Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Population-based Analysis of Increased Incidence and Improved Survival of Testicular Cancer Patients in Iceland

Objective: For unknown reasons the incidence of testicular cancer has risen dramatically in many industrialized countries. At the same time, the prognosis for these patients has improved even more significantly. This has mostly been explained by the introduction of an effective cisplatin-based multidrug chemotherapy regimen for patients with metastatic or recurrent disease, but better diagnostic tools and surveillance may also play a role. In this population-based study the clinical behaviour of testicular cancer cases (n = 198) in Iceland between 1955 and 1999 was investigated, with a special emphasis on changes in incidence, staging and survival. Material and Methods: The tumours were staged and pathologically classified and the crude probability of survival evaluated. The incidence was calculated for the whole period and further clinical evaluation was done for all the patients diagnosed after 1970 (n = 172). Results: Of 198 patients, 111 (58%) were diagnosed with seminomas and 82 with non-seminomas (42%). Age-adjusted incidence increased from 2.2 per 100 000 men between 1955 and 1959 to 5.3 per 100 000 men between 1995 and 1999 (p < 0.01). More patients were diagnosed with localized disease (stage I) in the second compared to the first time period of the study: 71% vs 52% respectively (p < 0.01). After the introduction of cisplatin-based multidrug chemotherapy in Iceland in 1978, 5-year survival has increased from 67% in the period 1955-77 to 96% in the period 1978-99. Conclusions: During the study period the incidence of testicular cancer in Iceland increased almost threefold. After multidrug chemotherapy was introduced in 1978 only two patients have died from the disease. Since 1987, patients with stage I disease have been followed with surveillance after orchiectomy, without any deaths. Our population-based findings of increased incidence, lower staging and improved survival of patients with testicular cancer in Iceland are important for planning future treatment strategies. The availability of effective treatment, even for patients with advanced disease, stresses the importance of reducing treatment-related morbidity (infertility and secondary malignancies).
The Early Winter Sea Ice Variability under the Recent Arctic Climate Shift

This study reveals that sea ice in the Barents and Kara Seas plays a crucial role in establishing a new Arctic coupled climate system. The early winter sea ice before 1998 shows double dipole patterns over the Arctic peripheral seas. This pattern, referred to as the early winter quadrupole pattern, exhibits the anticlockwise sequential sea ice anomaliespropagationfromthe Greenland Sea to the Barents‐Kara Seas andto the Bering Sea from October to December. This early winter in-phase ice variability contrasts to the out-of-phase relationship in late winter. The mean temperature advection and stationary wave heat flux divergence associated with the atmospheric zonal wave-2 pattern are responsible for the early winter in-phase pattern. Since the end of the last century, the early winter quadrupole pattern has broken down because of the rapid decline of sea ice extent in the Barents‐Kara Seas. This remarkable ice retreat modifies the local ocean‐ atmosphere heat exchange, forcing an anomalous low air pressure over the Barents‐Kara Seas. The subsequent collapse of the atmospheric zonal wave-2 pattern is likely responsible for the breakdown of the early winter sea ice quadrupole pattern after 1998. Therefore, the sea ice anomalies in the Barents‐Kara Seas play a key role in establishing new atmosphere‐sea ice coupled relationships in the warming Arctic.
Simulation of motoneuron morphology in three dimensions. II. Building complete neurons

By using dendrogram data from six adult cat alpha motoneurons, we have constructed computer simulations of these cells in three dimensions (3D) by “growing” their dendritic trees from stem branches that were oriented as in the original cells. Individual trees were simulated by using the algorithms and parameters discussed in the companion paper (Marks and Burke [ 2007 ] J. Comp. Neurol. 503:685–700). It was not possible to distinguish real from simulated motoneurons by visual inspection of 3D drawings. Simulated cells were compared quantitatively with their actual exemplars by using features that were measured in spherical shells at various radii centered on the soma. These included nearest neighbor distances (NNDs) between branches, the sizes and overlaps between the territories of individual dendrites measured as convex hulls (polygons that enclose all branches passing through a shell), and the sizes of circular zones that contained no branches. We also compared the 3D fractal dimensions and lacunarity (a measure of the 3D dispersion of branches) in actual cells and their simulations. The statistical properties of these quantitative measures were not significantly different, suggesting that the simulation algorithm was quite successful. However, there were three exceptions: 1) there were more NNDs at distances < 50 μm in simulated than in actual motoneurons; 2) average overlaps between the territories of different dendrites were almost twice as large in simulated compared with actual motoneurons; and 3) estimates of lacunarity were also larger in simulated cells. These exceptions suggest that dendritic branches in actual motoneurons tend to avoid one another. We discuss possible interpretations of these results. J. Comp. Neurol. 503:701–716, 2007. Published 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Sources and Management of Organizational Stress in Nursing Sub-units in Canada

The main objectives in this research were to explore differences in kinds of stress in varying types of nursing sub-units in hospitals and to examine the relative importance of sub-unit characteristics such as the technology, size, environment, context, structure, and internal sub-unit processes in contributing to sub-unit stress. Five kinds of stress were identified: stress from traumatic emotional experiences, psychogeriatric work load, scheduling of work, physician-nurse relationships, and personality role stress; some of these were found to be associated with variations in the technology of the sub units, but did not appear likely to be modifiable through changes in structural design and organizational processes. Other types of stress were related to both the technology and the sub-unit environment and these appeared to be more amenable to modification through the type of structure and internal processes of the sub-unit.
TextAI: Enhancing TextAE with Intelligent Annotation Support

We present TextAI, an extension to the annotation tool TextAE, that adds support for named-entity recognition and automated relation extraction based on machine learning techniques. Our learning approach is domain-independent and increases the quality of the detected relations with each added training document. We further aim at accelerating and facilitating the manual curation process for natural language documents by supporting simultaneous annotation by multiple users.
MODESTO: Data-centric Analytic Optimization of Complex Stencil Programs on Heterogeneous Architectures

Code transformations, such as loop tiling and loop fusion, are of key importance for the efficient implementation of stencil computations. However, their direct application to a large code base is costly and severely impacts program maintainability. While recently introduced domain-specific languages facilitate the application of such transformations, they typically still require manual tuning or auto-tuning techniques to select the transformations that yield optimal performance. In this paper, we introduce MODESTO, a model-driven stencil optimization framework, that for a stencil program suggests program transformations optimized for a given target architecture. Initially, we review and categorize data locality transformations for stencil programs and introduce a stencil algebra that allows the expression and enumeration of different stencil program implementation variants. Combining this algebra with a compile-time performance model, we show how to automatically tune stencil programs. We use our framework to model the STELLA library and optimize kernels used by the COSMO atmospheric model on multi-core and hybrid CPU-GPU architectures. Compared to naive and expert-tuned variants, the automatically tuned kernels attain a 2.0-3.1x and a 1.0-1.8x speedup respectively.
Perfectionism Dimensions and the Five–factor Model of Personality

This study of university students (n = 357) and community adults (n = 223) examined personal standards (PS) and evaluative concerns (EC) higher–order dimensions of perfectionism that underlie several measures from three different theoretical frameworks. In both students and community adults, confirmatory factor analyses supported PS perfectionism and EC perfectionism higher–order latent factors. In relation to the revised NEO Personality Inventory, PS perfectionism was primarily related to conscientiousness and achievement striving. In contrast, EC perfectionism was primarily related to neuroticism, and lower positive emotions, trust and competence. EC perfectionism accounted for unique variance in current depressive and anxious symptoms over and above the five–factor domain scores. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Expanding Opportunities by Opening Your Mind

A longitudinal study found that the psychological approach individuals take when immersed in a general multicultural environment can predict subsequent career success. Using a culturally diverse sample, we found that “multicultural engagement”—the extent to which students adapted to and learned about new cultures—during a highly international 10-month master of business administration (MBA) program predicted the number of job offers students received after the program, even when controlling for important personality/demographic variables. Furthermore, multicultural engagement predicted an increase in integrative complexity over the course of the 10-month program, and this increase in integrative complexity mediated the effect of multicultural engagement on job market success. This study demonstrates that even when individuals are exposed to the same multicultural environment, it is their psychological approach and engagement with different cultures that determines growth in integrative complexity and tangible increases in professional opportunities.
First-year students’ appraisal of assessment tasks: implications for efficacy, engagement and performance

This study investigated students’ appraisals of assessment tasks and the impact of this on both their task-related efficacy and engagement and subsequent task performance. Two hundred and fifty-seven first-year students rated their experience of an assessment task (essay, oral presentation, laboratory report or exam) that they had previously completed. First-year students evaluated these assessment tasks in terms of two general factors: the motivational value of the task and its manageability. Students’ evaluations were consistent across a range of characteristics and level of academic achievement. Students’ evaluations of motivational value generally predict their engagement and their evaluations of task manageability generally predict their sense of task efficacy. Engagement was a significant predictor of task performance (viz. actual mark) for exam and laboratory report tasks but not for essay-based tasks. Findings are discussed in terms of the implications for assessment design and management.
Emotional Expression in Written Essays and Psychotherapy

In an effort to understand emotional change, brief psychotherapy was compared with written expression about stressful life events as well as with a control condition of writing about trivial events using college students. The written expression condition was quite effective in temporarily arousing negative affect but not in changing feelings about the traumatic events. Some self-generated cognitive changes did occur. In contrast, psychotherapy aroused less negative affect but showed much more cognitive reappraisal and a dramatic shift to positive affect, as well as in a basic change in attitude about the stressful event. The study supports a model of therapeutic change stressing emotional expression followed by cognitive reappraisal rather than a model of simple affective discharge.
Physical activity monitor for recording energy expenditure in pregnancy

Objective. To determine whether the energy expenditure recorded with the physical activity monitor SenseWear™ Pro2 Armband differs from that recorded with indirect calorimetry. Design. Cross‐sectional comparison of measures of energy expenditure. Setting. A convenient sample recruited from a randomized controlled trial. Population. Twenty‐nine pregnant women (24–43years old). Methods. Energy expenditure was recorded with SenseWear™ Pro2 Armband and a portable oxygen analyzer for 90minutes while carrying out a variety of activities of different intensities. Main Outcome Measures. Energy expenditure recorded with the physical activity monitor SenseWear™ Pro2 Armband. Results. Comparing energy expenditure during free‐living activities, the mean differences and limits of agreements from Bland–Altman plots was −136±343kJ, giving an underestimation of energy expenditure by 9%. The intraclass correlation coefficient was 0.85 (95% confidence interval 0.71–0.93; p<0.001), giving 85% of the variance explained by differences among individuals. Conclusions. SenseWear™ Pro2 Armband is a valid measure of energy expenditure during pregnancy.
Indicadores del desarrollo educativo en América Latina y de su impacto en los niveles de vida de la población

Based on the information published by the Economic Commission for Latin America ( CEPAL ), the authors have followed the growth of the region’s educational systems, mainly during the last decades of the 20th century. The patterns of distribution of educational opportunities among the various economic levels and sexes have also been examined. On the other hand, they have analyzed some impact indicators related to the expansion of educational opportunities within the working fields where graduates of those school systems are, and indicators of the probability of those individuals earning higher wages than those considered as the minimum in many countries to outdo poverty. Finally, some obstacles which have hindered the equal distribution of education have been identified, and some political features necessary to overcome them have been sketched.
Perceived Social Competence and Depression

Differences in impressions of social skills between depressed and non-depressed college student participants were investigated. Participants engaged in a 15-minute, face-to-face `getting acquainted' exercise with an assigned partner of the same sex. Based on Beck Depression Inventory scores, participants were classified as depressed or not and three types of dyads were studied: (i) depressed participant interacting with depressed participant; (ii) depressed participant interacting with non-depressed participant; and (iii) non-depressed participant interacting with non-depressed participant. Prior to the interaction, participants reported their mood. After the interaction, participants evaluated their own social competence and the competence of their partners, and completed a second measure of their mood. On all measures of social competence, depressed participants rated themselves as less competent than non-depressed participants. Depressed participants also rated their partners as less competent than non-depressed participants, regardless of the depression level of the partner. Participants' mood prior to their interaction covaried with ratings of one's own skills but not ratings of partners' skills. These results suggest that depressed individuals have a trait-like bias to perceive themselves and others in a negative manner, independent of the mood and manner of expression of their partners. Non-depressed participants did not rate depressed partners as less competent than non-depressed partners, suggesting that depression may be associated more closely with a cognitive set than a skills deficit.
Dynamics of the ion cyclotron resonance effect on amino acids adsorbed at the interfaces

In this study we show a reproduction of the Zhadin experiment, which consists of the transient increase of the electrolytic current flow across an aqueous solution of L‐arginine and L‐glutamic acid induced by a proper low frequency alternating magnetic field superimposed to a static magnetic field of higher strength. We have identified the mechanisms that were at the origin of the so‐far poor reproducibility of the above effect: the state of polarization of the electrode turned out to be a key parameter. The electrochemical investigation of the system shows that the observed phenomenon involves the transitory activation of the anode due to ion cyclotron frequency effect, followed again by anode passivation due to the adsorption of amino acid and its oxidation products. The likely occurrence of similar ion cyclotron resonance (ICR) phenomena at biological membranes, the implications on ion circulation in living matter, and the consequent biological impact of environmental magnetic fields are eventually discussed. Bioelectromagnetics 27:16–25, 2006. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
MINISTERIAL ADVISERS, POLITICIZATION AND THE RETREAT FROM WESTMINSTER: THE CASE OF NEW ZEALAND

Political advisers are an established third element in a number of Westminster-styled jurisdictions, as they are in New Zealand’s institution of executive government. In this paper we report the initial findings of a research project focusing on the role and accountabilities of ministerial advisers in New Zealand. We locate these findings in the context of a growing body of international and comparative research on the role and accountabilities of non civil- or public-service advisers within political executives and comment on the extent to which the findings affirm or refute the view that the ‘third element’ constitutes a threat to the continued application of Westminster principles and practices in New Zealand’s system of government – once described as more Westminster than Westminster. In doing so, we highlight deficiencies in standard conceptions of politicization and argue that there is a need to more clearly differentiate between its procedural and substantive dimensions.
The impact of socio-contextual, physical and lifestyle variables on measures of physical and psychological wellbeing among Māori and non-Māori: the New Zealand Health, Work and Retirement Study

ABSTRACT This article provides an overview of the New Zealand Health, Work and Retirement Study (HWR), the focus of which is on determinants of cultural-contextual factors on physical and mental health among 6,662 New Zealand citizens, a nationally representative sample of adults between 55 and 70 years of age. The HWR was initiated in 2006 with two-year re-assessment intervals. The health and wellbeing of older Māori was a study priority as previous research has shown large health disparities between Māori and non-Māori in New Zealand. Persons of Māori origin were over-sampled to ensure adequate information for subsequent analyses. First-wave results indicated that socioeconomic status, social support and retirement status were associated with optimal ageing among older adults in New Zealand. Māori scored lower on markers of physical and mental health, which was partially explained by restrictive factors including reduced economic living standards and a propensity towards less physical activity. After controlling for multiple socio-contextual and biological variables, ethnicity continued to predict health, suggesting that there are other markers of health and wellbeing in ageing among Māori. Structural variables which restrict access to health care and predispose Māori to engage in maladaptive lifestyle behaviours combined with the distal effects of colonisation may contribute to the health disparities found between Māori and the majority population in New Zealand.
Delayed Rectifier Currents in Rat Globus Pallidus Neurons Are Attributable to Kv2.1 and Kv3.1/3.2 K+ Channels

The symptoms of Parkinson disease are thought to result in part from increased burst activity in globus pallidus neurons. To gain a better understanding of the factors governing this activity, we studied delayed rectifier K+ conductances in acutely isolated rat globus pallidus (GP) neurons, using whole-cell voltage-clamp and single-cell RT-PCR techniques. From a holding potential of −40 mV, depolarizing voltage steps in identified GP neurons evoked slowly inactivating K+ currents. Analysis of the tail currents revealed rapidly and slowly deactivating currents of similar amplitude. The fast component of the current deactivated with a time constant of 11.1 ± 0.8 msec at −40 mV and was blocked by micromolar concentrations of 4-AP and TEA (KD ∼140 μm). The slow component of the current deactivated with a time constant of 89 ± 10 msec at −40 mV and was less sensitive to TEA (KD = 0.8 mm) and 4-AP (KD ∼6 mm). Organic antagonists of Kv1 family channels had little or no effect on somatic currents. These properties are consistent with the hypothesis that the rapidly deactivating current is attributable to Kv3.1/3.2 channels and the slowly deactivating current to Kv2.1-containing channels. Semiquantitative single-cell RT-PCR analysis of Kv3 and Kv2 family mRNAs supported this conclusion. An alteration in the balance of these two channel types could underlie the emergence of burst firing after dopamine-depleting lesions.
PIGMENTARY RETINAL LIPOID NEURONAL HEREDODEGENERATION: (The Relationship of Juvenile and Adult Forms of Amaurotic Family Idiocy)

Ever since the original description by Tay in 1881 and Sachs in 1887, the Amaurotic Family Idiocies have remained among the most enigmatic of medical diseases. Points which are particularly puzzling and which are encountered almost universally in discussions of this group of diseases are ( 1 ) the similarity to or identity with the so-called systemic lipoidoses such as Niemann-Pick’s Hand-Schiller-Christian disease, Xanthamotosis, and Gaucher’s disease and ( 2 ) , the relationships between the various sub-groups within this category. The present discussion is concerned with this latter problem. In previous papers, this author offered evidence and expressed the opinion favoring the hypothesis that the Infantile type (Tay Sachs) and the Juvenile type ( Spielmeyer-Vogt) of Amaurotic Family Idiocy are different. This was based not only on an intensive review of the literature, but also in the light of data obtained from independent investigation. In an attempt to further clarify the issue, the following case is presented to establish the concept that the Juvenile form of Spielmeyer-Vogt and the Adult form of Kuf are quite definitely related if not modified forms of the same process.