Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Reinforcement of teeth with simulated coronal fracture and immature weakened roots using resin composite cured by a modified layering technique.

OBJECTIVE The purpose of this study was to evaluate the strengthening effect of resin composite, cured by a modified layering protocol, for teeth with simulated coronal fracture and weakened immature roots. METHODS Fifty maxillary teeth were decoronated and their apices sectioned to standardize the length to 12 mm. Prepared teeth were equally distributed into five groups. Group 1VF root apices were flared with Pesso drills up to size 6. The roots were flared until a dentin thickness of only 1 ± 0.2 mm remained. Root ends were filled with mineral trioxide aggregate. The canals were backfilled with Vertise Flow following a modified layering protocol using two light-transmitting posts size 6 and 3. Next, a DT light post size 2 was cemented using the same material. Groups 2TS/MF and 3ED/PF were prepared and cured in the same way as group 1VF but filled with Clearfil Tri-S Bond/Majesty Flow and ED Primer II/Panavia F2.0 respectively. Group 4UF was similarly prepared but left unfilled (control). In group 5NW, roots were unflared but similarly filled as in group 3ED/PF. After 24 hours of storage, the fracture load was measured. The degree of cure for each tested material was indirectly measured using microhardness at different root levels (cervical, middle, and apical). Data were analyzed using one-way analysis of variance followed by Newman-Keuls post hoc test. RESULTS Fracture load results revealed that groups 1VF and 2TS/MF had no statistically significant difference from group 5NW (p>0.05). For each tested material, no significant difference was found among microhardness values at different root levels. CONCLUSION It may be possible to reinforce the teeth with coronal fracture and immature weakened roots to be comparable with unweakened ones when composite is applied and cured by the modified layering technique.
Philanthropy and Political Influence: A case study on the link between symbolic capital, political access and public perception of Bill Gates

The influence wielded through private philanthropy has made a comeback to the academic and public discussion, as large foundations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) invest increasing amounts of money in national and international development efforts. This thesis researches one aspect of philanthropy that has received little attention in the debate on its implications for political equality: Firstly, the link of philanthropy and the accumulation of symbolic capital; and secondly, the resulting political influence of philanthropists. The theoretical basis for such a conceptualisation is derived from Bourdieu's theory of fields and the different forms of capital. The thesis focusses on the latest trend in philanthropic practices, namely entrepreneurial philanthropy. Using a case study approach, the prestige Bill Gates has accrued as a result of his charitable engagements with the BMGF, and the access to international high-level politicians this grants him as an individual are researched. Moreover, the public perception of his person is examined for changes that are related to his philanthropic work. To that end, data on awards and national honours Gates received from 2000 onwards, his meetings with high-level politicians since November 2014, and Google search term trends and correlations in the United States (US) since 2004 was analysed. Findings indicate that the symbolic rewards philanthropy brings are not to be underestimated, as both politicians and the general public seem to be influenced by his work with the BMGF. Development-related issues are discussed regularly with politicians, and philanthropy is increasingly reflected in Gates's public image. (Less)
Equine Culicoides hypersensitivity in Florida: biting midges aspirated from horses

Abstract. Nine species of Culicoides were aspirated from horses in Florida during the second phase of a study of equine Culicoides hypersensitivity (CHS). Approximately 90% of the 2933 midges were Culicoides insignis Lutz, 4% were C.stellifer (Coquillett), 3% were C.niger Root and Hoffman, 2% were C.alachua Jamnback and Wirth and the remaining 1% included C.venustus Hoffman, C.scanloni Wirth and Hubert, C.lahillei Iches (=C.debitipalpis Lutz), C.pusillus Lutz, and C.edeni Wirth and Blanton. Culicoides were sampled on seven farms located throughout Florida. The location and seasonality of lesion development on horses with CHS correlated with the Culicoides spp. collected directly from the horses as to their sites of attack, their seasonality and geographical distribution.
Classroom Management in Relation to Professional Commitment of Secondary School Teachers

Teachers play very important role in managing classroom activities and use strategies to ensure that the classroom provides a context to support and facilitate learning. In today’s classrooms teachers must possess high degree of professional competences so that they can manage their classes efficiently and students get the maximum gain from their schooling. So, in the present study the investigator tried to explore the relationship between classroom management and professional commitment among secondary school teachers. Data was collected from 500 secondary school teachers by using classroom management scale by Neerja Gautam (2011) and Professional commitment scale by Dr. Ravinder Kaur, Sarvjit Kaur Brar and Dr. Sarabjit Kaur Ranu (2013). Results of the study revealed positive and significant relationship between classroom management and professional commitment.
Crisis Leadership During the Great Recession of 2008

Understanding leadership characteristics, frameworks, components, and contexts that are beneficial to the guidance of organizational policy is useful for understanding the way in which leaders should act during a crisis. Recessions are common throughout economies; yet, many see recessions as crises. Due to the chaotic nature of economic recessions, leaders must work in conditions of uncertainty, complexity, and volatility. Therefore, using a qualitative phenomenological approach, an examination was conducted on leaders’ lived experiences of the Great Recession of 2008 to further understand the concept of crisis leadership. A discussion is included on the way in which leaders internalize and analyze the crisis and the characteristics and behaviors needed to sustain through the crisis. This research was conducted in 2013.
Race, Trust in Government, and Self-Employment

This paper examines the effects of trust in government on the self-employment decision. For black Americans the decision to be self-employed, and the associated returns are likely to be particularly sensitive to trust in the federal government, as the history and political economy of race in the United States required federal government to introduce laws, legislation and institutions to alter the future behavior of whites in their market interactions with blacks. Utilizing General Social Survey Data, I find that among the self-employed, race—being black—is a negative determinant of various measures of trust and confidence in federal government. Parameter estimates from a Bivariate Probit estimator of the likelihood of black self-employment and income reveal that both increase with respect to several measures of trust and confidence in the federal government. The results suggest that as the relative growth and performance of black self-employment is trust and confidence sensitive, the underrepresentation of black-owned firms can possibly be explained by the relatively low trust and confidence in the federal government among black Americans.
Speed-adaptive vertical handoff algorithm based on fuzzy logic in vehicular heterogeneous networks

This paper proposes a multi-mode vehicle terminal based speed adaptive vertical handoff policy in vehicular heterogeneous networks. The proposed vertical handoff algorithm uses speed adaptive policy in the network discovery phase, which overcomes the drawbacks of the fixed, single network discovery methods by using RSS, raises candidate network sets update rate and improves the network discovery time of high-speed mobile terminals. Moreover, a handoff decision algorithm based on type-2 fuzzy logic is proposed, which takes into account a variety of access network and user properties, selects the network with the maximum satisfaction value as the best handoff network. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can effectively improve the network update speed, lower network blocking probability, and assure the effectiveness and fairness of handoff compared with traditional vertical handoff based on type-1 fuzzy logic algorithm.
Reestablishment of Microenvironment is Necessary to Maintain In Vitro and In Vivo Human Islet Function

Islet transplantation is associated with an elevated rate of early graft failure. The isolation process leads to structural and functional abnormalities. The reestablishment of the cell–matrix relationship is important to modulate the survival and function of islets. Thus, we evaluated the effect of human fibronectin (hFN) and self-assembling peptide nanofiber (SAPNF) in the ability to support islet function in vitro and after transplantation into streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetic severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) mice. Human isolated islets were cultured with hFN or SAPNF for 7 days. Their ability to maintain insulin production/glucose responsiveness over time was evaluated. Islets embedded in hFN, SAPNF, or alone were transplanted into STZ-induced diabetic SCID mice. Islet grafts were removed after 14 days to evaluate insulin content, insulin expression, and apoptosis. SAPNF-entrapped islets maintained satisfactory morphology/viability and capability of glucose-dependent insulin secretion for over 7 days, whereas islets cultured in hFN underwent widespread deterioration. In vivo grafts containing human islets in SAPNF showed remarkably higher insulin content and expression when compared with human islets in hFn or alone. RT-PCR revealed lower caspase-3 expression in SAPNF islets grafts. These studies indicate that the reestablishment of the cell–matrix interactions by a synthetic matrix in the immediate postisolation period is a useful tool to maintain islet functions in vitro and in vivo.
A Security Architecture for e-Health Services

This paper presents an alternative way to secure communications in e-health. During the communication processes, users exchange different types of information with different levels of sensitivities. For example, communications between a doctor and a patient contain data of higher levels of sensitivities than communications between a social worker and a nurse. The different levels of the sensitivities of the information are secured by using different types of security processes. In this paper, these different communication types and different levels of data sensitivities in e-health are explained, the requirements for each type for communications are described and the use of the cryptography to secure the communication is discussed.
Evaluation of welfare advice in primary care: effect on practice workload and prescribing for mental health

Aims To determine Citizen's Advice Bureaux (CAB) and general practice staff perceptions on the impact of a CAB Health Outreach (CABHO) service on staff workload. To quantify the frequency of mental health issues among patients referred to the CABHO service. To measure any impact of the CABHO service on appointments, referrals and prescribing for mental health. Background GPs and practice managers perceive that welfare rights services, provided by CAB, reduce practice staff workload, but this has not been quantified. Methods Interviews with practice managers and GPs hosting and CAB staff providing an advisory service in nine general practices. Comparison of frequency of GP and nurse appointments, mental health referrals and prescriptions for hypnotics/anxiolytics and antidepressants issued before and after referral to the CABHO service, obtained from medical records of referred patients. Findings Most GPs and CAB staff perceived the service reduced practice staff workload, although practice managers were less certain. CAB staff believed that many patients referred to them had mental health issues. Data were obtained for 148/250 referrals of whom 46% may have had a mental health issue. There were statistically significant reductions in the number of GP appointments and prescriptions for hypnotics/anxiolytics during the six months after referral to CABHO compared with six months before. There were also non-significant reductions in nurse appointments and prescriptions for antidepressants, but no change in appointments or referrals for mental health problems. The quantitative findings therefore confirmed perceptions among both CAB and practice staff of reduced workload and in addition suggest that prescribing may be reduced, although further larger-scale studies are required to confirm this.
On the Promotion of the Social Web Intelligence

Given the ever-growing information generated through various online social outlets, analytical research on social media has intensified in the past few years from all walks of life. In particular, works on social Web intelligence foster and benefit from the wisdom of the crowds and attempt to derive actionable information from such data. In the form of collective intelligence, crowds gather together and contribute to solving problems that may be difficult or impossible to solve by individuals and single computers. In addition, the consumer insight revealed from social footprints can be leveraged to build powerful business intelligence tools, enabling efficient and effective decision-making processes. This dissertation is broadly concerned with the intelligence that can emerge from the social Web platforms. In particular, the two phenomena of social privacy and online persuasion are identified as the two pillars of the social Web intelligence, studying which is essential in the promotion and advancement of both collective and business intelligence. The first part of the dissertation is focused on the phenomenon of social privacy. This work is mainly motivated by the privacy dichotomy problem. Users often face difficulties specifying privacy policies that are consistent with their actual privacy concerns and attitudes. As such, before making use of social data, it is imperative to employ multiple safeguards beyond the current privacy settings of users. As a possible solution, we utilize user social footprints to detect their privacy preferences automatically. An unsupervised collaborative filtering approach is proposed to characterize the attributes of publicly available accounts that are intended to be private. Unlike the majority of earlier studies, a variety of social data types is taken into account, including the social context, the published content, as well as the profile attributes of users. Our approach can provide support in making an informed decision whether to exploit one’s publicly available data to draw intelligence. With the aim of gaining insight into the strategies behind online reasoning, the second part of the dissertation studies written comments in online deliberations. Specifically, we explore different dimensions of the language, the temporal aspects of the communication, as well as the attributes of the participating users to understand what makes people change their beliefs. In addition, we investigate the factors that are perceived to be the reasons behind persuasion by the users. We link our findings to traditional persuasion research, hoping to uncover when and how they apply to online persuasion. A set of rhetorical relations is known to be of importance in persuasive discourse. We further study the automatic identification and disambiguation of such rhetorical relations, aiming to take a step closer towards automatic analysis of reasoning traces in online platforms. Finally, a small proof of concept tool is presented, showing the value of our persuasion and rhetoric studies.
Depression, illness severity, and healthcare utilization in cystic fibrosis

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is an illness associated with high healthcare utilization and healthcare costs, even when compared to other chronic illnesses. In a variety of medical populations, depression has been found to be associated with lower adherence and poorer medical outcomes. The current study is a retrospective chart review of a matched set of 40 patients with CF, half with and half without a depressive disorder diagnosis. Participants were matched on the basis of their age, gender and lung function, and compared in terms of their illness severity (lung function and weight), medical adherence, and healthcare utilization during the year prior to and following diagnosis of depression and a comparable time period for the non‐depressed group. Results show an association between depression and BMI, with only the depressed group showing significant decreases in the year following their depressive disorder diagnosis (from a mean BMI z‐score of −0.48 to −1.04). Depression was also strongly associated with greater healthcare utilization and healthcare costs relative to those of comparably medically ill controls, in that depressed youth were hospitalized at over three times the rate of non‐depressed youth, and their healthcare costs were more than four times higher (mean number of admissions per year for the depressed group of 4.00 vs. 1.20 for the non‐depressed group; mean annual costs of $280,000 for the depressed vs. $60,116 for the non‐depressed). These findings highlight the importance of addressing the mental health needs of chronically ill patients as a path to better health outcomes and decreasing need for medical services. Pediatr Pulmonol. 2014; 49:1177–1181. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
The Predictive Relationship of Teacher Leadership Dimensions on Elementary School Climate.

Leaders exist at many levels. Within the educational arena, studies have shown the correlation of leadership styles among principals and the school culture (Pepper & Thomas, 2002; Perspective, 2012; Williams, 2009). This study attempted to extend Bass’s Transformational Leadership Theory (1985) and Hersey and Blanchard’s Situational Leadership Theory (1976) through examining leadership dimensions among teacher team leaders and their influence on school climate. Using a predictive correlational research design, the current study sought to investigate relationships between leadership dimensions of teacher leaders and elementary school climates. Two different groups of teachers from a school district in the northern metro area in Atlanta participated in two different surveys. Teacher team leaders from ten elementary schools were surveyed using the Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire to determine their leadership dimensions, or refined constructs of each leadership style. Subsequently, all other teachers working with the identified team leaders were surveyed using the Organizational Climate Description for Elementary Schools. A multiple regression analysis was used and indicated that there is a significant relationship between the two constructs – teacher leadership dimensions and elementary school climate – in the area of Disengaged Teacher Behavior and Teacher Openness Index. There were no significant relationships found between teacher team leaders’ leadership dimensions and elementary school climate in the areas of Collegial Teacher Behavior or Intimate Teacher Behavior. Discussion of the results and implications for future research were made.
Antibodies against a putative heparin receptor slow cell proliferation and decrease MAPK activation in vascular smooth muscle cells *

Heparin has long been known to slow the growth of vascular smooth muscle cells. However, the mechanism(s) by which heparin acts has yet to be resolved. The identification of a putative heparin receptor in endothelial cells with antibodies that blocked heparin binding to the cells provided the means to further examine the possible involvement of a heparin receptor in smooth muscle cell responses to heparin. Immunoprecipitation of a smooth muscle cell protein with the anti‐heparin receptor antibodies provided evidence that the protein was present in smooth muscle cells. Experiments with the anti‐heparin receptor antibodies indicate that the antibodies can mimic heparin in decreasing PDGF induced thymidine and BrdU incorporation. The anti‐heparin receptor antibodies were also found to decrease MAPK activity levels after activation similarly to heparin. These results support the identification of a heparin receptor and its role in heparin effects on vascular smooth muscle cell growth. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Different Strategies in the Laboratory Diagnosis of Autoimmune Disease: Immunofluorescence, Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay or Both?

We investigated the clinical utility of different strategies for antinuclear antibodies (ANA) and antibodies to extractable nuclear antigens (ENA) testing. All requests for ANA and ENA (n = 485) in a 20-week period were tested by immunofluorescence (FANA) and immunodiffusion (strategy 1), enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) techniques (strategy 2) or a combination of FANA and ELISA (strategy 3). Results of strategy 1 were positive by FANA in 8% (by immunodiffusion in 2%). By ELISA, 11% of the samples tested positive. In 12% (n = 60) of the cases the two strategies did not agree. The positive predictive value (PPV) for autoimmune disease of strategy 1 was significantly higher than that for strategy 2, but after exclusion of rheumatoid arthritis this difference was abolished. In strategy 2 reagent costs were high but working time comparably shorter. With strategy 3 PPV results were not better, whereas costs and working time were higher. The most frequently occurring reasons for ANA/ENA test requests were: joint symptoms (37%), follow up (30%) or abnormal laboratory result (7%). In a survey of the clinicians 66% replied that the test result did not have any consequences, irrespective of the result or the strategy used. We conclude that FANA and immunodiffusion are superior to ELISA techniques. However, the clinical value of ANA/ENA testing is low and more selective test ordering is strongly recommended.
Leishmania donovani-Induced Ceramide as the Key Mediator of Akt Dephosphorylation in Murine Macrophages: Role of Protein Kinase Cζ and Phosphatase

ABSTRACT Leishmania donovani is an intracellular protozoan parasite that impairs the host macrophage immune response to render it suitable for its survival and establishment. L. donovani-induced immunosuppression and alteration of host cell signaling is mediated by ceramide, a pleiotropic second messenger playing an important role in regulation of several kinases, including mitogen-activated protein kinase and phosphatases. We observed that the endogenous ceramide generated during leishmanial infection led to the dephosphorylation of protein kinase B (PKB) (Akt) in infected cells. The study of ceramide-mediated Akt phosphorylation revealed that Akt was dephosphorylated at both Thr308 and Ser473 sites in infected cells. Further investigation demonstrated that ceramide was also responsible for the induction of PKCζ, an atypical Ca-independent stress kinase, as well as the ceramide-activated protein phosphatases (e.g., protein phosphatase 2A [PP2A]). We found that Akt dephosphorylation was mediated by ceramide-induced PKCζ-Akt association and PP2A activation. In addition, treatment of L. donovani-infected macrophages with PKCζ-specific inhibitor peptide could restore the translocation of phosphorylated Akt to the cell membrane. This study also revealed that ceramide is involved in the inhibition of proinflammatory cytokine tumor necrosis factor alpha release by infected macrophages. These observations strongly suggest the importance of ceramide in the alteration of normal cellular functions, impairment of the kinase/phosphatase balance, and thereby establishment of leishmaniasis in the hostile macrophage environment.