Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Critical Review of Self-Reported Functional Ankle Instability Measures

Background: Since functional ankle instability (FAI) lacks a “gold standard” measure, a variety of self-reported ankle instability measures have been created. The purpose of this study was to determine which ankle instability measure identifies individuals who meet a minimum acceptable criterion for FAI. Methods: Participants volunteered from a large university population which included 242 participants (104 males, 138 females; 21.4 ± 1.4 years). The predictor variables were seven ankle instability questionnaires: Ankle Instability Instrument (AII), Ankle Joint Functional Assessment Tool (AJFAT), Chronic Ankle Instability Scale (CAIS), Cumberland Ankle Instability Tool (CAIT), Foot and Ankle Ability Measure (FAAM), Foot and Ankle Instability Questionnaire (FAIQ), and Foot and Ankle Outcome Score (FAOS). The outcome variable (MC_FAI) was created based on the minimum acceptable criteria for FAI. This was established as at least one ankle sprain and an episode of giving way. Data were modeled using chi-square and multinomial logistic regression. Results: The regression model revealed all of the questionnaires were more useful at identifying participants who did not meet the minimum criteria for FAI (No MC_FAI = 95.7%, MC_FAI = 55.6%, overall = 84.6%). Based on the Wald criterion, the full model was reduced to the CAIT, AII, and FAAM. The reduced model revealed the CAIT (X 2 = 8.756, p = 0.003) and AII (X 2 = 31.992, p = 0.001) as the only variables that had a significant relationship with the outcome variable. Conclusion: The model illustrates no single measure was able to predict if individuals met the minimally accepted criteria for FAI. However, a significantly accurate prediction of ankle stability status was produced by combining the CAIT and AII. Clinical Relevance: Based on the results we recommend that researchers and clinicians use both the CAIT and AII to determine ankle stability status.
Primary disseminated multifocal Ewing sarcoma: results of the Euro-EWING 99 trial.

PURPOSE To improve the poor prognosis of patients with primary disseminated multifocal Ewing sarcomas (PDMES) with a dose-intense treatment concept. PATIENTS AND METHODS From 1999 to 2005, 281 patients with PDMES were enrolled onto the Euro-EWING 99 R3 study. Median age was 16.2 years (range, 0.4 to 49 years). Recommended treatment consisted of six cycles of vincristine, ifosfamide, doxorubicin, and etoposide (VIDE), one cycle of vincristine, dactinomycin, and ifosfamide (VAI), local treatment (surgery and/or radiotherapy), and high-dose busulfan-melphalan followed by autologous stem-cell transplantation (HDT/SCT). RESULTS After a median follow-up of 3.8 years, event-free survival (EFS) and overall survival (OS) at 3 years for all 281 patients were 27% +/- 3% and 34% +/- 4% respectively. Six VIDE cycles were completed by 250 patients (89%); 169 patients (60%) received HDT/SCT. The estimated 3-year EFS from the start of HDT/SCT was 45% for 46 children younger than 14 years. Cox regression analyses demonstrated increased risk at diagnosis for patients older than 14 years (hazard ratio [HR] = 1.6), a primary tumor volume more than 200 mL (HR = 1.8), more than one bone metastatic site (HR = 2.0), bone marrow metastases (HR = 1.6), and additional lung metastases (HR = 1.5). An up-front risk score based on these HR factors identified three groups with EFS rates of 50% for score <or= 3 (82 patients), 25% for score more than 3 to less than 5 (102 patients), and 10% for score >or= 5 (70 patients; P < .0001). CONCLUSION PDMES patients may survive with intensive multimodal therapy. Age, tumor volume, and extent of metastatic spread are relevant risk factors. A score based on these factors may facilitate risk-adapted treatment approaches.
The Role of Trochlear Dysplasia in Patellofemoral Instability

&NA; Trochlear dysplasia is characterized by abnormal trochlear morphology and a shallow groove. It is associated with recurrent patellar dislocation, but it is unclear whether the dysplasia is congenital, the result of lateral tracking and chronic instability, or caused by a combination of factors. Lateral radiographs elucidate the crossing sign and characteristic trochlear prominence. Recurrent patellofemoral instability is multifactorial, and each component must be considered in determining treatment. Managing other factors associated with recurrent instability may compensate for a deficient trochlea and provide stability. Medial patellofemoral ligament reconstruction is recommended for patellofemoral instability in the presence of trochlear dysplasia in patients without patella alta or increased tibial tubercle‐trochlear groove distance. Trochleoplasty should be reserved for severe dysplasia in which patellofemoral stability cannot otherwise be obtained.
Combined Treatment Strategy and Outcome of High Risk Neuroblastoma: Experience of the Children’s Cancer Hospital-Egypt

Background: Neuroblastoma (NB) is remarkable for its wide spectrum of clinical behavior and biological characteristics in relation to outcome. The use of aggressive therapy, including autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) and the addition of isoretionin (cis-Retinoic Acid/cis-RA), has increased survival rates of patients with advanced disease. Methods: Pediatric 271 newly diagnosed high risk NB patients were prospectively enrolled into the study. Patients received neoadjuvant chemotherapy of alternating cycles: [cyclophosphamide, doxorubicin, vincristine (CAdO)] and [etoposide, carboplatin]. Intensification courses of “ICE” (ifosfamide, carboplatin, and etoposide) regimen were administered to patients with bone marrow (BM) residual infiltration. Whenever safely feasible, complete surgical resection or debulking of the primary tumor was attempted for patients achieving partial response. Eligible patients underwent HSCT, while radiation therapy to the primary and metastatic sites, as well as maintenance with cis-RA was given for 6 months. Results: The median age of our patients was 2.8 years with male to female ratio of 1.65:1. At 4 years, the overall and event free survivals were 33.7% and 23.3% for the entire group under study, with significantly higher rates (42.7% and 35.6%, respectively) for HSCT patients (n = 94; p < 0.001). The outcome was also significantly correlated with response to induction therapy, pathological subtype, as well as other variables. Conclusion: Myeloablative therapy followed by stem cell rescue is regarded as the most important goal of high risk NB treatment to improve survival till present. Each of consolidation HSCT, post induction disease status, as well as international neuroblastoma pathology classification (INPC) subtype was an independent predictive variable of survival. A collaborative effort with an emphasis on biologic characteristics of aggressive disease and tailored therapy needs to be strengthened to further our understanding of this disease.
Initiation of and Adherence to Treatment for Mental Disorders: Examination of Patient Advocate Group Members in 11 Countries

Objective.Greater understanding of the help-seeking process is needed to reduce the level of unmet need for mental health treatment. Design.Cross-sectional mail survey. Study Population.The study population consisted of 3,516 respondents to a survey of members of 14 patient advocacy groups in 11 countries. Respondents reported whether they initiated and adhered to the treatment most recently recommended to them. Outcomes.Crude and adjusted likelihoods of initiating and adhering to recommended treatment were studied. Results.The vast majority of respondents reported initiating the most recent treatment recommended to them (94%), and most of those who initiated treatment also adhered to such treatment (83%). Predictors of initiation by the respondents included higher levels of education, having pharmacotherapy recommended to the respondent, and having received explanations about the diagnosis and treatment. Predictors of adherence to therapy included male gender, receipt of pharmacotherapy, and presence of insurance coverage. Side effects were an important reported reason for treatment dropout, with 44% of respondents reporting lifetime treatment dropout due to side effects. Conclusions.Successful initiation and adherence to mental health treatments depend critically on patients’ knowledge and awareness, clinicians’ communication skills, treatment side effects, and barriers such as lack of insurance. Further study and intervention focused on these modifiable factors are needed to improve the adequacy of mental health treatment.
Reflection as an Educational Strategy in Nursing Professional Development: An Integrative Review

Reflection is a critical component of professional nursing practice and a strategy for learning through practice. This integrative review synthesizes the literature addressing the use of reflection as an educational strategy and reports outcomes from the use of reflective strategies. Reflection education is primarily nested in programs to meet specific clinical goals, structured with group facilitation. Findings suggest that reflective strategies stimulate learning in practice, enhance readiness to apply new knowledge, and promote practice change.
The relative importance of task, citizenship and counterproductive performance to job performance ratings: Do rater source and team‐based culture matter?

This study contributes to our understanding of which factors predict raters' policies for combining performance components into an overall job performance rating. We used a work-roles framework to examine the effects of rater source and team-based culture. The sample consisted of 612 individuals in three job categories (317 nurses, 168 personnel recruiters and 127 sales representatives). Respondents rated employee performance profiles that were described on task, citizenship and counterproductive performance. Raters' weights differed by (a) organizational culture (low- vs. high-team-based); (b) rating source (supervisor vs. peer) and (c) job. In a team-based culture, more weight was given to citizenship performance and less to task performance. Peers attached more importance to citizenship performance and less to task performance. Implications of these findings for performance management are discussed.
Friends Who Give : Relationship-Building and Other Uses of Social Networking Tools by Nonprofit Organizations

Social networking is now the most popular activity on the Web (Qualman, 2009), with Facebook alone now having member numbers in excess of 500 million (Facebook, 2009). Social networking represents a major opportunity for corporations and nonprofit organizations to gain access to massive audiences with a medium that is essentially free and user-friendly. This research focused on how nonprofit organizations are currently using social networking tools, with a particular interest in how they use social networking as a relationship-building tool to create and maintain relationships and communication with volunteers, donors and other interested parties.
A Combined Trip Generation, Trip Distribution, Modal Split, and Trip Assignment Model

The goal of this paper was to develop a model and a computationally efficient solution procedure that would achieve a practical compromise between the two objectives of behavioral richness and computational tractability. In the model developed, trip generation depends upon the transportation system's performance through an accessibility measure that is based on the random utility theory of users' behavior. In addition, trip distribution is given by a logit model rather than being specified by a more rigid entropy model. The results of this study indicate that assumptions of invertability, symmetry, and negative definiteness of transportation demand functions are not as restrictive as previously thought. Therefore, the reformulation of traffic equilibrium models as equivalent optimization problems that can be solved efficiently by nonlinear programming methods remains a potentially fruitful avenue for future investigation.
Plasma Free Amino Acids in Taiwan Chinese: the Effect of Age

Abstract Values of plasma amino acids (AA) in Taiwan Chinese in different age groups were determined. AA analysis was performed by ion-exchange chromatography. The results correlated well with the reference values published by Shapira in 1989, indicating that plasma AA concentrations are not evidently affected by race and dietary habits. We also confirmed the effect of age on plasma free AA levels. More than two thirds of 35 amino acids showed statistically significant differences between age groups (p<0.05, one-way ANOVA test). Levels of taurine, hydroxyproline, threonine, serine, glutamic acid, proline, citrulline and α-amino-η butyric acid varied with age (p<0.01). Only a few AA, including α-amino-adipic acid, glycine, alanine, cystine, homocystine, isoleucine, tyrosine, γ-aminobutyric acid and tryptophan, showed no statistically significant differences between the different age groups. When comparing the mean differences in individual AA among these three age groups using the post-hoc test, alanine, tyrosine, phenylalanine, glycine, glutamine, cystine, homocystine, isoleucine, γ-aminobutyric acid and tryptophan appeared to be constant across all age groups. Glutamic acid and serine correlated significantly with age (p<0.05), with a definite decline in concentration from infancy to adulthood (r=0.396 and 0.243; p<0.01, respectively). We conclude that AA values are not evidently affected by race, but they do vary with age.
Subsidized temporary jobs: lock-in and stepping stone effects

This article evaluates the effectiveness of subsidized temporary jobs as stepping stones to regular employment. We study a French program that allows job seekers to work part-time while remaining registered with the unemployment agency. In this program, insured individuals concurrently receive part of their unemployment benefits and wage income. Using administrative data, we find that subsidized temporary jobs have both a significant lock-in effect and a significant positive post-treatment impact on the hazard rate to employment. Since individuals facing a high implicit tax rate have incentives to self-select into better part-time jobs, we also find that a higher tax rate leads to a weaker lock-in effect and a stronger post-treatment effect. Simulations suggest that the lock-in effect first dominates, but that the overall effect eventually becomes positive. They also point to ways of improving the effectiveness of the policy.
Biased emotional attention in post-traumatic stress disorder: a help as well as a hindrance?

ABSTRACT Background From a cognitive neuroscience perspective, the emotional attentional bias in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) could be conceptualized either as emotional hyper-responsiveness or as reduced priming of task-relevant representations due to dysfunction in ‘top-down’ regulatory systems. We investigated these possibilities both with respect to threatening and positive stimuli among traumatized individuals with and without PTSD. Method Twenty-two patients with PTSD, 21 trauma controls and 20 non-traumatized healthy participants were evaluated on two tasks. For one of these tasks, the affective Stroop task (aST), the emotional stimuli act as distracters and interfere with task performance. For the other, the emotional lexical decision task (eLDT), emotional information facilitates task performance. Results Compared to trauma controls and healthy participants, patients with PTSD showed increased interference for negative but not positive distracters on the aST and increased emotional facilitation for negative words on the eLDT. Conclusions These findings document that hyper-responsiveness to threat but not to positive stimuli is specific for patients with PTSD.
Evaluation of the risk of congenital cardiovascular defects associated with use of paroxetine during pregnancy.

OBJECTIVE In 2005-2006, several studies noted an increased risk of cardiovascular birth defects associated with maternal use of paroxetine compared with other antidepressants in the same class. In this study, the authors sought to determine whether paroxetine was associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular defects in infants of women exposed to the drug during the first trimester of pregnancy. METHOD From teratology information services around the world, the authors collected prospectively ascertained, unpublished cases of infants exposed to paroxetine early in the first trimester of pregnancy and compared them with an unexposed cohort. The authors also contacted the authors of published database studies on antidepressants as a class to determine how many of the women in those studies had been exposed to paroxetine and the rates of cardiovascular defects in their infants. RESULTS The authors were able to ascertain the outcomes of 1,174 infants from eight services. The rates of cardiac defects in the paroxetine group and in the unexposed group were both 0.7%. The rate in the database studies (2,061 cases from four studies) was 1.5%. CONCLUSIONS Paroxetine does not appear to be associated with an increased risk of cardiovascular defects following use in early pregnancy, as the incidence in more than 3,000 infants was well within the population incidence of approximately 1%.
On the principles of the vascular network branching.

We propose an explanation of Murray's law without applying the minimality principles. The model deals with a "delivering" artery system of an organ that is characterized, first, by the space-filling embedding into the organ tissue and, second, by the uniform distribution of the blood pressure drop over it. The latter assumption is justified using the available physiological data and the idea about conditions needed for perfect self-regulation. Based on the two statements we get Murray's law, and so, demonstrate that it can be also regarded as a direct consequence of the organism's capacity for controlling finely the blood flow redistribution over peripheral vascular networks.
Skinks currently assigned to Carlia aerata (Scincidae : Lygosominae) of north-eastern Queensland: a preliminary study of cryptic diversity and two new species

A preliminary investigation of genetic diversity in Carlia aerata, by sequencing the mitochondrial ND4 gene, revealed the presence of two cryptic species, described herein. The sequence data was added to an existing phylogeny to discern molecular relationships. Interestingly, genetic affinities lie not with C. aerata, the species to which they key. Instead, one has affinities with C. tanneri, the other with C. foliorum. This casts doubt on the validity of morphological characters alone to infer relationships within this genus. Despite low levels of genetic divergence from sister taxa, the new species can be diagnosed from these by morphological characters that exhibit little or no intraspecific variation. The addition of these new species to the gene tree did not enhance resolution of the phylogenetic relationships at the deeper nodes of the Carlia tree. The discovery of these two new cryptic species provides further support for a previously suggested rapid mid-Miocene diversification of Carlia that may have resulted from the successful expansion of a rainforest-dwelling ancestor into the expanding woodlands associated with Miocene climate fluctuations.
Effects of some drugs on electroencephalographic fast activity and dream time.

The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that latency of REM onset is a negative function of drug-induced precentral fast (18 to 26 cps) activity in the EEG. Chlorpromazine increased this activity during sleep and wakefulness and decreased latency of REM sleep, whereas α-chloralose, pentothal, and phenobarbital were associated with a decrease of this activity during sleep, increased slow wave sleep, and increased latency of REM sleep. Phenobarbital and pentothal increased this fast activity during wakefulness and drowsiness, respectively. However, 18 to 26 cps precentral activity was reduced during sleep with α-chloralose and pentothal. A supporting study in cats demonstrates apparent synchrony of fast activity in the limbic system and cortex during wakefulness, and chlorpromazine increases fast activity in the limbic system. It is speculated that chlorpromazine enhances the effect of the limbic system on cortical (primarily precentral) activity. The sedatives are thought to potentiate the spontaneous slow wave sleep pattern.
Patient, Physician, Medical Assistant, and Office Visit Factors Associated With Medication List Agreement

Objectives Despite its importance for patient safety, there have been few studies of medication reconciliation in primary care. Our goal was to identify potential patient, physician, medical assistant (MA), and office visit factors associated with accurate medication lists in Cleveland Clinic primary care practices. Methods Physician and MA medication reconciliation activities were directly observed during office visits. The primary outcome was agreement between the electronic medical record medication list at the conclusion of the office visit and what the patients said they were actually taking, assessed by structured telephone interview within 2 weeks of the office visit. Medication list agreement was defined as the absence of any discrepancies in name, dose, frequency, route, and as-needed status. Associations between patient, physician, MA, and office visit factors and medication list accuracy were assessed using &khgr;2 tests and logistic regression. Results Twenty-four physicians and 33 MAs were observed during 231 patient encounters. Nineteen patients (8%) could not be contacted for the telephone interview and were excluded from the analysis. Thirty-two patients (15%) had perfect medication list agreement for prescription and nonprescription medications, and 66 patients (31%) had medication list agreement for prescription medications only. Of the 14 patient, physician, and MA medication reconciliation behaviors examined, only 1, in which the MA begins the medication review with an open-ended question, was significantly associated with a medication list in agreement (odds ratio, 2.96; confidence interval, 1.43–6.09) for prescription and nonprescription medications. This association was not significant when only prescription medications were included (odds ratio, 0.90; confidence interval, 0.43–1.91). No behaviors we observed significantly influenced prescription medication list agreement. Conclusions Having MAs begin their medication review with an open-ended question may be a simple, inexpensive, and easily implemented process to increase accuracy of medication lists for prescription and nonprescription medications.