Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Community diversity and invasion resistance: An experimental test in a grassland ecosystem and a review of comparable studies

The relationship between community diversity and invasion resistance in a grassland was examined using experimental plant assemblages that varied in species richness and composition. The assemblages were weeded for three seasons to remove unsown species and we used the number of weeded seedlings, their total biomass and the number of species removed as indicators of community resistance and susceptibility to invasion. In general, we found a positive relationship between invasion resistance and increasing community diversity. Similar patterns of establishment were observed at the end of the fourth field season after several months without weeding. Increased invasion resistance with higher diversity appears to come through reduced levels of several above- and belowground resources, although these did not fully explain the effects of species richness in the study’s analyses. Experimental increases and reductions of litter biomass within the study’s experimental plant assemblages did not modify these patterns significantly. A review of comparable studies of invasion across directly manipulated diversity gradients revealed similar patterns. Positive effects of species diversity on invasion resistance were found in experimental manipulations of plant diversity conducted in the field and in the glasshouse, from studies with aquatic microcosms and in a marine system. Although some exceptions to this pattern were found in both terrestrial plant systems and aquatic microcosms, it was concluded that in biodiversity manipulation experiments more diverse communities are generally more resistant to invasion.
Attitudes of Law Students at Al-Istiqlal University-Jericho towards Learning Legal Terminology Course in English

هدفت هذه الدراسة إلى إلقاء الضوء على اتجاهات طلبة القانون في جامعة الاستقلال نحو تعلم مادة مصطلحات قانونية باللغة الانجليزية. قام الباحث باستطلاع آراء 105 ( 61 ذكور،44إناث) من الطلبة باستخدام استبانة تم تصميمها وفقا لمقياس 5 –point Likert . وقد استخدم معامل Cronbach Alpha لقياس درجة صدق وثبات الاستبانة. كذلك تم إجراء تحليل وصفي لقياس اتجاهات الفئة المستهدفة (النسب المئوية، المتوسط الحسابي والانحراف المعياري). هذا وقد تم الأخذ بعين الاعتبار الاختلافات بين الجنسين أيضا عن طريق اختبار -Test Tالمستقل. خلص البحث إلى أن لدى طلبة القانون في جامعة الاستقلال اتجاهات ايجابية نحو تعلم مادة مصطلحات قانونية بلغة أجنبية بشكل عام ، ولا توجد فروق ذات دلالة إحصائية بين الجنسين.
Immunohistochemical alterations of fibronectin during the formation and proliferative repair of experimental cerebral aneurysms in rats.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE To determine whether distributional changes of fibronectin, a factor promoting wound healing, occur during the formation and repair of cerebral saccular aneurysms, we performed immunohistochemical analyses in experimental aneurysms. METHODS Cerebral aneurysms were induced in rats by both the ligation of the unilateral common carotid artery and induced hypertension. Intimal proliferation in aneurysmal walls was induced by the ligation of the preserved common carotid artery 3 months after the first operation. The distribution of fibronectin was examined by immunohistochemistry in anterior cerebral artery-olfactory artery bifurcations under the following three conditions: normal bifurcations in control rats, early aneurysmal lesions during the aneurysm induction, and aneurysmal lesions with intimal proliferation. Furthermore, the immunohistochemical distributions of type I and IV collagens were examined to evaluate the specificity of fibronectin immunoreactivity. RESULTS In the normal bifurcations, fibronectin was positive in the subintimal space, the surrounding area of the medial smooth muscle cells, and the adventitial fibrous tissue. In early aneurysmal lesions, linear staining of fibronectin and type I and IV collagens in the subendothelial space disappeared with the loss of the internal elastic lamina. In the intimal proliferation of early aneurysmal lesions, fibronectin was strongly immunostained in the subendothelial space and diffusely immunostained in the widened extracellular space surrounding proliferated cells. In contrast, the stainings of type I and IV collagens were sparse or negative. CONCLUSIONS Although the present findings regarding dynamic changes of fibronectin distribution do not prove any causality in the process of aneurysm formation and repair, these immunohistochemical changes may constitute the crucial sequela of intimal endothelial damage and its subsequent recovery in cerebral aneurysms.
Patient satisfaction with large-scale out-of-hours primary health care in The Netherlands: development of a postal questionnaire.

BACKGROUND Since the turn of the millennium, out-of-hours primary health care in The Netherlands has faced a substantial change from small locum groups towards large GP cooperatives. Improving the quality of care requires evaluation of patient satisfaction. OBJECTIVE To develop a reliable postal questionnaire for wide-scale use by patients contacting their out-of-hours GP cooperative and to present the results of a national survey. METHODS Literature review and interviews with both patients and health carers were carried out to identify issues of potential relevance, followed by two postal pilot studies and additional interviews to remove or rephrase items. Finally, postal questionnaires were sent to 14,400 people who contacted one of 24 GP cooperatives in The Netherlands. RESULTS Overall response was 52.2% for all types of contact. Three scales were identified prior to the field phase and confirmed by principal components analysis: telephone nurse, doctor and organization. Reliability was high, with Cronbach's alphas and intraclass correlation coefficients exceeding 0.70 for all scales. Only items in the organization scale showed clear differences among the participating cooperatives. Respondents receiving telephone advice showed lower levels of satisfaction than respondents with other types of contact (P < 0.001); centre consultation scored lower than home visit (P < 0.030 or less for all differences). CONCLUSION A reliable measure of patient satisfaction has been developed that can also be used for the comparison of GP cooperatives on an organizational level. Overall satisfaction was high, showing highest levels for home visit and lowest levels for telephone advice.
An improvement of opposition-based differential evolution with archive solutions

Differential evolution (DE) is a simple yet efficient evolutionary algorithm. Because of its simplicity, effectiveness and robustness, DE has gradually become more popular and applied in various fields. In addition, a lot of works have been done to improve the search ability of DE. Among them, opposition-based DE (ODE), which is incorporated opposition-based learning (OBL), has shown better performance compared to classical DE. The main idea behind OBL is the simultaneous consideration of an estimate and its corresponding opposite estimate in order to achieve a better approximation for the current candidate solution. In this paper, we improve OBL by using archive solutions and propose an improved version of the ODE. Experimental verifications are conducted on well-known benchmark functions and the performance of the proposed method is evaluated by comparing with classical DE and generalized ODE.
A model for keyword Profile Creation using extracted keywords and terminological ontology

The main purpose of having a user profile is to provide personalized services for users based on their interests, knowledge, task, behavior, and demographic information. In this paper, we propose an Ontology-based Research Profile Creation (ObRPC) model to create keyword profiles of users to assist in the task of expert finding. The model proposes to integrate Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), Domain Dictionary and Semantic matching with a terminological ontology for the creation of the user profiles.
Prevalence and moderators of terror-related post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms in Israeli citizens.

BACKGROUND A major psychological sequel of terrorist attacks is post-traumatic stress disorder. The relation between certain psychological factors specific to terrorist attacks (e.g., perceived control attributed to oneself/to the military, anticipated duration of terrorism) and PTSD symptoms have not been examined. OBJECTIVE To examine the prevalence, correlates and moderators of PTSD-like symptoms following terrorist attacks in Israel. METHODS Soon after a long wave of terrorist attacks in Israel in 2002, a convenience sample of 149 Israelis from five cities was assessed for terrorist attack exposure, perceived control, control attributed to the govemment/military, anticipated duration of the terrorism wave (predictability), and frequency of listening to the news. PTSD-like symptoms were assessed with a brief self-report scale. RESULTS We found that 15.4% of the sample was directly exposed to a terrorist attack and 36.5% knew someone dose who had been exposed to an attack. "Clinically significant" PTSD-like symptoms were reported by 10.1% of the sample. Correlates of PTSD-like symptoms were: perceived control in men, government control, and education in women (all inversely correlated to PTSD symptoms), and news-listening frequency in women (positively correlated to PTSD symptoms). PTSD-like symptoms were attenuated by the ability to predict the duration of the terrorism wave only in citizens exposed to an attack, and by perceived government control only among citizens listening infrequently to the news. CONCLUSIONS This study revealed that approximately 10% of Israelis in our sample had relatively frequent PTSD-like symptoms. Correlates of PTSD-like symptoms differed between men and women, and moderator effects were found. These findings reveal additional moderators that may have implications for treating PTSD following terrorist attacks.
Phase Forward Cooperative Communications with Antenna Selection and Continuous Phase Modulation

In this paper we proposed two extensions to the recently proposed Phase Forward (PF) relaying strategy for cooperative communication [1]. One extension is the replacement of CPFSK modulation by the more practical Gaussian filtered minimum shift keying (GMSK) modulation scheme. The second extension is the incorporation of antenna selection at the relay. Semi-analytical expressions for the bit error probabilities (BEP) of the two extension systems are derived in the paper. It is found that PF-GMSK can attain similar BEP performance as PF-CPFSK, despite the fact that it is a more bandwidth efficient modulation. Furthermore, it is better than GMSK with decode-and-forward (DF). It is also found that PF, with antenna selection at the relay, can actually outperform amplify-and-forward (AF) without antenna selection in a time-selective fading environment. It also leads to a lower outage probability when compared to time-diversity in an operating environment with shadowing.
Identification of lily pollen 14-3-3 isoforms and their subcellular and time-dependent expression profile

Abstract 14-3-3 proteins are major regulators in plant development and physiology including primary metabolism and signal transduction pathways, typically via a phosphorylation-dependent interaction with a target protein. Four full-length 14-3-3 isoforms were identified in pollen grains of Lilium longiflorum by screening of a cDNA library and RACE (rapid amplification of cDNA ends)-PCR. Mass spectrometry analysis of partially purified 14-3-3s confirmed the presence of the four isoforms but also indicated the presence of additional, less abundant 14-3-3 isoforms in lily pollen. Separation of partially purified 14-3-3 proteins by two-dimensional gel electrophoresis resulted in nine spots that mainly contained the four major 14-3-3 isoforms. In a first step to examine putative physiological roles of specific 14-3-3 isoforms, their subcellular expression profile during pollen germination and tube growth was monitored using a characterized set of antibodies against 14-3-3 proteins with distinct crossreactivity. The abundance profile of 14-3-3 proteins associated with the cytosol, endomembranes (tonoplast, endoplasmic reticulum, Golgi, mitochondria) and plasma membrane showed high spatial-temporal dynamics. This indicates different targets of 14-3-3 proteins at different organelles and time points during pollen germination and growth.
Health services utilization and cost of retinitis pigmentosa.

OBJECTIVE To estimate annual per-patient health services utilization and costs of retinitis pigmentosa (RP) in the United States. METHODS A retrospective claims analysis of patients with RP (N = 2990) and a 1:1 exactly matched cohort of non-RP patients was conducted using the MarketScan Commercial and Medicare Supplemental Databases. Individuals were continuously enrolled in a commercial health plan or employer-sponsored health insurance for at least 1 year. The following annual outcomes were analyzed using nonlinear multivariate models: inpatient hospital admissions, inpatient hospital days, emergency department visits, outpatient physician visits, and prescription drug refills and inpatient and outpatient medical, pharmacy, and total health care costs. RESULTS Patients with RP had 0.04 more hospital admissions (P < .001), 0.19 more inpatient hospital days (P < .02), 0.05 more emergency department visits (P < .01), 2.74 more outpatient visits (P < .001), and 2.18 additional prescription drug fills (P < .001) annually compared with their non-RP counterparts. Health care expenditures were significantly higher for patients with RP, who cost $894, $4855, and $452 more for inpatient, outpatient, and pharmacy services, respectively (P < .001). Overall health care costs were $7317 more per patient per year in the RP cohort, with expenditures varying considerably by age. CONCLUSIONS Patients with RP consume substantially greater amounts of health services with significantly higher health care costs. CLINICAL RELEVANCE Treatments that slow, halt, or possibly restore RP-related vision loss may prove cost-effective for payers and society.
Age-Related Differences in the Processing of Temporal Envelope and Spectral Cues in a Speech Segment

Objectives: As people age, they experience reduced temporal processing abilities. This results in poorer ability to understand speech, particularly for degraded input signals. Cochlear implants (CIs) convey speech information via the temporal envelopes of a spectrally degraded input signal. Because there is an increasing number of older CI users, there is a need to understand how temporal processing changes with age. Therefore, the goal of this study was to quantify age-related reduction in temporal processing abilities when attempting to discriminate words based on temporal envelope information from spectrally degraded signals. Design: Younger normal-hearing (YNH) and older normal-hearing (ONH) participants were presented a continuum of speech tokens that varied in silence duration between phonemes (0 to 60 ms in 10-ms steps), and were asked to identify whether the stimulus was perceived more as the word “dish” or “ditch. ” Stimuli were vocoded using tonal carriers. The number of channels (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, and unprocessed) and temporal envelope low-pass filter cutoff frequency (50 and 400 Hz) were systematically varied. Results: For the unprocessed conditions, the YNH participants perceived the word ditch for smaller silence durations than the ONH participants, indicating that aging affects temporal processing abilities. There was no difference in performance between the unprocessed and 16-channel, 400-Hz vocoded stimuli. Decreasing the number of spectral channels caused decreased ability to distinguish dish and ditch. Decreasing the envelope cutoff frequency also caused decreased ability to distinguish dish and ditch. The overall pattern of results revealed that reductions in spectral and temporal information had a relatively larger effect on the ONH participants compared with the YNH participants. Conclusions: Aging reduces the ability to utilize brief temporal cues in speech segments. Reducing spectral information—as occurs in a channel vocoder and in CI speech processing strategies—forces participants to use temporal envelope information; however, older participants are less capable of utilizing this information. These results suggest that providing as much spectral and temporal speech information as possible would benefit older CI users relatively more than younger CI users. In addition, the present findings help set expectations of clinical outcomes for speech understanding performance by adult CI users as a function of age.
Patterns of competitive authoritarianism in the Western Balkans

ABSTRACT The countries of the Western Balkans during the 1990s were dominated by competitive authoritarian regimes that combined multi-party elections with nationalist rhetoric and the privatisation of the state to affiliated business interests. After a move towards democratisation in the early 2000s across the region, authoritarian practices began re-appearing in the late 2000s and have now firmly taken root in many of these countries. This article will argue that the current competitive authoritarian systems (Levitsky, Steven, and Lucan A. Way. 2010. Competitive Authoritarianism. Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) are structurally different from those of the 1990s. These new regimes draw on the failure of reformist governments during the early 2000s to decisively break with authoritarian practices and establish independent and democratic institutions, thus facilitating the return of competitive authoritarian regimes. The current pattern in the Western Balkans is part of a global trend, but is also one embedded in the particularities of democratic transformation of the region. This article argues that the return of competitive authoritarianism is the result of weak democratic structures, facilitated by the weakening and insufficient transformative power of external actors, first and foremost the EU, in incentivizing continued democratisation.
Towards elucidating the stability, dynamics and architecture of the nucleosome remodeling and deacetylase complex by using quantitative interaction proteomics

The nucleosome remodeling and deacetylase (NuRD) complex is an evolutionarily conserved chromatin‐associated protein complex. Although the subunit composition of the mammalian complex is fairly well characterized, less is known about the stability and dynamics of these interactions. Furthermore, detailed information regarding protein–protein interaction surfaces within the complex is still largely lacking. Here, we show that the NuRD complex interacts with a number of substoichiometric zinc finger‐containing proteins. Some of these interactions are salt‐sensitive (ZNF512B and SALL4), whereas others (ZMYND8) are not. The stoichiometry of the core subunits is not affected by high salt concentrations, indicating that the core complex is stabilized by hydrophobic interactions. Interestingly, the RBBP4 and RBBP7 proteins are sensitive to high nonionic detergent concentrations during affinity purification. In a subunit exchange assay with stable isotope labeling by amino acids in cell culture (SILAC)‐treated nuclear extracts, RBBP4 and RBBP7 were identified as dynamic core subunits of the NuRD complex, consistent with their proposed role as histone chaperones. Finally, using cross‐linking MS, we have uncovered novel features of NuRD molecular architecture that complement our affinity purification‐MS/MS data. Altogether, these findings extend our understanding of MBD3–NuRD structure and stability.
Theoretical analysis of comparative studies of complex formation.

The stoichiometric ratios and the equilibrium constants describing the extent of formation of complexes are the basic information required in studies of complex formation between two species. Some of this information can be obtained by measuring the apparent solubility, the absorption spectrum, or the reactivity of one species (the substrate) as a function of the concentration of the other species (the ligand). The stability constant evaluated by these methods, assuming that a single complex of 1:1 substrate ligand ratio is present, can be related to the actual constants of the system. Analyses of some of the complex systems most likely to be encountered show that the three experimental approaches may not always yield the same numerical result and that comparative studies with several techniques may yield valuable information concerning the natures of the complexes. The solubility, spectral, and kinetic methods for studying complexes are, in general, subject to about the same degree of nonselectivity in their responses to multiple complexes and interactions.
Decreased constitutive nitric oxide synthase, but increased inducible nitric oxide synthase and endothelin‐1 immunoreactivity in aortic endothelial cells of Donryu rats on a cholesterol‐enriched diet

The Donryu rat is resistant to a high cholesterol diet in that typical atheromatous lesions do not develop. Using electron microscopic immunocytochemical techniques, the effects of a CCT diet (4% cholesterol with 1% cholic acid and 0.5% thiouracil) on the distributions of neuronal, macrophage, and endothelial specific nitric oxide synthase (NOS I, NOS II, and NOS III) and endothelin‐1 (ET‐1) immunoreactivity were examined in the thoracic aortic intima. Atheromatous lesions were absent, but immunocytochemistry showed 1.4±0.52% and 4.0±0.9% endothelial cells (EC) with positive staining for NOS I and NOS III, respectively, compared with 16.3±2.5% and 88.6±2.48% in control Donryu rats. The CCT‐supplemented diet induced expression of NOS II immunoreactivity in thoracic aortic intimal cells. EC, subendothelial macrophages, and smooth muscle cells (SMC) also showed high NOS II‐positive staining. The percentage of NOS II‐immunoreactive EC was 43±1.8%. In control groups, no NOS II immunoreactive cells were observed. The percentage of ET‐1 immunopositive cells was also significantly increased by 9.2±0.66% and 64.2±1.4% in control and CCT‐fed groups, respectively. It is concluded that the administration of a high cholesterol diet in Donryu rats produces endothelial dysfunction associated with changes in the balance of the different isoforms of NOS and ET‐1. Therefore, the increase in inducible NOS and ET‐1 immunoreactivity seen during the cholesterol‐enriched diet appears to be a compensatory reaction of aortic wall cells to the high cholesterol supplementation. Anat Rec 260:16–25, 2000. © 2000 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Tourism, Time, and the Last Chance

Last chance tourism (LCT) is tourism where individuals rush to view and experience vanishing resources before they are altered or disappear entirely. As a documented phenomenon LCT is relatively new, with most of the observations only considering the natural environment. Additionally, the concept of LCT lacks theoretical underpinning. This article addresses the theoretical gap. Two criteria are identified for LCT without which it will not exist. First is a perception that time is running out. Second is a sense of loss. Loss aversion is linked to a sense of loss which, when combined with time, provides a basis for the development of a model explaining why a visitor may choose one last chance destination over another even if the loss of that site may not be considered as important. The model also provides a basis for LCT to include places other than natural environments. A sense of impending loss can also be experienced for other types of tourism sites.