Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Sensitivity of Activated Cys Ret Mutants to Glial Cell Line-Derived Neurotrophic Factor Is Mandatory To Rescue Neuroectodermic Cells from Apoptosis

ABSTRACT Hirschsprung's disease (HSCR), a frequent developmental defect of the enteric nervous system is due to loss-of-function mutations of RET, a receptor tyrosine kinase essential for the mediation of glial cell-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF)-induced cell survival. Instead, gain-of-function Cys mutations (e.g., Cys609, Cys620, and Cys634) of the same gene are responsible for thyroid carcinoma (MEN2A/familial medullary thyroid carcinoma) by causing a covalent Ret dimerization, leading to ligand-independent activation of its tyrosine kinase. In this context, the association of Cys609- or Cys620-activating mutations with HSCR is still an unresolved paradox. To address this issue, we have compared these two mutants with the Cys634 Ret variant, which has never been associated with HSCR, for their ability to rescue neuroectodermic cells (SK-N-MC cells) from apoptosis. We show here that despite their constitutively activated kinase, the mere expression of these three mutants does not allow cell rescue. Instead, we demonstrate that like the wild-type Ret, the Cys634 Ret variant can trigger antiapoptotic pathways only in response to GDNF. In contrast, Cys609 or Cys620 mutations, which impair the terminal Ret glycosylation required for its insertion at the plasma membrane, abrogate GDNF-induced cell rescue. Taken together, these data support the idea that sensitivity to GDNF is the mandatory condition, even for constitutively activated Ret mutants, to rescue neuroectodermic cells from apoptosis. These findings may help clarify how a gain-of-function mutation can be associated with a developmental defect.
Fluid overload in a South African pediatric intensive care unit.

OBJECTIVE Fluid resuscitation is integral to resuscitation guidelines and critical care. However, fluid overload (FO) yields increased morbidity. METHODS Prospective observational study of Red Cross War Memorial Children's Hospital pediatric intensive care unit admissions (February to March 2013). FO % = (fluid in minus fluid out) [liters]/weight [kg] × 100%. PRIMARY OUTCOMES FO ≥ 10%, 28 day mortality. RESULTS Median [interquartile range (IQR)] age: 9.5 (2.0-39.0) months, median (IQR) admission weight: 7.9 (3.6-13.7) kg. Median (IQR) FO with admission weight: 3.5 (2.1-4.9)%; three patients had FO ≥ 10%. The 28 day mortality was 10% (n = 10). Patients who died had higher mean (IQR) FO using admission weight [4.9 (2.9-9.3)% vs. 3.4 (1.9-4.8)%; p = 0.04]. CONCLUSIONS Low FO ≥ 10% prevalence with 28 day mortality 10%. Higher FO% with admission weight associated with mortality (p = 0.04). We advocate further investigation of FO% as a simple bedside tool.
Concurrent Helminthic Infection Protects Schoolchildren with Plasmodium vivax from Anemia

Background Plasmodium vivax is responsible for a significant portion of malaria cases worldwide, especially in Asia and Latin America, where geo-helminthiasis have a high prevalence. Impact of the interaction between vivax malaria and intestinal helminthes has been poorly explored. The objective of this study was to evaluate the influence of intestinal helminthiasis on the concentration of hemoglobin in children with Plasmodium vivax malaria in rural areas in the municipality of Careiro, in the Western Brazilian Amazon. Methodology/Principal Findings A cohort study was conducted from April to November 2008, enrolling children from 5 to 14 years old in two rural areas endemic for malaria. A cross-sectional evaluation was performed in April to actively detect cases of malaria and document baseline hemoglobin and nutritional status. Children were followed-up for six months through passive case detection of malaria based on light microscopy. Throughout the follow-up interval, hemoglobin value and stool examination (three samples on alternate days) were performed on children who developed P. vivax malaria. For 54 schoolchildren with a single infection by P. vivax, hemoglobin during the malaria episode was similar to the baseline hemoglobin for children co-infected with Ascaris lumbricoides (n = 18), hookworm (n = 11) and Trichuris trichiura (n = 9). In children without intestinal helminthes, a significant decrease in the hemoglobin during the malarial attack was seen as compared to the baseline concentration. In the survival analysis, no difference was seen in the time (in days) from the baseline cross-sectional to the first malarial infection, between parasitized and non-parasitized children. Conclusion/Significance For the first time, a cohort study showed that intestinal helminthes protect against hemoglobin decrease during an acute malarial attack by P. vivax.
A Predictive Investigation of Reputation as Mediator of the Political-Skill/Career-Success Relationship1

Career success is determined by a number of factors, including some combination of specific competencies and a performance record, along with network development, organizational politics, and reputation building. Theory and research suggest that employees’ political skill predicts their career success, and that this relationship is mediated by employees’ reputation in the workplace. These hypotheses were tested in a predictive study, collecting 2 waves of data from 135 career employees, covering a 1-year timeframe. Political skill at Time 1 predicted hierarchical position, income, and career satisfaction at Time 2. Furthermore, reputation mediated the relationships between political skill, hierarchical position, and career satisfaction. Contributions, implications, limitations, strengths, and future research directions are discussed. jasp_862 1.24
Maximizing Business Returns to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): The Role of CSR Communication

By engaging in corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities, companies can not only generate favorable stakeholder attitudes and better support behaviors (e.g. purchase, seeking employment, investing in the company), but also, over the long run, build corporate image, strengthen stakeholder–company relationships, and enhance stakeholders' advocacy behaviors. However, stakeholders' low awareness of and unfavorable attributions towards companies' CSR activities remain critical impediments in companies' attempts to maximize business benefits from their CSR activities, highlighting a need for companies to communicate CSR more effectively to stakeholders. In light of these challenges, a conceptual framework of CSR communication is presented and its different aspects are analyzed, from message content and communication channels to company- and stakeholder-specific factors that influence the effectiveness of CSR communication.
Adaptive robust controller synthesis for hard disk servo systems

Adaptive robust controller is proposed for read/write head systems for hard disk drives (HDD). This structure can be applied to both track seeking and track following modes, and it makes the mode switching control algorithms proposed in conventional HDD servo system unnecessary. This controller theoretically guarantees a prescribed transient performance and tracking in presence of parametric uncertainties. An improved desired compensation ARC (IDCARC) scheme is then proposed, which has powered by a dynamic adaptive term compared to DCARC. The regressor is calculated using reference trajectory information. This has been done by structural vibration minimized acceleration trajectory control method. Simulation result show that the dynamic adaptation mechanism in IDCARC provide better performance compared to that of ARC, DCARC and the conventional servo system with mode switches control law.
Characterization of Aneurysm Remnants after Endovascular Treatment: Contrast-Enhanced MR Angiography versus Catheter Digital Subtraction Angiography

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: A substantial percentage of coiled aneurysms are associated with persistent filling of an aneurysmal component due to incomplete initial treatment or re-growth. Traditionally follow-up of coiled aneurysms has consisted of repeated intra-arterial cerebral catheter angiography, an invasive procedure with associated risks. Hence, many authors have advocated the use of non-invasive imaging techniques for this purpose. Our aim was to compare contrast-enhanced MR angiography (CE-MRA) with digital subtraction angiography (DSA) for depiction of aneurysmal remnants of coiled cerebral aneurysms. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Aneurysms coiled between September 2003 and October 2006 were retrospectively reviewed. We included patients meeting the following criteria: 1) residual/recurrent aneurysm measuring 2 mm or greater, and 2) CE-MRA and DSA performed no more than 60 days apart. Three readers were asked to determine which technique was superior for characterization of the aneurysmal remnant: CE-MRA, DSA, or indeterminate. Statistical analysis included most rule and κ statistics. RESULTS: Of 232 patients who underwent coiling, 44 met the inclusion criteria (33 women and 11 men; 24–72 years of age). Sixteen patients had neck remnants and 28 had body remnants. The first study to identify the remnant was DSA in 35 patients and CE-MRA in 9. In 32 patients (32/44, 73%), the readers indicated that CE-MRA was superior to DSA for remnant characterization. CE-MRA and DSA were thought to be equivalent in 7 (16%), and DSA was preferred in 3 (7%). Two cases (5%) yielded ambiguous results. Of the 28 body remnants, 22 (78.6%) were characterized by remnant protrusion into the coil mass: In 20 of these (91%), the readers preferred CE-MRA over DSA, and in 2 cases (9%), the techniques were thought to be equivalent. CONCLUSION: In patients with known aneurysm remnants, CE-MRA is at least equivalent to DSA for characterization of aneurysmal remnants after coiling. Contrast filling within the coil mass was more clearly seen with CE-MRA than with DSA.
A single-phase power conditioner with a buck-boost-type power decoupling circuit

This paper presents a novel single-phase inverter with a buck-boost-type power decoupling function suitable for PV generation. The proposed buck-boost-type power decoupling circuit enables the reduction of the peak voltage at the DC bus of the PWM inverter. This enables the use of switching devices with lower voltage ratings, and the resultant switching loss and conduction loss of the PWM inverter can be reduced. Another feature of the inverter is that a power decoupling control method based on single-phase p-q theory is applied. The proposed control method provides a low ripple current at the DC input portion, and it enables the use of small long-life capacitors such as film capacitors instead of electric capacitors. The effectiveness of the proposed system is verified by experiment with a 1 kW setup.
The Politics of Children's Health Insurance Policy

What is the relationship between state-level politics and the resources devoted to children's health insurance programs (CHIP)? The authors asses this question by drawing on theories from the power resources, institutionalist, logic of industrialism, and racial threat schools of thought. The authors find that each approach offers some explanatory power for per capita CHIP spending. In particular, Republican strength in state legislatures and governorships are associated with diminished CHIP spending. Professionalized state legislatures, strong state financial capacities, and states with a legacy of social policy innovation were linked to greater CHIP spending. States with more uninsured children tended to spend more per capita. And states with greater numbers of blacks spent less per capita. But there was no similar effect for Hispanics. The authors conclude that an array of forces at the state level figure prominently in cross-state inequality and the prospects for social citizenship.
Low-dose aerosol infection model for testing drugs for efficacy against Mycobacterium tuberculosis

As a paradigm for chronic infectious diseases, tuberculosis exhibits a variety of clinical presentations, ranging from primary pulmonary tuberculosis to reactivation tuberculosis and cavitary disease. To date, the animal models used in evaluating chemotherapy of tuberculosis have been high-dose intravenous models that mimic the disseminated forms of the disease. In the present study, we have used a low-dose aerosol exposure model which we feel better reflects newly diagnosed tuberculosis in patients converting to tuberculin positivity. As appropriate examples of chemotherapy, four rifamycins (rifampin, rifabutin, rifapentine, and KRM-1648) were tested, first in an in vitro murine macrophage model and then in the low-dose aerosol infection model, for their activity against Mycobacterium tuberculosis. In both models, KRM-1648 had the highest level of activity of the four compounds. In the infected-lung model, rifabutin, rifapentine, and KRM-1648 all had sterilizing activity when given orally at 5 mg/kg of body weight per day. When given at 2.5 mg/kg/day, KRM-1648 had the highest level of activity of the four drugs, reducing the bacterial load by 2.7 logs over 35 days of therapy.
The Effects of Troops to Teachers on Student Achievement: One State’s Study

This study examined approximately 6,500 Florida students’ reading and mathematics performance when taught by a sample of teachers who obtained their teaching credentials through the Troops to Teachers program. Results indicated that students served by Troops teachers performed about equally well in reading and achieved a small but statistically significant advantage in mathematics when compared with all teachers but achieved substantially and statistically significantly higher in both reading and mathematics when compared with teachers matched by subject and teaching experience.
Neither Romance Nor Regulation: Re‐evaluating Community

As the realm of the community has grown increasingly important in the contemporary political economy, the theoretical debates surrounding community have also grown in importance and volume. Too often this literature has been either celebratory or dismissive; either romanticizing the concept and thereby elevating it to primary rank as the focal point of societal initiatives, or objecting to its regulated limits and contradictions and thereby dismissing its importance and political utility. There are important contributions being made by both those who dismiss community and those who celebrate it. But for those interested in understanding the potential for emancipatory social change in the contemporary political economy of neoliberalism there are also severe limitations imposed by these perspectives. After critiquing these literatures and debates, we put forward an understanding of community that is neither dismissive nor celebratory, but instead argues that communities need to be understood as simultaneously products of both their larger, and largely external, contexts, and the practices, organizations and relations that take place within them. Thus, communities, because of their central place in capitalist political economies, can be vital arenas for social change. But they are also arenas that are constrained in their capacities to host such efforts.
A developmental perspective on alcohol use and heavy drinking during adolescence and the transition to young adulthood.

OBJECTIVE This article offers a developmental perspective on college drinking by focusing on broad developmental themes during adolescence and the transition to young adulthood. METHOD A literature review was conducted. RESULTS The transition to college involves major individual and contextual change in every domain of life; at the same time, heavy drinking and associated problems increase during this transition. A developmental contextual perspective encourages the examination of alcohol use and heavy drinking in relation to normative developmental tasks and transitions and in the context of students' changing lives, focusing on interindividual variation in the course and consequences of drinking and on a wide range of proximal and distal influences. Links between developmental transitions and alcohol use and other health risks are discussed in light of five conceptual models: Overload, Developmental Mismatch, Increased Heterogeneity, Transition Catalyst and Heightened Vulnerability to Chance Events. We review normative developmental transitions of adolescence and young adulthood, focusing on the domains of physical and cognitive development, identity, affiliation and achievement. CONCLUSIONS As shown in a selective review of empirical studies, these transitions offer important vantage points for examining increasing (and decreasing) alcohol and other drug use during adolescence and young adulthood. We conclude with a consideration of research and intervention implications.
A generalized neutral theory explains static and dynamic properties of biotic communities

Understanding the forces shaping ecological communities is crucially important to basic science and conservation. In recent years, considerable progress was made in explaining communities using simple and general models, with neutral theory as a prominent example. However, while successful in explaining static patterns such as species abundance distributions, the neutral theory was criticized for making unrealistic predictions of fundamental dynamic patterns. Here we incorporate environmental stochasticity into the neutral framework, and show that the resulting generalized neutral theory is capable of predicting realistic patterns of both population and community dynamics. Applying the theory to real data (the tropical forest of Barro-Colorado Island), we find that it better fits the observed distribution of short-term fluctuations, the temporal scaling of such fluctuations, and the decay of compositional similarity with time, than the original theory, while retaining its power to explain static patterns of species abundance. Importantly, although the proposed theory is neutral (all species are functionally equivalent) and stochastic, it is a niche-based theory in the sense that species differ in their demographic responses to environmental variation. Our results show that this integration of niche forces and stochasticity within a minimalistic neutral framework is highly successful in explaining fundamental static and dynamic characteristics of ecological communities.
Clomipramine trial for treatment-resistant persistent genital arousal disorder: a case series

Abstract Introduction: Treatment of persistent genital arousal disorder (PGAD), as a chronic and disabling condition, implicates substantial compelling complexities. Methods: In this case series, seven women diagnosed with PGAD who were referred to the Sexual Dysfunction Unit of Psychotherapy Outpatient Clinic of Bakirkoy Research and Training Hospital for Psychiatry, Neurology, and Neurosurgery, Istanbul, Turkey between 2006 and 2009 were included. All patients were previously resistant to other antidepressants, antipsychotics and antiepileptics. The additional details of PGAD onset, frequency, type and duration of arousal, previous pharmacological interventions, and maximum and maintenance doses of clomipramine were recorded. Results: All patients achieved a substantial symptomatic improvement with clomipramine within the follow-up period of 2–9 years. Discussion: Based on our study results, we recommend clomipramine in combination with psychotherapy as the treatment of choice in PGAD and to be used before any invasive procedure such as electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) or surgery.
Tracking with intent

This paper presents the novel theory for performing behaviour-based tracking using intentional priors. Motivated by our ultimate goal of anomaly detection, our approach is rooted in building better models of target behaviour. Our novel extension of the Kalman filter combines motion information with an intentional prior. We apply our `Intentional Tracker' to a pedestrian surveillance and tracking problem, using head pose as the intentional prior. We perform a statistical analysis of pedestrian head pose behaviour and demonstrate tracking performance on a set of simulated and real pedestrian observations. We show that by using intentional priors our algorithm outperform a standard Kalman filter across a range of target trajectories.
Opinion Dynamics in Social Networks With Hostile Camps: Consensus vs. Polarization

Most of the distributed protocols for multi-agent consensus assume that the agents are mutually cooperative and “trustful,” and so the couplings among the agents bring the values of their states closer. Opinion dynamics in social groups, however, require beyond these conventional models due to ubiquitous competition and distrust between some pairs of agents, which are usually characterized by repulsive couplings and may lead to clustering of the opinions. A simple yet insightful model of opinion dynamics with both attractive and repulsive couplings was proposed recently by C. Altafini, who examined first-order consensus algorithms over static signed graphs. This protocol establishes modulus consensus, where the opinions become the same in modulus but may differ in signs. In this paper, we extend the modulus consensus model to the case where the network topology is an arbitrary time-varying signed graph and prove reaching modulus consensus under mild sufficient conditions of uniform connectivity of the graph. For cut-balanced graphs, not only sufficient, but also necessary conditions for modulus consensus are given.
Swedish nurses’ perceptions of influencers on patient advocacy

Background: A limited number of studies have shown that patient advocacy can be influenced by both facilitators and barriers which can encourage and discourage nurses to act as patient advocates. Objective: This study’s aim was to describe Swedish nurses’ perceptions of influencers on patient advocacy. Research design and context: Interviews with 18 registered nurses from different Swedish clinical contexts were analysed using the phenomenographic method. Ethical considerations: Ethical revisions were made in accordance with national legislation and guidelines by committees for research ethics at Karlstad University. Findings: Three levels of hierarchically related influencers on patient advocacy were found in the descriptive categories. The fundamental influencer, the nurse’s character traits, was described in the perceptions that advocacy is influenced by nurse’s having a moral compass, having control over the care situation, being protective and feeling secure as a nurse. The second most vital influencer, the nurse’s bond with the patient, was expressed in the perceptions of knowing the patient and feeling empathy for the patient. The third level of influencers, the organisational conditions, was described in the perceptions that the organisational structures and organisational culture influence patient advocacy. Discussion: The results correspond with findings from earlier research but add an understanding that influencers on patient advocacy exist at three hierarchically related levels. Conclusion: The nurse’s character traits are the fundamental influencer to patient advocacy, but in order to be comfortable and secure when advocating for patients, nurses also need to be familiar with both the patient and the situation. A supposition could be that all influencers interact, which needs to be further addressed in future studies.