Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Culturally Relevant Psychiatric Care: The West Indian as a Client

Cultural sensitivity is essential to the provision of quality mental health intervention. West Indian culture, including belief systems,familypatterns, child-rearing practices, racial mixtures, and geography, influences the presentation of and perceived causes of symptoms in mentally ill persons, who are natives of the Eastern Caribbean Islands. Parenthood and childbearing beliefs and practices are discussed in relationship to their influences on the psychosocial development of the West Indianfamily. Salient cultural norms, mores,folkways, and habits are presented in relationship to the impact on clients presenting psychopathology. For example, the effects of child-rearing practices on the clients' hesitation to verbalize personal concerns are addressed, as well as the role and importance of the mental health professional. Cultural diversity requires the effective clinician to approach clients with an attitude of cultural relativity. The provision of mental health intervention to Eastern Caribbean natives involves understanding cultural traits and coping mechanisms that are prevalent in West Indian culture. Concerted effort on the clinician's part may be required to overcome egocentristic feelings and behavior which otherwise would interfere with culturally relevant and effective intervention.
Improvements that don't add up: ad-hoc retrieval results since 1998

The existence and use of standard test collections in information retrieval experimentation allows results to be compared between research groups and over time. Such comparisons, however, are rarely made. Most researchers only report results from their own experiments, a practice that allows lack of overall improvement to go unnoticed. In this paper, we analyze results achieved on the TREC Ad-Hoc, Web, Terabyte, and Robust collections as reported in SIGIR (1998--2008) and CIKM (2004--2008). Dozens of individual published experiments report effectiveness improvements, and often claim statistical significance. However, there is little evidence of improvement in ad-hoc retrieval technology over the past decade. Baselines are generally weak, often being below the median original TREC system. And in only a handful of experiments is the score of the best TREC automatic run exceeded. Given this finding, we question the value of achieving even a statistically significant result over a weak baseline. We propose that the community adopt a practice of regular longitudinal comparison to ensure measurable progress, or at least prevent the lack of it from going unnoticed. We describe an online database of retrieval runs that facilitates such a practice.
Parenteral nutrition providing a restricted amount of linoleic acid in severely burned patients: a randomised double-blind study of an olive oil-based lipid emulsion v. medium/long-chain triacylglycerols

It has been claimed that lipid emulsions with a restricted linoleic acid content can improve the safety of total parenteral nutrition (TPN). The tolerability of TPN and its effects on the metabolism of fatty acids were assessed in this prospective, double-blind, randomised study comparing an olive/soyabean oil long-chain triacylglycerol (LCT) with a medium-chain triacylglycerol (MCT)/LCT; 50:50 (w) based lipid emulsion in two groups (O and M, respectively; eleven per group) of severely burned patients. After resuscitation (48–72 h), patients received TPN providing 147 kJ/kg per d (35 kcal/kg per d) with fat (1·3 g/kg per d) for 6 d Plasma fatty acids, laboratory parameters including liver function tests, and plasma cytokines were assessed before and after TPN. Adverse events encountered during TPN and the clinical outcomes of patients within the subsequent 6 months were recorded. With both lipid emulsions, the conversion of linoleic acid in its higher derivatives (di-homo-γ-linolenic acid) improved and essential fatty acid deficiency did not appear. Abnormalities of liver function tests occurred more frequently in the M (nine) than in the O (three) group (P=0·04, Suissa–Shuster test). Seven patients (four from group O and three from group M) died as a consequence of severe sepsis 3–37 d after completion of the 6 d TPN period. When compared with the surviving patients, those who died were older (P=0·01) and hyperglycaemic at baseline (P<0·001), and their plasma IL-6 levels continued to increase (P<0·04). Although fatty acid metabolism and TPN tolerability were similar with both lipid emulsions, the preservation of liver function noted with the use of the olive oil-based lipid emulsions deserves confirmation.
Alopecia in a Viable Phospholipase C Delta 1 and Phospholipase C Delta 3 Double Mutant

Background Inositol 1,4,5trisphosphate (IP3) and diacylglycerol (DAG) are important intracellular signalling molecules in various tissues. They are generated by the phospholipase C family of enzymes, of which phospholipase C delta (PLCD) forms one class. Studies with functional inactivation of Plcd isozyme encoding genes in mice have revealed that loss of both Plcd1 and Plcd3 causes early embryonic death. Inactivation of Plcd1 alone causes loss of hair (alopecia), whereas inactivation of Plcd3 alone has no apparent phenotypic effect. To investigate a possible synergy of Plcd1 and Plcd3 in postnatal mice, novel mutations of these genes compatible with life after birth need to be found. Methodology/Principal Findings We characterise a novel mouse mutant with a spontaneously arisen mutation in Plcd3 (Plcd3mNab) that resulted from the insertion of an intracisternal A particle (IAP) into intron 2 of the Plcd3 gene. This mutation leads to the predominant expression of a truncated PLCD3 protein lacking the N-terminal PH domain. C3H mice that carry one or two mutant Plcd3mNab alleles are phenotypically normal. However, the presence of one Plcd3mNab allele exacerbates the alopecia caused by the loss of functional Plcd1 in Del(9)olt1Pas mutant mice with respect to the number of hair follicles affected and the body region involved. Mice double homozygous for both the Del(9)olt1Pas and the Plcd3mNab mutations survive for several weeks and exhibit total alopecia associated with fragile hair shafts showing altered expression of some structural genes and shortened phases of proliferation in hair follicle matrix cells. Conclusions/Significance The Plcd3mNab mutation is a novel hypomorphic mutation of Plcd3. Our investigations suggest that Plcd1 and Plcd3 have synergistic effects on the murine hair follicle in specific regions of the body surface.
A study on using texture analysis methods for identifying lobar fissure regions in isotropic CT images

The major hurdle for segmenting lung lobes in computed tomographic (CT) images is to identify fissure regions, which encase lobar fissures. Accurate identification of these regions is difficult due to the variable shape and appearance of the fissures, along with the low contrast and high noise associated with CT images. This paper studies the effectiveness of two texture analysis methods — the gray level co-occurrence matrix (GLCM) and the gray level run length matrix (GLRLM) — in identifying fissure regions from isotropic CT image stacks. To classify GLCM and GLRLM texture features, we applied a feed-forward back-propagation neural network and achieved the best classification accuracy utilizing 16 quantized levels for computing the GLCM and GLRLM texture features and 64 neurons in the input/hidden layers of the neural network. Tested on isotropic CT image stacks of 24 patients with the pathologic lungs, we obtained accuracies of 86% and 87% for identifying fissure regions using the GLCM and GLRLM methods, respectively. These accuracies compare favorably with surgeons/radiologists' accuracy of 80% for identifying fissure regions in clinical settings. This shows promising potential for segmenting lung lobes using the GLCM and GLRLM methods.
Differential association of HMG1 and linker histones B4 and H1 with dinucleosomal DNA: structural transitions and transcriptional repression.

We examined the structural and functional consequences of incorporating either histone H1, histone B4 or HMG1 into a synthetic dinucleosome containing two 5S rRNA genes. We found that all three proteins bind to linker DNA, stabilizing an additional 20 bp from micrococcal nuclease digestion and restrict nucleosome mobility. Histone H1 has the highest‐affinity interaction with the dinucleosome; histone B4 and HMG1 associate with significantly reduced affinities. We found that histone H1 binds to the dinucleosome template with a dissociation constant (KD) of 7.4 nM, whereas the KD is 45 nM for histone B4 and 300 nM for HMG1. The KDs for the interaction of these proteins with naked DNA are 18 nM for H1, 80 nM for B4 and 300 nM for HMG1. The differences in association of these proteins with the dinucleosome are reflected in the efficiency with which the different proteins repress transcription from the 5S rRNA genes. Thus, although all three proteins can contribute to the organization of chromatin, the stability of the structures they assemble will vary. Our results provide a molecular explanation for the transcriptional promiscuity of Xenopus early embryonic chromatin, which is enriched in HMG1 and linker histone B4, but deficient in histone H1.
Information presentation constraints and the adaptive decision maker hypothesis

Participants examined sets of apartments described along 4 dimensions. Attribute values were manipulated to provide a way to infer strategy from response patterns. Experiment 1 established baseline behavior in unconstrained search, whereas Experiments 2-4 constrained participants to search either by alternative or by dimension. Dimensionwise presentation resulted in higher accuracy and reduced looking times. In 3-alternative choice, mere was no evidence that strategy use depended on constraint condition. Evidence for possible strategy differences across constraint conditions was found when either multiple judgments rather than a single choice had to be made or the number of alternatives was increased to 5. These results supported features of the adaptive decision maker hypothesis (J. W. Payne, J. R. Bettman, & E. J. Johnson, 1988) but suggested that strategy use is not always strongly linked to acquisition pattern.
The effects of local steroid injections on tendons: a biomechanical and microscopic correlative study

is well recognized as an important therapeutic adjunct in the conservative treatment of local inflammatory conditions. Various steroid agents have been employed for more than twenty years to treat osteoarthritis, bursitis and tenosynovitis. The beneficial effects of pain relief and rapid rehabilitation make their frequent use desirable. However, in recent years serious complications, following local steroid use, have been brought to attention.
A user study on human-robot-interactive recovery for industrial assembly problems

This paper focuses on Human-Robot Interaction (HRI) in a scenario where a robot has to recover from an assembly problem. For this purpose, a human interacts with the robot so that the task-specific knowledge and experience of the human can be used for recovery. The question which interaction method is the most successful for this problem will be answered by a user study with 31 participants. Four different interaction methods are compared: space mouse, keyboard, kinesthetic guidance and a kinesthetic guidance with adaptive stiffness. The results clearly show that the kinesthetic guidance methods have superior performance and user satisfaction compared to the other considered methods.
Predictive call admission control for multimedia streaming in CDMA cellular environments

Third-generation (3G) wireless networks based on code-division multiple access (CDMA) have been engineered to provide mobile users with voice as well as advanced packet data services. Support of Internet-based multimedia streaming services is considered a critical factor for future deployment of such networks. Provisioning streaming services in a dependable way, however, requires supporting data transmission at relatively high data rates while maintaining session quality during both intracell and intercell user movements. In this paper, an adaptive bandwidth allocation and admission control scheme is proposed for managing network resources for a streaming service. Streaming requests are assumed to be served by an adaptive server capable of choosing suitable video streaming parameters (e.g., video resolution, frame rate, and encoding parameters) in response to possible requests from the wireless network to vary the currently allocated bandwidth. The devised admission control scheme exploits a priori knowledge of user mobility patterns to minimize the risk of running into an overload condition after acceptance of a new multimedia streaming connection. The obtained simulation results show that, compared to a nonpredictive admission control scheme, the proposed scheme achieves a lower forced-termination probability and higher throughput, while consuming less base-station transmission energy.
CoryneRegNet 2: An Integrative Bioinformatics Approach for Reconstruction and Comparison of Transcriptional Regulatory Networks in Prokaryotes

Summary CoryneRegNet is an ontology-based data warehouse of corynebacterial transcription factors and regulatory networks. Initially, it was designed to provide methods for the analysis and visualization of the gene regulatory network of Corynebacterium glutamicum. Now we integrated the genomes and transcriptional interactions of three other corynebacteria, C. diphtheriae, C. efficiens, and C. jeikeium into CoryneRegNet; providing comparative analysis and visualization with GraphVis. We also integrated the high-performance PSSM search tool PoSSuM search to detect potential transcription factor binding sites within and across species. As an application, we reconstruct in silico the regulatory network of the iron metabolism regulator DtxR in the four corynebacteria. CoryneRegNet is freely accessible at https://www.cebitec. uni-bielefeld.de/groups/gi/software/coryneregnet/. The final slash (/) is mandatory. In order to use the GraphVis feature, Java (at least version 1.4.2) is required.
Fluctuation theory and stochastic games for spectrally negative Lévy processes

Levy processes have stationary, independent increments. This seemingly unassuming (defining) property leads to a surprisingly rich class of processes which appear in a large number of applications including queueing, fragmentation theory, branching processes, dams, risk theory and finance. In this thesis we study various aspects and applications of Levy processes. We find the Laplace transform of the last time before an exponential time that a spectrally negative process is negative. This result is inspired by the extension of the model considered by Lundberg: instead of a compound Poisson process (with negative jumps and positive drift) the risk process is modelled by a general spectrally negative Levy process. The spectral negativity of the process stems from the fact that jumps in the risk process are caused by the incoming claims and hence only occur in the negative direction. Scale functions play an important role in the results. We use excursion theory to express resolvent measure of reflected Levy processes in terms of the resolvent measure of the (unreflected) process. We apply this result to find explicitly the potential measure of a reflected symmetric stable process killed at exceeding a certain level. We also study optimal stopping problems for generalised Ornstein--Uhlenbeck processes driven by a spectrally negative Levy process. We find the optimal stopping time as well as sufficient conditions for smooth fit to hold. The rest of this thesis is devoted to stochastic games for spectrally negative Levy processes. Such a game can be interpreted as a two player version of an optimal stopping problem. We study two specific examples: an extension of the American put option (called the McKean game) and an extension of the Russian option (Shepp--Shiryaev game). We use a combination of martingale techniques, fluctuation theory of spectrally negative Levy processes and auxiliary optimal stopping problems to find the optimal stopping strategies for both players. We find that the jumps of the process have an important influence on the optimal strategies: in some sense one could argue that the players becomes more defensive, as the jumps of the process could lead to sudden changes in value of the underlying process. We show that smooth fit holds at a boundary point of the stopping region according to whether that point is regular for the interior of the stopping region.
ACCENT, INTELLIGIBILITY, AND COMPREHENSIBILITY

This study was designed to extend previous research on the relationships among intelligibility, perceived comprehensibility, and accentedness. Accent and comprehensibility ratings and transcriptions of accented speech from Cantonese, Japanese, Polish, and Spanish intermediate ESL students were obtained from 26 native English listeners. The listeners were also asked to identify the first language backgrounds of the same talkers and to provide information on their familiarity with the four accents used in this study. When the results of this study were compared with the Munro and Derwing (1995, Language Learning, 45, 73–97) study of learners of high proficiency, speaker proficiency level did not appear to affect the quasi-independent relationships among intelligibility, perceived comprehensibility, and accentedness; however, the relative contributions of grammatical and phonemic errors and goodness of prosody differed somewhat. Ability to identify the speakers' first languages was influenced by familiarity.
Influence of Bottle-Feeding on Serum Bisphenol A Levels in Infants

Exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs), particularly during developmental periods, gives rise to a variety of adverse health outcomes. Bisphenol A (BPA) is a well-known EDC commonly found in plastic products including food and water containers, baby bottles, and metal can linings. This study investigates infant exposure to BPA and the effect of bottle-feeding on serum BPA levels in infants. Serum BPA levels in normal healthy infants 6 to 15 months of age (n=60) were evaluated by a competitive ELISA. BPA was detected in every study sample. Serum BPA levels of bottle-fed infants (n=30) were significantly higher than those of breast-fed infants (n=30) (96.58±102.36 vs 45.53±34.05 pg/mL, P=0.014). There were no significant differences in serum BPA levels between boys (n=31) and girls (n=29). No significant correlations were found between serum BPA levels and age, body weight, birth weight, and gestational age. Bottle-feeding seems to increase the risk of infant exposure to BPA. Establishment of health policies to reduce or prevent BPA exposure in infants is necessary. Graphical Abstract
Identification of HLA-E-specific alloreactive T lymphocytes: A cell subset that undergoes preferential expansion in mixed lymphocyte culture and displays a broad cytolytic activity against allogeneic cells

Previous studies showed that a subset of CD8+ cytolytic T lymphocytes expressing HLA class I-specific natural killer inhibitory receptors (iNKR) is characterized by the ability to recognize HLA-E and to mediate T cell receptor-dependent killing of different NK cell-susceptible tumor target cells. In this study, we show that this CD8+ T cell subset can also undergo extensive proliferation in mixed lymphocyte cultures in response to allogeneic cells. Analysis of their cytolytic activity revealed a broad specificity against a panel of allogeneic phytohemagglutinin-induced blasts derived from HLA-unmatched donors. On the other hand, autologous and certain allogeneic phytohemagglutinin blasts were resistant to lysis. We used as target cells the transporter associated with antigen processing (TAP)-2−/− murine RMA-S cell line cotransfected with β2-microglobulin and HLA-E*01033. On loading these cells with different HLA-E-binding peptides derived either from HLA class I leader sequences or viral proteins, we could show that HLA-E-specific cytolytic T lymphocytes recognized many, but not all, peptides analyzed. These data suggest that these cells may recognize, on allogeneic cells, HLA-E with peptides that are not present in the host of origin. In addition to their ability to proliferate in response to allogeneic stimulation and to lyse, most allogeneic cells may have important implications in transplantation and in antitumor immune responses.
Increase and Diffusion of Knowledge: Ethos of Science and Education in the Smithsonian's Inception

In 1835 the United States inherited the large estate of James Smithson, the natural son of a British nobleman. Smithson had written in his will, "I bequeath the whole of my property . to the United States of America, to found at Washington, under the name of the Smithsonian institution, an establishment for the increase & diffusion of Knowledge among men" (Rhees i). The single, enigmatic statement in Smithson's will was the only instruction that Congress had; as a result, competing Congressmen were able to interpret Smithson's words according to their own political and civil agendas. The eight-year debate that ensued over the use of the money was a groundbreaking ideological struggle in the nation's pursuit of knowledge. During these early years of the nineteenth century, universities were only beginning to develop in the United States, and the German thrust for research had not yet made its mark on these new institutions. The rhetoric in the Smithsonian debate represents a uniquely American version of the longstanding struggle between ethos as a value system passed on through education and ethos as a value system embodied in the new science of discovery.1 The debate forced Congressmen and citizens to address directly the question of where intellectual authority should reside in the developing nation. Gregory Clark and S. Michael Halloran argue that early nineteenth-century America was an oratorical culture: one in which a tradition of citizenship and public argument relied on tacit agreement about the commonality of knowledge. This oratorical culture, according to Clark and Halloran, underwent an individualistic transformation in the middle of the nineteenth century, exemplified by Andrew Jackson's defeat of John Quincy Adams in the presidential election of 1828. While the debate over the formation of the Smithsonian does not entirely support the theory of a rhetorical paradigm shift or transformation, it does dramatize a creative struggle between multiple ideological approaches. While the ethos of public education competed with the ethos of scientific discovery, a larger cultural context of traditional consensus vied with the new ideology of liberal individualism. Individual speakers often
Complexity and prototypicality as determinants of the appraisal of cubist paintings

In this experiment inexperienced observers (N = 22) scored 40 black-and-white slides of cubist paintings on a number of seven-point rating scales. On the basis of the time it took subjects to identify the depicted human figure, these slides were divided into three subgroups of Low Categorizability (LC), Intermediate Categorizability (IC) and High Categorizability (HC), respectively. For the LC slides ‘beauty’ scores revealed an inverted U-shaped relation with ‘complexity’. No significant relation between these two variables could be demonstrated, however, for the HC slides. ‘Beauty’ ratings of the latter stimuli increased linearly with the degree of prototypicality. For the IC slides ‘beauty’ showed a (nearly significant) inverted U-shaped relation to ‘complexity’, as well as a significant linear relation to ‘prototypicality’. The results of this study suggest that, whereas ‘complexity’ determines aesthetic preference for abstract paintings, ‘prototypicality’ determines preference for representational works.