Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Rhizoma Coptidis: A Potential Cardiovascular Protective Agent

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are among the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in both the developed and developing world. Rhizoma coptidis (RC), known as Huang Lian in China, is the dried rhizome of medicinal plants from the family Ranunculaceae, such as Coptis chinensis Franch, C. deltoidea C.Y. Cheng et Hsiao, and C. teeta Wall which has been used by Chinese medicinal physicians for more than 2000 years. In China, RC is a common component in traditional medicines used to treat CVD associated problems including obesity, diabetes mellitus, hyperlipidemia, hyperglycemia and disorders of lipid metabolism. In recent years, numerous scientific studies have sought to investigate the biological properties of RC to provide scientific evidence for its traditional medical uses. RC has been found to exert significant beneficial effects on major risk factors for CVDs including anti-atherosclerotic effect, lipid-lowering effect, anti-obesity effect and anti-hepatic steatosis effect. It also has myocardioprotective effect as it provides protection from myocardial ischemia-reperfusion injury. These properties have been attributed to the presence of bioactive compounds contained in RC such as berberine, coptisine, palmatine, epiberberine, jatrorrhizine, and magnoflorine; all of which have been demonstrated to have cardioprotective effects on the various parameters contributing to the occurrence of CVD through a variety of pathways. The evidence available in the published literature indicates that RC is a herb with tremendous potential to reduce the risks of CVDs, and this review aims to summarize the cardioprotective properties of RC with reference to the published literature which overall indicates that RC is a herb with remarkable potential to reduce the risks and damage caused by CVDs.
Teachers' planning and preparation of teaching resources and materials in the implementation of Form 4 Physical Education curriculum for physical fitness strand

This study was conducted to identify the level of teachers' preparation of teaching resources and materials in the implementtaion of Form 4 Physical Education for physical fitness strand. As a descriptive study, the location was selected in the district of Gombak, Selangor. Respondents who were involved in this study consisted of 50 teachers with Physical Education option and are teaching Form 4 students. The instrument employed to collect data was in the form of structured checklist and interviews. The findings of this study showed that the preparation level of Physical Education teachers towards the teaching resources and materials such as newspaper articles, magazines, articles / journals, Physical Education /Sports Science reference books and materials from the Physical Education panel files were moderate. Apart from that, the studied Physical Education teachers have also made preparation by utilizing diagrams and charts adapted from the Form 4 Physical Education textbook. The overall mean for the teaching resources and materials is 3.70 with a standard deviation of . 84. The findings also showed that the preparation level of Physical Education teachers towards teaching resources and materials was at high level. The teaching resources and materials must be prepared properly so that Physical Education teachers can use them effectively during the teaching and learning process.
Progression and survival studies in early chronic lymphocytic leukemia.

To investigate the natural history of stage A chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) we reviewed 84 such patients. Among 74 cases evaluable for disease progression, 22 (29.6%) progressed to more advanced clinical stages (9 to stage B, 13 to stage C); the actuarial estimation of such an event at 4 years was 30% (95% CI: 26.3% to 33.6%). Despite a linear trend toward an increasing risk (r = .92), the hazard function analysis showed a constant pattern of progression, suggesting a lack of correlation of such an event with time (r = .04). Furthermore, disease progression when analyzed as a time-dependent variable had a clear-cut impact on survival (P less than .001). With the aim of identifying a subgroup of patients with low probability of disease progression and death, we applied to our set of patients four different proposals for subclassifying stage A. All methods were similar in terms of sample size, 5-year survival rate, and disease progression risk, suggesting that the choice between different proposals is somewhat arbitrary. Whatever the criteria are for defining "smoldering" CLL, such patients (accounting in the present study for 20.5% of overall series and 46.7% of stage A patients) should not be treated until progression occurs.
Moved to Action: Motivation, Participation, and Inequality in American Politics. By Hahrie C. Han. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009. 208p. $50.00 cloth, $19.95 paper.

This excellent book explores how and why people participate in politics, focusing mostly on those without the educational, financial, and civic resources that enable democratic participation in the United States. How is it, Hahrie Han asks, that a large, underresourced population returned to New Orleans against great odds to vote in a mayoral election? Han problematizes the received wisdom about political participation, bringing new attention to the seemingly intractable problem of political inequality in the United States. How did these people manage to come from out of town, many of them busing in and out on the same day, to vote in a municipal election? If we find the answer to this question, we may discover new ways to expand political participation in the United States, particularly among those populations that seem to be the most difficult to pull into the democratic decision-making process.
Deciphering the Blood-Brain Barrier Damage in Stroke: Mitochondrial Mechanism

Stroke is a complex vascular and neurological syndrome that can lead to death and disability. About 15 million people worldwide and 800,000 people in the United States suffer stroke each year . On average, in the U.S. every 40 seconds someone has a stroke and every 4 minutes someone dies from a stroke. This medical emergency has very limited treatments, and causes serious health and economic burdens in the United States and globally. Blood-brain barrier (BBB) is composed of highly specialized cerebrovascular endothelial cells, seals brain tissue from the circulating blood, and prevents blood, bacteria or toxins from reaching the central nervous system (CNS). In acute ischemic stroke, BBB is disrupted, and blood solutes penetrate into the CNS parenchymal extracellular space then cause cerebral edema . Although much has been observed in this stroke-induced brain edema, such as inflammatory infiltration, releasing of chemokines and cytokines, much less has the mechanism of BBB disruption been understood.
Quantifying Age-Related Rates of Social Contact Using Diaries in a Rural Coastal Population of Kenya

Background Improved understanding and quantification of social contact patterns that govern the transmission dynamics of respiratory viral infections has utility in the design of preventative and control measures such as vaccination and social distancing. The objective of this study was to quantify an age-specific matrix of contact rates for a predominantly rural low-income population that would support transmission dynamic modeling of respiratory viruses. Methods and Findings From the population register of the Kilifi Health and Demographic Surveillance System, coastal Kenya, 150 individuals per age group (<1, 1–5, 6–15, 16–19, 20–49, 50 and above, in years) were selected by stratified random sampling and requested to complete a day long paper diary of physical contacts (e.g. touch or embrace). The sample was stratified by residence (rural-to-semiurban), month (August 2011 to January 2012, spanning seasonal changes in socio-cultural activities), and day of week. Usable diary responses were obtained from 568 individuals (∼50% of expected). The mean number of contacts per person per day was 17.7 (95% CI 16.7–18.7). Infants reported the lowest contact rates (mean 13.9, 95% CI 12.1–15.7), while primary school students (6–15 years) reported the highest (mean 20.1, 95% CI 18.0–22.2). Rates of contact were higher within groups of similar age (assortative), particularly within the primary school students and adults (20–49 years). Adults and older participants (>50 years) exhibited the highest inter-generational contacts. Rural contact rates were higher than semiurban (18.8 vs 15.6, p = 0.002), with rural primary school students having twice as many assortative contacts as their semiurban peers. Conclusions and Significance This is the first age-specific contact matrix to be defined for tropical Sub-Saharan Africa and has utility in age-structured models to assess the potential impact of interventions for directly transmitted respiratory infections.
Business Ethics and the Role of Pride

It can be hard to convince sceptics that business ethics is anything less than a contradiction in terms. The reality, it is argued, is a dog-eat-dog culture far removed from the niceties of ’right’ and ’wrong’, a notion firmly entrenched in the public imagination. It is based on a moral relativism; that a distinction can be made between personal and business life with different ethical considerations applying accordingly.
The optimum dietary indispensable amino acid pattern for growing Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar L.) fry

To determine the optimum indispensable (I) amino acid (AA) balance in Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar L.) fry, a single protocol established for the pig was adapted. The balance was calculated from the reduction in N gain after replacing about 45% of a single IAA by a mixture of dispensable AA in isonitrogenous diets. We confirmed that the mixture of AA simulating the AA pattern of cod-meal protein and gelatine (46:3, w/w) was used with the same efficiency as cod-meal protein and gelatine. From the deletion experiment an optimum balance between the IAA was derived. Expressed relative to lysine=100, the optimal balance was: arginine 76 (se 0·2), histidine 28 (se 2·2), methionine+cystine 64 (se 1·7), phenylalanine + tyrosine 105 (se 1·6), threonine 51 (se 2·4), tryptophan 14 (se 0·7), valine 59 (se 1·7). No estimates were made for isoleucine and leucine. Expressed as g/16g N, the optimal balance was: arginine 4·0 (se 0·0), histidine 1·5 (se 0·1), lysine 5·3 (se 0·2), methionine+cystine 3·4 (se 0·1), phenylaline+tyrosine 5·6 (se 0·1), threonine 2·7 (se 0·1), tryptophan 0·7 (se 0·0), valine 3·1 (se 0·1). This AA composition is close to that of the Atlantic salmon whole-body, but using it as an estimation of the IAA requirements may lead to an overestimation of the branched-chain AA requirements and an underestimation of aromatic and S-containing AA requirements. The results are discussed in accordance with the key assumptions associated with the model used (broken-line model, IAA efficiencies and maintenance requirements).
Gender Mainstreaming: The Answer to the Gender Pay Gap?

Introduction: Joan Eveline and Carol Bacchi The cross-fertilisation of ideas that is evident in earlier chapters, particularly in Chapters 3 and 4, is also clear in this study, which took place before the Gender Analysis Project actually commenced. We include the chapter here because it explores the question of gender mainstreaming in ways which dovetail with questions we raise in the earlier chapters, including whether gender mainstreaming can ‘transform’ policies and policy development organisations. In 2004 Patricia Todd and Joan Eveline undertook a public inquiry into the gender pay gap in Western Australia, commissioned by the incumbent Labor Government. This chapter is from that study. It analyses Australian gender pay gap inquiries conducted over the past decade to identify those components with transformative potential in the context of Australian industrial relations regulations and conditions. It provides examples of when and how policymakers have deployed such components, and when they have not. Interestingly, gender mainstreaming was the policy technique being mooted in only one of those inquiries, a suggestion that indeed has not since been initiated by the government involved. Rather than offering a study of how to close the gender pay gap through gender mainstreaming, therefore, this chapter asks what components we would wish to include if gender mainstreaming were used. Our earlier Chapters 2 and 3 introduced readers to the notion that gender mainstreaming is deeply contested as concept and practice – that it means different things in different locales – and this includes whether and when policymakers use it, how they use it and how they represent ‘the problem’ they hope to deal with (Chapter 5).
Cardio-protective and anti-cancer therapeutic potential of Nigella sativa

Nigella sativa is the miraculous plant having a lot of nutritional and medicinal benefits, and attracts large number of nutrition and pharmacological researchers. N. sativa seed composition shows that it is the blessing of nature and it contains and many bioactive compounds like thymoquinone, α-hederin, alkaloids, flavonoids, antioxidants, fatty acids many other compounds that have positive effects on curing of different diseases. Several medicinal properties of N. sativa like its anti-cancer, anti-inflammatory, anti-diabetic, antioxidant activities and many others are well acknowledged. However, this article focuses on activity of N. sativa against cardiovascular diseases and cancer. For gathering required data the authors went through vast number of articles using search engines like Science direct, ELSEVIER, Pub Med, Willey on Line Library and Google scholar and the findings were classified on the basis of relevance of the topic and were reviewed in the article. N. sativa is rich source of different biologically active compounds and is found effective in controlling number of cardiovascular diseases and various cancers both in vivo and in vitro studies.
From expert systems to knowledge-based companies: How the AI industry negotiated a market for knowledge

The idea behind this paper is that the attempt to market arti cial intelligence (AI), in the 1980s, was in several respects a forerunner of the marketing of Knowledge Management (KM) and largely negotiated the terms that produce ‘knowledge’ as a commodity that can usefully be both hoarded and exchanged. The point is not that KM inherited a fully  edged epistemology from AI: although there often appears to be a continuity of epistemological assumptions, there are also important differences of emphasis. Early ‘expert systems’ were often explained in terms of the acquisition of knowledge from experts, its storage in knowledge bases (for example, in the form of heuristic rules), and its application in appropriate circumstances. In theory, at least, expert systems were expected to act in blackbox fashion, carrying out expert tasks in place of humans. Knowledge management, by contrast, stresses support for human knowers: it offers, among other things, techniques and technological support for eliciting, sharing and applying knowledge, but maintains that (as one textbook puts it):
Student perceptions of classroom feedback

Feedback to students has been identified as a key strategy in learning and teaching, but we know less about how feedback is understood by students. The purpose of this study is to gain more insight into lower secondary students’ perceptions of when and how they find classroom feedback useful. This article draws on data generated through individual interviews with 11 students representing four lower secondary schools (grades 8–10, aged 13–15) in Norway. Feedback types are identified from students’ perceptions, coded and indexed. A feedback typology is designed to provide a framework which can be used to reflect on useful classroom feedback based on lower secondary school students’ perceptions.
Examining degree of balance and level of obligation in the employment relationship: a social exchange approach

Summary A typology of four exchange relationships defined by two dimensions (degree of balance in employee and employer obligations; level of obligation) was evaluated. Three hundred and twenty seven working MBA students participated in the study. Results generally supported the existence of our proposed four-group typology since: (1) four distinct patterns of obligations emerged in the cluster analysis, and (2) mean diAerences were shown for the four exchange types on the criterion variables. Of particular note was the finding that the mutual high obligations relationship (both employee and employer obligations were consistently perceived to be high) showed much higher levels of perceived organizational support, career future, and aAective commitment, and lower levels of turnover intention than all other types of exchange relationships. This suggests the importance of diAerences in the type of exchange relationship, as perceived by the employee, for both employees and organizations. #1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Comparative investigation of the effects of different materials used with a titanium barrier on new bone formation.

OBJECTIVES In this study, we aimed to study the effects on new bone formation of autogenous blood, deproteinized bovine bone graft (DBBG), and biphasic calcium phosphate (BCP) bioceramic graft materials placed under titanium barriers. MATERIAL AND METHODS Twenty-four adult male New Zealand white rabbits were used in this study. Two titanium barriers were fixed on each rabbit's calvarium. The study included four groups, one of which was a control group. The experiment groups, autogenous blood, DBBG (Bio-Oss(®) ; Geistlich Biomaterials, Wolhusen, Switzerland) and BCP (4Bone(TM) ; Biomatlante, Vigneux de Bretagne, France) were placed under titanium barriers; in the control group, no materials were used. Half of the animals were sacrificed after 1 month, and the rest were sacrificed after 3 months. After this, micro-computerized tomography images were taken, and a histomorphometric evaluation was carried out. RESULTS The amounts of new bone formation were found to be higher at the third month than at the first month. The differences between the groups were examined with both a micro-computerized tomography and histomorphometric analysis, and no statistical significance was noted in the first month. In contrast, the increase in the amount of new bone formation at the third month was found to be statistically significant only between the DBBG and control groups (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION Autogenous blood with titanium barriers in guided bone regeneration seems to be as successful as DBBG and BCP bioceramic graft material.
Thoughts as Data, Thoughts as Code: Natural Goodness and a Model of the Will

in kind from the goodness of ants or oak trees, it is simply the goodness of a faculty unique to the human mind: the rational will. In this paper, I adopt Foot’s position regarding species-specific goodness. My main project will be to suggest a computational model of the human will that could underpin Foot’s conception of human goodness. The most important part of my model of the will is a distinction between mental content that is read and mental content that is executed. I conclude with some further speculative thoughts about consciousness that this (partial) model of the human mind suggests.
A damped precipitation‐driven, bottom‐up model for deer mouse population abundance in the northwestern United States

Abstract Small‐mammal population densities can be regulated by bottom‐up (food availability) and top‐down (predation) forces. In 1993, an El Niño Southern Oscillation event was followed by a cluster of human hantavirus with pulmonary syndrome in the southwestern United States. An upward trophic cascade hypothesis was proposed as an explanation for the outbreak: Increased plant productivity as a consequence of El Niño precipitations led to an unusual increase in distribution and abundance of deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus; reservoir host of Sin Nombre virus). Could such drastic events occur in mesic habitats, where plant productivity in response to climate conditions is likely to be much less dramatic? In this work, we investigate to what extent deer mouse populations follow a precipitation‐driven, bottom‐up model in central and western Montana and discuss important conditions for such a model to be possible. We found positive correlations between deer mouse abundance and on‐the‐ground measured plant productivity with a several‐month lag in three of six study sites. This effect was weaker when deer mouse populations were more abundant, indicating density‐dependent effects. Dispersal resulting from territoriality may be important in attenuating local density increments in spite of high food availability. In addition, there is evidence that population abundance in the study area could respond to other abiotic factors. In particular, precipitation in the form of snow may reduce deer mice survival, thus compensating the benefits of improved plant productivity. Deer mouse populations in Montana study sites follow complex dynamics determined by multiple limiting factors, leading to a damped precipitation‐driven bottom‐up regulation. This prevents dramatic changes in rodent abundances after sudden increments of food availability, such as those observed in other regions.
Insulin stimulates the cleavage and release of the extracellular domain of Klotho by ADAM10 and ADAM17

Cleavage and release (shedding) of membrane proteins is a critical regulatory step in many normal and pathological processes. Evidence suggests that the antiaging transmembrane protein Klotho (KL) is shed from the cell surface by proteolytic cleavage. In this study, we attempted to identify the enzymes responsible for the shedding of KL by treating KL-transfected COS-7 cells with a panel of proteinase inhibitors and measuring cleavage products by Western blot. We report that metalloproteinase inhibitors, including EDTA, EGTA, and TAPI-1, inhibit the shedding of KL, whereas insulin increases shedding. The effects of the inhibitors in KL-transfected COS-7 cells were repeated in studies on rat kidney slices ex vivo, which validates the use of COS-7 cells as our model system. Tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase (Timp)-3 effectively inhibits KL cleavage, whereas Timp-1 and Timp-2 do not, a profile that indicates the involvement of members of the A Desintegrin and Metalloproteinase (ADAM) family. Cotransfection of KL with either ADAM10 or ADAM17 enhances KL cleavage, whereas cotransfection of KL with small interference RNAs specific to ADAM10 and ADAM17 inhibits KL secretion. These results indicate that KL shedding is mediated mainly by ADAM10 and ADAM17 in KL-transfected COS-7 cells. The effect of insulin is abolished when ADAM10 or ADAM17 are silenced. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the effect of insulin on KL shedding is inhibited by wortmannin, showing that insulin acts through a PI3K-dependent pathway. Insulin enhances KL shedding without increasing ADAM10 and ADAM17 mRNA and protein levels, suggesting that it acts by stimulating their proteolytic activities.
Greek-Letter Organizations, Alcohol, and the Courts: A Risky Mix?

This article examines all reported state and federal cases involving college fraternities and sororities and negligence resulting from the use of alcohol by college and university students from 1970 through 2001. Research examined the litigation volume, fact patterns, defendants named for litigation, and outcomes of cases. Results indicate student affairs professionals should focus more on student intervention than on concerns about institutional liability.