Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Missing Voices: Journeys of Pre-Service Teacher Candidates and Graduates of Color in a Predominantly White Teacher Education Program

Missing Voices: Journeys of Pre-Service Teacher Candidates and Graduates of Color in a Predominantly White Teacher Education Program Robbie R. Burnett This is a study of the journeys of pre-service teacher candidates and graduates of color who participated as minoritized persons in a predominantly White educator preparation program. In particular, this investigation explores the voices, experiences, and perceptions of minoritized individuals engaging in predominantly white teacher education program. Drawing across two focus groups and three in-depth individual interviews with eight participants, this study found that respondent’s journeys were influenced by dyconscious racism and centered in pedagogy of whiteness. Findings from the study also suggest the number of minioritized individuals in the predominantly White teacher education program had an impact on respondents experiences. Participants who were the only person of color or one of few participated as what Bristol (2014) described as “loners. ” Black male loners and individuals facing the critique of language by white faculty members faced greater challenges in navigating in and through the predominantly white teacher education program. Implications of this investigation address structural barriers a part of teacher candidates of color journey’s through a predominantly white educator preparation program and strategies toward reviewing and agitating teacher education practices, programs, policy and research.
Lifetime Distribution Identities

Five ways of representing the distribution of a continuous nonnegative random variable T are used extensively in the reliability literature: the probability density function, the reliability (survivor function), the hazard rate, the cumulative hazard function, and the mean residual life function. Properties, identities, and intuitive interpretations of the five representations are discussed. Several examples are given. Although there are other functions, such as normalized mean residual life for studying replacement policies, these five distribution representations have surfaced as vehicles for representing a lifetime distribution. The choice of which distribution representation to use depends on whether ¿ 1. The representation has a tractable form 2. Intuition is gained concerning the distribution by seeing a plot of the representation.
Comprehensive Primary Care for Children With Special Health Care Needs in Rural Areas

Objective. Most research on comprehensive primary care interventions for children with chronic health conditions has been conducted in large urban areas, where child health and related services are readily available. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the feasibility and impact of a medical home demonstration project in a more rural part of the country. Methods. Fifty-one parents of children with special health care needs participated in a pre-/posttreatment assessment of a program designed to enhance comprehensive and coordinated care. Participants were recruited from 3 primary care practices in a central Midwest state and remained in the program for ∼12 months. Results. Parents reported significant increases in satisfaction with care coordination and access to mental health services after the intervention. They also noted decreases in family needs, caregiver strain, parents’ missed work days, children’s school absences, and utilization of ambulatory services. Satisfaction with primary care declined slightly but remained in the “very good” range. Families of children with more complex conditions were more likely to report a decrease in needs after intervention, but other factors, such as geographic location or socioeconomic status, were not related to key outcome variables. Conclusions. Comprehensive care has a positive effect on children with chronic health conditions and their families, including those who live in more rural areas. Additional study is needed to learn more about rural service delivery strategies that promote implementation of this approach in general practice.
UVB‐induced gpt mutations in the skin of gpt delta transgenic mice

Ultraviolet light B (UVB)‐induced mutagenesis was studied in gpt delta transgenic mice, which contain the λEG10 shuttle vector as a transgene. The mice were exposed to UVB at single doses of 0.3, 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, and 2.0 kJ/m2. At 4 weeks after irradiation, the mutant frequencies (MF) of the gpt gene were determined in the epidermis and the dermis, and the gpt mutations in the epidermis were identified by DNA sequencing. The epidermis exhibited a higher sensitivity to UVB than the dermis at doses of 0.3 and 0.5 kJ/m2 UVB: the MF of the epidermis were more than nine times higher than those of the nonirradiated mice, whereas the MF of the dermis were only two to three times higher than the nonirradiated level at the doses used. The UVB‐induced mutation spectrum in the epidermis was dominated by G:C to A:T transitions at dipyrimidine sites, such as 5′‐TC‐3′, 5′‐CC‐3′, and 5′‐T/C‐CG‐3′. Tandem transitions such as CC to TT were also observed. Interestingly, a remarkable bias towards the template strand of the gpt gene was observed in the single transitions at 5′‐TC‐3′ and 5′‐CC‐3′ sites, but not at 5′‐T/C‐CG‐3′ site. In contrast, G:C to A:T transitions at CpG sites and deletions were observed in nonirradiated mice. Hot spots of transitions were observed at different sites in UVB‐irradiated and nonirradiated mice. These results indicate that gpt delta transgenic mouse is a suitable model for studying in vivo UVB‐induced mutations at the molecular level. Environ. Mol. Mutagen. 34:72–79, 1999 © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The Best Strategies for the Worst Crises

Hedging equity portfolios against the risk of large drawdowns is notoriously difficult and expensive. Holding, and continuously rolling, at-the-money put options on the S&P 500 is a very costly, if reliable, strategy to protect against market sell-offs. Holding ‘safe-haven’ US Treasury bonds, while providing a positive and predictable long-term yield, is generally an unreliable crisis-hedge strategy, since the post-2000 negative bond-equity correlation is a historical rarity. Long gold and long credit protection portfolios appear to sit between puts and bonds in terms of both cost and reliability. In contrast to these passive investments, we investigate two dynamic strategies that appear to have generated positive performance in both the long-run but also particularly during historical crises: futures time-series momentum and quality stock factors. Futures momentum has parallels with long option straddle strategies, allowing it to benefit during extended equity sell-offs. The quality stock strategy takes long positions in highest-quality and short positions in lowest-quality company stocks, benefitting from a ‘flight-to-quality’ effect during crises. These two dynamic strategies historically have uncorrelated return profiles, making them complementary crisis risk hedges. We examine both strategies and discuss how different variations may have performed in crises, as well as normal times, over the years 1985 to 2016.
Candidate HLA genes for prediction of co-trimoxazole-induced severe cutaneous reactions

Background Co-trimoxazole is a sulfonamide-containing antibiotic that is effective in the treatment of several infections and for prophylaxis of Pneumocystis jiroveci pneumonia. This drug has been reported as a common culprit drug for the Stevens–Johnson syndrome (SJS) and for toxic epidermal necrolysis (TEN). Human leukocyte antigens (HLAs) play a key role in the immunopathogenesis of severe cutaneous reactions induced by several drugs. This study investigated the association between the HLA class I and HLA-DRB1 polymorphisms and co-trimoxazole-induced SJS/TEN in a Thai population. Methods Forty-three patients with co-trimoxazole-induced SJS/TEN and 91 co-trimoxazole-tolerant patients were enrolled in the study. HLA class I and HLA-DRB1 were genotyped using the reverse sequence-specific oligonucleotide probe method. Results The frequencies of three alleles of HLA, namely HLA-B*15:02, HLA-C*06:02, and HLA-C*08:01, were significantly higher in the co-trimoxazole-induced SJS/TEN group compared with controls. The risks for co-trimoxazole-induced SJS/TEN in patients with the HLA-B*15:02, HLA-C*06:02, or HLA-C*08:01 allele were about 3–11-fold higher when compared with those who did not carry one of these alleles. Individuals who carried the HLA-B*15:02-C*08:01 haplotype had a 14-fold higher risk for co-trimoxazole-induced SJS/TEN. Conclusion Evidence of associations between co-trimoxazole-induced SJS/TEN and HLA alleles including HLA-B*15:02, HLA-C*06:02, and HLA-C*08:01 were found in the study population. These findings may suggest that apart from the HLA molecules, other molecules involved in the molecular pathogenesis of these severe cutaneous adverse drug reactions may play an important role in the susceptibility of individuals to SJS/TEN caused by co-trimoxazole.
Intercostal Nerve Implants Transduced with an Adenoviral Vector Encoding Neurotrophin-3 Promote Regrowth of Injured Rat Corticospinal Tract Fibers and Improve Hindlimb Function

Following injury to central nervous tissues, damaged neurons are unable to regenerate their axons spontaneously. Implantation of peripheral nerves into the CNS, however, does result in axonal regeneration into these transplants and is one of the most powerful strategies to promote CNS regeneration. In the present study implantation of peripheral nerve bridges following dorsal hemisection is combined with ex vivo gene transfer with adenoviral vectors encoding neurotrophin-3 (Ad-NT-3) to examine whether this would stimulate regeneration of one of the long descending tracts of the spinal cord, the corticospinal tract (CST), into and beyond the peripheral nerve implant. We chose to use an adenoviral vector encoding NT-3 because CST axons are sensitive to this neurotrophin and Schwann cells in peripheral nerve implants do not express this neurotrophin. At 16 weeks postimplantation of Ad-NT-3-transduced intercostal nerves, approximately three- to fourfold more of the anterogradely traced corticospinal tract fibers had regrown their axons through gray matter below the lesion site when compared to control animals. Regrowth of CST fibers occurred over more than 8 mm distal to the lesion site. No regenerating CST fibers were, however, observed into the transduced peripheral implant. Animals with a peripheral nerve transduced with Ad-NT-3 also exhibited improved function of the hindlimbs when compared to control animals treated with an adenoviral vector encoding LacZ. Thus, transient overexpression of NT-3 in peripheral nerve tissue bridges is apparently sufficient to stimulate regrowth of CST fibers and to promote recovery of hindlimb function, but does not result in regeneration of CST fibers into such transplants. Taken together, combining an established neurotransplantation approach with viral vector-gene transfer promotes the regrowth of injured CST fibers through gray matter and improves the recovery of hindlimb function.
Socioeconomic position and participation in baseline and follow-up visits: the Inter99 study

Background: The aim of this paper was to identify the extent of socioeconomic inequality in participation at baseline and follow-up visits. Design: The Inter99 study is a randomized intervention with the aim of investigating the effects of an individualized lifestyle consultation on ischaemic heart disease (IHD). The study comprised 61,301 persons of which 13,016 were assigned to the intervention group. The rest formed the control group. All those in the intervention group were invited to participate in health examinations, risk assessments, and lifestyle consultations. Participants at high risk of IHD were invited to follow-up visits after 1, 3, and 5 years. Methods: Data on five socioeconomic factors were retrieved from nationwide registers. For each socioeconomic factor we estimated the relative risks and relative index of inequality of participation at the baseline visit and among high-risk participants at follow-up visits. In addition, we conducted analyses of trends in socioeconomic inequality in participation across follow-up visits. Results: Participation rates were 53% at baseline and 61–65% at the three follow-up visits. There was strong socioeconomic inequality in participation at baseline, with increasing probability of participation found with increasing level of socioeconomic position. This was smaller at follow-up visits. Except for education and housing tenure, there was an increase in socioeconomic inequality in participation across follow-up visits. Conclusions: We found strong socioeconomic inequality in participation at baseline and follow-up visits. Effort should be made to increase participation in individualized lifestyle interventions among persons of low socioeconomic position. Otherwise, the consequence may be increased socioeconomic inequality in IHD.
Efficient key pathway mining: combining networks and OMICS data.

Systems biology has emerged over the last decade. Driven by the advances in sophisticated measurement technology the research community generated huge molecular biology data sets. These comprise rather static data on the interplay of biological entities, for instance protein-protein interaction network data, as well as quite dynamic data collected for studying the behavior of individual cells or tissues in accordance with changing environmental conditions, such as DNA microarrays or RNA sequencing. Here we bring the two different data types together in order to gain higher level knowledge. We introduce a significantly improved version of the KeyPathwayMiner software framework. Given a biological network modelled as a graph and a set of expression studies, KeyPathwayMiner efficiently finds and visualizes connected sub-networks where most components are expressed in most cases. It finds all maximal connected sub-networks where all nodes but k exceptions are expressed in all experimental studies but at most l exceptions. We demonstrate the power of the new approach by comparing it to similar approaches with gene expression data previously used to study Huntington's disease. In addition, we demonstrate KeyPathwayMiner's flexibility and applicability to non-array data by analyzing genome-scale DNA methylation profiles from colorectal tumor cancer patients. KeyPathwayMiner release 2 is available as a Cytoscape plugin and online at http://keypathwayminer.mpi-inf.mpg. de.
Nebulised colistin for ventilator-associated pneumonia prevention

We evaluated whether prophylactic nebulised colistin could reduce ventilator-associated pneumonia (VAP) rates in an intensive care unit (ICU) setting with prevalent multidrug-resistant (MDR) bacteria. We used a single-centre, two-arm, randomised, open-label, controlled trial in a 12-bed ICU in the University Hospital of Larissa, Greece. Patient inclusion criteria included mechanical ventilation of >48 h. The two arms consisted of prophylaxis with 500 000 U colistin (Col group) or normal saline (NS group), thrice daily, for the first 10 ICU days or until extubation. The primary outcome of the study was the 30-day VAP incidence. In total, 168 patients entered the study. VAP incidence was not different between Col and NS group patients (14 (16.7%) versus 25 (29.8%), respectively, p=0.07). Regarding the secondary outcomes, the intervention resulted in a lower VAP incidence density rate (11.4 versus 25.6, respectively, p<0.01), and less Gram-negative bacteria-VAP (p=0.03) and MDR-VAP (p=0.04). Among VAP patients (n=39), prophylaxis with inhaled colistin improved ICU survival (p=0.016). There was no evidence of increased resistance to colistin or multidrug resistance. Our findings suggest that nebulised colistin had no significant effect on VAP incidence. In a RCT, nebulised colistin prophylaxis did not decrease ventilator-associated pneumonia incidence http://ow.ly/R8FOE
Model of Cerebral Palsy in the Perinatal Rabbit

Perinatal brain injury results in one of the highest burdens of disease in view of the lifelong consequences and is of enormous cost to society. This makes it imperative to develop better animal models that mimic the human condition. Many neurodevelopmental deficits, such as cerebral palsy, are believed to be a result of prenatal hypoxia-ischemia in humans. Fetal global hypoxia-ischemia is most commonly a consequence of acute placental insufficiency. Our laboratory has modeled in utero sustained and repetitive hypoxia-ischemia in the pregnant rabbit to mimic the insults of abruptio placenta and labor, respectively. Sustained hypoxia-ischemia at 70% (22 days' gestation) and 79% (25 days' gestation) and repetitive hypoxia-ischemia at 90% gestation (28 days' gestation) caused stillbirths and multiple deficits in the postnatal survivors. The deficits included impairment in multiple tests of spontaneous locomotion, reflex motor activity, motor responses to olfactory stimuli, and the coordination of suck and swallow. Hypertonia was observed in the 22 and 25 days' gestation survivors but not in the 28 days' gestation group. Hypertonic survivors were artificially fed and found to have the motor deficits persist for at least 11 postnatal days. A spectrum of brain abnormalities is found on magnetic resonance imaging. This is the first animal model to mimic cerebral palsy. The findings also suggest a window of vulnerability during brain development when the injury results in hypertonia in newborn pups. (J Child Neurol 2005;20:972—979).
Learning automata with changing number of actions

A reinforcement scheme that is based on the linear reward-inaction updating algorithm is presented for a learning automaton whose action set changes from instant to instant. A learning automaton using the algorithm is shown to be both absolutely expedient and ε-optimal. The simulation results verify the ε-optimality of the algorithm. The results can be extended to the design of general nonlinear absolutely expedient learning algorithms.
Membrane topology of liver microsomal cytochrome P450 2B4 determined via monoclonal antibodies directed to the halt-transfer signal.

The membrane topology of cytochrome P450 2B4 from the endoplasmic reticulum has been studied with highly-purified liver microsomes in a site-directed immunochemical approach. Microsomes were prepared from phenobarbital-induced rabbits, and the resulting microsomal fraction was washed 6 additional times with 0.1 M pyrophosphate buffer to effect removal of significant quantities of adventitiously-bound protein. Monoclonal antibodies were prepared against residues 18-29 of P450 2B4 (Leu18-Leu-Phe-Arg-Gly-His-Pro-Lys-Ala-His-Gly-Arg29), essentially corresponding to the halt-transfer signal. This region was chosen due to its mutually-exclusive location in the two alternative membrane topology models currently tenable [Black, S.D. (1992) FASEB J.6, 680-685]. Model "A" contains a single transmembrane anchor peptide with the amino terminus projecting into the lumen of the endoplasmic reticulum, while model "B" exhibits a hairpin loop of the first approximately 46 residues inserted into the membrane with the amino terminus located on the cytosolic side of the lipid bilayer; the halt-transfer signal peptide would be located at the cytosolic surface of the membrane in model "A" or as a loop on the lumenal side of the membrane in model "B". Nine antibodies, denoted as MmAbA, MmAbC, MmAbD, MmAbF, MmAbH, MmAbI, MmAbK, MmAbL, and MmAbP, were produced, and all were identified as IgM/kappa subtypes. Western blotting demonstrated that the antibodies could readily recognize P450 2B4 in microsomes. ELISA assays showed that all of the antibodies exhibited strong binding to intact microsomes. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
A heuristic policy-based system call interposition in Dynamic Binary Translation

Dynamic Binary Translation (DBT) is a well known software technology that enables seamless cross-ISA execution. Unfortunately, many malicious programs that may lead to unauthorized access can run easily and unrestrictedly under the DBT system. Because these malicious programs must go through the system call interface to take malicious action, system call interposition has become a widely used technique for intrusion detection and prevention. In this paper, we present HPSCIBit, a solution that efficiently confines malicious applications, supports automatic policy generation and interactive policy generation, intrusion detection and prevention in the DBT system. The experimental result on SPEC2000 CINT benchmarks shows that HPSCIBit is an effective and low overhead solution to the cross-ISA security issues.
Persona Generation from Aggregated Social Media Data

We develop a methodology for persona generation using real time social media data for the distribution of products via online platforms. From a large social media account containing more than 30 million interactions from users from 181 countries engaging with more than 4,200 digital products produced by a global media corporation, we demonstrate that our methodology can first identify both distinct and impactful user segments and then create persona descriptions by automatically adding pertinent features, such as names, photos, and personal attributes. We validate our approach by implementing the methodology into an actual working system that leverages large scale online user data for generation of persona descriptions. We present the overall methodological approach, data analysis process, and system development. Findings show this method can develop believable personas representing real groups of people using real-time online user data. Results have implications for those distributing products via online platforms.
Uncertain Penalties and Compliance

We present the results of a series of laboratory economic experiments designed to study compliance behavior of polluting firms when information on the penalty is uncertain. The experiments consist of a regulatory environment in which university students face emission standards and an enforcement mechanism composed of audit probabilities and penalties (conditional on detection of a violation). We examine how uncertainty on the penalty affects the compliance decision and the extent of violation under two enforcement levels: one in which the regulator induces perfect compliance and another one in which it does not. Our results suggest that in the first case, uncertain penalties increase the extent of the violations of those firms with higher marginal benefits. When enforcement is not sufficient to induce compliance, the uncertain penalties do not have any statistically significant effect on compliance behavior. Overall, the results suggest that a cost-effective design of emission standards should consider including public and complete information on the penalties for violations.