Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Erythrocyte stability, membrane protective and haematological activities of Newbouldia laevis in alloxan –induced diabetic rats

The high prevalence rate of diabetes mellitus (DM) in the developing world and its attendant high cost on healthcare have necessitated search for cheaper, effective and readily available alternative therapies in plants. One of such plants used in Nigeria is Newbouldia laevis (P. Beauv) (NLE). Its effect on erythrocyte fragility, membrane stability and haematological parameters in alloxan-induced diabetic rats for 21 days showed that Newbouldia laevis at 250 mg/kg reduced erythrocyte haemolysis to 11.08±2.50 % while Vitamin C (Ascorbic acid 200 mg/kg) reduced the haemolysis by 10.87±2.16 %. Glibenclamide (2 mg/kg) a standard oral antidiabetic drug reduced the haemolysis to 22.52±3.50 % all at the NaCl concentration of 0.85 %. It also demonstrated its ability to protect the liver, kidney and the pancreas especially at the dose rate of 250 mg/kg against alloxan-induced diabetic membrane destruction. It dose-dependently decreased the packed cell volume (PCV) from 43.67±7.34 % at the dose of 62.5 m g/kg to 33.64±6.34 % at the dose of 125.0 mg/kg and 28.33±3.67 % at the dose of 250 mg/kg. Haemoglobin concentration (Hb), reduced from 14.57±2.43 % at the dose of 62.5 mg/kg to 9.43±1.20 % at 250 mg/kg. But at the same time, it dose-dependently increased the white blood cell count (WBC) from 4.13±0.83 x 103 at the dose of 62.5 mg/kg to 6.26±1.3 x 103 at the dose of 250.0 mg/kg. In conclusion, Newbouldia laevis at 250 mg/kg has erythrocyte and membrane protection ability in alloxan-induced diabetic rats comparable to Vitamin C and glibenclamide, but has variable effects on haematological parameters that are within the normal ranges in diabetic rats. Keywords : Diabetes, Erythrocytes, Haematology, Membrane stability, Newbouldia laevis
Academic Expectations, Belief of Ability, and Involvement by Parents as Predictors of Child Achievement: A cross‐cultural comparison

The aim of the present study was to test the hypotheses that parents’ academic expectations, their perception of children’s cognitive ability, and their degree of involvement at home and school would predict children’s academic achievement, and that there would be important differences in this achievement as a consequence of differences in culture. A sample of 158 parents of students from three primary schools (two Chinese and one of Anglo‐Celtic origin) in Hong Kong participated in this study. The three groups of parents differed in terms of both culture and socio‐economic status. Parents completed a questionnaire about their perceptions of their children’s memory ability, their involvement in their children’s activities, and expected and satisfactory scores for their children’s achievement in mathematics and language. Unstandardised achievement scores in mathematics and language were obtained from school records. Parents’ expected scores in these two subjects were found to be the consistent predictors of achievement for all children. Parental belief in children’s episodic memory and involvement at school were predictors of language achievement in one school.
Risk Factors and Consequences of Cortical Thickness in an Asian Population

Abstract Cortical thickness has been suggested to be one of the most important markers of cortical atrophy. In this study, we examined potential risk factors of cortical thickness and its association with cognition in an elderly Asian population from Singapore. This is a cross-sectional study among 572 Chinese and Malay patients from the ongoing Epidemiology of Dementia in Singapore (EDIS) Study, who underwent comprehensive examinations including neuropsychological testing and brain magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Cortical thickness (in micrometers) was measured using a model-based automated procedure. Cognitive function was expressed as composite and domain-specific Z-scores. Cognitive impairment was categorized into cognitive impairment no dementia (CIND)-mild, CIND-moderate, and dementia in accordance with accepted criteria. Linear regression models were used to examine the association between various risk factors and cortical thickness. With respect to cognition as outcome, both linear (for Z-scores) and logistic (for CIND/dementia) regression models were constructed. Initial adjustments were made for age, sex, and education, and subsequently for other cardiovascular risk factors and MRI markers. Out of 572 included patients, 171 (29.9%) were diagnosed with CIND-mild, 197 (34.4%) with CIND-moderate, and 28 (4.9%) with dementia. Risk factors related to a smaller cortical thickness were increased age, male sex, Malay ethnicity, higher blood glucose, and body mass index levels and presence of lacunar infarcts on MRI. Smaller cortical thickness was associated with CIND moderate/dementia [odds ratio (OR) per standard deviation (SD) decrease: 1.70; 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.19–2.44, P = 0.004] and with composite Z-score reflecting global cognitive functioning [mean difference per SD decrease: −0.094; 95% CI: −0.159; −0.030, P = 0.004]. In particular, smaller cortical thicknesses in the occipital and temporal lobes were related to cognitive impairment. Finally, in terms of specific cognitive domains, the most significant associations were found for executive function, visuoconstruction, and visual memory. Smaller cortical thickness is significantly associated with cognitive impairment, suggesting a contribution of diffuse cortical atrophy beyond the medial temporal lobe to cognitive function. These findings suggest that cortical thinning is a biomarker of neurodegenerative changes in the brain not only in dementia, but also in its preclinical stages.
Effects of Political Campaign Materials on Party and Non-Party Voting Supporters

Political parties would normally claim that their campaign and communication materials have effects on voters, be it on their supporters or their opponents during election campaigns. However, such effects are assumed effects by the parties unless voters are themselves assessed about the effects of such materials on themselves. The supporters of the parties are likely to regard such campaign materials as congenial to them but this may not be so with the opposition supporters who would regard such materials as negative. Taking the third-person effect to analyze effects on the audience as the theoretical framework, this study posited that opposition members would regard the materials as negative and thus would claim that they would not have any effect on them but they would likely say that such campaign materials would have effects on own party supporters. Davison (1983) posited that individuals will perceive that negative mediated messages would have their greatest impact not "on me" or "you" but on "them,"- the third person. Research suggests that people judge others to be more influenced than they are by media, advertising, libelous messages, media violence, pornography, and television drama. The theory referred to as the Third-person effect developed on the postulation that audience members would not admit that media had any direct effect on them, but would instead believe that the media influenced others, the third person (Tewksbury, Moy, & Weis, 2004; Price, Tewksbury, & Huang, 1998). On the other hand, while people would discount the effects of negative or biased messages on themselves, they would, under the notion of the First Person Effect, readily admit to being influenced by such messages. This study was based on studying the effects of political literature on party and opposition party supporters taking the messages to be positive to one group and biased and partisan to another group. The study focuses on the assumed effects of political literature on own party and opposition party supporters. It traces the degree of influence of Malaysia's largest political party, Barisan Nasional (BN) political communication literature on its own supporters and on non-BN party supporters. While the third-person effect assumes a null or minimal effect on one's self and some or strong effect on others, the question that arises are on welcoming favorable media effects on oneself and assuming unfavorable effects on others.
A hybrid approach to Arabic named entity recognition

In this paper, we propose a hybrid named entity recognition (NER) approach that takes the advantages of rule-based and machine learning-based approaches in order to improve the overall system performance and overcome the knowledge elicitation bottleneck and the lack of resources for underdeveloped languages that require deep language processing, such as Arabic. The complexity of Arabic poses special challenges to researchers of Arabic NER, which is essential for both monolingual and multilingual applications. We used the hybrid approach to develop an Arabic NER system that is capable of recognizing 11 types of Arabic named entities: Person, Location, Organization, Date, Time, Price, Measurement, Percent, Phone Number, ISBN and File Name. Extensive experiments were conducted using decision trees, Support Vector Machines and logistic regression classifiers to evaluate the system performance. The empirical results indicate that the hybrid approach outperforms both the rule-based and the ML-based approaches when they are processed independently. More importantly, our system outperforms the state-of-the-art of Arabic NER in terms of accuracy when applied to ANERcorp standard dataset, with F-measures 0.94 for Person, 0.90 for Location and 0.88 for Organization.
Motherhood and the High School Band Director: A Case Study

This instrumental case study examined the experiences of a successful female high school band director with regard to the phenomenon of striving to find balance within the dual roles of both mother and high school band director. In particular, this study was guided by the following research questions: (a) What enabling factors does the participant describe with regard to balancing her parenting and professional responsibilities? (b) What inhibiting factors does the participant describe with regard to balancing her parenting and professional responsibilities? Data were collected over a period of 21 months, and data sources included extended participant journals, three in-person interviews, and observational field notes. Thematic analysis of the data revealed that the participant's pursuit of balance was enabled by personal qualities that she possessed, the structure of her work demands, a supportive partner, and a strong passion for both work and home. Analysis also revealed that the participant's pursuit of balance was inhibited by a lack of time, complicated logistics, particularities of her home/work life, feelings of guilt, and differences she perceived between male and female working parent expectations.
Evaluating a team building intervention in a youth exercise setting.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the mechanisms in an established team building (TB) activity intervention and cohesion, its proposed outcome as well as conduct a process evaluation of the intervention in a youth exercise setting. Participants (N 100, 13–17 years) were members of school-based exercise clubs randomly assigned to either a TB or control condition. In the TB condition, trained leaders implemented an established TB protocol (Carron & Spink, 1993). Results revealed a positive association between the specified mechanisms in the TB intervention and the proposed outcome of task cohesion. The evaluation of the intervention also revealed that the TB components were implemented as prescribed, and the intervention appeared to be appropriate for a youth setting.
Experimental influence of the base load effect on SiGe/Si and InGaAs/InP HPTs

Heterojunction bipolar phototransistors (HPTs) This paper presents an experimental direct validation of the opto-microwave matching properties of heterojunction bipolar phototransistors (HPTs) for the first time. Thus, it provides a direct validation of the associated theory and confirms that HPT require a special process to their base matching as it differs dramatically from conventional complex conjugate matching. This experimental study is undertaken up to 10 GHz on SiGe/Si phototransistors at 850 nm and on InGaAs/InP phototransistors at 1550 nm, with both the HPTs integrated in conventional HBT technologies for greater integration with electronic circuits.
Low-Density Lipoprotein Receptor Gene Mutations and Cardiovascular Risk in a Large Genetic Cascade Screening Population

Background—A large cohort of patients with familial hypercholesterolemia (FH), free from selection for cardiovascular disease (CVD), and their unaffected relatives was collected by genetic cascade screening and examined for the influence of different mutations of the LDL receptor gene on lipoprotein levels and the risk of CVD. Multivariate analyses with adjustment for age, sex, and specific family ties were performed. Methods and Results—Significant variation of LDL levels was observed among 399 patients with FH with different mutations. Null alleles were associated with more severely elevated LDL cholesterol, whereas the frequent N543H/2393del9 mutation led to less elevated LDL cholesterol. The type of mutation did not influence HDL cholesterol levels. Patients with FH had CVD 8.5 times more often compared with their unaffected relatives (RR, 8.54; 95% CI, 5.29 to 13.80). The N543H/2393del9 mutation was associated with a smaller increase of risk compared with other mutations (P <0.0001). After exclusion of families with the N543H/2393del9 mutation, null alleles and other allele mutations no longer differed with regard to LDL cholesterol levels and CVD risk. Conclusions—LDL receptor mutations only partly contributed to the variation of LDL cholesterol levels and cardiovascular burden in FH. Additional, so far unidentified, familial risk factors must underlie the differences of CVD risk, most likely independent of lipids and lipoproteins.
Influence of Aerobic Training on Cardiovascular and Metabolic Parameters in Ederly Hypertensive Women

Background: Treatment of hypertension includes pharmacological and nonpharmacological interventions. Among the nonpharmacological interventions emphasizes the practice of regular physical exercise. However, the effects of aerobic exercise training on cardiovascular and metabolic parameters in elderly hypertensive women are still controversial. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of a walking program on metabolic and cardiovascular parameters at rest and during the recovery period following maximal exercise by hypertensive elderly women. Methods: Twelve elderly women with hypertension started a 2-week walking program. Rest blood cholesterol and anthropometric data, as well as blood pressure and heart rate at rest and after progressive maximal exercise were measured before and after training. Results: There were significant differences between the pre- and posttraining periods in VO2max, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, and mean blood pressure. There were no changes in serum cholesterol levels after the training. During the recovery period following the progressive test, the fall in heart rate and mean blood pressure after 10 minutes of recovery was significantly higher after training. Conclusion: The proposed walking program did not alter serum cholesterol, but it did reduce resting blood pressure, improve aerobic performance and accelerate the fall in heart rate and mean blood pressure during the postprogressive maximal aerobic exercise recovery period in elderly hypertensive women.
REASONING ABOUT SHAPE AS A PATTERN IN VARIABILITY

This paper examines ways in which coherent reasoning about key concepts such as variability, sampling, data, and distribution can be developed as part of statistics education. Instructional activities that could support such reasoning were developed through design research conducted with students in grades 7 and 8. Results are reported from teaching experiment with grade 8 students that employed two instructional activities in order to learn more about their conceptual development. A „growing a sample“ activity had students think about what happens to the graph when bigger samples are taken, followed by an activity requiring reasoning about shape of data. The results suggest that the instructional activities enable conceptual growth. Last, implications for teaching, assessment and research are discussed. First published November 2004 at Statistics Education Research Journal Archives
Pupil Groupings in Primary School Classrooms: Sites for learning and social pedagogy?

Studies of teaching and learning within classrooms rarely consider the multilayered effects of social context, especially involving within-class groupings. Yet, all pupils in classes are placed in some form of grouping throughout their classroom life and this will have an impact on their learning. This article seeks to move forward the understanding of within-class groupings in real classrooms. Five 'core themes' central to pupils' experience of groups in classrooms are identified (group size, group composition, learning tasks, within group interaction and adult presence) and used as a basis to collect information on classroom groupings (using a novel classroom 'mapping' survey). Teachers in 187 classrooms from Years 2 and 5 were surveyed and undertook the mapping during normal classroom work time. The most common group size found was the small group of 4-6 pupils. Other group sizes, including whole classes, individuals, dyads, and triads were less frequent. Most pupil groupings were teacher designated an.
Deletions at chromosome 1p by fluorescence in situ hybridization are an early event in human colorectal tumorigenesis.

BACKGROUND & AIMS Deletions at chromosome 1p have been observed frequently in human colorectal adenocarcinomas, suggesting that loss of genes in this chromosome arm is relevant for tumorigenesis. The aim of this study was to investigate whether 1p deletions are already present in adenomas within selected foci of dysplasia and early cancer using two-color fluorescence in situ hybridization. METHODS Fifty-one sectors characterized by low- and high-grade dysplasia and early cancer were microdissected from 34 adenomas, and isolated epithelial nuclei were subjected to hybridization with probes to the telomeric and centromeric regions of chromosome 1. RESULTS Deletions of 1p were detected in 13 of 34 adenomas (38%). In particular, low/moderate and high dysplasia and foci of early cancer had 1p deletion frequencies of 31%, 44%, and 50%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS Compared with classic cytogenetics, fluorescence in situ hybridization seems to be a particularly useful methodology to detect 1p deletions in human colorectal adenomas. The present findings indicate that loss of genes from the 1p chromosome arm may play an important role during the early steps of the colorectal carcinogenesis.
Application of Entropy-Based Metrics to Identify Emotional Distress from Electroencephalographic Recordings

Recognition of emotions is still an unresolved challenge, which could be helpful to improve current human-machine interfaces. Recently, nonlinear analysis of some physiological signals has shown to play a more relevant role in this context than their traditional linear exploration. Thus, the present work introduces for the first time the application of three recent entropy-based metrics: sample entropy (SE), quadratic SE (QSE) and distribution entropy (DE) to discern between emotional states of calm and negative stress (also called distress). In the last few years, distress has received growing attention because it is a common negative factor in the modern lifestyle of people from developed countries and, moreover, it may lead to serious mental and physical health problems. Precisely, 279 segments of 32-channel electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings from 32 subjects elicited to be calm or negatively stressed have been analyzed. Results provide that QSE is the first single metric presented to date with the ability to identify negative stress. Indeed, this metric has reported a discriminant ability of around 70%, which is only slightly lower than the one obtained by some previous works. Nonetheless, discriminant models from dozens or even hundreds of features have been previously obtained by using advanced classifiers to yield diagnostic accuracies about 80%. Moreover, in agreement with previous neuroanatomy findings, QSE has also revealed notable differences for all the brain regions in the neural activation triggered by the two considered emotions. Consequently, given these results, as well as easy interpretation of QSE, this work opens a new standpoint in the detection of emotional distress, which may gain new insights about the brain’s behavior under this negative emotion.
Comparing Minorities' Ethnic Options

What does it mean for ethnic minority groups to possess ‘ethnic options’? Do ethnic minority groups differ in their abilities to choose and assert their ethnic identities, and can some groups be said to possess more ethnic options than others? It has been recently suggested by certain analysts that while Asian Ameri-cans can exercise some ethnic options, African Americans possess few, if any, ethnic options. This article critically assesses this view, and puts forward various reasons why such a view is problematic. In particular, it argues for the need to rethink and broaden the conceptualization of ethnicity and the need to re-examine our under-standings of the images and labels applied to various ethnic minority groups. Although the article draws primarily upon studies of Asian Americans and African Americans, it also refers to the experiences of ethnic minority groups in Britain with whom American minority groups share both commonalities and differences.
The ASA framework: An update.

In 1987, B. Schneider proposed a person-oriented model of organizational behavior based on the proposition that it is the collective characteristics of people who define an organization. He further proposed that, over time, organizations become defined by the persons in them as a natural outcome of an attraction-selection-attrition (ASA) cycle. We provide a brief overview of the ASA cycle and review literature relevant to two facets of the theory. The literature reviewed provides some indirect support for the proposal that founders and the members of top management have long-term effects on organizations through the ASA cycle. The literature reviewed provides both indirect and direct evidence supporting a central proposition of ASA theory–that organizations over time become relatively homogeneous with regard to the kinds of people in them. Suggestions for future research on ASA are presented.
The Entamoeba histolytica Mitochondrion-Derived Organelle (Crypton) Contains Double-Stranded DNA and Appears To Be Bound by a Double Membrane

ABSTRACT Amebae have an Hsp60-associated, mitochondrion-derived organelle (crypton). In this study, the crypton was stained with multiple DNA-binding fluorochromes and a monoclonal anti-double-stranded DNA antibody. Transmission microscopy of partially purified cryptons revealed organelles bound by a double membrane.
Cooperative control of mobile sensor networks:Adaptive gradient climbing in a distributed environment

We present a stable control strategy for groups of vehicles to move and reconfigure cooperatively in response to a sensed, distributed environment. Each vehicle in the group serves as a mobile sensor and the vehicle network as a mobile and reconfigurable sensor array. Our control strategy decouples, in part, the cooperative management of the network formation from the network maneuvers. The underlying coordination framework uses virtual bodies and artificial potentials. We focus on gradient climbing missions in which the mobile sensor network seeks out local maxima or minima in the environmental field. The network can adapt its configuration in response to the sensed environment in order to optimize its gradient climb.