Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Perspectives on Decision Making About Human Papillomavirus Vaccination Among 11- to 12-Year-Old Girls and Their Mothers

Introduction. The aims of this qualitative study were to explore (a) the factors influencing mothers’ decisions to vaccinate 11- to 12-year-old daughters against human papillomavirus (HPV) and (b) the mothers’ and daughters’ perspectives about HPV vaccine–related decision making. Methods. Participants were girls (N = 33) who had received an HPV vaccine and their mothers (N = 32), recruited from suburban and urban pediatric practices. Semistructured interviews were conducted with girls and mothers separately, and data were analyzed using framework analysis. Results. The primary factors influencing mothers’ decisions to vaccinate daughters against HPV were (a) mother’s beliefs and experiences; (b) interactions with clinicians, friends, and family members; and (c) exposure to media reports/marketing. Most daughters believed the decision to be vaccinated was a mutual one, although most mothers believed the decision was theirs. Conclusions. This study provides novel insights into perspectives on decision making about HPV vaccination among mothers and 11- to12-year-old daughters, which can be used in interventions to improve vaccination rates.
Adding Values through Practical Education in Agroecology: Review of Canadian Student Experiences

Experiential learning builds on the strong conceptual foundation established in the last century especiallyby John Dewey and David Kolb. The process generates high expectations in students, recognizes manyways of knowing, reflecting and evaluating, and creates education relevant to past experience and realworld challenges. Canadian students have been active participants in the Norwegian programs inAgroecology, an integrative field of science that explores the ecology of farming and food systems. Focusof an 8-week farming systems course at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences is developing a farmplan that meets the long-term goals of a farm family. A subsequent 8-week food systems course hasstudent teams developing comprehensive food system plans for counties in Norway. Relevance of theprogram for Canadian students is especially strong due to similarities in crop and livestock species,cultural heritage and values, and interdisciplinary education. Undergraduate students in Canada often gaina rich background in group dynamics and conducting practical team projects.The Nordic programme addsethics and values to the production, economic, and environmental emphasis found in their prior courses.Students who have found the courses enriching have come from a diverse range of backgrounds,including animal science, agronomy, environmental science, history, sociology and geography. Thisreview uses the method of testimonials from Canadian students and their performance in subsequentpositions to provide a rich qualitative picture of the relevance of this education to their growth as scholarsand preparation to enter the professional world as agroecologists. The goal is to describe how they haveincorporated personal values into study of farming and food systems.
The Effects of China Performance on World Economic Growth, an Empirical Approach

The impressive growth of Chinese economy has become a global issue for the study of the world development. Since the 2009 economic crisis, China has gained more attention in developed countries, as the impacts caused by the crisis on China's economy have been imperceptible, and instead its economic strengths are being an important dynamic for the global economic growth. Applying cointegrated and autoregressive vectors, the present study shows that Chinese economy has a positive causal relationship on United States, Canada, European Union and Japan on selected economics variables, such as employment, economic growth and productivity. Nevertheless, in the Mexican case the relationship is negative, which is consistent with other researches that show the existence of competition between both countries.
Early Tumor Progression Associated with Enhanced EGFR Signaling with Bortezomib, Cetuximab, and Radiotherapy for Head and Neck Cancer

Purpose: A phase I clinical trial and molecular correlative studies were conducted to evaluate preclinical evidence for combinatorial activity of the proteasome inhibitor bortezomib, the epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) inhibitor cetuximab, and radiation therapy. Experimental Design: Patients with radiotherapy-naive stage IV or recurrent squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (SCCHN) were studied. Escalating doses of bortezomib (0.7, 1.0, and 1.3 mg/m2) were given intravenously twice weekly on days 1, 4, 8, and 11, every 21 days, with weekly cetuximab beginning 1 week prior and concurrently with intensity-modulated radiotherapy, delivered in 2 Gy fractions to 70 to 74 Gy. Molecular effects were examined in serial serum and SCCHN tumor specimens and the cell line UMSCC-1. Results: Seven patients were accrued before the study was terminated when five of six previously untreated patients with favorable prognosis oropharyngeal SCCHN progressed within 1 year (progression-free survival = 4.8 months; 95% CI, 2.6–6.9). Three patients each received bortezomib 0.7 or 1.0 mg/m2, without dose-limiting toxicities; one patient treated at 1.3 mg/m2 was taken off study due to recurring cetuximab infusion reaction and progressive disease (PD). Expected grade 3 toxicities included radiation mucositis (n = 4), dermatitis (n = 4), and rash (n = 1). SCCHN-related cytokines increased in serial serum specimens of patients developing PD (P = 0.029). Bortezomib antagonized cetuximab- and radiation-induced cytotoxicity, degradation of EGFR, and enhanced prosurvival signal pathway activation in SCCHN tumor biopsies and UMSCC-1. Conclusions: Combining bortezomib with cetuximab and radiation therapy showed unexpected early progression, evidence for EGFR stabilization, increased prosurvival signaling, and SCCHN cytokine expression, warranting avoidance of this combination. Clin Cancer Res; 17(17); 5755–64. ©2011 AACR.
Measuring employee innovation:a review of existing scales and the development of the innovative behavior and innovation support inventories across cultures

Purpose - The paper develops a model of employee innovative behavior conceptualizing it as distinct from innovation outputs and as a multi-faceted behavior rather than a simple count of ‘innovative acts’ by employees. It understands individual employee innovative behaviors as a micro-foundation of firm intrapreneurship that is embedded in and influenced by contextual factors such as managerial, organizational and cultural support for innovation. Building from a review of existing employee innovative behavior scales and theoretical considerations we develop and validate the Innovative Behavior Inventory (IBI) and the Innovation Support Inventory (ISI). Design/methodology/approach – Two pilot studies, a third validation study in the Czech Republic and a fourth cross-cultural validation study using population representative samples from Switzerland, Germany, Italy and the Czech Republic (n=2,812 employees and 450 entrepreneurs) were conducted. Findings - Both inventories were reliable and showed factorial, criterion, convergent and discriminant validity as well as cross-cultural equivalence. Employee innovative behavior was supported as comprising of idea generation, idea search, idea communication, implementation starting activities, involving others and overcoming obstacles. Managerial support was the most proximal contextual influence on innovative behavior and mediated the effect of organizational support and national culture. Originality/value - The paper advances our understanding of employee innovative behavior as a multi-faceted phenomenon and the contextual factors influencing it. Where past research typically focuses on convenience samples within a particular country, we offer first robust evidence that our model of employee innovative behavior generalizes across cultures and types of samples. Our model and the IBI and ISI inventories enable researchers to build a deeper understanding of the important micro-foundation underpinning intrapreneurial behavior in organizations and allow practitioners to identify their organizations’ strengths and weaknesses related to intrapreneurship.
Probabilistic Mixture of Model-Agnostic Meta-Learners

Meta-learning or learning to learn is a promising direction for generalizing machine learning models beyond the specific tasks they were trained on. Meta-learning ideas are at least a few decades old [1, 12], and recent approaches include metric learning [13], soft-attention models [2], memoryaugmented networks [11], and learning optimizers [10]. Our focus is on gradient-based meta-learning algorithms that attempt to learn good initializations for a variety of tasks. Examples of this class of algorithms include Model-Agnostic Meta-Learning (MAML) [3] and Reptile [8]. Learning to learn new tasks using only a few training examples is a key concern for recent meta-learning approaches.
Biogenesis of Regulated Exocytotic Carriers in Neuroendocrine Cells

Ca2+-triggered exocytosis is a hallmark of neurosecretory granules, but the cellular pathway leading to the assembly of these regulated exocytotic carriers is poorly understood. Here we used the pituitary AtT-20 cell line to study the biogenesis of regulated exocytotic carriers involved in peptide hormone secretion. We show that immature secretory granules (ISGs) freshly budded from thetrans-Golgi network (TGN) exhibit characteristics of unregulated exocytotic carriers. During a subsequent maturation period they undergo an important switch to become regulated exocytotic carriers. We have identified a novel sorting pathway responsible for this transition. The SNARE proteins, VAMP4 and synaptotagmin IV (Syt IV), enter ISGs initially but are sorted away during maturation. Sorting is achieved by vesicle budding from the ISGs, because it can be inhibited by brefeldin A (BFA). Inhibition of this sorting pathway with BFA arrested the maturing granules in a state that responded poorly to stimuli, suggesting that the transition to regulated exocytotic carriers requires the removal of a putative inhibitor. In support of this, we found that overexpression of Syt IV reduced the stimulus-responsiveness of maturing granules. We conclude that secretory granules undergo a switch from unregulated to regulated secretory carriers during biogenesis. The existence of such a switch may provide a mechanism for cells to modulate their secretory activities under different physiological conditions.
The human vestibulo-ocular reflex and saccades: normal subjects and the effect of age.

Here we characterise in eighty normal subjects (16-84 years (mean(SD), 47(19) years) the vestibulo-ocular reflex (VOR) and saccades in response to three-dimensional head-impulses with a monocular video head impulse test (vHIT) of the right eye. Impulses towards the right lateral, right anterior and left posterior canals (means: 0.98, 0.91, 0.79) had slightly higher mean gains compared to their counterparts (0.95, 0.86, 0.76). In the older age-group (>60 yrs), gains of left posterior canal dropped 0.09 and left anterior canals rose 0.09 resulting in symmetry. All canal gains reduced with increasing head velocity (0.02-0.13 per 100 °/s). Comparison of lateral canal gains calculated using five published algorithms yielded lower values (~0.80) when a narrow detection window was used. Low amplitude refixation saccades (amplitude: 1.11±0.98 °, peak velocity: 63.9±34.0 °/s at 262.0±93.9 ms) were observed amongst all age-groups (frequency: 40.2±23.4 %), increasing in amplitude, peak-velocity and frequency in older subjects. Impulses towards anterior canals showed the least frequent saccades and lateral and posterior canals were similar, but while lateral canal impulses showed the smallest saccades the posterior canal showed the largest saccades. Saccade peak-velocity ~ amplitude 'main sequence' slope was steeper for the horizontal canals compared to the vertical planes (60 °/s vs. < 40 °/s per 1°). We found small but significant asymmetries in monocular vHIT gain that changed with age. Healthy subjects commonly have minuscule refixation saccades that are moderately to strongly correlated with vHIT gain.
Full Solution Indexing Using Database for QoS-Aware Web Service Composition

Automated service composition can fulfill user request by composing services automatically when no individual services meet the goal. Unfortunately, most of current automated service composition methods are in-memory methods, which are limited by expensive and volatile physical memory. In this work, we develop a relational-database approach for automatic service composition. Possible service combinations are stored in a relational database on persistence disk instead of volatile memory, and for any composition requests, solutions can be obtained by simple SQL queries. We offer three main contributions in this paper. First, pursuing earlier work, we overcome the disadvantages of in-memory composition algorithms, such as volatile and expensive, and provide a solution suitable to cloud environments. Second, compared with other pre-computing composition methods, we use a single SQL query: there is no need to eliminate spurious services iteratively. Third, we address the quality of services to maximize user's satisfaction in our system. An experimental validation is done, which shows the performance benefits of our system and proves that this system can find a valid composition solution with fewer services to maximize user satisfaction.
A meta-analysis of the impact of neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio on treatment outcomes after radiotherapy for solid tumors

Background: To evaluate the impact of neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratios (NLR) as a prognostic factor in predicting treatment outcomes after radiotherapy (RT) for solid tumors. Methods: PubMed and Embase databases were used to search for articles published by February 2019 based on the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guideline. Hazard ratios (HR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI) were used to evaluate the association between NLR levels and treatment outcomes after RT. The primary endpoint was overall survival (OS) rates. Secondary endpoints included progression-free survival, disease-free survival, and disease-specific survival rates. Results: Thirty-eight datasets with a total of 7065 patients were included in the meta-analysis. Patients with high pretreatment NLR demonstrated significantly worse OS with a pooled HR of 1.90 (95% CI 1.66–2.17, P < .001). In patients receiving RT alone, the pooled HR for OS was 1.71 (95% CI 1.44–2.04, P < .001) with no between-study heterogeneity (I2 = 0%, P = .46). Conclusion: Elevated pretreatment NLR is associated with poorer survival in cancer patients undergoing RT. Elevated pretreatment NLR prior to RT initiation may be a useful biomarker to predict treatment outcomes and select a subgroup of patients in need of a more aggressive treatment approach.
Aβ and tau prion-like activities decline with longevity in the Alzheimer’s disease human brain

Cellular assays reveal a decline in Aβ and tau pathological conformers in Alzheimer’s disease brain samples. Puncta point the way Amyloid plaques composed of Aβ peptides and neurofibrillary tangles composed of aberrant tau proteins are the key pathological hallmarks in the Alzheimer’s disease (AD) brain. However, understanding which conformers of Aβ and tau play a pathological role at each step of AD pathogenesis has been difficult to elucidate. Aoyagi et al. have developed sensitive cellular assays that detect aberrant Aβ and tau in postmortem brain homogenates from patients with AD or other neurodegenerative diseases. Using fluorescent puncta as a readout, these assays now reveal that patients with AD who died at an older age have lower Aβ and tau pathological conformers than do patients who died at a younger age. The hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are the accumulation of Aβ plaques and neurofibrillary tangles composed of hyperphosphorylated tau. We developed sensitive cellular assays using human embryonic kidney–293T cells to quantify intracellular self-propagating conformers of Aβ in brain samples from patients with AD or other neurodegenerative diseases. Postmortem brain tissue from patients with AD had measurable amounts of pathological Aβ conformers. Individuals over 80 years of age had the lowest amounts of prion-like Aβ and phosphorylated tau. Unexpectedly, the longevity-dependent decrease in self-propagating tau conformers occurred in spite of increasing amounts of total insoluble tau. When corrected for the abundance of insoluble tau, the ability of postmortem AD brain homogenates to induce misfolded tau in the cellular assays showed an exponential decrease with longevity, with a half-life of about one decade over the age range of 37 to 99 years. Thus, our findings demonstrate an inverse correlation between longevity in patients with AD and the abundance of pathological tau conformers. Our cellular assays can be applied to patient selection for clinical studies and the development of new drugs and diagnostics for AD.
Spread of bla(CTX-M-type) and bla(PER-2) beta-lactamase genes in clinical isolates from Bolivian hospitals.

OBJECTIVES To assess the prevalence and types of genes encoding extended-spectrum beta-lactamases (ESBLs) in clinical isolates of Enterobacteriaceae, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Acinetobacter spp. from Bolivia. METHODS A total of 642 clinical isolates were collected consecutively during a 4 month period (September to December 2004). Resistance or reduced susceptibility to cefotaxime and/or ceftazidime and/or aztreonam was assessed using double disc synergy tests using clavulanic acid, cefotaxime, ceftazidime and aztreonam to identify putative ESBL-producing isolates. The ESBL determinants were characterized by colony blot hybridization, PCR and DNA sequencing. RESULTS Of the 642 isolates, 220 (34.3%) showed resistance or reduced susceptibility to cefotaxime and/or ceftazidime and/or aztreonam, and 150 (23.4%) were putative ESBL producers. A total of 106 ESBL-producing isolates contained the bla(CTX-M-2) gene, and 32 isolates had a novel allele, bla(CTX-M-43). bla(CTX-M) alleles were detected in all P. aeruginosa and Acinetobacter spp. studied. In contrast, only 12 ESBL-producing isolates had bla(PER-2), mainly Enterobacteriaceae, although it was also found in a strain of P. aeruginosa. CONCLUSIONS This is the first study on ESBL-producing strains in Bolivia and it reveals a high prevalence of bla(CTX-M) genes. The PER-2 enzyme was less prevalent, but its gene was detected in several species, including P. aeruginosa, which is consistent with horizontal transfer.
Abstract 3344: Akt1 and Akt3 exert opposing roles in the regulation of vascular tumor growth

Proceedings: AACR Annual Meeting 2014; April 5-9, 2014; San Diego, CA Vascular tumors are endothelial cell neoplasms with a wide spectrum of clinical presentations, ranging from benign infantile hemangiomas in children to low-grade malignant hemangioendotheliomas and highly aggressive angiosarcomas in adults. To date, the cellular and molecular mechanisms leading to vascular tumor formation are poorly understood, and current therapies, particularly those for malignant vascular tumors, have not significantly improved the clinical outcome. We examined the growth regulatory pathways in vascular tumors, and showed that human vascular tumors have increased Akt activation, and constitutive activation of Akt1 in endothelial cells is sufficient to drive de novo vascular tumor formation in a transgenic mouse model. Importantly, we have uncovered the opposing functions of Akt isoforms in this regulation, in which Akt1 promotes, whereas Akt3 inhibits tumor endothelial cell migration and growth in in vitro and in vivo tumor models. Consistent with these findings, we observed reduced levels of Akt3 expression in human vascular tumors. Mechanistically, Akt3 blocks tumor cell migration and growth by inhibiting p70 S6-Kinase (S6K) activation, and Akt3 does so in part by modulating the levels of Rictor, a component of the mammalian target of rapamycin complex-2. S6K in turn exerts negative feedback regulation on Akt3 expression. Moreover, vascular tumor cells with Akt3 knockdown have increased S6K signaling, and are sensitized to a novel S6K inhibitor. Our findings provide a new perspective on Akt signaling, in which there are “check-and-balance” functions by different Akt isoforms to modulate the overall Akt signaling output. These studies also highlight the potential clinical utility of treating malignant vascular tumors, such as angiosarcomas, with agents that effectively block the S6K pathway. Citation Format: Thuy L. Phung, Qi Xue, Sokha Nhek, Damien Gerald, Carole Perruzzi, Sriram Ayyaswamy, Wa Du, Sandaruwan Geeganage, Laura Benjamin. Akt1 and Akt3 exert opposing roles in the regulation of vascular tumor growth. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 105th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2014 Apr 5-9; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2014;74(19 Suppl):Abstract nr 3344. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2014-3344
Detecting branching structures using local Gaussian models

We present a method for modelling and estimating branching structures, such as blood vessel bifurcations, from medical images. Branches are modelled as a superposition of Gaussian functions in a local region which describe the amplitude, position and orientations of intersecting linear features. The centroids of component features are separated by applying K-means to the local Fourier phase and the covariances and amplitudes subsequently estimated by a likelihood maximisation. We employ a penalised likelihood test (AIC) to select the best fit model in a region. Results are presented on synthetic and representative 2D retinal images which show the estimation to be robust and accurate in the presence of noise. We compare our results with a curvature scale-space operator method.
Temporomandibular joint dislocation

Temporomandibular joint (TMJ) dislocation is an uncommon but debilitating condition of the facial skeleton. The condition may be acute or chronic. Acute TMJ dislocation is common in clinical practice and can be managed easily with manual reduction. Chronic recurrent TMJ dislocation is a challenging situation to manage. In this article, we discuss the comprehensive review of the different treatment modalities in managing TMJ dislocation.
An image saliency detection algorithm based on color and space information

This study aims to correct inaccurate results of salient region detection. This paper presents an image saliency detection algorithm based on color and space information. First, image based SLIC (simple linear iterative clustering) method was used, then the image color and space information was fused to calculate the salient features of the region, so that the foreground and background were separated to an extent. Specifically, an optimized saliency map computing algorithm, which uses the operator of similarity measures between superpixels, was employed. This prevented background areas from being detected by mistake and provided a detection result that satisfies the human visual attention mechanism. Experiments show that the proposed algorithm produces satisfying saliency maps.