Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluation of brainstem auditory evoked potentials and their relationshipwith levels of thyroid autoantibodies in patients with vitiligo.

BACKGROUND/AIM Vitiligo is a common depigmenting disorder. The damage can also occur in similar ways to melanocytes within other organs. We evaluated the brainstem and auditory pathway functions by evaluating brainstem auditory evoked potentials (BAEPs) and whether there is any relationship between auditory functions and autoimmunity. MATERIALS AND METHODS Forty patients with vitiligo and 20 healthy volunteers were enrolled. Thyroid functions and autoantibodies were examined and BAEP tests were assessed by a neurologist. RESULTS Antithyroid peroxidase (anti-TPO) and antithyroglobulin (anti-TGA) antibody positivity was higher in the patient group (P < 0.05). A negative correlation was detected between anti-TPO and lead III, IV, and V latency and I-III interpeak latency (IPL) of the right ear together with lead IV latency and I-V IPL of the left ear in the patient group. When each BAEP parameter was compared between the two groups, more abnormalities were detected in the V latency and III-V IPL of the left ear together with IV and V latency of the right ear. CONCLUSION In this study the presence of a correlation between increased anti-TGA and anti-TPO levels and BAEP parameters may be related to an autoimmune-mediated mechanism. However, further studies are needed to be performed in a large patient series.
Health status of the Pakistani population: a health profile and comparison with the United States.

OBJECTIVES The health status of the Pakistani population was compared with that of the US population to provide a better understanding of the health problems in a developing nation and shed light on the dynamics of selected diseases. METHODS Results from the National Health Survey of Pakistan (n = 18,315) and the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (n = 31,311) were compared. Standardized and comparable methods were used in both surveys. RESULTS Indicators of undernutrition among children were high throughout Pakistan. Among adults, there were urban-rural differences and economic gradients in indicators of undernutrition and risk factors for heart disease and cancer. In comparison with the US population, the Pakistani population has a higher rate of undernutrition, a lower rate of high cholesterol, and an approximately equal rate of high blood pressure. CONCLUSIONS There are major inequalities in health within Pakistan and between Pakistan and the United States. Standardized national health examination survey methodology can be used to monitor health status and plan health transition policy in developing countries.
A small plant with big benefits: Fenugreek (Trigonella foenum‐graecum Linn.) for disease prevention and health promotion

Plant-derived natural products have long-standing utility toward treating degenerative diseases. It is estimated that about two-thirds of world population depend on traditional medicine for primary medical needs. Fenugreek (Trigonella foenum-graecum Linn.), a short-living annual medicinal plant belonging to Fabaceae family, is used extensively in various parts of the world as herb, food, spice, and traditional medicine. Fenugreek is considered as one of the oldest medicinal plants and its health-promoting effects have been cited in Ayurveda and traditional Chinese medicine. The investigations into the chemical composition and pharmacological actions have seen a renaissance in recent years. Extensive preclinical and clinical research have outlined the pharmaceutical uses of fenugreek as antidiabetic, antihyperlipidemic, antiobesity, anticancer, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, antifungal, antibacterial, galactogogue and for miscellaneous pharmacological effects, including improving women's health. The pharmacological actions of fenugreek are attributed to diverse array of phytoconstituents. The phytochemical analysis reveals the presence of steroids, alkaloids, saponins, polyphenols, flavonoids, lipids, carbohydrates, amino acids, and hydrocarbons. This review aims to summarize and critically analyze the current available literature to understand the potential of fenugreek for disease prevention and health improvement with special emphasis on cellular and molecular mechanisms. Current challenges and new directions of research on fenugreek are also discussed.
Intangible Benefits of Team Identification, and the Factors Which Generate It, toward Intercollegiate Athletic Programs in Students' College Adjustment

Intercollegiate athletic programs have been used to facilitate social interactions between students within the complex nature of the college environment. In particular, many researchers have discussed the benefits of intercollegiate athletic programs in higher education, examining positive aspects of team identification such as the enhancing sense of belonging, personal selfesteem, happiness, and decreasing stress, anxiety, depression, and loneliness in social life. With the benefits of the program, it is important to scrutinize the benefits of intercollegiate athletic programs in students’ college adjustment in higher education. Therefore, the goal of this dissertation was to provide better understanding of the intercollegiate athletic programs in higher education to academic counselor and administrators. The purpose of two studies designed for this dissertation were as follows: (1) to assist to understand what role intercollegiate athletics have on students’ academic success by considering social and emotional construct in college life, (2) to identify significant factors that generate team identification toward intercollegiate athletic programs in college environment. Researchers in the field of sport management should have a better knowledge of benefits of intercollegiate athletic programs to directly and indirectly assist students’ social, emotional, and academic adjustment. Additionally, the predictive factors enhancing the degree of team identification, as resulted in the second study, support sport marketers to positively engage with student fans in a college. It is also evidence why students are highly identified to intercollegiate athletic programs as well as conceptual note that the predictive factors are directly and indirectly associated with the assistance of students’ better life in college environment. ©2015 by Junmo Sung All Rights Reserved
Concerns about Facebook among users and abstainers: Relationships with individual differences and Facebook use.

Facebook (FB) has become a virtually inescapable aspect of modern social life. Yet many people have concerns about using FB and even consider quitting or abstaining from it. To establish a framework for organizing the varied concerns that people have about FB, the present research surveyed 2 groups known to have high rates of FB adoption (e.g., Duggan, 2015): College students (N 264) and other adults (N 610) in the United States. Results suggest 3 broad themes underlie people’s concerns about FB— that it can be pointless, a problematic distraction, and raise privacy issues. Compared with adults from the noncollege sample, college students were more concerned with problematic distraction, and less concerned with privacy issues. To investigate the characteristics that may be driving concerns about FB, we explored the relationships between concerns, FB use, and individual differences. In general, people who endorsed problematic distraction tended to use FB more, and be higher in Extraversion, Neuroticism, and Anxious Attachment. For people who endorsed pointless and privacy issues, the relationships between the concerns and individual differences showed different association across the college student and other adult samples. Moreover, results from a series of hierarchical regressions revealed that pointless and problematic distraction concerns predicted FB use, over and above individual differences. Discussion contextualizes the findings with regards to previous research and discusses the possible applications of the results for the general public, commercial entities, and policymakers.
Fields in Planar Anisotropic Transmission-Line Metamaterials

An electromagnetic analysis of wave propagation in planar anisotropic transmission-line metamaterials is presented. It is shown that a planar square-celled grid, series-loaded with orthogonal inductors and capacitors and positioned over a ground plane, is magnetically anisotropic and may be described in terms of a diagonal permeability tensor. Resonance cone field concentrations form when two of the three diagonal elements of the permeability tensor are opposite in sign and the dispersion surface becomes hyperbolic. A theoretical treatment of an electric line current source excitation shows that the formation of resonance cones is a consequence of the singularity associated with the characteristic surface of a hyperbolic equation. The resonance cone angle, which also describes the direction of local power flow in the region between the grid and the ground plane, can be predicted to a good degree of accuracy. To the authors' best knowledge, the present work also verifies experimentally for the first time that current flow reverses direction across the resonance cone. Experiments, simulations, and analytical calculations of the cone angle are in good agreement
Identification and prioritization of factors affecting venture capitalists’ investment decision-making process: An analytical hierarchal process (AHP) approach

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to identify and rank critical factors influencing investment decisions of venture capitalists. Design/methodology/approach To identify and prioritize factors affecting investment decisions of venture capitalists, a two-phase methodology was adopted: in the first phase, critical factors influencing venture capitalists’ investment decisions were identified using exploratory factor analysis; the second phase entailed the use of a multi-criteria decision-making technique – analytical hierarchal process (AHP) which involved assigning weights to, and prioritizing the identified criteria and sub-criteria. Findings Seven factors were found to significantly influence investment decisions of venture capitalists: entrepreneur’s characteristics, product or services, market characteristics, management skills, financial consideration, economic environment and institutional and regulatory environment. Findings revealed that entrepreneur’s characteristics, financial consideration and product or services were prime influencers of venture capitalists’ investment decisions. Research limitations/implications As for limitations, first, the study considers limited number of factors influencing investment decisions of venture capitalists; there may be other influencers not considered in this study. Second, the AHP methodology assumes that the various decision-making criteria and sub-criteria are independent of each other; in real life, there may be inter-dependency among criteria. Third, the hierarchal model has been tested in the Indian venture capital industry only, and generalizability of results with respect to other industries is questionable. Practical implications The present study identifies and ranks seven factors found to significantly influence investment decisions of venture capitalists. Venture capitalists could use this list of factors as a guideline before making investment decisions, and if considering all factors is not possible, take into account the factors given top rank so that they arrive at informed and intelligent decisions. Originality/value This study is the first to identify economic factors (economic environment and institutional & regulatory environment) as influencers of venture capitalists’ investment decisions. Further, no study in the past has attempted to rank or prioritize factors influencing venture capitalists’ investment decisions; this is the first attempt of the kind.
Comparing the Robustness of POSIX Operating Systems

Critical system designers are turning to off-the-shelf operating system (OS) software to reduce costs and time-to-marker. Unfortunately general-purpose OSes do not always respond to exceptional conditions robustly, either accepting exceptional values without complaint, or suffering abnormal task termination. Even though direct measurement is impractical, this paper uses a multiversion comparison technique to reveal a 6% to 19% normalized rate at which exceptional parameter values cause no error report in commercial POSIX OS implementations. Additionally, 168 functions across 13 OSes are compared to reveal common mode robustness failures. While the best single OS has a 12.6% robustness failure rare for system calls, 3.8% of failures are common across all 13 OSes examined. However, combining C library calls with system calls increases these rates to 29.5% for the best single OS and 17.0% for common mode failures. These results suggest that OS implementations are not completely diverse, and that C library junctions are both less diverse and less robust than system calls.
CYCLICALITY, DETERMINANTS AND MACROECONOMIC EFFECTS OF FISCAL POLICY IN EUROPEAN COUNTRIES, WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO TRANSITION COUNTRIES

This thesis empirically investigates the stabilization properties and the effectiveness of fiscal policy, which is an issue that has been gaining attention in the academic literature and among policy-makers in the past two decades, particularly in the wake of the Great Recession. The aim of the thesis is to analyse the cyclical character and determinants of fiscal policy, as well as the short- to medium-term effects of fiscal policy on output and other macroeconomic variables in European countries, with particular reference to transition countries. Using an extensive survey of the relevant literature and particularly the results of the comprehensive empirical investigation, the thesis offers recommendations relevant for policy-makers in European countries. The thesis thus deals with issues that lie at the heart of the main academic and policy debates in the wake of the European debt crisis. Consequently, its findings and recommendations should be useful for current and prospective European Union and euro area member states. In order to analyse the cyclical character and determinants of fiscal policy, system GMM is used as the most appropriate estimation method for the sample and the aim of the study. The main finding in this part is that discretionary fiscal policy is pro-cyclical in both groups of transition countries (from Central and Eastern Europe and from South-eastern Europe), thus aggravating economic fluctuations, while it is a-cyclical in old EU member states. These baseline results are robust to various extensions and robustness checks. The investigation of a wide range of additional factors indicates that various political and institutional factors also have important effects on fiscal policy in European countries, with numerous differences among the three country groups regarding their particular effect. The extensive analysis of the stabilisation properties of fiscal policy is followed by an investigation of the ability of fiscal policy to influence economic movements, as well as of the transmission mechanism of fiscal policy. In this part, Panel Vector Auto Regression with recursive identification of government spending shocks is used to analyse the short- to medium-term effects of fiscal policy on output (fiscal multipliers) and other macroeconomic variables. The main results indicate that expansionary government spending shocks have a positive, but a relatively low effect on output, with the fiscal multiplier around one in the year of the shock and the following year, and lower thereinafter. Further, effects of fiscal policy are strongly dependent on structural country characteristics. In particular, fiscal multipliers are higher in new EU member states, in countries with low public debt and low trade openness.
Clock Gene Expression in the Liver and Adipose Tissues of Non-Obese Type 2 Diabetic Goto-Kakizaki Rats

Recent studies have revealed a close relationship between the pathophysiology of metabolic syndrome, which is characterized by obesity and hyperglycemia, and the functioning of internal molecular clocks. In this study, we show that the rhythmic mRNA expression of clock genes (Clock, Bmal1, Cry1, and Dbp) is not attenuated in the liver and visceral adipose tissues of Goto-Kakizaki rats, a model of nonobese, type 2 diabetes, as compared to control Wistar rats. Our results suggest that molecular clock impairment in peripheral tissues of obese diabetic animals may be either caused by obesity-related factor(s), but not hyperglycemia, or be a cause, but not a consequence, of hyperglycemia.
Disclosure of Cancer Information in Iran: a Perspective of Patients, Family Members, and Health Professionals

Background In the last decades cancer has become one of the important causes of death in Iran . This study examined perspective of a group of Iranian health professionals, patients and patients’ family members regarding their view on disclosure of cancer information at a university hospital in Tehran, Iran. Methods The method of study was qualitative semi-structured focused group content analysis. Two group leaders (psychologist and psychiatrist) run the focus groups. Oncologists, nurses, patients and family members participated in separate focus groups. Five group sessions were held to sum up the participants views in four major topics related to disclosure of cancer information to patients and families. Results Most of physicians and nurses believed that disclosure of cancer diagnosis is a mistake. Family members think that it should be delivered gradually during stages of therapy based on patient’s psychological state, but most of the patients consider truth telling as a patient right. All physicians, most of nurses and all the patients see the physician as a person responsible to break the diagnostic disclosure. All patients wanted the physicians to take the total control of decision-making process for their treatment. Conclusion Iranian physicians and nurses hesitate to disclose cancer diagnosis compared to patients, who want to know the truth. Patients, nurses and physicians consider the physician to be the person responsible for delivering the information of cancer diagnosis . Development and implementation of a protocol based on Iranian culture is a necessity.
Biofeedback in headache: An overview of approaches and evidence

Biofeedback-related approaches to headache therapy fall into two broad categories: general biofeedback techniques (often augmented by relaxation-based strategies) and methods linked more directly to the pathophysiology underlying headache. The use of general biofeedback-assisted relaxation techniques for headache has been evaluated extensively by expert panels and meta-analyses. Taken together, these reviews indicate that (1) various forms of biofeedback are effective for migraine and tension-type headache; (2) outcomes with biofeedback rival outcomes with medication therapy; (3) combining biofeedback with medication can enhance outcomes; and (4) despite efficacy in many patients, biofeedback fails to bring significant relief to a sizeable number of headache patients. Biofeedback methods that more directly target headache pathophysiology have focused chiefly on migraine. These headache-specific approaches include blood volume pulse biofeedback, which has considerable supportive evidence, and electroencephalographic feedback.
Electronic structure, phonons, and thermal properties of ScN, ZrN, and HfN: A first-principles study

With a motivation to understand microscopic aspects of ScN, ZrN, and HfN relevant to the thermoelectric properties of nitride metal/semiconductor superlattices, we determine their electronic structure, vibrational spectra and thermal properties using first-principles calculations based on density functional theory with a generalized gradient approximation of the exchange correlation energy. We find a large energy gap in the phonon dispersions of metallic ZrN and HfN, but a gapless phonon spectrum for ScN spanning the same energy range, this suggests that a reduced thermal conductivity, suitable for thermoelectric applications, should arise in superlattices made with ScN and ZrN or ScN and HfN. To obtain an electronic energy band gap of ScN comparable to experiment, we use a Hubbard correction with a parameter U =3.5 eV. Anomalies in the acoustic branches of the phonon dispersion of ZrN and HfN, manifested as dips in the bands, can be understood through the nesting of Fermi surface determined from our calculations. To connect with transport properties, we have determined effective masses of ScN and determined their dependence on the U parameter. Using the relaxation time approximation in the Boltzmann transport theory, we estimate the temperature dependence of the lattice thermal conductivity and discuss the chemical trends among these nitrides. © 2010 American Institute of Physics. doi:10.1063/1.3291117
Effects of infographics on news elaboration, acquisition, and evaluation: Prior knowledge and issue involvement as moderators

This study investigated how infographics may affect individuals’ news processing, focusing on multimodality and interactivity as its signature characteristics. News readers’ prior knowledge and issue involvement, which affect their ability and motivation to process information, were considered as potential moderators. In a 3 (text vs graphic vs text + graphic) × 2 (hyperlinks vs no hyperlinks) between-subjects experiment (N = 360), participants read a news article concerning economic issues. Adding graphics to the news heightened the extent to which they engaged in news elaboration, albeit only among those with higher issue involvement. However, in-text hyperlinks hindered information recall among those with less prior knowledge, creating an information acquisition gap between more and less resourceful individuals. The graphical representation of news appeared to have heuristic appeals to those less involved in and less knowledgeable about the news topic, leading to more favorable news evaluation.
Pc2-mediated Sumoylation of Smad-interacting Protein 1 Attenuates Transcriptional Repression of E-cadherin*

Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is important in embryonic development and tumorigenesis. Smad-interacting protein 1 (SIP1) can induce EMT by repressing the transcription of E-cadherin through recruitment of the corepressor C-terminal-binding protein (CtBP). How the activity of SIP1 is regulated still remains unclear. Here we show in vivo and in vitro that SIP1 is covalently modified by sumoylation at two conserved sites, Lys391 and Lys866. The polycomb protein Pc2, but not the PIAS (protein inhibitor of activated STAT) family proteins, acts as a Small ubiquitin-like modifier E3 ligase for SIP1. Sumoylation of SIP1 does not affect its subcellular localization, but regulates its transcriptional activity. Compared with the wild-type, a SIP1 sumoylation null mutant shows more potent repression on E-cadherin transcription but similar repression on two transforming growth factor-β-responsive reporter genes and comparable activation on vitamin D3 receptor transcription. Coexpression of SIP1 with Pc2 can partially relieve E-cadherin repression by SIP1. We further show that SIP1 sumoylation disrupts the recruitment of CtBP. Thus SIP1 sumoylation regulates its transcriptional activity in a promoter context-dependent manner and may represent an important intervention target to modulate EMT in tumorigenesis.