Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Neuropharmacological Potential of Gastrodia elata Blume and Its Components

Research has been conducted in various fields in an attempt to develop new therapeutic agents for incurable neurodegenerative diseases. Gastrodia elata Blume (GE), a traditional herbal medicine, has been used in neurological disorders as an anticonvulsant, analgesic, and sedative medication. Several neurodegenerative models are characterized by oxidative stress and inflammation in the brain, which lead to cell death via multiple extracellular and intracellular signaling pathways. The blockade of certain signaling cascades may represent a compensatory therapy for injured brain tissue. Antioxidative and anti-inflammatory compounds isolated from natural resources have been investigated, as have various synthetic chemicals. Specifically, GE rhizome extract and its components have been shown to protect neuronal cells and recover brain function in various preclinical brain injury models by inhibiting oxidative stress and inflammatory responses. The present review discusses the neuroprotective potential of GE and its components and the related mechanisms; we also provide possible preventive and therapeutic strategies for neurodegenerative disorders using herbal resources.
Title The health-enhancing efficacy of Zumba ® fitness : An 8 wk randomised controlled study

The Health‐Enhancing Efficacy of Zumba© Fitness: An 8 Week Randomised Controlled Study Original citation: Domene, P.A. , Moir, H.J., Pummell, E. , Knox, A. , and Easton, C. (2016) The Health‐ Enhancing Efficacy of Zumba© Fitness: An 8 Week Randomised Controlled Study. Journal of Sports Sciences, Vol: 34 (15) pp. 1396‐1404 http://dx.doi. org/10.1080/02640414.2015. 1112022 DOI: 10.1080/02640414.2015. 1112022 ISSN: 0264‐0414, E‐ISSN: 1466‐447X Publisher: Elsevier
When Worlds Collide: Different Comparative Static Predictions of Continuous and Discrete Agent Models with Land

This paper presents a difference in the comparative statics of general equilibrium models with land when there are finitely many agents, and when there is a continuum of agents. Restricting attention to quasi-linear and Cobb-Douglas utility, it is shown that with finitely many agents, an increase in the (marginal) commuting cost increases land rent per unit (that is, land rent averaged over the consumer's equilibrium parcel) paid by the consumer located at each fixed distance from the central business district. In contrast, with a continuum of agents, average land rent goes up for consumers at each fixed distance close to the central business district, is constant at some intermediate distance, and decreases for locations farther away. Therefore, there is a qualitative difference between the two types of models, and this difference is potentially testable.
A CENTURY OF ECONOMIC GROWTH

This paper makes a contribution to the study of economic growth in developing countries by analysing the six largest Latin American economies over 105 years within a two-equation framework. Confirming previous findings, physical and human capital prove to be key determinants of GDP per capita growth. However, a more controversial result is an overall negative conditional correlation between trade openness and GDP per head growth – though openness has a positive link via investment. The evidence also shows that macroeconomic instability has been a drag on long-term growth in the region. JEL classifications: F43; N26; O11 JEL keywords: Economic Growth; Investment; Openness; Latin America  The paper benefited from comments by Valpy FitzGerald, Leandro Prados, Antonio Tena, Leonardo Vera and an anonymous referee. The author also thanks participants to a economic history seminar held at the University Carlos III in Madrid and to the LACEA meeting in Paris for helpful ideas.
A novel workplace-based assessment for competency-based decisions and learner feedback

Abstract Background: Increased recognition of the importance of competency-based education and assessment has led to the need for practical and reliable methods to assess relevant skills in the workplace. Methods: A novel milestone-based workplace assessment system was implemented in 15 pediatrics residency programs. The system provided: (1) web-based multisource feedback (MSF) and structured clinical observation (SCO) instruments that could be completed on any computer or mobile device; and (2) monthly feedback reports that included competency-level scores and recommendations for improvement. Results: For the final instruments, an average of five MSF and 3.7 SCO assessment instruments were completed for each of 292 interns; instruments required an average of 4–8 min to complete. Generalizability coefficients >0.80 were attainable with six MSF observations. Users indicated that the new system added value to their existing assessment program; the need to complete the local assessments in addition to the new assessments was identified as a burden of the overall process. Conclusions: Outcomes – including high participation rates and high reliability compared to what has traditionally been found with workplace-based assessment – provide evidence for the validity of scores resulting from this novel competency-based assessment system. The development of this assessment model is generalizable to other specialties.
Changes in the attitudes towards psychiatry among Spanish medical students during training in psychiatry

Background: To gain an understanding of the process of recruitment, studying changes in attitudes and views towards psychiatry among Spanish medical students during their fourth academic year. Methods: A 33-item questionnaire was administered to 48 medical students before and after having completed training in psychiatry. Comparative data analysis was carried out using the Wilcoxon test. Results: The comparison showed that there was a reduction in the number of students reporting that psychiatrists abuse their legal power, that for most specialists in this area, psychiatry was not their preferred choice and that those students interested in psychiatry are regarded as odd or peculiar. However, the view that psychiatry is an expanding frontier of medicine decreased among the students. The percentage of students considering psychiatry as a future career rose from 4.2% to 10.4% after training. Conclusions: The students' opinions change with the experience of training in psychiatry and become more realistic. Alongside these changes in attitudes, there is an increase in the proportion of students willing to consider psychiatry as a future career, which suggests that there is no reduction in vocations for psychiatry among Spanish students.
Verification Theorems for Hamilton--Jacobi--Bellman Equations

We study an optimal control problem in Bolza form, and we consider the value function associated to this problem. We prove two verification theorems which ensure that, if a function W satisfies some suitable weak continuity assumptions and a Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman inequality outside a countably H n -rectifiable set, then it is lower than or equal to the value function. These results can be used for optimal synthesis approach.
Family Relationship and Family Interactions among Children with Oppositional Defiant Disorder

Oppositional Defiant Disorder(ODD)is characterized as a pattern of noncompliant,argumentative,angry,hostile and defiant behavior.In order to explore the symptoms and the affecting factors of ODD upon one child families with grandparents education,29group interview data(each group including ODD children,parents,teachers)were collected through oneto-one and face-to-face interviewing.The analysis revealed that:(i)ODD has great negative internalizing and externalizing problems in that such children were easy to be irritated and in general disobeyed both their parents and teacher,and tended to beat peers;(ii)ODD families had problems of parentification,scapegoat,cross-generation coalition,hierarchical structure,and multigenerational transmission;and(iii)they had such problems as whole family ODD level(e.g.,low cohesion),interaction level(e.g.,control,inconsistent)and parent individual level psychology(inferiority and compensation).
Lipedema Fat and Signs and Symptoms of Illness, Increase with Advancing Stage

Background: Lipedema is a poorly known disorder of painful subcutaneous adipose tissue (SAT) likely affecting millions of women worldwide. Stage 1 lipedema has smooth skin with increased underlying fat, Stage 2 has indentations and nodules, and Stage 3 has large extrusions of skin and SAT. Women with lipedema have more SAT below the waist. As this gynoid fat is known to be cardioprotective, we aimed to determine if health declined with increasing stage and extent of lipedema SAT. Methods and Findings: Chart review from June 2012 to February 2013 at a tertiary academic center. Fifty women and one man were included in consecutive order. Fat was assessed in 29 areas for lipomas, size of the depot, and presence of lipedema fat. Pain was assessed by a numerical pain scale. Average age of patients was 50 ± 13 y; average body mass index was 38 ± 12 kg/m2. Median age of development of lipedema was 20 y. Pain occurred daily in 89.7%. None of the patients with Stage 1 lipedema had diabetes, hypertension or dyslipidemia. The amount of lipedema fat differed significantly between Stages of lipedema (p=0.003), with Stage 3 having significantly more. There was no difference in fat depot size or number of lipomas amongst Stages. Only one of 51 patients had type 2 diabetes. There was an increase in shortness of breath, palpitations, urination, and numbness in Stage 3. Conclusions: Lipedema fat can develop in any SAT location and increases in association with increasing signs and symptoms of systemic illness.
Learning Semantic Representations for Nonterminals in Hierarchical Phrase-Based Translation

In hierarchical phrase-based translation, coarse-grained nonterminal Xs may generate inappropriate translations due to the lack of sufficient information for phrasal substitution. In this paper we propose a framework to refine nonterminals in hierarchical translation rules with real-valued semantic representations. The semantic representations are learned via a weighted mean value and a minimum distance method using phrase vector representations obtained from large scale monolingual corpus. Based on the learned semantic vectors, we build a semantic nonterminal refinement model to measure semantic similarities between phrasal substitutions and nonterminal Xs in translation rules. Experiment results on ChineseEnglish translation show that the proposed model significantly improves translation quality on NIST test sets.
Beyond the Traditional Retention Data: A Qualitative Study of the Social Benefits of Living Learning Communities

Living Learning Communities (LLCs) have been shown to increase student retention rates and academic performance (Hotchkiss, Moore, & Pitts, 2006), as well as increase overall satisfaction with college (Baker & Pomerantz, 2000) and increase cognitive skills (Walker, 2003). These benefits have been demonstrated in a variety of institutions with diverse students (Andrade, 2007). However, these studies have relied on quantitative measures of assessment. As suggested by Taylor, Moore, MacGregor, and Lindblad (2003) and Ward and Commander (2011), more qualitative data is needed to really understand why LLCs are linked to positive outcomes. This qualitative study collected focus group data from both LLC students and non-LLC students to determine what possible social and psychological benefits students reported about their LLC or university experiences. Themes emerged from the qualitative data to reveal that LLC students do experience some of the same university life experiences that non-LLC students experience. However, LLC students reported richer connections to faculty and students, as well as additional social and academic opportunities.
Poor Patient and Graft Outcome After Induction Treatment by Antithymocyte Globulin in Recipients of a Kidney Graft After Nonrenal Organ Transplantation

Background End-stage renal failure occurs in a substantial number of patients having received a nonrenal transplantation (NRT), for whom a kidney transplantation is needed. The medical strategy regarding the use of immunosuppression (IS) for a kidney graft in patients after an NRT is not well established. The prekidney grafts long-term IS advocates for a mild induction, such as using anti-IL-2R antibodies, whereas addition of new incompatibilities and anti-HLA preimmunization may suggest using stronger IS such as induction by polyclonal antithymocyte globulins (ATG). Methods We performed Cox multivariate and propensity score analysis of our validated transplant database to study the impact of the type of induction therapy on kidney graft survival of recipients of a kidney graft after NRT. Results We report here that kidney transplantation after NRT treated with an ATG induction has a poorer outcome (kidney and recipient survival) than that with an anti–IL-2R induction. After accounting for potential baseline differences with a multivariate Cox model, or by adjusting on a propensity score, we found that despite patients having received ATG cumulate more risk factors, ATG appears independently involved. As animal-derived biotherapeutics induce antiglycan antibodies and particularly anti–N-glycolylneuraminic acid (Neu5Gc) IgGs which may activate endothelial cells in patients and grafts, we also investigated the magnitude and the nature of the anti-Neu5Gc elicited by the induction and showed that induction was associated with a shift in anti-Neu5Gc IgG repertoire. Possible reasons and mechanisms of a deleterious ATG usage in these patients are discussed. Conclusions Our study suggests that ATG induction after a kidney transplantation in recipients already under maintenance IS for a NRT should be used cautiously.
A study of the relationship between the components of the five-factor model of personality and the occurrence of occupational accidents in industry workers

Accidents are among the most important problems of both the developed and the developing countries. Individual factors and personality traits are the primary causes of human errors and contribute to accidents. The present study aims to investigate the relationship between the components of the five-factor model of personality and the occurrence of occupational accidents in industrial workers. The independent T-test indicated that there is a meaningful relationship between the personality traits and accident proneness. In the two groups of industry workers injured in occupational accidents and industry workers without any occupational accidents, there is a significant relationship between personality traits, neuroticism (p=0.001), openness to experience (p=0.001), extraversion (p=0.024) and conscientiousness (p=0.021). Nonetheless, concerning the personality trait of agreeableness (p = 0.09), the group of workers with accidents did not differ significantly from the workers without any accidents. The results showed that there is a direct and significant relationship between accident proneness and the personality traits of neuroticism and openness to experience. Furthermore, there is a meaningful but inverse correlation between accident proneness and the personality traits of extraversion and conscientiousness, while there was no relationship between accident proneness and the personality trait of agreeableness.
Quantifying N2O reduction to N2 based on N2O isotopocules - validation with independent methods (helium incubation and 15N gas flux method)

Abstract. Stable isotopic analyses of soil-emitted N2O (δ15Nbulk, δ18O and δ15Nsp = 15N site preference within the linear N2O molecule) may help to quantify N2O reduction to N2, an important but rarely quantified process in the soil nitrogen cycle. The N2O residual fraction (remaining unreduced N2O, rN2O) can be theoretically calculated from the measured isotopic enrichment of the residual N2O. However, various N2O-producing pathways may also influence the N2O isotopic signatures, and hence complicate the application of this isotopic fractionation approach. Here this approach was tested based on laboratory soil incubations with two different soil types, applying two reference methods for quantification of rN2O: helium incubation with direct measurement of N2 flux and the 15N gas flux method. This allowed a comparison of the measured rN2O values with the ones calculated based on isotopic enrichment of residual N2O. The results indicate that the performance of the N2O isotopic fractionation approach is related to the accompanying N2O and N2 source processes and the most critical is the determination of the initial isotopic signature of N2O before reduction (δ0). We show that δ0 can be well determined experimentally if stable in time and then successfully applied for determination of rN2O based on δ15Nsp values. Much more problematic to deal with are temporal changes of δ0 values leading to failure of the approach based on δ15Nsp values only. For this case, we propose here a dual N2O isotopocule mapping approach, where calculations are based on the relation between δ18O and δ15Nsp values. This allows for the simultaneous estimation of the N2O-producing pathways' contribution and the rN2O value.
In vitro screening of antagonistic activity of soil Streptomyces against plant pathogenic fungi and assessment of its characters.

Actinobacteria from the genus Streptomyces have been studied as potential biocontrol agents worldwide. In this study, a total of 35 isolates of Actinomycete like colonies were isolated from the rhizospheres of various plant species. These isolates were primary screened for antagonistic activity to inhibit mycelial growth of Colletotrichum gloeosporioides. The screen revealed that seven isolates of Actinomycete like colonies were good inhibitors of the fungal mycelial growth and were chosen for their antagonistic effects against C. gloeosporioides and Biporalis maydis by the dual culture method. The isolate that had the best inhibitory effect on both fungi was further evaluated for antagonistic activity against C. capsici, Pyricularia sp. , Fusarium sp. , Curvularia sp. and Sclerotium roftsii. The results showed that the selected isolate inhibited the mycelial growth of C. capsici, Pyricularia sp. , Fusarium sp. and Curvularia sp. within the range of 65.5-91.6%, while it did not affect the mycelial growth of S. roftsii. Moreover, the culture filtrate of the selected isolate inhibited the mycelial growth of C. gloeosporioides and B. maydis under in vitro condition. Based on the 16S rDNA gene sequence, colony morphology, spore chain rearrangement and physiology, the best isolate belonged to the genus Streptomyces and assigned as Streptomyces sp. isolate SRF1. These findings suggest that the Streptomyces sp. isolate SRF1 is a potential candidate, with a broad antagonistic activity, for use as a biocontrol against plant pathogenic fungi.
Localized delivery of therapeutic doxorubicin dose across the canine blood–brain barrier with hyperthermia and temperature sensitive liposomes

Abstract Most drugs cannot penetrate the blood–brain barrier (BBB), greatly limiting the use of anti-cancer agents for brain cancer therapy. Temperature sensitive liposomes (TSL) are nanoparticles that rapidly release the contained drug in response to hyperthermia (>40 °C). Since hyperthermia also transiently opens the BBB, we hypothesized that localized hyperthermia can achieve drug delivery across the BBB when combined with TSL. TSL-encapsulated doxorubicin (TSL-Dox) was infused intravenously over 30 min at a dose of 0.94 mg/kg in anesthetized beagles (age ∼17 months). Following, a hyperthermia probe was placed 5–10 mm deep through one of four 3-mm skull burr holes. Hyperthermia was performed randomized for 15 or 30 min, at either 45 or 50 °C. Blood was drawn every 30 min to measure TSL-Dox pharmacokinetics. Nonsurvival studies were performed in four dogs, where brain tissue at the hyperthermia location was extracted following treatment to quantify doxorubicin uptake via high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and to visualize cellular uptake via fluorescence microscopy. Survival studies for 6 weeks were performed in five dogs treated by a single hyperthermia application. Local doxorubicin delivery correlated with hyperthermia duration and ranged from 0.11 to 0.74 μg/g of brain tissue at the hyperthermia locations, with undetectable drug uptake in unheated tissue. Fluorescence microscopy demonstrated doxorubicin delivery across the BBB. Histopathology in Haematoxylin & Eosin (H&E) stained samples demonstrated localized damage near the probe. No animals in the survival group demonstrated significant neurological deficits. This study demonstrates that localized doxorubicin delivery to the brain can be facilitated by TSL-Dox with localized hyperthermia with no significant neurological deficits.
Mental Rotation of Faces in Healthy Aging and Alzheimer's Disease

Background Previous research has shown that individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD) develop visuospatial difficulties that affect their ability to mentally rotate objects. Surprisingly, the existing literature has generally ignored the impact of this mental rotation deficit on the ability of AD patients to recognize faces from different angles. Instead, the devastating loss of the ability to recognize friends and family members in AD has primarily been attributed to memory loss and agnosia in later stages of the disorder. The impact of AD on areas of the brain important for mental rotation should not be overlooked by face processing investigations – even in early stages of the disorder. Methodology/Principal Findings This study investigated the sensitivity of face processing in AD, young controls and older non-neurological controls to two changes of the stimuli – a rotation in depth and an inversion. The control groups showed a systematic effect of depth rotation, with errors increasing with the angle of rotation, and with inversion. The majority of the AD group was not impaired when faces were presented upright and no transformation in depth was required, and were most accurate when all faces were presented in frontal views, but accuracy was severely impaired with any rotation or inversion. Conclusions/Significance These results suggest that with the onset of AD, mental rotation difficulties arise that affect the ability to recognize faces presented at different angles. The finding that a frontal view is “preferred” by these patients provides a valuable communication strategy for health care workers.
Enhancing Mathematical Problem Solving for Secondary Students with or at Risk of Learning Disabilities: A Literature Review

Requirements for reasoning, explaining, and generalizing mathematical concepts increase as students advance through the educational system; hence, improving overall mathematical proficiency is critical. Mathematical proficiency requires students to interpret quantities and their corresponding relationships during problem–solving tasks as well as generalizing to different contexts; both requirements are particularly challenging for many students with learning disabilities. An in–depth review of research was completed to (1) demonstrate how interventions targeting mathematical problem solving are categorized into heuristic, semantic, or authentic approaches; (2) explore the degree to which generalization is presented in each approach; and (3) determine the efficacy of each intervention approach. Experimental studies (n = 17) demonstrating the effects of interventions designed to enhance mathematical problem solving for secondary students with or at risk of learning disabilities were analyzed. Findings indicate that the efficacy of the three intervention approaches varies, and that the real–world connections differ. Implications for research and practice are discussed.