Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Urinary 8-hydroxy-2′-deoxyguanosine (8-oxodG) level can predict acute renal damage in young children with urinary tract infection

Abstract Background: There are no good biomarkers to predict renal parenchymal involvement in children with urinary tract infection (UTI). Methods: Children (N = 73) younger than 5 years with UTI were enrolled. Urinary levels of 8-hydroxy-2′-deoxyguanosine (8-oxodG) and total antioxidant capacity (TAC) were checked as markers of oxidative stress and antioxidant capacity, respectively. Tc99m-dimercaptosuccinic acid (DMSA) renal scintigraphy was used to find evidence of renal involvement. Results: Patients with positive DMSA findings had higher levels of urinary 8-oxodG (p = 0.003) and higher urinary TAC (p = 0.001) than patients with normal DMSA findings. Conclusions: High level of urinary 8-oxodG may be a risk factor of severe renal damage.
Aging and strategy switch costs: A study in arithmetic problem solving.

Resume Dans cette experience, nous avons etudie les differences liees a l’âge dans les couts de changements strategiques lorsque les participants devaient changer (ou repeter) de strategie. Nous avons manipule le nombre de strategies disponibles (c’est-a-dire, deux vs. trois strategies). Des groupes d’adultes jeunes et âges devaient resoudre des additions a deux chiffres (par ex., 47 + 84). Pour chaque probleme, la strategie a executer etait indicee. Les participants devaient changer ou repeter la strategie d’un essai a l’autre pour la moitie des essais. Les donnees ont montre que les couts de changement strategique (c’est-a-dire, les participants etaient moins performants lorsqu’ils changeaient de strategie que lorsqu’ils repetaient une strategie) etaient plus eleves dans la condition deux que dans la condition trois strategies. De plus, il n’y avait aucune difference d’âge au niveau des couts de changement strategique, lorsque les participants changeaient entre deux strategies. En revanche, les couts de changement augmentaient avec l’âge lorsque les participants etaient dans la condition trois strategies. L’augmentation des couts de changement avec l’âge et le nombre de strategies pourrait etre liee aux variations de controle executif pendant l’execution et pourrait etre cruciale dans un certain nombre de variations strategiques au cours du vieillissement cognitif.
AN EXAMINATION OF THREE MODELS OF TELEVISION VIEWING AND AGGRESSION

Three general models of the relationship between television viewing and aggressiveness are described: the Facilitation Model, featuring learning or legitimization of aggression from television violence; the Catharsis Model, or the reduction of innate aggressive drives through vicarious participation in television violence; and the Arousal Model, which considers television programming as an agent of arousal, generating a drive toward activity, with the nature of the activity determined by situational factors. The Arousal Model is further discriminated into an Emotional Arousal Model, in which the agent of arousal is emotional reaction to violent content, and the Form Arousal Model, in which arousal is a result of the cognitive effort involved in decoding programming. The Facilitation, Catharsis, and Form Arousal Models are contrasted on a sample of 597 adolescents. The results indicate independent Facilitation and Form Arousal processes occur. A rather startling result is the finding that levels of aggressiveness can be predicted as well by examining only the form of programming as they can by examining only the violent content. Age and sex differences are associated with different strengths of Facilitation and/or Form Arousal effects, indicating possible socialization or maturation processes affecting the response of adolescents to programming.
The influence of active measurement on unstructured peer-to-peer network

In this paper, we investigated the influence of active measurement on the unstructured P2P network. Theoretical analysis and simulation results suggested that the measurement system should get the information of existing peers as many as possible. There is an interesting phase-transition phenomena in degree distribution when the size of the measurement system increases. A P2P network mixed with a small active measurement remains as a scale-free network; however, the mixture P2P network will not remain scale-free when the size of the measurement system exceeds a threshold. Simulation results also showed that the clustering coefficients of the mixture P2P network are greater than those of the original P2P network and the average path lengths of the mixture P2P network are smaller than those of the original P2P network. We had a general conclusion: a small but dense active measurement is better than a large but loose measurement system.
Exploring Depression Among a Cohort of African American Women

BACKGROUND: Depression is a chronic and disabling illness that occurs more often in women than men and commonly goes undetected and/or undertreated in African American women. Understanding sociocultural factors that may influence detection of depression is important for early intervention and treatment. OBJECTIVE: To improve understanding of how African American women articulate and conceptualize depression as well as how they manage depression in their daily life. This information can assist in detecting depression, which is requisite to accessing treatment. STUDY DESIGN: In accordance with this study's exploratory descriptive design, 36 African American women diagnosed with depression by a licensed mental health provider within the past year participated in five focus groups. RESULTS: Main themes included enduring the experience, revealing distress, and coping. CONCLUSION: Women's accounts of how they shaped their views and words used to communicate their depression were influenced by social and cultural experiences, values, and their knowledge about depression. J Am Psychiatr Nurses Assoc, 2007; 13(3), 161-169. DOI: 10.1177/1078390307304996
(Dimethylformamide-κO)(2-hydroxybenzoato-κ2 O 1,O 1′)[tris(1-methyl-1H-benzimidazol-2-ylmethyl-κN 3)amine-κN]manganese(II) perchlorate dimethylformamide monosolvate

In the title complex, [Mn(C7H5O3)(C27H27N7)(C3H7NO)]ClO4·C3H7NO, the MnII ion is coordinated in a slightly distorted monocapped trigonal-prismatic geometry. The tris(1-methyl-1H-benzimidazol-2-ylmethyl)amine (Mentb) ligand coordinates in a tetradentate mode and the coordination is completed by a bis-chelating salicylate ligand and a dimethylformamide ligand. The hydroxy group and the ortho H atoms of the salicylate ligand were refined as disordered over two sites with occupancies of 0.581 (8) and 0.419 (8). Both disorder components of the hydroxy group form intramolecular O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds.
Dimensions of Majority and Minority Groups

Several definitions of majority and minority groups can be found in the social psychological literature. They involve numeric size, power/status, and counternormative position, but size is most commonly used in experimental research to manipulate minority/minority status. Does this practice mirror real-world conceptualizations? To address this question, 77 participants were asked to describe majority and minority groups using a structured openended measure. Content analysis of their responses revealed that majority and minority groups were conceptualized along eight dimensions, which included power, number, distinctiveness, social category, group context, dispositions, and being the source or target of behavior. Although these dimensions were relevant to both majorities and minorities, they often were applied differentially. Also, minorities were associated with more divergent thinking and viewed more negatively than were majorities. On the basis of these findings, a new typology of groups was proposed that could be used in future experimental research to advance our understanding of majorities and minorities.
Parallel graph reduction with the (v , G)-machine

We have implemented a parallel graph reducer on a commercially available shared memory multiprocessor (a Sequent Symmetry TM ), that achieves real speedup compared to a a fast compiled implementation of the conventional Gmachine. Using 15 processors, this speedup ranges between 5 and 11, depending on the program. Underlying the implementation is an abstract machine called the h ; Gi-machine. We describe the sequential and the parallel h ; Gi-machine, and our implementation of them. We provide performance and speedup gures and graphs.
Lung volume-related changes in the pharyngeal area of obese females with and without obstructive sleep apnoea.

The majority of male patients with obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA) have an abnormal pharyngeal structure and function, with episodic complete airway occlusion during sleep. Since OSA is less common in females than in males, it is possible that other abnormalities are active in female patients with OSA. Consequently, we measured pharyngeal area and its lung volume-related changes (LVRC) from functional residual capacity (FRC) to residual volume (RV) in overweight females, 14 with OSA and 14 without OSA. Pharyngeal areas were measured using the acoustic reflection technique. While there were no significant differences in pharyngeal area between the OSA and control groups at either FRC (mean +/- SD, 3.49 +/- 0.46 cm2 vs 3.08 +/- 0.63 cm2) or RV (2.86 +/- 0.47 cm2 vs 2.67 +/- 0.49 cm2), the reduction in pharyngeal area between FRC and RV was significantly greater in the OSA group (0.63 +/- 0.23 cm2 vs 0.33 +/- 0.32 cm2, p less than 0.05). Furthermore, although the expiratory reserve volume (ERV) was not significantly different between the two groups (0.4 +/- 0.2 l vs 0.4 +/- 0.3 l), LVRC, defined as the reduction in pharyngeal area normalized by ERV, was significantly higher in the females with OSA than in the non-apnoeic controls (2.68 +/- 2.24 cm2.l-1 vs 1.17 +/- 1.23 cm2.l-1, p less than 0.02). We conclude that females with OSA have abnormal pharyngeal mechanics similar to males with OSA.
Reciprocity between phase shifts and amplitude changes in the mammalian circadian clock

Circadian rhythms help organisms adapt to predictable daily changes in their environment. Light resets the phase of the underlying oscillator to maintain the organism in sync with its surroundings. Light also affects the amplitude of overt rhythms. At a critical phase during the night, when phase shifts are maximal, light can reduce rhythm amplitude to nearly zero, whereas in the subjective day, when phase shifts are minimal, it can boost amplitude substantially. To explore the cellular basis for this reciprocal relationship between phase shift and amplitude change, we generated a photoentrainable, cell-based system in mammalian fibroblasts that shares several key features of suprachiasmatic nucleus light entrainment. Upon light stimulation, these cells exhibit calcium/cyclic AMP responsive element-binding (CREB) protein phosphorylation, leading to temporally gated acute induction of the Per2 gene, followed by phase-dependent changes in phase and/or amplitude of the PER2 circadian rhythm. At phases near the PER2 peak, photic stimulation causes little phase shift but enhanced rhythm amplitude. At phases near the PER2 nadir, on the other hand, the same stimuli cause large phase shifts but dampen rhythm amplitude. Real-time monitoring of PER2 oscillations in single cells reveals that changes in both synchrony and amplitude of individual oscillators underlie these phenomena.
Efficiency of Selecting Important Variable for Longitudinal Data

Variable selection with a large number of predictors is a very challenging and important problem in educational and social domains. However, relatively little attention has been paid to issues of variable selection in longitudinal data with application to education. Using this longitudinal educational data (Test of English for International Communication, TOEIC), this study compares multiple regression, backward elimination, group least selection absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO), and linear mixed models in terms of their performance in variable selection. The results from the study show that four different statistical methods contain different sets of predictors in their models. The linear mixed model (LMM) provides the smallest number of predictors (4 predictors among a total of 19 predictors). In addition, LMM is the only appropriate method for the repeated measurement and is the best method with respect to the principal of parsimony. This study also provides interpretation of the selected model by LMM in the conclusion using marginal R2.
Validação de dois questionários para a avaliação da atividade física em adultos

Objetivou-se verificar a validade da versao longa do IPAQ (dominios de lazer e deslocamento) e do questionario Baecke para a medida da atividade fisica em adultos, tendo a acelerometria como metodo de referencia. Em 2011, 58 adultos com ≥18 anos de idade residentes no distrito de Ermelino Matarazzo (Sao Paulo, SP) responderam os modulos de lazer e deslocamento da versao longa do IPAQ, o questionario Baecke e utilizaram acelerometros Actigraph (modelo GT1M) por sete dias. Os testes de correlacao de Pearson e de Spearman, t de Student para amostras independentes, de McNemar e a analise grafica de Bland-Altman foram utilizados para avaliar a relacao e concordância entre os metodos. Encontrou-se correlacao dos minutos de atividade fisica moderada a vigorosa (AFMV) da acelerometria com minutos de atividade fisica de lazer e deslocamento do IPAQ (ρ=0,34; p=0,01). Houve correlacao entre o total de counts e o somatorio dos escores de exercicio fisico e de atividade fisica de lazer e locomocao (r=0,36; p=0,005) e escore total (r=0,54; p
Predicting Maternal Discipline Responses to Early Child Aggression: The Role of Cognitions and Affect

SYNOPSIS Objective . To test models relating maternal cognitions, anger, and dysfunctional discipline responses to mother-directed toddler aggression. Design . In a cross-sectional design, maternal cognitions (intentionality, negative appraisal, and learning ability) and anger were modeled using path analyses as mediated predictors of overreactive and lax discipline responses to child-to-mother aggression in a community sample of 236 mothers of 4- to 71-month-old children. Results . Maternal anger mediated relations between maternal cognitions of intentionality, negative appraisal, and learning ability and overreactive discipline in response to child aggression. Maternal anger also mediated relations between negative appraisal and lax discipline. Maternal assessments of children's learning ability were directly associated with lax responses to child aggression. Conclusion . These results are consistent with the social information processing model that interpretation and evaluations of child behavior influence emotional arousal, which, in turn, influences the choice of discipline response.
Activation of Ras-ERK Signaling and GSK-3 by Amyloid Precursor Protein and Amyloid Beta Facilitates Neurodegeneration in Alzheimer’s Disease

Abstract It is widely accepted that amyloid β (Aβ) generated from amyloid precursor protein (APP) oligomerizes and fibrillizes to form neuritic plaques in Alzheimer’s disease (AD), yet little is known about the contribution of APP to intracellular signaling events preceding AD pathogenesis. The data presented here demonstrate that APP expression and neuronal exposure to oligomeric Aβ42 enhance Ras/ERK signaling cascade and glycogen synthase kinase 3 (GSK-3) activation. We find that RNA interference (RNAi)-directed knockdown of APP in B103 rat neuroblastoma cells expressing APP inhibits Ras-ERK signaling and GSK-3 activation, indicating that APP acts upstream of these signal transduction events. Both ERK and GSK-3 are known to induce hyperphosphorylation of tau and APP at Thr668, and our findings suggest that aberrant signaling by APP facilitates these events. Supporting this notion, analysis of human AD brain samples showed increased expression of Ras, activation of GSK-3, and phosphorylation of APP and tau, which correlated with Aβ levels in the AD brains. Furthermore, treatment of primary rat neurons with Aβ recapitulated these events and showed enhanced Ras-ERK signaling, GSK-3 activation, upregulation of cyclin D1, and phosphorylation of APP and tau. The finding that Aβ induces Thr668 phosphorylation on APP, which enhances APP proteolysis and Aβ generation, denotes a vicious feedforward mechanism by which APP and Aβ promote tau hyperphosphorylation and neurodegeneration in AD. Based on these results, we hypothesize that aberrant proliferative signaling by APP plays a fundamental role in AD neurodegeneration and that inhibition of this would impede cell cycle deregulation and neurodegeneration observed in AD.
La politique des bars gikuyu de Nairobi

Depuis la fin des annees 1980, les bars gikuyu sont devenus des arenes politiques dans un contexte d'autoritarisme fragilise. On y discute en particulier les principes et les fondements du nationalisme gikuyu qui refait surface a l'issue de la premiere decennie du regime du president Moi. Ainsi, la pensee politique gikuyu contemporaine s'enonce a travers differents genres artistiques representes dans les bars. Nous etudierons en particulier les messages ideologiques delivres par le theâtre populaire, la musique benga et les mugithi (des chansonniers qui travestissent de vieilles chansons et leur donnent un sens grivois ou ironique). Mais les differentes theories politiques enoncees par les artistes ne se suffisent pas a elles-memes. Elles fonctionnent avant tout dans le debat qui les confronte. Ainsi, les bars apparaissent comme des agoras ou les genres artistiques et donc les idees politiques dialoguent et ou le public est constamment amene a participer a ces « conversations democratiques ».
Stereotypes and stereotyping: What's the brain got to do with it?

Influential social-psychological models suggest that perceivers frequently use information-processing strategies that result in the stereotype-based construal and treatment of other people. To elucidate in greater detail when, why, and how social encounters elicit stereotyping, researchers have begun to incorporate neuroscientific tools into their repertoire of investigative methods. The current article reviews these studies and considers their significance in light of existing theories of person perception, knowledge representation, and impression formation. Finally, using the concrete example of stereotyping, benefits and pitfalls of adopting a social neuroscience approach are discussed.
Laplace Approximation for Divisive Gaussian Processes for Nonstationary Regression

The standard Gaussian Process regression (GP) is usually formulated under stationary hypotheses: The noise power is considered constant throughout the input space and the covariance of the prior distribution is typically modeled as depending only on the difference between input samples. These assumptions can be too restrictive and unrealistic for many real-world problems. Although nonstationarity can be achieved using specific covariance functions, they require a prior knowledge of the kind of nonstationarity, not available for most applications. In this paper we propose to use the Laplace approximation to make inference in a divisive GP model to perform nonstationary regression, including heteroscedastic noise cases. The log-concavity of the likelihood ensures a unimodal posterior and makes that the Laplace approximation converges to a unique maximum. The characteristics of the likelihood also allow to obtain accurate posterior approximations when compared to the Expectation Propagation (EP) approximations and the asymptotically exact posterior provided by a Markov Chain Monte Carlo implementation with Elliptical Slice Sampling (ESS), but at a reduced computational load with respect to both, EP and ESS.
Is Obstructive Sleep Apnea Associated with Cardiovascular and All-Cause Mortality?

Background Studies have reported inconsistent findings regarding the association between obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and future risks of cardiovascular and all-cause mortality. We conducted a meta-analysis to investigate whether OSA is an independent predictor for future cardiovascular and all-cause mortality using prospective observational studies. Methods Electronic literature databases (Medline and Embase) were searched for prospective observational studies published prior to December 2012. Only observational studies that assessed baseline OSA and future risk of cardiovascular and all-cause mortality were selected. Pooled hazard risk (HR) and corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated for categorical risk estimates. Subgroup analyses were based on the severity of OSA. Results Six studies with 11932 patients were identified and analyzed, with 239 reporting cardiovascular mortality, and 1397 all-cause mortality. Pooled HR of all-cause mortality was 1.19 (95% CI, 1.00 to 1.41) for moderate OSA and 1.90 (95% CI, 1.29 to 2.81) for severe OSA. Pooled HR of cardiovascular mortality was 1.40 (95% CI, 0.77 to 2.53) for moderate OSA and 2.65 (95% CI, 1.82 to 3.85) for severe OSA. There were no differences in cardiovascular mortality in continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) treatment compared with healthy subjects (HR 0.82; 95% CI, 0.50 to 1.33). Conclusions Severe OSA is a strong independent predictor for future cardiovascular and all-cause mortality. CPAP treatment was associated with decrease cardiovascular mortality.
Production of Recombinant Snakehead Rhabdovirus: the NV Protein Is Not Required for Viral Replication

ABSTRACT Snakehead rhabdovirus (SHRV) affects warm water fish in Southeast Asia and belongs to the genus Novirhabdovirus by virtue of its nonvirion gene (NV). Because SHRV grows best at temperatures between 28 and 31°C, we were able to use the T7 expression system to produce viable recombinant SHRV from a cloned cDNA copy of the viral genome. Expression of a positive-strand RNA copy of the 11,550-nucleotide SHRV genome along with the viral nucleocapsid (N), phosphoprotein (P), and polymerase (L) proteins resulted in the generation of infectious SHRV in cells preinfected with a vaccinia virus vector for T7 polymerase expression. Recombinant virus production was verified by detection of a unique restriction site engineered into the SHRV genome between the NV and L genes. Since we were now able to begin examining the function of the NV gene, we constructed a recombinant virus containing a nonsense mutation located 22 codons into the coding sequence of the NV protein. The NV knockout virus was produced at a concentration as high as that of wild-type virus in cultured fish cells, and the resulting virions appeared to be identical to the wild-type virions in electron micrographs. These initial studies suggest that NV has no critical function in SHRV replication in cultured fish cells.
Learning bilingual lexicons from comparable English and Spanish corpora

Research on extraction of word translation from comparable, non­parallel texts has not been very popular because it produces poor results when compared to those obtained from aligned parallel corpora. Whereas for parallel texts, word translation extraction can reach about 99%, the accuracy for comparable corpora has been around 72% up to now. The current approach, which relies not on a bilingual dictionary but on the previous extraction of bilingual information from parallel corpora, makes a significant improvement to about 79% of words translations identified correctly.