Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effect of reducing the number of items of the Oral Health Impact Profile on responsiveness, validity and reliability in edentulous populations.

BACKGROUND The 49-item Oral Health Impact Profile (OHIP) has shown strong responsiveness, reliability and validity. However, the large number of items included may limit its use in clinical trials, clinical practice and surveys. OBJECTIVE The main objective of this study is to assess the effect of reducing the number of items in each domain, one at a time, on responsiveness, reliability and validity of the OHIP in edentulous populations. MATERIALS AND METHODS Data used in this study were obtained from two randomized clinical trials comparing mandibular implant overdentures and conventional dentures among 102 subjects between 35 and 65 years of age, and 60 subjects over the age of 65 years. Participants were edentulous individuals who wished to replace their current prostheses. Subjects in both trials were asked to complete the 49-item OHIP prior to treatment and at 2 months post-treatment. Within the study, effect sizes were computed at each stage of item reduction using the impact method. Intraclass correlation coefficients and Pearson's correlation coefficients were also assessed at each stage of item reduction. In addition, receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curves were used to indicate the accuracy with which measurement changes corresponded to judgements of important changes in Oral Health Related Quality of Life (OHRQL). RESULTS The results indicated that, in general, domain responsiveness was not affected by the reduction of the number of items used per domain. However, there was a decrease in reliability, especially within the 'psychological' and 'social' disabilities and 'handicap' domains (35- to 65-year group). In addition, there was a decrease in construct validity of the 'physical pain', 'psychological' and 'social disabilities' domains (35- to 65-year group), as well as on 'physical pain', 'psychological discomfort', 'physical' and 'psychological' disabilities in the 65-year and older group. This occurred primarily, when reducing from two to one item per domain. Among the 35- to 65-year group, there were consistencies in patients' ratings of the importance of similarly measured changes in oral health. CONCLUSION The results indicate that although the 49-item OHIP responsiveness could be maintained with item reduction, this will lead to compromises in reliability and validity.
The ‘lost years’ of green turtles: using stable isotopes to study cryptic lifestages

Ignorance of the location or inaccessible locations of lifestages can impede the study and management of species. We used stable isotopes of carbon and nitrogen to identify the habitats and diets and to estimate the duration of a ‘missing’ lifestage: the early juvenile stage of the green turtle, Chelonia mydas. Stable isotopes in scute from young herbivorous green turtles in shallow-water habitats revealed that they spend 3–5 years as carnivores in oceanic habitats before making a rapid ontogenetic shift in diet and habitat. Stable isotopes in persistent and continuously growing tissues, such as some fish scales, bird bills and claws and mammal hair and claws, can be used to evaluate the ecology of inaccessible lifestages.
Protein Kinase R Mediates Intestinal Epithelial Gene Remodeling in Response to Double-Stranded RNA and Live Rotavirus1

As sentinels of host defense, intestinal epithelial cells respond to the viral pathogen rotavirus by activating a gene expression that promotes immune cell recruitment and activation. We hypothesized that epithelial sensing of rotavirus might target dsRNA, which can be detected by TLR3 or protein kinase R (PKR). Accordingly, we observed that synthetic dsRNA, polyinosinic acid:cytidylic acid (poly(I:C)), potently induced gene remodeling in model intestinal epithelia with the specific pattern of expressed genes, including both classic proinflammatory genes (e.g., IL-8), as well as genes that are classically activated in virus-infected cells (e.g., IFN-responsive genes). Poly(I:C)-induced IL-8 was concentration dependent (2–100 μg/ml) and displayed slower kinetics compared with IL-8 induced by bacterial flagellin (ET50 ∼24 vs 8 h poly(I:C) vs flagellin, respectively). Although model epithelia expressed detectable TLR3 mRNA, neither TLR3-neutralizing Abs nor chloroquine, which blocks activation of intracellular TLR3, attenuated epithelial responses to poly(I:C). Conversely, poly(I:C)-induced phosphorylation of PKR and inhibitors of PKR, 2-aminopurine and adenine, ablated poly(I:C)-induced gene expression but had no effect on gene expression induced by flagellin, thus suggesting that intestinal epithelial cell detection of dsRNA relies on PKR. Consistent with poly(I:C) detection by an intracellular molecule such as PKR, we observed that both uptake of and responses to poly(I:C) were polarized to the basolateral side. Lastly, we observed that the pattern of pharmacologic inhibition of responses to poly(I:C) was identical to that seen in response to infection by live rotavirus, indicating a potentially important role for PKR in activating intestinal epithelial gene expression in rotavirus infection.
Melodic sound enhances visual awareness of congruent musical notes, but only if you can read music

Significance When left and right eyes disagree about what is being viewed, the brain resolves the disagreement by compromise: Visual awareness alternates between the two eyes’ views over time. Called “binocular rivalry,” these alternations in awareness are widely thought to reveal the usually implicit inferential nature of visual processing. In this study, we found that the perceptual dynamics defining rivalry are influenced by abstract, relational properties between visual and auditory sequences comprising musical melodies. However, this bisensory interaction impacts only the amount of time a visual sequence dominates awareness, with audiovisual interaction being powerless to hasten a visual sequence’s emergence from invisibility into awareness. These findings situate the inferential processing putatively transpiring during rivalry prior to extraction of abstract, semantic information. Predictive influences of auditory information on resolution of visual competition were investigated using music, whose visual symbolic notation is familiar only to those with musical training. Results from two experiments using different experimental paradigms revealed that melodic congruence between what is seen and what is heard impacts perceptual dynamics during binocular rivalry. This bisensory interaction was observed only when the musical score was perceptually dominant, not when it was suppressed from awareness, and it was observed only in people who could read music. Results from two ancillary experiments showed that this effect of congruence cannot be explained by differential patterns of eye movements or by differential response sluggishness associated with congruent score/melody combinations. Taken together, these results demonstrate robust audiovisual interaction based on high-level, symbolic representations and its predictive influence on perceptual dynamics during binocular rivalry.
Visual design examples in the evaluation of anticipated user experience at the early phases of research and development

User experience research has focused mainly on understanding user experiences during or directly after use. However, studies that focus on anticipated user experiences are scarce. Different methods and metrics have also been developed to measure user experience, but only a few are suitable for evaluating visual user interface design in an anticipated use situation. Moreover, these methods do not provide guidance on how to create suitable examples for research. This thesis investigates how anticipated user experiences, needs, and wishes for visual user interface design can be studied in the early development phase. Furthermore, it investigates how visual design examples can be created and used in these studies as well as their benefits. To answer these questions, it was necessary to create and evaluate prototypes and visual design examples in the user early development phase user experience studies. The examples allowed the study of how interactive elements of user interfaces should be visually designed to draw users’ attention to them. In addition, the thesis explains the means of increasing the visibility of an interactive object and the impact of its use context on its visual design. A constructive design research approach is used in this thesis. The research material is compiled from the artifacts and results of the seven user studies. The main data collection and analysis methods are qualitative, supported with some quantitative methods. The main contribution of this thesis is a practical EDE method for creating visual design examples and evaluating them in early development phase anticipated user experience studies focused on the visual design of a user interface. The second contribution of this thesis is user experience-based preliminary suggestions for the design of interactive elements within the studied user interfaces. The findings are useful for both practitioners and researchers dealing with user experience and visual user interface design.
PHYTOCHROME C plays a major role in the acceleration of wheat flowering under long-day photoperiod

Significance Plants perceive day length as a critical environmental signal to trigger major changes in development. Multiple light sensors participate in day-length perception, the most important of which are the red/far-red phytochromes. In rice and Arabidopsis, PHYTOCHROME C (PHYC) requires other phytochromes for stability and function. By contrast, wheat PHYC is stable and functionally active even in the absence of other phytochromes. The loss of functional wheat PHYC results in altered expression of circadian clock and photoperiod genes and a dramatic delay in flowering under long days, indicating that PHYC promotes wheat flowering under inductive photoperiods. Our results provide an additional entry point to modify wheat flowering and to accelerate the development of wheat varieties better adapted to new and changing environments. Phytochromes are dimeric proteins that function as red and far-red light sensors influencing nearly every phase of the plant life cycle. Of the three major phytochrome families found in flowering plants, PHYTOCHROME C (PHYC) is the least understood. In Arabidopsis and rice, PHYC is unstable and functionally inactive unless it heterodimerizes with another phytochrome. However, when expressed in an Arabidopsis phy-null mutant, wheat PHYC forms signaling active homodimers that translocate into the nucleus in red light to mediate photomorphogenic responses. Tetraploid wheat plants homozygous for loss-of-function mutations in all PHYC copies (phyCAB) flower on average 108 d later than wild-type plants under long days but only 19 d later under short days, indicating a strong interaction between PHYC and photoperiod. This interaction is further supported by the drastic down-regulation in the phyCAB mutant of the central photoperiod gene PHOTOPERIOD 1 (PPD1) and its downstream target FLOWERING LOCUS T1, which are required for the promotion of flowering under long days. These results implicate light-dependent, PHYC-mediated activation of PPD1 expression in the acceleration of wheat flowering under inductive long days. Plants homozygous for the phyCAB mutations also show altered profiles of circadian clock and clock-output genes, which may also contribute to the observed differences in heading time. Our results highlight important differences in the photoperiod pathways of the temperate grasses with those of well-studied model plant species.
Circulating Hematopoietic Progenitor Cells are Decreased in COPD

Abstract Rationale: Bone marrow derived progenitor cells participate in the repair of injured vessels. The lungs of individuals with emphysema have reduced alveolar capillary density and increased endothelial apoptosis. We hypothesized that circulating levels of endothelial and hematopoietic progenitor cells would be reduced in this group of patients. Objectives: The goal of this study was to measure circulating levels of endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) and hematopoietic progenitor cells (HPCs) in subjects with COPD and to determine if progenitor levels correlated with disease severity and the presence of emphysema. Methods: Peripheral blood mononuclear cells were isolated from 61 patients with COPD and 32 control subjects. Levels of EPCs (CD45dim CD34+) and HPCs (CD45+ CD34+ VEGF-R2+) were quantified using multi-parameter flow cytometry. Progenitor cell function was assessed using cell culture assays. All subjects were evaluated with spirometry and CT scanning. Measurements and Main Results: HPC levels were reduced in subjects with COPD compared to controls, whereas circulating EPC levels were similar between the two groups. HPC levels correlated with severity of obstruction and were lowest in subjects with severe emphysema. These associations remained after correction for factors known to affect progenitor cell levels including age, smoking status, the use of statin medications and the presence of coronary artery disease. The ability of mononuclear cells to form endothelial cell colony forming units (EC-CFU) was also reduced in subjects with COPD. Conclusions: HPC levels are reduced in subjects with COPD and correlate with emphysema phenotype and severity of obstruction. Reduction of HPCs may disrupt maintenance of the capillary endothelium, thereby contributing to the pathogenesis of COPD.
Consideration of gender differences in ankle stabilizer selection for half-squat parachute landing.

INTRODUCTION Chinese paratroopers have traditionally performed the half-squat parachute landing (HSPL), which was different from the well-known parachute landing fall. During HSPL, ankle biomechanics have been shown to vary greatly between genders. Therefore, it is necessary to consider gender with regard to the design of ankle stabilizers for paratroopers. METHODS Eight male and eight female healthy participants landed from platforms under three ankle conditions based on different stabilizer rigidity levels (barefoot control, elastic tape, and semi-rigid brace). Multivariate analysis of variance was used to analyze the effects and interactions of ankle stabilizer, gender, and dropping height on the ground reaction forces (GRF), ankle kinematics, and the shank surface electromyogram (EMG). RESULTS Compared to men, women had significantly higher peak medial-lateral GRF when they were equipped with stabilizers (tape: men 0.521 vs. women 0.856 bodyweight; brace: men 0.531 vs. 0.935 bodyweight), except when barefoot. Both stabilizers significantly decreased all peak angular displacements, but no significant interaction was detected between gender and stabilizer rigidity in ankle kinematics. Compared to barefoot, the semi-rigid brace significantly increased male pre-landing EMG amplitude of the tibialis anterior from 218 to 525 microV and post-landing EMG amplitude of the lateral gastrocnemius from 323 to 910 microV, but no corresponding change took place in women. DISCUSSION The semi-rigid stabilizer was helpful for men in increasing shank muscle activities. Increased stabilizer rigidity had little influence on the muscle activities of women and this could contribute to greater injury risk in women during HSPL.
Scenario tree reduction in stochastic programming with recourse for hydropower operations

A stochastic programming with recourse model requires the consequences of recourse actions be modeled for all possible realizations of the stochastic variables. Continuous stochastic variables are approximated by scenario trees. This paper evaluates the impact of scenario tree reduction on model performance for hydropower operations and suggests procedures to determine the optimal level of scenario tree reduction. We first establish a stochastic programming model for the optimal operation of a cascaded system of reservoirs for hydropower production. We then use the neural gas method to generate scenario trees and employ a Monte Carlo method to systematically reduce the scenario trees. We conduct in‐sample and out‐of‐sample tests to evaluate the impact of scenario tree reduction on the objective function of the hydropower optimization model. We then apply a statistical hypothesis test to determine the significance of the impact due to scenario tree reduction. We develop a stochastic programming with recourse model and apply it to real‐time operation for hydropower production to determine the loss in solution accuracy due to scenario tree reduction. We apply the proposed methodology to the Qingjiang cascade system of reservoirs in China. The results show: (1) the neural gas method preserves the mean value of the original streamflow series but introduces bias to variance, cross variance, and lag‐one covariance due to information loss when the original tree is systematically reduced; (2) reducing the scenario number by as much as 40% results in insignificant change in the objective function and solution quality, but significantly reduces computational demand.
A double-blind placebo-controlled study to evaluate the effect of progestelle progesterone cream on postmenopausal women

Objective To evaluate the effect on climacteric symptoms and quality of life, and the safety of four doses of progestelle progesterone cream administered for 24 weeks to postmenopausal women complaining of moderate to severe menopausal symptoms. Design Single-centre, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled study. Population Two hundred and twenty-three healthy postmenopausal women, aged between 40 and 60 years and complaining of severe menopausal symptoms were recruited through newspaper advertisements. Methods Women were randomly allocated to progestelle progesterone cream 60, 40, 20, 5 mg or placebo, to be applied daily for six months. Main outcome measures The primary efficacy variable was the psychological, somatic and vasomotor components of the Greene Climacteric Scale after six months. Secondary endpoints were incidence of hot flushes and night sweats, the nine subscales of the Medical Outcome Survey Short Form-36 (SF-36), serum progesterone, endometrial thickness and histology after six months. Adverse events were sought and recorded and followed up to resolution. Results There were no statistically significant differences between any of the treatment groups and placebo for any of the components of the Greene Score. A statistically significant difference between the 20 mg group and placebo was found for the physical functioning (95% confidence interval [CI] 1.7–12.3; P = 0.01) and social functioning (95% CI 1.9–16.7; P = 0.01) scales of SF-36 after six months. No other statistically significant differences were found between any treatment group and placebo for any of the other secondary efficacy variables. There appeared to be a higher incidence of headache in the groups treated with progesterone cream. Conclusions Progesterone cream was no more effective than placebo for relief of menopausal symptoms.
Effects of the Premier Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration on Medicare patient mortality and cost.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the effects of the Premier Inc. and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Hospital Quality Incentive Demonstration (PHQID), a public quality reporting and pay-for-performance (P4P) program, on Medicare patient mortality, cost, and outlier classification. DATA SOURCES The 2000-2006 Medicare inpatient claims, Medicare denominator files, and Medicare Provider of Service files. STUDY DESIGN Panel data econometric methods are applied to a retrospective cohort of 11,232,452 admissions from 6,713,928 patients with principal diagnoses of acute myocardial infarction (AMI), heart failure, pneumonia, or a coronary-artery bypass grafting (CABG) procedure from 3,570 acute care hospitals between 2000 and 2006. Three estimators are used to evaluate the effects of the PHQID on risk-adjusted (RA) mortality, cost, and outlier classification in the presence of unobserved selection, resulting from the PHQID being voluntary: fixed effects (FE), FE estimated in the subset of hospitals eligible for the PHQID, and difference-in-difference-in-differences. DATA EXTRACTION METHODS Data were obtained from CMS. Principal Findings. This analysis found no evidence that the PHQID had a significant effect on RA 30-day mortality or RA 60-day cost for AMI, heart failure, pneumonia, or CABG and weak evidence that the PHQID increased RA outlier classification for heart failure and pneumonia. CONCLUSIONS By not reducing mortality or cost growth, this study suggests that the PHQID has made little impact on the value of inpatient care purchased by Medicare.
Market rewards associated with patterns of increasing earnings

*Stanford University; tCornell University; +Northwestern University. We appreciate comments from workshop participants at Baruch College, Cornell University, Harvard Business School, the University of Iowa, the University of North Carolina, the University of Notre Dame, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, the University of Rochester, Temple University, the University of Waterloo, the Financial Economics Conference at SUNY Buffalo, the American Accounting Association Annual Meeting, and the Financial Decisions and Control Seminar at Harvard Business School, and from four anonymous reviewers, Dan Collins, Sanjay Kallapur, Wayne Landsman, Charles Lee, Barbara Lougee, and Krishna Palepu. We also appreciate the research assistance of Don Cram, Philip Joos, and Peter Joos. Funding from the Financial Research Initiative, Stanford University Graduate School of Business, the Stanford Business School Class of 1969 Faculty Fellowship, Cornell's Accounting Institute, the Institute of Professional Accounting at the University of Chicago, Northwestern's Accounting Research Center, and Division of Research, Harvard Business School is gratefully acknowledged. We thank IIBIEIS for use of analyst forecast data. 1 The term "earnings multiple" refers to either the coefficient on earnings in price regressions or the coefficient on earnings changes in returns regressions. We refer to firms with nondecreasing patterns of earnings as firms with increasing patterns. Fewer than 1% of the firm-year observations have a zero year-to-year change as part of an increasing earnings pattern.
Looking forwards and backwards: The real-time processing of Strong and Weak Crossover

We investigated the processing of pronouns in Strong and Weak Crossover constructions as a means of probing the extent to which the incremental parser can use syntactic information to guide antecedent retrieval. In Experiment 1 we show that the parser accesses a displaced wh-phrase as an antecedent for a pronoun when no grammatical constraints prohibit binding, but the parser ignores the same wh-phrase when it stands in a Strong Crossover relation to the pronoun. These results are consistent with two possibilities. First, the parser could apply Principle C at antecedent retrieval to exclude the wh-phrase on the basis of the c-command relation between its gap and the pronoun. Alternatively, retrieval might ignore any phrases that do not occupy an Argument position. Experiment 2 distinguished between these two possibilities by testing antecedent retrieval under Weak Crossover. In Weak Crossover binding of the pronoun is ruled out by the argument condition, but not Principle C. The results of Experiment 2 indicate that antecedent retrieval accesses matching wh-phrases in Weak Crossover configurations. On the basis of these findings we conclude that the parser can make rapid use of Principle C and c-command information to constrain retrieval. We discuss how our results support a view of antecedent retrieval that integrates inferences made over unseen syntactic structure into constraints on backward-looking processes like memory retrieval.