Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Age in the development of closure ability in children.

CLOSURE IS the perception of an object or event which is not completely or immediately represented. Previous studies (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9) have revealed marked individual differences in this perceptual ability, but have thrown little light on its development. Street's use of a Gestalt Completion Test with school children revealed no consistent or significant differences in scores attributable to age—which later prompted Thurstone (7, p. 9) to remark that the finding was of interest "as an indication that the test involves some factors which mature at an early age, and it may be taken as indicative of some fundamental and primitive function. " The study by Verville and Cameron (9) of age and sex differences in the perception of incomplete pictures by adults revealed slight differences in reaction times and perceptual set attributable to age, but did not reveal a relationship between age and perceptual ability. Street's test comprised only thirteen items in its final form; the items were not of a single class; nor could the particular percepts be presumed to be universally familiar. Verville and Cameron used only ten items, and they were checking age differences between two groups of adults—those aged 16 to 23 and those aged 35 to 56. Both studies are open to the presumption that the tests, subjects, and procedures were not adequate to reveal an association between perceptual ability and age. The present study was undertaken to reveal, through an early age range, the likely association between closure ability and age. The procedure was designed to minimize the differential effects of prior perceptual experience through the use, on the one hand, of subjects of common social and educational background, and, on the other hand, of closure test-items representative of a single class of percepts that might be presumed to be universally familiar. In short, the aim was to correlate closure ability and age in a uni-dimensional perceptual domain.
Pregnancy and delivery in women with von Willebrand’s disease and different von Willebrand factor mutations

Background Pregnancy in von Willebrand’s disease may carry a significant risk of bleeding. Information on changes in factor VIII and von Willebrand factor and pregnancy outcome in relation to von Willebrand factor gene mutations are very scanty. Design and Methods We examined biological response to desmopressin, changes in factor VIII and von Willebrand factor and pregnancy outcome in a cohort of 23 women with von Willebrand’s disease characterized at molecular level and prospectively followed during 2000–2007. Results Thirty-one pregnancies occurred during the study period. Remarkably, similar changes of factor VIII and von Willebrand factor were observed after desmopressin and during pregnancy in nine women with R854Q, R1374H, V1665E, V1822G and C2362F mutations. Women with von Willebrand’s disease and R1205H and C1130F mutations (17 pregnancies in 12 women) had only a slight increase of factor VIII and von Willebrand factor during pregnancy while their response to desmopressin was marked but short-lived. For these women, two to three desmopressin administrations within the first 48 hours were sufficient to successfully manage vaginal delivery. Two women with recessive von Willebrand’s disease due to compound heterozygosity for different gene mutations had a spontaneous, major increase in factor VIII while von Willebrand factor remained severely reduced. Desmopressin increased factor VIII and was clinically useful in the first case, while a factor VIII/von Willebrand factor concentrate was required in the second patient not responsive to the compound. Factor VIII/von Willebrand factor concentrate was also required for two women with type 2 A von Willebrand’s disease with V1665E mutations who had no von Willebrand factor activity change during pregnancy. In one of them, delayed bleeding occurred 15 days later requiring treatment with Factor VIII/von Willebrand factor concentrate. No miscarriages or stillbirths occurred. Conclusions Close follow-up and detailed guidelines for the management of parturition have produced a very low rate of immediate and late bleeding complications in this setting. Desmopressin was effective and safe in preventing significant bleeding at delivery in most of these patients.
IT Orientation Effects on Obstacles and Facilitators of Innovation: An Emerging Economy Perspective in Mexico

Innovation is a crucial determinant in the survival and growth of firms in emerging economies such as Mexico and other Latin American countries. These firms face obstacles in the form of institutional challenges and rigidity towards change. This study explores how two types of IT orientation to innovation – Internal IT Orientation to Innovation (IIOI) and External IT Orientation to Innovation (EIOI), help firms overcome three types of obstacles to innovation typically prevalent in LATAM economies- economic, policy, and internal. We argue that IIOI has a mitigating role for internal obstacles, while EIOI enables firms to overcome policy and economic obstacles to innovation. We argue that IIOI complements economic facilitators, and EIOI complements policy facilitators to innovation. Analyzing a unique dataset of Mexican firms, we provide empirical support for our hypotheses. The results contribute to theory and practice by highlighting how specific IT orientations help overcome specific obstacles and complement specific facilitators.
Twenty-Five Years of Research on Violence in Digital Games and Aggression Empirical Evidence, Perspectives, and a Debate Gone Astray

Violence in digital games has been a source of controversy in the scientific community and general public. Over two decades of research have examined this issue. However, much of this research has been undercut by methodological limitations and ideological statements that go beyond what scientific evidence could support. We review 25 years of experimental, cross-sectional, longitudinal, and meta- analytical research in this field. Empirical evidence regarding the impact of violent digital games on player aggression is, at best, mixed and cannot support unambig- uous claims that such games are harmful or represent a public health crisis. Rather, indulgence in such claims risked damage to the credibility of games effects research, credibility which can only be restored through better empirical research and more conservative and careful statements by scholars. We encourage the field to engage in a responsible dialog and constructive debate that could continue to be enriching and invigorating.
Stable Isotope Pharmacokinetic Studies Provide Insight into Effects of Age, Sex, and Weight on Levothyroxine Metabolism.

BACKGROUND This study sought to determine whether levothyroxine pharmacokinetics (PKs) are affected by age, weight, and sex. METHODS A PK study was performed after administration of a tracer dose of carbon-13-labeled LT4 (13C-LT4). The study was conducted at an academic medical center. Adults of any age being treated with levothyroxine for hypothyroidism were enrolled in the study. A single dose of 13C-LT4 was administered. Eighteen serial plasma samples were collected. One sample was obtained before the 13C-LT4 dose, and the majority of the remaining samples were collected over the 120-hour period post dosing. 13C-LT4 concentration was quantified using liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry. PK analysis was conducted using a linear log trapezoidal non-compartmental analysis using Phoenix 6.4. RESULTS Eight males and 33 females with a median age of 50 years (range 22-78 years) and median weight of 65.9 kg (range 50-150 kg) were enrolled in the study. The median 13C-LT4 dose administered was 100 μg (range 70-300 μg). The median oral clearance rate (CL/F), apparent volume of distribution (V/F), time to peak concentration (Tmax), and dose-normalized peak concentration (Cmax) of 13C-LT4 were estimated to be 0.712 L/h, 164.9 L, 4 h, and 7.5 ng/L/μg, respectively. The dose-normalized area under the concentration-time curve from time 0 to 120 hours and half-life of the terminal distribution phase were 0.931 ng.h/mL/μg and 172.2 h, respectively. There was no significant difference in any 13C-LT4 PK parameter between patients aged >60 years (n = 10) and patients aged ≤60 years (n = 31), nor was there a relationship between age as a continuous variable and 13C-LT4 PK parameters. Sex only affected CL/F, V/F, and dose-normalized Cmax in univariate analyses. However, after adjusting for weight, sex was no longer a significant covariate. Weight was a significant predictor for CL/F, V/F and dose-normalized Cmax of 13C-LT4 in multivariate analyses. CONCLUSION Prior studies suggest that patient age affects levothyroxine dose requirement. This study did not identify an effect of age and suggests that age-related changes in levothyroxine pharmacokinetics may be mediated by age-related weight differences. Physicians should consider a patient's weight, rather than age, for estimating levothyroxine dosage requirement.
Restructuring the Welfare State: An Analysis of Public Expenditure, 1979/80–1984/85

ABSTRACT Since the election of the Thatcher Government in 1979, public expenditure on the welfare state has undergone a series of changes. The nature of change has, however, often been obscured by the use of inadequate and misleading statistical data. This paper presents a systematic examination of public expenditure on education, health care, housing and social security over the period 1979/80 to 1984/85. It shows that, contrary to much political rhetoric, the major changes in the welfare state have not always arisen from reductions in programme expenditures, but from changes in the composition of expenditure. It is the latter that has often increased economic inequality and can be legitimately referred to as ‘restructuring’.
The Analyst's Attitude Toward Pharmacotherapy

The increased acceptance of medication in psychoanalysis has occurred with too little consideration of possible complications. The potentially adverse psychological effects and disintegrative aspects of this important technical modification require further examination. While the use of phenomenologically defined diagnostic criteria provides valuable guidance to the clinician, the decision to include pharmacotherapy in a psychoanalysis must be understood also as a transference-countertransference enactment. The analyst's attitude toward pharmacotherapy is an essential element in some defensive and gratifying enactments, resistances that can interfere with psychoanalytic processes. Clinical material is presented illustrating narcissistic and perverse resistances that might be facilitated by analysts' attitudes toward pharmacotherapy, attitudes often tacitly communicated in decisions to use combined treatment.
Spawn: A Distributed Computational Economy

The authors have designed and implemented an open, market-based computational system called Spawn. The Spawn system utilizes idle computational resources in a distributed network of heterogeneous computer workstations. It supports both coarse-grain concurrent applications and the remote execution of many independent tasks. Using concurrent Monte Carlo simulations as prototypical applications, the authors explore issues of fairness in resource distribution, currency as a form of priority, price equilibria, the dynamics of transients, and scaling to large systems. In addition to serving the practical goal of harnessing idle processor time in a computer network, Spawn has proven to be a valuable experimental workbench for studying computational markets and their dynamics. >
Body Size Evolution in Mammals: Complexity in Tempo and Mode

Body size correlates with virtually every aspect of species biology, so understanding the tempo and mode of its evolution is of key importance in macroecology and macroevolution. Here we use body mass data from 3,473 of 4,510 extant mammalian species and an almost complete species‐level phylogeny to determine the best model of log(body mass) evolution across all mammals, split taxonomically and spatially. An early‐burst model fits better across all mammals than do models based on either Brownian motion or an Ornstein‐Uhlenbeck process, suggesting that mammals experienced a burst of morphological evolution relatively early in their history that was followed by slower change. We also use spatial models to investigate rates of body mass evolution within ecoregions. These models show that around 50% of the variation in rate can be explained by just a few predictors. High estimated rates are associated with cold, low‐lying, species‐poor, high‐energy, mainland ecoregions. We conclude that the evolution of mammalian body size has been influenced by a complex interplay among geography, climate, and history.
Recombinant CYP3A4*17 Is Defective in Metabolizing the Hypertensive Drug Nifedipine, and the CYP3A4*17 Allele May Occur on the Same Chromosome as CYP3A5*3, Representing a New Putative Defective CYP3A Haplotype

Genetic variation in CYP3A activity may influence the rate of the metabolism and elimination of CYP3A substrates in humans. We previously reported four new CYP3A4 coding variants in three different racial groups. In the present study, we examined metabolism of nifedipine by the recombinant forms of these allelic variants. Metabolism of nifedipine by the L293P (CYP3A4*18), M445T (CYP3A4*3), and P467S (CYP3A4*19) allelic variants was not significantly different from wild-type CYP3A4*1. However, F189S (CYP3A4*17) exhibited a >99% decrease in both Vmax and CLmax of nifedipine compared with CYP3A4*1. Of 72 racially diverse individuals, CYP3A4*17 was identified in 1 of 24 Caucasian samples [1:5 Eastern European (Adygei ethnic group)]. Genotyping of an extended set of 276 genomic DNAs of Caucasians (100 from the Coriell Repository and an additional 176 from the United States) for CYP3A4*17 detected no additional individuals containing the CYP3A4*17 allele. However, additional genotyping of four more Adygei samples available from Coriell detected an additional individual carrying the CYP3A4*17 allele. New specific polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism genotyping procedures were developed for the major splice variant of CYP3A5 (CYP3A5*3) and CYP3A4*17. Genotyping revealed that the two individuals carrying CYP3A4*17 were either homozygous or heterozygous for the more frequent CYP3A5*3 allele, suggesting that the two alleles may exist on the same chromosome as a new putative CYP3A poor metabolizer haplotype. We predict that individuals who are homozygous for defective alleles of both of these genes would metabolize CYP3A substrates poorly. The new genetic tests will be useful in future clinical studies to investigate genotype/phenotype associations.
Design criteria of 1.3-μm multiple-quantum-well lasers for high-temperature operation

We present design criteria for high-temperature operation in 1.3-/spl mu/m multiple-quantum-well (MQW) lasers from the viewpoint of the light output power penalty, i.e., the change in the light output power at a fixed drive current with increasing temperature. It is shown that not only the characteristic temperature (T/sub 0/) but also internal loss dependence on temperature (/spl gamma/) and threshold current (I/sub th/) are significant parameters for reducing the power penalty. We compare the high-temperature performance of InGaAsP-based and AlGaInAs-based MQW lasers and demonstrate that AlGaInAs-based lasers have more potential in terms of the power penalty. Furthermore, we also demonstrate that the power penalty can be reduced by introducing a buried-heterostructure (BH) structure into AlGaInAs-based lasers. From these results, we conclude that the AlGaInAs-based BH lasers are promising for high-temperature performance.
Reduced Serum Dopamine-β-Hydroxylase Activity in Paranoid Schizophrenics

The serum dopamine-beta-hydroxylase activity of 134 carefully selected paranoid schizophrenic patients was compared with that of 118 normal controls. Significantly reduced serum DBH activity found in the schizophrenic group in comparison to the control group could not be brought into relationship with the patients' age, nor with neuroleptic treatment. Manic depressive patients showed values similar to the normal control group. It is discussed that mainly genetically determined low serum DBH activity may be related to the hyperdopaminergic pathomechanism of paranoid schizophrenia.
The Differing Effect of Computerized Dynamic Assessment of L2 Reading Comprehension on High and Low Achievers

The present study investigates the effectiveness of using a computerized dynamic reading comprehension test (CDRT) on Iranian EFL students with a moderate level of proficiency. Using an interventionist approach, the researchers have developed a software which provides the learners with pre-fabricated strategy-based mediations for each item. The software provides two scores for each learner; a non-dynamic score that represents the learner’s ability to answer the test without using the mediations and a dynamic score which represents the learners’ ability to answer the test items using mediations in a stepwise fashion. The results revealed that providing mediation in the form of hints contributed significantly to the increase of students` scores, and consequently to the improvement of their text comprehension. Moreover, this study confirmed that low achievers would benefit more than high achievers from a dynamic test of reading comprehension.
Reuse of Mid-Level Feature in Deep Convolutional Neural Network

Deep convolutional neural network have led to a series of breakthroughs for computer vision task. The success of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) is attributed to their ability to learn rich image representations. However, mid-level representations (features) learned by hidden layers, which contains rich discriminative information, are not directly used for downstream tasks. In this paper, we propose a novel end-to-end model called ReuseNet, which utilizes mid-level features. More specifically, the final fully connected layer consists of the outputs of last hidden layer and also a few intermediate hidden layers. Intermediate hidden layers would receive signals directly from the loss via back propagation. ReuseNet can utilize features of different levels and also strengthen feature propagation, in order to improve the accuracy of downstream tasks. We evaluate our proposed model on two object recognition benchmark tasks: CIFAR-10 and CIFAR-100. The evaluation results show that ReuseNet significantly outperforms VGG-like networks which are trained from the bottom to up, and some other recent models.
Hospital‐Level Correlation Between Clinical and Service Quality Performance for Heart Failure Treatment

&NA; A national cross‐sectional study correlates the satisfaction ratings of heart failure patients (diagnosis related group 127) and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' process‐based quality measures for heart failure treatment for 32 hospitals during the first and second quarters of 2004. Two of the four measures of clinical quality showed statistically significant, moderately strong, positive correlations with a global measure of satisfaction and with, respectively, 5 and 7 subscales of the 10 subscales of satisfaction under examination (Pearson's r ranged between .40 and .67, 2‐tailed; p < .05). Findings demonstrate that quality need not be a zero‐sum issue, with clinical quality and service quality competing for resources and attention.
Laser-ion acceleration through controlled surface contamination

In laser-plasma ion accelerators, control of target contamination layers can lead to selection of accelerated ion species and enhancement of acceleration. To demonstrate this, deuterons up to 75 keV are accelerated from an intense laser interaction with a glass target simply by placing 1 ml of heavy water inside the experimental chamber prior to pumping to generate a deuterated contamination layer on the target. Using the same technique with a deuterated-polystyrene-coated target also enhances deuteron yield by a factor of 3 to 5, while increasing the maximum energy of the generated deuterons to 140 keV.
Thrombocytopenia secondary to linezolid administration: what is the risk?

tration was stopped on day 21. The WBC count and the platelet count reached nadir 4 days after discontinuation of linezolid (to cells/mL and plate3 3 3.3 10 55 10 lets/mL, respectively); the platelet count returned to a level 1 platelets/mL 3 100 10 only 7 days after administration of the drug ceased. The hemoglobin level decreased to 7.9 g/dL 7 days after linezolid therapy was stopped; there was no evidence of bleeding, but the patient required blood transfusions. The patient completed a 6-week antibiotic course with oral azithromycin; his infection was cured. These 2 cases illustrate the potential that administration of linezolid will result in serious myelosuppressive effects, necessitating serial, frequent laboratory followup and phlebotomy, as well as blood transfusions. In their report, Attassi et al. [1] focus on thrombocytopenia and emphasize that platelet counts ! plate3 100 10 lets/mL occur in 32% of patients (6 of 19 patients) with no risk factors for thrombocytopenia after 10 days of linezolid therapy, which is a far greater frequency than the product label reports [2], and report several bleeding complications. Reversible anemia recently has been reported by others as well [3]. Our cases indicate that pancytopenia may also occur in patients who are receiving linezolid. My experience, although anecdotal, is disturbing, and reading the report by Attassi et al. [1] has heightened my concern. Infectious diseases physicians are well aware that there is a great need for alternative therapeutic options for treatment of infections caused by gram-positive organisms, whether because of drug resistance, patient intolerance to first-line antibiotics, or the need for good bioavailability. However, it seems that linezolid may not be an option for prolonged treatment in a substantial number of patients and that, if it is used, close monitoring of the blood count in all patients is necessary. Linezolid is an extremely expensive drug (the cost for administration of 600 mg of the oral formulation twice daily is $100 per day); in the end, this prohibitive cost may limit indiscriminate or prolonged use, which may be a saving grace for patients.
Effectiveness of drug therapies to treat or prevent respiratory syncytial virus infection-related morbidity

Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection causes a huge burden to the health service, as it results in a large number of in-patient days each year and increases the risk of asthma in childhood. In the acute phase, therapy is supportive as bronchodilators and corticosteroids have resulted, at best, only in short-term benefits; promising treatments for ventilated patients, such as exogenous surfactant, require further testing. Passive immunoprophylaxis reduces hospital admission in high risk groups. In the prevention of chronic respiratory morbidity following RSV infection, however, studies are needed to determine whether immunoprophylaxis will have a useful role and to identify which drug treatment will be most cost-effective.