Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Post-operative hypothalamic lesions and obesity in childhood craniopharyngioma: results of the multinational prospective trial KRANIOPHARYNGEOM 2000 after 3-year follow-up.

BACKGROUND Hypothalamic obesity has major impact on prognosis and quality of life (QoL) in childhood craniopharyngioma. PATIENTS AND METHODS For this study, 120 patients were prospectively recruited during 2001 and 2007 and evaluated after 3 years of follow-up (KRANIOPHARYNGEOM 2000). Body mass index (BMI) and QoL at diagnosis and 36 months after diagnosis were analysed based on the reference assessment of tumour localisation and post-surgical hypothalamic lesions. Treatment was analysed based on the neurosurgical strategy of 50 participating neurosurgical centres, the centre size based on the patient load. RESULTS BMI SDS at diagnosis was similar in patients with or without hypothalamic involvement. Surgical lesions of anterior and posterior hypothalamic areas were associated with higher increase in BMI SDS during 36 months post-diagnosis compared with patients without or only anterior lesion (+1.8 BMISD, P=0.033, +2.1 BMISD; P=0.011), negative impact on QoL in patients with posterior hypothalamic lesions. Surgical strategies varied among the 50 neurosurgical centres (three large-sized, 24 middle-sized and 23 small-sized centres). Patients treated in small-sized centres presented with a higher rate of hypothalamic involvement compared with those treated in the middle- and large-sized centres. Treatment in large-sized centres was less radical, and the rates of complete resection and hypothalamic surgical lesions were lower in large-sized centres than those of the middle- and small-sized centres. However, a multivariable analysis showed that pre-operative hypothalamic involvement was the only independent risk factor for severe obesity (P=0.002). CONCLUSIONS Radical neurosurgical strategies leading to posterior hypothalamic lesions are not recommended due to the potential to exacerbate hypothalamic obesity and impaired QoL. Treatment should be confined to experienced multidisciplinary teams.
An Examination Of College Persistence Factors For Students From Different Rural Communities: A Multilevel Analysis

Students transitioning into college from public school require more than just academic readiness; they also need the personal attributes that allow them to successfully transition into a new community (Braxton, Doyle, Hartley III, Hirschy, Jones, & McLendon, 2014; Nora, 2002; Nora, 2004; Tinto, 1975). Rural students have a different educational experience than their peers at schools in suburban and urban locations (DeYoung & Howley, 1990; Gjelten, 1982). Additionally, the resources, culture, and educational opportunities at rural schools also vary among different types of rural communities. Although some studies have examined the influence of rural students’ academic achievement on college access and success, little research has analyzed the relationship between students of different types of rural communities and their persistence in post-secondary education. This study examined the likelihood for college-going students from three different types of rural communities to successfully transition into and persist at a four-year residential college. Multilevel logistic modeling was used to analyze the likelihood for students to persist in college for up to two academic years based on whether they were from rural tourist communities, college communities, and other rural communities. The analysis controlled for a variety of student and high school factors. Findings revealed that student factors related to poverty and academic readiness have the greatest effects, while the type of rural community has no significant influence on college persistence.
Automata-based modeling of interrupts in the Linux PREEMPT RT kernel

This paper presents a methodology to model and check the behavior of a part of the Linux kernel by applying automaton theory and in-kernel tracing from real execution. It is possible to check that the state transitions of the kernel during a real execution match with the allowed ones, according to the formal model. The scope of the paper is limited to the IRQ/NMI subsystem of the Linux kernel.
Using GARCH in Event Studies

The aim of this paper is to use an econometric model for the period (3/1/2000- 31/12/2016) in order to examine if a (Μ&Α) affects the share prices of eight big US acquiring banks. GARCH analysis will be thus used on daily data. Some advantages of GARCH models will be explained.
Double transverse myocutaneous gracilis free flaps for unilateral breast reconstruction

In cases were the deep inferior epigastric perforator flap (DIEP flap) is not available and unilateral transverse myocutaneous gracilis flap (TMG flap) is not sufficient for breast reconstruction, we perform double TMG flaps as a reconstructive method. In this report, we present our results of the use of double TMG free‐flap‐transfer for unilateral breast reconstruction.
Sexual Assault Supportive Attitudes: Rape Myth Acceptance and Token Resistance in Greek and Non-Greek College Students From Two University Samples in the United States

Colleges are rape-prone cultures with high rates of sexual victimization. Fraternities’ and sororities’ relationships with sexual assault are consistent themes in literature focusing on sexual violence among college students. Previous research suggests that fraternity men are more likely to endorse rape-supportive attitudes compared with non-Greek men or sorority women. The present study examines rape-supportive attitudes as well as rape and sexual assault victimization in college students with a focus on gender and Greek-life (i.e., involvement in fraternities or sororities) status variables. College students (N = 1,002) completed a survey including the Token Resistance to Sex Scale (TRSS), Illinois Rape Myth Acceptance Scale–Short Form (IRMA-S), and items related to past experiences of nonconsensual sex. Two regression models tested predictors of token resistance and rape myth acceptance. Chi-square analyses tested between-group differences of experiencing rape and sexual assault. Gender (p < .001), Greek status (p < .001), and race/ethnicity (p < .001) were predictors for TRSS scores. For IRMA scores, gender (p < .001), Greek status (p < .001), and race/ethnicity variables (p < .001) were also significant. Interaction terms revealed that Greek men had higher token resistance and rape myth acceptance than any other group. Chi-square analyses indicate women more frequently report experiences of rape (χ2 = 25.57, df = 1, p < .001) and sexual assault (χ2 = 31.75, df = 1, p < .001). Men report high rates (40.8%) of experiencing sexual assault “because refusing was useless. ” No differences of victimization rates were found between Greeks and non-Greeks. Gender and sexual scripting theory can help explain gender differences in attitudes and experiences. Greater endorsement of rape myth acceptance and token resistance by Greeks, who influence college party culture, could be contributing to a culture conducive to rape. Findings demonstrate a continued need for interventions focused on shifting sociocultural dynamics (e.g., traditional roles and sexual scripting) on college campuses.
Connectivity‐based parcellation of the anterior limb of the internal capsule

The anterior limb of the internal capsule (ALIC) is an important locus of frontal‐subcortical fiber tracts involved in cognitive and limbic feedback loops. However, the structural organization of its component fiber tracts remains unclear. Therefore, although the ALIC is a promising target for various neurosurgical procedures for psychiatric disorders, more precise understanding of its organization is required to optimize target localization. Using diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) collected on healthy subjects by the Human Connectome Project (HCP), we generated parcellations of the ALIC by dividing it according to structural connectivity to various frontal regions. We then compared individuals’ parcellations to evaluate the ALIC's structural consistency. All 40 included subjects demonstrated a posterior–superior to anterior–inferior axis of tract organization in the ALIC. Nonetheless, subdivisions of the ALIC were found to vary substantially, as voxels in the average parcellation were accurately assigned for a mean of only 66.2% of subjects. There were, however, some loci of consistency, most notably in the region maximally connected to orbitofrontal cortex. These findings clarify the highly variable organization of the ALIC and may represent a tool for patient‐specific targeting of neuromodulation. Hum Brain Mapp 38:6107–6117, 2017. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Scientific Research Activity of Students Pre-Service Teachers of Sciences at University: The Aspects of Understanding, Situation and Improvement

The development of student abilities of scientific research activity (SRA) in the process of studies appears as a highly important area. In the course of studies, students not only increase their general competencies, acquire professional abilities and skills but also learn to conduct research. This does not mean that all students will build their careers in the field of scientific research in the future. The present life, labour market, the complexity of technology, etc. require at least minimum competencies in carrying out investigation. SRA should be universally stimulated and developed. Scientific research activity is not an entertainment but responsible, thorough work requiring a lot of self-independence. Such activity promotes student analytical thinking, the abilities of searching and using information are formed, they learn how to analyse the collected material, prepare reports, make research presentations, etc. The conducted qualitative research involved graduated students – pre-service teachers of sciences studying at Lithuanian universities. The research was conducted in January-February 2016 and based on the constructivist paradigm, suggesting that knowledge was not the final or uniform product. Teaching is an effective tool when students gain information thus stimulating active cognitive processes. The performed research has demonstrated that SRA questions remain crucial, the organization of such activity has specific weaknesses and improvement is not always carried out deliberately and purposefully, because the context, environment, conditions and requirements for education in general may differ. Improvement on SRA is not possible without empirical data based on the status. The research has revealed student understanding of SRA, its key strengths and weaknesses as well as allowed assessing the significance of such activity on the professional training of the pre-service teacher and on improving guidelines.
Fine-Tuning Medium-of-Instruction Policy in Hong Kong: Acquisition of Language and Content-Based Subject Knowledge.

Facing a dramatic decline in English standards over the past decade, the Hong Kong Government introduced the ‘Fine-tuning Medium of Instruction (MOI) policy’ in 2010 to address the grievances arising from different sectors in the community. Integrating content and language has become popular in second/foreign language teaching in recent years. The main objective of the fine-tuning MOI policy is to raise students’ English proficiency with a view to enhancing their competitiveness for further education and work in the era of globalization. Under this new policy, students can choose to learn through English upon meeting certain language criteria while schools are given more autonomy to offer English-medium classes. One aim of the present study is to explore the impact of the ‘fine-tuning’ policy on how language and content-based subject knowledge are acquired as well as strategies employed by teachers and students to facilitate their teaching and learning in the second language environment. A qualitative research method semistructured interviews of some teachers and students is employed to collect data from two schools. The main finding is that while agreeing that their English proficiency could be enhanced through learning content-based subjects in English, students admitted encountering difficulties in the process.
Assessing Food Security in Ethiopia

Abstract We analyze several dimensions of food security in Ethiopia, taking into account projected population growth, economic growth, and price information to estimate future food consumption by income decile. The analysis looks at the potential impact of large consumer price increases on food security metrics. We use the new USDA/ERS demand-based modeling framework in order to carry out this study. The modeling approach captures economic behavior by making food demand systematically responsive to income and price changes based on a demand specification well-grounded in microeconomic foundations. The projected change in food consumption can be apportioned to population growth, income growth, and changes in food prices and real exchange rates. We found that Ethiopia is highly food insecure, with 54% of the population consuming less than 2,100 calories a day at calibration levels. Income growth under unchanged prices mitigates food insecurity with the number of food-insecure people falling to 42.5 million in 2016. If domestic prices were free to fall with world market prices, the food-insecure population would decrease farther to 36.1 million. If domestic prices increased because of domestic supply shocks and constrained imports, the food-insecure population could rise to 64.7 million. The food gap (i.e., the amount of food necessary to eliminate Ethiopia’s food insecurity) would reach 3.6 million tons. The practical implications of this are that measures of food security are sensitive to changes in prices. Maintaining higher prices when global prices are low maintains higher levels of food insecurity than would otherwise prevail. Expanded access to lower cost imports could significantly improve food security in Ethiopia.
Long-term responses of canine lungs to acidic particles

Sixteen beagle dogs were housed in four large chambers under minimum restraint. They were exposed for 16 months to clean air and individual baseline data of markers were obtained. For 13 months, eight dogs were further exposed to clean air and eight dogs for 6 h/d to 1-μm MMAD (mass median aerodynamic diameter) acidic sulfate particles carrying 25 μmol H+ m−3 into their lungs. To establish functional responses (lung function, cell and tissue integrity, redox balance, and non-specific respiratory defense capacity), each exposed animal served as its own control. To establish structural responses, the eight non-exposed animals served as controls. Acidic particles were produced by nebulization of aqueous sodium hydrogen sulfate at pH 1.5. Only subtle exposure-related changes of lung function and structure were detected. A significant increase in respiratory burst function of alveolar macrophages points to a marginal inflammatory response. This can be explained by the significant production of prostaglandin E2, activating cyclooxygenase-dependent mechanisms in epithelia and thus inhibiting lung inflammation. The non-specific defense capacity was slightly affected, giving increased tracheal mucus velocity and reduced in vivo dissolution of moderately soluble test particles. Hypertrophy and hyperplasia of bronchial epithelia were not observed, but there was an increase in volume density of bronchial glands and a shift from neutral to acidic staining of epithelial secretory cells in distal airways. The acidic exposure had thus no pathophysiological consequences. It is therefore unlikely that long-term inhalation of acidic particles is associated with a health risk.
Integrase interactor 1 regulates proliferation, apoptosis and invasion in gastric cancer cells.

BACKGROUND Integrase interactor 1 (INI1), which encodes a component of the ATP-dependent chromatin remodeling hSWI-SNF complex, has been identified as a tumor suppressor in many tumors. Nonetheless, the role of INI1 in gastric tumor progression is not known exactly. The aim of this research was to investigate the effect of INI1 in the carcinogenesis and progression of gastric cancer. METHODS Gastric tumor tissues with different differentiation levels from clinical gastric carcinoma samples and adjacent control normal tissues were taken. Expression levels of INI1 were detected by quantitative reverse transcriptation-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and Western blotting. Gastric cancer cell line SGC7901 was transfected with INI1 eukaryotic expressing vector INI1-GFP. Cell proliferation activities were assessed by MTT; cell count and cell cycle were detected by flow cytometry (FCM); cell apoptosis were measured by TUNEL and FCM; cell migration and invasiveness were evaluated by wound healing and transwell assays. Expression levels of INI1 and proliferation-related genes including p16, p21, cyclin D1 and cyclin A, apoptosis genes p53, B-cell non-Hodgkin lymphoma-2 (Bcl-2), Bcl-2-associated x protein (Bax) and caspase-3, and invasion-related genes including intercellular adhesion molecule 1 (ICAM1), matrix metalloproteinase 2 (MMP2), MMP9 and tissue inhibitor of matrix metalloproteinase 1 (TIMP1), were detected by quantitative RT-PCR and Western blotting. RESULTS INI1 expression levels were lower in gastric carcinoma compared with adjacent control normal tissues. Overexpression of INI1 in SGC7901 cells inhibited its proliferation and invasiveness, but increased anoikis and G(0)/G(1) cell number. INI1-GFP transfection upregulated expression of INI1 and proliferation related genes p16 and p21, apoptosis genes p53 and Bax, and invasion-related genes TIMP1; cyclin D1, cyclin A, Bcl2, ICAM1, MMP2 and MMP9 were downregulated, and there was no significant change in caspase 3 levels. CONCLUSION INI1 plays a key role in gastric carcinogenesis by affecting proliferation, apoptosis and invasion.
Assessment of the short-term radiometric stability between Terra MODIS and Landsat 7 ETM+ sensors

Short-term radiometric stability was evaluated using continuous ETM+ scenes within a single orbit (contact period) and the corresponding MODIS scenes for the four matching solar reflective visible and near-infrared (VNIR) band pairs between the two sensors. The near-simultaneous earth observations were limited by the smaller swath size of ETM+ (183 km) compared to MODIS (2330 km). Two sets of continuous granules for Terra MODIS and Landsat 7 ETM+ were selected and mosaicked based on pixel geolocation information for noncloudy pixels over the African continent. The matching pixel pairs were resampled from a fine to a coarse pixel resolution, and the at-sensor spectral radiance values for a wide dynamic range of the sensors were compared and analyzed, covering various surface types. The following study focuses on radiometric stability analysis from the VNIR band-pairs of ETM+ and MODIS. The Libya-4 desert target was included in the path of this continuous orbit, which served as a verification point between the short-term and the long-term trending results from previous studies. MODTRAN at-sensor spectral radiance simulation is included for a representative desert surface type to evaluate the consistency of the results.
Endoscopic Lesions in Crohn's Disease early after Ileocecal Resection

Fifty patients with Crohn's disease were studied endoscopically 6 weeks to 6 months (median 9 weeks) after ileocecal or ileocolonic resection for evidence of non-resected abnormality. Only 8 of the 50 patients were endoscopically free of abnormalities. Microscopic examination of the surgical specimen revealed inflammatory pathology at the site of resection line in 30 patients. Of the latter, 27 had endoscopic lesions at the anastomosis or in the "neoterminal" ileum. Of the 42 patients with endoscopic lesions only 8 had minor biochemical abnormalities. This study suggests that the well known reappearance of inflammatory activity after resection, especially at and proximal to the anastomosis, develops from foci of remaining inflammation and should be considered as recrudescence of the disease rather than true recurrence.
Pharmacokinetics of troglitazone, an antidiabetic agent: prediction of in vivo stereoselective sulfation and glucuronidation from in vitro data.

Sulfation and glucuronidation, the major routes of metabolism of troglitazone, an antidiabetic agent, were examined in vitro using hepatic cytosol and microsomes prepared from KK mice, an animal model of non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus. Stereoselectivity was observed for both conjugation reactions, and the metabolic intrinsic clearance of glucuronidation was about 3- to 100-fold higher than that of sulfation for each stereoisomer. In addition, the metabolic intrinsic clearance of glucuronidation exhibited an 8-fold difference among stereoisomers. The predicted metabolic clearance for each stereoisomer, calculated from the in vitro data based on a dispersion model, was comparable to the measured metabolic clearance in vivo, ranging from 27 to 93%. We also attempted to predict the in vivo metabolic clearance from in vitro metabolism data, to investigate species differences in the stereoselectivity of the conjugation reactions in normal animals, i.e., ddY mice and rats. For ddY mice the in vivo hepatic glucuronidation clearance was 170-fold higher than the corresponding sulfation clearance, whereas for rats the sulfation clearance was 6-fold higher than the glucuronidation clearance. The hepatic sulfation clearance in mice and rats predicted from in vitro metabolism data was 5.3- and 1.1-fold higher, respectively, than that in vivo, calculated from the plasma disposition of parent drug and biliary excretion of metabolites. For glucuronidation, the predicted values in mice and rats were 1.0- and 0.33-fold higher, respectively. These results suggest that semiquantitative extrapolation of in vitro stereoselective metabolism of troglitazone, by conjugation, to the in vivo situation is possible.
Optimized design for high-speed parallel BCH encoder

A new design method for parallel BCH encoder is presented, which can eliminate the bottleneck in long BCH encoder. Based on serial LFSR architecture, a recursive formula which can deduce the parallel BCH encoder was first derived. The complexity and the delay of the critical paths of the circuit could be effectively decreased by using a tree-type structure, sharing sub-expression and limiting its maximum number, and balancing load technique. Finally, a parallel BCH (2184, 2040) encoder with 8-bit parallelism is realized in TSMC's 0.18 /spl mu/m CMOS technology for high-speed optical communication that can operate at 400 MHz and process data at the rate of 2.5 Gb/s.
Exploring the Financial Leakages in the Classified Hotels in Jordan: A Managerial Perspective

ABSTRACT The study aimed to provide a better understanding of financial leakages in a sample of classified hotels in Jordan in terms of its reasons, its channels, and potential ways to reduce it from hotel managers’ perspective. Eighteen semistructured interviews were conducted with hotel managers. The results showed a high level of awareness regarding financial leakages by hotel managers. Furthermore, the main reasons for financial leakages included: the high cost of energy, the need to import products not produced locally, and the lack of awareness of sustainability practices. The main channels of financial leakages were: importing furniture and electronics, human resources, and food and beverages not produced in Jordan. The study’s main suggestions are to reduce financial leakages, especially energy consumption, and to increase trust in local products.