Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Extended nortriptyline and psychological treatment for cigarette smoking.

OBJECTIVE Accepted treatments for cigarette smoking rarely achieve abstinence rates of >35% at 1 year. Low rates may reflect failure to provide extended and multifocal treatment for this complex and chronic addiction. Using a chronic disease model of smoking, the authors undertook a study to determine the effects of long-term antidepressant and psychological treatment. METHOD One hundred sixty smokers of > or =10 cigarettes/day were randomly assigned to one of four treatment conditions in a two-by-two (nortriptyline versus placebo by brief versus extended treatment) design. All subjects received 8 weeks of a transdermal nicotine patch, five group counseling sessions, and active or placebo treatment. Interventions for subjects in brief treatment ended at this point. Subjects in extended treatment continued taking drug or placebo to week 52 and received an additional 9 monthly counseling sessions, with checkup telephone calls midway through each session. Subjects were assessed at baseline and weeks 12, 24, 36, and 52. The principal outcome variables were repeated abstinence at each assessment after the first over a 1-year period and a point prevalence of 7 days of abstinence. RESULTS At week 52, point-prevalence abstinence rates with missing subjects imputed as smokers were 30% for placebo brief treatment, 42% for placebo extended treatment, 18% for active brief treatment, and 50% for active extended treatment. With missing subjects omitted, these rates were 32%, 57%, 21%, and 56%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS Comprehensive extended treatments that combine drug and psychological interventions can produce consistent abstinence rates that are substantially higher than those in the literature.
What Drives the Creation of New Businesses? A Panel-Data Analysis for EU Countries

ABSTRACT Our article aims to identify the key factors that affect the establishment of new businesses in 18 developed and emerging member countries in the European Union over the period 2003–2015. Using panel-data estimation techniques, we alternatively assess the effects of some macroeconomic, demographic, individual, and business environment-related factors on the dynamics of new firm creation, proxied by the rates of nascent entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial intentions. The results show that macroeconomic and demographic variables are the most significant determinants, followed by the individual characteristics of potential entrepreneurs and of the business environment. In addition, the sovereign debt crisis in Europe in 2010 positively affected entrepreneurship through increased support for new firms by individual country governments and the European Union.
Perceived risk of breast cancer: influence of heuristic thinking.

PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of heuristic reasoning on women's perceived risk for developing breast cancer, and to test for an expected bias in the direction of optimism that is predicted by recent research on human cognition. DESCRIPTION OF STUDY In total, 770 women recruited in community settings were surveyed regarding cancer screening behavior and their perceived risk of developing breast cancer. RESULTS Most women perceived their risk of breast cancer to be lower than that of other women (3:1), confirming the expected bias toward optimism, and this finding was not attributable to the personality trait of optimism. Women following mammography guidelines showed greater optimism that their risk was low. Cancer knowledge and education diminished unwarranted optimism. Women with a history of benign breast disease, with a female relative with breast cancer, or both overestimated their risk. All findings suggest that heuristic thinking is being used to estimate personal cancer risk. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS Clinicians should expect women to be optimistic about their personal risk of developing breast cancer. As a result, women may put off breast cancer screening or delay the evaluation of breast symptoms that may signal breast cancer. Helping women to understand their relative risk is an essential part of a health promotion visit.
The Groningen Activity Restriction Scale for measuring disability: its utility in international comparisons.

OBJECTIVES The Groningen Activity Restriction Scale (GARS) is a non-disease-specific instrument to measure disability in activities of daily living (ADL) and instrumental activities of daily living (IADL). It was developed in studies of Dutch samples consisting of elderly or chronically ill people. The psychometric properties of the GARS demonstrated in these studies were highly satisfactory. This paper addresses the psychometric properties of the GARS across countries. METHODS Data of 623 patients with recently diagnosed rheumatoid arthritis from four European countries were analyzed by means of a principal components analysis and a Mokken scale analysis for polychotomous items. RESULTS The results of the analyses were highly satisfactory: there was one strong and reliable general factor representing one underlying dimension of disability in ADL and IADL, and there was a clear hierarchical ordering of the items included in the GARS. The validity of the GARS was strongly suggested by the pattern of associations of the GARS with age, sex, and other existing health status measures. CONCLUSIONS The psychometric characteristics of the GARS, which measures disability in ADL and IADL simultaneously, make this instrument very useful for comparative research across countries.
Sustainable development: A quest for logistics social responsibility among Chinese manufacturing firms

With globalization, especially after China's entry into the WTO, an increasing number of Chinese firms have experienced social responsibility barriers such that they lose international orders due to failure in meeting the requirements of environment, human rights or safety standard. This study attempts to shed some light on the mechanism underlying logistics social responsibility (LSR) in China. In particular, based on the five-dimensional structure of LSR framework, we propose that clan culture, business ethics, pressures from customers, suppliers, competitors, and law/regulations are important antecedents of five dimensions of LSR. A largely scale survey was conducted in China and a total of 162 firm-level questionnaires were returned. The results from a pilot study were reported. The contributions and implications of these findings are discussed further.
Cryptic invasions of the crab Carcinus detected by molecular phylogeography

Coastal marine ecosystems world‐wide are threatened by invasions of nonindigenous species. The ubiquity of marine sibling species identifiable only by genetic analysis suggests that many invasions are cryptic and therefore undetected, causing an underestimation of the actual number and impacts of invading species. We test this hypothesis with European crabs in the genus Carcinus that have invaded five regions globally. Partial 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequences confirm sibling species status of morphologically similar Atlantic C. maenas and Mediterranean C. aestuarii. Based on 16S rRNA haplotypes, crabs from California, New England and Tasmania were all C. maenas. However, we report the cryptic multiple invasion of both species in Japan and South Africa, where only C. aestuarii and C. maenas, respectively, were previously recognized.
Impact of home modification services on ability in everyday life for people ageing with disabilities.

OBJECTIVE To examine the impact of home modifications on self-rated ability in everyday life from various aspects for people ageing with disabilities. METHODS The study sample was recruited from an agency providing home modification services in Sweden and comprised 73 subjects whose referrals had been approved and who were scheduled to receive home modifications (intervention group) and 41 subjects waiting for their applications to be assessed for approval (comparison group). The subjects rated their ability in everyday life using the Client-Clinician Assessment Protocol Part I on 2 occasions: at baseline and follow-up. The Client-Clinician Assessment Protocol Part I provides data on the clients' self-rated independence, difficulty and safety in everyday life. The data were first subjected to Rasch analysis in order to convert the raw scores into interval measures. Further analyses to investigate changes in self-rated ability were conducted with parametric statistics. RESULTS Subjects who had received home modifications reported a statistically significant improvement in their self-rated ability in everyday life compared with those in the comparison group. Subjects who had received home modifications reported less difficulty and increased safety, especially in tasks related to self-care in the bathroom and transfers, such as getting in and out of the home. CONCLUSION Home modifications have a positive impact on self-rated ability in everyday life, especially on decreasing the level of difficulty and increasing safety.
Seasonal U.S. beer demand: socio-economic determinants and relation with other products

ABSTRACT This article employs quarterly U.S. state-level data from 2009 to 2015 to estimate the demand for beer. Other contributions of this work involve the incorporation of demographic factors and wine prices. Results show beer demand to be inelastic, and beer and wine to be substitutes. Further, males, whites, and blacks were, ceteris paribus, likely to have greater beer demand. The income effects, however, were mixed, showing some support for beer being a normal good.
An Immunohistochemical and Fluorescence In Situ Hybridization-based Comparison Between the Oracle HER2 Bond Immunohistochemical System, Dako HercepTest, and Vysis PathVysion HER2 FISH Using Both Commercially Validated and Modified ASCO/CAP and United Kingdom HER2 IHC Scoring Guidelines

Immunohistochemistry (IHC) is used as the frontline assay to determine HER2 status in invasive breast cancer patients. The aim of the study was to compare the performance of the Leica Oracle HER2 Bond IHC System (Oracle) with the current most readily accepted Dako HercepTest (HercepTest), using both commercially validated and modified ASCO/CAP and UK HER2 IHC scoring guidelines. A total of 445 breast cancer samples from 3 international clinical HER2 referral centers were stained with the 2 test systems and scored in a blinded fashion by experienced pathologists. The overall agreement between the 2 tests in a 3×3 (negative, equivocal and positive) analysis shows a concordance of 86.7% and 86.3%, respectively when analyzed using commercially validated and modified ASCO/CAP and UK HER2 IHC scoring guidelines. There is a good concordance between the Oracle and the HercepTest. The advantages of a complete fully automated test such as the Oracle include standardization of key analytical factors and improved turn around time. The implementation of the modified ASCO/CAP and UK HER2 IHC scoring guidelines has minimal effect on either assay interpretation, showing that Oracle can be used as a methodology for accurately determining HER2 IHC status in formalin fixed, paraffin-embedded breast cancer tissue.
Face Recognition in Criminal Investigations (Uncontrolled Environment)

The application of face recognition through public surveillance cameras in criminal investigations is non-intrusive, inconspicuous and faster compared with fingerprint or DNA-sampling biometric evaluation methods. It assists the law enforcement agency during the preliminary investigation to narrow down the candidate list of suspects or person-of-interest. In this project, the fusion between Gabor filters and Maximum Response (MR) filters with Random Forests classifier is proposed for face recognition in criminal investigation. The proposed method differs from the algorithms such as deep neural networks in which the deep neural networks require larger training datasets. However, it is difficult to obtain large volume of the face images of the same individuals in reality. Deep neural networks are also more computation exhausting. The Gabor and MR filters are the facial features extractor. The Gabor filters are the hybrid of the Gabor magnitude filters and oriented Gabor phase congruency (OGPC) filters. Gabor magnitude filters produce the magnitude response while the OGPC filters produce the phase response of Gabor filters. The MR filters produce the edgeand bar-anisotropic filter responses and isotropic filter responses. The variable selection using Monte Carlo Uninformative Variable Elimination Partial Least Squares Regression (MC-UVE-PLSR) is used to pick the most useful features in order to save computation costs and time which is crucial in criminal investigations. Random Forests is used in the classification of the generated feature vectors. The algorithm is applied in uncontrolled environment where the unconstrained parameters of facial images such as uncontrolled illumination, pose and expression variations commonly present in the tape recorded by surveillance cameras during criminal investigation. The algorithm performance is evaluated using two unconstrained facial image databases: Labelled Faces in the Wild and Unconstrained Facial Images (UFI). The images of the databases include different illumination, face expressions and pose variations. The implemented method achieved 81.28% and 67.33% of recognition rates and 97.07% and 93.06% of Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) curve on LFW and UFI databases.
Quantification of Cytokine Gene Expression Using an Economical Real‐Time Polymerase Chain Reaction Method Based on SYBR® Green I

Assessment of cytokine expression has become crucial to understand host responses to infections as well as autoimmunity. Several approaches including Northern blot, RNase protection assay and enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assay have been used for this purpose, but they are time consuming, labour intense, and relatively large quantity of the samples is usually required. Recently, a technique termed real‐time reverse transcriptase‐polymerase chain reaction (RT‐PCR) has been developed to determine genetic expression with great sensitivity and specificity; however, specialized instrumentation and costly reagents are usually needed. We aimed at using low‐cost reagents for real‐time PCR. This was achieved by adapting a conventional RT‐PCR protocol to the quantitative real‐time format, by the addition of the SYBR® Green I reagent. We validated the approach by assessing the cytokine gene expression of murine splenocytes upon stimulation with phorbol 12‐myristate 12‐acetate (PMA)–ionomycin. The results using this technique were compared with those obtained with the well‐established gene array method. We conclude that the use of the SYBR® Green I reagent during real‐time RT‐PCR provides a highly specific and sensitive method to quantify cytokine expression with accuracy and no post‐PCR manipulation.
The effects of upper extremity progressive resistance and endurance exercises in patients with spinal cord injury.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Exercises aiming to strengthen the upper extremities are recommended to increase activities of daily living (ADLs) in patients with spinal cord injury (SCI). The aim of this study was to compare the effects of upper extremity progressive resistance exercises (PRE) and endurance exercises (EE) performed with an arm ergometer in patients with paraplegia due to SCI. MATERIALS AND METHODS A total of 19 SCI patients were included in the study, and randomly divided into two groups. The first group performed PRE while the second group performed arm EE. The functional independence measurement (FIM) was used on each patient at the beginning and at the end of the study. The elbow flexion and extension muscle strengths of each patient were determined with the computerized isokinetic dynamometer at the beginning and end of the study. RESULTS Post-training increased the FIM scores in both PRE (p=0.005) and EE groups (p=0.008). There were increases in the extension peak torque (PT) and total work (TW) at 180°/sec and 60°/sec angular velocity in the PRE group compared to the EE group (all p<0.05). CONCLUSION There were improvement in post-training muscle strength values in both the PRE (found to be more effective) and EE groups. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE Randomized trial (Level I).
Technical Methodology for ASTER Global DEM

At the core of the technical methodology for creating the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection radiometer (ASTER) global digital elevation model (GDEM) is the procedure for generating a global set of 1 ° latitude-by-1 ° longitude tiles containing DEM data in geographic latitude and longitude coordinates and with one arc second postings from scene-based ASTER DEMs. The ASTER GDEM is comprised of all tiles, which include at least 0.01% land in them, each containing 3601-by-3601 elevation data points. The tiles are created by stacking all observed scene DEM data matched geographically to the tile container, selecting valid data for each pixel, removing abnormal data values, and then averaging the remaining selected valid data to assign as the tile elevation data. Valid Earth surface elevation values typically clump within a ± 40-m range and are assumed to be lower in elevation than residual cloud outliers. The filtering process, which assigns the tile elevation data, is one of the most important parts of the GDEM generation system. The median-based selection method is designed to efficiently select the valid data for each pixel. The combination of cloud-masked and non-cloud-masked data is another important part of the process to assign accurate elevation data for each pixel, because the cloud masking capability is not perfect. The algorithm used to combine both data is described. The postprocessing for inland water bodies is successfully carried out to yield a flattened elevation value. This postprocessing is essential to assign unique elevation values for each inland water body. GDEM tile elevation data include some residual anomalies, mostly in areas with fewer than three valid stacked input scenes. The correction method using existing reference data also is described.
Levels of STEM Integration through Agriculture, Food, and Natural Resources

The purpose of this action research study was to develop a rubric that identified levels of integrated science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) lessons through agriculture, food, and natural resources (AFNR) lessons that were developed and implemented in afterschool programs by preservice informal educators. The research study expanded on the knowledge base by identifying three levels and six features of integrated STEM through the context of AFNR. Using the rubric, we analyzed 10 mini-units, consisting of 27 lesson plans, of STEM integrated AFNR lesson plans that were developed by preservice informal educators. There were three major findings. First, teaching AFNR content and skills was the main focus of integrated STEM lesson plans. Second, the lesson plans attempted to use real-world problems to connect students’ learning to use content knowledge and skills to solve the problem, yet failed to connect other disciplines. Finally, students who had previous teaching experiences in non-formal and informal settings achieved the highest scores, but students who were in formal teacher preparation programs had the lowest scores in terms of developing integrated STEM through AFNR lesson plans.
'And the Linguistic Minorities Suffer What They Must?': A Review of Conflicts In Curriculum Theory Through the Lenses of Language Teacher Education ?

This review builds on Joao Paraskeva’s proposal for the development of an Itinerant Curriculum Theory (ICT), to analyse how his contributions advance the conversation on the need to deterritorialize the received field in curriculum studies and in teacher education. The subtractive forms of education that are imposed on bilingual/bicultural students and how (language) teacher education is (not) properly addressing them will be used to illustrate the relevance of Paraskeva’s work in providing the required critical lenses. In his contention for the need to reconceptualise the field of curriculum studies and teacher education, he addresses two key-concepts that are used in this text to analyse second language education and (language) teacher education with a focus on Portugal: the concept of curriculum epistemicides and the concept of epistemic colonization. Acknowledging their pervasive effects in reinforcing educational forms that severely limit the emancipatory goals of second language education and in the way teachers are prepared, this review also discusses the way teachers and students resist, oppose, and even subvert oppressive official discourses and practices, in order to create their own counterhegemonic alternatives. If used to advance the agenda for transformative and emancipatory education for bicultural and bilingual students in public schooling contexts, Paraskeva’s ICT informs, complements, and constitutes a significant contribution to move forward the concatenated fields of critical multicultural education, bicultural education, and bilingual/ multilingual education for global justice. Maria Alfredo Moreira works in the Department of Integrated Studies of Literacy, Didactics, and Supervision at the University of Minho, Portugal. She has been working in initial, in-service and graduate teacher education programs, teaching (foreign/ second) language education, evaluation and assessment, action research for professional development, and supervision of instruction. She has also supervised more than one hundred students in their practicum year. Moreira has worked for the UNICEF and participated on research projects funded by the European Commission, on curriculum development and language (teacher) education. Her most recent research interest is in multicultural/ multilingual (teacher) education for social justice. Her work has been published by journals like Language Teaching, Curriculo sem Fronteiras, Turkish Online Journal of Distance Education, Sustainable Multilingualism among other. She has 13 books (authored and edited) and 29 book chapters published by Peter Lang, Palgrave MacMillan, Authentik, the Portuguese Ministry of Education and other national publishers.
Multi‐channel near‐infrared spectroscopy shows reduced activation in the prefrontal cortex during facial expression processing in pervasive developmental disorder

Aim: The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether individuals with pervasive developmental disorders (PDD) show differential activation during an emotional activation task compared with age‐ and sex‐matched controls, by measuring changes in the concentration of oxygenated (oxyHb) and deoxygenated (deoxyHb) hemoglobin, using near‐infrared spectroscopy (NIRS).