Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Personal Exposure to Fine Particulate Matter in Elderly Subjects: Relation between Personal, Indoor, and Outdoor Concentrations

ABSTRACT The time-series correlation between ambient levels, indoor levels, and personal exposure to PM2.5 was assessed in panels of elderly subjects with cardiovascular disease in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and Helsinki, Finland. Subjects were followed for 6 months with biweekly clinical visits. Each subject's indoor and personal exposure to PM2.5 was measured biweekly, during the 24-hr period preceding the clinical visits. Outdoor PM2.5 concentrations were measured at fixed sites. The absorption coefficients of all PM2.5 filters were measured as a marker for elemental carbon (EC). Regression analyses were conducted for each subject separately, and the distribution of the individual regression and correlation coefficients was investigated. Personal, indoor, and ambient concentrations were highly correlated within subjects over time. Median Pearson's R between personal and outdoor PM2.5 was 0.79 in Amsterdam and 0.76 in Helsinki. For absorption, these values were 0.93 and 0.81 for Amsterdam and Helsinki, respectively. The findings of this study provide further support for using fixed-site measurements as a measure of exposure to PM2.5 in epidemiological time-series studies.
Integrins ( a 7 b 1 ) in Muscle Function and Survival Disrupted Expression in Merosin-deficient Congenital Muscular Dystrophy

Mutations in genes coding for dystrophin, for a , b , g , and d -sarcoglycans, or for the a 2 chain of the basement membrane component merosin (laminin-2/4) cause various forms of muscular dystrophy. Analyses of integrins showed an abnormal expression and localization of a 7 b 1 isoforms in myofibers of merosin-deficient human patients and mice, but not in dystrophin-deficient or sarcoglycan-deficient humans and animals. It was shown previously that skeletal muscle fibers require merosin for survival and function (Vachon, P.H., F. Loechel, H. Xu, U.M. Wewer, and E. Engvall. 1996. J. Cell Biol. 134:1483–1497). Correction of merosin deficiency in vitro through cell transfection with the merosin a 2 chain restored the normal localization of a 7 b 1D integrins as well as myotube survival. Overexpression of the apoptosis-suppressing molecule Bcl-2 also promoted the survival of merosin-deficient myotubes, but did not restore a normal expression of a 7 b 1D integrins. Blocking of b 1 integrins in normal myotubes induced apoptosis and severely reduced their survival. These findings ( a) identify a 7 b 1D integrins as the de facto receptors for merosin in skeletal muscle; ( b) indicate a merosin dependence for the accurate expression and membrane localization of a 7 b 1D integrins in myofibers; ( c) provide a molecular basis for the critical role of merosin in myofiber survival; and (d) add new insights to the pathogenesis of neuromuscular disorders. ( J. Clin. Invest. 1997. 100:1870–1881.)
Surfactant proteins in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid of horses: assay technique and changes following road transport

An enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was developed for equine surfactant proteins SP-A and SP-D in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF). Anti-equine SP-A or SP-D monoclonal antibodies (mAb) were produced by hybridoma technology, purified by the antibody purification reagent, and analysed by Western blotting analysis. The immunoreaction (two-site sandwich ELISA) with a mAb, peroxidase-labelled mAb and BALF sample was carried out simultaneously and analytical recovery and precision were assayed. Six mAb for SP-A and four mAb for SP-D were successfully cloned in limiting dilution to monoclonality. These mAb were reacted with equine SP-A or SP-D on Western blotting analysis. For SP-A, a combination of solid-phase TA08 and horseradish peroxidase (HRP)-conjugated WA28 was found to be more sensitive than other combinations, gave a good dose response and was capable of measuring 0.78 to 100 ng of protein/mi. For SP-D, a combination of solid-phase TD13 and HRP-conjugated WD19 was found to be more sensitive than other combinations, had a good dose response and was capable of measuring 0.78 to 200 ng of protein/ml. The assay was used to determine the effect of 41 hours of road transport on the concentrations of SP-A and SP-D in the BALF of 30 horses. The concentrations of SP-A and SP-D decreased by 55 per cent and 36 per cent, respectively, decreases similar to the decrease in phosphatidylglycerol concentration previously reported by the authors.
The Relationship Between Parenting and the Economic Orientation and Behavior of Norwegian Adolescents

ABSTRACT Little is known about the economic socialization of children and adolescents and the role of parents in this process. The authors’ purpose was to explore the role of parenting in the intergenerational transfer of economic orientation and economic behavior. More specifically, they studied the link between four parenting dimensions (parental warmth–responsiveness, behavioral control, psychological control, autonomy granting), three parenting styles (authoritative, authoritarian, and neglectful) and adolescents’ conscientiousness, future time perspective, and present hedonistic orientation. The authors also studied the relationships between these dispositions and the adolescents’ spending preferences and ability to control spending. They used data collected from 14–16-year-olds (n = 597) and their parents (n = 469) in Norway. Results showed that adolescents who perceived their parents as psychologically controlling were less future oriented and conscientious, and were more present hedonistic oriented than others, while adolescents who perceived their parents as responsive, autonomy granting, and controlling of behavior were more future orientated and conscientious than others. Adolescents’ scores for conscientiousness and future orientation were negatively associated with preferences for spending and positively with the ability to control spending, while the opposite relationships were found with respect to a present hedonistic orientation. Parental style was also found to be important for the future educational plans of adolescents, and plans for higher education were more frequent among adolescents who characterized their parents as authoritative than among those who perceived their parents as neglectful. Implications of the findings for economic socialization are discussed.
Iron Deficiency and Child Development

Iron deficiency is widespread in infants and young children, especially in developing countries. Animal models provide convincing evidence that, despite iron repletion, iron deficiency during the brain growth spurt alters metabolism and neurotransmission, myelination, and gene and protein profiles. In the human, there is compelling evidence that 6- to 24-month-old infants with iron-deficiency anemia are at risk for poorer cognitive, motor, social–emotional, and neurophysiologic development in the short- and long-term outcome. In contrast to inconsistent developmental effects of iron therapy for iron-deficient infants, recent large, randomized trials of iron supplementation in developing countries uniformly show benefits of iron, especially on motor development and social–emotional behavior. These results indicate that adverse effects can be prevented and/or reversed with iron earlier in development or before iron deficiency becomes severe or chronic. New findings also point to the need for more attention to the developmental effects of prenatal iron deficiency.
The internal origin of the west-east asymmetry of Antarctic climate change

The harmony of the Southern Ocean and Antarctic terrain is the pacemaker of Antarctic climate change under global warming. Recent Antarctic surface climate change has been characterized by greater warming trends in West Antarctica than in East Antarctica. Although this asymmetric feature is well recognized, its origin remains poorly understood. Here, by analyzing observation data and multimodel results, we show that a west-east asymmetric internal mode amplified in austral winter originates from the harmony of the atmosphere-ocean coupled feedback off West Antarctica and the Antarctic terrain. The warmer ocean temperature over the West Antarctic sector has positive feedback, with an anomalous upper-tropospheric anticyclonic circulation response centered over West Antarctica, in which the strength of the feedback is controlled by the Antarctic topographic layout and the annual cycle. The current west-east asymmetry of Antarctic surface climate change is undoubtedly of natural origin because no external factors (e.g., orbital or anthropogenic factors) contribute to the asymmetric mode.
Motivation for Dental Home Care : Testing a Self-Determination Theory Model

The present research developed the Self-Regulation for Dental Home Care Questionnaire (SRDHCQ), based on self-determination theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 2000), and used it in an SDT process model of dental health behaviors and self-rated oral health. In this model, patients’ perceptions of autonomy-supportive (relative to controlling) dental professionals were expected to positively predict patients’ psychological needs satisfaction in treatment. Needs satisfaction was expected to be positively related to autonomous motivation for dental home care and perceived dental competence, which were expected to be positively associated with self-rated oral health and dental health behaviors. Confirmatory factor analysis of the 5-factor SRDHCQ model fit the data very well, and a structural equation model supported the hypothesized process model. jasp_867 1.39
Interval training does not modulate diastolic function in heart transplant recipients

Abstract Objectives. This study investigates the effect of aerobic interval training on diastolic function at rest and during exercise in stable heart transplant (HTx) recipients. Design. Twenty-three stable HTx recipients (74% males, mean age 50 ± 14.9 years) were recruited to a training programme. Intervention was 8 weeks intensive training or control in a randomized controlled design. Results. At baseline, participants had normal or mild diastolic dysfunction at rest. During exercise, mean E/e′ increased from 9.0 (± 2.8) to 12.8 (± 7.7) (p = 0.09), E/A increased from 2.1 (± 0.6) to 2.6 (± 0.7) (p = 0.02), and deceleration time decreased by over 50 ms, all markers of increased filling pressure. There were no correlations between diastolic function and VO2peak at baseline. After intervention VO2peak increased from 23.9 (± 4.5) to 28.3(± 6) ml/kg/min in the training group (difference between groups p = 0.0018). No consistent pattern of improvement in diastolic function at rest or during exercise was seen. Conclusion. The study does not support a role of diastolic dysfunction in the limited exercise capacity of HTx recipients and suggests that in these patients peripheral factors are of greater importance.
Density, Velocity, and Magnetic Field Structure in Turbulent Molecular Cloud Models

We use three-dimensional (3D) numerical magnetohydrodynamic simulations to follow the evolution of cold, turbulent, gaseous systems with parameters chosen to represent conditions in giant molecular clouds (GMCs). We present results of three model cloud simulations in which the mean magnetic field strength is varied (B0 = 1.4-14 μG for GMC parameters), but an identical initial turbulent velocity field is introduced. We describe the energy evolution, showing that (1) turbulence decays rapidly, with the turbulent energy reduced by a factor 2 after 0.4-0.8 flow crossing times (~2-4 Myr for GMC parameters), and (2) the magnetically supercritical cloud models gravitationally collapse after time ≈6 Myr, while the magnetically subcritical cloud does not collapse. We compare density, velocity, and magnetic field structure in three sets of model "snapshots" with matched values of the Mach number ℳ ≈ 9,7,5. We show that the distributions of volume density and column density are both approximately log-normal, with mean mass-weighted volume density a factor 3-6 times the unperturbed value, but mean mass-weighted column density only a factor 1.1-1.4 times the unperturbed value. We introduce a spatial binning algorithm to investigate the dependence of kinetic quantities on spatial scale for regions of column density contrast (ROCs) on the plane of the sky. We show that the average velocity dispersion for the distribution of ROCs is only weakly correlated with scale, similar to mean size-line width distributions for clumps within GMCs. We find that ROCs are often superpositions of spatially unconnected regions that cannot easily be separated using velocity information; we argue that the same difficulty may affect observed GMC clumps. We suggest that it may be possible to deduce the mean 3D size-line width relation using the lower envelope of the 2D size-line width distribution. We analyze magnetic field structure and show that in the high-density regime n ≳ 103 cm-3, total magnetic field strengths increase with density with logarithmic slope ~1/3-2/3. We find that mean line-of-sight magnetic field strengths may vary widely across a projected cloud and are not positively correlated with column density. We compute simulated interstellar polarization maps at varying observer orientations and determine that the Chandrasekhar-Fermi formula multiplied by a factor ~0.5 yields a good estimate of the plane-of sky magnetic field strength, provided the dispersion in polarization angles is ≲25°.
[Doppler ultrasound examination of fetal umbilical arteries of the intra-abdominal segment in normal singleton pregnancies].

BACKGROUND In the management of high risk pregnancies, blood flow measurements in the umbilical arteries (Aa. umb) have reduced perinatal morbidity and mortality. No consensus has been reached about the optimal location of measurements along the umbilical cord. The present study analyses the blood flow in both umbilical arteries where they pass by the fetal bladder. PATIENTS AND METHODS In 48 normal pregnancies, Doppler examinations were used to measure the pulsatility indices (PI). From the 20th week of pregnancy onward, the PI were measured once every four weeks in the intraabdominal segments of the right and the left Aa. umb. lateral to the fetal bladder. Measurements were also done in a free loop and at the placental insertion. RESULTS For all locations, normal ranges were calculated. The PI at all four sites decreased as the pregnancies were approaching term. In the III. trimester, the standard deviations of PI were smaller than in the II. trimester. The PI at the intraabdominal segment of the right and the left umbilical arteries turned out to be similar to each other and exceeded the values measured at the free loop and at the placental insertion respectively. CONCLUSION The intraabdominal segments of the umbilical arteries were defined as a new location for PI measurements. When adopting a fixed place of measurement, it is likely that the reproducibility of PI measurements will be increased. DISCUSSION The higher PI at the intraabdominal segment of the umbilical arteries are caused by the more central location compared to the placental insertion.
Relation of shyness in grade school children to the genotype for the long form of the serotonin transporter promoter region polymorphism.

OBJECTIVE Studies have shown that genetic factors are significant in predisposing individuals to shyness and social phobia. Toward further elucidating the genetic structure of shyness, the authors examined four functional polymorphisms that make biological sense for contributing to the development of this phenotype: serotonin transporter promoter region 44 base pair insertion/deletion (5-HTTLPR), dopamine D(4) receptor exon III repeat (DRD4), catechol O-methyltransferase (COMT), and monoamine oxidase A promoter region repeat (MAO(A)). METHOD The authors assessed shyness after recruitment of a nonclinical sample (N=118, unscreened second-grade children) using a composite scale derived from questionnaires administered to the children, parents, and teachers. DNA from buccal smears successfully obtained from 98 children was genotyped by polymerase chain reaction methods for the 5-HTTLPR, DRD4, COMT, and MAO(A) polymorphisms. RESULTS Significant correlations were observed for parents', teachers', and children's ratings of shyness, and Cronbach's alpha reliability was high for all three scales. A significant association was observed between the long 5-HTTLPR polymorphism and shyness, both by the functional classification of Lesch as well as by consideration of all three genotypes. No significant association was observed for the DRD4, COMT, or MAO(A) polymorphisms. CONCLUSIONS This study provisionally identifies a common genetic polymorphism, 5-HTTLPR, that modestly (effect size=7%) contributed to greater shyness scores in a nonclinical group of second-grade students. These first findings may be relevant to previous reports that have shown an association between the 5-HTTLPR long form and obsessive-compulsive disorder and autism.
Year : 2011 Disambiguation of English contractions for machine translation of TV

This paper presents a disambiguation method for English apostrophe+s contractions. They occur frequently in subtitles and pose special difficulties for Machine Translation. We propose to disambiguate these contractions in a preprocessing step and show that this leads to improved translation quality. Disambiguation of English Contractions for Machine Translation of TV Subtitles Martin Volk and Rico Sennrich University of Zurich, Institute of Computational Linguistics Zurich, Switzerland {volk|sennrich}@cl.uzh. ch
BAY 59‐7939: an oral, direct Factor Xa inhibitor for the prevention of venous thromboembolism in patients after total knee replacement. A phase II dose‐ranging study

Summary. Background: BAY 59‐7939, a novel, oral, direct factor Xa inhibitor, is in clinical development for the prevention of venous thromboembolism (VTE), a frequent complication following orthopaedic surgery. Methods: In a multicenter, parallel‐group, double‐blind, double‐dummy study, 621 patients undergoing elective total knee replacement were randomly assigned to oral BAY 59‐7939 (2.5, 5, 10, 20, and 30 mg b.i.d., initiated 6–8 h postsurgery), or subcutaneous enoxaparin (30 mg b.i.d., initiated 12–24 h postsurgery). Treatment was continued until mandatory bilateral venography 5–9 days after surgery. The primary efficacy endpoint was a composite of any deep vein thrombosis (proximal and/or distal), confirmed non‐fatal pulmonary embolism and all‐cause mortality during treatment. The primary safety endpoint was major, postoperative bleeding during treatment. Results: Of the 613 patients treated, 366 (59.7%) were evaluable for the primary efficacy analysis. The primary efficacy endpoint occurred in 31.7%, 40.4%, 23.3%, 35.1%, and 25.4% of patients receiving 2.5, 5, 10, 20 and 30 mg b.i. d. doses of BAY 59‐7939, respectively (test for trend, P = 0.29), compared with 44.3% in the enoxaparin group. The frequency of major, postoperative bleeding increased with increasing doses of BAY 59‐7939 (test for trend, P = 0.0007), with no significant difference between any dose group compared with enoxaparin. Bleeding endpoints were lower for the 2.5–10 mg b.i. d. doses compared with higher doses of BAY 59‐7939. Conclusions: Oral administration of 2.5–10 mg b.i. d. of BAY 59‐7939, early in the postoperative period, showed potential efficacy and an acceptable safety profile, similar to enoxaparin, for the prevention of VTE in patients undergoing elective total knee replacement.
[Short version of the "job stress scale": a Portuguese-language adaptation].

OBJECTIVE To describe the adaptation to Portuguese of the short version of the "job stress scale", originally in English. METHODS We evaluate six aspects of equivalence between the original scale and the Portuguese version: conceptual, semantic, operational, item, measurement, and functional equivalences. A reliability test-retest study was conducted with 94 selected subjects. RESULTS Reproducibility (interclass correlation coefficients) for the 'demand', 'control', and 'social support' dimensions of the scale was estimated at 0.88, 0.87, and 0.85, respectively. Internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha) estimates for these same dimensions were 0.79, 0.67, and 0.85, respectively. CONCLUSIONS Our results suggest that the adaptation of the scale was successful, and indicate that its use in the sociocultural context of the studied population (Pró-Saúde survey) is appropriate.
Diagnostic Concordance of ICD-10 Personality and Comorbid Disorders: A Comparison of Standard Clinical Assessment and Structured Interviews in a Clinical Setting

Objective: The diagnosis of personality disorders is one of the most problematic areas in psychiatric diagnosis. Diagnoses are usually made by standard clinical interview, but they have poor reliability. The aim of this study was to compare the concordance in diagnosis between structured assessment tools and assessment as usual in a clinical setting. Method: Diagnosis of 33 patients on the International Personality Disorder Examination (IPDE) and the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI) was compared to diagnosis made by standard assessment through clinical interview. Results: There was poor concordance between structured measures and standard assessment by clinical interview, and poor levels of diagnostic sensitivity and specificity on standard assessment. Conclusion: Structured measures were more comprehensive, sensitive and specific in diagnosis than standard clinical assessment. Increased diagnostic accuracy is needed for effective understanding and treatment planning for personality disorders.
Racial Salary Discrimination in the NBA : 2008-2009

This paper examines racial salary differences in the National Basketball Association for the 2008-2009 season. Previous studies that used data from the mid-1980s estimated salary premiums of between 16 and 20% for white players whose performance was comparable to black players. A study that used data from the late-1980s to early-1990s showed no significant salary differential between white and black players. Another study, using data from the 1990s, found no racial discrimination in the NBA, but did find a height premium of 7.4%. This paper will update previous studies by using more recent data to analyze salary discrimination in the NBA. I find that nonwhite players earn approximately $83,000 more than white players for the 2008-2009 season. Yet when I control for player productivity and other variables, I find a significant white premium of approximately 24.5%. I also find that customer discrimination is not evident in the NBA for the 20082009 season.
The relative importance of service dimensions in a healthcare setting.

PURPOSE The paper aims to focus on an augmented SERVQUAL instrument that was used to measure private patients' service expectations and perceptions. DESIGN/METHOD/APPROACH A questionnaire was administered to 750 and 34 per cent responded. FINDINGS A new service quality instrument called PRIVHEALTHQUAL emerged from the study, based on factor and reliability analysis. The "reliability and fair and equitable treatment" factor was found to be the most important healthcare service quality dimension. ORIGINALITY/VALUE Adds to the existing body of research on service quality and demonstrates that SERVQUAL is not a generic service quality measure for all industries.