Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Preliminary validation study of the Sydney Post-Traumatic Amnesia Scale (SYPTAS) in children with traumatic brain injury aged 4 to 7 years

ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to assess the validity (developmental, concurrent, and predictive) of the Sydney Post-Traumatic Amnesia Scale (SYPTAS) for assessment of post-traumatic amnesia (PTA) in 4 to 7 year old children with traumatic brain injury (TBI). The design of this study is a retrospective cohort study. The SYPTAS was administered to 35 children (26 boys) aged 4.0 to 7.8 years who were consecutively admitted to a children’s hospital with mild (n = 26), moderate (n = 3), or severe (n = 7) TBI. Concurrent validity of the SYPTAS was assessed against the Glasgow Coma Scale Scores (GCS). Predictive validity of the SYPTAS for functional outcomes was evaluated against the King’s Outcome Scale for Childhood Head Injury (KOSCHI) at discharge and outpatient follow-ups. The length of PTA, measured by the SYPTAS, was invariant of children’s chronological age, confirming the scale’s developmental validity. Longer PTA was associated with lower GCS, endorsing concurrent validity of PTA duration measured by the SYPTAS, as a clinical indicator of TBI severity. PTA duration measured by the SYPTAS was a significant predictor of functional outcomes on the KOSCHI at discharge and follow-ups. This study provides evidence that the SYPTAS has good developmental, concurrent and predictive validity for assessment of PTA in children aged 4 to 7 years. PTA duration assessed by the SYPTAS is a clinical indicator of TBI severity and can aid rehabilitation planning post TBI.
Quantitative analyses of myelofibrosis by determining hydroxyproline.

BACKGROUND Myeloproliferative neoplasms (MPNs) are blood malignancies manifested in increased production of red blood cells, white blood cells, and/or platelets. Myelofibrosis is a subtype of MPNs characterized by the formation of scar-like tissues in the bone marrow due to abnormal hematopoiesis. It is considered a disease of both hematopoietic stem cells and stem cell niches. Patients with myelofibrosis have very poor prognosis, and there is no effective treatment so far. Myelofibrosis has routinely been detected by using histochemical staining methods which produce qualitative rather than quantitative results. In this study, we developed a quantitative assay of bone marrow myelofibrosis in JAK2V617F transgenic mice by determining hydroxyproline. METHODS The JAK2V617F transgenic mice's tissue was collected to detect the bone marrow myelofibrosis. Statistical analyses were performed using the GraphPad Prism program. Differences of samples between two groups were accessed using t tests. P values less than 0.05 (2-tailed) were considered significantly different. RESULTS We developed a quantitative method for detecting myelofibrosis by analyzing the content of hydroxyproline, a modified amino acid largely restricted to collagen which forms the fibrotic structure in bone marrow tissues. Our study also demonstrated age-dependent development of bone marrow myelofibrosis in JAK2V617F transgenic mice. CONCLUSIONS In the present study, we have developed a new method for detecting bone marrow myelofibrosis by analyzing hydroxyproline contents. The method is highly sensitive and accurate. It provides more accurate, representative, and quantitative information than histochemical analyses. We believe that this method should find wide applications for analyzing the progression of myelofibrosis and efficacy of drug treatment.
Distributed local resolution of Boolean equation systems

Boolean equation systems (BESs) allow to represent various problems encountered in the area of propositional logic programming and verification of concurrent systems. Several sequential algorithms for global and local BES resolution have been proposed so far, mainly in the field of verification; however, these algorithms do not scale up satisfactorily as the size of BESs increases. In this paper, we propose a distributed algorithm, called DSOLVE, which performs the local resolution of a BES using a set of machines connected by a network. Our experiments for solving large BESs using clusters of PCs show linear speedups and a scalable behaviour of DSOLVE w.r. t. its sequential counterpart.
Effect of topical insulin application on wound neutrophil function.

UNLABELLED This study observed the quantity and functions of wound neu- trophils after topical insulin treatment and investigated the effect of insulin on the wound inflammatory response, as well as the mechanism of insulin-induced wound healing. METHODS Full-thickness excisional wounds were made on the dorsal symmetrical site of C57BL/6J mice. The wounds were treated with either 0.03U insulin/20 μL saline or 20 μL saline. The healing times and healing rates of the wounds were recorded. The wounds and adjacent tissues were collected during the first 3 consecutive days after the injury. Quantification of myeloid dif- ferentiation antigen Gr-1, myeloperoxidase (MPO), malondialdehyde (MDA), and macrophage inflammatory protein-2 (MIP-2) were mea- sured by Western blotting, biochemical analysis, and real-time poly- merase chain reaction (PCR), respectively. RESULTS The healing time of insulin-treated wounds was significantly decreased compared with the saline-treated wounds. The wound closure rates at days 5 and 7 after injury were significantly higher with insulin treatment than with saline treatment. Additionally, wound neutrophil infiltration was suppressed by insulin treatment within the first 2 days after injury. Real-time PCR revealed insulin treatment significantly inhibited MIP-2 expression within 2 days after injury (P P <0.05), whereas MIP-2 expression in both groups decreased to a similar level at 3 days after injury. There was no statistical difference in MPO or MDA content between the insulin treatment and control group. CONCLUSION Topical insulin application decreased neutrophil infiltration by inhibiting MIP-2 expression and advanced neutrophil resolution. It has been reported that insulin pro- motes neutrophil functions; therefore, the present results, along with previous findings, suggest there is a delicate regulation of insulin on wound inflammatory response during the healing process.
Defective DNA mismatch repair determines a characteristic transcriptional profile in proximal colon cancers.

BACKGROUND & AIMS Colon cancers with defective DNA mismatch repair (MMR) have peculiar molecular, pathologic, and clinical features, including high-level microsatellite instability, conspicuous lymphocytic infiltration, preferential location in the proximal colon, and better prognosis. Our aim was to characterize the transcriptional profile of this colon cancer subset. METHODS An oligonucleotide microarray containing 12,625 probes was used to evaluate gene expression in 25 proximal colon cancers, 10 samples of normal colon mucosa, and 14 colon cancer cell lines. Transcriptional profiles of MMR-deficient cancers and cell lines were compared with those of their MMR-proficient counterparts. RESULTS Unsupervised analysis of microarray data showed that MMR status exerts a predominant influence on the gene expression profile of proximal colon cancers. Hierarchical clustering divided the cancers into 2 groups corresponding almost perfectly with their MMR status. Supervised analysis identified numerous gene expression changes that represent a genetic signature of MMR-deficient colon cancers. Changes in genes involved in apoptosis and the immune response were consistent with the better prognosis of MMR-deficient cancers. In MMR-deficient cancers and cell lines, 4-1BBL, a crucial gene in the anti-tumor immune response, was, respectively, 2.4 and 6.0 times more expressed than in their MMR-proficient counterparts. This difference was confirmed by quantitative reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction and flow cytometric assessment of 4-1BBL protein expression in colon cancer cell lines. Our analysis also showed novel possible gene targets of microsatellite instability. CONCLUSIONS MMR inactivation produces distinct changes in the cellular messenger RNA pool, which is consistent with a unique tumorigenesis pathway.
Understanding Why People with Type 1 Diabetes Do Not Attend for Specialist Advice: A Qualitative Analysis of the Views of People with Insulin-dependent Diabetes Who Do Not Attend Diabetes Clinic

Attendance at diabetes clinic is associated with improved medical outcome, however, significant numbers of people with type 1 diabetes choose not to attend. In order to understand the reasons underlying this decision, qualitative interviews were carried out with 12 long-term non-attenders. Three distinct groups emerged differing in terms of their cognitive and emotional responses to diabetes and their coping strategies: (1) the ‘High fear’ group; (2) the ‘Patient as expert’ group; and (3) the ‘Low motivation’ group. These differences should be recognized and suitable approaches developed to ensure that all people with diabetes are able to accept appropriate specialist support.
Crisis and the Content of Managerial Communications: A Study of the Focus of Attention of Top Managers in Surviving and Failing Firms.

The authors would like to thank Edward Bowman, Rohit Deshpande, Jane Dutton, Leonard Greenhalgh, Robert Gunther, Donald Hambrick, Murray Low, Marshall Meyer, Gerald Salancik, Debra Shapiro, Robert Sutton, James P. Walsh, and Richard Woodman for their insightful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this paper. The authors would also like to thank Donald Hambrick for his substantial help as a judge in the matched-pair selection process. We also thank Julia Andrew, Sunil Gupta, Tom Middleton, Carmen Ortiz, Brooke Stallworth, and Mary Beth Stone for their consistently thorough content coding of the letters. We also thank the Columbia University Strategy Research Center, the Business Foundation of North Carolina, Inc., and Amos Tuck School, Dartmouth College, for their support of this study. A special debt of gratitude is owed to Patricia Luciani of Mobley-Luciani Associates in New York City for her funding of the content analysis. This project would have been impossible without her patience, constant moral support, and enthusiasm for our two-year data collection effort. This exploratory study of 57 bankrupt firms and 57 matched survivors compared senior managers' letters to shareholders during demand-decline crises to see which aspects of the environment they pay attention to. Through content analysis of the letters from the five years preceding the bankruptcy of the failed firm in each pair, we measured the focus of top managers on their external (input and output) and internal environments. Results indicate that under normal circumstances managers of surviving firms pay equal attention to the internal and external environment and more attention to the output environment than to the input environment. When a crisis of demand decline occurs, they pay more attention to the critical aspects of their external environment. In contrast, managers of failing firms deny or ignore output factors during crisis and pay more attention to the input and internal environments. The results are consistent with the normative strategy literature's hypothesis that successful firms attend to critical success factors related to the output environment (e.g., customer needs and demand growth) and the decline literature's hypothesis that failing firms deny crises and avoid focusing on long-term problems because of short-run resource constraints and threat-rigidity response. These results are not predicted by previous studies of self-serving attributions in letters to shareholders. '
Design of a high-throughput IDPC decoder for DVB-S2 using local memory banks

This paper proposes a novel LDPC (Low-Density Parity Check) decoder architecture to increase throughput for DVB-S2, a second generation standard of ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) for European satellite digital video broadcasting system, which is employed in European digital TVs. The proposed architecture clusters nodes of a Tanner graph into node groups utilizing the properties of IRA (Irregular Repeat-Accumulate) LDPC codes. Functional modules, which perform calculations for node groups, read and store messages at predetermined local memory banks. The memory banks are designed to avoid memory conflicts by differentiating read and store timings. Hence, throughput of the proposed architecture can be increased. Experimental results show that the throughput of the proposed architecture is increased by 104% ~ 479%, when compared to previous architectures.
Authentic Inquiry With Data: Critical Barriers to Classroom Implementation

We explore challenges in achieving authentic inquiry with data in classrooms from the fifth through the eighth grade. We present the Tabletop, a prototype computer-based data analysis tool based on animated visual representations, and reports on clinical and classroom trials of this tool. Vignettes from clinical sessions illustrate students' understanding of the software interface as well as interacting subtleties of data creation and data analysis. One year of classroom trials is summarized in terms of three important categories of conceptual and cultural prerequisites for successful implementation: (a) reasoning about the aggregate, (b) the objectification of knowledge, and (c) the pragmatic structure of classroom projects.
High cleavage activity and stability of hammerhead ribozymes with a uniform 2'-amino pyrimidine modification.

The uniform 2'-pyrimidine modifications have been found to inhibit ribozyme cleavage activity. However, in the present study we show that a good cleavage activity can be achieved for the 2'-amino modified ribozymes when their sequences were designed to contain only a few pyrimidines in helix I. In particular, ribozymes with no pyrimidines in helix I cleaved their target RNAs with almost the same efficacy as their unmodified versions. Interestingly, selective 2'-amino modification at positions 2.1 and 2.2 reduced the ribozyme cleavage activity by 8-fold, suggesting that the 2'-amino groups at these two positions may interfere with the formation of the ribozyme active conformation. In addition, uniformly modified ribozymes showed a remarkable stability in serum. Taken together these results should facilitate the design of stable ribozymes with sustained cleavage activity.
Some experimental results on quartz-crystal resonators at temperature below 4.2 K

Properties of quartz-crystal resonators at temperature below 4.2K have been measured for two different types of crystals: 5-MHz resonators of the BVA2 design (electrodeless design) and the conventional 5th overtone, AT-cut design. The Q for both types is increased by about one order of magnitude at 4.2K. No significant increase in Q below 4.2K was obtained in either type of resonators. The temperature coefficient near 2K is greatly reduced compared with the value at 4.2K for one sample of each type. The BVA2 sample shows the temperature coefficient of 3×10-10/K at 2K. The frequency variation versus dissipated power in crystals is very steep above 10-7 W below 4.2K.
Situation Awareness: Proceed with Caution

Situation awareness (SA) is a relatively new concept that has captured the imagination of the human factors community. This new concept is considered in the light of Benton J. Underwood's discussion about psychological concepts. In particular the distinction between SA as a phenomenon description (Level 2 concept) and SA as a causal agent (Level 3 concept) is discussed. The argument that SA is valuable as a phenomenon description draws attention to the intimate interactions between human and environment in determining meaning (or what matters) and reflects an increased appreciation for the intimate coupling between processing stages (e.g., perception, decision, and action) within closed-loop systems. However, I caution against considering SA as a causal agent. When SA is considered to be an object within the cognitive agent, there is a danger of circular reasoning in which SA is presented as the cause of itself. As a causal explanation, SA is a simple, easy-to-understand wrong answer that, in the end, will be an obstacle to research. As a phenomenon description, SA invites further research to discover causal relationships between the design of human-machine systems and the resulting performance.
Second-order conditions for optimal control problems with mixed control-state constraints and control appearing linearly

We study optimal control problems with a two-sided mixed control-state constraint and assume that the control variable appears linearly in both the system dynamics and constraints. By defining the control-state constraint as a new control variable, the optimal control problem is transformed into an optimal control problem with simple bounds on the new control variable. In view of Pontryagin's Minimum Principle, optimal controls of the transformed problem are concatenations of bang-bang or singular arcs. Second-order sufficient conditions (SSC) for such bang-singular controls have recently been given in the literature. We summarize results on SSC and illustrate their numerical verification on the optimal control of the Rayleigh equation for various bounds in a two-sided control-state constraint.
From ‘Normal Incidents’ to Political Crises: Understanding the Selective Politicization of Policy Failures 1

Abstract This article aims to enhance understanding of selective politicization processes in policy failures and examine the attempts of policy-makers to use framing strategies to allocate blame. The policy response to alleged submarine intrusions in Sweden and Dutch military involvement in the fall of Srebrenica are the two case-studies used in this article. These cases will be analysed using three perspectives derived from the literature on framing: depicting events as violations of core public values; depicting events as operational incidents or as symptoms of endemic problems; allocating accountability and blame for the occurrence and/or ‘mismanagement’ of crisis. Finally, we present a conceptual framework of the different shapes that political blaming can take when certain framing strategies are adopted.
Rule-governed behavior and pedophilia

The experimental analysis of verbal and rule-governed behavior is one area that potentially has much relevance to applied clinical settings, including the assessment and treatment of pedophilia. Much of the interaction between therapists and clients takes place in a verbal context. Since the publication of Skinner'sVerbal Behavior in 1957, however, not much systematic clinical research concerning verbal behavior has been integrated into clinical practice, partly evidenced in the past several years by the many cognitive theories proclaiming to some extent that “mental way stations” explain the causes of behavior. This paper analyzes the fundamental aspects of rule-governed behavior, summarizes current research in this area, and explores some of the research methods and issues involved with rule-governed behavior. In addition, the potential of this area of behavioral psychology to provide important alternatives to explanations offered by cognitive psychology is also explored. Implications for the scientific use of rule-governed behavior in conducting psychological assessments with pedophiles is also examined.
Language activation and lexical processing by Polish learners of English and Chinese – the role of learning experience in TLA

Abstract Many offline studies on third language acquisition suggest strong connections between speakers’ L3 and L2 rather than between their L3 and L1, especially if the foreign languages are typologically related (Cenoz, Hufeisen, & Jessner, 2001; Singleton, 2001). However, a recent online study investigating trilingual processing did not provide evidence for such connections (Kujałowicz, 2007). This paper reports the results of two online experiments that investigated the influence of learning experience on the links between lexical representations in the trilingual mental lexicon in Polish learners of English and Chinese. The first experiment employed a picture–word interference paradigm: its goal was to determine the activation of languages in the minds of trilingual speakers who learn the L3 through the medium of their L2. The aim of the second study was to investigate the process of translation of high-frequency concrete nouns from the speakers’ L3 into their L2 and L1. The results from Experiment 1 suggest that learning experience exerts a significant influence on the connections between lexical representations of the languages that are extensively and concurrently used in acquisition. In Experiment 2 translation from L3 was faster into L1 than into L2, which provides further evidence for concept mediation in translation performed by trilinguals.
Good politics, bad politics: the experience of AIDS.

Historically many of the improvements in public health have their roots in a synergistic combination of political leadership and science. The potency of this synergy between politics and science is illustrated by many of the public health advances made in the late 19th and 20th centuries. Improvements in European childrens health for example occurred when politicians responded to calls from their electorates to end child labor. Similarly declines in tuberculosis started before treatment was even available because of social activism that resulted in improved living conditions. Incidences of tobacco-related illnesses were finally reduced when doctors and the antismoking lobby prevailed upon governments to boost taxes and institute smoking bans. Progress in the response against AIDS is no exception. In fact the response to AIDS is probably the most striking contemporary example of how intertwined politics policy and public health are. Why has the global response to AIDS been so highly politicized? One key reason is the prejudice and discomfort around the ways HIV is transmitted. Another is that the epidemic is fueled by injustices. AIDS both exposes and exacerbates multiple fault lines of social and economic inequality and injustice which in themselves are highly political. An expanding AIDS epidemic reveals a political systems weak points whether at the national or the community level. (excerpt)
Multidrug resistance and integron carriage in clinical isolates of Pseudomonas aeruginosa in Tehran, Iran.

BACKGROUND/AIM Pseudomonas aeruginosa is the cause of 10% of hospital-acquired infections. The organisms are often multidrug- resistant, mediated mostly by antibiotic-resistant integrons. The aim of this research was to study integron carriage and its association with multidrug resistance in burn and nonburn clinical isolates of P. aeruginosa. MATERIALS AND METHODS A total of 112 P. aeruginosa clinical isolates were collected from the Motahari and Shohadaye Tajrish hospitals in Tehran between July and December 2011. Antibiotic susceptibility to 13 antibiotics was determined by disk diffusion. Detection of integron classes 1 and 2 and amplifications of internal variable regions (IVRs) of class 1 integrons were carried out by PCR and specific primers. RESULTS Among the 112 isolates, 77 were from burn patients and 35 were nonburn isolates. Multidrug resistance and class 1 integron carriage were both significantly higher in the burn isolates compared to the nonburn strains (97.4% vs. 22.8% and 82.3% vs. 17.7%, respectively). Class 2 integron (2.7%) was only present in the burn isolates. Amplification of IVRs of class 1 integrons revealed 3 different fragment arrays. CONCLUSION The significant association between multidrug resistance and integron carriage among P. aeruginosa burn isolates suggests a dissemination of resistance determinants by horizontal gene transfer.