Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Biomodeling and fabricating of a hybrid PU-collagen nerve regeneration conduit

A new technique for preparing double layer polyurethane (PU)-collagen nerve conduits for peripheral nerve repair via a double-nozzle low-temperature deposition manufacturing (DLDM) system has been developed. The DLDM system is based on a digital prototyping approach, and uses a combination of thermally induced phase separation and freeze-drying. With this system, two kinds of biomaterials with different properties can be combined to produce scaffold structures with good biocompatibility in the inner layer and with the desired mechanical strength protruded by the outer layer. The forming precision is high, the wall thickness can be controlled, and a tight connection between the two layers can be achieved. The effects of changing the processing parameters and the material temperature on the structure of the scaffolds have been investigated. Ideal peripheral nerve repair conduits, comprising an outer microporous layer of polyurethane (PU) and internal oriented filaments of collagen, have been manufactured through optimizing the processing parameters and the biomaterial concentrations.
Don't Speak and Drive: Cognitive Workload of In-Vehicle Speech Interactions

In-vehicle voice interactions appear to be less distracting than those systems with visual-manual interfaces only. However, speaking with an auditory interface can still divert drivers' attention away from the primary driving task. A driving simulator study was conducted to compare the workloads of speaking and listening. Thirty-two participants were recruited and were asked to multi-task between driving a vehicle, using a voice control system (VCS), and performing the Tactile Detection Response Task (TDRT). TDRT performance metrics show that speaking is cognitively more demanding than listening. There are also associations observed between the complexity of the spoken information and higher cognitive load.
Do RCAN1 proteins link chronic stress with neurodegeneration?

It has long been suspected that chronic stress can exacerbate, or even cause, disease. We now propose that the RCAN1 gene, which can generate several RCAN1 protein isoforms, may be at least partially responsible for this phenomenon. We review data showing that RCAN1 proteins can be induced by multiple stresses, and present new data also implicating psychosocial/emotional stress in RCAN1 induction. We further show that transgenic mice overexpressing the RCAN1‐1L protein exhibit accumulation of hyperphosphorylated tau protein (AT8 antibody), an early precursor to the formation of neurofibrillary tangles and neurodegeneration of the kind seen in Alzheimer disease. We propose that, although transient induction of the RCAN1 gene might protect cells against acute stress, persistent stress may cause chronic RCAN1 overexpression, resulting in serious side effects. Chronically elevated levels of RCAN1 proteins may promote or exacerbate various diseases, including tauopathies such as Alzheimer disease. We propose that the mechanism by which stress can lead to these diseases involves the inhibition of calcineurin and the induction of GSK‐3β by RCAN1 proteins. Both inhibition of calcineurin and induction of GSK‐3β contribute to accumulation of phosphorylated tau, formation of neurofibrillary tangles, and eventual neurodegeneration. —Ermak, G. , Pritchard, M. A. , Dronjak, S. , Niu, B. , Davies, K. J. A. Do RCAN1 proteins link chronic stress with neurodegeneration? FASEB J. 25, 3306–3311 (2011). www.fasebj. org
Determination of Technopedagogical Content Knowledge Competencies of Preservice Physical Education Teachers: A Turkish Sample.

This study examined preservice physical education teachers’ (PPETs’) technopedagogical content knowledge (TPCK) competencies. The participants were 1028 PPETs from 26 major universities representing all seven geographical regions of Turkey. The Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge Deep- Scale developed by Kabakci Yurdakul et al. (2012) was used to measure TPCK competencies of PPETs. Descriptive statistics, an independent samples t test, and multivariate analysis of variance were used to analyze the data. The results showed that PPETs rated themselves at a high level in self-reported TPCK competencies in terms of the entire scale and its factors (design, exertion, ethics and proficiency). There was no significant main effect for gender (p .05) and PPETs’ interest in keeping up with the latest PE-related technological developments (p > .05) were significant variables in PPETs’ TPCK competencies. Overall, this study offers some evidence that the use of i.
Prevalence of EHV-1 in adult horses transported over long distances

INFECTION with equine herpesvirus type 1 (EHV-1) is widespread in horse populations throughout the world; it produces well-documented syndromes and outbreaks of respiratory disease, abortion, neonatal losses and myeloencephalopathy ([Van Maanen 2002][1]). It is believed that EHV-1 circulates in a
Importance of serrated polyps in colorectal carcinogenesis

Colorectal cancer is an invasive neoplasm of the glandular epithelium of the colon and rectum that begins in a precursor lesion and expands to replace its lesion of origin. The majority of colorectal cancers arise from an adenoma, and the ‘adenoma to carcinoma’ pathway has been acknowledged for decades. More recently, another precursor lesion has been recognized: the serrated polyp. Serrated polyps are characterized by a sawtooth appearance of the crypt epithelium resulting from failure of apoptosis and a build‐up of aging colonocytes. Although initially felt to be innocent of involvement in colorectal carcinogenesis, some types of serrated polyp are being increasingly recognized as precursor lesions, prone to develop into cancer, and likely to be a cause of ‘missed’ or interval cancers after colonoscopic screening. It is essential that gastrointestinal specialists appreciate the clinical significance of these lesions and what that means for colorectal cancer screening, and prevention. The purpose of this review is to highlight the importance serrated lesions of the colon and rectum, and to summarize current opinion on their natural history, diagnosis, surveillance and treatment.
Introducing the family of "Sen" transformers: a set of power flow controlling transformers

Summary form only given, as follows. Real and reactive power flow in an alternating current transmission line are independently controlled by connecting, to the transmission line, a series-compensating voltage, which is variable in magnitude and at variable angle with respect to the transmission line voltage as well as the prevailing line current. The traditional technology of transformer and tap changer is used to implement this novel technique. An additional voltage regulation capability can also be implemented. The speed of tap changer operation determines the response time of this power flow controller, which is quite adequate in most utility applications. The response time can be improved if suitable solid-state switches are available to replace the mechanical taps.
Identifying AD/HD subtypes using the cognitive assessment system and the NEPSY

The purpose of this study was to examine the ability of the Cognitive Assessment System (CAS) and the NEPSY, A Developmental Neuropsychological Assessment, to differentiate between the subtypes of Attention Deficit/ Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD). The CAS and NEPSY are neuropsychological instruments which provide norms for AD/HD children in general. This study examined the performance of the two subtypes of AD/HD on the CAS and NEPSY. In addition, this study examined the performance of the two AD/HD groups on the Screening Test for Auditory Processing Disorders (SCAN). Since AD/HD children tend to have difficulty with language, the SCAN was used to determine if any of the AD/HD subjects had auditory processing difficulties that might impact their performance on the CAS and/or NEPSY subtests. The sample consisted of 118 children between the ages of 8 and 12 years of age. Using the DSM-IV criteria, the children were diagnosed as having three types of AD/HD: A Predominantly Hyperactive-Impulsive Type (AD/HD-HI), a Predominantly Inattentive Type (AD/HD-I) and a Combined Type The subtypes were also identified by the Attention Deficit Disorders Evaluation Scale-Home Version (ADDES-H). Only two subtypes, AD/HD-I and AD/HD-C, were identified by the ADDES-H. There were not enough AD/HD-HI subjects to include in the study. Therefore, this study focused on the AD/HD-I and AD/HD-C subtypes. A binomial logistic regression analysis was conducted on the AD/HD-I and AD/HD-C subtypes with selected subtests of the NEPSY and the four PASS Scales of the CAS. Results indicated a significant difference between the AD/HD-I and AD/HD-C groups on the Tower subtest of the NEPSY and the Planning Scale of the CAS. The Tower and the Planning Scale are both purported measures of executive functioning; however, results of the Planning Scale were in an unexpected direction. No significant difference was found between the two AD/HD groups on the other subtests examined. The results of the SCAN analysis suggested there were no significant differences in auditory processing between the two AD/HD groups. Recommendations for future research are discussed.
Isolation and characterization of circumferential microfilament bundles from retinal pigmented epithelial cells

Chicken retinal pigmented epithelial cells have circumferential microfilament bundles (CMBs) at the zonula adherens region. We have isolated these CMBs in intact form and characterized them structurally and biochemically. Pigmented epithelia obtained from 11-d-old chick embryos were treated with glycerol and Triton. Then, the epithelia were homogenized by passing them through syringe needles. Many isolated CMBs were found in the homogenate by phase-contrast microscopy. They formed polygons, mostly pentagons and hexagons, or fragments of polygons. Polygons were filled with meshwork structures, i.e. they were polygonal plates. Upon exposure to Mg-ATP, isolated CMBs showed clear and large contraction. The contraction was inhibited by treatment with N- ethylmaleimide-modified myosin subfragment-1. After purification by centrifugation with the density gradient of Percoll, CMBs were analyzed by SDS PAGE. The electrophoretic pattern gave three major components of 200, 55, and 42 kdaltons and several minor components. Electron microscopy showed that the polygons were composed of thick bundles of actin-containing microfilaments, and the meshworks were composed primarily of intermediate filaments.
Language and speech predictors of reading achievement in preschool children with language disorders

LANGUAGE AND SPEECH PREDICTORS OF READING ACHIEVEMENT IN PRESCHOOL CHILDREN WITH LANGUAGE DISORDERS by Juliet K. Haarbauer-Krupa The purpose of this longitudinal study was to examine the relationship between language and reading in children diagnosed with developmental language disorder (DLD) during preschool. An archival data set was available for analysis. Preschool children with DLD who were assessed between 35 and 74 months for preschool language and speech abilities (Rapin, 1996) returned for language, speech and reading testing at age seven years. Children who enrolled in the study were a clinically referred sample, met criteria for average nonverbal intellectual functioning, and demonstrated below average performance on a composite language measure. To evaluate a hypothesis about the contribution of vocabulary, grammar, and speech articulation to reading outcome measures, a series of regression analyses tested models to identify predictors of reading achievement at age seven. Results indicated a strong, positive relationship between language skills assessed at both ages and reading comprehension. School-age language and speech skills explained 25% of the variance in reading comprehension after controlling for word identification skills. Grammar at school age was a significant unique predictor of reading comprehension. Preschool language and speech skills explained 22% of the variance after controlling for word identification skills. Speech articulation was not related to reading outcomes. In contrast, regression analyses suggested that language and speech skills did not predict word reading abilities. Children who had reading comprehension difficulties had weaker vocabulary, grammar and speech skills compared to children who had average and above comprehension skills. Findings support previous research describing a relationship between language skills and reading comprehension. Language skills measured at preschool can predict reading comprehension difficulties in elementary school for children with DLD. Results highlight the importance of early identification and intervention of language impairment in children to improve areas of vocabulary and grammar critical to reading success. LANGUAGE AND SPEECH PREDICTORS OF READING ACHIEVEMENT IN PRESCHOOL CHILDREN WITH LANGUAGE DISORDERS by Juliet Haarbauer-Krupa
An Unbiased Data Collection and Content Exploitation/Exploration Strategy for Personalization

One of missions for personalization systems and recommender systems is to show content items according to users' personal interests. In order to achieve such goal, these systems are learning user interests over time and trying to present content items tailoring to user profiles. Recommending items according to users' preferences has been investigated extensively in the past few years, mainly thanks for the popularity of Netflix competition. In a real setting, users may be attracted by a subset of those items and interact with them, only leaving partial feedbacks to the system to learn in the next cycle, which leads to significant biases into systems and hence results in a situation where user engagement metrics cannot be improved over time. The problem is not just for one component of the system. The data collected from users is usually used in many different tasks, including learning ranking functions, building user profiles and constructing content classifiers. Once the data is biased, all these downstream use cases would be impacted as well. Therefore, it would be beneficial to gather unbiased data through user interactions. Traditionally, unbiased data collection is done through showing items uniformly sampling from the content pool. However, this simple scheme is not feasible as it risks user engagement metrics and it takes long time to gather user feedbacks. In this paper, we introduce a user-friendly unbiased data collection framework, by utilizing methods developed in the exploitation and exploration literature. We discuss how the framework is different from normal multi-armed bandit problems and why such method is needed. We layout a novel Thompson sampling for Bernoulli ranked-list to effectively balance user experiences and data collection. The proposed method is validated from a real bucket test and we show strong results comparing to old algorithms
What Is a Great Experiment

In the introduction to Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century, the author declares that the experiments described in her book “deserve to be not only reported on as research, but also celebrated as story” (p. 3). It is unfortunate that in telling these stories, too much of the science that is also part of the story is sacrificed. The book focuses on personalities and personal anecdote with little substantive discussion of the great experiments that are the stated subject of the book. Though interesting, provocative, even controversial, these stories of the great experiments are incomplete and distorted. The saving grace of the book may be that it forces us to ask: What is a great experiment?
Psychological adjustment to disfiguring skin diseases

After diagnosis of a skin disorder, there follows a period of psychological adjustment during which most people are able to cope. Coping is a process that can be described as ‘expending conscious effort to solve personal and interpersonal problems, and seeking to master, minimise or tolerate a stressor’. Many types of coping strategies are possible, including planning; positive re-interpretation; using practical and emotional social support; venting of emotions; suppression of competing activities; emotional, behavioural and cognitive disengagement; and use of humour or religion. Several methods may be used and the methods used may change; skills are used or developed to regain a sense of equilibrium and well-being. Exploring ways of coping can be useful and an assessment tool such as The Brief COPE Questionnaire can help in this regard. Some people appear to cope well and adjust quickly despite an objectively severe skin disease, while others may become very stressed and struggle to cope in the face of an objectively minor skin disorder. Psychological adjustment is a multifactorial and fluctuant biopsychosocial process which centres around three themes: a search for meaning in the experience; an attempt to regain control over the situation and in life generally; and an effort to restore self-esteem.
Utilization of Unlabeled Probes for the Detection of Fibroblast Growth Factor Receptor 2 Exons 7 and 12 Mutations in Endometrial Carcinoma

BackgroundEndometrial adenocarcinomas are associated with a variety of molecular abnormalities including microsatellite instability, Kirsten rat sarcoma viral oncogene homolog mutations, and phosphatase and tensin homolog inactivation. Recently, mutations in fibroblast growth factor receptor 2 (FGFR2) have been described but their frequency and clinicopathologic characteristics are incompletely known. MethodsTo determine the frequency of mutations in FGFR2 exons 7 and 12, 43 adenocarcinomas of the endometrium were studied by high-resolution melting analysis utilizing unlabeled probes and sequencing. ResultsThree of 43 (7%) endometrial carcinomas harbored FGFR2 exon 7 mutations. All 3 mutations were S252W and occurred in endometrioid (type I) adenocarcinomas. Direct sequencing indicated that 2 of the S252W mutations were heterozygous, whereas 1 was presumably homozygous. No FGFR2 mutations were detected in exon 12. ConclusionsFGFR2 mutations occur in approximately 7% of adenocarcinomas of the endometrium. Only carcinomas of an endometrioid morphology contain FGFR2 mutations, and in our series all were S252W. FGFR2 exons 7 and 12 unlabeled DNA probes allow for easy screening of endometrial carcinoma for the 2 most common FGFR2 mutations (S252W and N550K). Identification of these mutations may have important implications in directed molecular therapy.
New Strategies in Refractory and Recurrent Neuroblastoma: Translational Opportunities to Impact Patient Outcome

Neuroblastoma remains responsible for a disproportionate amount of childhood cancer morbidity and mortality despite recent significant advances in understanding the genetic basis of tumor initiation and progression. About half of newly diagnosed patients can be reliably identified as having tumors of low malignant potential, and these children have cure rates of greater than 95% with little or no cytotoxic therapy. On the other hand, the other half of neuroblastomas typically present in an explosive fashion with widely metastatic disease, and reliable tumor-specific biomarkers have been defined for this phenotype as well. Empiric approaches to high-risk neuroblastoma therapy have relied on dramatic escalation of chemotherapy dose intensity and, recently, the incorporation of targeted immunotherapy, but nearly 50% of children with high-risk disease will be refractory to therapy or suffer a relapse, both of which are invariably fatal. Future improvements in high-risk neuroblastoma outcomes will require the identification of disease and patient-specific oncogenic vulnerabilities that can be leveraged therapeutically. Rational development of novel approaches to neuroblastoma therapy requires forward-thinking strategies to unequivocally prove activity in the relapse setting and, ultimately, efficacy in curing patients when integrated into frontline treatment plans. Clin Cancer Res; 18(9); 2423–8. ©2012 AACR.
Energy-aware allocation of reliable Virtual Software Defined Networks

The Internet is now present in our personal and professional life, where reliability and green communications are still open issues to be addressed. Usually, clients establish Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with their Internet Service Providers (ISPs), including parameters of reliability and bandwidth. On the other hand, the ISPs aim to maximize their profit by establishing as many SLAs as possible and decreasing the energy consumption to provide their services. In this context, this paper presents an algorithm for Virtual Software Defined Network (VSDN) allocation that considers both reliability and energy efficiency. The algorithm deploys the VSDN aiming to comply with the parameters defined in SLAs, as well as to improve the energy efficiency of the ISP. Experiments using a real network topology show the effectiveness of the algorithm to deploy the VSDN with a performance 15% better than existing algorithms.
NSF-DGE GK-12 teaching fellowships: changing student perceptions about computer science

SUMMARY College computer science enrollments dropped drastically between 2000 and 2004 with record decreases of 60% nationwide. [5] Reasons given for the waning interest in computer science and IT related fields include media attention to offshore outsourcing and the dot com.bust, as well as incorrect perceptions about the field of computer science [8]. Although offshoring has increased during the last few years, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, more IT jobs are available now than during the dot.com boom. [1]. Furthermore, over half the jobs in a list of the top ten fastest-growing jobs over the next decade are computer science related. This panel describes four projects that aim to increase computer science enrollments by providing enhanced curricula to K-12 students. All projects are funded by the Department of Graduate Education - National Science Foundation GK-12 Teaching Fellowships awards. These Fellowships place graduate students majoring in STEM (science, technology, engineering, or mathematics) disciplines in K-12 classrooms. The Fellows work with teachers to bring their research into the classroom in an effort to motivate students to become the next generation of scientists.
Performance evaluation of left-handed delay lines for RFID backscatter applications

The operation principle of a passive RFID tag on the basis of delay lines is presented and the performance of left- and right-handed lines for this application is compared. Additionally, limitations due to the dispersion properties of left-handed lines for the maximum number of usable cells are discussed. In conclusion, an expression relating the maximum number of usable bits for the tag impulse response to system parameters like bandwidth, centre frequency etc. is given. A proof of concept is realized with a 100 cell four bit backscatter tag. The set up of the tag is described and the performance analysed.