Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Self-handicapping in school physical education: The influence of the motivational climate.

BACKGROUND Self-handicapping is an attribution-related process whereby individuals create performance impediments/excuses to protect self-worth in socially evaluative environments. Thus, the prevailing motivational climate would appear to be an important factor when attempting to understand the situational self-handicapping process within school physical education. AIMS Drawing from achievement goal theory, the study examined the effect of experimentally induced conditions (viz. task vs. ego) on situational self-handicapping. SAMPLE Seventy British secondary school students (36 females and 34 males; M age = 11.98; SD=0.31). METHOD Participants were randomly assigned to partake in a running endurance task in either an ego-involving (20 male students and 16 female students) or a task-involving (14 male students and 20 female students) condition. Prior to completing the experimental task, participants were given the opportunity to claim situational self-handicaps. Data for goal orientations, subjective climate perceptions, perceived ability and perceived task importance were also obtained. RESULTS After determining the effectiveness of the experimental manipulation, results revealed participants in the ego-involving condition to report significantly more situational self-handicapping claims. Further, and after controlling for individual difference variables, the results of moderated hierarchical regression analysis revealed subjective perceptions of an ego-involving climate to be the main positive predictor of situational self-handicapping. Although a weaker contributor to the percentage of variance explained, task orientation emerged as a negative predictor of situational self-handicapping. CONCLUSIONS The findings suggest that PE teachers would be prudent to minimize ego-involving situations should they wish to reduce situational self-handicapping.
Granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor as an arteriogenic factor in the treatment of ischaemic stroke

Granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) induces arteriogenic growth of collateral vessels after occlusion of cardiac or peripheral arteries. Recently, evidence has been provided that arteriogenesis also occurs in the brain under conditions of reduced arterial blood supply. Hemispheric hypoperfusion induced by unilateral carotid and bilateral vertebral artery occlusion (three-vessel occlusion, [3-VO]) led to the growth of the anterior and posterior segments of the circle of Willis, which is the main collateral pathway between the origins of the anterior, middle and posterior cerebral arteries. GM-CSF applied subcutaneously at daily doses of 40 μg·kg-1 resulted in the marked acceleration of this process. Within one week after the onset of treatment, the diameter of the posterior segment of the circle of Willis enlarged to 170% of control, blood flow and the haemodynamic reserve capacity of the brain returned to normal, and haemodynamic stroke, induced after 3-VO by systemic hypotension, was greatly alleviated. GM-CSF-induced stimulation of arteriogenesis in the hypoperfused brain thus provides powerful protection against ischaemic stroke.
The emergence of multidrug-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa in cystic fibrosis patients on inhaled antibiotics

Introduction: Multidrug-resistant Pseudomonas aeruginosa (MDR-PA) is an important and growing issue in the care of patients with cystic fibrosis (CF), and a major cause of morbidity and mortality. Objective: The objective of the study was to describe the frequency of MDR-PA recovered from the lower respiratory samples of pediatric and adult CF patients, and its antibiotic resistance pattern to commonly used antimicrobial agents including β-lactams, aminoglycosides, and fluoroquinolones. Materials and Methods: The lower respiratory isolates of P. aeruginosa were obtained from inpatients and outpatients CF clinics from a tertiary care teaching hospital for the period from October 2014 to September 2015. The identification and antimicrobial susceptibility for all the isolates were performed by using the BD Phoenix™ and E-test in compliance with Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) guidelines. Results: A total of 61 P. aeruginosa samples were isolated from thirty CF patients from twenty families. Twelve sputum samples were positive for MDR-PA (seven nonmucoid and five mucoid isolates) from five CF patients (five families) with moderate-to-very severe lung disease given MDR-PA frequency of 19.7%. The median age of the study group was 20 (range 10–30) years. Three CF patients were on chronic inhaled tobramycin and two on nebulized colistin. The antimicrobial patterns of isolates MDR-PA showed the highest rate of resistance toward each gentamycin, amikacin, and cefepime (100%), followed by 91.7% to ciprofloxacin, 75% to tobramycin, 58.3% to meropenem, and 50% to piperacillin-tazobactam. None of the isolates were resistant to colistin during the study period. Conclusion: The study results emphasize that the emergence of a significant problem in the clinical isolates of P. aeruginosa in CF patients that dictate appropriate attention to the antibiotic management after proper surveillance.
Low-temperature liquid phase reduced TiO2 nanotube arrays: synergy of morphology manipulation and oxygen vacancy doping for enhancement of field emission

The partially reduced TiO2 nanotube arrays (TNAs) are prepared via an uncomplicated and low-cost liquid phase reduction strategy using NaBH4 as the reducing agent. By controlling and adjusting the reduction temperatures from 30 to 90 °C, the reduction treatment can not only change their surface morphology but also introduce oxygen vacancies into them, resulting in an optimized morphology, elevated Fermi-level, reduced effective work function and improved conductivity of the TNAs. Meanwhile, the thermal and long-term stability of oxygen vacancy are also investigated, indicating that the oxygen vacancies retain long-term stability from room temperature up to 150 °C. More interesting, partially reduced TNAs show drastically enhanced field emission (FE) performances including substantially decreased turn-on field from 18.86 to 1.53 V μm−1, a high current density of 4.00 mA cm−2 at 4.52 V μm−1, and an excellent FE stability and repeatability. These very promising results are attributed to the combination of the optimized morphology and introduced oxygen vacancies, which can increase FE sites, reduce effective work function and increase conductivity.
Acute thrombosis of the left internal mammary artery graft 14 years after coronary bypass surgery.

Causes for stenosis of the left internal mammary artery (LIMA) graft are flow competition from the native vessel, narrowing at the anastomotic sites, atherosclerosis, fixed kinks within the graft, smooth tubular stenosis, dissection, and spasm (1, 2). Acute thrombosis of the LIMA, however, is rare and usually presents in the early post-operative period due to inadequate anti-thrombotic treatment or incompetent surgical technique (3-5). In this report, we represent a case of acute thrombotic occlusion of the LIMA, 14 years after coronary artery bypass grafting surgery (CABG), presenting with acute myocardial infarction (AMI), and managed with primary percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI).
Load-independent transconductance and ZPA input for symmetrical resonant converter in IPT system

The symmetrical compensation is widely used in inductive power transfer (IPT) system due to the advantages of achieving good coupling coefficient when the coils are perfectly aligned and easy to design. This paper investigates a general tuning method for voltage-fed symmetrical higher-order resonant networks for achieving load-independent transconductance. With the proposed tuning method, a resonant network can be modeled as series connection of a LC-circuit and multi-stages π-circuit to explore all of the load-independent resonant frequencies. The input voltage is nearly in phase with the input current when system operates at these resonant frequencies. The analysis is supported by symmetrical series-series (SS), parallel-parallel (PP), and double-sided LCC resonant converters in IPT system. And a double-sided LCC compensated IPT prototype was built and validated.
Lateral Gain Control in the Outer Retina Leads to Potentiation of Center Responses of Retinal Neurons

The retina can function under a variety of adaptation conditions and stimulus paradigms. To adapt to these various conditions, modifications in the phototransduction cascade and at the synaptic and network levels occur. In this paper, we focus on the properties and function of a gain control mechanism in the cone synapse. We show that horizontal cells, in addition to inhibiting cones via a “lateral inhibitory pathway,” also modulate the synaptic gain of the photoreceptor via a “lateral gain control mechanism. ” The combination of lateral inhibition and lateral gain control generates a highly efficient transformation. Horizontal cells estimate the mean activity of cones. This mean activity is subtracted from the actual activity of the center cone and amplified by the lateral gain modulation system, ensuring that the deviation of the activity of a cone from the mean activity of the surrounding cones is transmitted to the inner retina with high fidelity. Sustained surround illumination leads to an enhancement of the responses of transient ON/OFF ganglion cells to a flickering center spot. Blocking feedback from horizontal cells not only blocks the lateral gain control mechanism in the outer retina, but it also blocks the surround enhancement in transient ON/OFF ganglion cells. This suggests that the effects of the outer retinal lateral gain control mechanism are visible in the responses of ganglion cells. Functionally speaking, this result illustrates that horizontal cells are not purely inhibitory neurons but have a role in response enhancement as well.
An adaptive model for the control of critical dimension in photolithography process

In this paper, a method of adaptive modeling is studied for the photolithography process used in the semiconductor industry. Real data of the critical dimension (CD) in a shallow trench isolation area from an Intel flash manufacturing fab is used for model analysis. We focus on the problem of CD prediction in the presence of unpredictable drift. Multiple inputs are included in the model as interactive integral parts of the system. In addition, a feedback controller based on the adaptive model is designed to stabilize CID in the presence of unknown disturbances. Simulations are carried out based on the data from an Intel 8-inch fab of flash products. The results are generalized to systems with multiple outputs, in which both CD and focus indicator are controlled based on adaptive modeling. The simulation results prove that the designed controller is able to correct process drift automatically.
Share Videos, Not Pills: A Content Analysis of Prescription Drug Videos on YouTube for Presence of Behavior Change Theory

Objective: To identify the extent to which YouTube.com videos targeting prescription drug abuse include health behavior theory in their content and design. Methods: This study used a content analysis of 209 YouTube.com videos. Coders used an established theory-based instrument to rate each video’s inclusion of theoretical constructs from four prominent health behavior theories. Each YouTube.com video was coded for twenty-two theoretical items, which were summed to create a total theory score. Results: The mean theory score of videos was 3.26 out of a possible 22. Among the top 10% of videos with highest theory scores, social cognitive theory constructs were coded most often and transtheoretical constructs were coded least often. Conclusion: It is not unexpected that YouTube.com videos are largely void of theoretical content since these videos are made by a variety of organizations and sources that may not be trained in the application of health behavior theories. There is an opportunity for the organizations that create these videos to collaborate with health and behavior change experts in creating videos with more theoretical constructs, possibly resulting in better health outcomes.
An explicit desingularization procedure for general nonholonomic systems

Consider a control-affine nonholonomic system (Σ). We present in this paper a new desingularization procedure which constructs explicitly from (Σ) a regular control-affine nonholonomic system. The main idea is to add new variables, thus augmenting the dimension of the state space, such that its projection coincides with the original control system (Σ). This construction will allow us to devise a global and fully constructive motion planning method for general driftless and control-affine nonholonomic systems under the sole assumption of the Lie Algebraic Rank Condition.
Team Sock Monkeys : CIS 520 Final Report

We experimented with several feature selection and reduction techniques, such as PCA, K-means, and Gabor filtering for images, and mutual information and td-idf encodings for blogs. Additionally, we compared the accuracy of different feature spaces and classification algorithms such as SVMs, KNN, Naive Bayes, and Boosting. Our experiments suggest that selecting good features has the largest effect on accuracy. Lastly, we learned that organic chocolate can be very tasty and comes in many different flavors. 1. Age and Gender prediction from facial images We looked at two different aspects of the problem for this task: (a) the feature space to use and, (b) the classification algoriths to use. Most background literature [4] used a tightly fitting elliptical region around the face (excluding any hair and background context) to train the classifiers. For our training data, this kind of cropping was not available though it could be enforced by applying an off-the-shelf face localizer to the data. However, rather than defining such a crop, we experimented with the opposite approach of including more contextual information around the face. Thus, for all the experiments below, we first cropped the images to an area bigger than the original crop in the baseline code and it resulted in better performance from our crossvalidation experiments. In addition, the cropped area was scaled down by a factor of 4 unlike the fixed 25×25 square in the baseline code. All the algorithms described below were tried for both age and gender prediction initially so some of them use both gender and age labels together during training. Later, for each task, we chose the specific variant which performed better for that task without removing the dependence on both age and gender labels. We think that the joint labels might have helped in certain cases depending on the correlation between age-related changes and gender. Figure 1. Cluster centers learned for the male and female genders (rows 1 and 2), and the three age categories (rows 3-5).
Learning needs assessment: assessing the need

Learning needs assessment is a crucial stage in the educational process that leads to changes in practice, and has become part of government policy for continuing professional development. Learning needs assessment can be undertaken for many reasons, so its purpose should be defined and should determine the method used and the use made of findings. Exclusive reliance on formal needs assessment could render education an instrumental and narrow process rather than a creative, professional one. Different learning methods tend to suit different doctors and different identified learning needs. Doctors already use a wide range of formal and informal ways of identifying their own learning needs as part of their ordinary practice. These should be the starting point in designing formalised educational systems for professional improvement.
Out with the old, in with the new: reassessing morpholino knockdowns in light of genome editing technology

Morpholino oligomers have been used widely and for many years in the zebrafish community to transiently knock down the function of target genes. It has often been difficult, however, to reliably discriminate between specific and non-specific effects, and thus generally accepted guidelines to control for morpholino side effects do not exist. In light of recent methodologies to generate mutant lines in virtually any zebrafish gene, we discuss these different approaches with a specific focus on how the first description of a loss-of-function phenotype in zebrafish should be accomplished.
Effects of calcitonin in metastatic bone carcinoma, osteoporosis, polyostotic fibrous dysplasia and hypercalcemia.

Porcine calcitonin was administered intramuscularly at doses of 4.5-10MRC u. per day to patients with metastatic bone carcinoma, osteoporosis and polyostotic fibrous dysplasia during 22-50 days period. Transient effects of calcitonin were also investigated in hypercalcemia of primary hyperparathyroidism, multiple myeloma and vitamin D intoxication.Serum calcium and/or magnesium showed gradual decrease during the period of administration in metastatic bone carcinoma, senile osteoporosis and polyostotic fibrous dysplasia. Urinary calcium and/or magnesium also decreased in metastatic bone carcinoma and osteoporosis. Alkaline phosphatase did not change during the period of calcitonin treatment but was lowered in the posttreatment period in polyostotic fibrous dysplasia. Serum hydroxyproline showed a transient decrease in metastatic bone carcinoma.Hypercalcemia of multiple myeloma and vitamin D intoxication was improved temporarily by calcitonin. These results suggest a beneficial effect of calcitonin in the treatment of some of the bone diseases and hypercalcemia.
Diaspirin-crosslinked hemoglobin reduces mortality of severe hemorrhagic shock in pigs with critical coronary stenosis

Objective To evaluate the effects of resuscitation with a 10% diaspirin-crosslinked hemoglobin (DCLHb) solution on global hemodynamic variables, systemic and myocardial oxygen transport and tissue oxygenation, and contractile function of the left ventricle in an experimental model of severe hemorrhagic shock and critical stenosis of the left anterior descending coronary artery (LAD). Design Prospective, placebo-controlled, randomized study. Setting Experimental animal laboratory. Subjects A total of 20 anesthetized pigs. Interventions After implementation of a permanent critical LAD stenosis (ie, maintenance of basal blood flow but absence of reactive hyperemia after a 10-sec complete vessel occlusion), hemorrhagic shock (target mean aortic pressure, 45 mm Hg) was induced within 15 mins by programmed withdrawal of blood and maintained for 60 mins. Subsequently, the volume of plasma lost during hemorrhage was replaced by either a balanced electrolyte solution containing 10 g/dL DCLHb (DCLHb group; n = 10) or an 8 g/dL human albumin solution (HSA) oncotically matched to DCLHb (HSA group; n = 10). Data were collected immediately after the infusion of the different solutions and again after 60 mins had elapsed. Measurements and Main Results Although five of ten HSA-treated animals died of acute left ventricular failure within the first 20 mins after complete fluid resuscitation, all of the DCLHb-treated animals survived the 60-min observation period after resuscitation (p < .05). This significant difference in mortality is explained by higher coronary perfusion pressure in DCLHb-treated animals (75 ± 17 vs. 27 ± 17 torr DCLHb vs. HSA group;p < .05) and persistence of subendocardial ischemia and hypoxia (radioactive microspheres method) in HSA-treated animals on resus-citation particularly affecting the LAD-supported myocardium (subendocardial oxygen delivery: 20 ± 11 vs. 3 ± 1 mL oxygen·g−1·min−1, DCLHb vs. HSA group;p < .05). Except for enhanced myocardial contractility immediately on infusion of DCLHb (maximal left ventricular pressure increase: 2373 ± 782 vs. 1730 ± 543 torr·sec−1 DCLHb vs. HSA group;p < .05), no differences were detected between groups concerning the variables of systemic oxygen transport, tissue oxygenation, and regional contractile function of the myocardium (determined with microsonometry). Conclusions Fluid resuscitation with 10% DCLHb solution completely reverses hemorrhagic shock-induced subendocardial ischemia and hypoxia in the presence of compromised coronary circulation and thereby prevents early death after resuscitation.
The Mathematics Enthusiast The Mathematics Enthusiast

: The seven projects discussed in the preceding articles are funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Math and Science Partnership (MSP) program (Hamos et al., 2009), which began in 2002. One of the main goals of the MSP program is to build capacity and integrate the work of higher education, especially its STEM disciplinary faculty, with that of K‐12 to strengthen and reform mathematics and science education (Hamos et al., 2009). Thus, the MSP program brought together three sets of people (disciplinary faculty, teacher educators, and school system personnel) who do not usually work together to reform the mathematics and science education of teachers. For many of the MSP partnerships this was the first time that members of these groups were purposefully working together to develop mechanisms designed to 1) increase both preservice and inservice teachers’ mathematical content knowledge for teaching; 2) provide teachers with the opportunity to learn mathematics in the manner in which their students should learn mathematics in order to develop habits of mind similar to those of mathematicians, such as making conjectures and testing them out, modeling contextual situations with mathematics, and persevering in solving problems; and 3) engage all of the partners in collaborative opportunities focused on student learning and assessment. Accordingly, the seven partnerships discussed throughout this issue and other partnerships chose coursework at universities, some combination of coursework and professional development, and/or study groups as the mechanisms to accomplish the objectives of the MSP program. As principal