Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Embryonic Stem Cell Conditioned Medium Supports In Vitro Maturation of Mouse Oocytes

Background: This study aimed to investigate the maturation and fertilization rates of immature mouse oocytes using Embryonic Stem Cell Conditioned Medium (ESCM). Methods: Germinal Vesicle (GV) stage oocytes were observed in 120 NMRI mice, aged 4–6 weeks. GV oocytes with or without cumulus cells were subjected to IVM in either ESCM, Embryonic Stem Cell Growth Medium (ESGM), or α-minimum essential medium (α-MEM). After recording the Metaphase II (MII) oocyte maturation rate, the oocytes were fertilized in vitro. The fertilization success rate was recorded after 24 hr. The embryos were maintained in potassium Simplex Optimization Medium (KSOM) for 96 hr and allowed to grow until the blastocyst stage. After recording developmental competence, they were transferred into the uteri of pseudopregnant mice and their birth rates were recorded. Results: No significant difference existed between the maturation rates in α-MEM (68.18%) and ESCM (64.67%; p>0.05), whereas this rate was significantly higher for both α-MEM and ESCM compared to ESGM (32.22%; p<0.05). A significant difference in IVF success rate existed for oocytes grown in α-MEM (69.44%), ESCM (61.53%), and ESGM (0%). A significantly higher developmental competence was observed at the blastocyst stage for oocytes grown in α-MEM (51.2%) compared to ESCM (35%; p<0.05). 17 days after embryo transfer into the uteri of pseudopregnant mice, there was a nonsignficant (p>0.05), similar birth rate between α-MEM and ESCM (47 vs. 40%). Conclusion: ESCM is an effective medium for preantral follicle growth, oocyte maturation, and subsequent embryo development.
Design of innovative integrated circuits in education

Teaching practical ASIC design, one faces a lot of problems, such as high manufacturing costs, long workflow, and heterogeneous previous knowledge of the students. On one hand, it is difficult to find topics that motivate students and, at the same time, are not too complex. On the other hand, the industry requires students who are trained not only theoretically, but also have practical experience in team work and project management. We regard these problems as a challenge and are going to create a concept of a project-oriented ASIC design course that focuses on teaching hard and soft skills. In this paper, we describe our concept for a student project work, which leaves to the students a lot of degrees of freedom in the design process and offers the possibility to realize an own idea as integrated circuit.
Mitochondrial DNA variation in indigenous sheep (Ovis aries) breeds of Nepal.

Nepal borders India in the south and China in the north. Four distinct indigenous domestic sheep breeds, i.e. Bhyanglung in the alpine region, Baruwal in the high hills, Kage in the mid hills and Lampuchhre in the low lands are distributed in the country. In this study, the mitochondrial DNA control region of 111 sheep from these four breeds was directly sequenced to determine their genetic variations and phylogenetic relationships. High mitochondrial DNA diversity among these breeds was observed and all haplotypes were classified into three haplogroups (A to C). Among the four breeds, three residing in middle to high hills had all three haplogroups while Lampuchhre sheep in low land only carried haplogroups A and B. This study revealed that a south-western route of gene flow in sheep might have come from China to India via Nepal. It can be concluded that these indigenous sheep breeds have isolated breeding paths. Lack of crossbreeding among Nepalese sheep breeds is unique, and it is important for the decision making on utilization and conservation of Nepalese sheep genetic resources.
Metabolism of 2-Amino-1-methyl-6-phenylimidazo[4,5-b]pyridine (PhIP) by Human CYP1B1 Genetic Variants

Human cytochrome P450 1B1 (CYP1B1) plays a critical role in the metabolic activation of a variety of procarcinogens, including 2-amino-1-methyl-6-phenylimidazo[4,5-b]pyridine (PhIP). The existence of human CYP1B1 missense genetic variants has been demonstrated, but their activities in metabolizing PhIP are unknown. In this study, we expressed 15 naturally occurring CYP1B1 variants (with either single or multiple amino acid substitutions) and determined their activity changes in metabolizing PhIP to its two major metabolites, 2-hydroxyamino-PhIP and 4′-hydroxy-PhIP. Although the PhIP-metabolizing activities of four variants (Ala119Ser, Pro379Leu, Ala443Gly, Arg48Gly/Leu432Val) were comparable with that of the expressed wild-type CYP1B1, five variants (Trp57Cys, Gly61Glu, Arg48Gly/Ala119Ser, Arg48Gly/Ala119Ser/Leu432Val, Arg48Gly/Ala119Ser/Leu432Val/Ala443Gly) exhibited more than 2-fold decrease in activity and a reduction in the catalytic efficiency (Vmax/Km) for both N- and 4-hydroxylation of PhIP. Six variants (Gly365Trp, Glu387Lys, Arg390His, Pro437Leu, Asn453Ser, Arg469Trp) showed little activity in PhIP metabolism, but the molecular mechanisms involved are apparently different. The microsomal CYP1B1 protein level was significantly decreased for the Trp365, Lys387, and His390 variants and was not detectable for the Ser453 variant. In contrast, there was no difference between the Trp469 variant and the wild-type in the microsomal CYP1B1 protein level and P450 content but the Trp469 variant totally lost its metabolic activity toward PhIP. The Leu437 variant also had a substantial amount of CYP1B1 protein in the microsomes, but there was a lack of detectable P450 peak and activity. Our results should be useful in selecting appropriate CYP1B1 variants as cancer susceptibility biomarkers for human population studies related to PhIP exposure.
A local Latent Semantic Analysis-based kernel for document similarities

The document similarity measure is a key point in textual data processing. It is the main responsible of the performance of a processing system. Since a decade, kernels are used as similarity functions within inner-product based algorithms such as the SVM for NLP problems and especially for text categorization. In this paper, we present a semantic space constructed from latent concepts. The concepts are extracted using the Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA). To take into account of the specificity of each document category, we use the local LSA to define the global semantic space. Furthermore, we propose a weighted semantic kernel for the global space. The experimental results of the kernel, on text categorization tasks, show that this kernel performs better than global LSA kernels and especially for small LSA dimensions.
Thinking postmodern and practising in the enlightenment: Managing uncertainty in the treatment of children and adolescents

In this paper, I explore how postmodern ideas about gender may impact on clinicians working with gender variant children and adolescents. The postmodern turn has built on the feminist rejection of the idea of ‘essential’ gender, to further interrogate accepted conceptions of sex and gender and the stability of all identity categories. Some queer theorists have taken a further step, viewing all gender as fictional and artificial and celebrating the subversive potential of transgender identities. However, those working clinically with trans adolescents may experience a troubling tension between, on the one hand, a view of sex and gender categorisations as undecidable and fragmented (as postmodern theory suggests), and, on the other hand, the apparent need of many for a coherent and settled sense of self. In particular, how do we justify supporting trans youngsters to move towards treatment involving irreversible physical change, while ascribing to a highly tentative and provisional account of how we come to identify and live as gendered? I conclude that the meaning of trans rests on no demonstrable foundational truths but is constantly being shaped and re-shaped in our social world. Clinicians must be accountable in this process; far from succumbing to a paralysing relativism, the task for clinicians is to be highly attuned to our young clients’ complex narratives and to question our complex investments in the positions we adopt.
Brain Activity Elicited by Positive and Negative Feedback in Preschool-Aged Children

To investigate the processing of positive vs. negative feedback in children aged 4–5 years, we devised a prize-guessing game that is analogous to gambling tasks used to measure feedback-related brain responses in adult studies. Unlike adult studies, the feedback-related negativity (FRN) elicited by positive feedback was as large as that elicited by negative feedback, suggesting that the neural system underlying the FRN may not process feedback valence in early childhood. In addition, positive feedback, compared with negative feedback, evoked a larger P1 over the occipital scalp area and a larger positive slow wave (PSW) over the right central-parietal scalp area. We believe that the PSW is related to emotional arousal and the intensive focus on positive feedback that is present in the preschool and early school years has adaptive significance for both cognitive and emotional development during this period.
Looking for Cultural Congruence in the Education of Gitano Children

This paper presents an analysis of narrative participation frameworks in bicultural situations between Gitano (Spanish Gypsy) children and non-Gypsy Spanish (payo) researchers in institutional and informal settings. Data were obtained in two contexts, a public school in a large urban city and a summer school in a mid-sized city. Narratives produced under these conditions are characterised by a high degree of co-participation between children that seems to be mediated by two elements: the multiple positions that children hold in relation to the narrative and narrated events, and peer relations outside the institutional contexts of the study. Our theoretical discussion builds on aspects of the 'home-school continuity-discontinuity framework' and develops two arguments. First, we argue that the linguistic practices of Gitano children can be problematic for payo teachers, as these practices build on social structures that teachers do not take into consideration. Second, we suggest what arrangements could be made to develop culturally responsive teaching strategies with Gypsy children.
Dialogism and Polyphony in Organizing Theorizing in Organization Studies: Action Guiding Anticipations and the Continuous Creation of Novelty

Bakhtin's ideas of polyphony and dialogism in language are explored as ways of organizing our thinking in organizational theorizing. Traditionally, language has been thought of as an already established, self-contained system of linguistic communication that sets out a set of rules or social conventions that people make use of in expressing themselves. In this account, what could be called the intellectualist, Cartesian account of language, people understand the linguistic representations contained or encoded in each other's sentences. However, another account—a relationally responsive, emotionalvolitional account articulated by Bakhtin (1981, 1984, 1986, 1993), along with a number of others, such as Wittgenstein, Merleau-Ponty, James, and Bergson—is of a much more dynamic, participatory, relational kind. In it, language and the world are intertwined in a dialogical or chiasmic relation with each other, in which we are shaped just as much, if not more, by the world, as the world by us. Indeed, in arguing for the importance of an utterance's capacity to call out a bodily response from us, spontaneously, Bakhtin is arguing that our intellectual knowledge is dependent for its achievement on a much more fundamental, spontaneously occurring, sensuous attunement to the events occurring in our surroundings—an understanding that occurs in the `movements' of our expressions, prior to our grasp of their finished forms. Thus, to switch to this very different view of language is also to switch to a very different view of the world in which we live: it is to see it as a living, dynamic, indivisible world of events that is still coming into being. It is also to switch to a form of complex thinking, very much as outlined by Chia and his colleagues (Chia 1996, 1998, 2002; Chia and King 2001; Tsoukas and Chia 2002), in which, instead of our thinking retrospectively about organizations (assuming we all already know what `an organization' is), we are reoriented toward thinking in duration, a very different way to organize our thinking in organizational studies.
Matrix Multiplication Algorithm Selection with Support Vector Machines

Abstract : We present a machine learning technique for the algorithm selection problem, specifically focusing on algorithms for dense matrix multiplication. Dense matrix multiplication is a core component of many high-performance computing and machine learning algorithms [1], but the performance of matrix multiplication algorithms can vary significantly based on input parameters and hardware architecture. We build performance models for multiple machines using support vector machines (SVMs) [2] and show that only a sparse exploration of the input space is sufficient to accurately predict the best choice of algorithm over a wide range of possible inputs. We find that by using this classifier-based approach to choose the best algorithm to use at runtime, we are able to achieve as much as a 26% increase in average performance over choosing a single algorithm a priori. This is within 1.5% of the performance possible with a perfect algorithm selector.
Exploring physical activity intention as a response to the Vancouver Olympics: an application and extension of the theory of planned behavior.

The theory of planned behavior (TPB) was used to understand motivational factors behind individuals' intention to become more active in response to the Vancouver 2010 Olympics. Gender, geographic proximity to the event, past behavior, and descriptive norm were explored as extensions of the TPB model. Just over 400 (n=405) students attending undergraduate classes in two universities at opposite ends of Canada completed a questionnaire prior to the start of the Games. Results from the hierarchical multiple linear regression analysis revealed that 50.7% of the variance in respondents' intention scores was explained by the variables in the proposed extended TPB model. Specifically, attitude toward the behavior, past behavior, and descriptive norms (i.e., people's perceptions about the degree to which other people were going to become more active as a result of the Olympic Winter Games) emerged as significant predictors of intention to become more active in response to the event. Implications for the design of interventions aimed at enhancing participation legacies of Olympic Games are discussed.
Preparing learners with partly incorrect intuitive prior knowledge for learning

Learners sometimes have incoherent and fragmented intuitive prior knowledge that is (partly) “incompatible” with the to-be-learned contents. Such knowledge in pieces can cause conceptual disorientation and cognitive overload while learning. We hypothesized that a pre-training intervention providing a generalized schema as a structuring framework for such knowledge in pieces would support (re)organizing-processes of prior knowledge and thus reduce unnecessary cognitive load during subsequent learning. Fifty-six student teachers participated in the experiment. A framework group underwent a pre-training intervention providing a generalized, categorical schema for categorizing primary learning strategies and related but different strategies as a cognitive framework for (re-)organizing their prior knowledge. Our control group received comparable factual information but no framework. Afterwards, all participants learned about primary learning strategies. The framework group claimed to possess higher levels of interest and self-efficacy, achieved higher learning outcomes, and learned more efficiently. Hence, providing a categorical framework can help overcome the barrier of incorrect prior knowledge in pieces.
Status in Experimentally Produced Groups

In a study of intra-and intergroup relations utilizing a combination of observational and laboratory methods, two small groups were experimentally produced as a consequence of interaction among individuals. This was done under controlled conditions embodying goals that had a common appeal and that called for interdependent activities for their attainment. It is demonstrated that, when group members face an unstructured task in which they are sufficiently motivated, their estimates of each other's performance are influenced by the status each occupies in the social hierarchy. This finding shows th feasibility of assessing the effects of group interaction by means of laboratory techniques.
A Postmodern Deconstruction of Total Quality Management (TQM)

Offers a postmodern, deconstructive analysis of total quality management (TQM) theory and practice. Problematizing TQM, uncovers unchallenged assumptions and implicit power relations cloaked by management science′s veil of objectivity and value‐neutrality. Tracing these assumptions and power relations to the life‐worlds of TQM organizations, regrettably discovers an obsequious and dehumanized subjectivity of TQM workers. These alienated TQM workers are inscribed in a seamless and inescapable network of totalitarian power relations epitomized by authoritarian admonitions of “the one right way”, “quality is Job 1”, and “quality or else”. As hegemonic TQM ideology insidiously permeates all aspects of social life, witnesses an unparalleled threat to the basic individual rights of a liberal democracy. Proclaiming the “death of TQM”, optimistically discusses preliminary suggestions for an emancipatory post‐TQM theory and practice.
Historical developments in sex offender treatment

Abstract This paper describes our view of the important developments in the history of sex offender treatment with a particular emphasis on aspects of this growth in the UK. We begin where, in our view, treatment of sex offenders was first implemented; that is, at the Institute of Psychiatry in London. After the move across the Atlantic, we note the beginnings of more comprehensive programmes in North America which morphed into the Relapse Prevention model. The implementation of comprehensive programmes in Her Majesty's Prisons led not only to further refinements but also offered the opportunity for researchers to explore all manner of possibilities. The more recent focus on strength-based approaches is examined, and we then spell out our hopes for the future in terms of treatment, assessment and theory.
Using Facebook for teaching and learning: a review of the literature

Considerable interests in exploring the affordance of Facebook for teaching and learning arise from researchers and educators. This paper reviews the existing empirical research studies on the use of Facebook for teaching and learning. Twenty one journal articles have been reviewed and most of the studies reported in the literature are descriptive and conducted in higher education settings. Results show that the use of Facebook makes a difference in the students’ affective outcomes. However, research on the potential of Facebook for improving student performance outcomes is just the beginning. The result suggests that more empirical research on effective use of Facebook for teaching and learning should be conducted in the future.
Proximity relationship between the active site of Escherichia coli RNA polymerase and rifampicin binding domain: a resonance energy-transfer study.

Escherichia coli RNA polymerase has two subsites, i and i + 1, for the binding of the first two substrates, and the first phosphodiester bond is formed between them during the initiation of transcription. Various studies have shown earlier that the inhibitor rifampicin has little effect, if any, on the formation of this phosphodiester bond. On an earlier occasion, we measured the distance of the i nucleotide from the rifampicin binding site on RNA polymerase using Forster's energy-transfer mechanism [Kumar & Chatterji (1990) Biochemistry 29,317]. In this paper, the 1-aminonaphthalene-5-sulfonic acid (AmNS) derivative of UTP in the presence of 10 mM MgCl2 was used as an energy donor, and its distance from rifampicin was estimated. The modified nucleotide (gamma-AmNS)-UTP binds to RNA polymerase with a Kd of 3 microM and has one binding site in the presence of Mg(II) ion. Fluorescence titration studies performed with or without an initiator indicated that (gamma-AmNS)-UTP exclusively binds to RNA polymerase at the (i + 1) site in the presence of Mg(II). Rifampicin was found to form a 1:1 complex with RNA polymerase bound to labeled UTP. Rifampicin and (gamma-AmNS)-UTP have a substantial spectral overlap with an energy-transfer efficiency close to 50%. Labeled UTP shows a decrease in its excited-state lifetime when bound to the enzyme; the transfer efficiency calculated from lifetime measurements was found to be lower than that estimated from steady-state spectral analysis. Time-resolved emission spectral analysis was carried out to differentiate between the free and bound UTP over the enzyme surface. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
FUNCTIONAL AND MORPHOLOGICAL CHANGES OF THYROID GLAND IN 14 – 18 YEARS OF AGED CHILDREN IN WESTERN POLAND AT THE TRANSITION PERIOD FROM IODINE DEFICIENCY TO IODINE SUFFICIENCY

Aim. The aim of the study was to assess thyroid morphological and functional changes in school-aged children after the introduction of obligatory iodine prophylaxis with iodinated salt in 1997. Methods. The examined group consisted of 706 children divided into two age groups: 14–16 year-olds (first group) and 16–18 year-olds (second group). Iodine nutrition was assessed by means of urine iodine excretion. In both groups serum TSH, free T3, free T4 levels and aTPO titer were measured. Thyroid gland morphology was evaluated in ultrasound examination. Results. Iodine supplementation increased urine iodine concentration – the principal marker of iodine nutrition. The incidence of goiter was higher in older group, in which iodine prophylaxis was introduced later. Compared to the studies conducted before obligatory iodine supplementation the occurrence of elevated aTPO was more frequent. Conclusions. The prevalence of goiter was high, especially in older children, which suggests, that the later the iodine supplementation is introduced, the higher is the risk of thyroid gland enlargement. Elevated aTPO and autoimmune diseases result from the obligatory prophylaxis introduced in 1997 and are typical for the first years of iodine supplementation.
Option-Implied Risk-Neutral Distributions and Risk Aversion

Analysts are accustomed to using prices for the information they contain. A stock price, for example, can be thought of as an expected value of future cash flows. Each futures price and option price tells the analyst a bit more about the probability distribution under which those expectations should be accepted. In this Research Foundation monograph, the author describes what can and cannot be learned from option prices for applications in financial analysis and provides examples for each step so that the reader can actually apply the concepts.