Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
PROGRESSIVE MASTERY TESTING: DOES IT INCREASE LEARNING AND RETENTION? YES AND NO

Student mastery of material from an introductory st atistics course was compared across courses that differed by whether a progressive mastery test ing method was used. Students taught using progressive mastery methods showed increases in exa m scores. The increases were small but of the same order of magnitude as increases associated with earning a course grade of A versus B+ and as increases associated with 100 points increas es on the SAT math test. The increase in exam scores was about 75% of the increase associated wit h having taken a high school advanced placement course in addition to the college introdu ctory course. However these increases were short lived as these students showed double rates o f decline when tested in follow-up semesters. All benefit of the method vanished within two semes ters. Duke students were recruited from the pool of under graduates who had or were currently taking Statistics 101, an introductory algebra-base d course. The pool consists primarily of students majoring in the social sciences, although as many as twenty different majors are represented in any semester. Most students take the course as a requirement for their major or to fill a quantitative studies curriculum requirement. The format for the course includes 150-minutes of lecture and 50-minutes of data-analysis computin g lab. Class sizes were between 120 and 150 students, with lab sections of 25-30 students. The text book used in all sections is Freedman et al . (1998). The course covers all topics in the text—which includes the standard topics in an introductory course—plus introductions to multiple regression and Bayesian inference. Professors who did not use the progressive mastery method gave a combination of homework, weekly quizzes, two midterm exams, a data project, and a final exam. Under the progressive mastery method, students were given dai ly warm-up exercises that covered material in the preceding lecture, three practice exams give n during the first eight weeks of the semester, and then a sequence of four progressively more chal lenging exams corresponding to mastery levels of D, C, B, and A. Students did not progress to the next level until they had achieved 75% correct on the preceding level. Students who had taken Statistics 101 in any one of eight sections and received a final grade of B- or higher were invited to participate. Because the exam was administered during the reading period before final exams in Spring 2004 an d Fall 2005, for students currently enrolled, only those students who were expected to achieve a B- or higher were invited. As an incentive to participate, students were offered $40 to take the voluntary exam. Confidentiality of all test scores was assured and maintained. Students were instructe d not to study for the exam. The goal was to measure retention rather than what could be relearn ed.
Approaches to decrease the prevalence of depression in later life

Purpose of review Depression is a common and disabling disorder that affects people of all ages and 10% of those older than 65 years. Current strategies to decrease the personal and societal burden of depression in older age rely on the management of people with depression or of those at risk, but benefits have been limited and data remain scant. Recent findings Existing data suggest that decreasing the onset of a depressive disorder in people at risk is a reasonable way of reducing its prevalence in the community. Older adults with subthreshold symptoms of depression and those who have suffered a stroke have been successfully targeted with various interventions. In addition, the use of collaborative care has improved the immediate and long-term outcome of patients with depression. Finally, the findings of epidemiological studies indicate that a more systematic approach to the management of risk factors might improve the outcome of patients and those at risk, but trial data are still lacking. Summary Current evidence suggests that it is possible to decrease the prevalence of depression in later life, but a more systematic approach to the assessment and management of older adults is necessary.
Population aging and hospitalization for chronic disease in Germany.

BACKGROUND The population of Germany is aging, i.e., the elderly currently make up an increasing percentage of the population from year to year. Furthermore, many common chronic diseases mainly affect the elderly. For these two reasons, the overall cost of health care in Germany is expected to increase. We studied the effect that population aging has had on the number of hospitalizations for major types of chronic disease in Germany since the year 2000. METHODS This study is based on nationwide hospitalization statistics, classified by diagnosis, that were published by the German Federal Statistical Office. We analyzed data for three classes of diagnoses--malignant neoplasia, cardiovascular diseases, and diseases of the musculoskeletal system and connective tissue--which were further broken down into nine diagnostic subgroups. Changes in inpatient case numbers might be due either to population aging or to changing rates of hospitalization for individual diagnoses. We used index decomposition analysis to determine the relative influence of these two factors on changing case numbers. RESULTS The author found that the aging of the population increased the number of hospitalizations for all of the diagnoses studied. This was particularly evident with respect to the large birth cohorts born in the 1920s (with the diagnosis of congestive heart failure) and in the period 1934-1944 (with the diagnoses ischemic heart disease, lung cancer, colorectal cancer, and osteoarthritis). On the other hand, changing rates of hospitalization for individual diagnoses increased the number of hospitalizations for some diagnoses (congestive heart failure, diseases of the spine and back) and decreased it for others (ischemic heart disease, cerebrovascular diseases, colorectal cancer, breast cancer). CONCLUSION The aging of the population and the changing rates of hospitalization for various diagnoses are exerting separate effects on the number of hospitalizations for chronic diseases in Germany. Predictions of hospital case numbers in the future must take both factors into account.
SIX1 mutation screening in 247 branchio‐oto‐renal syndrome families: a recurrent missense mutation associated with BOR

Branchio‐oto‐renal syndrome (BOR) is a clinically heterogeneous autosomal dominant form of syndromic hearing loss characterized by variable hearing impairment, malformations of the pinnae, the presence of branchial arch remnants, and various renal abnormalities. Both EYA1 and SIX1 are expressed in developing otic, branchial and renal tissue. Consistent with this expression pattern, mutations in both genes cause BOR syndrome. Mutations in EYA1 are found in approximately 40% of patients with the BOR phenotype, however, the role of SIX1 is much lower. To date only three different SIX1 mutations have been described in BOR patients. The current screen of 247 BOR families detected five novel SIX1 mutations (c.50T>A, c.218A>C, c.317T>G, c.329G>A, c.334C>T) and one previously reported mutation (c.328C>T) seen in 5 unrelated families. All mutations are within the protein‐binding Six domain. Phenotypic variability was high in these BOR families. Seven of the eight known SIX1 mutations are missense and the one in frame deletion is predicted to be functionally similar. The wide phenotypic variability precludes making genotype‐phenotype correlations at this time. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The positive-feedback preference model of the AS-level Internet topology

When modeling the behavior of the Internet, it is vital to obtain a good description of its topology because structure fundamentally affects function. We introduce the positive-feedback preference (PFP) model, which is the most precise and complete Internet topology generator to date. The model uses two generic mechanisms based on observations on Internet history data, namely the interactive growth of new nodes and new internal links, combined with a novel nonlinear preferential probability, which is described by a positive-feedback mechanism. The PFP model accurately reproduces many topological properties of the AS-level Internet, including degree distribution, the maximum degree, rich-club connectivity, disassortative mixing, shortest-path length, short cycles and betweenness centrality. These properties are relevant to crucial network behaviors, such as routing efficiency, flexibility and traffic distribution. The PFP model can be used in more representative Internet simulations.
RTP801 gene expression is differentially upregulated in retinopathy and is silenced by PF-04523655, a 19-Mer siRNA directed against RTP801.

PURPOSE The intraocular pharmacodynamics of PF-04523655, a small-interfering RNA (siRNA) directed against RTP801, was characterized using rat models of retinopathy. METHODS Rat models of streptozotocin-induced diabetes and wet AMD were used to determine the onset, extent, and duration of siRNA inhibition of retinal RTP801 expression by PF-04523655, and this inhibition was characterized by pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) modeling. A rat model of wet AMD was also used to examine PF-04523655 dose-dependent effects on the incidence of clinical grade 3 or 4 choroidal neovascularization lesions. Whole homogenate versus laser-capture microdissected (LCM) retinal samples were analyzed by quantitative PCR for RTP801 expression. RESULTS RTP801 expression in RPE/choroid (RPE/C) increased in diabetic rats by up to 70% above nondiabetic rat levels. Inhibition of retinal RTP801 expression by PF-04523655 began 1 day after intravitreous injection and was observed through day 7 in the neurosensory retina and through day 14 or longer in RPE/C. PF-04523655 inhibition of RTP801 expression was maintained well after clearance of PF-04523655 from the eye and was best characterized by an effect compartment PK/PD model. Moreover, PF-04523655 administration decreased the incidence of clinical grade 3 or 4 lesions by approximately 60% (P = 0.053), and dose-dependently inhibited retinal RTP801 expression (P < 0.01). RTP801 expression was enriched in the outer nuclear layer in LCM samples. CONCLUSIONS In rodent retinopathy models, administration of the siRNA, PF-04523655, reduced RTP801 expression in the retina, consistent with the RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC) mechanism of action. The pharmacodynamic profile from the animal models could be useful to elucidate dose and exposure dependency of RTP801 expression inhibition by siRNA.
Webs of Workspaces

This paper presents a prototype of a cooperative virtual environment supporting cooperation through the materials being worked upon. The paper focuses on capabilities for creating flexible structures of materials as affordances for effective cooperation and awareness. At the core is the notion of workspace, as derived from ethnographic studies of architects’ work practice and their ways of assembling materials in support of ongoing work. The Manufaktur provides a tailorable 3D interface and a series of generic mechanisms to support the distributed nature and complexity of design work, the need for overview, and the visual character of materials and arrangements of them. The mechanisms the permanence of workspaces, document-objects, webs of workspaces, templates, implantations, behaviours, etc. – have been developed in close cooperation with the architect-users.
Random Folded Clos Topologies for Datacenter Networks

In datacenter networks, big scale, high performance and fault-tolerance, low-cost, and graceful expandability are pursued features. Recently, random regular networks, as the Jellyfish, have been proposed for satisfying these stringent requirements. However, their completely unstructured design entails several drawbacks. As a related alternative, in this paper we propose Random Folded Clos (RFC) networks. They constitute a compromise between total randomness and maintaining some topological structure. As it will be shown, RFCs preserve important properties of Clos networks that provide a straightforward deadlock-free equal-cost multi-path routing and enough randomness to gracefully expanding. These networks are minutely compared, in topological and cost terms, against fat-trees, orthogonal fat-trees and random regular graphs. Also, experiments are carried out to simulate their performance under synthetic traffics that emulate common loads in datacenters. It is shown that RFCs constitute an interesting alternative to currently deployed networks since they appropriately balance all the important design requirements. Moreover, they do that at much lower cost than the fat-tree, their natural competitor. Being able up to connect the same number of compute nodes, saving up to 95% of the cost, and giving similar performance.
The cGMP-phosphodiesterase and its contribution to sensitivity regulation in retinal rods

We have used the truncated outer segment preparation to measure rod cGMP-phosphodiesterase activity, as well as its modulation by Ca2+, in darkness and in light. The basal enzyme activity in darkness was approximately 0-3 s-1, and was largely independent of Ca2+ concentration from 10 nM to 10 microM. The steady state activity elicited by a step of light (lambda = 520 nm) was strongly enhanced by Ca2+, increasing from approximately 0.005 s-1/(h nu micron-2 s-1) at 10 nM Ca2+ to approximately 0.16 s-1/h nu micron-2 s-1) at 10 microM Ca2+. Based on these measurements, as well as previous measurements on the effects of Ca2+ on rod guanylate cyclase and the cGMP-gated channel, we have calculated the step response-intensity relation for the rod cell in steady state. This relation agrees reasonably well with the relation directly measured from intact rods. We have also evaluated the relative contributions from the three Ca2+ effects to rod sensitivity. At low background light intensities, the Ca2+ modulation of the guanylate cyclase appears to be the most important for sensitivity regulation. At higher light intensities, especially above half-saturation of the response, the Ca2+ modulation of the light-stimulated phosphodiesterase shows a progressively important influence on the light response; it also extends the Weber-Fechner behavior of the cell to higher intensities. The contribution of the Ca2+ modulation of the cGMP-gated channel is slight throughout.
Magnetic resonance imaging in sclerotic-type chronic graft-vs-host disease.

BACKGROUND Sclerotic-type chronic graft-vs-host disease (cGVHD) of the skin is an uncommon but potentially debilitating sequela of allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. There is no standardized assessment measure for this form of cGVHD. Because a full-thickness incisional biopsy specimen to the level of the fascia may be needed to make a definitive histologic diagnosis of cGVHD-related fasciitis, a noninvasive technique for the assessment and monitoring of sclerotic-type cGVHD, particularly cGVHD-related fasciitis, would be of potential value. OBSERVATIONS Sixty-two consecutive patients with cGVHD following allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation were evaluated for sclerotic skin disease. Forty-four patients (71%) had cutaneous cGVHD, and 28 patients (45%) had evidence of sclerotic involvement based on physical examination findings. Fifteen patients agreed to undergo research magnetic resonance imaging to evaluate quantifiable changes in the dermis, subcutaneous tissue, and muscle. Among 15 patients, magnetic resonance imaging identified abnormalities in the skin in 7 (47%), subcutaneous fibrous septa in 13 (87%), deep fascia in 12 (80%), epimysium in 9 (60%), and muscle in 3 (20%). CONCLUSIONS Magnetic resonance imaging should be considered in the evaluation of patients with cGVHD suspected of having subcutaneous or fascial involvement. Additional studies are needed to validate this noninvasive modality for serial monitoring of disease activity and response to therapy. Trial Registration clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00331968.
Institutional Defensive equity : Is the market mispricing risk ?

Intuitively, investors might expect stocks that are less risky than other stocks – stocks we refer to as defensive stocks – to deliver lower returns than the broad market over the long term. That does not seem to have been the case, however. Among the factors that have been suggested as contributing to this apparent anomaly is the widespread use of market-relative benchmarking by mutual funds and institutional accounts. For investors who expect this defensive effect to persist, the strategy offers the possibility of a reduction in portfolio risk and a more attractive trade-off between risk and reward.
Long-Term Outcomes after CABG with Concomitant CO2 Transmyocardial Revascularization in Comparison with CABG Alone

Objectives Transmyocardial revascularization (TMR) has been used as an isolated or adjunctive revascularization therapy in patients presumed to have nonbypassable coronary artery disease. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the short- and midterm mortality for patients with complete revascularization using TMR and coronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) compared with those patients with incomplete CABG revascularization and to document long-term follow-up in patients receiving TMR + CABG. Methods Seventy TMR + CABG patients were cohort matched with 70 patients undergoing isolated CABG with circumflex coronary artery disease, but with no bypassable distal targets, from 1999 to 2005 at Emory University Hospital. The data were retrospectively reviewed from a database after being prospectively entered. Results are presented in mean ± standard deviation, and Kaplan-Meier curves were created for long-term all-cause mortality. Results The TMR + CABG patients had a similar incidences to the CABG only group for preoperative ejection fraction (50.9 ± 11.2% vs. 50.7 ± 10.3%, P = 0.93), number of grafts (2.6 ± 1.1 vs. 2.5 ± 1.3, P = 0.5), and number of diseased vessels (2.8 ± 0.3 vs. 2.9 ± 0.4, P = 0.26). Off-pump surgery was used more often in the CABG alone group versus the TMR combined with CABG group (74.3% vs. 41.4%, P < 0.001). Postoperatively, there was no statistical difference among the TMR + CABG and the CABG alone groups for intensive care unit length of stay (4.3 ± 7.8 days vs. 2.6 ± 3.4 days, P = 0.026), postsurgical length of stay (7.6 ± 6.1 days vs. 6.8 ± 4.5 days, P = 0.31), stroke events (1.4% vs. 1.4%, P = 1.00), myocardial infarction (4.3% vs. 2.9%, P = 0.65), and 30-day mortality (5.7% vs. 4.3%, P = 0.70). Long-term survival rate was not statistically significant. In addition, 4-year follow-up in the TMR + CABG group had symptom improvement with reduction in New York Heart Association classification for class III/IV (P < 0.0001, baseline vs. 4-year follow-up). Conclusions The combination of TMR and CABG for complete revascularization is safe and carries no further risk to patients compared with CABG only. CABG + TMR patients tend to have increased resource utilization. Long-term follow-up shows similar survival between the groups. TMR can be a useful adjunct to CABG for complete revascularization.
iTopic: Influential Topic Discovery from Information Networks via Keyword Query

The rapid growth of information networks provides a significant opportunity for people to learn the world and find useful information for decision making. To find influential topics in a given context, instead of searching widely over the whole information network, normally it is wise to find the related communities first and then identify the influential topics in those communities. In this demonstration, we present a novel framework to compute the correlated sub-networks from a large information network such as CiteSeerX based on a user's keyword query, and to extract the influential topics from each correlated network. To help users understand the influential topics as a whole, we utilize a word cloud to represent the discovered topics for each correlated network. As such, multiple word clouds can be generated for different correlated networks, by which users can easily pick up their interested ones by reading the visualized topic descriptions over word clouds. To determine the sizes of different terms in a word cloud, we introduce a scoring scheme for assessing the influence of these terms in the corresponding networks. We demonstrate the functionality of our influential topic system, called iTopic, using the CiteSeerX information network data.
New time-shifted Z-score and Student's test in fMRI

A new approach to compute z-score and Student's test in functional MRI has been developed. This approach tends to involve standard z-score and Student's test computation. This approach is based on the delay of the response compared to the stimulation introduced by many authors. The results obtained prove the methods efficiency; moreover these methods can be easily adapted in a clinical context. This paper presents the new computation and the validation
Measuring Fundamental Properties of Real-World Complex Networks

Complex networks, modeled as large graphs, received much attention during these last years. However, data on such networks is only available through intricate measurement procedures. Until recently, most studies assumed that these procedures eventually lead to samples large enough to be representative of the whole, at least concerning some key properties. This has crucial impact on network modeling and simulation, which rely on these properties. Recent contributions proved that this approach may be misleading, but no solution has been proposed. We provide here the first practical way to distinguish between cases where it is indeed misleading, and cases where the observed properties may be trusted. It consists in studying how the properties of interest evolve when the sample grows, and in particular whether they reach a steady state or not. In order to illustrate this method and to demonstrate its relevance, we apply it to data-sets on complex network measurements that are representative of the ones commonly used. The obtained results show that the method fulfills its goals very well. We moreover identify some properties which seem easier to evaluate in practice, thus opening interesting perspectives.
DSASim: A Simulation Framework for Dynamic Spectrum Allocation

The current methodology for distributing the frequency spectrum among users is in need of revamping. This is necessary in order to increase the number of users able to access the communication channels; to better manage usage in metropolitan areas, where the usage of wireless communication is still rapidly increasing; and to ensure adequate frequency allocation for users during peak usage times. Several methods and paradigms have been suggested as replacements for the current scheme of distributing spectrum among users. This paper proposes a simulation framework to simulate a broker-based system to implement a dynamic spectrum allocation environment. The broker operates based upon pre-defined spatial and temporal requirements in a manner where operational parameters are set up or collected dynamically. The broker system responds to the radio devices, allocating the suitable amount of frequency spectrum required for a particular application. The results of the simulations show a promising and efficient utilization of frequency spectrum resources.