Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Entorhinal Cortex Lesions Disrupt the Relational Organization of Memory in Monkeys

Recent accounts suggest that the hippocampal system critically supports two central characteristics of episodic memory: the ability to establish and maintain representations for the salient relationships between experienced events (relational representation) and the capacity to flexibly manipulate memory (flexible memory expression). To test this proposal in monkeys, intact controls and subjects with bilateral aspiration lesions of the entorhinal cortex were trained postoperatively on two standard memory tasks, delayed nonmatchingto-sample (DNMS) and two-choice object discrimination (OD) learning, and three procedures intended to emphasize relational representation and flexible memory expression: a paired associate (PA) task, a transitive inference (TI) test of learning and memory for hierarchical stimulus relationships, and a spatial delayed recognition span (SDRS) procedure. The latter assessments each included critical “probe” tests that asked monkeys to evaluate the relationships among previously learned stimuli presented in novel combinations. Subjects with entorhinal cortex lesions scored as accurately as controls on all phases of DNMS and OD, procedures that can be solved on the basis of memory for individual stimuli. In contrast, experimental monkeys displayed deficits relative to controls on all phases of the PA, TI, and SDRS tasks that emphasized the flexible manipulation of memory for the relationships between familiar items. Together, the findings support the conclusion that the primate hippocampal system critically enables the relational organization of declarative memory.
Fishing and Nonfishing Income Decisions: The Role of Human Capital and Family Structure

Resource-dependent households often diversify their income. We model demand for remittances and supply of off-resource labor as a joint decision, and discuss household trade-offs. We extend the off-farm labor supply literature to a rural fishery, contrasting our results to common findings in the farm literature and providing empirical evidence of the interdependence between education and family structure in determining income diversification. Using a unique dataset from Malaysia, we find that more-educated households are less likely to diversify their income, with caveats depending on family composition. Policy implications for resource management in a remittance economy with alternative livelihoods are discussed. (JEL Q22)
Image co-segmentation via active contours

In this paper, a new co-segmentation model by incorporating active contours based method and rewarding strategy is represented. We first generate co-segmentation energy function from two aspects. One is foreground similarity between image pairs. The other is background consistency in each single image. Then, we optimize the energy function through a mutual optimization approach. We verify the proposed method on the images commonly used in co-segmentation research. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.
Intermittent parathyroid hormone fails to stimulate osseointegration in diabetic rats.

OBJECTIVES Diabetes is considered a risk factor in the osseointegration of dental implants, which suggests that these patients might benefit from anabolic therapies. Preclinical studies, including investigations by this research group, revealed that intermittent administration of parathyroid hormone (PTH) stimulates bone formation on the surface of titanium implants under physiological conditions. However, the anabolic effect of PTH on osseointegration under the hyperglycemic condition of diabetes is unknown. METHODS The ability of PTH to stimulate osseointegration was investigated in 40 female Wistar rats that were randomly divided into the following treatment groups: diabetes, diabetes plus PTH, control, and control plus PTH. Diabetes was induced by intraperitoneal injection of streptozotocin (45 mg/kg) at 1 week before implantation. Rats received PTH at a dose of 60 μg/kg or a vehicle by subcutaneous injection starting at the day of implant insertion into the tibia. Histomorphometric analysis was performed after 4 weeks. RESULTS The medullary peri-implant bone area significantly increased in rats receiving PTH in comparison with the control group (41±12% to 20±12%; P<0.01). Moreover, there was an increased bone-to-implant contact (BIC) area in animals treated with PTH (47±18% to 27±16%; P<0.05). In contrast, diabetic rats failed to benefit from the anabolic treatment. A similar peri-implant bone area occurred in the diabetes group, independent of treatment with PTH (13±9% to 15±6%; P>0.05). Moreover, PTH did not affect the BIC area under hyperglycemic conditions (16±12% to 16±8%; P>0.05). No significant changes were observed in the cortical compartment of all groups. CONCLUSION These results demonstrate that the metabolic characteristics of the diabetic rats produced a condition that was unable to respond to PTH treatment. These findings led us to hypothesize that metabolic control of diabetes might be a critical determinant when diabetic patients are undergoing anabolic therapy to enhance osseointegration.
Nasal Packing after Septoplasty: A Randomized Comparison of Packing versus no Packing in 88 Patients

The once-common practice of packing the nose after septoplasty was based on a desire to prevent postoperative complications such as bleeding, septal hematoma, and adhesion formation. However, it was since found that not only is nasal packing ineffective in this regard, it can actually cause these complications. Although the consensus in the world literature is that packing should be avoided, to the best of our knowledge, no truly randomized study has been undertaken in Southwest Asia upon which to justify this recommendation here. Therefore, we conducted a prospective randomized comparison of the incidence of a variety of postoperative signs and symptoms in 88 patients, 15 years of age and older, who did (n = 44) and did not (n = 44) undergo nasal packing following septoplasty. We found that the patients who underwent packing experienced significantly more postoperative pain, headache, epiphora, dysphagia, and sleep disturbance on the night of surgery. Oral and nasal examinations 7 days postoperatively revealed no significant difference between the two groups in the incidence of bleeding, septal hematoma, adhesion formation, and local infection. Finally, the packing group reported a moderate to high level of pain during removal of the packing. Our findings confirm that nasal packing after septoplasty is not only unnecessary, it is actually a source of patient discomfort and other signs and symptoms.
The effect of psychiatric symptoms on the internet addiction disorder in Isfahan's University students

BACKGROUND: Internet addiction disorder is an interdisciplinary phenomenon and it has been studied from different viewpoints in terms of various sciences such as medicine, computer, sociology, law, ethics, and psychology. The aim of this study was to determine the association of psychiatric symptoms with Internet addiction while controlling for the effects of age, gender, marital status, and educational levels. It is hypothesized, that high levels of Internet addiction are associated with psychiatric symptoms and are specially correlated with obsessive-compulsive disorder symptoms. METHODS: In a cross-sectional study, a total number of 250 students from Isfahan's universities were randomly selected. Subjects completed the demographic questionnaire, the Young Diagnostic Questionnaire (YDQ) and the Symptom Checklist-90-Revision (SCL-90-R). Data was analyzed using the multiple logistic regression method. RESULTS: There was an association between psychiatric symptoms such as somatization, sensitivity, depression, anxiety, aggression, phobias, and psychosis with exception of paranoia; and diagnosis of Internet addiction controlling for age, sex, education level, marital status, and type of universities. CONCLUSIONS: A great percentage of youths in the population suffer from the adverse effects of Internet addiction. It is necessary for psychiatrists and psychologists to be aware of the mental problems caused by Internet addiction.
The labor productivity of family firms : a socioemotional wealth perspective

In this chapter we examine the relationship between family firms and labor productivity. We focus on labor productivity for two reasons. First, it is an essential component of total factor productivity for which recent analyses have found differences between family and non-family firms. Second, it is directly tied to employees’ attitudes and behavior and therefore is a key indicator to look at in order to further understand people management related issues in family firms. A family firm is a firm controlled by a group of individuals related to each other by ties of blood or marriage. Family ownership is the most common type of ownership form in almost every country (La Porta et al., 1999; Gomez-Mejia et al., 2003). Further, family firms can be found in all economic sectors and size categories, and are also significantly present among publicly held firms (Gomez-Mejia et al., 2010). Because of this ubiquity, family firm research in recent years is becoming one of the classic lines of inquiry in the management and economics literature. This literature has gained momentum during the last decade, with significant contributions published in major academic journals.
Putamen functional connectivity during inhibitory control in smokers and non‐smokers

The putamen has been shown to play a key role in inhibitory control and addiction, and consists of distinct subregions associated with distinct functions. The anterior putamen is thought to be specialized in goal‐directed control or response‐monitoring in connection with frontal regions, whereas the posterior part is specialized in habitual or automatic responding in connection with sensorimotor regions. The present study is the first to delineate functional networks of the anterior and posterior putamen in a Go–NoGo response inhibition task, and to examine differences between smokers (n = 25) and non‐smokers (n = 23) within these networks. Functional connectivity analyses were conducted on fMRI data from a Go–NoGo study, using the generalized form of psychophysiological interaction with anterior and posterior putamen seed regions. In the context of inhibition, the anterior putamen exhibited connectivity with the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and precuneus (pFWE < .05), which was in line with previous literature. Conversely, the posterior putamen showed connectivity with regions implicated in sensorimotor processing. When we compared smokers to non‐smokers, we did not observe the expected weaker connectivity between the anterior putamen and ACC during inhibition in smokers. Instead, our study revealed stronger inhibition‐related connectivity between the anterior putamen and right insula in smokers. This finding highlights the involvement of putamen – insula interactions in addiction and impulse control.
Antioxidant protection: A promising therapeutic intervention in neurodegenerative disease

Abstract Oxidative stress has been consistently linked to ageing-related neurodegenerative diseases. Neurodegenerative diseases are characterized by progressive dysfunction and death of neurons. Oxidative stress is associated with dysfunction of the mitochondria and endoplasmic reticulum, inducing apoptosis and protein misfolding in neurons. Decreased activities of antioxidant enzymes like SOD, catalase, glutathione, glutathione peroxidase in neurodegenerative states signifies role of reduced antioxidant potential in neurodegeneration. Among the cellular pathways conferring protection against oxidative stress, a key role is played by vitagenes, which include Hsp70, heme oxygenase-1, thioredoxin and sirtuins. Cellular signalling pathways and molecular mechanisms that mediate hormetic responses typically involve antioxidant enzymes and transcription factors such as Nrf-2 and NFκB. Vitagenes, either individually or by acting in concert, contribute to counteract the ROS mediated damage. In this review the importance of oxidative stress and the potential use of antioxidants in the prevention and treatment of neurodegenerative disorders are discussed.
Mixed Fuzzy Clustering for Misaligned Time Series

Data mining in medical databases often involves the comparison of time series, which represent the evolution of a physiological variable. Temporal misalignment of physiological variables can conceal the discovery of patterns and trends shared between different patients. To address this problem, this paper proposes the mixed fuzzy clustering (MFC) algorithm with the dynamic time-warping (DTW) distance. We developed the MFC algorithm by 1) incorporating the DTW distance into the standard fuzzy c-means to handle misaligned time series; 2) introducing a new dimension into the spatiotemporal clustering algorithm to handle P time-variant features; and 3) incorporating unsupervised learning of cluster-dependent attribute weights. The algorithm is designed to simultaneously cluster time-variant and time-invariant data. We demonstrate the advantages of the proposed algorithm in four synthetic datasets and in two real-world applications in intensive care units. The first application is the classification of patients who will need the administration of vasopressors, and the second is the classification of patients with a high risk of mortality. Time-variant features consist of physiological variables collected with different sampling rates at different points in time. Time-invariant features consist of patients’ demographics and score records. The performance is evaluated using cluster validity measures, showing that the proposed algorithm outperforms fuzzy c-means.
Strain Variation among Bordetella pertussis Isolates in Finland, Where the Whole-Cell Pertussis Vaccine Has Been Used for 50 Years

ABSTRACT Pertussis is an infectious disease of the respiratory tract caused by Bordetella pertussis. Despite the introduction of mass vaccination against pertussis in Finland in 1952, pertussis has remained an endemic disease with regular epidemics. To monitor changes in the Finnish B. pertussis population, 101 isolates selected from 1991 to 2003 and 21 isolates selected from 1953 to 1982 were studied together with two Finnish vaccine strains. The analyses included serotyping of fimbriae (Fim), genotyping of the pertussis toxin S1 subunit (ptxA) and pertactin (prn), and pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) after digestion of B. pertussis genomic DNA with XbaI restriction enzyme. Strains isolated before 1977 were found to harbor the same ptxA as the strains used in the Finnish whole-cell pertussis vaccine, and strains isolated before 1982 harbored the same prn as the strains used in the Finnish whole-cell pertussis vaccine. All recent isolates, however, represented genotypes distinct from those of the two vaccine strains. A marked shift of predominant serotype from Fim serotype 2 (Fim2) to Fim3 has been observed since the late 1990s. Temporal changes were seen in the genome of B. pertussis by PFGE analysis. Three PFGE profiles (BpSR1, BpSR11, and BpSR147) were distinguished by their prevalence between 1991 and 2003. The yearly emergence of the three profiles was distributed periodically. Our study stresses the importance of the continuous monitoring of emerging strains of B. pertussis and the need to obtain a better understanding of the relationship of the evolution of B. pertussis in vaccinated populations.
Imaging endogenous dopamine competition with [11C]raclopride in the human brain

This study images dopamine release in response to a neurochemically specific challenge with the psychostimulant drug methylphenidate. Changes in synaptic dopamine induced by methylphenidate were evaluated with positron emission tomography and [11C]raclopride, a D2 receptor radioligand that is sensitive to endogenous dopamine. Methylphenidate significantly decreased striatal [11C]raclopride binding. The decrease was variable and was negatively correlated with age. Mood and anxiety at baseline, were also correlated with methylphenidate‐induced DA changes. This strategy provides a tool to investigate the responsiveness of the dopamine system in the normal and diseased human brain and to investigate the neurochemical correlates of behavior. © 1994 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Organisational strategies for changing clinical practice: how trusts are meeting the challenges of clinical governance

Objectives—To describe the use, perceived effectiveness, and predicted future use of organisational strategies for influencing clinicians' behaviour in the approach of NHS trusts to clinical governance, and to ascertain the perceived benefits of clinical governance and the barriers to change. Design and setting—Whole population postal survey conducted between March and June 1999. Subjects—Clinical governance leads of 86 NHS trusts across the South West and West Midlands regions. Method—A combination of open questions to assess the use of strategies to influence clinician behaviour and the barriers to clinical governance. Closed (yes/no) and Likert type ratings were used to assess the use, perceived effectiveness, and future use of 13 strategies and the predicted outcomes of clinical governance. Results—All trusts use one or more of 13 strategies categorised as educational, facilitative, performance management, and organisational change methods. Most popular were educational programmes (96%) and protocols and guidelines (97%). The least popular was performance management such as use of financial incentives (29%). Examples of successful existing practice to date showed a preference for initiatives that described the use of protocols and guidelines, and use of benchmarking data. Strategies most frequently rated as effective were facilitative methods such as the facilitation of best practice in clinical teams (79%), the use of pilot projects (73%), and protocols and guidelines (52%). The least often cited as effective were educational programmes (42%) and training clinicians in information management (20%); 8% found none of the 13 strategies to be effective. Predicted future use showed that all the trusts which completed this section intended to use at least one of the 13 strategies. The most popular strategies were educational and facilitative. Scatterplots show that there is a consistent relationship between use and planned future use. This was less apparent for the relationship between planned use and perceived effectiveness. Barriers to change included lack of resources, mainly of money and staff time, and the need to address cultural issues, plus infrastructure support. The anticipated outcomes of clinical governance show that most trusts expect to influence clinician behaviour by improving patient outcomes (78%), but only 53% expect it to result in better use of resources, improved patient satisfaction (36%), and reduced complaints (10%). Conclusions—Clinical governance leads of trusts report using a range of strategies for influencing clinician behaviour and plan to use a similar range in the future. The choice of methods seems to be related to past experience of local use, despite equivocal judgements of their perceived effectiveness in the trusts. Most expect to achieve a positive impact on patient outcomes as a result. It is concluded that trusts should establish methods of learning what strategies are effective from their own data and from external comparison.
Survey of routines for sedation of patients on controlled ventilation in Nordic intensive care units

Background: Sedation strategies and practice for patients on controlled ventilation is variable from place to place as well as over time. Less sedation results in shorter ventilation time and new ventilatory modes permit more awake patients. Previous works estimated sedative and analgesic use in Nordic ICUs some years ago, but current practice is not known. We therefore designed this study to describe pharmacological and practical routines for sedation of patients on controlled ventilation.
Studies of lignin biosynthesis using isotopic carbon. VII. The role of p-hydroxyphenylpyruvic acid.

L-Phenylalanine-C14 and p-hydroxyphenylpyruvic acid-3-C14 were administered to wheat, buckwheat, and salvia (Salvia splendens Sello), and after 24 hours the "lignin aldehydes" (p-hydroxybenzaldehyde, vanillin, and syringaldehyde) were isolated following alkaline nitrobenzene oxidation of the plant fraction insoluble in ethanol–benzene and water. Although all species converted phenylalanine readily to lignin, only wheat could form the syringyl and guaiacyl parts of lignin efficiently from p-hydroxyphenylpyruvic acid. p-Hydroxybenzaldehyde recovered from all species was heavily labelled after feeding both compounds. The L-tyrosine from acid hydrolysis and the p-hydroxybenzaldehyde from nitrobenzene oxidation, isolated from buckwheat activated by feeding p-hydroxyphenylpyruvic acid-3-C14, had the same molar specific activity, and it is considered probable that most if not all of the p-hydroxybenzaldehyde in all these species was derived from protein tyrosine in the extracted residue. When p-hydroxyphenyllact.
A mechanistic review of silica-induced inhalation toxicity

Abstract Crystalline forms of silica have been proposed as positive control material for the toxicity test of inhaled particulate/fibrous matter, although mechanism of silica-induced inhalation toxicity has not yet been established. Inhalation exposure of α-quartz to rodents induces severe lung inflammation and fibrosis only after a certain period of latency, despite strong surface reactivity. The delayed occurrence of inhalation toxicity by α-quartz may be largely attributed to the sequestration of α-quartz particles by alternatively activated (M2) macrophages that express abundant levels of scavenger receptors but are relatively insensitive to inflammatory stimuli. When exposure to α-quartz continues, lung dust burden reaches a particle overload level, at which M2 macrophages cannot accommodate further quartz particles. Free quartz particles distributed in the interstitium interact with another subtype of macrophages, classically activated/inflammatory (M1) macrophages, which secrete various inflammatory cytokines, but silica-laden M1 macrophages initiate granuloma formation, which sequesters silica particles, too. Furthermore, the ability of M2 macrophages to clear foreign matter, particularly bacterial endotoxins [lipopolysaccharides (LPS)], may decrease due to α-quartz cytotoxicity. When LPS concentration in the lung reaches a certain level, LPS primes M1 macrophages to prepare for interleukin-1β production in response to α-quartz and also stimulates M1 macrophages and plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs) to produce tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α and interferon (IFN)-β, respectively. Besides, IFN-β may enhance TNF-α production in LPS-stimulated M1 macrophages. The elevated levels of inflammatory cytokines produce progressive lung inflammation and fibrosis.