Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Long-Term Treatment of Growth Hormone Insensitivity Syndrome with IGF-I

A total of 33 patients (17 female, 16 male) with Laron syndrome (n = 31) or hGH-1 gene (n = 2, type IA deletion) from 22 centres in 12 countries were enrolled in a study conducted by Pharmacia & Upjohn, Stockholm, which was designed to test the efficacy, in terms of growth promotion and safety, of IGF-I (IgefTM). The patients were treated with 40–120 μg/kg IGF-I s.c. twice daily after meals. After the study ended, the patients continued to be treated on an individual basis. The results of 17 patients, who were treated for 48 months or longer were available for the present analysis. Six patients were treated for up to 72 months. When treatment started, the mean age of these patients (8 female, 9 male) was 9.1 (3.7–13.5) years and mean height was –6.5 ± 1.3 SDS. At the end of the observation period, the mean age of the 17 patients was 14.2 (9.1–17.7) years and mean height was –4.9 ± 1.9 SDS. All patients showed a significant increase in growth during the final year on IGF-I, with two of them reaching the age-corresponding 3rd centile. The total gain in height (ΔHT) was 1.7 ± 1.2 SDS. ΔHT SDS correlated negatively with age at onset of treatment (R2 = –0.78, p < 0.02). BMI was 0.6 ± 1.8 SDS at start of treatment and 1.8 ± 1.5 SDS at the end of observation. Total ΔHT SDS correlated positively with total ΔBMI SDS (R2 = 0.59, p < 0.01). Long-term treatment of patients with GHIS thus proved to be effective in promoting growth. If treatment is started at an early age, there is considerable potential for achieving height normalisation. The treatment modalities need to be optimized with respect to the growth-promoting and metabolic effects of IFG-I.
Multi-context photo browsing on mobile devices based on tilt dynamics

This paper presents a photo browsing system on mobile devices to browse and search photos efficiently by tilting action. It employs tilt dynamics and a multi-scale photo screen layout for enhancing the browsing and the search capability respectively. The implementation uses continuous inputs from an accelerometer, and a multimodal (visual, audio and vibrotactile) display coupled with the states of this model. The model is based on a simple physical model, with its characteristics shaped to enhance controllability. The multi-scale layout holds both local and global view for users to both control photos and look at the surrounding context in a single framework. The experiment on Samsung MITs PDA used seven novice users browsing from 100 photos. We compare a tilt-based interaction method with a button-based browser and an iPod wheel by a quantitative usability criteria and subjective experience. The proposed tilt dynamics improves the usability over conventional dynamics. The iPod wheel has mixed performance comparing worse on some metrics than button pushing or tilt interaction, despite its commercial popularity.
Evaluating the Efficacy of Elaborative Strategies for Remembering Expository Text

This study investigated whether elaborative interrogation would be an effective learning strategy for lengthy expository text. One hundred undergraduates (65 females and 35 males) comprised the study's five experimental groups: (a) unsupported elaborative interrogation, (b) self-study, (c) repetition, (d) elaborative interrogation with preunderlined main ideas, and (e) elaborative interrogation with preunderlined main ideas plus structured why questions. All students read an eight-page passage on childhood education, studied the main ideas (preidentified or not), used their instructed strategies, and completed a free recall and multiple-choice test. Of interest is that in unsupported conditions students had difficulty recognizing the main ideas in the passage. Elaborative interrogation was maximized when supported with preunderlined ideas and also was enhanced by providing specific why questions in addition to preunderlined ideas.
Non invasive blood glucose measurement based on Photo-Acoustic Spectroscopy

Diabetes mellitus is a serious disease that affects not only the patient's internal organs, circulation system and eyesight, but also his entire lifestyle. Determination of blood glucose level is a frequently occurring procedure in diabetes care. As the most common method involves collecting blood drops for chemical analysis, it is invasive and liable to afflict a degree of pain and cause skin injury; therefore, an alternative is needed. This study focuses of designing a non-invasive blood glucose measurement tool using pulsed Photo-Acoustic Spectroscopy. A system has been designed and implemented, as a result it was found that there is a linear mathematical relationship between acoustic signal produced across measuring site and blood glucose concentration. The experimental results were analyzed using Clarke Error Grid Analysis (EGA) with 90% of the results falling into the clinically accurate zone A. the system overall error was (2.6±6.28 mg/dl). This study presents a new effective, simple, portable and safe method that reduces discomfort due to the measurement procedures.
Explaining Language Model Predictions with High-Impact Concepts

To encourage fairness and transparency, there exists an urgent demand for deriving reliable explanations for large language models (LLMs). One promising solution is concept-based explanations, i.e., human-understandable concepts from internal representations. However, due to the compositional nature of languages, current methods mostly discover correlational explanations instead of causal features. Therefore, we propose a novel framework to provide impact-aware explanations for users to understand the LLM’s behavior, which are robust to feature changes and influential to the model’s predictions. Specifically, we extract predictive high-level features (concepts) from the model’s hidden layer activations. Then, we innovatively optimize for features whose existence causes the output predictions to change substantially. Extensive experiments on real and synthetic tasks demonstrate that our method achieves superior results on predictive impact, explainability, and faithfulness compared to the baselines, especially for LLMs.
Semantic Web Tools for Categorization Greek Texts on the Internet: the MeDa13 standard and TeGO ontology

The wider question of this study is the suitability of existing Web search engines for the needs of school education. It examines the relevance to the teaching objectives of the results returned by the search process given a query and its (stated or unstated) purpose in the context of an educational activity. The particular field of teaching and research interest is Modern Greek in Cypriot secondary education (third high school grade, G9). For the purpose of the research, the exploratory-descriptive and experimental approaches were adopted. The goal of this work is to automate the categorization of Greek texts available in the Internet into textual genres, according to their external (structural/format) and internal (linguistic, stylistic) features, using Semantic Web technology, i.e. metadata and ontologies. The long term vision is to build a semantic search engine that categorizes its results into textual genres as understood and used in high school teaching. The results so far highlighted the need for multi-categorization of texts, mainly due to their hybrid and multimodal nature. The contribution of this paper lies in the construction of a semantic search engine suitable for the needs of school education which returns results classified into textual genres, in accordance to their external and internal characteristics. An algorithm to categorize texts into genres was designed and tested on the basis of the standard metadata Dublin Core (DC). By adapting DC model to the needs of the present work, a model called ‘MeDa13’ (MetaData13) that includes thirteen elements, was designed. In addition, TeGO ontology (Textual Genres Ontology) was constructed in order to clarify concepts and terms that are stated in the definitions of textual genres. TeGO was developed specifically for teaching Modern Greek focusing on textual genres. In this paper, we describe the proposed models and present the target objectives and outcomes.
Structural and Functional Brain Imaging in Autism Spectrum Disorders

nucleus, while choline levels de‐ creased in the left inferior anterior cingulate cortex. In the same study, decreased levels of creatine were found in the left body portion of the nucleus caudatus and right occipital cortex. These findings were associated with changes in membrane metabolism and energy metabo‐ lism in these regions. In a different study, NAA and glutamate/glutamine (Glx) levels were found to be significantly decreased on the grey matter which involves many cerebral lobes in a common area. at children with autism. These findings have been associated with neuronal integrity and dysfunction, which spreads over a wide area at glutamatergic neurons in autistic children [63]. In some MRS studies, no significant changes have been found in metabolite levels in white matter [63, 64].
The Role of Blogs In Studying The Discourse And Social Practices of Mathematics Teachers

This paper introduces a rationale for change in roles and practices of the participants in mathematics education MA courses and their instructor, based on the integration and use of a web log, both as a medium for asynchronous communication, and as a mechanism for provoking professional reflection, through changes in the discursive style and the social practices of participants. It reports research carried out with 48 mathematics teachers, as students of two six-month academic (MA) courses. A framework for research and practice in on line learning (Garrison & Anderson, 2003) is related to theoretical constructs from the fields of mathematics education and online learning and is used as a first analytical filter. In terms of identifying kinds of discourse, the analytical categories used have aided in clarifying specific patterns. The first seems to be that of the development of different writing genres and the informal discursive style embedded in teachers’ narratives. The second is the effort of participants to engage in communicatively demanding situations, adopting different roles and behaviours. These roles and behaviours are summarised in three profiles: the “blog enthusiast”, the “blog frequent visitor” and the “blog sceptic”.
Othering Organization Theory: Marta Calás and Linda Smircich

Marta Calás and Linda Smircich’s collaborative work on leadership, culture, gender and their intersections is remarkable in many ways for the consistency of its central thematics. Indeed Calás and Smircich have been at the forefront of developing arguments forming the bedrock of poststructuralist/ postmodernist ‘critical management studies’; and their review of the contributions of the ‘postmodern conversation’ (Calás and Smircich, 1999: 666) to organization theory seems to me to summarize the key insights of their own research:
The Genetic Architecture of Maize Flowering Time

Codifying Maize Modifications Maize, one of our most important crop species, has been the target of genetic investigation and experimentation for more than 100 years. Crossing two inbred lines tends to result in “better” offspring, in a process known as heterosis. Attempts to map the genetic loci that control traits important for farming have been made, but few have been successful (see the Perspective by Mackay). Buckler et al. (p. 714) and McMullen et al. (p. 737) produced a genomic map of maize that relates recombination to genome structure. Even tremendous adaptations in very diverse species were produced by numerous, small additive steps. Differences in flowering time in maize among inbred lines were not caused by a few genes with large effects, but by the cumulative effects of numerous quantitative trait loci—each of which has only a small impact on the trait. Assaying nearly one million plants reveals that maize flowering time is not controlled by a large effect at any single locus. Flowering time is a complex trait that controls adaptation of plants to their local environment in the outcrossing species Zea mays (maize). We dissected variation for flowering time with a set of 5000 recombinant inbred lines (maize Nested Association Mapping population, NAM). Nearly a million plants were assayed in eight environments but showed no evidence for any single large-effect quantitative trait loci (QTLs). Instead, we identified evidence for numerous small-effect QTLs shared among families; however, allelic effects differ across founder lines. We identified no individual QTLs at which allelic effects are determined by geographic origin or large effects for epistasis or environmental interactions. Thus, a simple additive model accurately predicts flowering time for maize, in contrast to the genetic architecture observed in the selfing plant species rice and Arabidopsis.
A readiness analysis for the Argentine Air Force and the Brazilian Navy A-4 fleet via consolidated logistics support

The Argentine Air Force and the Brazilian Navy recently added the Douglas A-4 Skyhawk aircraft to their military services. Each country maintains its own limited repair facility and spare parts inventory. Major repair work (depot-level maintenance) must be sent to the manufacturers in the United States, and the long repair cycle times adversely affect military readiness. It is critical to implement an effective spare parts management system to compensate for such long repair cycle times. We developed a simulation model to study the impact of consolidating aviation component spare parts inventory management and reducing transportation cycle times. Our results indicate that both countries will greatly benefit if they collaborate on the inventory management of their A-4 fleet maintenance. Their benefits will be significantly increased if they change the sea transportation mode to air transportation for transporting avionic components back and forth to the United States for repair.
Comparison of the Effects of Cyclosporin a on the Metabolism of Perfused Rat Brain Slices during Normoxia and Hypoxia

The authors evaluated and compared the metabolic effects of cyclosporin A in the rat brain during normoxia and hypoxia/reperfusion. Ex vivo 31P magnetic resonance spectroscopy experiments based on perfused rat brain slices showed that under normoxic conditions, 500 μg/L cyclosporin A significantly reduced mitochondrial energy metabolism (nucleotide triphosphate, 83 ± 9% of controls; phosphocreatine, 69 ± 9%) by inhibition of the Krebs cycle (glutamate, 77 ± 5%) and oxidative phosphorylation (NAD+, 65 ± 14%) associated with an increased generation of reactive oxygen species (285 ± 78% of control). However, the same cyclosporin A concentration (500 μg/L) was found to be the most efficient concentration to inhibit the hypoxia-induced mitochondrial release of Ca2+ in primary rat hippocampal cells with cytosolic Ca2+ concentrations not significantly different from normoxic controls. Addition of 500 μg/L cyclosporin A to the perfusion medium protected high-energy phosphate metabolism (nucleotide triphosphate, 11 ± 15% of control vs. 35 ± 9% with 500 μg/L cyclosporin A) and the intracellular pH (6.2 ± 0.1 control vs. 6.6 ± 0.1 with cyclosporin A) in rat brain slices during 30 minutes of hypoxia. Results indicate that cyclosporin A simultaneously decreases and protects cell glucose and energy metabolism. Whether the overall effect was a reduction or protection of cell energy metabolism depended on the concentrations of both oxygen and cyclosporin A in the buffer solution.
GeospaCy: A tool for extraction and geographical referencing of spatial expressions in textual data

Spatial information in text enables to understand the geographical context and relationships within text for better decision-making across various domains such as disease surveillance, disaster management and other location based services. Therefore, it is crucial to understand the precise geographical context for location-sensitive applications. In response to this necessity, we introduce the GeospaCy software tool, designed for the extraction and georeferencing of spatial information present in textual data. GeospaCy fulfils two primary objectives: 1) Geoparsing, which involves extracting spatial expressions, encompassing place names and associated spatial relations within the text data, and 2) Geocoding, which facilitates the assignment of geographical coordinates to the spatial expressions extracted during the Geoparsing task. Geoparsing is evaluated with a disease news article dataset consisting of event information, whereas a qualitative evaluation of geographical coordinates (polygons/geometries) of spatial expressions is performed by end-users for Geocoding task.
Rethinking the connections between campus courses and Field experiences in College and University-based teacher education

In this paper, I discuss one of the central problems that has plagued college and university-based pre-service teacher education for many years, the disconnect between the campus and school-based components of programs. First, I will draw on my own experiences as a teacher educator and administrator over the last thirty plus years at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the literature to lay out various dimensions of this issue. Then, utililizing the concept of hybridity and “third space,” I will discuss a variety of current work in programs across the U.S. that offers much promise in deepening the quality of teacher learning in college and university-based teacher education programs and the ability of teacher education graduates to enact desired teaching practices in complex school settings. This work in creating hybrid spaces in teacher education where academic and practitioner knowledge and knowledge that exists in communities come together in new less hierarchical ways in the service of teacher learning represents a paradigm shift in the epistemology of teacher education programs. I argue that this shift toward more democratic and inclusive ways of working with schools and communities is necessary for colleges and universities to fulfill their mission in the education of teachers. Keywords: Education of teachers; Campus and school-based; Programs across.
It's good for me: It has added fibre! An exploration of the role of different categories of functional foods in consumer diets

This study extends extant research by examining the impetus behind the consumption of both nutritionally rich and nutritionally poor functional foods. It uses diaries and in-depth interviews and demonstrates that nutritionism theory, that is, where focus shifts from base food products to their constituent nutrients, is central to consumers' perception and consumption of functional foods. An unfortunate consequence is that consumers are unable to distinguish between nutritionally rich and nutritionally poor functional foods, believing instead the health claims of both. Nutritionally poor foods are often as unhealthy and calorific as nonfortified alternatives, and thus this consumption behaviour can have a negative impact on consumer well-being. This is exacerbated by functional foods being used to boost unhealthy diets as an alternative to more substantial dietary overhaul and being habitually used as substitutes for healthy foods such as fruits and vegetables. Finally, this article reveals that theories of guilt and justification can and should be applied to the consumption of functional foods because many consumers often use functional foods and the nutrients therein to assuage any guilt resultant from unhealthy eating patterns. This study has important implications for nutrition policies. It illustrates the necessity of educating consumers about (i) what constitutes a healthy diet and (ii) the role of nutrients as building blocks in healthy diets, highlighting the importance of choosing appropriate sources for these nutrients. This should enable them to make healthier dietary choices and reduce their propensity to use functional foods as a quick fix to unhealthy eating patterns. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
cuART: Fine-Grained Algebraic Reconstruction Technique for Computed Tomography Images on GPUs

Algebraic reconstruction technique (ART) is an iterative algorithm for computed tomography (CT) image reconstruction. Due to the high computational cost, researchers turn to modern HPC systems with GPUs to accelerate the ART algorithm. However, the existing proposals suffer from inefficient designs of compressed data structure and computational kernel on GPUs. In this paper, we identify the computational patterns in the ART as the product of a sparse matrix (and its transpose) with multiple vectors (SpMV and SpMV_T). Because the implementations with well-tuned libraries, including cuSPARSE, BRC, and CSR5, underperform the expectations, we propose cuART, a complete compression and parallelization solution for the ART-based CT on GPUs. Based on the physical characteristics, i.e., the symmetries in the system matrix, we propose the symmetry-based CSR format (SCSR), which can further compress data storage by removing symmetric but redundant non-zero elements. Leveraging the sparsity patterns of X-ray projection, wetransform the CSR format to multiple dense sub-matrices in SCSR. We then design a transposition-free kernel to optimize the data access for both SpMV and SpMV_T. The experimental results illustrate that our mechanism can reduce memory usage significantly and make practical datasets fit into a single GPU. Our results also illustrate the superior performance of cuART compared to the existing methods on CPU and GPU.
HT‐1080 fibrosarcoma cell matrix degradation and invasion are inhibited by the matrix‐associated serine protease inhibitor TFPI‐2/33 kDa MSPI

The urokinase‐urokinase receptor system plays a dominant role in the degradation and invasion of extracellular matrix (ECM) by tumor cells. In this system, urokinase bound to its cell receptor converts plasminogen to plasmin, a broad‐spectrum serine protease that participates in the degradation and invasion of connective tissues by tumor cells. In this study, we evaluated whether these activities of plasmin are inhibited by a newly characterized human 32 kDa recombinant serine protease inhibitor called trypsin/tissue factor pathway inhibitor‐2 (rTFPI‐2). We found that rTFPI‐2 dose‐dependently inhibited fluid‐phase plasmin as well as plasmin generated on the ECM and/or the cell surface of HT‐1080 fibrosarcoma cells. The degradation of radiolabeled matrix as well as Matrigel invasion by these tumor cells is also inhibited by rTFPI‐2 in a dose‐dependent fashion. We have reported that rTFPI‐2 is identical to 33 kDa extracellular matrix‐associated serine protease inhibitor (33 kDa MSPI), whereas the 31 and 27 kDa MSPIs are under‐glycosylated forms of the 33 kDa MSPI. We therefore evaluated the ability of MSPIs from the ECM of dermal fibroblasts to inhibit plasmin and found that the plasmin activity was effectively blocked by the MSPIs. We have also evaluated whether the HT‐1080 cells synthesize and secrete the MSPIs and found that the synthesis and secretion of the MSPIs was undetectable in these cells. Collectively, our results suggest that rTFPI‐2/33 kDa MSPI inhibits plasmin on the tumor cell and ECM surfaces as well as the degradation and invasion of matrix by HT‐1080 fibrosarcoma cells. Int. J. Cancer 76:749–756, 1998. © 1998 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.