Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Differentiation between Malignant and Benign Solitary Lesions in the Liver with 18FDG PET/CT: Accuracy of Age-related Diagnostic Standard

Objective: This study was to determine the reliability of age-stratified diagnostic index in differential diagnosis of malignant and benign solitary lesions in the liver using fluorine-18 fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography/computed tomography (18FDG PET/CT). Methods: The enrolled 272 patients with solitary lesions in the liver were divided into three age groups, younger group (under 50 years), middle-aged group (50-69 years), and elderly group (70 years and above). Patients' ages were compared, and the optimal cut-offs of the standard uptake value (SUV) ratio (tumor-to-non-tumor ratio of the SUV), as well as areas under the curves (AUC), were evaluated in terms of malignant and benign lesions in each age group by using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) analysis. Based on optimal cut-offs, the sensitivity, specificity, accuracy were calculated, and the diagnostic accordance rate was compared between each age group and all patients, supported by 18FDG PET/CT imaging data. Results: There was a significant age difference between the malignant and benign groups (t=3.905 p=0.0001). ROC analysis showed that the optimal cut-off value in all patients, younger group, middle-aged group and elderly group was 1.25, 1.17, 1.45 and 1.25 for SUVratio, and 0.856, 0.962, 0.650, 0.973 for AUC. The chi-square test proved that diagnostic accordance rate of 18FDG PET/CT in younger group and elderly group were superior to that in all patients (χ2=13.352, P=0.0003) and (χ2=8.494, P=0.0036). Conversely, overall diagnostic accordance rate in all patient group was higher than that in middle-aged group (χ2=9.057, P=0.0026). Representative 18FDG PET/CT imaging findings are demonstrated. Conclusion: This study indicates that diagnostic optimal cut-offs of SUVratio of liver solitary lesions of 18FDG PET/CT were different in each age group. In addition, the diagnostic performance of SUVratio was better in younger and elderly groups than that in all patients, and was poorer in middle-aged group than that in all patients. Therefore, age difference appears to be one of the important factors for discriminating malignant liver lesions from benign ones using 18 FDG PET/CT.
Metabolic kinetics of pulmonary surfactant in newborn infants using endogenous stable isotope techniques Published, JLR Papers in Press, March 16, 2005. DOI 10.1194/jlr.M400481-JLR200

We compared kinetic indices of pulmonary surfactant metabolism in premature infants (n = 41) with respect to i) tracer ([1-13C1]acetate, [U-13C6]glucose, and [1,2,3,4-13C4] palmitate), ii) phospholipid (PL) pool (total PLs or disaturated PLs), or iii) instrumentation [gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC/MS) or GC-combustion-isotope ratio mass spectometry (GC-C-IRMS)]. Tracer incorporation was measured in PLs extracted from serial tracheal aspirates after a 24 h tracer infusion. The fractional catabolic rate (FCR), representing the total fractional turnover from all sources of surfactant production, was independent of tracer. The fractional synthesis rate of surfactant PL from plasma palmitate was significantly higher than that from palmitate synthesized de novo from acetate, and these two sources of palmitate together accounted for only half of the total surfactant production in preterm infants. [U-13C6]glucose showed significant recycling of the 13C label in intermediary metabolism, distinguishable by GC-MS but not by GC-C-IRMS, resulting in a slower apparent FCR when GC-C-IRMS was used. The extracted PL pool did not affect the surfactant metabolic indices. We suggest that FCR should be used as a primary measure of surfactant turnover kinetics and that tracers labeling both de novo synthesis (acetate and glucose) and preformed pathways (plasma palmitate) can be used to partition the fractional contribution of each pathway to total production.
Headteacher performance management: an investigation of the role of the external adviser

The performance management scheme that has been operating in English schools since 2000 gives considerable responsibilities to the school's governing body. These include responsibility for appraisal of the headteacher's overall performance as a school leader and manager. Governing bodies are assisted in this task by government appointed external advisers. Drawing on research, this article outlines the role of the external adviser in headteacher appraisal and what we know about how it is working in practice. Some of the key issues are explored and questions raised for further research. External advisers were very clear that their primary role was as advisers and supporters to the governors, but they also put considerable emphasis on the support that they provided for headteachers. They understood, however, that the ultimate responsibility for the performance management of the head lay with the governing body. They also saw themselves as counsellors, facilitators, mentors, honest brokers, coaches and governor trainers. The key to their role was the fact that they were outsiders, with no axe to grind and with no connection to either the LEA or to the national inspection agency (OfSTED).
Right atrial stretch alters fore‐ and hind‐brain expression of c‐fos and inhibits the rapid onset of salt appetite

The inflation of an intravascular balloon positioned at the superior vena cava and right atrial junction (SVC‐RAJ) reduces sodium or water intake induced by various experimental procedures (e.g. sodium depletion; hypovolaemia). In the present study we investigated if the stretch induced by a balloon at this site inhibits a rapid onset salt appetite, and if this procedure modifies the pattern of immunohistochemical labelling for Fos protein (Fos‐ir) in the brain. Male Sprague–Dawley rats with SVC‐RAJ balloons received a combined treatment of furosemide (Furo; 10 mg (kg bw)−1) plus a low dose of the angiotensin‐converting enzyme inhibitor captopril (Cap; 5 mg (kg bw)−1). Balloon inflation greatly decreased the intake of 0.3 m NaCl for as long as the balloon was inflated. Balloon inflation over a 3 h period following Furo–Cap treatment decreased Fos‐ir in the organum vasculosum of the lamina terminalis and the subfornical organ and increased Fos‐ir in the lateral parabrachial nucleus and caudal ventrolateral medulla. The effect of balloon inflation was specific for sodium intake because it did not affect the drinking of diluted sweetened condensed milk. Balloon inflation and deflation also did not acutely change mean arterial pressure. These results suggest that activity in forebrain circumventricular organs and in hindbrain putative body fluid/cardiovascular regulatory regions is affected by loading low pressure mechanoreceptors at the SVC‐RAJ, a manipulation that also attenuates salt appetite.
Mothers Perception of Health Care Needs of Preterm Neonates in Intensive Care Unit

Background: Family members of the new born admitted to neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) of hospitals are stressed and in are in undue anxiety. Aims: What are the health care needs of preterm neo-nates admitted to NICU as perceived by the mothers. Materials and methods: Thirty mothers whose pre-term child was being provided care in NICU were studied. An interview questionnaire tool was applied and the perception of the mother about her child's health care need was rated using a scale. Results: Majority of the mothers were under 25 years (86.60%), 60% were from nuclear families and 66.6% were primis. Major-ity of the babies were born premature between 32-37 weeks of gestation (76.6%) and 70% of them were malnourished (birth weight < 2.5 kg). Mothers of critical new born child in intensive care units are anxious for information about the child’s condition. Conclusions: Nurses in the NICU are primary care givers and information providers. Provision of appropriate and adequate information and counselling to mothers are essential for quality preterm care. Keywords: Preterm child, perceived health care, intensive care.
Hyperbolic sigma-pi neural network operators applied to image processing and reconstruction

: In this paper, we recall how to design three-layer feedforward neural network operators based on hyperbolic sigma-pi units in order to act as approximation and interpolation devices for regular gridded data. The basic part of the paper consists of an application of this strategy in connection with image processing and reconstruction.
Histone H3.3 Variant Dynamics in the Germline of Caenorhabditis elegans

Germline chromatin undergoes dramatic remodeling events involving histone variants during the life cycle of an organism. A universal histone variant, H3.3, is incorporated at sites of active transcription throughout the cell cycle. The presence of H3.3 in chromatin indicates histone turnover, which is the energy-dependent removal of preexisting histones and replacement with new histones. H3.3 is also incorporated during decondensation of the Drosophila sperm pronucleus, indicating a direct role in chromatin remodeling upon fertilization. Here we present a system to monitor histone turnover and chromatin remodeling during Caenorhabditis elegans development by following the developmental dynamics of H3.3. We generated worm strains expressing green fluorescent protein– or yellow fluorescent protein–fused histone H3.3 proteins, HIS-71 and HIS-72. We found that H3.3 is retained in mature sperm chromatin, raising the possibility that it transmits epigenetic information via the male germline. Upon fertilization, maternal H3.3 enters both male and female pronuclei and is incorporated into paternal chromatin, apparently before the onset of embryonic transcription, suggesting that H3.3 can be incorporated independent of transcription. In early embryos, H3.3 becomes specifically depleted from primordial germ cells. Strikingly, the X chromosome becomes deficient in H3.3 during gametogenesis, indicating a low level of histone turnover. These results raise the possibility that the asymmetry in histone turnover between the X chromosome and autosomes is established during gametogenesis. H3.3 patterns are similar to patterns of H3K4 methylation in the primordial germ cells and on the X chromosome during gametogenesis, suggesting that histone turnover and modification are coupled processes. Our demonstration of dynamic H3.3 incorporation in nondividing cells provides a mechanistic basis for chromatin changes during germ cell development.
Keynote Address to the 2003 HOPE Conference: My Keynesian Education

I have mixed feelings about Bob Byrd1 saying he’s looking forward to receiving my papers. He’s probably only going to get them when I’m gone: I don’t seem to be able to give up anything out of my file drawers. But when that does happen, my papers will be in the best library for the history of economic thought they can find anywhere, so they will have a happy home. Well, I’m not here to tell people in this group about the history of monetary thought. I guess I’m here as a kind of witness from a vanished culture, the heyday of Keynesian economics. It’s like historians rushing to interview the last former slaves before they died, or the last of the people who remembered growing up in a Polish shtetl. I am going to tell you what it was like growing up in a day when Keynesian economics was taught as a solid basis on which macroeconomics could proceed. My credentials? Was I a Keynesian myself? Absolutely. And does my Chicago training disqualify me for that? No, not at all. David Laidler [who was present at the conference] will agree with me on this, and I will explain in some detail when I talk about my education. Our Keynesian credentials, if we wanted to claim them, were as good as could be obtained in any graduate school in the country in 1963. I thought when I was trying to prepare some notes for this talk that people attending the conference might be arguing about Axel
StructureFold: genome-wide RNA secondary structure mapping and reconstruction in vivo

MOTIVATION RNAs fold into complex structures that are integral to the diverse mechanisms underlying RNA regulation of gene expression. Recent development of transcriptome-wide RNA structure profiling through the application of structure-probing enzymes or chemicals combined with high-throughput sequencing has opened a new field that greatly expands the amount of in vitro and in vivo RNA structural information available. The resultant datasets provide the opportunity to investigate RNA structural information on a global scale. However, the analysis of high-throughput RNA structure profiling data requires considerable computational effort and expertise. RESULTS We present a new platform, StructureFold, that provides an integrated computational solution designed specifically for large-scale RNA structure mapping and reconstruction across any transcriptome. StructureFold automates the processing and analysis of raw high-throughput RNA structure profiling data, allowing the seamless incorporation of wet-bench structural information from chemical probes and/or ribonucleases to restrain RNA secondary structure prediction via the RNAstructure and ViennaRNA package algorithms. StructureFold performs reads mapping and alignment, normalization and reactivity derivation, and RNA structure prediction in a single user-friendly web interface or via local installation. The variation in transcript abundance and length that prevails in living cells and consequently causes variation in the counts of structure-probing events between transcripts is accounted for. Accordingly, StructureFold is applicable to RNA structural profiling data obtained in vivo as well as to in vitro or in silico datasets. StructureFold is deployed via the Galaxy platform. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION StructureFold is freely available as a component of Galaxy available at: https://usegalaxy.org/. CONTACT yxt148@psu.edu or sma3@psu.edu SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
The Conceptualization, Measurement, and Effects of School Leadership: Introduction to the Special Issue

This article highlights growing evidence that leadership matters to academic success in schools and examines several needs for additional research to improve our understanding of this relationship. The measurement, conceptualization, and effects of school leadership are discussed as important topics around which the field needs additional knowledge to understand the ways in which school leadership can make a difference to the quality of teaching and learning. This article reviews several promising studies that present new knowledge about (a) a reciprocal effects model of collaborative leadership, (b) advances in the conceptualization and measurement of distributed leadership in schools, (c) the assessment of learning-centered leadership, (d) the measurement of school leadership behaviors using annual surveys and daily instructional logs, and (e) the relationship between principal leadership and norms for effective instruction in schools. As a group, these studies provide new means of conceptualizing, measuring, and understanding the effects of leadership in schools.
Bridging the Gap: Using Triangulation Methodology to Estimate Minimal Clinically Important Differences (MCIDs)

This paper proposes the use of triangulation methodology to derive guidelines for interpreting change scores on health outcome measures. Triangulation integrates results from global ratings with clinical benchmarks of change, statistical estimates of magnitude, and qualitative data from patients and/or clinicians to derive guidelines that are not field-specific or method bound. A case study is presented to illustrate how this methodology can be applied. Secondary analyses were performed on blinded data from 2,971 patients enrolled in three phase IIIa clinical trials to develop guidelines for interpreting change scores on the Breathlessness Diary (BD), a relatively new approach for evaluating dyspnea outcomes in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. BD scores were examined by disease severity and rescue medication use. In addition, mean BD change scores by physician global ratings of efficacy were juxtaposed with changes in forced expiratory volume (FEV1) and St. George's Respiratory Questionnaire scores. Percent change, effect size, one-half standard deviation, and the standard error of measurement were used as statistical indicators of magnitude. Data from qualitative interviews provided insight into patient perspectives of change in dyspnea. Taking into consideration results across estimation methods, guidelines were developed for defining large, moderate, and small group-level mean changes on the BD. Areas of divergence and convergence across statistical indicators and clinical benchmarks in this case study highlight the importance of using triangulation methodology to derive guidelines that are both empirically sound and clinically relevant.
The Etiology and Diagnosis of Status Epilepticus

Status epilepticus (SE) is a common, serious, potentially life-threatening, neurologic emergency characterized by prolonged seizure activity. Generalized convulsive status epilepticus (GCSE) is the most widely recognized form of SE. Direct consequences of convulsive movements from SE can result in injury to the body and brain. Nonconvulsive status epilepticus (NCSE) is underrecognized, with controversy surrounding the consequences and treatment. High mortality rates with GCSE have been noted in the past. New treatments for SE are emerging with new parenteral drug formulations as well as new agents for refractory SE, offering an opportunity to improve outcome. Special drug delivery systems, drug combinations, and neuroprotective agents that prevent the subsequent development of epilepsy may soon emerge as future options for treating SE.
Design and Research of the Authority Control Based on Creation Role

Role-based access control strategy has been widely applied to a variety of access control system. Permission checks are employed in this strategy to improve flexibility and easier management, using dynamic proxy to optimize the process. Facilitating an authority through permission checks helps provide grained transaction management safely. In this study we proposed an authority control method based on several creating roles. This way, the use permissions features are configured flexibly. Through careful system design based on new theory on achieving role-based access control policy, we are able to improve authority systems in high performance.
A triple-band planar printed L-type antenna with an open-loop resonator for handset application

A planar printed multiband handset antenna by using an L-shape radiating element and an open-loop resonator to achieve multi-operation bands is presented. The antenna can cover the operation of GSM900/DCS1800 and WLAN2450 or Bluetooth system. The antenna is fabricated with a FR-4 substrate. The areas occupied by the antenna radiators and ground plane are 15×45 mm2 and 85×45 mm2, respectively. The area of antenna substrate has 100×45 mm2 which is a typical size of mobile handsets. The HFSS FEM-based 3-D full-wave EM solver is used for the design simulation. For the triple-band antenna, except for the GSM900 system, the measured antenna input VSWR is less than 3.5 in the designed frequency bands. The measured maximum antenna gains are about 0.8, 2.4, and 2.2 dBi at 920 MHz, 1795, and 2450 MHz, respectively. The antenna has the advantages of low-cost, easy-fabrication, and an integration with RF front-end circuits.
Social Sports Stratification in Flanders 1969-1999

This article provides substantial empirical evidence that significant social differences exist in sports involvement in Flanders. A 30-year follow-up study of social stratification in sports was carried out to find out (i) if sports participation in Flanders is still socially stratified, and (ii) if social changes occurred in the status sports pyramid over the years of investigation. Based upon the educational status, the professional status and the geographical status of male and female adults in Flanders, social stratification pyramids in sport were set up for 1969, 1979, 1989 and 1999. Although the amount of sports participation from 1969 until 1999 has increased for each socioprofessional status, a significant difference persists between the high and the low professional levels (X² test for trend = 85.90; p<0.0001; df=1). The 1999 social sports pyramid continues to be socially stratified, and therefore confirms that sports participation still depends on socioprofessional status.
Funções cognitivas no transtorno do pânico: um estudo comparativo com controles saudáveis

The interface between neuropsychology and psychopathology has been studied with a growing frequency. Nevertheless there is still a great demand of characterizing the cognitive profile of each process among patients with panic disorder (PD). In this study we aimed at verifying if there are differences in the neuropsychological performance between adults with PD and adults from a healthy control group. Thirty adults took part on this study, 15 with clinically diagnosed PD and 15 healthy control subjects, matched by education, age, sociodemographic level and intellectual abilities. A neuropsychological test battery was administered including NEUPSILIN, narrative speech and verbal fluency of MAC battery, WAIS-III subtests, Wisconsin, Hayling, Trail Making Test, Stroop Test, RAVLT, Buschke and Bells Test. The performance was compared between groups by means of the non-parametric test Mann-Whitney (p≤0,05). We found significant differences on executive components: processing speed, initiation, inhibition, episodic and working memory. Further enquires are necessary, with a larger and more homogeneous sample, controlling for depression and agoraphobia.
Student Attitudes towards Asylum Seekers in Croatia

800x600 U ovom radu opisana je konstrukcija mjernog instrumenta "Skale stavova prema tražiteljima azila", koja se temelji na ispitivanju provedenom na prigodnom uzorku od 277 studenata/studentica drustvenih, prirodnih i tehnickih smjerova Zagrebackoga sveucilista. Eksploratornom faktorskom analizom, direktnom oblimin rotacijom dobivena su tri faktora: "percepcija drustvene prijetnje", "percepcija kulturne prijetnje" te "percepcija zdravstveno-ekonomske prijetnje". Dobiveni faktori objasnjavaju 60,8% varijance instrumenta te su na temelju njih konstruirane aditivne podskale koje su tretirane kao zavisne varijable u jednostavnoj analizi varijance (ANOVA), dok su kao nezavisne uzete odabrane sociodemografske, sociokulturne i kontekstualne varijable. Rezultati pokazuju da veci doživljaj tražitelja azila kao drustvene i kulturne prijetnje među studentskom populacijom Zagrebackoga sveucilista imaju studenti koji studiraju tehnicke znanosti, politicki se pozicioniraju desno i krajnje desno, uvjereni su vjernici ili su religiozni te oni koji nemaju ili imaju samo jednoga prijatelja stranca u RH (znacajno samo za percepciju drustvene prijetnje). Veci doživljaj tražitelja azila kao zdravstveno-ekonomske prijetnje imaju samo oni koji studiraju tehnicke ili prirodne znanosti. Predviđena povezanost stavova prema tražiteljima azila s varijablom "osobno iskustvo raseljenosti" (prognanicko i izbjeglicko iskustvo), varijablom "kontakt s tražiteljom azila ili azilantom" te varijablom "primarni izvor upoznavanja s temom azila" nije statisticki znacajna.