Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Spectral pulsed-wave tissue Doppler imaging lateral-to-septal delay fails to predict clinical or echocardiographic outcome after cardiac resynchronization therapy.

AIMS The current study sought to assess if pre-implantation lateral-to-septal delay (LSD) > or =60 ms assessed by spectral pulsed-wave myocardial tissue Doppler imaging (PW-TDI) could predict successful long-term outcome after cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT). METHODS AND RESULTS Sixty patients (72% males, mean age 59 +/- 10 years) who were referred for CRT according to the ACC/ESC guidelines were enrolled in the study. All patients underwent spectral PW-TDI before and 1 year after CRT. Two left ventricular (LV) dyssynchrony time intervals, T(O) and T(P) (time to onset and peak of LV myocardial velocity, respectively), LSD were recorded. Left ventricular dyssynchrony was defined as LSD > or =60 ms. Clinical response was defined as an improvement in >1 NYHA class plus improvement in 6-min walk distance (6MWD) > or =25%, echocardiographic response was defined as a > or =15% reduction in LV end-systolic volume (LV-ESV). One year after CRT, 50 patients (83%) were clinical responders and 47 patients (78%) were echocardiographic responders. Both T(O) and T(P) LV dyssynchrony indices failed to predict echocardiographic CRT outcome. In addition, there were no significant differences between 'synchronous' and 'dyssynchronous' patient populations at baseline or follow-up in either clinical (NYHA class and 6MWD) or echocardiographic (LV ejection fraction, LV end-diastolic, and end-systolic) variables. CONCLUSION The great majority of patients referred for CRT benefit clinically from it. However, spectral PW-TDI failed to predict CRT outcome. When PW-TDI dyssynchrony was applied for selection of proper CRT patients, up to 80-86% of the patients with synchronous LSD that had proven clinical and echocardiographic benefit from CRT would have been denied CRT.
A new classification for epidemiological study of mechanical eye injuries.

OBJECTIVE Considering the difficulty in classifying some cases with eye trauma by Birmingham Eye Trauma Terminology (BETT) in our epidemiological study, we introduce a new classification for epidemiological study of mechanical eye injuries based on BETT. METHODS A retrospective investigation was carried out in 31 hospitals from January 2005 to December 2010. All medical records of inpatients with eye injuries were reviewed. A total of 10 718 patients (11 227 eyes) were diagnosed as mechanical eye injuries. All mechanical eye injuries were tried to be classified using BETT. While some eye injuries were difficult to categorize. We recorded the injury type and case number. A new classification based on BETT was also used for the same project. RESULTS Of 10 718 patients (11 227 eyes) with mechanical eye injuries, the following cases cannot be classified by BETT: 1 488 patients (1 559 eyes) with merely orbital or ocular adnexa injury, 1 961 (2 054) globe injuries associated with orbital or ocular adnexa injury, 271 (284) ocular surface foreign body (OSFB) or ocular wall foreign body (OWFB), 77 (89) contusion, 9 (11) lamellar laceration associated with OSFB or OWFB, 29 (30) rupture associated with OSFB, OWFB or intraocular foreign body and 60 (62) lace- ration associated with OSFB or OWFB. While according to our new classification, all eye injuries can be categorized without any difficulty. CONCLUSION Difficulty in classifying some eye injuries in epidemiological study by BETT brings some trouble to our study, which can be solved by our new eye injury classification to some extent. It is hoped that other ophthalmologists present better ones to make the classification more perfect.
Retinoic Acid Drives Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor Expression and Is Instrumental to Dioxin-Induced Toxicity during Palate Development

Background: Palate development depends on complex events and is very sensitive to disruption. Accordingly, clefts are the most common congenital malformations worldwide, and a connection is proposed with fetal exposure to toxic factors or environmental contaminants, such as dioxins. There is increasing evidence that dioxin interferes with all-trans-retinoic acid (atRA), a hormone-like signal derived from vitamin A, which plays an essential role during embryonic development. Although similarities have been described between dioxin-induced toxicity and the outcome of altered atRA signaling during palate development, their relationship needs to be clarified. Objectives: We used a genetic approach to understand the interaction between atRA and dioxin and to identify the cell type targeted by dioxin toxicity during secondary palate formation in mice. Methods: We analyzed the phenotype of mouse embryos harboring an atRA-sensitive reporter transgene or bearing null mutations for atRA-synthesizing enzymes (RALDH) or atRA receptors (RAR) and maternally exposed to 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) at gestation day 10.5. Results: We found that an intact atRA signal was required to enable TCDD to induce cleft palate. This mandatory atRA signal was generated through the activity of RALDH3 in the nasal epithelium and was transduced by RARγ (RARG) in the nasal mesenchyme, where it notably controlled aryl hydrocarbon receptor (Ahr) transcript levels. TCDD also did not alter the developmental pattern of atRA signaling during palate formation. Conclusions: TCDD-induced alteration of secondary palate development in the mouse appears to depend on atRA signaling, which controls AHR expression. This mechanism is likely conserved throughout vertebrate evolution and may therefore be relevant in humans.
Color map design for visualization in flood risk assessment

ABSTRACT Visualizations of flood maps from simulation models are widely used for assessing the likelihood of flood hazards in spatial planning. The choice of a suitable type of visualization as well as efficient color maps is critical to avoid errors or bias when interpreting the data. Based on a review of previous flood uncertainty visualization techniques, this paper identifies areas of improvements and suggests criteria for the design of a task-specific color scale in flood map visualization. We contribute a novel color map design for visualizing probabilities and uncertainties from flood simulation ensembles. A user study encompassing 83 participants was carried out to evaluate the effects of this new color map on user’s decisions in a spatial planning task. We found that the type of visualization makes a difference when it comes to identification of non-hazardous sites in the flood risk map and when accepting risks in more uncertain areas. In comparison with two other existing visualization techniques, we observed that the new design was superior both in terms of task compliance and efficiency. In regions with uncertain flood statuses, users were biased toward accepting less risky locations with our new color map design.
The impact of consensus and agreement of leadership perceptions on commitment, Organizational Citizenship Behaviour, and customer satisfaction

Based on a follower-centred approach to transformational leadership, the meaning of team consensus for relevant organizational outcome measures is examined. It is argued that high consensus among followers with regard to their respective leaders' behaviour is an indicator of consistent transformational leadership. It is also hypothesized that the team consensus concerning leadership moderates the relation between transformational leadership and outcome criteria. Furthermore we expect leader–team agreement in leadership evaluation between the leader and the group to be related to followers' and customers' reactions. Data was collected from 27 supervisors and 233 subordinates representing 36 service-oriented organizations. Independent measures were taken from 1463 customers. For data analysis a multilevel approach was employed. The results show that consensus is an important predictor for commitment, Organizational Citizenship Behaviour (OCB), and customer satisfaction, and moderates the relationship of transformational leadership with commitment and OCB. Agreement is related to commitment and customer satisfaction and moderates the relationship between leadership and commitment. The findings are discussed in a practical light with regard to the consequences of consensus about leadership within a group and of agreement between a group and the respective leader. Moreover, practical implications are given for the improvement of commitment, OCB, and customer satisfaction.
Anomalous experiences and schizotypy: which comes first? The Hermit Crab syndrome hypothesis

This study confirms findings of previous research as they state that some triggering events or anomalous experiences can give rise to a disruption of cognitive processes and emotional changes in a predisposed person. Furthermore, our research states that the cognitive process and change of world view (paradigm shift (PS)) accompanying some paranormal experiences (PEs) could facilitate the development of a schizotypal personality structure. For the purposes of this study, 675 young people aged between 13 and 25 years old (M = 16.8, SD = 1.9) completed the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire, the Revised and Modified Paranormal Belief Scales, the measurement of eight kinds of PE and a self-reported measurement of change of world view. The results confirm the mediating role of PS between paranormal practices and schizotypy as the cognitive process contributing to symptom formation as well as to symptom maintenance. The said results also confirm the existence of cognitive–emotional stages, also called Hermit Crab syndrome, in the process of the “paranormalisation” of reality.
Preferences for body mass index and waist-to-hip ratio do not vary with observer age

Several studies have suggested that mate selection strategies alter with age, but the mechanism of this shift in mate strategy is unclear. Two possibilities suggest themselves. The first is that attractiveness preferences themselves alter, compensating for the changing mate value of the observer. Alternatively, the preferences may remain constant with observer age, but an individual may compensate for changes in their own relative attractiveness by consciously targeting different regions of the "attractiveness spectrum" as their own mate value changes. To address this question, we asked 142 Caucasian subjects (aged 18–87 years) to rate 50 photographs of women varying in lower body shape (the waist-hip ratio, or WHR), and overall body mass (body mass index, or BMI). We found no effects of observer age on attractiveness preferences. This suggests that the criteria for attractiveness do not alter with changing observer age, and instead that it is the strategies employed using this information that may change.
Do Kinetics of the Humoral Response to Cryptococcus neoformans Proteins during Murine Cryptococcosis Reflect Outcome?

ABSTRACT The kinetics of the humoral response to Cryptococcus neoformans proteins were studied in outbred mice infected with isolate NIH52D. Future nonsurvivors had earlier and stronger (i.e., more bands recognized) humoral responses than survivors. In addition, antibodies to a 56- to 60-kDa membrane antigen and to a 39- to 40-kDa cytosolic antigen were detected more frequently in samples from future nonsurvivors and from survivors, respectively (P < 0.05).
The enigma of the Chinese learner

Although increasingly challenged in the higher education literature in recent years, there is still a common perception among teachers of the stereotypical Chinese rote learner. This perception, however, lies uncomfortably with the paradox that Chinese learners nevertheless often excel in their studies, in comparison with their Western counterparts. This comparative study of Chinese and Australian accountancy students provides evidence that, while surface approaches to learning can be associated with mechanical rote learning, the Chinese tradition of memorization through repetition can be used to deepen understanding and achieve high levels of academic performance. In recognizing this phenomenon, the enigma of the Chinese learner is better understood.
[Clinical analysis of 247 children with whooping cough and the risk factors of severe cases].

OBJECTIVE To summarize the clinical characteristics of whooping cough in children and analyze the risk factors for severe whooping cough. METHOD A retrospective analysis was made on the clinical data of 247 children with whooping cough in Children's Hospital of Chongqing Medical University between Jan 2013 and Dec 2014. Of these patients, 126 were male, 121 were female, the median age was 3.1 months (23 days-4 years and eight months old). The patients were divided into two groups, group 1 had infants less than 3 months of age (n=120) and group 2 had infants and young children older than 3 months (n=127) according to their age. On the other hand, the patients were also divided into two groups according to vaccination status: vaccinated group (received diphtheria toxoid, tetanus toxoid, and acellular pertussis, DTP) (n=31) and unvaccinated group (n=188). Pure Bordetella pertussis infection was seen in 106 cases, and 141 cases had mixed infection. Severe disease was seen in 13 cases, and the other 234 cases had the modest disease. Clinical data were retrospectively analyzed and compared. RESULT (1) Bordetella pertussis was identified in 57/680 cases (8.4%) in 2013, and 190/1 856 cases (10.2%) in 2014. The disease could be seen throughout the year, but 182 cases (73.7%) occurred in summer or autumn; 202 cases (81.8%) were less than 6 months. (2) Paroxysmal cough was seen in 238 cases (96.4%) , 61 cases (24.7%) had inspiratory whoop. Infants in group 1 often had episodes of cyanosis, apnea and suffocation (χ² = 19.999, 12.081, 6.508, P<0.05), persistent cough was often seen in group 2 (χ² = 9.885, P<0.05). Complications such as severe pneumonia, pulmonary consolidation and encephalopathy were more common in the group 1 than in group 2 (χ² = 17.340, 6.080, 11.030, 23.545, P<0.05). (3) The length of stay of group 1, and of unvaccinated group was significantly longer than that of group 2 and of vaccinated group (t=19.331, 26.741, P<0.05). (4) Leukocytosis was found in 224 cases (90.7%), 182 cases (73.7%) had predominant lymphocytosis. White blood cell in group 1, unvaccinated group and severe disease group was higher than the corresponding group (t=11.075,13.739,3.469, P<0.05). (5) Patients who had a history of exposure, fever, leukocytosis and pulmonary consolidation or atelectasis on chest imaging were prone to develop into severe pertussis (OR=4.521, 4.900, 1.085, 4.792, 50.400; P<0.05). A total of 244 cases (98.8%) recovered, 3 cases (1.2%) died, they were less than 3 months old and unvaccinated. CONCLUSION The number of cases with whooping cough in Chongqing area tends to be rising. The disease occurred mostly in summer and fall. Infants less than 3 months old, unvaccinated with DTP had high susceptibility to pertussis, often had a severe clinical presentation and severe complications, had a high mortality rate.
Tuning the performance of I/O-intensive parallel applications

Getting good I/O performance from parallel programs is a critical problem for many application domains. In this paper, we report our experience tuning the I/O performance of four application programs from the areas of satellite-data processing and linear algebra. After tuning, three of the four applications achieve application-level I/O rates of over 100 MB/s on 16 processors. The total volume of I/O required by the programs ranged from about 75 MB to over 200 GB. We report the lessons learned in achieving high I/O performance from these applications, including the need for code restructuring, local disks on every node and knowledge of future I/O requests. We also report our experience on achieving high performance on peer-to-peer con gurations. Finally, we comment on the necessity of complex I/O interfaces like collective I/O and strided requests to achieve high performance.
Mapping Instructions and Visual Observations to Actions with Reinforcement Learning

We propose to directly map raw visual observations and text input to actions for instruction execution. While existing approaches assume access to structured environment representations or use a pipeline of separately trained models, we learn a single model to jointly reason about linguistic and visual input. We use reinforcement learning in a contextual bandit setting to train a neural network agent. To guide the agent’s exploration, we use reward shaping with different forms of supervision. Our approach does not require intermediate representations, planning procedures, or training different models. We evaluate in a simulated environment, and show significant improvements over supervised learning and common reinforcement learning variants.
Sulphur isotopes in animal hair track distance to sea.

Stable sulphur isotope ratios ((34)S/(32)S) in animal tissues have been suggested as a tracer of coastal residency of terrestrial animals, but data are lacking that quantify the inland range of the sulphur coastal signal and the effects of seasonality. Here, we present δ(34)S measurements of sheep wool collected seasonally on eight farms across Ireland and wool samples collected opportunistically along the west and east coasts. We observed large (>10‰) δ(34)S differences across the island and we show that wool δ(34)S values were negatively correlated with distance to the west coast. We propose that this is due to the predominantly (south-)westerly airflow, possibly combined with the influence of anthropogenic sulphur deposited from the east. While essentially all the sulphur contained in west-coast wool is of marine origin, relatively high δ(34)S values were still measured >100 km inland, suggesting that marine sulphur can be carried over long distances. Seasonal variations are small at the individual level for sedentary grazing animals. We conclude that sulphur isotopes ratios measured in archival keratinous tissues can be used to describe regional δ(34)S isoscapes primarily defined by distance to coasts and thus provide a tool to detect short-term movements of domestic, feral and wild animals within such isoscapes.
Communicative Dynamics of Police-Civilian Encounters: South African and American Interethnic Data

Research in the American West, China, and Taiwan has shown that officers’ communication accommodative practices (and attributed trust in them) can be more potent predictors of satisfaction with the police than are the sociodemographic characteristics of those judging. With Black and White respondents, this study continues this line of work in Louisiana and South Africa and tests a new model about the relationships among perceived officer accommodation, trust in the police, and reported voluntary compliance from civilians. In addition to an array of differences that emerged between nations and ethnicities, officer accommodativeness indirectly predicted civilian compliance through trust. The hypothesized model was partially supported and culturally-sensitive.
Estimation of Physical Activity Levels Using Cell Phone Questionnaires: A Comparison With Accelerometry for Evaluation of Between-Subject and Within-Subject Variations

Background Physical activity promotes health and longevity. Further elaboration of the role of physical activity for human health in epidemiological studies on large samples requires accurate methods that are easy to use, cheap, and possible to repeat. The use of telecommunication technologies such as cell phones is highly interesting in this respect. In an earlier report, we showed that physical activity level (PAL) assessed using a cell phone procedure agreed well with corresponding estimates obtained using the doubly labeled water method. However, our earlier study indicated high within-subject variation in relation to between-subject variations in PAL using cell phones, but we could not assess if this was a true variation of PAL or an artifact of the cell phone technique. Objective Our objective was to compare within- and between-subject variations in PAL by means of cell phones with corresponding estimates using an accelerometer. In addition, we compared the agreement of daily PAL values obtained using the cell phone questionnaire with corresponding data obtained using an accelerometer. Methods PAL was measured both with the cell phone questionnaire and with a triaxial accelerometer daily during a 2-week study period in 21 healthy Swedish women (20 to 45 years of age and BMI from 17.7 kg/m2 to 33.6 kg/m2). The results were evaluated by fitting linear mixed effect models and descriptive statistics and graphs. Results With the accelerometer, 57% (95% confidence interval [CI] 40%-66%) of the variation was within subjects, while with the cell phone, within-subject variation was 76% (95% CI 59%-83%). The day-to-day variations in PAL observed using the cell phone questions agreed well with the corresponding accelerometer results. Conclusions Both the cell phone questionnaire and the accelerometer showed high within-subject variations. Furthermore, day-to-day variations in PAL within subjects assessed using the cell phone agreed well with corresponding accelerometer values. Consequently, our cell phone questionnaire is a promising tool for assessing levels of physical activity. The tool may be useful for large-scale prospective studies.
Ansiedade e consumo de substâncias psicoativas em adolescentes

This aim of this study was to relate anxiety with psychoactive substances use among adolescents in Maceio, Alagoas, Brazil. It is a cross sectional study with 407 students, aged 14 to 18. Data was collected using a sociodemographic questionnaire; the adolescent anxiety scale; and a questionnaire regarding the consumption of psychoactive substances. The analysis of the relationship between psychoactive substance consumption and anxiety was performed using the chi-square and Fisher's exact tests. Alcohol was the most consumed legal substance, with solvents, the most popular illicit substances. A higher percentage of participants presented moderate levels of anxiety: 28%. The lifetime use of solvents (p=0.037) and energy drinks (p=0.023); cigarette (p=0.043) and alcohol (p=0.007) use in the pervious year; and the frequent use of alcohol (p<0.001) correlated with anxiety. The study evidenced the need to carry out health promotion and drug prevention projects aiming to increase the reflection about lifestyle and anxiety.
Transition From Elementary to Middle School and Change in Motivation: An Examination of Chinese Students

Abstract This study examines whether a change in motivation occurred from 5th-grade elementary school to 6th-grade middle level school for students in the People's Republic of China, as had been identified among U.S. students. A total of 260 Chinese students, 138 in the 5th grade and 122 in the 6th grade, participated in the study. The students' motivation was examined using the Patterns of Adaptive Learning Survey in the following aspects: personal achievement goal orientations, perceptions of the classroom goal structure, academic efficacy, academic self-handicapping strategies, and cultural dissonance between home and school. While no significant difference was reported between male and female students, significant main effects were found between students in the 5th and 6th grades. Specifically, a significant difference was found in two out of eight subcategories: performance approach goal orientation and cultural dissonance between home and school. The findings indicate that the causes of difference in the Chinese students' motivation by grade/school level could be different from those of their U.S. counterparts.