Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Unsafe Sex

SUMMARY The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships among self-efficacy for condom use during distress (SE-Condom Distress), self-efficacy related to general HIV prevention skills (SE-HIV), and HIV risk behaviors, attitudes, and knowledge. Two hundred and twenty two adolescents with psychiatric disorders between 13 and 18 years-old participated. Participants completed measures related to HIV Self-Efficacy, HIV Attitudes, and Sexual Behaviors. Self-efficacy for condom use during distress (SE-Condom Distress) was significantly associated with more HIV protective behaviors. Controlling for observed covariates, SE-Condom Distress was the only variable significantly associated with consistent condom use in a multiple logistic regression (OR = 2.43). Self-efficacy regarding condom use during affective arousal is closely associated with HIV-related attitudes and behaviors. Clinicians need to be alert to subtle signs of distress as adolescents contemplate safer sexual behavior.
Efficient organic dye-sensitized solar cells: molecular engineering of donor-acceptor-acceptor cationic dyes.

Three metal-free donor-acceptor-acceptor sensitizers with ionized pyridine and a reference dye were synthesized, and a detailed investigation of the relationship between the dye structure and the photophysical and photoelectrochemical properties and the performance of dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs) is described. The ionization of pyridine results in a red shift of the absorption spectrum in comparison to that of the reference dye. This is mainly attributable to the ionization of pyridine increasing the electron-withdrawing ability of the total acceptor part. Incorporation of the strong electron-withdrawing units of pyridinium and cyano acrylic acid gives rise to optimized energy levels, resulting in a large response range of wavelengths. When attached to TiO2 film, the conduction band of TiO2 is negatively shifted to a different extent depending on the dye. This is attributed to the electron recombination rate between the TiO2 film and the electrolyte being efficiently suppressed by the introduction of long alkyl chains and thiophene units. DSSCs assembled using these dyes show efficiencies as high as 8.8 %.
Patient-physician concordance: preferences, perceptions, and factors influencing the breast cancer surgical decision.

PURPOSE This study explored patient preferences for involvement in the breast cancer treatment decision and concordance between patients' and physicians' views on decisional role. The impact of demographic and psychosocial characteristics on patients' decisional role was also examined. PATIENTS AND METHODS Women with stage I or II breast cancer who were candidates for either mastectomy or lumpectomy were recruited from a university breast cancer treatment center. Patient interviews were obtained before meeting the surgical oncologist and again after the treatment decision was made but before surgical intervention. Clinician responses were obtained after the consultation. RESULTS The 101 participants were generally white (97%), married (80%), and well-educated. They reported moderate levels of depression and anxiety but good social support and self-efficacy in communicating with their physician. Before the consultation, 47% of women reported a preference for shared decision making; afterwards, 61% felt they had primary responsibility for the decision. Only 38% of patients agreed with the physician's assessment of how the treatment decision was made. In regression analyses, higher education was significantly associated with patients' preferred level of control (P = .01). There was a trend toward women with greater self-efficacy desiring more active decisional roles (P = .08). Patient preference for decision making did not impact time in the patient-physician encounter, but more influence did increase satisfaction. CONCLUSION Limited concordance between patient preference and patient perception and between patient and physician perception in how the treatment decision was made suggests the need for better communication between patient and clinician during a critical treatment encounter for breast cancer patients.
From Sinai to Jerusalem : a study of the Hebrew text of Psalm 68

This dissertation presents a study of one of the most difficult texts in the Psalter, Psalm 68. After an introduction setting out the distinctive features of my treatment and arguing for the need for a painstaking literary study, I divide my work into three sections. The first of these presents a translation with detailed notes on the text. The second explores this world of the text in more detail by examining the vocabulary of the Psalm (characterisation, semantic domains including geographical terms), its structural makeup (building from the smallest units to the largest), the central use and importance of intertextual connections, and the presence of ambiguity and ̀ underdeterminacy'. I examine each of these as being of interest in their own right, but the ultimate purpose is to use them to deduce what a good reading of the Psalm might be and to cast light on its meaning(s) both to an original audience and to subsequent readers. By the end of this section I will have argued for a an ̀ original' setting in the reigns of David or Solomon, one which is closely linked to the bringing of the ark to Zion and the building of the temple. My third section tackles the matter of writers and readers more explicitly. Although I shall have studied the text as one hitherto (since this is the only form in which we possess it), I now examine whether the Psalm ̀ should' be seen as essentially a unity, and ask what can be known about its compositional history. I then turn to the question of dating, followed by a more explicit consideration of the implied audience of the text. Much work ha> been done on the possible cultic use of Psalm 68; I review this as part of my work on audience, before turning to the question of other readers in a final chapter. Although I shall have been primarily concerned with the initial meaning of Psalm 68 in the dissertation (for reasons of space), that chapter presents concluding reflections on the way in which the Psalm has been used subsequently and may sti'1 be used; I reflect on the continued power of the Psalm to speak through the centuries. Psalm 68 is indeed a complex text, but one which abundantly repays close reading and study, and one which is still fascinating, vivid, and arresting in the modern world. FROM SINAI TO JERUSALEM A Study of the Hebrew Text of Psalm 68 The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published in any form, including Electronic and the Internet, without the author's prior written consent. All information derived from this thesis must be acknowledged appropriately. Dissertation Submitted to the Theology Department, University of Durham for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Mark Anthony Vincent
Direct evidence for activity-dependent glucose phosphorylation in neurons with implications for the astrocyte-to-neuron lactate shuttle

Significance A near one-to-one relationship had previously been observed between increments in the fluxes of the glutamate−glutamine neurotransmitter cycle and neuronal glucose oxidation in the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle. This flux relationship was consistent with a hypothesized mechanism involving glycolytic ATP in astrocytes and astrocyte-to-neuron lactate shuttling. Here, 2-fluoro-2-deoxy-d-glucose was used to evaluate the glucose flux through glycolysis and the TCA cycle in nerve terminals isolated from the brains of rats under baseline and high-activity conditions. In a direct contradiction of this hypothesis, the results show that nerve terminals metabolize significant amounts of glucose. Previous 13C magnetic resonance spectroscopy experiments have shown that over a wide range of neuronal activity, approximately one molecule of glucose is oxidized for every molecule of glutamate released by neurons and recycled through astrocytic glutamine. The measured kinetics were shown to agree with the stoichiometry of a hypothetical astrocyte-to-neuron lactate shuttle model, which predicted negligible functional neuronal uptake of glucose. To test this model, we measured the uptake and phosphorylation of glucose in nerve terminals isolated from rats infused with the glucose analog, 2-fluoro-2-deoxy-d-glucose (FDG) in vivo. The concentrations of phosphorylated FDG (FDG6P), normalized with respect to known neuronal metabolites, were compared in nerve terminals, homogenate, and cortex of anesthetized rats with and without bicuculline-induced seizures. The increase in FDG6P in nerve terminals agreed well with the increase in cortical neuronal glucose oxidation measured previously under the same conditions in vivo, indicating that direct uptake and oxidation of glucose in nerve terminals is substantial under resting and activated conditions. These results suggest that neuronal glucose-derived pyruvate is the major oxidative fuel for activated neurons, not lactate-derived from astrocytes, contradicting predictions of the original astrocyte-to-neuron lactate shuttle model under the range of study conditions.
Implementación de procedimientos ITIL v3.0 en la gestión de TI de la Universidad del Valle, 2008-2011

Resumen. La gestion de las Tecnologias de la Informacion y las Comunicaciones en instituciones de educacion superior ofrece la posibilidad de aumentar la eficiencia de los procesos da academia, investigacion y extension al tiempo que abre las puertas a la innovacion y a la creacion de nuevos servicios de apoyo. Si bien es cierto que aun esta en discusion en que medida la gestion de IT impacta en los indicadores estrategicos de las Universidades, los estudios muestran una clara tendencia hacia la existencia de un impacto real y medible. En el caso particular del sector de la educacion superior en America Latina, donde la gestion de IT provee multiples oportunidades para expandir el alcance de los procesos misionales de las universidades, se hace necesario establecer un mecanismo para la vigilancia de su comportamiento, establecer su impacto y sugerir la forma mas adecuada para su apropiacion en el quehacer de la Comunidad Universitaria. El presente trabajo muestra como ha sido el proceso de adopcion del modelo ITIL v3.0 para la gestion de IT en la Universidad del Valle (Colombia) durante los anos 2008 a 2011, su integracion con el Sistema institucional de Calidad y cuales han sido los resultados de tres anos de trabajo con el modelo.
LONG‐TERM RESULTS OF GASTRIC CANCER SCREENING USING THE SERUM PEPSINOGEN TEST METHOD AMONG AN ASYMPTOMATIC MIDDLE‐AGED JAPANESE POPULATION

Background and Aim: In order to reduce gastric cancer death, mass screening for gastric cancer has been established in Japan for several decades. Only photofluorography is considered to be an acceptable screening method so far, but recent evidence may show the usefulness of serum pepsinogen (PG) measurement for gastric cancer screening. The aim of the present study was to elucidate the feasibility of measuring serum PG levels for detection of gastric cancers.
Mutational analysis of the Src SH3 domain: the same residues of the ligand binding surface are important for intra‐ and intermolecular interactions.

The protein tyrosine kinase c‐Src is negatively regulated by phosphorylation of Tyr527 in its C‐terminal tail. The repressed state is achieved through intramolecular interactions involving the phosphorylated tail, the Src homology 2 (SH2) domain and the SH3 domain. Both the SH2 and SH3 domains have also been shown to mediate the intermolecular interaction of Src with several proteins. To test which amino acids of the Src SH3 domain are important for these interactions, and whether the intra‐ and intermolecular associations involve the same residues, we carried out a detailed mutational analysis of the presumptive interaction surface. All mutations of conserved hydrophobic residues had an effect on both inter‐ and intramolecular interactions of the Src SH3 domain, although not all amino acids were equally important. Chimeric molecules in which the Src SH3 domain was replaced with those of spectrin or Lck showed derepressed kinase activity, whereas a chimera containing the Fyn SH3 domain was fully regulated. Since spectrin and Lck SH3 domains share the conserved hydrophobic residues characteristic of SH3 domains, other amino acids must be important for specificity. Mutational analysis of non‐ or semi‐conserved residues in the RT and n‐Src loops showed that some of these were also involved in inter‐ and intramolecular interactions. Stable transfection of selected SH3 domain mutants into NIH‐3T3 cells showed that despite elevated levels of phosphotyrosine, the cells were morphologically normal, indicating that the SH3 domain was required for efficient transformation of NIH‐3T3 cells by Src.
Surgical management of long-term central venous access in uraemic patients.

Over a 5-year period, 1980-1985, 39 patients from a dialysis population of over 400 treated at this centre experienced major difficulties in achieving adequate access for dialysis by conventional techniques (i.e. arteriovenous fistula or CAPD). This study has evaluated the long-term results of a new approach to circulatory access, central venous catheterisation (CVC) for so called "high risk" patients. CVC consists of inserting a single-lumen CAPD-type silastic catheter into the right atrium via an external or internal jugular vein. Forty-seven catheters have been inserted into 39 uraemic patients. All patients had failed on, or were unsuitable for, conventional access to haemodialysis or CAPD. Ten patients (26%) had previous failed renal transplants. The median duration of catheter use was 7 months (range 1-60 months) and a total of 6500 high-performance dialyses have been performed using this technique. No patient has died of catheter-related problems. The catheters were easily managed by nurses and well tolerated by the patients. The incidence of complications among patients was low: displacement (1), catheter thrombosis (2), skin exit-site infections (5), septicaemia (2). Central venous catheterisation is a method of providing safe and reliable long-term vascular access which is immediately usable by high-risk patients who have either failed on or are unsuitable for conventional circulatory access.
Adaptive Image-Registration-Based Nonuniformity Correction Algorithm With Ghost Artifacts Eliminating for Infrared Focal Plane Arrays

In this paper, we present a new adaptive image registration nonuniformity correction method with the function of eliminating ghost artifacts. This method assumes that the irradiation of objects stays unchanged during the adjacent two frames' time interval and then corrects the corresponding pixels of two frames by the result of image registration. With regard to real-time continuous image sequence, we first calculate the displacement vectors based on their row and column projections. Then, by bidirectional image registration, we can get the overlapped area matrices of two frames accurately. Meanwhile, a variance threshold is set to judge the scene classification, and then, displacement revising is selectively added to decrease stripe noise. Considering that moving targets exist, the error function for updating is also accordingly adapted to eliminate the ghost artifacts. By using the least-mean-square-error iteration algorithm, the gain and offset coefficients of the overlapped area can be updated in real time with the image sequence adaptively. The advantages of this algorithm lie in its high efficiency of image processing, low computational complexity, and few ghost artifacts. A clean infrared image sequence and two real infrared datasets with nonuniformity are used to compare the ability and correction performance of different algorithms. The results show that our algorithm performs better than other compared algorithms and obtains almost no ghost artifacts.
Molecular Pathways for Cancer Chemoprevention by Dietary Phytochemicals

Interest in dietary phytochemicals for potential cancer chemoprevention has increased substantially. Screening dietary compounds for chemopreventive activity however, requires a systematic and wide-ranging approach to encompass the complexity of carcinogenesis. We present some of the molecular pathways that underpin the broad biological processes involved in carcinogenesis. Oxidative stress, inflammation, and the evasion of apoptosis are important biological mechanisms by which carcinogenesis occurs. Subsequently, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and pro-apoptotic activity represent important activities for preventing, suppressing, or reversing the development of carcinogenesis. Ultimately, these mechanisms of action may provide a useful basis for screening novel phytochemicals for chemopreventive activity. In this review, we identify the important molecular processes that may be targeted in routine screenings of dietary phytochemicals to ultimately select the most effective potential candidates for cancer chemoprevention.
Roles of Hes genes in neural development

Hes genes are mammalian homologues of Drosophila hairy and Enhancer of split, which encode basic helix‐loop‐helix (bHLH) transcriptional repressors. In the developing central nervous system, Hes1, Hes3 and Hes5 are highly expressed by neural stem cells. Inactivation of these Hes genes leads to upregulation of proneural genes, acceleration of neurogenesis and premature depletion of neural stem cells. Conversely, overexpression of Hes genes leads to inhibition of neurogenesis and maintenance of neural stem cells. At later stages of development, Hes genes promote gliogenesis. Furthermore, Hes genes regulate maintenance of boundaries, which partition the nervous system into many compartments and endow the neighboring compartments with regional identities by secreting morphogens. Boundary cells usually proliferate slowly and do not give rise to neurons, unlike neural stem cells in compartments. Interestingly, these different characteristics between boundary cells and compartmental neural stem cells are regulated by different modes of Hes1 expression, which is variable in neural stem cells in compartments and persistent and high in boundary cells. Thus, Hes genes play an essential role in neural development by regulating proliferation, differentiation and specification of neural stem cells.
Protection against experimental Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection by recombinant P. aeruginosa lipoprotein I expressed in Escherichia coli

Lipoprotein I (OprI) is one of the major proteins of the outer membrane of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. OprI is a candidate for a vaccine against P. aeruginosa, because it cross-reacts antigenically in all serotype strains of the International Antigenic Typing Scheme. We recently cloned and expressed the gene coding for OprI in Escherichia coli. This heterologously expressed OprI was used successfully to immunize mice against P. aeruginosa. In addition, OprI from serogroup 12 of P. aeruginosa was highly purified by preparative isoelectric focusing and used for immunization of mice. Both vaccines protected the mice against a challenge with a four- to fivefold 50% lethal dose of P. aeruginosa.
A novel five-level inverter for solar system

This paper compares the advantages and disadvantages of I-type 5-level inverter and T-type 5-level inverter, involving the conduction loss, commutation path in reactive power and switching loss, especially at high frequency. Based on the analysis, this paper proposes a novel 5-level inverter for solar system, aiming at reducing both the conduction loss and switching loss at high frequency, and solving their common issue of unbalanced devices dissipation. A prototype has been built to verify the operation and performance of the proposed inverter.
A novel structure for CdZnTe capacitive frisch grid radiation detector

CdZnTe gamma spectrometers with capacitive Frisch grid structure can potentially achieve a higher detecting resolution and their geometrical structures have an important role in optimizing the detector performance. In the paper, three geometrical structures of capacitive Frisch grid detectors were investigated by using Finite element method based on the 3-dimensional weighting potential and field distribution. Simulation results indicated the trapezoid prism model could get better detector performance, whose novel structure has not only a better weighting potential distribution but also a bigger detector volume than the cuboid models
An optimal soft handoff algorithm for rayleigh fading channels

In this paper, we design and analyze a soft handoff algorithm for code-division multiple access (CDMA) systems in a Rayleigh fading environment. For each mobile, this algorithm selects a set of base stations to be in handoff with the mobile based on the average channel conditions between the mobile and the base stations. For a given target value for the average number of base stations in handoff, our handoff algorithm is optimal in that it maximizes the effective channel gain seen by mobiles. We consider both power control and rate control in the forward and reverse links of CDMA systems, where maximizing the effective channel gain minimizes the average transmit power for the power controlled case and maximizes the average received power for the rate controlled case, respectively.
2-Deoxy-d-Glucose (2-DG)–Induced Cardiac Toxicity in Rat

2-Deoxy-d-glucose (2-DG) is being developed as a potential anticonvulsant and disease-modifying agent for patients with epilepsy; however, during preclinical development, cardiac toxicity has been encountered in rats. This study was performed to determine whether cardiac troponin (cTnI and cTnT), atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP), brain natriuretic peptide (BNP), N-terminal pro-brain natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP), and/or creatine kinase (CK) could be useful as indicators of 2-DG cardiac toxicity. In addition, this study also investigated the association of cardiac histopathological changes with these biomarkers. F344 rats (4/sex/group/sacrifice point) were gavaged with either vehicle or 2-DG (50, 125, or 375 mg/kg twice daily; total daily dose of 100, 250, or 750 mg/kg/d) for 7, 14, 21, or 45 days followed by a 15-day recovery. Dose-dependent increases in NT-proBNP and BNP plasma concentrations were observed. Following recovery period, the NT-proBNP and BNP concentrations returned to baseline levels. There were no remarkable increases in CK, ANP, cTnI, or cTnT concentrations. There were no gross cardiac lesions observed at the necropsy. Microscopic findings of vacuolar degeneration and hypertrophy of the endothelial cells of the endocardium were present in the heart at doses of 250 and 750 mg/kg/d. Microscopic findings, in general, were associated with increases in NT-proBNP levels. Cardiac toxicity appeared to be reversible. In conclusion, NT-proBNP and BNP are potential early biomarkers for 2-DG-induced cardiac toxicity that can be useful to monitor 2-DG therapy in clinical trials.