and the acceleration of the energetic electrons causing the type III burst. The spikes are identied by the Phoenix-2 spectrometer (ETH Zurich) from survey solar observations in the frequency range from 220 MHz to 530 MHz. Simultaneous spatial information was provided by the Nan cay Radioheliograph (NRH) at several frequencies. Five events were selected showing spikes at one or two and type III bursts at two or more Nan cay frequencies. The 3{dimensional geometry of the single events has been reconstructed by applying dierent coronal density models. As a working hypothesis it is assumed that emission at the plasma frequency or its harmonic is the responsible radiation process for the spikes as well as for the type III bursts. It has been found that the spike source location is consistent with the backward extrapolation of the trajectory of the type III bursts, tracing a magnetic eld line. In one of the analyzed events, type III bursts with two dierent trajectories originating from the same spike source could be identied. These ndings support the hypothesis that narrow band metric spikes are closely related to the acceleration region.