Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
SEASONALVARIATIONS IN HABITAT PREFERENCES OF THE PIN-TAILED SANDGROUSE INAGRARIAN PSEUDO-STEPPES

—We investigated habitat use and preferences of pin-tailed sandgrouse Pterocles alchata in agrarian pseudo-steppes of central Spain. We used radio-tracking to characterise habitat selection throughout the year and look for seasonal variations. Pin-tailed sandgrouses selected ploughed fields all year round, except in winter when they preferred stubble fields. Pasturelands were used more often than expected in the breeding and post-breeding seasons and fallows in winter and pre-breeding seasons. Cereal crops, olive groves and vineyards were avoided. Our results indicate that appropriate habitat management for the pin-tailed sandgrouse should take into consideration its habitat preferences during the full annual cycle.
Predicting Survival for 1 Year Among Different Subtypes of Stroke Results From the Perth Community Stroke Study

Few studies have evaluated the factors influencing or predicting long-term survival after stroke in an unselected series of patients in whom the underlying cerebrovascular pathology is clearly defined. Moreover, the relative importance of risk factors for stroke, including sociodemographic and premorbid variables, has not been described in detail. Methods The study cohort consisted of 492 patients with stroke who were registered with a population-based study of acute cerebrovascular disease undertaken in Perth, Western Australia, during an 18-month period in 1989 and 1990. Objective evidence of the pathological basis of the stroke was obtained in 86% of cases, and all deaths among patients during a follow-up of 1 year were reviewed. Results One hundred twenty patients (24%) died within 28 days of the onset of stroke. Among the different subtypes of stroke, the 1-year case fatality (mean, 38%) varied from 6% and 16% for boundary zone infarction and lacunar infarction, respectively, to 42% and 46% for subarachnoid hemorrhage and primary intracerebral hemorrhage, respectively. Using Cox proportional-hazards analysis, a predictive model was developed on 321 patients with acute stroke (test sample). The best model contained five baseline variables that were independent predictors of death within 1 year: coma (relative risk [RR], 3.0; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.1 to 8.4), urinary incontinence (RR, 3.9; 95% CI, 1.4 to 10.6), cardiac failure (RR, 6.5; 95% CI, 2.8 to 15.1), severe paresis (RR, 4.9; 95% CI, 1.6 to 15.5), and atrial fibrillation (RR, 2.0; 95% CI, 1.1 to 3.5). The sensitivity, specificity, and negative predictive value of this model for predicting death were 90%, 83%, and 95%, respectively. When applied to a second randomly selected validation sample of 171 events, sensitivity was 94%, specificity 62%, and negative predictive value 92%, indicating stability of the model. Conclusions Although the case fatality, timing, and cause of death vary considerably among the different pathological subtypes of stroke, simple clinical measures that reflect the severity of the neurological deficit and associated cardiac disease at onset independently predict death by 1 year and may help to direct management.
The influence of episodic hypoxia on upper airway collapsibility in subjects with obstructive sleep apnea.

We have previously shown that in subjects with obstructive sleep apnea, repetitive hypoxia is associated with long-term facilitation as manifested by decreased upper airway resistance (Rua). Our objective was to study the influence of long-term facilitation on upper airway collapsibility as measured by the critical closing pressure (Pcrit) model and to determine whether changes in Rua correlated with changes in collapsibility. We studied 13 subjects (10 men, 3 women) with a mean apnea-hypopnea index of 43.9 +/- 24.0 events/h. In the first protocol with 11 subjects, we measured collapsibility using a Pcrit protocol before and after episodic hypoxia. Brief (3 min) isocapnic hypoxia (inspired O(2) fraction = 8%) followed by 5 min of room air was induced 10 times. A sham study without hypoxia was performed on eight subjects. Ventilatory parameters, Rua, and Pcrit before and after episodic hypoxia were measured. At 20 min of recovery, there was no change in minute ventilation but there was a significant decrease in Rua compared with the control period (control, 8.6 +/- 4.8 cmH(2)O.l(-1). s vs. recovery, 5.9 +/- 3.8 cmH(2)O.l(-1). s; P < 0.05). However, there was no change in Pcrit between the control (2.3 +/- 1.9 cmH(2)O) and recovery (2.7 +/- 3.2 cmH(2)O) periods. No changes in Rua or Pcrit were observed in the sham protocol. We conclude that long-term facilitation of upper airway dilators is not associated with changes in upper airway collapsibility in subjects with obstructive sleep apnea. These results corroborate previous evidence that changes in upper airway resistance and caliber can be dissociated from changes in upper airway collapsibility.
The relationship between personality and motivation: Is there a General Factor of Motivation

There have been calls from individual difference researchers to connect the multiplicity of constructs within the field. This study investigated relations between personality and motivation. Adult participants (N=192) completed Saucier's (1994) Mini-Markers and the Motivational Orientation Measure (Barrick, Stewart & Piotrowski, 2002). Structural equation modeling indicated that high Extraversion, Conscientiousness and Agreeableness were significantly related to Status striving, Accomplishment striving and Communion striving respectively (p<.001). Further, a General Factor of Motivation (GFM), not previously located within this measure, was found to explain between 39-64% of variance within the three motivational orientations. The GFM was found to have a significant relationship with Emotional Stability (p<.001). The study provides further evidence for the strong relationships between personality and motivation and adds to support for the hierarchical organization of not only motivation, but of individual difference constructs as a whole. Results are discussed in relation to extant research findings and theory. © 2011 Individual Differences Association, Inc.
EFFECTS OF PICTURES IN TEXTBOOKS ON STUDENTS' CREATIVITY

One essential key element of the curriculum is the textbook which provides a clear structure for teachers and students. This paper is study based on the literature and previous research papers to explain the importance of textbooks as well as effect of pictures in the textbooks on student’s creativity. Images in the textbooks influence the learning process. Students often see pictures before reading the text and these pictures can enhance the power of imagination of the students. The findings of this study show that the pictures in textbooks can increase students’ creativity. The use of images for educational intention and learning is a vital, but designer of textbook should be aware of the utility of an image. This study aimed to help the curriculum planners and designers to reveal the points of strength of textbooks to be reinforced and the points of weakness to be avoided and treated in the future.
The use of phenotypic correlations and factor analysis in determining characters for grain yield selection in chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.).

To our knowledge, this is the first report on the use of factor analysis in determining characters for yield selection in chickpea (Cicer arietinum L.). The present investigation was undertaken to evaluate yield criteria in chickpea using phenotypic correlations and factor analysis. Factor 1 composed of biological yield, reaction to ascochyta blight (Ascochyta rabiei (Pass.) Labr. ), plant height, grain yield and harvest index. Factor 2 consisted of branches and pods per plant. Factor 3 encompassed of only the grain weight. The total factors explained 92.9% of the total variance caused in the characters. The grain yield was positively and statistically significant correlated with biological yield, harvest index, plant height, branches and pods per plant, while it was negatively and statistically significant related with reaction to ascochyta blight and grain weight. Biological yield, harvest index, plant height and reaction to ascochyta blight instead of many selection criteria should previously be evaluated in selection to increase the grain yield in chickpea breeding programs. Pods per plant should be handed together with and branches per plant. Apart from the other selection criteria, the grain weight should solely be evaluated to select large grained genotypes.
A Comparative Analysis of Two Teacher Preparation Programs

A mixed methods study design was employed to determine what differences in knowledge of reading instruction and perceived preparedness to teach reading exist between two groups of teacher candidates enrolled in different teacher preparation programs offered at the University of Pittsburgh. Additionally, this study investigated which components of such programs - coursework, field experience, reflection, or collaboration - teacher candidates perceived as preparing them to teach reading. Data regarding teacher candidates' perceived preparedness to teach reading were collected once upon completion of their preparation program and again after obtaining full-time teaching experience in order to record changes over time.Data collection consisted of the Knowledge Inventory, Survey of Perceptions, Follow-up Survey of Perceptions and telephone interviews. Background information regarding teacher candidates was also collected. It was hypothesized that teacher candidates from the Masters of Arts in Teaching program would obtain higher scores on the Knowledge Inventory and perceive themselves as more prepared to teach reading than those enrolled in the Professional Year program, which would be attributable to their extended amount of time spent in the field. An analysis of the data revealed that few significant differences existed between teacher candidates from the two programs. Based on Knowledge Inventory scores, teacher candidates had a rudimentary knowledge of reading instruction. Undergraduate GPA, PRAXIS scores, age and gender were not factors in knowledge of reading instruction. There were no differences in knowledge of reading between teacher candidates from the two programs based on amount of time spent in the field or grade-level placement. Teacher candidates from both programs perceived themselves as being prepared to teach reading; however, their perceived level of preparedness was somewhat lower after gaining teaching experience than it was immediately upon completing their respective program. Teacher candidates from both programs perceived their coursework and field experience to be the most valuable components of their program. Despite this overall sense of readiness to teach reading, teacher candidates had specific areas of concern in which they would benefit from further instruction, including: spelling and writing instruction; differentiating instruction based on assessment results; and differentiating instruction to meet the needs of diverse learners.
Treehouse: Javascript Sandboxes to Help Web Developers Help Themselves

Many Web applications (meaning sites that employ JavaScript) incorporate third-party code and, for reasons rooted in today's Web ecosystem, are vulnerable to bugs or malice in that code. Our goal is to give Web developers a mechanism that (a) contains included code, limiting (or eliminating) its influence as appropriate; and (b) is deployable today, or very shortly. While the goal of containment is far from new, the requirement of deployability leads us to a new design point, one that applies the OS ideas of sandboxing and virtualization to the JavaScript context. Our approach, called TreeHouse, sandboxes JavaScript code by repurposing a feature of current browsers (namely Web Workers). TreeHouse virtualizes the browser's API to the sandboxed code (allowing the code to run with few or no modifications) and gives the application author fine-grained control over that code. Our implementation and evaluation of Tree-House show that its overhead is modest enough to handle performance-sensitive applications and that sandboxing existing code is not difficult.
Actively controlled lateral gait assistance in a lower limb exoskeleton

Various powered wearable lower limb exoskeletons are designed for paraplegics to make them walk again. Control methods are developed and implemented in these exoskeletons to provide active gait assistance in the sagittal plane while active control in the frontal plane is still missing. This paper proposed a control method that provided gait assistance in both lateral and sagittal plane. First, in the lateral plane, the exoskeleton was controlled to support the weight shift during stepping by providing assisting hip ab/adduction torques when the subject initiated a small amount of weight shift to the stance side to trigger a step. Second, the exoskeleton's hip ab/adduction during stepping was controlled to improve lateral stability. This was achieved by altering the amount of hip ab/adduction to change step width at heel strike. Using these controls, an able-bodied subject could walk in the exoskeleton without any external balance aids, i.e. crutches or a walker, where his hip and knee joints were controlled by the exoskeleton and his ankle joints were constrained by the exoskeleton. The next step is to test whether the proposed method improves balance in spinal cord injured subjects.
Performance improvement of tall triple gate devices with strained SiN layers

In this letter, we investigate the influence of tensile and compressive SiN layers on the device performance of triple-gate devices with 60-nm fin height and fin widths down to 35 nm. It will be shown that even for narrow fin devices, the nMOS performance improvement can be as high as 20% with tensile strained layers. The improvement seen for pMOS is lower, about 10%. Next to that both compressive as well as tensile SiN layers can increase the pMOS on-state current.
Renin Release in Patients with Benign Essential Hypertension

In 16 of 28 patients with benign essential hypertension, reduction of mean arterial pressure to 75 to 120 mm Hg by infusion of sodium nitroprusside caused significant increase in renin release estimated by the renal-systemic difference of renin activity and renal plasma flow (RPF). The threshold at which renin release increased was shifted to a range that was intermediate between that previously reported for normotensive subjects and that for patients with renovascular hypertension, but the average magnitude of renin release was almost comparable to that in normotensive subjects. In the other 12 patients, no significant renin release occurred during reduction in pressure of comparable degree.The difference in renin release was difficult to explain by the difference in severity of hypertensive disease or in sodium excretion, but increased renin release was usually associated with a decrease in RBF and a rise in renal vascular resistance, while insignificant release was usually associated with an insignificant change in RBF and a decrease in resistance. The average known duration of hypertension was significantly greater in the unresponsive patients. It is suggested that renal sympathetic nerve activity may be a factor in the variations in renin release in patients with essential hypertension.
Keck Spectroscopy of Young and Old Star Clusters in NGC 1023

We present Keck/LRIS spectra for 11 old globular clusters in the S0-type galaxy NGC 1023 and two young blue clusters in the nearby companion NGC 1023A. Analysis of the spectra of seven old clusters with sufficient signal-to-noise ratio shows generally good agreement between spectroscopic and previous photometric metallicity estimates, but the integrated colors of two clusters are too blue for their spectroscopic metallicities. Although the cluster ages are not well constrained, they are most likely similar to those of Milky Way globular clusters and certainly older than ∼5 Gyr. The brightest globular cluster in the sample shows enhanced cyanogen, possibly indicating an abundance anomaly similar to that observed in some M31 globular clusters. For the two blue clusters in NGC 1023A we estimate ages between 125 and 500 Myr on the basis of their strong Balmer lines. The total masses are about 8 × 104 M⊙ and 6 × 104 M⊙ for a Miller-Scalo initial mass function and Z = 0.004, making these objects similar to the young populous clusters in the Large Magellanic Cloud. It is suggested that the two young clusters might have formed during a period of enhanced star formation activity in NGC 1023A, stimulated by a close encounter with NGC 1023.
Sharp integral inequalities for harmonic functions

Motivated by Carleman's proof of isoperimetric inequality in the plane, we study some sharp integral inequalities for harmonic functions on the upper half‐space. We also derive the regularity for nonnegative solutions of the associated integral system and some Liouville‐type theorems. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
GABAA receptors, gephyrin and homeostatic synaptic plasticity

Homeostatic synaptic plasticity describes the changes in synapse gain and function that occur in response to global changes in neuronal activity to maintain the stability of neuronal networks. In this review, we argue that a coordinated regulation of excitatory and inhibitory synaptic transmission is essential for maintaining CNS function while allowing both global and local changes in synaptic strength and connectivity. Therefore, we postulate that homeostatic synaptic plasticity depends on signalling cascades regulating in parallel the efficacy of glutamatergic and GABAergic transmission. Since neurotransmitter receptors interact closely with scaffolding proteins in the postsynaptic density, this coordinated regulation of excitatory and inhibitory synaptic transmission probably involves posttranslational modifications of scaffolding proteins, which in turn modulate local synaptic function. Here we review the current state of knowledge on the regulation of GABAA receptors and their main scaffolding protein gephyrin by posttranslational modifications; we outline future lines of research that might contribute to furthering our understanding of the molecular mechanisms regulating GABAergic synapse function and homeostatic plasticity.
Mutation Screening of the Krüppel-Like Factor 1 Gene Using Single-Strand Conformational Polymorphism in a Cohort of Iranian β-Thalassemia Patients

Abstract The Krüppel-like factor 1 (KLF1) is an essential erythroid-specific transcription factor. Mutations in the human KLF1 gene have different phenotypic effects, ranging from increased Hb F levels to the disruption of erythropoiesis. Here, we screened 227 Iranian β-thalassemia (β-thal) patients for the presence of KLF1 mutations by using the single-strand conformational polymorphism (SSCP) approach. Our aim was to assess the potential effect of these mutations on the β-thal disease severity. After screening, two variants were found. One patient carried a potentially deleterious variant (Polyphen-2) in exon 2 (p.F182L). Another patient was homozygous for a previously unreported intronic variant (KLF1: c.911 + 84A > G). The patient with the p.F182L variant (KLF1: c.544T > C) had noticeably high Hb A2 levels (7.6%), consistent with the phenotypic effect of several previously characterized KLF1 mutations in the same exonic region. In addition, he had higher platelet counts (1,069,000/μL) compared to other patients in the cohort.
Microarrays: how many do you need?

We estimate the number of microarrays that is required in order to gain reliable results from a common type of study: the pairwise comparison of different classes of samples. Current knowlegde seems to suffice for the construction of models that are realistic with respect to searches for individual differentially expressed genes. Such models allow to investigate the dependence of the required number of samples on the relevant parameters: the biological variability of the samples within each class; the fold changes in expression; the detection sensitivity of the microarrays; and the acceptable error rates of the results. We supply experimentalists with general conclusions as well as a freely accessible Java applet at http://cartan.gmd. de/~zien/classsize/ for fine tuning simulations to their particular actualities. Since the situation can be assumed to be very similar for large scale proteomics and metabolomics studies, our methods and results might also apply there.
Use of a novel S1 nuclease RNA-mapping technique to measure efficiency of transcription termination on polyomavirus DNA

We devised a strategy to measure the efficiency of transcription termination in vivo by RNA polymerase on polyomavirus DNA. Pulse-labeled nuclear RNA was hybridized with a single-stranded polyomavirus DNA fragment which spans the transcription initiation region. Hybrids were treated with RNase, bound to nitrocellulose filters, eluted with S1 nuclease, and analyzed by gel electrophoresis. The ratio of full-length to less-than-full-length DNA-RNA hybrids was used to calculate transcription termination frequency. We found that 50% of the polymerases terminated per traverse of the L DNA strand during the late phase of infection. The method for mapping in vivo pulse-labeled RNAs which we developed is potentially useful for studying unstable cellular or viral RNAs.
Long-term efficacy of hyperuricaemia treatment in renal transplant patients.

BACKGROUND Although hyperuricaemia and gout are frequently found in renal transplant recipients, little has been published on the efficacy of urate-lowering therapy (ULT) in this patient population. We therefore examine the effects of allopurinol and benziodarone therapy in a cohort of renal transplant patients. METHODS We reviewed files from a cohort of 1328 patients that received renal transplantation. The selection criteria included: functioning allograft, hyperuricaemia for >12 months or gout, ULT lasting at least 1 year and at least two control measurements after the onset of ULT. Patients on azathioprine were treated with benziodarone to avoid azathioprine-allopurinol interactions. RESULTS Two-hundred and seventy-nine patients fulfilled the criteria for review. They were treated with 289 courses of ULT: 100 with allopurinol (mean dose: 376 mg/day/dl/min of creatinine clearance) and 189 with benziodarone (mean dose: 73 mg/day). The mean follow-up was 38 months. Both drugs were effective for the control of hyperuricaemia, but benziodarone caused greater reductions in serum uric acid levels, especially when used at mean doses of >75 mg/day. Severe side effects were uncommon, in both the allopurinol and benziodarone groups. CONCLUSIONS Both allopurinol and benziodarone were effective for the control of hyperuricaemia in renal transplantation. Benziodarone at doses >75 mg/day was more effective than allopurinol in reducing serum uric acid levels and also reduced the risk of azathioprine-allopurinol interactions.