Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Outcome measurement in functional neurological disorder: a systematic review and recommendations

Objectives We aimed to identify existing outcome measures for functional neurological disorder (FND), to inform the development of recommendations and to guide future research on FND outcomes. Methods A systematic review was conducted to identify existing FND-specific outcome measures and the most common measurement domains and measures in previous treatment studies. Searches of Embase, MEDLINE and PsycINFO were conducted between January 1965 and June 2019. The findings were discussed during two international meetings of the FND-Core Outcome Measures group. Results Five FND-specific measures were identified—three clinician-rated and two patient-rated—but their measurement properties have not been rigorously evaluated. No single measure was identified for use across the range of FND symptoms in adults. Across randomised controlled trials (k=40) and observational treatment studies (k=40), outcome measures most often assessed core FND symptom change. Other domains measured commonly were additional physical and psychological symptoms, life impact (ie, quality of life, disability and general functioning) and health economics/cost–utility (eg, healthcare resource use and quality-adjusted life years). Conclusions There are few well-validated FND-specific outcome measures. Thus, at present, we recommend that existing outcome measures, known to be reliable, valid and responsive in FND or closely related populations, are used to capture key outcome domains. Increased consistency in outcome measurement will facilitate comparison of treatment effects across FND symptom types and treatment modalities. Future work needs to more rigorously validate outcome measures used in this population.
Dendritic complexity change in the triple transgenic mouse model of Alzheimer’s disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is an irreversible, neurodegenerative disease that is characterized by memory impairment and executive dysfunction. However, the change of fine structure of neuronal morphology remains unclear in the AD model mouse. In this study, high-resolution mouse brain sectional images were scanned by Micro-Optical Sectioning Tomography (MOST) technology and reconstructed three-dimensionally to obtain the pyramidal neurons. The method of Sholl analysis was performed to analyze the neurons in the brains of 6- and 12-month-old AD mice. The results showed that dendritic complexity was not affected in the entorhinal cortex between 6-month-old mice and 12-month-old mice. The dendritic complexity had increased in the primary motor cortex and CA1 region of hippocampus of 12- month-old mice compared with 6-month-old mice. On the contrary, dendritic complexity in the prefrontal cortex was decreased significantly between 6-month-old and 12-month-old mice. To our knowledge, this is the first study to provide high-resolution brain images of triple transgenic AD mice for statistically analyzing neuronal dendrite complexity by MOST technology to reveal the morphological changes of neurons during AD progression.
Coproduction Between Government and Civil Society to Establish Smart Cities in the State of Pará

This article discusses the environment around the process of adopting the concept of smart cities in the State of Para (Brazil), based on the coproduction of public services involving civil society and government. The study presents a case study of coproduction focusing on the rural area, characterized by the partnership between a civil society organization and public agencies from the state, and local governments to enable specialized medical care. The article also shows the results of a survey about coproduction, focused on the urban area, seeking to identify the feasibility to implement a data sharing service, using the Wi-Fi of individuals and households in areas where the local government has difficulties in offering public services. The use of this shared infrastructure would allow coproducing public services, including preventive telemedicine services in the neighborhoods around the Metropolitan Region of Belem. The survey was based on the following question: To what extent are citizens and civil society organizations willing to form partnerships to coproduce with the government? The results of this article show that citizens and civil society organizations are willing to coproduce with governments and explore the conditions for these partnerships to happen. Also, the article shows that coproduction involving technological infrastructure and solutions may be a start to discussing and establishing smart cities in the state of Para.
From experimental work to theoretical study

• Thermally deactivated Fe2(SO4)3/TiO2 (FeTi-T) was obtained by thermal treatment. • Fe2(SO4)3 decomposition causes Brønsted acid sites loss and catalyst deactivation. • The in situ recovery of FeTi-T is achieved by SO2 in the flue gas. • Fe2(SO4)3 is formed by SO2/O2 and Fe2O3 under NH3-SCR reaction conditions. A R T I C L E I N F O
At War and at Home: The Consequences of US Women Combat Casualties

What are the consequences of women dying in combat? We study how women fighting on the frontlines of the military affects public attitudes toward (1) military conflict and (2) women’s equality. We demonstrate through a series of survey experiments that women dying in combat does not reduce public support for war. However, women’s combat deaths do shape perceptions of women’s equality. Women dying in combat increases support for gender equality, particularly in the public sphere of work and politics, but only among women respondents. The findings indicate that women’s combat deaths do not undermine leaders’ ability to garner support for war, but combat service—and indeed, combat sacrifice—alone is insufficient to yield women’s “first-class citizenship” among the general US public. The results highlight how major policy changes challenging traditional conceptions of gender and war can generate positive attitudinal shifts concentrated among members of the underrepresented community.
Exploring Identity Representation Strategies in English and Persian Political Discourse

Previous research on identity construction in political and media discourse is mostly limited to the study of strategies employed by politicians in their spoken discourse. However, different political agents, by way of assuming different degrees of power, may employ different strategies for the construction of others' identities. This study is set to investigate how political agents differ in the strategies they employ for the linguistic construction of identities across cultures: English and Persian. A total number of 66 English and Persian texts, produced by three groups of political agents (actors, reporters & researchers) were randomly selected. Then, following Wodak's (2001, 2007, 2009) critical discourse analysis approach, they were analyzed in terms of the quality and quantity of the strategies proposed for positive/negative representation of others. The results of the critical discourse analyses as well as Chi-square tests of statistical significance indicated qualitative/quantitative differences in the type and frequency of discourse strategies employed by English and Persian agents. p ersian agents tended to be more indirect, covert and anonymous than their English counterparts by using more implicit strategies for other representation. The implications are drawn for material development and designing teaching programs to raise advanced level students' awareness of the relevant discourse strategies for other representation.
The Contagion of Drug Violence: Spatiotemporal Dynamics of the Mexican War on Drugs

Why are some territories ravaged by intense levels of criminal violence while others are relatively peaceful? This research contributes to an understanding of the escalation and diffusion of drug violence in Mexico from 2000 to 2010 by formalizing the interactions between the state and organized criminals and by relying on a large database of event data containing more than 1.6 million observations. Results based on spatial econometrics provide evidence of the spatial diffusion of violence. In congruence with the theoretical expectations, the results show that the disruptive effect of law enforcement is an important catalyst for the intensification of violence between criminal organizations, especially when deployed in areas hosting a high concentration of criminal groups. This relationship holds for a broad menu of violent and nonviolent law enforcement tactics. The analysis also reveals that other broadly held factors (international, geographic, and socioeconomic characteristics) have a modest effect on the dynamics of drug-related violence.
The Criticality of Growth, Urbanization, Electricity and Fossil Fuel Consumption to Environment Sustainability in Africa

While most African economies are primarily sandwiched with the seemingly unsurmountable task of attaining consistent economic growth and unhindered energy supply, the enormous threat posed by environmental degradation has further complicated the economic and environmental sustainability drive. In this context, the present study examines the effect of economic growth, urbanization, electricity consumption, fossil fuel energy consumption, and total natural resources rent on pollutant emissions in Africa over the period 1980-2014. By employing selected African countries, the current study relies on the Kao and Pedroni cointegration tests to cointegration analysis, the Pesaran's Panel Pooled Mean Group-Autoregressive distributive lag methodology (ARDL-PMG) for long run regression while Dumitrescu and Hurlin (2012) is employed for the detection of causality direction among the outlined variables. The study traces long run equilibrium relationships between examined indicators. The ARDL-PMG results suggest a statistical positive relationship between pollutant emissions and urbanization, electricity consumption and non-renewable energy consumption. Dumitrescu and Hurlin (2012) Granger causality test lends support to the long-run regression results. A bi-directional causality is observed between pollutant emissions, electricity consumption, economic growth and pollutant emissions while a unidirectional causality is apparent between total natural resources rent and pollutant emission. Based on these results, several policy implications for the African continent were suggested. (a) The need for a paradigm shift from fossil fuel sources to renewables is encouraged in the region (b) The need to embrace carbon storage and capturing techniques to decouple pollutant emissions from economic growth on the continent's growth trajectory. Further policy insights are elucidated.
Remembering and forgetting.

Remembering and forgetting raise the question of how an event at one time influences behavior that occurs at another. In physics, action at a distance used to be a puzzle because it was thought that objects could influence each other only through direct contact. In psychology, the question of action at a temporal distance remains a puzzle. How do people remember and why do people forget? Research on human memory is wide ranging, and naturalistic and laboratory studies of remembering in nonhuman animals are covered by the field called comparative cognition (Roberts, 1998). Sometimes the different abilities reveal fascinating species­ specific characteristics (Wasserman, 1993), and sometimes the species similarities owe to procedural limits (White,Juhasz, &: Wilson, 1973). This chap­ ter is more constrained in scope. In it, I examine the experimental analysis of nonhuman remembering and forgetting in laboratory procedures in which the retention intervals are typically short and in which parametric variation is a main focus. Can an experi­ mental analysis contribute a solution to the puzzle of action at a temporal distance? In any experiment in which remembering or for­ getting is studied, the most important parameter is the temporal distance between original learning and the point of remembering, because the time delay, or retention interval, defines the behavior as remem­ bering or its converse, forgetting. The process used to bridge the temporal gap is loosely referred to as memory; but as I discuss later, this question is a the­ oretical one that has many different interpretations.
PII: S0021-8502(99)00024-5

A new set of experimental data on the particle collection e$ciency of small cyclones operating at high #owrates is reported. Seven di! erent cyclones were studied systematically covering a #owrate range 60}110 lmin~1 and a particle size range 0.026}3.6 km. Special emphasis was given to the e! ects of the cylinder height and of the exit tube length on the particle collection e$ciency. The length ratios of the cylinder height and exit tube length to the cyclone body diameter were varied from 0.75 to 4.5 and from 0.5 to 1.5, respectively. The experimental results suggest that the #owrate plays a signi"cant role in cyclone collection e$ciency. High #owrate can help to collect "ne particles. As the cylinder height is increased, the collection e$ciency increases. However, when the cylinder height is increased excessively, the collection e$ciency appears to decrease to certain extent. An optimized exit tube length was also observed. Pressure drop decreased substantially either as the cylinder height became longer or as the exit tube length became shorter. It was also found that the di! erence between the cyclone cylinder height and the exit tube length a! ects the particle collection characteristics signi"cantly. ( 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved
The relationship between the risk of falling and fear of falling among aged hospitalized patients

Background & Aim: Identifying aged people at risk of falls in hospitals is particularly important for the prevention of falls. A review of the literature revealed that the association of falls and fear of falls had not been investigated extensively in previous studies in Iran. This study aimed to determine the relationship between falling and fear of falling among aged hospitalized patients. Methods & Materials: In this descriptive-correlational study, 1123 subjects were recruited. Of all subjects, 385 aged hospitalized patients, 60 years old and above, were conveniently selected based on inclusion criteria in Shahroud Imam Hossein hospital from March to December 2016. Johns Hopkins fall risk assessment tool (JHFRAT) was used to evaluate the risk of falls among older adults and the Falling Efficiency Scale (FES) was applied to assess fear of falling. SPSS software version 19with the significance level of p<0.05. Chi-Square test and exact test of Fisher and logistic regression has been used for data analysis. Results: All aged patients (n=1123) admitted in the emergency room were assessed for eligibility to inclusion in the study. Of all subjects, 385 patients were included in this study. The subjects' mean of age was 71.68±4.32 years, age range: 60-84. Of all samples (n=385) of study 90 (23.4%), 151(39.2%) and 144 (37.4%) had a low, middle, and high risk of falls, respectively. Of all participants of the study, 193(51%) subjects were male and 192(49%) were female. One-third (36.4%) of the subjects had a fear of falls and (33.8%) experienced fall in the last six months before admission. A statistically significant relationship was found between the incidence of falls and fear of falling (P<0.001). Conclusion: This study found JHFRAT and FES as two applicable instruments for assessment of aged people. The result of this study concluded that evaluation of fear of falling and the risk of falls among aged hospitalized patients is recommended as a routine procedure to predict the risk of falls. Nurses are in the best position to evaluate the fear of falls and risk of falls, so it is recommended considering the fear of falls as a potential risk factor for falls in the hospital.
Within-host Mycobacterium tuberculosis evolution: a population genetics perspective

The within-host evolutionary dynamics of TB remain unclear, and underlying biological characteristics render standard population genetic approaches based upon the Wright-Fisher model largely inappropriate. In addition, the compact genome combined with an absence of recombination is expected to result in strong purifying selection effects. Thus, it is imperative to establish a biologically-relevant evolutionary framework incorporating these factors in order to enable an accurate study of this important human pathogen. Further, such a model is critical for inferring fundamental evolutionary parameters related to patient treatment, including mutation rates and the severity of infection bottlenecks. We here implement such a model and infer the underlying evolutionary parameters governing within-patient evolutionary dynamics. Results demonstrate that the progeny skew associated with the clonal nature of TB severely reduces genetic diversity and that the neglect of this parameter in previous studies has led to significant mis-inference of mutation rates. As such, our results suggest an underlying de novo mutation rate that is considerably faster than previously inferred, and a progeny distribution differing significantly from Wright-Fisher assumptions. This inference largely reconciles the seemingly contradictory observations of both rapid drug-resistance evolution but extremely low levels of genetic variation in both resistant and non-resistant populations.
Chemistry Laboratory Experiences of Prospective Biology Teachers: A Case Study

This study aims to evaluate the experiences of prospective biology teachers in the chemistry laboratory. Prospective biology teachers’ experiences, including their preparation for laboratory work, the duration of laboratory work, experiences following laboratory work and benefits derived from the work were investigated and methods of optimizing laboratory conditions were identified by observing current situations. Participants comprised prospective biology teachers studying at Hacettepe University in the Department of Biology Education and registered in the General Chemistry Laboratory II course. The case study research design—a qualitative research method was utilized. The data for the research were collected through interview, observation and document analysis. The results obtained were evaluated by applying content analysis to assess data. Prospective biology teachers were found to have several different types of needs with respect to chemistry laboratory experiences.
CISS-a composite indicator of systemic stress in the financial system

This paper introduces a new indicator of contemporaneous stress in the financial system named Composite Indicator of Systemic Stress (CISS). Its specific statistical design is shaped according to standard definitions of systemic risk. The main methodological innovation of the CISS is the application of basic portfolio theory to the aggregation of five market-specific subindices created from a total of 15 individual financial stress measures. The aggregation accordingly takes into account the time-varying cross-correlations between the subindices. As a result, the CISS puts relatively more weight on situations in which stress prevails in several market segments at the same time, capturing the idea that financial stress is more systemic and thus more dangerous for the economy as a whole if financial instability spreads more widely across the whole financial system. Applied to euro area data, we determine within a threshold VAR model a systemic crisis-level of the CISS at which financial stress tends to depress real economic activity.
Estimating Dust Attenuation from Galactic Spectra. I. Methodology and Tests

We develop a method to estimate the dust attenuation curve of galaxies from full optical spectral fitting. Motivated by previous studies, we separate the small-scale features from the large-scale spectral shape, by performing a moving average method to both the observed spectrum and the simple stellar population (SSP) model spectra. The intrinsic dust-free model spectrum is then derived by fitting the observed ratio of the small- to large-scale (S/L) components with the S/L ratios of the SSP models. The selective dust attenuation curve is then determined by comparing the observed spectrum with the dust-free model spectrum. One important advantage of this method is that the estimated dust attenuation curve is independent of the shape of theoretical dust attenuation curves. We have done a series of tests on a set of mock spectra covering wide ranges of stellar age and metallicity. We show that our method is able to recover the input dust attenuation curve accurately, although the accuracy depends slightly on the signal-to-noise ratio of the spectra. We have applied our method to a number of edge-on galaxies with obvious dust lanes from the ongoing MaNGA survey, deriving their dust attenuation curves and E(B − V) maps, as well as dust-free images in g, r, and i bands. These galaxies show obvious dust lane features in their original images, which largely disappear after we have corrected the effect of dust attenuation. The vertical brightness profiles of these galaxies become axisymmetric and can well be fitted by a simple disk vertical structure model.
Stellar Kinematics and Environment at z ∼ 0.8 in the LEGA-C Survey: Massive Slow Rotators Are Built First in Overdense Environments

In this Letter, we investigate the impact of environment on integrated and spatially resolved stellar kinematics of a sample of massive, quiescent galaxies at intermediate redshift (0.6 < z < 1.0). For this analysis, we combine photometric and spectroscopic parameters from the UltraVISTA and Large Early Galaxy Astrophysics Census surveys in the COSMOS field and environmental measurements. We analyze the trends with overdensity (1+δ) on the rotational support of quiescent galaxies and find no universal trends at either fixed mass or fixed stellar velocity dispersion. This is consistent with previous studies of the local universe; rotational support of massive galaxies depends primarily on stellar mass. We highlight two populations of massive galaxies ( ) that deviate from the average mass relation. First, the most massive galaxies in the most underdense regions ((1 + δ) ≤ 1) exhibit elevated rotational support. Similarly, at the highest masses ( ) the range in rotational support is significant in all but the densest regions. This corresponds to an increasing slow-rotator fraction such that only galaxies in the densest environments ((1 + δ) ≥ 3.5) are primarily (90% ± 10%) slow rotators. This effect is not seen at fixed velocity dispersion, suggesting minor merging as the driving mechanism: only in the densest regions have the most massive galaxies experienced significant minor merging, building stellar mass and diminishing rotation without significantly affecting the central stellar velocity dispersion. In the local universe, most massive galaxies are slow rotators, regardless of environment, suggesting minor merging occurs at later cosmic times (z ≲ 0.6) in all but the most dense environments.
Tangi: Tangible Proxies For Embodied Object Exploration And Manipulation In Virtual Reality

Exploring and manipulating complex virtual objects is challenging due to limitations of conventional controllers and free-hand interaction techniques. We present the TanGi toolkit which enables novices to rapidly build physical proxy objects using Composable Shape Primitives. TanGi also provides Manipulators allowing users to build objects including movable parts, making them suitable for rich object exploration and manipulation in VR. With a set of different use cases and applications we show the capabilities of the TanGi toolkit and evaluate its use. In a study with 16 participants, we demonstrate that novices can quickly build physical proxy objects using the Composable Shape Primitives and explore how different levels of object embodiment affect virtual object exploration. In a second study with 12 participants we evaluate TanGi’s Manipulators and investigate the effectiveness of embodied interaction. Findings from this study show that TanGi’s proxies outperform traditional controllers and were generally favored by participants.