Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Housing First Services for People Who Are Homeless With Co-Occurring Serious Mental Illness and Substance Abuse

The literature on homeless adults with severe mental illness is generally silent on a critical issue surrounding service delivery—the contrast between housing first and treatment first program philosophies. This study draws on data from a longitudinal experiment contrasting a housing first program (which offers immediate permanent housing without requiring treatment compliance or abstinence) and treatment first (standard care) programs for 225 adults who were homeless with mental illness in New York City. After 48 months, results showed no significant group differences in alcohol and drug use. Treatment first participants were significantly more likely to use treatment services. These findings, in combination with previous reports of much higher rates of housing stability in the housing first group, show that “dual diagnosed” adults can remain stably housed without increasing their substance use. Thus, housing first programs favoring immediate housing and consumer choice deserve consideration as a viable alternative to standard care.
Family relations, adjustment and wellbeing in a longitudinal study of children in care

The article reports on a longitudinal study of children placed in a children's home during the first two years of the 1980s. The 26 children placed when younger than 4 years of age and staying more than 4 weeks were followed up 3 and 9 months after leaving the children's home and 5, 10, 15 and 20 years later. The children's family relations, including early attachments and later parental relationships and the perception of who is their family, have been one of the predominant themes in the recurrent studies. None of them had lived with both parents after leaving the children's home and 20 of them had been in foster care for periods or permanently. At the time of the last study the children were young adults, aged 20–25. They are categorized in three rather distinct categories, one for those with a 'good' and one for those with a 'moderate' social adjustment and well-being and one for those with a 'bad' social adjustment and well-being insofar as involvement with drugs, criminal behaviour and legal sanctions are concerned. Their contacts and relationships with birth parents and foster parents and the perception of who is their family are analysed by use of attachment theory and developmental psychopathology. (Less)
Generalized elasticities improve patient-cooperative control of rehabilitation robots

In the effort to make rehabilitation robots patient-cooperative, two prerequisites have to be met: One is providing the necessary amount of guidance and safety for the patient. Just as important is transparency, i.e. minimum interaction between robot and human when it is not needed. Recently, we suggested the method of Generalized Elasticities, which reduce undesired interaction forces due to robot dynamics by shaping optimal conservative force fields to compensate these dynamics. We now show that these conservative force fields can not only be used to minimize undesired interaction, but that they can also support and guide the patient during therapy when needed. Thus, the patient is given maximum freedom within a safe training environment, with the aim to maximize training efficacy.
Increased glucose metabolism by enzyme‐loaded erythrocytes in vitro and in vivo normalization of hyperglycemia in diabetic mice

The main metabolic properties of human red blood cells (RBC) overloaded with glucose catabolizing enzymes such as hexokinase and glucose oxidase were evaluated. Human erythrocytes loaded with human hexokinase metabolized 3.1 +/‐ 0.2 mumol/h/ml RBC of glucose, an amount double that consumed by normal and unloaded cells (1.46 +/‐ 0.16 mumol/h/ml RBC), while glucose oxidase‐loaded erythrocytes consumed up to 5.5 +/‐ 0.5 mumol/h/ml RBC of glucose but with a time‐dependent increase in methemoglobin formation due to the H2O2 produced in the glucose oxidase reaction. This methemoglobin production was greatly reduced while glucose consumption was increased (8.1 +/‐ 0.4 mumol/h/ml RBC) by coentrapment of hexokinase and glucose oxidase. Similar results were obtained in mouse red blood cells, although the role of hexokinase was less pronounced due to a higher basal level of this enzyme. When administered to diabetic mice the hexokinase/glucose oxidase‐overloaded erythrocytes had a circulating half‐life of 5 days and were able to regulate blood glucose at near physiological levels. A single intraperitoneal administration of 500 microliters of enzyme‐loaded cells maintained a near‐normal blood glucose concentration for 7 +/‐ 1 days, while repeated administrations at 10‐day intervals were effective in the regulation of blood glucose levels for several weeks. These results suggest that enzyme‐loaded erythrocytes can behave as circulating bioreactors and can provide a new way to reduce abnormally elevated blood glucose.
Diagnostic stability in young children at risk for autism spectrum disorder: a baby siblings research consortium study.

BACKGROUND The diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) made before age 3 has been found to be remarkably stable in clinic- and community-ascertained samples. The stability of an ASD diagnosis in prospectively ascertained samples of infants at risk for ASD due to familial factors has not yet been studied, however. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends intensive surveillance and screening for this high-risk group, which may afford earlier identification. Therefore, it is critical to understand the stability of an ASD diagnosis made before age 3 in young children at familial risk. METHODS Data were pooled across seven sites of the Baby Siblings Research Consortium. Evaluations of 418 later-born siblings of children with ASD were conducted at 18, 24, and 36 months of age and a clinical diagnosis of ASD or Not ASD was made at each age. RESULTS The stability of an ASD diagnosis at 18 months was 93% and at 24 months was 82%. There were relatively few children diagnosed with ASD at 18 or 24 months whose diagnosis was not confirmed at 36 months. There were, however, many children with ASD outcomes at 36 months who had not yet been diagnosed at 18 months (63%) or 24 months (41%). CONCLUSIONS The stability of an ASD diagnosis in this familial-risk sample was high at both 18 and 24 months of age and comparable with previous data from clinic- and community-ascertained samples. However, almost half of the children with ASD outcomes were not identified as being on the spectrum at 24 months and did not receive an ASD diagnosis until 36 months. Thus, longitudinal follow-up is critical for children with early signs of social-communication difficulties, even if they do not meet diagnostic criteria at initial assessment. A public health implication of these data is that screening for ASD may need to be repeated multiple times in the first years of life. These data also suggest that there is a period of early development in which ASD features unfold and emerge but have not yet reached levels supportive of a diagnosis.
The Role of Adenosine in Alzheimer’s Disease

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder of the central nervous system manifested by cognitive and memory deterioration, a variety of neuropsychiatric symptoms, behavioral disturbances, and progressive impairment of daily life activities. Current pharmacotherapies are restricted to symptomatic interventions but do not prevent progressive neuronal degeneration. Therefore, new therapeutic strategies are needed to intervene with these progressive pathological processes. In the past several years adenosine, a ubiquitously released purine ribonucleoside, has become important for its neuromodulating capability and its emerging positive experimental effects in neurodegenerative diseases. Recent research suggests that adenosine receptors play important roles in the modulation of cognitive function. The present paper attempts to review published reports and data from different studies showing the evidence of a relationship between adenosinergic function and AD-related cognitive deficits. Epidemiological studies have found an association between coffee (a nonselective adenosine receptor antagonist) consumption and improved cognitive function in AD patients and in the elderly. Long-term administration of caffeine in transgenic animal models showed a reduced amyloid burden in brain with better cognitive performance. Antagonists of adenosine A2A receptors mimic these beneficial effects of caffeine on cognitive function. Neuronal cell cultures with amyloid beta in the presence of an A2A receptor antagonist completely prevented amyloid beta-induced neurotoxicity. These findings suggest that the adenosinergic system constitutes a new therapeutic target for AD, and caffeine and A2A receptor antagonists may have promise to manage cognitive dysfunction in AD.
ASSOCIATIONS AND INTEREST GROUPS

A review of the past decade’s research on American associations reveals significant growth in empirical findings across three levels of analysis: the individual member, the organization, and the political system. The social correlates of joining and participation, particularly gender and race differences, and the effect of incentives on individual decisions continued to attract the interest of many researchers. At the organization level, the structure of incentives and the impact of collective decision-making processes received less attention than the social ecology of association growth and differentiation, The advocacy explosion of recent years that brought many new groups and lobbying methods to Washington stimulated much research on associations in the pressure group system. The field of association research as a whole, however, still suffers from a lack of theoretical consensus on the central issues and of means for studying them.
Autocalibration and Uncalibrated Reconstruction of Shape from Defocus

Most algorithms for reconstructing shape from defocus assume that the images are obtained with a camera that has been previously calibrated so that the aperture, focal plane, and focal length are known. In this manuscript we characterize the set of scenes that can be reconstructed from defocused images regardless of calibration parameters. In lack of knowledge about the camera or about the scene, reconstruction is possible only up to an equivalence class that is described analytically. When weak knowledge about the scene is available, however, we show how it can be exploited in order to auto-calibrate the imaging device. This includes imaging a slanted plane or generic assumptions on the restoration of the deblurred images.
Somatosensory Projections to Cochlear Nucleus Are Upregulated after Unilateral Deafness

The cochlear nucleus (CN) receives innervation from auditory and somatosensory structures, which can be identified using vesicular glutamate transporters, VGLUT1 and VGLUT2. VGLUT1 is highly expressed in the magnocellular ventral CN (VCN), which receives auditory nerve inputs. VGLUT2 is predominantly expressed in the granule cell domain (GCD), which receives nonauditory inputs from somatosensory nuclei, including spinal trigeminal nucleus (Sp5) and cuneate nucleus (Cu). Two weeks after unilateral deafening VGLUT1 is significantly decreased in ipsilateral VCN while VGLUT2 is significantly increased in the ipsilateral GCD (Zeng et al., 2009), putatively reflecting decreased inputs from auditory nerve and increased inputs from nonauditory structures in guinea pigs. Here, we wished to determine whether the upregulation of VGLUT2 represents increases in the number of somatosensory projections to the CN that are maintained for longer periods of time. Thus, we examined concurrent changes in VGLUT levels and somatosensory projections in the CN using immunohistochemistry combined with anterograde tract tracing three and six weeks following unilateral deafening. The data reveal that unilateral deafness leads to increased numbers of VGLUT2-colabeled Sp5 and Cu projections to the ventral and dorsal CN. These findings suggest that Sp5 and Cu play significant and unique roles in cross-modal compensation and that, unlike after shorter term deafness, neurons in the magnocellular regions also participate in the compensation. The enhanced glutamatergic somatosensory projections to the CN may play a role in neural spontaneous hyperactivity associated with tinnitus.
Role Strain in University Research Centers

We examine interview data from 21 science and engineering faculty affiliated with both academic departments and university research centers. Our results indicate that such scientists experience "role strain" but that resources provided by the centers provide sufficient inducement for affiliation. An important faculty development issue is whether the increments in resources are sufficient to offset the fragmentation of activities likely associated with role strain.
Gender and Life Course in the Narratives of Melbourne's High-rise Housing Developers

Socially constructed ideas about the life course, sometimes encompassing gender relations, have long informed the views of those within the housing development industry about who should be housed where in the city, living what sorts of lives. Drawing on the findings of a recent study of developers’ narratives about the construction of expensive, high-rise housing in central Melbourne, a relatively new form of dwelling even in this part of the metropolitan area, several themes are found to characterise the taken-for-granted ways in which these city-builders view the gendered life courses of housing consumers. Developers’ narratives oppose the suburban ‘home’ to the high-rise ‘lifestyle’, consider central city high-rise residences as appropriate only for people without families, and see women, separately from the couples they make up with men, only as potential victims requiring the security that high-rise apartment living is said to provide. These narratives reiterate the characteristics of an essentialised ‘empty nester’, or ‘young professional’ housing consumer, who is envisaged to occupy the new housing and is defined according to life course stage and gender. The developers’ partial and narrow accounts of the likely consumers of this high-rise housing is one factor amongst many that explains the building of precincts of high-rise housing that have limited facilities for children and for pursuits other than consumption of the individual ‘lifestyle’.
Expression of α‐synuclein mRNA in Parkinson's disease

The letter by Papapetropoulos and colleagues presents an additional study correlating -synuclein expression levels and sporadic PD. Previously we and others published studies of mRNA levels of SNCA in PD brains that have been performed using different methods. Some are in agreement with our results, while others contradict our findings. Recognizing the contradictory findings in the field, our paper explained that there were technical issues that arose in the course of these kinds of studies and emphasized the need to carefully control these assays. Thus the conclusion from Papapetropoulos et al. study to be cautious when analyzing gene expression align perfectly with our previous recommendation to be cautious when designing assays for quantifying mRNA levels since results can also reflect other factors (i.e., cell type, tissue status, studied group, assay used). In this light we believe that increased reproducibility of results can best be achieved by independent analysis of replicate samples to improve the interpretation of results and recommend that others working in this field follow our recommendations. Moreover, the internal controls for these studies have to be carefully chosen, keeping in mind the cell type heterogeneity (neurons, glia) of the tissue and the specific neuronal loss in the PD samples. This is why we chose a neuronal mRNA as an internal control for our studies. The results presented by Papapetropoulos et al. may reflect the use of a ubiquitously expressed gene, 18S rRNA, as an internal control in a heterogenous tissue that undergoes neuron-specific degeneration. The decrease in SNCA-mRNA expression might result from the neuronal loss in the substantia nigra and amygdala of PD brains. Finally, we would like to emphasize that we showed an increase in SNCA-mRNA in the majority, but not in all, sporadic PD mid-brain samples we analyzed. Thus, elevation in SNCA-mRNA levels might contribute to disease pathogenesis in many but, perhaps, not all cases of sporadic PD. Our observation is consistent with the hypothesis that an increase in SNCA expression may be a contributory factor, among other factors, to the development of at least some cases of sporadic PD.
A voltage‐clamp study of the electrophysiological characteristics of the intramural neurones of the rat trachea.

1. The electrophysiological characteristics of intramural neurones from the paratracheal ganglia of 14‐ to 18‐day‐old rats were studied in vitro using intracellular, single‐electrode current‐ and voltage‐clamp techniques. 2. Resting membrane potentials ranged between ‐50 and ‐73 mV. In 50‐60% of all neurones, random and occasionally patterned bursts of spontaneous, fast synaptic potentials were observed. In all cases, superfusion with either hexamethonium (100 microM), or Ca2(+)‐free, high‐magnesium‐containing solutions abolished all synaptic activity. 3. Two distinct patterns of spike discharge were observed in response to prolonged intrasomal current injection. Most cells (65‐75%) fired rhythmic, high‐frequency (50‐90 Hz) bursts of action potentials, with interburst intervals of between 300 and 500 ms, throughout the period of current stimulation. A further 10‐15% of cells fired tonically at low frequencies (10‐15 Hz) for the duration of the applied stimulus. In both cell types, trains of action potentials were followed by a pronounced calcium‐dependent after‐hyperpolarization which persisted for up to 3 s. The magnitude of the after‐hyperpolarization following a single spike in tonic‐firing cells was considerably larger than in burst‐firing cells. Both the action potential and the after‐hyperpolarization in all cells displayed a calcium‐dependent, tetrodotoxin‐resistant component which was abolished by the removal of the extracellular calcium. 4. The spike after‐hyperpolarization resulted from activation of an outward calcium‐dependent potassium current which reversed at ‐86.5 mV. This value was shifted by 63.6 mV for a 10‐fold increase in extracellular potassium concentration. 5. All of the cells studied exhibited marked outward rectification when depolarized. This resulted from activation of a time‐ and voltage‐dependent M‐current. The slow inward current relaxations associated with the M‐current became faster at more negative potentials and reversed around ‐85 mV. Raising the extracellular potassium concentration shifted the reversal potential for the current relaxations to more depolarized potentials in a manner predicted by the Nernst equation for a current carried by potassium ions. Both the outward current at depolarized potentials and the slow current relaxations were potently inhibited by extracellular BaCl2 (1 mM) but were unaffected by CsCl (1‐3 mM). 6. Inward rectification at hyperpolarized potentials was a characteristic of all cells. Membrane hyperpolarization revealed inward rectification in the ‘instantaneous’ current‐voltage relationship at membrane potentials greater than ‐80 mV. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
Use of immune modulators in nonspecific therapy of bacterial infections

Despite the availability of a wide variety of potent antimicrobial agents, severe bacterial and fungal infections represent a continuing threat to patients. This is due not only to the antimicrobial resistance of the involved microorganisms but also to the increasing number of patients with severely hampered host defense mechanisms. This failure of antimicrobial therapy has led to attempts to enhance the nonspecific resistance of the host. Since the beginning of this century, many studies have demonstrated nonspecific resistance to infection that can be enhanced by the administration of killed microorganisms like mycobacteria (Mycobacterium bovis bacillus Calmette-Guerin [BCG]) (21), Corynebacterium parvum (now called Propionibacterium acnes) (1), and Listeria monocytogenes and Candida albicans (68). Several preparations derived from microorganisms are capable of duplicating these effects; bacterial endotoxin (lipopolysaccharide [LPS]), muramylpeptides, glucan, and protodyne increase the survival of gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria, some viruses, fungi, and protozoans (4, 14, 74). However, most of these substances are too toxic for clinical use. The exact mechanisms by which these immunomodulators enhance nonspecific resistance are unknown. Since most of these immunostimulants are potent inducers of cytokines like interleukin-1 (IL-1), tumor necrosis factor (TNF), and IL-6 (10, 28, 52, 54), it is logical to ask whether these cytokines are able to induce nonspecific resistance. This minireview examines the effects of these cytokines on nonspecific resistance to infection. In addition, a brief review is given on the effects of interferons, colony stimulating factors, and IL-2. The use of cytokines like IL-1, gamma interferon (IFN--y), and IL-2 as adjuvants for vaccines are beyond the scope of this review.
Adaptive control schemes for discrete-time T-S fuzzy systems with unknown parameters and actuator failures

This paper develops a new solution framework with detailed system modeling, and control design, analysis and evaluation, for adaptive control of discrete-time input-output multiple-delay T-S fuzzy systems with unknown parameters and uncertain actuator failures. A multiple-delay prediction fuzzy system model is derived and its minimum phase property is clarified. Based on a model-based approach, the design and analysis are presented for an adaptive control scheme for multiple-delay T-S fuzzy systems, and an adaptive actuator failure compensation for systems with redundant actuators subject to uncertain failures, for which new system parametrizations and controller structures are developed. Illustrative examples and simulation results are presented to demonstrate the studied new concepts and to verify the desired performance of the new types of adaptive fuzzy control systems.
Innovations in Practice: Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for depression in adolescents

Background: Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) has been shown to be effective in preventing relapse of depression in adults, but has not previously been applied to adolescents who have residual symptoms of depression following treatment. Method: An 8-week MBCT group was adapted for adolescents, and evaluated using qualitative and quantitative measures. Results: Participants report high levels of satisfaction with the group intervention. Qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews provides areas for future development of this intervention. Pilot data indicate reductions in depressive symptoms, alongside positive change in mindfulness skills, quality of life and rumination. Conclusions: Preliminary evidence for the use of MBCT with this group of adolescents is provided.
Design and implementation of the 1024-QAM RF transmission system for UHD cable TV broadcasting

This paper presents the 1024-QAM transmission system design, implementation and performance for providing UHDTV services over HFC network. The CNR@TOV (Threshold Of Visibility, BER of 3.6e-6) of proposed system is 32.7dB under AWGN and data throughput is 48.54Mbps within 6MHz bandwidth. In this paper, we provide a detail description of UHDTV(Ultra High Definition TV) 1024-QAM cable transmission system design which includes functional description of modem components, simulation results, and lab test results for performance evaluation. To overcome severe burst noise and multipath channel impairments, we proposed the MPEG transport stream layer FEC (TS-FEC) and pilot symbol insertion for additional error control coding gain, fast channel acquisition and estimation.