Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Facilitating Effect of Multisensory Letter Encoding on Reading and Spelling in 5-Year-Old Children

Institut Universitaire de France, Paris, FranceSummary: This study aims at identifying the effect of training in the acquisition of the alphabetic principle in 5-year-old children.We compared the effect of multisensory training of letters in visual, haptic, graphomotor, visuo-haptic, and visuo-graphomotorgroups. For each training type, we contrasted trained versus untrained letters in reading and spelling tasks. First, visuo-hapticand visuo-graphomotor training improved letter-sound correspondence acquisition scores more than the other types of training,and this improvement persisted in the second post-test. A cross-modal transfer was revealed by the fact that scores increased afterblindfold haptic and graphomotor experiences. Moreover, performance on untrained letters also improved, suggesting an indirecteffect following the speciﬁc trained letters training. The results argue in favor of a facilitating effect of multisensory encoding onacquisition of the alphabetic principle. Practical implications for the prevention of future reading difﬁculties are discussed.Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Expanded Genetic Code Technologies for Incorporating Modified Lysine at Multiple Sites

Post-translational lysine N-modifications (such as acetylation, methylation, crotonylation, butyrylation, propionylation, ubiquitylation and sumoylation) of specific lysine residues in proteins regulate a variety of biological processes, including transcription, protein degradation, apoptosis, nuclear transport and the cell cycle (Figure 1A). Lysine acetylation and methylation of histones, for example, are important for defining the epigenetic status and controlling transcriptional activation/repression, DNA repair, X-chromosome inactivation and genome imprinting, through alterations of chromatin structures (Figure 1B and C). Acetylation and methylation of lysine residues have also been increasingly discovered in non-histone proteins, including cytoskeletal proteins, molecular chaperones, nuclear import factors, ribosomal proteins, transcription factors and translation factors. The acetylation and deacetylation of lysine residues are catalyzed by acetyltransferases and deacetylases, respectively. Acetylated lysine residues are specifically recognised by bromodomain-containing proteins, which contribute to the maintenance of the transcriptional activity. On the other hand, the amounts of the mono-, diand trimethylated forms of lysine residues are balanced by the methyltransferase and demethylase activities. However, little is known about whether the three possible methylation statuses of the lysine residues cause differences in protein functions, and if so, how they exert their effects. Histones containing trimethylated lysine residues are enriched in promoters, transcription start sites, exons and the coding regions of active and inactive genes and are involved in transcriptional activation/repression. In contrast, histones containing monomethylated lysine residues are often enriched in enhancer regions, Figure 1. Post-translational modifications of histone proteins. A) Examples of naturally occurring N-modified lysine residues (Me3Lys, Ac-Lys, Prop-Lys, Crot-Lys and Buty-Lys) are shown. B) Representation of histone tails and their post-translational modifications. This figure was adapted from refs. [41e] and [46a,b] . C) Structure of a mononucleosome core particle (PDB ID: 1AOI). H2A (magenta and blue), H2B (orange and yellow), H3 (pink and green), H4 (grey and turquoise) and a-satellite DNA (orange, double-strand) are shown as ribbon models.
Importance of Geometry and Refractory Period in Sustaining Atrial Fibrillation: Testing the Critical Mass Hypothesis

Background—The critical mass hypothesis for atrial fibrillation (AF) was proposed in 1914. There has never been a systematic investigation defining the relationship between tissue geometry and AF. The purpose of this study was to determine the association among the probability of maintaining AF and the width, area, weight, effective refractory period (ERP), and wavelength in atrial tissue. Methods and Results—Isolated canine atria (n=20) were perfused with Krebs-Henseleit solution. Baseline ERPs were obtained with and without acetylcholine (10E-3.5 mol/L) using single extra-stimulus pacing while unipolar electrograms were recorded from 250 sites. The tissue was then partitioned using bipolar radiofrequency ablation, and the ERPs were measured again with and without acetylcholine. Any section of tissue that maintained AF was divided until the arrhythmia was no longer inducible. ERPs and conduction velocities were measured in all of the sections after each ablation, and the wavelengths were calculated. The probability of AF was found to be correlated with increasing tissue areas, widths, and weights (P<0.001). The probability of AF was significantly associated with the length of the ERP and the wavelength (P<0.001). With shorter ERPs and shorter wavelengths, there was an increased probability of sustained AF. Conclusions—The probability of sustained AF was significantly associated with increasing tissue area, width, and weight and decreasing ERPs and wavelengths. These data may lead to a better understanding of the mechanism of AF and, thus, help to design more-effective interventional procedures in the future.
Valsalva-Related Subretinal Hemorrhage as a Presenting Symptom of Polypoidal Choroidal Vasculopathy

Purpose To describe a case of Valsalva-related subretinal hemorrhage as a presenting symptom of polypoidal choroidal vasculopathy (PCV). The patient refrained from treatment against our best advice, and thus this is also a rare case of the natural course of an untreated PCV. Methods Case report. Results A 66-year-old female with a respiratory infection coughed intensely until exhaustion, after which she developed visual symptoms on the right eye. Primary care ophthalmologist examined the patient on the same day of the onset of symptoms and referred her to our tertiary medical retinal service for detailed retinal diagnosis including fluorescein and indocyanine green angiography. The right eye had a large subretinal hemorrhage and pigment epithelium detachment in the lower temporal arcade with foveal involvement. Against our best advice, the patient refused treatment. In the following 9 months, the BCVA decreased from 68 to 55 ETDRS letters, the subretinal hemorrhage almost regressed, pigment epithelium detachments persisted, and macular edema, intraretinal cysts, and subretinal fibrosis developed. Conclusions Although classic Valsalva retinopathy with preretinal hemorrhage in most cases can be managed by careful observation and no treatment, this case demonstrates that Valsalva-related subretinal hemorrhage needs different attention and approach.
Can We Call Behaviours Addictive

The question of whether behaviours can be addictive in the same sense as psychoactive substances has been debated in psychology for some time. Increased understanding of the brain reward system tends to support this notion. The way in which behaviours may modulate that system, coupled with self-report and behavioural analysis, suggests three characteristics of substances or behaviours that may lead to addictions. The reward system must register a relatively rapid and substantial improvement in hedonic state, the user unable to find alternative ways of obtaining this improvement, and the performance of the addictive behaviour leads to maladaptive functioning and a state of chronic dysphoria. Cognitive and social factors may also influence the development and maintenance of addiction.
Parasitic vocabulary acquisition, cross-linguistic influence, and lexical retrieval in multilinguals*

The first part of this paper reviews research evidence for typological similarity and/or L2 status as determinants of cross-linguistic influence (CLI) in multilingual lexical production. The second part presents a model of vocabulary acquisition as a framework to explain CLI at the levels of form, (syntactic) frame, and meaning, as well as some of the developmental changes that have been reported for CLI patterns in relation to L3 learners’ proficiency. It is suggested that these patterns can be related to default processes and stages involved in the acquisition of individual word forms and their integration into networks of existing lexical triads, as described in the Parasitic Model of vocabulary acquisition. The third part of this paper points to research into the complexity and non-linearity of multilingual lexical development and the need to learn more about it.
Temporal changes in the documentation of neurological findings among patients with acute ischaemic stroke in a single centre in Japan: a retrospective cross-sectional study

Objective To evaluate temporal differences in the documentation of neurological findings by the same physicians in patients with ischaemic stroke while in hospital. We also investigated differences in the rate of documentation of neurological findings in patients with stroke between internists and neurosurgeons. Design A retrospective medical chart review. Participants Hospitalised adult patients with acute ischaemic stroke who stayed 7 or more days in our hospital. Neurosurgeons (n=8) and internists (n=19) caring for these patients (including up to 10 patients per physician). Main outcome measures The documentation rate of any neurological finding in the patients on each day (from day 1 to 7 and on discharge). The documentation rates of eight neurological finding components (consciousness, mental status, cranial nerves, motor function, sensory function, coordination, reflexes and gait). We included only documentation by the same physician. Fisher’s exact test was used to evaluate differences in outcomes between neurosurgeons and internists. Results During the study period, we identified 172 patients with stroke who were cared for by 27 physicians. The documentation rates of any neurological findings were 94% (day 1), 58% (day 2), 35% (day 3), 40% (day 4), 32% (day 5), 30% (day 6) and 23% (day 7). On discharge, all eight neurological finding components were documented in less than 10% of all cases. The documentation rate was significantly higher by internists than that by neurosurgeons on each day but not on discharge. Conclusions The documentation rate of neurological findings by physicians during usual stroke care decreased to less than 50% after the third hospital day. Given the importance of temporal changes in the neurological symptoms of patients with stroke, further study is needed to determine whether this low documentation rate after the third hospital day was due to a lack of physician interest in neurological findings or other factors.
Evaluating disease similarity using latent Dirichlet allocation

Measures of similarity between diseases have been used for applications from discovering drug-target interactions to identifying disease-gene relationships. It is challenging to quantitatively compare diseases because much of what we know about them is captured in free text descriptions. Here we present an application of Latent Dirichlet Allocation as a way to measure similarity between diseases using textual descriptions. We learn latent topic representations of text from Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man records and use them to compute similarity. We assess the performance of this approach by comparing our results to manually curated relationships from the Disease Ontology. Despite being unsupervised, our model recovers a record’s curated Disease Ontology relations with a mean Receiver Operating Characteristic Area Under the Curve of 0.80. With low dimensional models, topics tend to represent higher level information about affected organ systems, while higher dimensional models capture more granular genetic and phenotypic information. We examine topic representations of diseases for mapping concepts between ontologies and for tagging existing text with concepts. We conclude topic modeling on disease text leads to a robust approach to computing similarity that does not depend on keywords or ontology.
Functional group diversity of bee pollinators increases crop yield

Niche complementarity is a commonly invoked mechanism underlying the positive relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, but little empirical evidence exists for complementarity among pollinator species. This study related differences in three functional traits of pollinating bees (flower height preference, daily time of flower visitation and within-flower behaviour) to the seed set of the obligate cross-pollinated pumpkin Cucurbita moschata Duch. ex Poir. across a land-use intensity gradient from tropical rainforest and agroforests to grassland in Indonesia. Bee richness and abundance changed with habitat variables and we used this natural variation to test whether complementary resource use by the diverse pollinator community enhanced final yield. We found that pollinator diversity, but not abundance, was positively related to seed set of pumpkins. Bees showed species-specific spatial and temporal variation in flower visitation traits and within-flower behaviour, allowing for classification into functional guilds. Diversity of functional groups explained even more of the variance in seed set (r2=45%) than did species richness (r2=32%) highlighting the role of functional complementarity. Even though we do not provide experimental, but rather correlative evidence, we can link spatial and temporal complementarity in highly diverse pollinator communities to pollination success in the field, leading to enhanced crop yield without any managed honeybees.
Inducing awareness for learners through visualizing mutual evaluation data by a self-organizing map

Self-evaluation and evaluations among peer learners, which together are called mutual evaluations in this study, are presumed to motivate learners to increase learning and introspection. The basis behind these effects is the awareness resulting from the differences between self-evaluation and evaluations from others. Therefore, for learners to benefit from the effects of mutual evaluations, we need to easily visualize the mutual evaluation results that make them aware of something. In this paper we design a system to visualize mutual evaluation data, which are many and multi-dimensional data, in such a way that we can easily grasp the overview at first glance and develop an actual system according to the design for fostering “Fundamental Competencies for Working Persons” as an example. In addition, we compare the visualization method used in the developed system with an existing method through a subjective evaluation test and a statistical hypothesis test. Finally, we show the usefulness of our visualization method by comparing the results.
The Bioinformatics Analysis of Comparative Genomics of Mycobacterium tuberculosis Complex (MTBC) Provides Insight into Dissimilarities between Intraspecific Groups Differing in Host Association, Virulence, and Epitope Diversity

Tuberculosis now exceeds HIV as the top infectious disease cause of mortality, and is caused by the Mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTBC). MTBC strains have highly conserved genome sequences (similarity >99%) but dramatically different phenotypes. To analyze the relationship between genotype and phenotype, we conducted the comparative genomic analysis on 12 MTBC strains representing different lineages (i.e., Mycobacterium bovis; M. bovis BCG; M. microti; M. africanum; M. tuberculosis H37Rv; M. tuberculosis H37Ra, and six M. tuberculosis clinical isolates). The analysis focused on the three aspects of pathogenicity: host association, virulence, and epitope variations. Host association analysis indicated that eight mce3 genes, two enoyl-CoA hydratases, and five PE/PPE family genes were present only in human isolates; these may have roles in host-pathogen interactions. There were 15 SNPs found on virulence factors (including five SNPs in three ESX secretion proteins) only in the Beijing strains, which might be related to their more virulent phenotype. A comparison between the virulent H37Rv and non-virulent H37Ra strains revealed three SNPs that were likely associated with the virulence attenuation of H37Ra: S219L (PhoP), A219E (MazG) and a newly identified I228M (EspK). Additionally, a comparison of animal-associated MTBC strains showed that the deletion of the first four genes (i.e., pe35, ppe68, esxB, esxA), rather than all eight genes of RD1, might play a central role in the virulence attenuation of animal isolates. Finally, by comparing epitopes among MTBC strains, we found that four epitopes were lost only in the Beijing strains; this may render them better capable of evading the human immune system, leading to enhanced virulence. Overall, our comparative genomic analysis of MTBC strains reveals the relationship between the highly conserved genotypes and the diverse phenotypes of MTBC, provides insight into pathogenic mechanisms, and facilitates the development of potential molecular targets for the prevention and treatment of tuberculosis.
BDNF is upregulated by postnatal development and visual experience: quantitative and immunohistochemical analyses of BDNF in the rat retina.

PURPOSE This study sought to elucidate changes in the levels and distribution of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) in the retina throughout aging and depending on visual experience. METHODS Protein and mRNA levels of BDNF were quantified by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and semiquantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), respectively. Levels were assayed in the retinas of rats on postnatal day (P)2, P7, and P14 (approximate time of eye opening) and at 1 month (M), 3M, 8M, and 18M of age. Changes in BDNF expression and localization in the retina were assessed by immunohistochemistry. The effect of monocular deprivation during infancy on retinal BDNF expression was also examined, by ELISA and immunohistochemistry. RESULTS Both protein and mRNA levels of BDNF in the rat retina increased after P14. Immunohistochemical analyses revealed that the increase in BDNF protein levels occurred in retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) between P14 and 1M. BDNF immunoreactivity in Müller cell processes was observed in the inner nuclear layer at 1M, but not at P14. The levels of BDNF protein in the retinas of visually deprived eyes were lower than those of control eyes, as quantified by ELISA. Immunohistochemistry showed that BDNF immunoreactivity in RGCs was diminished by visual deprivation, whereas Müller cells were unaffected. CONCLUSIONS These observations indicate that BDNF expression in RGCs is upregulated in an activity-dependent manner, whereas that in Müller cells is regulated only by development.
Mechanical manifestations of activation in cardiac muscle.

W hen a muscle is stimulated electrically, its ability to contract rises and then falls. It is conceptually easy to imagine, therefore, that something called the "active state" might rise and fall with a well-defined time course. Although the concept is simple, the attempts to measure this time course have produced such conflicting results that the whole concept has fallen into disrepute.1 These conflicting results generally are attributed to the fact that the perturbations used to make the measurements frequently altered the active state. Another good reason is that many different parameters were being measured as a reflection of the active state, and some of them may have been inappropriate. As a result, the terms "active state" and "activation" became imprecise and vague, even though they have remained in general use and embody a potentially useful concept. As the concept of active state became more imprecise, interest among muscle physiologists shifted away from this area to studies of the individual mechanisms responsible for activation. These newer studies were made possible by the development of chemical techniques that permitted the exploration of molecular mechanisms. Many of these mechanisms now have been elucidated, and the first purpose of this review is to describe them. This description leads to a definition of what is meant, and what is not meant, by the term "activation. " The second, and major, purpose of this review is to examine the changes in contractile properties of muscle that accompany changes in activation. In the course of this examination, an effort will be made to define mechanical parameters that signal changes in activation. As with the first section, emphasis will be given to showing that some parameters do not accurately signal changes in activation. A third and final purpose of the article is to review the history of the
Organizational Discretion in Responding to Institutional Practices: Hospitals and Cesarean Births

The authors thank Rob Burns, Huseyin Leblebici, Ann Flood, and Randy Brown for comments on earlier versions of this paper. This paper has also benefited from the helpful comments of the associate editor, Christine Oliver, as well as the feedback provided by the three anonymous ASO reviewers. The data were generously provided by Ronald L. Williams, Community and Organization Research Institute, University of California. While others have tried to accommodate agency and interests within institutional theory by directly incorporating a strategic choice perspective, we propose here that institutions are primary and exist as the context within which interests operate. We argue that uncertainty provides discretion, implying that organizational influence on practice will be greatest when institutional standards are most uncertain. We examine these arguments in the context of cesarean section surgeries in hospitals with different ownership and teaching structures. As expected, we found that hospitals' characteristics were influential in determining the use of cesareans only when the level of institutional uncertainty was high, that is, when patient risk was at an intermediate rather than a high or low level. *
Enhancing Performance of Cancellable Fingerprint Biometrics Using Classifier Ensembles

Biometric systems automatically recognize individuals based on their physiological and/or behavioral characteristics like fingerprint, face, hand-geometry, iris, retina, palmprint, voice, gait, signature, and keystroke dynamics. These systems offer several advantages over traditional forms of identity protection (e.g. password-based). Nevertheless, many biometric characteristics are immutable, resulting in permanent compromise when a template is stolen. In order to replace compromised biometric templates, the concept of cancellable biometrics has recently been introduced. The concept is to transform a biometric trait into a new one for enrollment and matching. Although cancellable biometrics were proposed to solve privacy concerns, the concept raises new issues, since they make the authentication problem more complex and difficult to solve. Thus, more effective authentication structures are needed to perform these tasks. In this paper, we investigate the use of ensemble systems in cancellable biometrics, using fingerprint-based identification to illustrate the possible benefits accruing. In order to perform this analysis, we have proposed a simpler version of a transformation function used to create cancellable fingerprint. The main aim of this paper is to analyze the performance of such well-established structures on transformed biometric data to determine whether they have a positive effect on the performance of this complex and difficult task.