Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Contribution of Stretch to the Change of Activation Properties of Muscle Fibers in the Diaphragm at the Transition from Fetal to Neonatal Life

The transition from fetal to postnatal life involves clearance of liquid from the lung and airways, and rapid formation of a functional residual capacity. Despite the importance of the diaphragm in this process, the impact of birth on the mechanical and functional activity of its muscle fibers is not known. This study determined the contractile characteristics of individual “skinned” diaphragm fibers from 70 days (0.47) gestation to after birth in sheep. Based on differential sensitivity to the divalent ions calcium (Ca2+) and strontium (Sr2+), all fibers in the fetal diaphragm were classified as “fast,” whereas fibers from the adult sheep diaphragm exhibited a “hybrid” phenotype where both “fast” and “slow” characteristics were present within each single fiber. Transition to the hybrid phenotype occurred at birth, was evident after only 40 min of spontaneous breathing, and could be induced by simple mechanical stretch of diaphragm fibers from near-term fetuses (∼147 days gestation). Both physical stretch of isolated fibers, and mechanical ventilation of the fetal diaphragm in situ, significantly increased sensitivity to Ca2+ and Sr2+, maximum force generating capacity, and decreased passive tension in near-term and preterm fetuses; however, only fibers from near-term fetuses showed a complete transition to a “hybrid” activation profile. These findings suggest that stretch associated with the transition from a liquid to air-filled lung at birth induces physical changes of proteins determining the activation and elastic properties of the diaphragm. These changes may allow the diaphragm to meet the increased mechanical demands of breathing immediately after birth.
Assimilation and Contrast as a Function of Context-Target Similarity, Distinctness, and Dimensional Relevance

Two studies examine conditions under which context information that is cognitively accessible and relevant to interpretation of an ambiguous target stimulus is primarily used as an interpretation frame (and leads to assimilation) or as a comparison standard (and leads to contrast). The currently dominating perspectives explain context effects in terms of the perceived extremity and appropriateness of context information. In the present studies, it is demonstrated that, beyond extremity and appropriateness, whether context information instigates assimilative interpretation or contrastive comparison processes may depend on three additional factors: (a) categorical context-target similarity, (b) perceived distinctness of the context information, and (c) relevance of the context information to the dimension on which the target will be judged.
A New Architecture for an Automatic Generation of Fast Pipelined Adders

This paper describes a compact VLSI implementation of fast pipelined adders. A new architecture is presented. Although the speed achieved is lineary proportionnai to o(n), it is faster than if it would be proportional to o(logn) (n equals to the number of bits). A new design strategy has been used to speed up the algorithm. In addition, the whole set of blocks has been designed in order to allow an automatic generation of any size of adders.
The Teaching and Learning of English as an Additional Language in Primary School

The article seeks to investigate the methods of teaching and learning English as an additional language in primary education, and to identify the most appropriate and effective means of achieving this. The study tracks a cohort of children from reception to Year 2. Data collection draws on the strengths of both qualitative and quantitative paradigms and combines observations of children and staff, interviews with staff, and focus groups with parents. Alongside these are assessments of children and a review of records and policy documents. This is an ongoing longitudinal study spanning three years; the researcher is currently in the final year of data collection.
The State of GLBT Family Research: An Opportunity to Critically Reflect

abstract It has been well established that there exists a severe need for family researchers, family professionals, and therapists that serve families to have training and competency in issues that affect the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) community. Given this need, this study was created to examine and reflect upon the scholarship productivity, relative to GLBT family issues, in some of the most highly respected and top-tier family journals. This study identified 10 of the most prominent journals that involve family issues, and the thousands of articles within (N = 6,003). After a thorough content analysis, GLBT scholarship made up 2.2% of total scholarship (N = 130). Journals, researchers, and institutions that published the most GLBT family research in the articles selected are also reported as well as possible directions for future research.
Dose coverage evaluation for lung cancer radiation therapy.

UNLABELLED Purpose of the study was to evaluate adequacy of target volume coverage with conventional two-dimensional radiotherapy; and to estimate potential of three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy for increasing dose to the target. MATERIAL AND METHODS Analysis was performed for 34 lung cancer patients referred for curative intend two-dimensional radiation therapy. For the same patients two independent specialist teams created conventional two-dimensional plans according to "gold standard" radiotherapy and three-dimensional conformal plans. Evaluation of target coverage adequacy and normal tissue complication probability parameters was performed on two-dimensional isodose distributions overlay over outlined clinical target volumes. Maximum total dose for three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy was estimated keeping normal tissue complication probability on the same level as for two-dimensional plans. Conformity was evaluated. RESULTS For two-dimensional planning maximum target dose was on average 52 Gy (3 Gy 1 standard deviation). Clinical target volumes coverage was poor for most plans; 95% isodose surface covers 57%. This percentage was consistent with 1 standard deviation of 10-17%. Minimum target dose was low - 5-10% of prescribed dose. Three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy allows increasing dose to clinical target volume with elective nodes irradiation up to 68-72 Gy and up to 78-90 Gy without it. Conformity of clinical target volume coverage was acceptable for all patients; 95% isodose surface covered on average 95% of target. CONCLUSION Three-dimensional conformal radiotherapy allows increasing of total dose to the target keeping tolerable dose to functional tissues for most patients. However, only combinations of modern imaging, planning and delivery techniques enable providing adequate and homogeneous clinical target volume coverage with therapeutically significant dose for lung tumors.
Attitudes towards objective testing: a cross-cultural perspective

The present study investigated overseas and Australian students' attitudes towards objective testing and written examinations. Two hundred and ninety-three Bachelor of Business first-year students were surveyed after they had sat both traditional and objective mid-semester examinations. Significant differences between South East Asian and Australian students' attitudes were found. These findings have important implication for tertiary assessment procedures – particularly in light of the increasing numbers of full-fee paying overseas students entering Australian universities.
Support for Censorship of Violent and Misogynic Rap Lyrics

Recent calls for censorship of rap music have demonstrated the need to test the perceptual and especially the behavioral components of Davison's third-person effect hypothesis. The hypothesis states that people perceive media content to have a greater impact on others than on themselves (perceptual component), and that these perceptions lead people to take actions, such as censorship, to prevent the impact (behavioral component). Results of a survey of college students (N = 202) using rap lyrics as the context revealed strong support for both components of the hypothesis. Limited support was found for the social distance corollary of the perceptual component, while the knowledge corollary of the perceptual component was not supported. A new target corollary to the perceptual component was proposed; it predicts that those groups seen as likely targets of a communication will produce larger third-person perceptions than will generalized others.
Empirical constraints on theories of scientific reasoning: Reply to Baron (1990).

Baron (1990) makes two assertions concerning our research on reflectiveness in scientific reasoning (Duemler & Mayer, 1988): (a) His theory, particularly as stated in Baron (1988), predicts our findings, and (b) we have misnamed the indepedent variable in our study as reflectiveness. In this essay, we briefly respond to each assertion and call for three improvements in theories of scientific reasoning
The Role of Language in Theory of Mind Development.

Various arguments are reviewed about the claim that language development is critically connected to the development of theory of mind. The different theories of how language could help in this process of development are explored. A brief account is provided of the controversy over the capacities of infants to read others’ false beliefs. Then the empirical literature on the steps in theory of mind development is summarized, considering studies on both typically developing and various language-delayed children. Suggestions are made for intervention by speech language pathologists to enhance the child’s access to understanding the minds of others.
Evolution of Ethnodominated Marketing Channels: Evidence from Oman and Sudan

Ethnic domination of marketing channels is very common throughout the developing work. The phenomenon often has become closely associated with volatile political issues, such as unequal distribution of wealth or perceived foreign domination of the national economy. Ethnodomination arises when an external commercially oriented economy penetrates a subsistence agricultural economy. Historical records on Oman show in detail how such a system functioned before the era of modern economic development. A cultural boundary separates market-oriented outsiders who operate wholesale and retail firms from the subsistence farmers who are brought into the market economy as petty producers and consumers. Such trade contact starts a process of cultural assimilation. Fieldwork and historical records from Sudan show how such systems can evolve under development. When the cultural boundary has shifted downward in the marketing channel, local people begin to acquire commercially oriented values which allow them to participate more fully in economic activities. However, actually moving into marketing channel activities requires capital, most of which is still controlled by the ethnic group dominating the channels. Modern development brings infusions of capital from outside the marketing system, and local people can begin moving into lower level channel activities easily. Once that happens, successful small retailers accumulate capital to move into wholesaling, and so on. The ethnic group which traditionally had controlled channels shifts investments from marketing into industrial production, and eventually ethnodomination of marketing will decline.
A Comparative Study of Descriptors and Detectors in Multispectral Face Recognition

--Feature extraction is widely used in many computer vision problems such as object detection, image retrieval, object and scene recognition, etc. Feature extraction based on local feature detectors and descriptors requires a good compromise between the detectors and the descriptors. This paper presents a set of tools which are BRISK, FAST, FREAK, HARRIS and SURF for multispectral face recognition which is an alternative to conventional face recognition. The multispectral images are obtained by fusion of thermal and visible images. Keywords---BRISK, FREAK, HARRIS, SURF, multispectral face recognition, visible, infrared.
Title: Some Notes on Software Failure

The problem Software failure manifests itself in at least three important ways:-• Process failure. Here the process of producing software fails in some fundamental way so that the wrong system is produced, or the right system is produced but very late, or even no system is produced at all. This has been a very common source of failure in all types of development. An example is the Taurus Stock Exchange system in the UK as well as a significant number of Government sponsored initiatives. The NHS has been rather blighted here. We are not alone. In the US, a study of $140 million worth of Flight Controls Software Projects 1985-1990 by the Audit Office of the US D.o. D. revealed that 90% was either never delivered or never worked. • Product failure (cessation). Here the product fails when it is running leading to some adverse behaviour. There are numerous examples of this with a significant number of billion dollar failures occurring around the world in the 1990s, the first probably being the AT&T failure of January 1990 when a single mistake took down the entire US long-distance telephone network for 9 hours. In the last two years, most major car companies have had very expensive recalls because of mistakes in software controlled systems leading to unacceptable failures. • Product failure (misleading results). Here the results of scientific research are erroneous because they are computer simulated by defective software. As an example of this, the main mathematical technique used for oil & gas exploration is fundamentally damaged by software failure, (Hatton & Roberts (1994), Hatton (1997)), with an unexpected drop to one significant figure of accuracy instead of the expected four and the necessary three. The evidence suggests that many other numerical simulations in science may be similarly affected. In aggregate, the cost of failure is now such as to be unquestionably damaging to the UK economy (as well as all other major economies) and a resolve to improve matters would be central to the global performance of the UK economy in IT and any dependent activity. It is a genuinely strategic issue. Aggravating factors • Size. Software systems are growing by a factor of two every 18 months in consumer embedded systems. Today we have around 3,000,000 source lines in a car.
Simultaneous Bilingualism and the Perception of a Language-Specific Vowel Contrast in the First Year of Life

Behavioral studies have shown that while young infants can discriminate many different phonetic contrasts, a shift from a language-general to a language-specific pattern of discrimination is found during the second semester of life, beginning earlier for vowels than for consonants. This age-related decline in sensitivity to perceive non-native contrasts has been generally attested in monolinguals. In order to analyze the impact of bilingual exposure on the perception of native-sound contrasts and the early building of language-specific contrastive categories, four-monthold and eight-month-old infants from Spanish monolingual, Catalan monolingual and Spanish-Catalan bilingual environments have been tested with a familiarization-preference procedure on a vowel contrast present onlyin Catalan: /e/—/E/. As expected, younger infants were all able to perceive this contrast, independently of the language of exposure. However, by eight months, only infants from Catalan monolingual environments succeeded. Although the decline in sensitivity with the monolingual Spanish group was expected, the results with the bilingual group challenge the view that mere exposure is enough to maintain the capacity to perceive a contrast. An additional experiment at 12 months of age indicated that bilinguals finally regained discrimination. Together these results suggest a specific developmental pattern of perceptual reorganization in bilingual exposure.
Endothelial Progenitor Cell Research in Stroke: A Potential Shift in Pathophysiological and Therapeutical Concepts

Background and Purpose— Stroke is the leading cause of disability in the Western world; however, few therapies are at hand to decrease this burden. Summary of Review— Endothelial progenitor cells (EPCs) have been introduced in cardiovascular medicine as factotums. EPCs can repair damaged endothelium and attenuate the development and progression of atherosclerosis. Also, EPCs can form new vessels in ischemic areas and thus promote recovery after ischemic events. In stroke, however, EPC research is limited. In our overview, we provide background information on EPC use as a risk marker and as a potential therapeutic agent. Conclusion— In our opinion, the lack of EPC studies in stroke should instigate vascular neurologists to participate in EPC research, as EPCs could also change pathophysiological concepts and improve clinical treatments in vascular neurology.
Deceiving appearances: signaling by “dead” and “fractured” receptor protein‐tyrosine kinases

The mechanisms by which most receptor protein‐tyrosine kinases (RTKs) transmit signals are now well established. Binding of ligand results in the dimerization of receptor monomers followed by transphosphorylation of tyrosine residues within the cytoplasmic domains of the receptors. This tidy picture has, however, some strange characters lurking around the edges. Cases have now been identified in which RTKs lack kinase activity, but, despite being “dead” appear to have roles in signal transduction. Even stranger are the cases in which genes encoding RTKs produce protein products consisting of only a portion of the kinase domain. At least one such “fractured” RTK appears to be involved in signal transduction. Here we describe how these strange molecules might function and discuss the questions associated with their evolution. BioEssays 23:69–76, 2001. © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
"Family Support for Individual Effort": The Experience of Schooling in Mexican Working‐Class Families

This article addresses the meaning of schooling for Mexican working-classfamilies. In my ethnographic research I analyzed narratives of the life courses and school experiences of tenfamilies. I describe one cultural model involved in their rela- tionship with schooling, which I call 'family supportfor individ- ual effort. "Parents emphasize 'family support" and, at the same time, encourage individual personality traits in their children. The young men and women take their parents' support for granted whilefeeling responsiblefor their own actions and deci- sions concerning school. The narratives suggest that individu- als can construct diverse experiences with schooling on the basis of the same cultural model.
Sex differences in depressive, anxious behaviors and hippocampal transcript levels in a genetic rat model

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a common, debilitating illness with high prevalence of comorbid anxiety. The incidence of depression and of comorbid anxiety is much higher in women than in men. These gender biases appear after puberty and their etiology is mostly unknown. Selective breeding of the Wistar Kyoto (WKY) rat strain, an accepted model of adult and adolescent depression, resulted in two fully inbred substrains. Adult WKY more immobile (WMI) rats of both sexes consistently show increased depression‐like behavior in the forced swim test when compared with the control WKY less immobile (WLI) strain. In contrast, here we show that while adult female WMIs and WLIs both display high anxiety‐like behaviors, only WLI males, but not WMI males, show this behavior. Moreover, the behavioral profile of WMI males is consistent from early adolescence to adulthood, but the high depression‐ and anxiety‐like behaviors of the female WMIs appear only in adulthood. These sex‐specific behavioral patterns are paralleled by marked sex differences in hippocampal gene expression differences established by genome‐wide transcriptional analyses of 13th generation WMIs and WLIs. Moreover, sex‐ and age‐specific differences in transcript levels of selected genes are present in the hippocampus of the current, fully inbred WMIs and WLIs. Thus, the contribution of specific genes and/or the influence of the gonadal hormonal environment to depression‐ and anxiety‐like behaviors may differ between male and female WMIs, resulting in their distinct behavioral and transcriptomic profiles despite shared sequences of the somatic chromosomes.
Readability analysis of online health information about overactive bladder

Despite the prevalence of overactive bladder (OAB) and the widespread accessibility of patient education information on the Internet, the readability of this information and its potential impact on patient decision‐making are not known. This study evaluates the readability of OAB material online in the context of website ownership and the Health on the Net standard for information reliability.
Multimodal Classical Conditioning of Fear: Contributions of Direct, Observational, and Verbal Experiences to Current Fears

The authors propose that a multimodal classical conditioning model be considered when clinicians or clinical researchers study the etiology of fears and anxieties learned by human beings. They argue that fears can be built through the combined effects of direct, observed, and verbally presented classical conditioning trials. Multimodal classical conditioning is offered as an alternative to the three pathways to fear argument prominent in the human fear literature. In contrast to the three pathways position, the authors present theoretical arguments for why “learning by observation” and “learning through the receipt of verbal information” should be considered classical conditioning through observational and verbal modes. The paper includes a demonstration of how data, commonly collected in research on the three pathways to fear, would be studied differently using a multimodal classical conditioning perspective. Finally, the authors discuss implications for assessment, treatment, and prevention of learned fears in humans.
Superior results with eccentric compared to concentric quadriceps training in patients with jumper’s knee: a prospective randomised study

Background: A recent study reported promising clinical results using eccentric quadriceps training on a decline board to treat jumper’s knee (patellar tendinosis). Methods: In this prospective study, athletes (mean age 25 years) with jumper’s knee were randomised to treatment with either painful eccentric or painful concentric quadriceps training on a decline board. Fifteen exercises were repeated three times, twice daily, 7 days/week, for 12 weeks. All patients ceased sporting activities for the first 6 weeks. Age, height, weight, and duration of symptoms were similar between groups. Visual analogue scales (VAS; patient estimation of pain during exercise) and Victorian Institute of Sport Assessment (VISA) scores, before and after treatment, and patient satisfaction, were used for evaluation. Results: In the eccentric group, for 9/10 tendons patients were satisfied with treatment, VAS decreased from 73 to 23 (p<0.005), and VISA score increased from 41 to 83 (p<0.005). In the concentric group, for 9/9 tendons patients were not satisfied, and there were no significant differences in VAS (from 74 to 68, p<0.34) and VISA score (from 41 to 37, p<0.34). At follow up (mean 32.6 months), patients in the eccentric group were still satisfied and sports active, but all patients in the concentric group had been treated surgically or by sclerosing injections. Conclusions: In conclusion, eccentric, but not concentric, quadriceps training on a decline board, seems to reduce pain in jumper’s knee. The study aimed to include 20 patients in each group, but was stopped at the half time control because of poor results achieved in the concentric group.