Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
SKELETAL MUSCLE FUNCTION IN A SAMPLE POPULATION OF 1 ST YEAR MBBS STUDENTS AT CMH LAHORE MEDICAL COLLEGE

Background and Aims: Hand dynamometry is a predictor of surgical outcome and old age disability whereas peak expiratory flow rate (PEFR) has been used as an index of respiratory function. This study was designed to measure and compare the skeletal muscle strength and anthropometric markers of upper limb in healthy adults in a sample population of first year MBBS students and to study the correlation between lung function parameters such as PEFR and hand grip strength. Methods: Sixty three medical undergraduate students (33 male and 30 female) between the age of 19 – 21 years were included. Anthropometric measurements were performed according to published guidelines. Hand grip strength was measured by Biopac Hand dynamometer and PEFR was performed by using a Wright’s Peak flow meter. Data was analyzed by Student t test and Pearson’s correlation test. Results: There was a significant correlation between hand grip strength in the dominant hand and PEFR (correlation coefficient = 0.694, p = 0) across both genders. Hand grip strength was significantly correlated with upper arm length (correlation coefficient = 0.417, p = 0.001) and mean arm circumference (correlation coefficient = 0.307, p = 0.014). PEFR was also significantly correlated with BMI (correlation coefficient = 0.39, p = 0.002), upper arm length (correlation coefficient = 0.294, p = 0.02) and mean arm circumference (correlation coefficient = 0.396, p = 0.001). Conclusion: There is a positive correlation between skeletal muscle function as depicted by hand grip strength and PEFR with anthropometric measurements of upper arm such as mean arm circumference and upper arm length in healthy adults recruited in the study.
Harnessing ICT potential: The adoption and analysis of ICT systems for enhancing the student learning experience

– This paper aims to examine how effective higher education institutions have been in harnessing the data capture mechanisms from their student information systems, learning management systems and communication tools for improving the student learning experience and informing practitioners of the achievement of specific learning outcomes. The paper seeks to argue that the future of analytics in higher education lies in the development of more comprehensive and integrated systems to value add to the student learning experience. , – Literature regarding the trend for greater accountability in higher education is reviewed in terms of its implications for greater “user driven” direction. In addition, IT usage within higher education and contemporary usage of data captured from various higher education systems is examined and compared to common commercial applications to suggest how higher education management and teachers can gain greater understanding of the student cohort and personalise and enhance the learning experience much as commercial entities have done for their client base. A way forward for higher education is proposed. , – If the multiple means that students engage with university systems are considered, it is possible to track individual activity throughout the entire student life cycle – from initial admission, through course progression and finally graduation and employment transitions. The combined data captured by various systems builds a detailed picture of the activities students, instructors, service areas and the institution as a whole undertake and can be used to improve relevance, efficiency and effectiveness in a higher education institution. , – The paper outlines how academic analytics can be used to better inform institutions about their students learning support needs. The paper provides examples of IT automation that may allow for student user‐information to be translated into a personalised and semi‐automated support system for students.
NoWait-RPC: extending ONC RPC to a fully compatible message passing system

Locally and functionally distributed applications realized on different system architectures demand a universal, portable and intuitive software utility for interprocess communication. Remote Procedure Calling (RPC) fulfills these requirements but suffers unnecessarily strict synchronization and the danger of deadlocks with complex client/server relations. Using message passing to avoid the inherent problems of RPC, however requires additional knowledge and sometimes a complete structural redesign. This paper presents NoWait-RPC, an extended but fully compatible version of SUN's Open Network Computing Group's ONC RPC, which adds message passing capabilities to form an easy to use programming environment for robust system integration. NoWait-RPC was developed to resolve potentially arising deadlocks in an already RPC-based complex application. It is designed to be a plug-and-play substitute for ONC RPC and consists of the library and the extended protocol compiler nwrpcgen. Additionally, applications using the asynchronous (non-blocking) features of NoWait-RPC may experience a major speedup compared to ONC RPC through pipelining calls to different servers. It has successfully been employed in a research programme dealing with the development of autonomous mobile robots.
Local inhibition of nitrogen fixation and nodule metabolism in drought-stressed soybean

Drought stress is a major factor limiting symbiotic nitrogen fixation (NF) in soybean crop production. However, the regulatory mechanisms involved in this inhibition are still controversial. Soybean plants were symbiotically grown in a split-root system (SRS), which allowed for half of the root system to be irrigated at field capacity while the other half remained water deprived. NF declined in the water-deprived root system while nitrogenase activity was maintained at control values in the well-watered half. Concomitantly, amino acids and ureides accumulated in the water-deprived belowground organs regardless of transpiration rates. Ureide accumulation was found to be related to the decline in their degradation activities rather than increased biosynthesis. Finally, proteomic analysis suggests that plant carbon metabolism, protein synthesis, amino acid metabolism, and cell growth are among the processes most altered in soybean nodules under drought stress. Results presented here support the hypothesis of a local regulation of NF taking place in soybean and downplay the role of ureides in the inhibition of NF.
Millimeter Wave Reflectometry and Imaging for Noninvasive Diagnosis of Skin Burn Injuries

Accurate assessment of the degree of burn in human skin is critically important for burn technicians and physicians when making treatment decisions. Millimeter wave reflectometry and imaging are potential diagnostic tools capable of distinguishing between healthy and burned skin, as the dielectric properties of the latter are significantly different from that of the former. In this paper, the commonly used layered model of human skin is used to simulate the reflection properties of skin with varying degrees of burn, at Ka-band (26.5-40 GHz), to demonstrate the potential for such diagnosis. Measurements of complex reflection coefficient are also conducted on a pigskin with and without medical dressing, which is a close mimic to human skin. Good agreement is obtained, in amplitude and variation trends in the reflection coefficient results, between simulation and measurement results, indicating the potential effectiveness and feasibility of burn degree diagnosis by localized millimeter wave reflectometry and complex reflection coefficient $L^{{\mathrm {2}}}$ -Norm analysis. Finally, synthetic aperture radar imaging technique is used to examine the efficacy of imaging for burn wound at V-band (50-75 GHz). In addition, the effectiveness of localized and imaging methods for evaluating burns covered by medical dressings is also demonstrated.
Damage control resuscitation for patients with major trauma

#### Summary points Military conflict has always driven innovation and technical advances in medicine and surgery. Accepted concepts of trauma resuscitation and surgery have been challenged in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and novel approaches have been developed to address the current complexity and severity of military trauma.1 A number of these new strategies have evolved into a single seamless approach that extends from the point of wounding to surgery, and on to critical care. Although the precise contribution of medical care is difficult to ascertain, better trauma management has almost certainly contributed to a remarkable reduction in the lethality of war wounds. Only 10% of United States servicemen wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan between 2003 and 2009 died, compared with 24% in the first Gulf War (1990-1991) and Vietnam War (1961-1973). w1 Initially derived from clinical experience, new concepts in caring for the injured have been refined with experiment and study and have been translated back to the battlefield in a dynamic process.2 Many of these advances are also relevant to trauma care in civilian practice. The aim of this article is to provide an overview of a new approach …
Failure in Grade: Do Retained Students Catch Up?.

Abstract This study examines the phenomenon of retention in kindergarten through Grade 8 using data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS: 88). Data on 16,623 White, Black, and Hispanic public school students show that boys, minorities, and students from lower socioeconomic status (SES) are more likely to be retained. Two subanalyses of the data were conducted. In the first subanalysis, students who were retained in K through 3 were compared with those who were retained in Grades 4 through 8. The second analysis compared students retained in K through 8 with the total sample of nonretainees. Results suggest that the timing of retention is not uniformly associated with superior performance. Retention at any point is associated with less optimal academic and personal-social outcomes. Nonretained students demonstrate higher grades, test scores, and fewer academic, emotional, and behavioral problems than the retained group. Moreover, retention is associated with more negative outcomes f.
Collaborative Planning

Collaborative planning is an interactive process of consensus building and implementation using stakeholder and public involvement. Based on research of twenty case studies in the United States and Australia, the author explores some of the most common obstacles that have confronted stakeholder groups in their effort to build consensus, including contextual, compositional, operational, organizational, ideological, and power and capacity. The case studies reveal a range of responses for overcoming these obstacles and highlight some important distinctions between models of collaborative planning and conflict resolution. The researcher also identifies key questions for stake-holders to use in designing and assessing consensus-building processes.
Growing (clausal) roots: All children start out (and may remain) multilingual

This paper is concerned with problems of learnability. It speculates on how learners, with the help of UG and a few common-sense strategies, go about discovering abstract relationships between superficially different structural formats available in the input. Far from being confused by variation, learners can use what they perceive as conflicts between UG and experience to infer new system properties. According to the multiple-roots perspective proposed here, the monolingual child starts out like a bilingual child, that is, with coexisting (but not arbitrary) sentential roots, eventually deciding where convergence is possible and where (as in the case of the real bilingual) it is not. The knowledge domain for which this scenario is explored is the acquisition of finite and nonfinite verb placement in German. The paper also addresses the issue of how different target languages enhance or slow down the overall process of structure building and relates this to asynchronies observed in bilingual children.
The Role of Social Comments in Problem-Solving Groups in an Online Class

This grounded theory article focuses on the role of social communications during an online group problem-solving class. The proposed theory states that students working collaboratively and asynchronously with people they do not know use social comments to overcome emotional and geographical distance feelings. The subthemes of self-revelation, tying, and etiquette enabled students to "connect" to group members, group process, and the learning content. The contextual subtheme of technology provided a framework for messages. Social commentary constructed a foundation for problem-solving activities. Instructors are encouraged to consider enhancing social connections as a means of accomplishing primary course objectives.
Attitude Tracking of the Small-Scale Helicopter System using Disturbance Observer based Sliding Mode Control

Control design for a small-scale helicopter is quite challenging due to its nonlinearities, unknown and unmodelled dynamics, strong cross-coupling effects produced by the vehicles actuators, parametric uncertainties and external disturbances. This paper introduces the design of robust and stable disturbance observer (DOB) based sliding mode control (SMC) to meet these issues. It consists of the disturbance observer in the inner control loop which estimates and attenuates plant input generalized disturbance, and the sliding mode controller in the outer control loop which enforces convergence to the reference and stability of the equilibrium. Introduced disturbance observer is a linear low-pass filter capable to compensate unwanted chattering effects of the sliding mode control. The highly nonlinear helicopter model is introduced to illustrate effectiveness of the proposed control method. Designed controllers are implemented in the simulation mode and experimentally tested in a realistic environment. Obtained results showed that developed DOB based SMC controllers improve tracking performances o ver the entire range of the helicopter output variables even in the presence of additional parametric uncertainties, and external disturbances in the form of wind gusts.
Estimating Heterogeneous and Hierarchical Peer Effects on Body Weight Using Roommate Assignments as a Natural Experiment

We investigate peer effects in weight gain by exploiting a natural experiment, roommate assignments of 751 male and 845 female first-year college students. Results indicate that females are subject to peer influence in weight gain, with little evidence of peer effects for males. Peer influences appear to be heterogeneous as heavier and thinner females are affected by roommates more than average-weight females, and hierarchical with females influenced only by roommates who are thinner, of a higher socioeconomic status, and more sexually experienced relative to themselves. Similarity of academic performance, religiosity, and political views appears to facilitate transmission of peer influences.
Evaluation of JNK Blockade as an Early Intervention Treatment for Type 1 Diabetic Nephropathy in Hypertensive Rats

Background/Aims: The c-Jun amino-terminal kinase (JNK) signaling pathway is activated in human kidney diseases and promotes renal injury in experimental glomerulonephritis. In this study, we examined whether JNK signaling plays a role in the development of diabetic nephropathy or in regulating hypertension, which exacerbates diabetic renal injury. Methods: Diabetes was induced in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR) using streptozotocin. At week 16 of diabetes, rats with equivalent hyperglycemia and albuminuria were randomized into groups which received no treatment, vehicle alone or a selective JNK inhibitor (CC-930, 60 mg/kg/bid) for 10 weeks. These rats were assessed for hypertension and progression of renal damage. Results: At week 16, diabetic rats showed increased kidney JNK activation compared with nondiabetic controls. Effective JNK inhibition was demonstrated at week 26 by reductions in c-Jun phosphorylation. CC-930 did not affect blood pressure, kidney hypertrophy, glomerular hyperfiltration, podocyte loss, glomerular fibrosis or tubulointerstitial injury in diabetic SHR. However, CC-930 reduced macrophages and ccl2 mRNA levels in diabetic kidneys. In contrast, CC-930 exacerbated albuminuria at week 26, which was associated with reduced glomerular mRNA levels of the podocyte-specific molecules, nephrin and podocin. Conclusion: JNK inhibition does not prevent the progression of early diabetic renal injury in hypertensive rats, which contrasts with the ability of JNK inhibition to suppress albuminuria and injury in experimental glomerulonephritis.
Causal modeling in family research.

Structural equations modeling or causal modeling is a strategy through which researchers enhance their ability to draw causal inferences for their empirical research. This type of modeling in family studies is useful when a researcher has the goal of determining whether certain cause and effect relationships among variables of interest exist in the real world of families. Godwin reviews the application of causal modeling in family research and the requirements for effectively implementing a causal modeling strategy. She concludes that a fundamental point that must be understood by critics of causal modeling with ex post facto data is that family researchers will never be able to address adequately the important causal questions of this discipline if researchers do not depart from the ideal experimental research design. That researchers will never know for sure whether a particular causal model is true is no reason not to try to discover whether it is a plausible representation of what is happening in the real world of families with as much certainty as possible. It is clearly superior to alternative methods such a relying on folklore armchair commentary or empirical tests using models and methods not designed for that purpose. Correlation does not imply causation but neither does the F test used with data from an experimental design taken alone imply causation. It is the logic of the theory the research design with its inherent advantage of creating ceteris paribus via random assignment and laboratory control the soundness of the measurement sampling and data collection plus the researchers careful consideration of group differences that collectively help the researcher infer causation. Regardless of what type of design is used being able to infer cause-and-effect in relationships from empirical data requires knowing about all the threats to such valid causal inference and ruling them out as systematically as possible. Causal modeling strategies should be viewed as 1 set of tools for aiding in that task. Causal modeling in family research has room for improvement. Until researchers begin thinking more comprehensively about the requirements for causal modeling and including those complexities in designs and empirical tests tests of causal models will be less than valid and understanding of families incomplete.
Torrance Yaratıcı Düşünme Testleri-Şekil Testi Aracılığıyla 12-14 Yaşları Arasındaki Çocukların Yaratıcılık Düzeylerinin Yaş ve Cinsiyete Göre Karşılaştırılması

This study aims to compare figurative creativity of 12-14 years old children using age and sex as basic variables. 90 subjects were given Torrance Test of Creativity Thinking Figural Form A, and the obtained scores were evaluated byfour indicators of creativity, namely fluidity, flexibility, originality and elaboration. Applied variance analysis in four indicators showed that the creativity of the subjects who belong to 14 years old group is significantly higher than subjects who range between 12 and 13 years old. Furthermore, the results of analysis clearly showed that the flexibilty of boys who belong to 13 years old group is significantly higher than the girls in the same group. However, data showed that there is no significant differences between girls and boys when creative is concerned. Results indicated that some indicators of creativity are correlated with each other.
Forms in search of substance: Quality and evaluation in Romanian universities

Romania’s integration into the European Union is fraught with cultural stereotypes. One dominant narrative is that the country creates ‘forms without substance’: meaningless institutions without adequate personnel or intellectual capital. In this paper, we investigate whether this popular stereotype adequately describes higher education reforms in recent years. We ask, ‘what is the meaning of “quality” in the reforms of Romanian universities? ’ We present our findings based on an analysis of policy documents and 186 semi-structured interviews with administrators, professors and students in five universities. The results show that people in universities have engaged in a process of interpretation and negotiation with the new quality standards. They are ‘forms in search of substance’, as meaning is created within and around the new institutional structures. We argue that ‘quality’ has come to mean ‘scoring high in evaluations’. This is not without problems for the actors in universities; the evaluation standards contain many contradictions, while evaluations themselves have important limitations. Such findings reflect earlier studies on the ‘audit culture’ in university life.
Promoting a structural view of biology for varied audiences: an overview of RCSB PDB resources and experiences

The Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics Protein Data Bank (RCSB PDB) serves a community of users with diverse backgrounds and interests. In addition to processing, archiving and distributing structural data, it also develops educational resources and materials to enable people to utilize PDB data and to further a structural view of biology.
A kinetic model enabling controlled electrosynthesis of stacked metallic nanotubes and nanowires.

Methods of filling pores for the fabrication of nanostructures are various but the most employed is the electrochemical deposition process (EDP). However, little is known about the deposition process itself, which partially explains the limits of developing tunable and controlled electrodeposited nanostructure properties. Recently we proposed a comprehensive kinetic model of the process that provides a quantitative evaluation of determining growth factors on the resulting nanostructure properties. Among tunable properties via adjustment of growth parameters, the possibility of producing metallic nanowires and nanotubes by taking advantages of the parasite reduction of hydrogen protons has been already evidenced. However, if the growth of a tube or a wire seems to depend on the metal deposition rate in comparison with that of hydrogen generation inside the pores (dissolved or evolved as bubbles), the tuning of the process needs to corroborate the electrochemical interfacial phenomena, including the hydrogen gas nucleation and evolution, with nanopore dimension and main growth parameters. In this work, we present for the first time a comprehensive and robust model to predict and tune quantitatively the nanostructure geometry (tubular or dense cylinder) of metals by means of electrochemical deposition inside templates. Experimental validation is done via cobalt nanowire deposition. During EDP, the reduction of metallic ions Mnþ from the bulk solution into the ionic metal lattice M(deposition) and the cathodic evolution of hydrogen are the main reactions. Equation (1) is the Nernst equation for the variation of M/Mnþ potential EðMnþ=MÞ with concentration M nþ: