Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Parvovirus B19 infection in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia is associated with cytopenia resulting in prolonged interruptions of chemotherapy.

BACKGROUND Parvovirus B19 infection causes severe cytopenia and can mimic a leukemic relapse or therapy-induced cytopenia in patients with hematologic malignancies. We evaluated the complications of parvovirus B19 infection, including delays in the scheduled course of chemotherapy, in children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). METHODS Consecutive bone marrow samples were collected from 117 children with ALL and were analyzed for parvovirus B19 DNA by polymerase chain reaction. Clinical and laboratory data were collected from the Nordic Childhood Leukemia Registry and from medical records. RESULTS Among the 117 children with ALL, 18 (15%) were found to be parvovirus B19 DNA positive. The infection was suspected on clinical grounds in only 1 of these 18 patients. Patients with viremia at diagnosis or during therapy for infection had lower viral loads (median viral load, 7 x 10(4) copies/mL) than did those who became viremic during maintenance therapy (median viral load, 2 x 10(8) copies/mL). The former group also had fewer clinical complications. Indeed, when parvovirus B19 DNA was present during the maintenance treatment, the number of complications (including cytopenia) increased, causing significantly longer periods without chemotherapy (median duration without chemotherapy, 59 days vs. 30 days; P < or = .05) and a higher number of blood transfusions (P = .018) in parvovirus B19 DNA-positive patients than in parvovirus B19 DNA-negative patients. CONCLUSIONS Children with ALL who were infected with parvovirus B19 became cytopenic, leading to reduced treatment intensity and to complications during treatment. Screening for parvovirus B19 DNA by quantitative polymerase chain reaction in pediatric patients with ALL and unexplained cytopenia is suggested.
Reflections on Comparative Methodology in Education, 1964‐1966

SINCE THE APPEARANCE OF Comparative Method in Education in 1964,11) a lengthy log of writings about method has accumulated. This concern is healthy in view of the weakness of comparative method in all social sciences and the continuing difficulty of arriving at a good definition of comparative education in relation to other academic fields. Contributions from Great Britain, Germany, Japan, France and Belgium, Spain and Venezuela, and USSR and Poland continue to explore the methodological frontiers and the history of method in the field. '2) Similar efforts in the United States are represented by a sizeable literature. ") In view of a closely knit relationship and continuous interchange of ideas across national frontiers, ") it is difficult to distinguish which ideas are stimulated by thought from abroad and which originate on the American continent. On April 29th-3oth, 1964, there came together a 'state of the field' conference at Teachers College, Columbia University attended by some twenty-five researchers in comparative education in the United States. At that time the following list of methodological questions was submitted for discussion at their request:
Administrative Visibility and Its Effect on Classroom Behavior

A study was conducted on a junior high school campus in the Midwest to evaluate the influence an assistant principal can have on classroom instruction. The study included 489 ninth-grade students and was conducted over an 18-week period. It examined the effect of assistant principals' visibility on classroom behavior. The results indicate that an increased level of assistant principal visibility resulted in a decrease in student disciplinary referrals. A statistical analysis of the data was performed and the results were significant.
A preliminary investigation into the effect of yoga practice on mindfulness and flow in elite youth swimmers.

Research has indicated positive effects of mindfulness training as a performance-based intervention and of yoga on mindfulness. This study examined the effects of a 10-week yoga intervention on mindfulness and dispositional flow of elite youth swimmers using a mixed methods design. No significant changes in mindfulness and dispositional flow were identified. Qualitative data suggested that the 10-week yoga intervention had a positive impact on a range of physiological, cognitive, and performance parameters that included elements of mindfulness and flow. Methodological considerations for future research are discussed.
The Impact of a Comprehensive Tier I Core Kindergarten Program on the Achievement of Students at Risk in Mathematics

This study examined the efficacy of a core kindergarten mathematics program, ELM, a 120-lesson comprehensive curriculum providing instruction in (a) number operations, (b) geometry, (c) measurement, and (d) vocabulary. ELM is designed to address the learning needs of all students, including at-risk students in the general education or Tier I classroom setting. The study utilized a randomized block design, with 64 classrooms randomly assigned within schools to treatment (ELM) or control (standard district practices) conditions. Measures of achievement were collected at pretest and posttest to measure student achievement. Students did not differ on mathematics assessments at pretest. Gain scores of at-risk treatment students were significantly greater than control peers, and the gains of at-risk treatment students were greater than the gains of peers not at risk, effectively reducing the achievement gap. Implications for Tier I instruction in a Response to Intervention (RTI) model are discussed.
Service Congestion: The Problem, and an Optimized Service Composition Architecture as a Solution

Web services have many important advantages. But their great drawback, the invocation overhead, has not been a research focus. So far, only invocations of simple Web services were considered. But Web service composition may create additional performance problems. Our measurements demonstrate that Web service composition may reduce the maximal load of a system drastically. The reduction quotient increases quasi-exponentially with the number of service compositions. We call that phenomenon "service congestion" since it is not due to the combined payload of the composed services. Such detrimental performance effects can not be tolerated in many areas. For that reason, we propose an optimized service composition architecture as a solution. This service component architecture uses service connectors on top of standard Web service middleware. It optimizes automatically the local invocation of services with a Lookup&Service bus. The result is that no service congestion occurs since local service invocations have the cost of local calls
Timing Recovery for Backplane Ethernet

The dominant solutions for single-chip multi-port backplane Ethernet transceivers utilize a dual-loop design - a combination of a single master phase-locked loop (PLL) and multiple slave delay-locked loops (DLL). Each transmitter or receiver port has its own DLL, which delays or advances a copy of the master clock from the master PLL to generate its own clock signal for synchronization. The DLLs are typically implemented using current-mode logic phase interpolators. This paper presents an alternative solution to this synchronization problem. Instead of moving the sampling phase, timing recovery is done by changing the group delay of the receiver-side forward equalizer by rotating its tap coefficients. The standard least-mean-square algorithm is used for coefficient rotation. This solution is equivalent to a first-order PLL/DLL, which suffers from steady-state timing offset when there is a frequency offset between the transmitter and the receiver. However, the degradation in performance caused by a frequency offset is significantly reduced by using a coefficient-rotation digital-signal processor capable of detecting and reducing the offset. With a practical frequency accuracy specification of plusmn100 ppm, the improved performance can approach that of the PLL/DLL dual-loop solution.
Emotional Intelligence: A Stable Change?.

In recent decades, emotional intelligence (EI) has emerged as one of the crucial components of emotional adjustment, personal well-being, interpersonal relationships, and overall success in life. Yet few professional curricula adequately address this subject. The results of this study indicate that the potential for enhanced emotional intelligence can be improved in the traditional classroom, employing experiential teaching methods. Further, the findings revealed a significant difference in stability measures between social work and education students, indicating that EI course “Doing Psychotherapy” (conceived by the study’s authors) has a differential effect on students of the two faculties. This suggests that EI may not be perceived by all students in the same way; rather, specific goals, the nature of the participants, and the professional setting must be taken into consideration when assessing the impact of EI programs in higher education. Future research should focus on specific EI teaching strategies and on designing evaluation studies that assess changes in knowledge (learning), behavior (expertise), and results (performance).
Cavamax W7 Composite Ethosomal Gel of Clotrimazole for Improved Topical Delivery: Development and Comparison with Ethosomal Gel

The present research work was aimed to formulate clotrimazole encapsulated Cavamax W7 composite ethosomes by injection method for improved delivery across epidermis. 32 factorial design was used to design nine formulations (F1-F9) and compared with ethosomal formulations (F10-F12). F9 with vesicle size of 202.8 ± 4.8 nm, highest zeta potential (−83.6 ± 0.96 mV) and %EE of 98.42 ± 0.15 was selected as optimized composite ethosome and F12 as reference ethosomal formulation. As revealed by transmission electron microscopy F9 vesicles were more condensed, uniformly spherical in shape than F12 vesicles. Vesicular stability studies indicated F9 to be more stable as compared to F12. Both F9 and F12 were incorporated in carbopol 934 gel base to get G1–G8 gel formulations and evaluated for in vitro skin permeability. Cavamax W7 composite ethosomal optimized gel (G5) showed higher in vitro percent cumulative drug permeation (88.53 ± 2.10%) in 8 h and steady state flux (Jss) of 3.39 ± 1.45 μg/cm2/min against the Jss of 1.57 ± 0.23 μg/cm2/min for ethosomal gel (G1) and 1.13 ± 0.06 μg/cm2/min for marketed formulation. The Jss flux of G5 was independent of amount of drug applied/unit area of skin. In vivo confocal laser scanning microscopic study of G5 depicted uniform and deeper penetration of rhodamine B (marker) in epidermis from Cavamax W7 composite ethosomal gel in comparison to G1. Finally, G5 demonstrated better (p < 0.05) antifungal activity against Candida albicans and Aspergillus niger than G1 thus, signifying that Cavamax W7 composite ethosomes present a superior stable and efficacious vesicular system than ethosomal formulation for topical delivery of clotrimazole.
From Symbols to Numbers: The Shifting Technologies of Education Governance in Europe

This article focuses on the changing nature of education governance in Europe. It looks at the shifting discourses and policy practices in the ways in which the European Commission has aligned itself to education and discusses the reasons for what is presented as a substantial shift in the tools and resources for governing the European education space. The article suggests that, alongside other significant developments, the knowledge economy has had two significant effects on education governance in Europe: first, a rapid change of policy discourse and practice, moving from constructing a European ‘culture’ to a Europe of learning governed by numbers; and second, education is slowly moving from the margins of European governance to the very centre of its policy making. The article discusses the new technologies of governance that have powered this shift and makes a case for the significance of recognising and studying them further.
Multiblending: displaying overlapping windows simultaneously without the drawbacks of alpha blending

Alpha blending allows the simultaneous display of overlapping windows-such as palette windows in visual workspaces. Although alpha blending has been used in some applications, such as games, it has not been widely adopted. One reason for the limited acceptance is that in many scenarios, alpha blending compromises the readability of content. We introduce a new blending mechanism called multiblending that uses a vector of blending weights, one for each class of features, rather than a single transparency value. Multiblending can in most cases be automatically optimized to preserve the most relevant features of both the palette and the background window. We present the results of a user study in which multiblended palettes provided higher recognizability of both the background and the palette than the best participating version of alpha blending.
Nonsuicidal Self-Injury, Pain, and Self-Criticism

People who engage in nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) endure physical pain for longer periods than do noninjuring individuals. Pain endurance is also predicted by the presence of highly self-critical beliefs. We tested the hypothesis that changing beliefs about the self would change pain endurance in NSSI individuals. NSSI (n = 50) and control (n = 84) participants were randomly assigned to hear positive music, to receive a brief cognitive intervention designed to improve feelings of personal self-worth, or to a neutral condition. Pain endurance was measured before and after the experimental manipulations. As predicted, there was a significant Group × Condition × Time interaction. After the cognitive intervention, NSSI participants showed a 69-s decrease in pain endurance compared with a 9-s decrease for control participants. For NSSI participants, improvement in self-worth was also significantly correlated with decreased willingness to endure pain. Cognitive approaches that focus on self-worth may provide a new treatment direction for NSSI.
Avaliação das Funções Executivas na Infância: Revisão dos Conceitos e Instrumentos

As funcoes executivas (FE) sao funcoes mentais complexas, responsaveis pela autoregulacao. Apesar do crescente interesse cientifico no estudo dessas funcoes, ainda existem indefinicoes acerca do construto. Este artigo objetiva agregar evidencias de pesquisas no campo da avaliacao neuropsicologica infantil. Trata-se de revisao sistematica de publicacoes indexadas nas bases de dados PsycINFO e PubMed, nos ultimos cinco anos (2008–2013). Foram identificados 25 artigos. Os resultados indicam aumento da producao cientifica sobre o tema nos tres ultimos anos. Os principais instrumentos de avaliacao das FE identificados foram o BRIEF, as escalas Wechsler e tarefas baseadas nos paradigmas Go/No-Go e Stroop. Observou-se relativo consenso acerca da natureza multidimensional das FE. Contudo, permanecem divergencias teoricas e metodologicas quanto a natureza e a quantidade desses componentes.
Mental Health, Substance Use, and Criminal Justice Characteristics of Males With a History of Abuse in a Swedish National Sample

Objective: The primary goals of this study were to (a) provide the first estimate of prevalence of self-reported history of having been emotionally, physically, and/or sexually abused for men with a substance use disorder in Sweden and (b) identify, for men with a substance use disorder, mental health, substance use, and criminal justice characteristics associated with having a history of abuse. Methods: Assessment interviews for a substance use disorder were conducted in 50 out of 300 Swedish counties for the time period 2003 to 2008. Participants were a nationally representative sample of 9,571 Swedish men interviewed in county welfare offices. The Addiction Severity Index (ASI) was used as an assessment tool in these counties. From the ASI, answers to questions asking about lifetime history of emotional, physical, and sexual abuse were analyzed to provide this initial measure on history of abuse. Bivariate statistical analysis and multivariate logistic regression methods were used to explore the relationships between substance use severity, level of mental health problems reported, criminal justice history, and history of being abused. Results: Overall, 47.9% of the men in this sample reported having experienced abuse; specifically, 26.9% of clients reported a history of physical abuse, 4.5% reported a history of sexual abuse, and 40.7% reported a history of emotional abuse. Results from logistic regression modeling identified that higher ASI mental health symptomology scores were associated with 13 times higher likelihood of having experienced any abuse. Further, results from logistic regression models identified that scoring higher on the ASI mental health symptoms core was associated with an 8 times higher likelihood of having experienced physical abuse,14 times higher likelihood of having experienced sexual abuse, and 13 times higher likelihood of having experienced emotional abuse. Conclusions: Both the high prevalence of reporting a history of abuse among men with substance use disorders and the strong association between reporting more mental health symptoms and history of abuse indicate a need for Swedish substance use disorder treatment programs to start using more comprehensive and clinically appropriate trauma assessment tools and to provide empirically supported trauma treatments.
Online Kernel Learning with a Near Optimal Sparsity Bound

In this work, we focus on Online Sparse Kernel Learning that aims to online learn a kernel classifier with a bounded number of support vectors. Although many online learning algorithms have been proposed to learn a sparse kernel classifier, most of them fail to bound the number of support vectors used by the final solution which is the average of the intermediate kernel classifiers generated by online algorithms. The key idea of the proposed algorithm is to measure the difficulty in correctly classifying a training example by the derivative of a smooth loss function, and give a more chance to a difficult example to be a support vector than an easy one via a sampling scheme. Our analysis shows that when the loss function is smooth, the proposed algorithm yields similar performance guarantee as the standard online learning algorithm but with a near optimal number of support vectors (up to a poly(ln T) factor). Our empirical study shows promising performance of the proposed algorithm compared to the state-of-the-art algorithms for online sparse kernel learning.
Nordic sports – from social movements via emotional to bodily movement – and back again?

When talking about bodily movement, emotional movement and social movements, one applies the same term, ‘movement’, to very different practical, psychological and social relations. This is not accidental. This essay inquires into the connections between these three dimensions, via an analysis of sports in the Nordic countries. In relation to social movements, Nordic sports developed historically from dynamic popular movements. The cases of Denmark, Sweden and Norway reveal very different relations between sports movements (often gymnastic movements) on the one hand and national, political and social movements on the other. In relation to emotional movement, three different ways of identity building can be identified. While elite sport favours competitive identities and oppositional patterns, mass sport stresses social discipline and fitness, and popular festivities and games give rise to emotions of encounter. The third dimension, bodily movement, is examined in a phenomenological, experiential sense. The essay concludes with some questions about how the different dimensions of movement interact.
Television news in Bangladesh: intersection of market-oriented journalism and perceived credibility

The television medium has occupied a dominant place in Bangladesh. With the unprecedented expansion of the television industry, questions are being raised about a palpable rise in market-oriented journalism (MOJ) in the country. This article examines the theoretical and empirical relationship between MOJ and credibility of TV news. Three surrogate factors of MOJ including independence, social role, and objectivity, along with TV news credibility are analyzed for insights. The findings suggest that there is a complex relationship between the two constructs. To improve the perception of credibility of TV news, our findings suggest an important role of public journalism as an alternative to MOJ.
The place of the laboratory in secondary science teaching

The paper is based on interviews conducted with secondary science teachers in schools in England. It focuses on how teachers understand the place of the laboratory and laboratory work in their practice. It emphasizes, however, not the epistemological dimensions of their view but rather the following issues: how they construe their practice tactically in terms of ‘theory’ and ‘practical work’; how they use this construal in their judgements of lessons, in lesson planning and in relationships with pupils; and how laboratory work influences their institutional and material situation. It concludes with an analysis of the senses in which science teachers' work can be said to be ‘structured’ by its engagement with the laboratory, drawing on the work of the sociologist Anthony Giddens on the relationship between structure and agency.
Development and Evaluation of Shortcut-Derived Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales

The purpose of the present study was to evaluate a shortcut method for developing Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales (BARS). The developmental method included two novel steps: (a) the performance of judgmental cluster analysis to define scales and (b) the direct placement of behavioral incidents on the scales rather than the use of the retranslation step. Two groups of six students each developed shortcut BARS through using an instructional booklet. The BARS were developed to evaluate teaching performance of college instructors. The sets of shortcut scales constructed by the two groups and a traditionally developed BARS were then distributed randomly to students in nine classes who were asked to evaluate both their class instructors and the instructors in their immediately preceding class. The shortcut scales, in comparison with the traditional BARS, were slightly more reliable. Both sets of scales had approximately the same degree of leniency error. The shortcut scales were in general somewhat less adequate in terms of halo error and discriminant validity, but were almost equivalent on these characteristics after the scales with very low reliabilities had been dropped. The results did not support the use of the judgmental cluster analysis, but did indicate that the retranslation step may not be necessary to develop BARS.