Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Exploring career “choices” of work‐centred women in a professional service firm

– The purpose of this paper is to challenge Hakim's work‐centred category and empirically tests its applicability in a professional service firm. , – The information was gathered through 19 in‐depth interviews with women in an international consulting firm. The analysis was conducted using Nvivo software. , – The paper shows that contrary to the contentions of preference theory, work‐centred women do not face unfettered choice in their career advancement. Findings reveal a number of structural constraints within the firm – namely the prevailing model of success, the need for high‐level sponsorship and the need to network, which impact their choices. The findings also problematise the nature and formulation of the work‐centred category itself. , – The paper surfaces a number of contradictions in the work‐centred category and calls for further work in this area. The paper also surfaces the presence of structural constraints which impact on women's career choices. Further research to develop these themes and provide broader contextual analysis is called for. , – Hakim's preference theory has taken responsibility for women's career advancement away from society and organisations and placed it on individual women. The paper challenges this positioning and calls for organisations to audit their policies and processes to ensure they are not “gender oppressive”. , – The paper adds to the debate on the applicability of preference theory through empirical evaluation of the one of the three categories at its heart – that of work‐centred women. The theory is found to be wanting on a number of issues and problematises not just the category but key tenets of the theory itself.
DBS Programming: An Evolving Approach for Patients with Parkinson's Disease

Deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgery is a well-established therapy for control of motor symptoms in Parkinson's disease. Despite an appropriate targeting and an accurate placement of DBS lead, a thorough and efficient programming is critical for a successful clinical outcome. DBS programming is a time consuming and laborious manual process. The current approach involves use of general guidelines involving determination of the lead type, electrode configuration, impedance check, and battery check. However there are no validated and well-established programming protocols. In this review, we will discuss the current practice and the recent advances in DBS programming including the use of interleaving, fractionated current, directional steering of current, and the use of novel DBS pulses. These technological improvements are focused on achieving a more efficient control of clinical symptoms with the least possible side effects. Other promising advances include the introduction of computer guided programming which will likely impact the efficiency of programming for the clinicians and the possibility of remote Internet based programming which will improve access to DBS care for the patients.
Parent–Child Roles in Decision Making About Medical Research

Our objective is to understand how parents and children perceive their roles in decision making about research participation. Forty-five children (ages 4–15 years) with or without a chronic condition and 21 parents were the participants. A semistructured interview assessed perceptions of up to 4 hypothetical research scenarios with varying levels of risk, benefit, and complexity. Children were also administered the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Third Edition, to assess verbal ability, as a proxy for the child's cognitive development. The audiotaped interviews were transcribed and analyzed for themes related to parent and child decision-making roles. Both parents and children varied in their perceptions of decision-making roles. Child perceptions of parental influence on decision making as knowledge-based increased with cognitive development, whereas perceptions of parental influence as power-based decreased. Both children and parents commented that they would collaborate with each other when making decisions. Collaborative decision making appeared to increase with cognitive development. These findings suggest that approaches to child assent and parent permission should consider the parent–child relationship and how children and families typically make decisions. Future research is necessary to explain variation in the process of research decision making across children and families, explore the role of collaboration on children's decision-making skills, and understand developmental trajectories and mechanisms related to research decision making.
Combining multi-class maximum margin classification with linear discriminant analysis for human action recognition

In this paper, a new multi-class classification method is proposed and evaluated in the problem of human action recognition in unconstrained environments. The proposed method exploits both the maximum margin property of multi-class Support Vector Machines and Linear Discriminant Analysis-based discrimination. Experiments indicate that by exploiting such discriminant information in a multi-class maximum margin framework, classification performance can be enhanced, leading to state-of-the-art performance in human action recognition.
Neurotoxicity and Neurodegeneration When PrP Accumulates in the Cytosol

Changes in prion protein (PrP) folding are associated with fatal neurodegenerative disorders, but the neurotoxic species is unknown. Like other proteins that traffic through the endoplasmic reticulum, misfolded PrP is retrograde transported to the cytosol for degradation by proteasomes. Accumulation of even small amounts of cytosolic PrP was strongly neurotoxic in cultured cells and transgenic mice. Mice developed normally but acquired severe ataxia, with cerebellar degeneration and gliosis. This establishes a mechanism for converting wild-type PrP to a highly neurotoxic species that is distinct from the self-propagating PrPSc isoform and suggests a potential common framework for seemingly diverse PrP neurodegenerative disorders.
Adaptive output-feedback stabilisation for hybrid PDE–ODE systems with uncertain input disturbances

ABSTRACT This paper is concerned with the adaptive output-feedback stabilisation for a class of hybrid partial differential equation (PDE)–ordinary differential equation (ODE) systems with uncertain input disturbances. Remarkably, in this paper, only two boundary measurements of the considered system are available for feedback. Moreover, the unknown parameters involved in the system are allowed to belong to an unknown interval. These two aspects make the considered system essentially different from those in the closely related literature. Inspired by the existing results, an observer is first introduced to estimate the unmeasured states of the original system. Then, by adaptive technique and backstepping method, an adaptive output-feedback controller is successfully constructed, which guarantees that the entire closed-loop system is asymptotically stable, and moreover, the parameter estimates converge to their own real values ultimately. Besides, by the semigroup approach, the well-posedness of the entire closed-loop system is achieved. Finally, a numerical example is provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Dual role for Insulin/TOR signaling in the control of hematopoietic progenitor maintenance in Drosophila

The interconnected Insulin/IGF signaling (IlS) and Target of Rapamycin (TOR) signaling pathways constitute the main branches of the nutrient-sensing system that couples growth to nutritional conditions in Drosophila. Here, we addressed the influence of these pathways and of diet restriction on the balance between the maintenance of multipotent hematopoietic progenitors and their differentiation in the Drosophila lymph gland. In this larval hematopoietic organ, a pool of stem-like progenitor blood cells (prohemocytes) is kept undifferentiated in response to signaling from a specialized group of cells forming the posterior signaling center (PSC), which serves as a stem cell niche. We show that, reminiscent of the situation in human, loss of the negative regulator of IIS Pten results in lymph gland hyperplasia, aberrant blood cell differentiation and hematopoietic progenitor exhaustion. Using site-directed loss- and gain-of-function analysis, we demonstrate that components of the IIS/TOR pathways control lymph gland homeostasis at two levels. First, they cell-autonomously regulate the size and activity of the hematopoietic niche. Second, they are required within the prohemocytes to control their growth and maintenance. Moreover, we show that diet restriction or genetic alteration mimicking amino acid deprivation triggers progenitor cell differentiation. Hence, our study highlights the role of the IIS/TOR pathways in orchestrating hematopoietic progenitor fate and links blood cell fate to nutritional status.
Efficient, inexpensive rapid cuff inflator for venous occlusion plethysmography.

The cuff inflator design described has been found to be adequate for clinical purposes. It has a cuff inflation time of less than 0.3 s. It is safe to use as prolonged overpressurisation cannot happen. It is economical to produce, and is sufficiently compact to be mounted on a trolley side by side with the plethysmographic equipment to form a mobile unit, enabling venous occlusion plethysmography to be performed at any location.
Evaluation of spatial abilities through tabletop AR

Research has been done into improving the means by which we organise and manage information. The usefulness of 2D versus 3D interfaces and environments has also been debated and evaluated. Human spatial abilities can be used to store more information about particular objects including their position in space. Our hypothesis states that as 3D objects contain more information about themselves and their relative position in space than 2D objects, although users take longer to process this information, they should be more accurate when searching and retrieving 3D objects. The evaluation study conducted compared spatial abilities between a 2D version of a memory game and an Augmented Reality (AR) version. Results showed that participants took significantly longer to complete the AR 3D version of the game than the 2D version, but did so with significantly fewer attempts i.e. they were more accurate. These results are specifically relevant for the design and development process of interfaces for AR applications.
Integrating multiple scan matching results for ego-motion estimation with uncertainty

This paper describes an ego-motion estimation method by integrating multiple scan matching results. The method considers both the uncertainty of scan matching results and that of estimated ego-motions, and not only estimates the latest ego-motion but also updates previous ego-motions. The estimation process is formulated as an iterative one using Kalman filter. We implement the method by using an omnidirectional stereo-based scan matching method. Experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Curcumin modulates cellular AP-1, NF-kB, and HPV16 E6 proteins in oral cancer

In this study, we investigated the effects of the natural antioxidant curcumin on the HPV16-positive oral carcinoma cell line 93VU147T and demonstrated that curcumin is not only a potent inhibitor for the activity of host nuclear transcription factors AP-1 and NF-kB but it also selectively suppresses transcription of the HPV16/E6 oncogene during the carcinogenic process in oral cancer cells. This study suggests a therapeutic potential of curcumin for high-risk human papilloma virus (HPV)-infected oral cancers.
Neuropsychological and neural correlates of autobiographical deficits in a mother who killed her children

We report a case of a delusional patient who had killed two of her children in an attempted ‘extended suicide’. She was convinced of a genetic defect that caused autobiographical memory and emotional deficits and made life ‘senseless’. Neuropsychological tests revealed dysfunctions in remembering emotional details of personal episodes and theory of mind. Water positron emission tomography (15O) with a paradigm used in a former study by Fink et al. (1996) with healthy controls elicited abnormal activations during autobiographical memory retrieval characterised by a lack of prefrontal and limbic activity. We conclude that these imaging findings reflect neural correlates of the self-reported and objectified autobiographical dysfunctions. Furthermore, they indicate that beliefs or prejudices may have a major impact on the brain's processing of the personal past.
Population Dynamics of Bifidobacterium Species in Human Feces during Raffinose Administration Monitored by Fluorescence In Situ Hybridization-Flow Cytometry

ABSTRACT The population dynamics of bifidobacteria in human feces during raffinose administration were investigated at the species level by using fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) coupled with flow cytometry (FCM) analysis. Although double-staining FISH-FCM using both fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC) and indodicarbocyanine (Cy5) as labeling dyes for fecal samples has been reported, the analysis was interfered with by strong autofluorescence at the FITC fluorescence region because of the presence of autofluorescence particles/debris in the fecal samples. We circumvented this problem by using only Cy5 fluorescent dye in the FISH-FCM analysis. Thirteen subjects received 2 g of raffinose twice a day for 4 weeks. Fecal samples were collected, and the bifidobacterial populations were monitored using the established FISH-FCM method. The results showed an increase in bifidobacteria from about 12.5% of total bacteria in the prefeeding period to about 28.7 and 37.2% after the 2-week and 4-week feeding periods, respectively. Bifidobacterium adolescentis, the Bifidobacterium catenulatum group, and Bifidobacterium longum were the major species, in that order, at the prefeeding period, and these bacteria were found to increase nearly in parallel during the raffinose administration. During the feeding periods, indigenous bifidobacterial populations became more diverse, such that minor species in human adults, such as Bifidobacterium breve, Bifidobacterium bifidum, Bifidobacterium dentium, and Bifidobacterium angulatum, proliferated. Four weeks after raffinose administration was stopped, the proportion of each major bifidobacterial species, as well as that of total bifidobacteria, returned to approximately the original values for the prefeeding period, whereas that of each minor species appeared to differ considerably from its original value. To the best of our knowledge, these results provide the first clear demonstration of the population dynamics of indigenous bifidobacteria at the species level in response to raffinose administration.
Handling Static Configurability in Refactoring Engines

Although most systems written in C are statically configurable with a preprocessor, contemporary commercial, open source, and research refactoring engines often do not support preprocessor directives well; even simple refactorings could introduce errors. To make refactoring practical in the presence of static configurability, the authors propose variability-aware refactoring and report on their experience using it.
Attempting to Explain Why the Good Die Young

would yield values of r as reported, just on the basis of those matching variables. For me, this puts into question the conclusions drawn by the authors as to the absolute efficacy of the various therapies, and, consequently, their claimed relative efficacies. In view of the considerable number of inconsistencies, differences in reporting, inaccuracies, and highly unlikely numbers in several of the studies carried out by GrossarthMaticek and by Grossarth-Maticek and colleagues, I believe that the prudent reader should be cautious about drawing conclusions from the reported results and about accepting unquestionably the conclusions drawn by the authors from those results.
Informative intervention to improve normative functioning and output of groups

Formal probability models of group decision making imply that the normative influence of large opinion factions tends to have a negative impact on the quality of decisions in difficult tasks and a positive impact in easy tasks that many people solve correctly. Consequently, an informative intervention (INFO) was developed that advises group members to evaluate task difficulty and to react correspondingly to normative majority or plurality influence. In the study, groups of 5 persons had to solve 2 types of intellective tasks: knowledge questions and logic problems. Compared to control groups, group members in the INFO condition were less overconfident, and achieved more correct group decisions.
Bottom-Up Ecosystem Trophic Dynamics Determine Fish Production in the Northeast Pacific

We addressed the question of bottom-up versus top-down control of marine ecosystem trophic interactions by using annual fish catch data and satellite-derived (SeaWiFS) chlorophyll a measurements for the continental margin of western North America. Findings reveal a marked alongshore variation in retained primary production that is highly correlated with the alongshore variation in resident fish yield. The highest productivity occurs off the coasts of Washington and southern British Columbia. Zooplankton data for coastal British Columbia confirm strong bottom-up trophic linkages between phytoplankton, zooplankton, and resident fish, extending to regional areas as small as 10,000 square kilometers.
CeBr3 for Time-of-Flight PET

In this paper we report on our investigation of the CeBr3 timing properties for Time-of-Flight (TOF) Positron Emission Tomography (PET). The TOF detection can significantly improve the signal-to-noise ratio in a reconstructed PET image and reduce the number of events necessary to do the reconstruction. In order to achieve TOF PET, a scintillator must have good timing resolution and good light output. We have investigated seven CeBr3 samples of different height, ranging from 3 mm to 37 mm. Two Hamamatsu R4998 fast photomultipliers were used for most experiments. Each sample was measured against a common standard (LaBr3:5%Ce) and the average timing resolution was found to be about 166 ps (fwhm). The two reference (LaBr3:5%Ce) crystals measured against each other gave the timing resolution of 170 ps. The best time resolution of 108 ps (fwhm) was measured for two CeBr3 samples (3 and 12 mm height). The longest sample (37 mm) provided 215 ps (fwhm). Two such samples working in coincidence would give about 252 ps timing resolution (fwhm, calculated). We have also measured TOF, where the source was moved between the two detectors and the change in a timing peak position was registered. The results show that a shift of 5 cm could be easily resolved by such a system.
Cell death induced by endoplasmic reticulum stress

The endoplasmic reticulum is an organelle with multiple functions. The synthesis of transmembrane proteins and proteins that are to be secreted occurs in this organelle. Many conditions that impose stress on cells, including hypoxia, starvation, infections and changes in secretory needs, challenge the folding capacity of the cell and promote endoplasmic reticulum stress. The cellular response involves the activation of sensors that transduce signaling cascades with the aim of restoring homeostasis. This is known as the unfolded protein response, which also intersects with the integrated stress response that reduces protein synthesis through inactivation of the initiation factor eIF2α. Central to the unfolded protein response are the sensors PERK, IRE1 and ATF6, as well as other signaling nodes such as c‐Jun N‐terminal kinase 1 (JNK) and the downstream transcription factors XBP1, ATF4 and CHOP. These proteins aim to restore homeostasis, but they can also induce cell death, which has been shown to occur by necroptosis and, more commonly, through the regulation of Bcl‐2 family proteins (Bim, Noxa and Puma) that leads to mitochondrial apoptosis. In addition, endoplasmic reticulum stress and proteotoxic stress have been shown to induce TRAIL receptors and activation of caspase‐8. Endoplasmic reticulum stress is a common feature in the pathology of numerous diseases because it plays a role in neurodegeneration, stroke, cancer, metabolic diseases and inflammation. Understanding how cells react to endoplasmic reticulum stress can accelerate discovery of drugs against these diseases.
Emotions, Public Opinion and U.S. Presidential Approval Rates: A 5 Year Analysis of Online Political Discussions

This paper examines how emotional reactions to political events shape public opinion. We analyze political discussions in which people voluntarily engage online to approximate the public agenda: online discussions offer a natural approach to the salience of political issues and the means to analyze emotional reactions as political events take place in real time. We measure shifts in the emotions of the public over a period that includes two U.S. presidential elections, the attacks of September 11, and the start of military action in Afghanistan and Iraq. Our findings show that emotional reactions to political events help explain approval rates for the same period, which casts novel light on the mechanisms that mediate the association between agenda setting and political evaluations. Our contribution is twofold: we show that online discussions contain information that is representative of public opinion trends; and we provide evidence that emotions can be used as consistent indicators of political attitudes on a societal scale.
A Comparison of Effects of Fixed and Tailored Cardiopulmonary Bypass Flowrates on Renal Function

Cardiopulmonary bypass may result in renal impairment but there is little investigative data on the effect of differing flowrates on postoperative renal function. One hundred and twenty-two patients presenting for cardiac surgery were randomly assigned to receive either a fixed CPB flow of 2.4 l.m-2 or a bypass flow tailored to maintain a venous return oxygen saturation of 75–80%. Vasoactive drugs were given to maintain a perfusion pressure of 50 to 80 mmHg. Patients were assessed by serum creatinine, creatinine clearance, arterial blood gases, serum lactates and electrolytes. The results show an overall decline in postoperative renal function compared with preoperative levels, with no significant differences between the two groups.