Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Elementary School Principals as Boundary Spanners: Their Engagement with Parents

The elementary school principal, the chief administrator at the local school level, occupies the boundary‐spanning role. One aspect of the principal′s role as boundary spanner is to engage with parents. The principals′ interactions with parents in terms of their boundary‐spanning functions are described. Interviews of 113 suburban elementary school principals suggest they are concerned with buffering and bridging between the school organisation and their parental clientele as boundary spanners. When buffering, principals mediate between angry parents and their superiors at central office and moderate the impact of complaining parents on their schools. When bridging, principals aim at obtaining parental support through promoting public relations.
Anaesthetic management of parturient with malaria and thrombocytopaenia

Malarial infection during pregnancy is a significant public health problem with substantial risk for the pregnant woman and newborn child. Globally, 125 million women are at risk every year. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 23 million pregnant women are exposed to malarial infection annually and approximately 400,000 pregnant women develop moderate to severe anaemia. [1] We report successful perioperative management of case of Plasmodium vivax infection in full-term parturient who presented with thrombocytopaenia and deep transverse arrest and subsequently developed right occipito-parietal haematoma with mass effect.
[The genetics of dementias, Part 3: a molecular basis for the multifactorial inheritance of sporadic Alzheimer's disease].

The majority of Alzheimer's disease cases, i.e. more than 85% of the whole population of patients, can be referred to as the sporadic form of the disease, with a negative family history and complex inheritance. As the genetic background of sporadic Alzheimer's disease is still largely unknown. , strategies based on individual genetic risk profiling for either early prediction of the disease or its therapy and prevention are not possible. The APOE*4 allele of the gene for apolipoprotein E is still the only completely confirmed risk factor. Screening for new genetic risk factors with the use of genetic association analysis has many methodological difficulties and limitations. New combined approaches including genomics, proteogenomics, pharmacogenomics, epigenomics, and bioinformatics have to been applied in the future search for a molecular basis of AD. Genetic defects do not fully explain the complexity of the etiopathogenesis of this disease. It is rather certain that environmental factors (through epigenetic modifications in the patient' sepigenome) also have impact on the initiation of neurodegeneration processes. The identification of new genetic and environmental risk factors would make it possible to understand epistatic processes, for example interactions between genes and between genes and environmental factors, responsible for the complex etiology and multifactorial inheritance of sporadic Alzheimer's disease.
The 18 kDa translocator protein influences angiogenesis, as well as aggressiveness, adhesion, migration, and proliferation of glioblastoma cells

Background It is known that the mitochondrial 18 kDa translocator protein (TSPO) is present in almost all peripheral tissues and also in glial cells in the brain. TSPO levels are typically enhanced in correlation with tumorigenesis of cancer cells including glioblastoma. Relevant for angiogenesis, TSPO is also present in almost all cells of the cardiovascular system. Methods We studied the effect of TSPO knockdown by siRNA on various aspects of tumor growth of U118MG glioblastoma cells in two in-vivo models: a nude mouse model with intracerebral implants of U118MG glioblastoma cells and implantation of U118MG glioblastoma cells on the chorionallantoic membrane (CAM) of chicken embryos. In vitro, we further assayed the influence of TSPO on the invasive potential of U118MG cells. Results TSPO knockdown increased tumor growth in both in-vivo models compared with the scrambled siRNA control. Angiogenesis was also increased by TSPO knockdown as determined by a CAM assay. TSPO knockdown led to a decrease in adhesion to the proteins of the extracellular matrix, including fibronectin, collagen I, collagen IV, laminin I, and fibrinogen. TSPO knockdown also led to an enhancement in the migratory capability of U118MG cells, as determined in a modified Boyden chamber. Application of the TSPO ligand 1-(2-chlorophenyl)-N-methyl-N-(1-methylpropyl)-3-isoquinolinecarboxamide (PK 11195) at a concentration of 25 µmol/l in the in-vitro models yielded results similar to those obtained on TSPO knockdown. We found no effects of PK 11195 on TSPO protein expression. Interestingly, at low nmol/l concentrations (around 1 nmol/l), PK 11195 enhanced adhesion to collagen I, suggesting a bimodal concentration effect of PK 11195. Conclusion Intact TSPO appears to be able to counteract the invasive and angiogenic characteristics related to the aggressiveness of U118MG glioblastoma cells in vivo and in vitro.
Cyclic Coordinate-Update Algorithms for Fixed-Point Problems: Analysis and Applications

Many problems reduce to the fixed-point problem of solving $x=T(x)$, where $T$ is a mapping from a Hilbert space to itself. To this problem we apply the coordinate-update algorithms, which update only one or a few components of $x$ at each step. When each step is cheap, these algorithms are faster than the full fixed-point iteration (which updates all the components). In this paper, we focus on cyclic coordinate selection rules, where the ordering of coordinates in each cycle is arbitrary. The corresponding algorithms are fast, but their convergence is unknown in the fixed-point setting. When $T$ is a nonexpansive operator and has a fixed point, we show that the sequence of coordinate-update iterates converges to a fixed point under proper step sizes. This result applies to the primal-dual coordinate-update algorithms, which have wide applications to optimization problems with nonseparable nonsmooth objectives, and/or global linear constraints. Numerically, we apply coordinate-update algorithms with cycli.
Phosphoglycerate kinase gene from Zymomonas mobilis: cloning, sequencing, and localization within the gap operon

The Zymomonas mobilis gene encoding phosphoglycerate kinase (EC 2.7.3.2), pgk, has been cloned into Escherichia coli and sequenced. It consists of 336 amino acids, including the N-terminal methionine, with a molecular weight of 41,384. This promoterless gene is located 225 base pairs downstream from the gap gene and is part of the gap operon. Previous studies have shown that the specific activities of glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase and phosphoglycerate kinase do not change coordinately in Z. mobilis, although the two enzymes appear to be under the control of a common promoter. The translated amino acid sequence for the Z. mobilis phosphoglycerate kinase is less conserved than those of eucaryotic genes. A comparison of known sequences for phosphoglycerate kinase revealed a high degree of conservation of structure with 102 amino acid positions being retained by all. In general, the amino acid positions at the boundaries of beta-sheet and alpha-helical regions and those connecting these regions were more highly conserved than the amino acid positions within regions of secondary structure.
Mind over matter

Zusammenfassung. Theoretischer Hintergrund: Neuere Befunde zeigen, dass psychobiologische Prozesse an der Entstehung emotionaler Prozesse beteiligt sind, wobei dysfunktionale Reaktionen neuroendokriner Systeme als mogliche biologische Korrelate psychischer Storungen diskutiert werden. Unklar ist, ob effektive psychotherapeutische Masnahmen, wie z.B. Expositionstherapie bei Phobien, nicht nur auf Symptomebene, sondern auch physiologische Prozesse beeinflusst. Fragestellung: Hat eine erfolgreiche kognitiv-verhaltenstherapeutische Intervention (Wiederholte Exposition bei Spinnenangstlichen) Auswirkungen auf biologische Parameter und welche Rolle spielen dabei kognitive Prozesse? Methoden: Psychologischen (Bewertung, Angst) und biologischen Reaktionen (Cortisol und Herzrate) von funfzehn Spinnenangstliche und funfzehn gesunde Kontrollpersonen wurden wahrend einer Spinnenexposition verglichen. Zusatzlich wurden bei Spinnenangstlichen Veranderungen dieser Parameter uber den Verlauf von drei Expositionsterminen .
Pruning within cascade-correlation

Cascade-correlation produces networks with all possible feedforward connections. The pruning of redundant connections using a simple saliency measure is examined, along with three methods for stopping the pruning process which may be used with any network type. The methods are shown to be effective and it is further shown that a large number of redundant connections may be located and removed from cascade-correlation networks.
Timing is everything : a spatio-temporal approach to the analysis of facial actions

This thesis presents a fully automatic facial expression analysis system based on the Facial Action Coding System (FACS). FACS is the best known and the most commonly used system to describe facial activity in terms of facial muscle actions (i.e., action units, AUs). We will present our research on the analysis of the morphological, spatio-temporal and behavioural aspects of facial expressions. In contrast with most other researchers in the field who use appearance based techniques, we use a geometric feature based approach. We will argue that that approach is more suitable for analysing facial expression temporal dynamics. Our system is capable of explicitly exploring the temporal aspects of facial expressions from an input colour video in terms of their onset (start), apex (peak) and offset (end). The fully automatic system presented here detects 20 facial points in the first frame and tracks them throughout the video. From the tracked points we compute geometry-based features which serve as the input to the remainder of our systems. The AU activation detection system uses GentleBoost feature selection and a Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifier to find which AUs were present in an expression. Temporal dynamics of active AUs are recognised by a hybrid GentleBoost-SVM-Hidden Markov model classifier. The system is capable of analysing 23 out of 27 existing AUs with high accuracy. The main contributions of the work presented in this thesis are the following: we have created a method for fully automatic AU analysis with state-of-the-art recognition results. We have proposed for the first time a method for recognition of the four temporal phases of an AU. We have build the largest comprehensive database of facial expressions to date. We also present for the first time in the literature two studies for automatic distinction between posed and spontaneous expressions.
Subtractive hybridization reveals tissue‐specific expression of ahnak during embryonic development

The gene product ahnak has been identified from extra‐embryonic mesoderm cDNA enriched using a subtractive hybridization approach modified for using small amounts of starting material. Clones for cyclin D2 and H19 have also been isolated as being preferentially enriched in the extra‐embryonic mesoderm compared with the embryo proper of embryonic day (E) 7.5 neural plate stage mouse embryos. The differential expression of these genes was confirmed at gastrulation stage using in situ hybridization. More detailed analysis of the human genomic ahnak sequence suggests that its highly repetitive structure was formed by unequal cross‐over and gene conversion. During organogenesis, ahnak is expressed in a variety of tissues, including migratory mesenchyme. By E12.5, the major site of expression of ahnak is craniofacial mesenchyme. Immunohistochemical analysis has shown that ahnak protein is expressed mainly at the cell membrane of migratory mesenchymal cells, primarily in the nucleus of bone growth plate cells and mostly in the cytoplasm of differentiating nasal epithelia. The potential functions of ahnak are discussed in light of these results.
Links in a Professional Development Chain: Preservice and Inservice Education for Effective Programs of School, Family, and Community Partnerships

This paper summarizes lessons learned from studies of preservice education and inservice programs of family and community involvement. The research and interventions suggest that a chain of professional development events is needed to prepare educators to conduct and sustain effective programs of school, family, and community partnerships. This starts with college courses and continues with inservice education, ongoing technical assistance and support, and external networking. There are required links, missing and weak links, interconnected links, and ways to strengthen the professional development chain. The discussion yields a blueprint for a professional development system that should produce more and better programs of school, family, and community partnerships. This work was supported by grants from NICHD and the U. S. Department of Education (IES). The opinions expressed are the author’s and do not necessarily represent the positions of the funding agencies. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the European Research Network (ERNAPE) conference on Parents in Education, Gdansk, Poland, September 2003.
Career commitment and career success: moderating role of emotion perception

This study examined the moderating effect of emotion perception – a basic component of emotional intelligence – on the relationship between career commitment and career success. White‐collar employees from a diverse set of occupations and organizations in Malaysia were surveyed. Moderated multiple regression results showed that career commitment predicted objective career success (i.e. salary level) only for employees with average to high emotion perception but not for those with low emotion perception. Emotion perception, however, did not moderate the effects of career commitment on subjective career success (i.e. career satisfaction). Implications of the findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.
Using eye movements to determine referents in a spoken dialogue system

Most computational spoken dialogue systems take a "literary" approach to reference resolution. With this type of approach, entities that are mentioned by a human interactor are unified with elements in the world state based on the same principles that guide the process during text interpretation. In human-to-human interaction, however, referring is a much more collaborative process. Participants often under-specify their referents, relying on their discourse partners for feedback if more information is needed to uniquely identify a particular referent. By monitoring eye-movements during this interaction, it is possible to improve the performance of a spoken dialogue system on referring expressions that are underspecified according to the literary model. This paper describes a system currently under development that employs such a strategy.
Emanuel Miller lecture: confusions and controversies about Asperger syndrome.

BACKGROUND Hans Asperger drew attention to individuals who show the core symptoms of autism in the presence of high verbal intelligence. METHODS A review of the literature explores current issues concerning the diagnosis and nature of Asperger syndrome. RESULTS The behavioural and neurophysiological evidence to date suggests that Asperger syndrome is a variant of autism typically occurring in high-functioning individuals, and not a separate disorder. One of the problems of diagnosis is that the typical impairment of social communication may be difficult to identify in early childhood, and can be camouflaged in adulthood by compensatory learning. The range and nature of the social impairments in Asperger syndrome are still in need of investigation, but appear to be less severe than in autism. Experimental evidence suggests that individuals with Asperger syndrome may lack an intuitive theory of mind (mentalising), but may be able to acquire an explicit theory of mind. Brain imaging studies pinpoint a network that links medial prefrontal and temporal cortex as the neural substrate of intuitive mentalising. This network shows reduced activation and poor connectivity in Asperger syndrome. While some individuals with Asperger syndrome have written eloquently about their lives, their ability to talk about their own emotions appears to be impaired (alexithymia). This impairment may be linked to depression and anxiety, which is common in adulthood. Little is as yet known about the often considerable cognitive strengths in Asperger syndrome, or about the difficulties observed in higher-level executive skills. CONCLUSIONS Studies are needed that define the developmental course of the disorder and the nature of the strengths and weaknesses in both social and non-social domains. This requires more sensitive assessment instruments than are currently available. Questions about the prevalence of Asperger syndrome, about associated and secondary features, and about optimal education and management, urgently call for such studies.
Analysis of a ZVS converter with the balanced output currents

A new three-level zero voltage switching (ZVS) pulse-width modulation (PWM) converter with the balanced output currents is presented for medium input voltage and high load current applications. Three-level converter with two clamped diodes and one flying capacitor is adopted to reduce the voltage stress of power semiconductors for medium voltage application and achieve ZVS operation for power MOSFETs. In order to reduce the size of the magnetic core and copper windings and to decrease the current rating of the rectifier diodes, three circuit cells are adopted in the proposed converter for high current applications. In each circuit cell, two transformers with a series connection are used in order to balance the output currents. To overcome the drawback of a wide range of switching frequencies in conventional series resonant converters, the duty cycle PWM control is adopted in the proposed circuit to achieve ZVS turn-on for power MOSFETs and zero current switching (ZCS) turn-off for rectifier diodes. Finally, experimental results are provided to demonstrate the performance of the proposed converter.
Activated protein C stimulates the fibrinolytic activity of cultured endothelial cells and decreases antiactivator activity.

The effects of bovine activated protein C (APC) on the fibrinolytic activity of cultured bovine aortic endothelial cells were investigated. Confluent monolayers were incubated with purified APC under various conditions and changes in total fibrinolytic activity and in the level of plasminogen activator and plasminogen activator inhibitor (antiactivator) were monitored. The addition of APC to the cells in the absence of other blood or plasma components led to a rapid, dose-dependent increase of fibrinolytic activity both in the media and in cellular extracts. For example, 3.4 micrograms of APC per ml resulted in a 15-fold increase of fibrinolytic activity in the medium within 1 hour. The enhanced fibrinolytic activity reflected increases in both the urokinase-related and tissue-type plasminogen activators produced by these cells. Interestingly, treatment of cells with APC also caused a rapid, dose-dependent decrease in antiactivator activity. Diisopropyl fluorophosphate-inactivated APC did not decrease antiactivator or increase plasminogen activator. Although a small but significant direct (i.e., cell-independent) effect of APC on both fibrinolytic activity and antiactivator activity could be demonstrated, the major portion of these changes appeared to be cell-mediated. These observations indicate that the fibrinolytic potential of cultured endothelial cells is increased by APC and that the enzyme active site is essential for this change. Moreover, the results suggest that one of the primary mechanisms for this stimulation of endothelial cell fibrinolytic activity involves an APC-mediated decrease in antiactivator.
N-Acetylcholinesterase-Induced Apoptosis in Alzheimer's Disease

Background Alzheimer's disease (AD) involves loss of cholinergic neurons and Tau protein hyper-phosphorylation. Here, we report that overexpression of an N-terminally extended “synaptic” acetylcholinesterase variant, N-AChE-S is causally involved in both these phenomena. Methodology and Principal Findings In transfected primary brain cultures, N-AChE-S induced cell death, morphological impairments and caspase 3 activation. Rapid internalization of fluorescently labeled fasciculin-2 to N-AChE-S transfected cells indicated membranal localization. In cultured cell lines, N-AChE-S transfection activated the Tau kinase GSK3, induced Tau hyper-phosphorylation and caused apoptosis. N-AChE-S-induced cell death was suppressible by inhibiting GSK3 or caspases, by enforced overexpression of the anti-apoptotic Bcl2 proteins, or by AChE inhibition or silencing. Moreover, inherent N-AChE-S was upregulated by stressors inducing protein misfolding and calcium imbalances, both characteristic of AD; and in cortical tissues from AD patients, N-AChE-S overexpression coincides with Tau hyper-phosphorylation. Conclusions Together, these findings attribute an apoptogenic role to N-AChE-S and outline a potential value to AChE inhibitor therapeutics in early AD.
Multifaceted Roles of Metzincins in CNS Physiology and Pathology: From Synaptic Plasticity and Cognition to Neurodegenerative Disorders

The extracellular matrix (ECM) and membrane proteolysis play a key role in structural and functional synaptic plasticity associated with development and learning. A growing body of evidence underscores the multifaceted role of members of the metzincin superfamily, including metalloproteinases (MMPs), A Disintegrin and Metalloproteinases (ADAMs), A Disintegrin and Metalloproteinase with Thrombospondin Motifs (ADAMTSs) and astacins in physiological and pathological processes in the central nervous system (CNS). The expression and activity of metzincins are strictly controlled at different levels (e.g., through the regulation of translation, limited activation in the extracellular space, the binding of endogenous inhibitors and interactions with other proteins). Thus, unsurprising is that the dysregulation of proteolytic activity, especially the greater expression and activation of metzincins, is associated with neurodegenerative disorders that are considered synaptopathies, especially Alzheimer’s disease (AD). We review current knowledge of the functions of metzincins in the development of AD, mainly the proteolytic processing of amyloid precursor protein, the degradation of amyloid β (Aβ) peptide and several pathways for Aβ clearance across brain barriers (i.e., blood-brain barrier (BBB) and blood-cerebrospinal fluid barrier (BCSFB)) that contain specific receptors that mediate the uptake of Aβ peptide. Controlling the proteolytic activity of metzincins in Aβ-induced pathological changes in AD patients’ brains may be a promising therapeutic strategy.