bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Association between prescription medications and falls at home among young and middle-aged adults
Authors: Kool Bridget , Ameratunga Shanthi , Robinson Elizabeth
Published: January 2012

Using data from a population-based case–control study of people aged 25–60 years in Auckland, New Zealand, the authors investigated the association between medications and fall-related injuries at home. The 335 cases comprised people who died or were admitted to hospital as a result of unintentional falls at home, and the 352 controls were randomly selected from the electoral roll. After controlling for confounding by demographic, personal and lifestyle factors, the use of two or more prescription medications relative to one or no medications was associated with an increased risk of fall injury (OR 2.5, 95% CI 1.3 to 4.8). Antihypertensives and lipid lowering drugs were the most common groups involved. The findings suggest that, as in the case of older people, younger working aged adults who use multiple prescription medications are at increased risk of falls, an aspect that should be considered in falls prevention programmes.
Does hormone replacement therapy cause breast cancer? An application of causal principles to three studies: Table 1
Authors: Shapiro Samuel , Farmer Richard D T , Stevenson John C , Burger Henry G , Mueck Alfred O
Published: January 2012

Background

Based principally on findings in three studies, the collaborative reanalysis (CR), the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) and the Million Women Study (MWS), it is claimed that hormone replacement therapy (HRT) with estrogen plus progestogen (E+P) is now an established cause of breast cancer; the CR and MWS investigators claim that unopposed estrogen therapy (ET) also increases the risk, but to a lesser degree than does E+P. The authors have previously reviewed the findings in the CR and WHI (Parts 1–3).

Objective

To evaluate the evidence for causality in the MWS.

Methods

Using generally accepted causal criteria, in this article (Part 4) the authors evaluate the findings in the MWS for E+P and for ET.

Results

Despite the massive size of the MWS the findings for E+P and for ET did not adequately satisfy the criteria of time order, information bias, detection bias, confounding, statistical stability and strength of association, duration-response, internal consistency, external consistency or biological plausibility. Had detection bias resulted in the identification in women aged 50–55 years of 0.3 additional cases of breast cancer in ET users per 1000 per year, or 1.2 in E+P users, it would have nullified the apparent risks reported.

Conclusion

HRT may or may not increase the risk of breast cancer, but the MWS did not establish that it does.
Summary of PLOS 2011
Authors: Eide Eric , Muller Gilles , Schröder-Preikschat Wolfgang , Spinczyk Olaf
Published: January 2012

This report summarizes the Sixth Workshop on Programming Languages and Operating Systems (PLOS 2011), which was held in conjunction with the SOSP 2011 conference. It presents the motivation for the PLOS workshop series and describes the contributions of the PLOS 2011 event.
Practical experiences with chronics discovery in large telecommunications systems
Authors: Kavulya Soila P. , Joshi Kaustubh , Hiltunen Matti , Daniels Scott , Gandhi Rajeev , Narasimhan Priya
Published: January 2012

Chronics are recurrent problems that fly under the radar of operations teams because they do not perturb the system enough to set off alarms or violate service-level objectives. The discovery and diagnosis of never-before seen chronics poses new challenges as they are not detected by traditional threshold-based techniques, and many chronics can be present in a system at once, all starting and ending at different times. In this paper, we describe our experiences diagnosing chronics using server logs on a large telecommunications service. Our technique uses a scalable Bayesian distribution learner coupled with an information-theoretic measure of distance (KL divergence), to identify the attributes that best distinguish failed calls from successful calls. Our preliminary results demonstrate the usefulness of our technique by providing examples of actual instances where we helped operators discover and diagnose chronics.
Processing and visualizing the data in tweets
Authors: Marcus Adam , Bernstein Michael S. , Badar Osama , Karger David R. , Madden Samuel , Miller Robert C.
Published: January 2012

Microblogs such as Twitter provide a valuable stream of diverse user-generated data. While the data extracted from Twitter is generally timely and accurate, the process by which developers extract structured data from the tweet stream is ad-hoc and requires reimplementation of common data manipulation primitives. In this paper, we present two systems for querying and extracting structure from Twitter-embedded data. The first, TweeQL, provides a streaming SQL-like interface to the Twitter API, making common tweet processing tasks simpler. The second, TwitInfo, shows how end-users can interact with and understand aggregated data from the tweet stream, in addition to showcasing the power of the TweeQL language. Together these systems show the richness of content that can be extracted from Twitter.
The case for ethernet in automotive communications
Authors: Bello Lucia Lo
Published: January 2012

Several factors seem to favor the introduction of Ethernet technology in automotive communications. The spreading of Ethernet as an in-vehicle network for today's cars or for those in the near future is being broadly announced by spokespersons for major carmakers and automotive electronics companies. Even in the scientific community there is a growing interest in the topic, shown by the increasing number of studies on the performance of Ethernet-based technologies such as Switched Ethernet or Time-Triggered Ethernet in automotive embedded systems.

This position paper provides an overview on facts and trends towards the introduction of Ethernet in automotive communications and discusses how and to what extent Ethernet technology is likely to step in and provide benefits to the different automotive functional domains. The paper will also discuss which Ethernet technologies would be the possible candidates for the automotive industry.
The possibility of wireless sensor networks for commercial vehicle load monitoring
Authors: Jung Jieun , Song Byunghun , Park Sooyeol
Published: January 2012

It is of great importance to be able to monitor and enforce vehicle weight limits for road authorities involved in almost all aspects of transportation and pavement engineering. For the active control of additional weight carried by overloaded vehicles, essential IT technologies such as sensors, measurement, and data processing have been applied. The integration of vehicle load monitoring systems with Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) technology has a possibility of reducing installation efforts and costs, and enabling the quick and easy configuration of data acquisition and control systems. In this paper, we try to verify that WSN technology can replace the wiring sensor applications for vehicle monitoring issues. The WSN-based system includes: inclinometer sensors which measure variation of inclination values with load changes;, an Access Point (AP) that logs the data collected from all these sensors;, and a weight estimation algorithm. To reach the goal, we performed an experiment with real deployment and estimated the weight of trucks with an error of less than 3%. The result shows that it is possible to adopt WSN for commercial vehicle load monitoring.
Real-time routing and retry strategies for low-latency 802.15.4 control networks
Authors: Holtman Koen , van der Stok Peter
Published: January 2012

In many applications of wireless control networks, the latency of message delivery is an important consideration. In a lighting control network where a light switch sends a wireless message to a lamp, a worst case end-to-end latency of 200 ms or better is desired, so that the working of the switch feels 'immediate' to the end user. This paper studies the probability that latency deadlines of a few hundred ms are exceeded. We use a 802.15.4 test network, located in a real-life office environment, to evaluate and compare the effects of several re-try and re-routing strategies and different MAC parameter settings. Testing under realistic conditions, in an office environment when people are present, is important to accurately determine worst case latency performance as experienced by end users. At night, without any people in the building, performance is much better than during the day. In order to accurately observe the effect of different strategies, test runs lasting at least a week are needed. We find that retrying message delivery via a single delivery route is sub-optimal. Keeping a set of two or more candidate routes for subsequent retries greatly improves worst-case latency. We show that the use of time slotting and energy saving strategies is not necessarily incompatible with the goal of optimizing for human-observable latency.
Networking in modern avionics
Authors: Penna Sérgio D.
Published: January 2012

This paper provides an overview of three important emerging standards in modern Avionics - ARINC-664 Part 7 (AFDX), TTP and ARINC-653 - and addresses challenges and opportunities arising from their adoption. Beyond several potential benefits offered by these standards, additional effort should be expected by practitioners when system design requires, for instance, timing analysis for estimating data transmission jitter. This paper presents some of these design challenges and suggests new academic research opportunities for, for instance, extending current timing analysis methods for distributed systems.
An on-line graduate degree in computers and society
Authors: Derk Molisa
Published: January 2012

Leaders in today's world need an understanding of the ways that computers and computing are affecting society. To this end, a graduate degree in computers and society is proposed. This degree does not require any background in computer science or mathematics.
The decreasing marginal value of evaluation network size
Authors: Dong Zheng , Camp L. Jean
Published: January 2012

The best way to protect information is never to release it. Yet even the earliest definition of security recognizes availability as a necessary quality. In this work, we seek to quantify the value of information disclosure for web resource evaluation and discovery. Communal evaluation tools help users share ratings on websites, music, and other online resources. This approach assumes that experiences are self-similar, so that a site one person visits is likely to have been evaluated and thus visited by others. Collaborative search tools aim for discovery as opposed to evaluation. Therefore, they assume participants in a collaborative network have large sets of non-overlapping sites so that an increase in network size corresponds to an increase in web coverage. We quantify the value of information sharing for these closely related but sometimes distinct functions.

In this paper, we analyzed a dataset that includes eight weeks of browsing history of 1084 college students that live in the same dormitory. Our experiments showed that for discovery, more sharing monotonically improves results; for evaluation, however, there are decreasing marginal returns for each participant added to the network. The subject population was selected for its homogeneity in order to mimic a collaborative network.
Transafe
Authors: Hamilton M. , Salim F. , Cheng E. , Choy S. L.
Published: January 2012

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2011 IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society (ISTAS) at Saint Xavier University in Chicago, Illinois (and printed in the 2011 ISTAS proceedings).

This paper describes a proposed mobile platform,
Transafe
, that captures and analyses public perceptions of safety to deliver 'crowdsourced' collective intelligence about places in the City of Melbourne, Australia, and their affective states at various times of the day. Public perceptions of crime on public transport in Melbourne are often mismatched with actual crime statistics and such perceptions thus can act as social barriers to visitors and locals traversing within and through the city. Using interactive mobile applications and social media, the visualization of this crowdsourced safety perception information will increase the commuter's awareness of various situations in the City of Melbourne. In addition, through social behavioral analysis and ethnographic research, the collective public intelligence will also help inform the stakeholders of the city for future policy-making and policing strategies for safety perception management. At the centre of the proposed platform is the design and development of a mobile phone application that can contribute to people feeling safer by supporting users to report crimes and misdemeanors that they witness, and provide information about transportation and emergency services around where the users are located. The proposed application can also act as a crime deterrent with one feature that enables user tracking by up to three nominated friends if the user opts to activate tracking when feeling unsafe while roaming the city.
Towards Haskell in the cloud
Authors: Epstein Jeff , Black Andrew P. , Peyton-Jones Simon
Published: January 2012

We present Cloud Haskell, a domain-specific language for developing programs for a distributed computing environment. Implemented as a shallow embedding in Haskell, it provides a message-passing communication model, inspired by Erlang, without introducing incompatibility with Haskell's established shared-memory concurrency. A key contribution is a method for serializing function closures for transmission across the network. Cloud Haskell has been implemented; we present example code and some preliminary performance measurements.
Can user-level probing detect and diagnose common home-WLAN pathologies
Authors: Kanuparthy Partha , Dovrolis Constantine , Papagiannaki Konstantina , Seshan Srinivasan , Steenkiste Peter
Published: January 2012

Common Wireless LAN (WLAN) pathologies include low signal-to-noise ratio, congestion, hidden terminals or interference from non-802.11 devices and phenomena. Prior work has focused on the detection and diagnosis of such problems using layer-2 information from 802.11 devices and special purpose access points and monitors, which may not be generally available. Here, we investigate a user-level approach: is it possible to detect and diagnose 802.11 pathologies with strictly user-level active probing, without any cooperation from, and without any visibility in, layer-2 devices? In this paper, we present preliminary but promising results indicating that such diagnostics are feasible.
Towards a cost model for network traffic
Authors: Motiwala Murtaza , Dhamdhere Amogh , Feamster Nick , Lakhina Anukool
Published: January 2012

We develop a holistic cost model that operators can use to help evaluate the costs of various routing and peering decisions. Using real traffic data from a large carrier network, we show how network operators can use this cost model to significantly reduce the cost of carrying traffic in their networks. We find that adjusting the routing for a small fraction of total flows (and total traffic volume) significantly reduces cost in many cases. We also show how operators can use the cost model both to evaluate potential peering arrangements and for other network operations problems.
Improving TCP performance in residential broadband networks
Authors: Podlesny Maxim , Williamson Carey
Published: January 2012

ADSL and cable connections are the prevalent technologies available from Internet Service Providers (ISPs) for residential Internet access. Asymmetric access technologies such as these offer high download capacity, but moderate upload capacity. When the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is used on such access networks, performance degradation can occur. In particular, sharing a bottleneck link with different upstream and downstream capacities among competing TCP flows in opposite directions can degrade the throughput of the higher speed link. Despite many research efforts to solve this problem in the past, there is no solution that is both highly effective and easily deployable in residential networks. In this paper, we propose an Asymmetric Queueing (AQ) mechanism that enables full utilization of the bottleneck access link in residential networks with asymmetric capacities. The extensive simulation evaluation of our design shows its effectiveness and robustness in a variety of network conditions. Furthermore, our solution is easy to deploy and configure in residential networks.
Distributed denial of service is a scalability problem
Authors: Chung Yoo
Published: January 2012

Distributed denial of service attacks are often considered just a security problem. While this may be the way to view the problem with the Internet of today, perhaps new network architectures attempting to address the issue should view it as a scalability problem. In addition, they may need to approach the problem based on a rigorous foundation.
Functional Analytic Multisensory Environmental Therapy for People with Dementia
Authors: Staal Jason A.
Published: January 2012

This paper introduces Functional Analytic Multisensory Environmental Therapy (FAMSET) for use with elders with dementia while using a multisensory environment/snoezelen room. The model introduces behavioral theory and practice to the multisensory environment treatment, addressing assessment, and, within session techniques, integrating behavioral interventions with emotion-oriented care. A modular approach is emphasized to delineate different treatment phases for multisensory environment therapy. The aim of the treatment is to provide a safe and effective framework for reducing the behavioral disturbance of the disease process, increasing elder well-being, and to promote transfer of positive effects to other environments outside of the multisensory treatment room.
Does Ménière's Disease in the Elderly Present Some Peculiar Features?
Authors: Teggi R. , Meli A. , Trimarchi M. , LiraLuce F. , Bussi M.
Published: January 2012

Object. Aim of our study was to establish some peculiar features of Ménière's Disease (MD) in a group of elderly MD patients, in which the first vertigo spell happened when over 65 years old.Material and Methods. We analyzed a group of 73 younger than 65-years-old and a group of 30 elderly MD patients. All patients underwent a neurotological evaluation, an anamnestic evaluation including a lifetime history of migraine, and blood withdrawal for autoantibody screening.Results. Some differences were found between elderly and younger MD patients. Elderly MD patients presented a higher prevalence of Tumarkin attacks and a lower prevalence of lifetime history of migraine; moreover, they presented a faster develop of hearing loss and vertigo spells than a subgroup of 32 younger patients matched for the duration of illness.Conclusions. Some clinical features of MD in elderly have been pointed out. Particularly, the lower rate of migrainous history and positivity for autoantibodies often associated with MD, in our opinion, support the hypothesis of a vascular disorder acting as a predisposing factor for MD in elderly.
Influence of Morphine on Pericyte-Endothelial Interaction: Implications for Antiangiogenic Therapy
Authors: Luk Kathryn , Boatman Sonja , Johnson Katherine N. , Dudek Olivia A. , Ristau Natalie , Vang Derek , Nguyen Julia , Gupta Kalpna
Published: January 2012

Morphine stimulates tumor angiogenesis and cancer progression in mice. We examined if morphine influences endothelial-pericyte interaction via platelet-derived growth factor-BB (PDGF-BB) and PDGF receptor-β(PDGFR-β). Clinically relevant doses of morphine stimulated PDGF-BB secretion from human umbilical vein endothelial cells and activated PDGFR-βand mitogen-activated protein kinase/extracellular signal-regulated kinase (MAPK/ERK) phosphorylation in human pericytes. Thesein vitroeffects of morphine were translated into promotion of tumor angiogenesis in a transgenic mice model of breast cancer when treated with clinically used dose of morphine. Increased vessel-associated immunoreactivity of desmin and PDGFR-βwas observed on pericytes in tumors of morphine-treated mice. These data suggest that morphine potentiates endothelial-pericyte interaction via PDGF-BB/PDGFR-βsignaling and promotes tumor angiogenesis, pericyte recruitment, and coverage of tumor vessels. We speculate that morphine may impair the effectiveness of antiangiogenic therapy by influencing vascular pericyte coverage.
The Challenge of Efficient Synthesis of Biofuels from Lignocellulose for Future Renewable Transportation Fuels
Authors: Mäki-Arvela Päivi , Salminen Eero , Riittonen Toni , Virtanen Pasi , Kumar Narendra , Mikkola Jyri-Pekka
Published: January 2012

Dehydration of sugars to 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) has recently been under intensive study by a multitude of research groups. On the other hand, when lignocellulosic biomass is applied as the starting material, very few studies can be found in the open literature. The direct synthesis of HMF, in line with the idea of “one-pot” synthesis strategy from lignocellulose, is demanding since the overall process should encompass dissolution, hydrolysis, and dehydration steps in a single processing unit. Ionic liquid-assisted methods to produce hydroxymethyl-furfural directly from lignocellulosic biomass are reported here together with a short overview of the most important biofuels. In reality, HMF is not suitable to be used as a single-component fuel as such, and, consequently, methods to produce HMF derivatives suitable as liquid fuels are reported.
Expression Pattern of the Alpha-Kafirin Promoter Coupled with a Signal Peptide fromSorghum bicolorL. Moench
Authors: Ahmad Norazlina , Sant Rajnesh , Bokan Milovan , Steadman Kathryn J. , Godwin Ian D.
Published: January 2012

Regulatory sequences with endosperm specificity are essential for foreign gene expression in the desired tissue for both grain quality improvement and molecular pharming. In this study, promoters of seed storage α-kafirin genes coupled with signal sequence (ss) were isolated fromSorghum bicolorL. Moench genomic DNA by PCR. The α-kafirin promoter (α-kaf) contains endosperm specificity-determining motifs, prolamin-box, the O2-box 1, CATC, and TATA boxes required for α-kafirin gene expression in sorghum seeds. The constructs pMB-Ubi-gfpand pMB-kaf-gfpwere microprojectile bombarded into various sorghum and sweet corn explants. GFP expression was detected on all explants using the Ubi promoter but only in seeds for the α-kaf promoter. This shows that the α-kaf promoter isolated was functional and demonstrated seed-specific GFP expression. The constructs pMB-Ubi-ss-gfpand pMB-kaf-ss-gfpwere also bombarded into the same explants. Detection of GFP expression showed that the signal peptide (SP)::GFP fusion can assemble and fold properly, preserving the fluorescent properties of GFP.
The Effects of Radial Compression on Thermal Conductivity of Carbon and Boron Nitride Nanotubes
Authors: Shen Haijun
Published: January 2012

By using molecular dynamics method, thermal conductivity of (10, 10) carbon and boron nitride (BN) nanotubes under radial compression was investigated, and the λ‐T (thermal conductivity versus temperature) curves of the two nanotubes were obtained. It is found that with the increase of temperature the thermal conductivity of two nanotubes decreases; the nanotubes, under both the local compression and whole compression, have lower thermal conductivity, and the larger the compressive deformation is, the lower the thermal conductivity is; the whole compression has more remarkable effect on thermal conductivity than the local compression.
HAX1 Augments Cell Proliferation, Migration, Adhesion, and Invasion Induced by Urokinase-Type Plasminogen Activator Receptor
Authors: Mekkawy Ahmed H. , Morris David L. , Pourgholami Mohammad H.
Published: January 2012

The urokinase-type plasminogen activator receptor (uPAR) is a cell surface receptor which has a multifunctional task in the process of tumorigenesis including cell proliferation, adhesion, migration, and invasion. Many of the biological functions of uPAR necessitate interactions with other proteins. We have shown previously that uPAR interacts with HAX1 protein (HS-1-associated protein X-1). In the current study, to gain insight into the possible role of HAX1 overexpression in regulation of uPAR signal transduction pathway, several function assays were used. We found that, upon stimulation of uPAR, HAX1 colocalizes with uPAR suggesting a physiological role for HAX1 in the regulation of uPAR signal transduction. HAX1 overexpression augments cell proliferation and migration in uPAR-stimulated cells. Moreover, HAX1 over-expression augmented uPAR-induced cell adhesion to vitronectin as well as cellular invasion. Our results suggest that HAX1 over-expression may underlay a novel mechanism to regulate uPAR-induced functions in cancer cells.
JNK-Induced Apoptosis, Compensatory Growth, and Cancer Stem Cells
Authors: Chen Fei
Published: January 2012

Overwhelming) are a set of key stress-responsive kinases that mediate cell apoptosis, which is an important process for tumor suppression. However, JNKs have also been implicated in the malignant transformation and tumorigenesis of cells. This review attempts to reconcile these 2 contradictory functions of JNKs with recent discoveries on the role of JNKs in compensatory growth of neighboring cells and stem cells, which may provide new mechanistic understanding about the role of JNKs in the regulation of cancer stem cells and the pathogenesis of cancers. Cancer Res; 72(2); 379–86. ©2012 AACR.
Genetic Variations in Epigenetic Genes Are Predictors of Recurrence in Stage I or II Non–Small Cell Lung Cancer Patients
Authors: Wagner Klaus W. , Ye Yuanqing , Lin Jie , Vaporciyan Ara A. , Roth Jack A. , Wu Xifeng
Published: January 2012

Purpose: Early-stage non–small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is potentially curable, however, many patients develop recurrent disease. Therefore, identification of biomarkers that can be used to predict patient's risk of recurrence and survival is critical. Genetic polymorphisms or single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) of DNA- and histone-modifying genes, particularly those of O6-methylguanine DNA-methyltransferase (MGMT), have been linked to an increased risk of lung cancer as well as treatment outcomes in other tumors.

Experimental Design: We assessed the association of 165 SNPs in selected epigenetic enzyme genes, DNA methyltransferases, and methyl-CpG–binding proteins with cancer recurrence in 467 patients with stage I or II NSCLC treated with either surgery alone (N = 340) or surgery plus (neo)-adjuvant chemotherapy (N = 127).

Results: We found several SNPs to be strongly correlated with tumor recurrence. We identified 10 SNPs that correlated with the outcome in patients treated with surgery alone but not in patients treated with surgery and adjuvant chemotherapy, which suggested that the addition of platinum-based chemotherapy could reverse the high genetic risk of recurrence. We also identified 10 SNPs that predicted the risk of recurrence in patients treated with surgery plus adjuvant chemotherapy but not in patients treated with surgery alone. The cumulative effect of these SNPs significantly predicted outcomes with P-values of 10−9 and 10−6, respectively.

Conclusions: The first set of genotypes may be used as novel predictive biomarkers to identify patients with stage I NSCLC, who could benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy, and the second set of SNPs might predict response to adjuvant chemotherapy. Clin Cancer Res; 18(2); 585–92. ©2012 AACR.
Polymorphism in apoA1 Influences High-Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol Levels but Is Not a Major Risk Factor of Alzheimer’s Disease
Authors: Smach Mohamed Ali , Edziri Hayet , Charfeddine Bassem , Ben Othman Leila , Lammouchi Turkia , Ltaief Afef , Nafati Souhir , Dridi Hedi , Bennamou Soufien , Limem Khalifa
Published: January 2012

Background: Apolipoprotein A1 (apoA1) is the major apolipoprotein constituent of the high-density lipoprotein (HDL) and is involved in reverse cholesterol transport. Variation in the apoA1 gene might influence the function of the protein and, thus, brain cholesterol metabolism, leading to an increased risk for Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Aim: In the current report, we investigated the role of the functional apoA1 polymorphism (–75 G/A) as a genetic risk factor for AD in a Tunisian population. Methods: 173 AD patients and 150 healthy controls were studied. Results: No association was found between this genetic variation in apoA1 gene and the risk of AD. The presence of the (–75 G/A) A allele appeared, however, to be associated with lower levels of cerebrospinal fluid Aβ42 and HDL cholesterol levels in sera. Conclusion: Our data support the observation that apoA1 polymorphism influences cholesterol metabolism and Aβ42 deposition in the brain.
Preplaque (‘Preclinical’) Aβ-Induced Inflammation and Nerve Growth Factor Deregulation in Transgenic Models of Alzheimer’s Disease-Like Amyloid Pathology
Authors: Cuello A.C. , Ferretti M.T. , Iulita M.F.
Published: January 2012

Background: Alzheimer’s disease (AD) neuropathology likely begins decades before clinical symptoms are manifested. Investigations on the early stages of the amyloid pathology are crucial for the discovery of diagnostic biomarkers or new therapeutic targets. Our transgenic (tg) animal models are most suitable to study early AD pathological events, as the pathology evolves in a well-staged manner, starting with intracellular Aβ accumulation and ending with plaque deposition. Objective: To determine the occurrence of key inflammatory markers and to look for signs of nerve growth factor (NGF) dysmetabolism at preplaque and postplaque stages in tg models of AD-like amyloid pathology and in human AD brains. Methods: We used our own tg lines (mice and rat), high-quality human brain material and applied neurochemical and immunohistochemical experimental approaches. Results: In both tg models, we observed an intracellular accumulation of oligomeric Aβ in cortical and hippocampal pyramidal neurons. This coincided with an upregulation of key inflammatory markers (iNOS, MHCII, COX-2) and a recruitment of microglia towards Aβ-burdened neurons. Using human AD brains, we showed alterations in the NGF metabolic pathway, which were mirrored in our tg rat model at early and late stages of amyloid plaque generation. Conclusion: A proinflammatory process and, consequently, the deregulation of the NGF metabolic pathway could be amongst the earliest pathological events in the progression of AD.
The prevalence and correlates of psychological distress in Australian tertiary students compared to their community peers
Authors: Cvetkovski Stefan , Reavley Nicola J , Jorm Anthony F
Published: January 2012

Objective: To examine differences between university students, vocational education and training (VET) students, tertiary students combined and non-students in the prevalence of psychological distress and the socio-demographic and economic characteristics associated with psychological distress.

Method: The Kessler Psychological Distress Scale was used to estimate the prevalence of moderate (16–21) and high (22–50) distress with data from three national surveys: the 2007 Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey, the 2007–08 National Health Survey (NHS), and the 2007 National Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing (NSMHWB). Multinomial logistic regression models were also estimated using the HILDA survey to examine any differences in the characteristics associated with moderate and high distress between the groups.

Results: There was evidence of a higher prevalence of moderate distress in tertiary students than non-students in the HILDA survey (27.1% vs 21.2%, p < 0.05) and the NSMHWB (27.4% vs 19.5%, p < 0.05), but not the NHS (26.1% vs 22.5%, p > 0.05). However, standardized rates for age and gender attenuated the difference in moderate distress in the HILDA survey and the NSMHWB. The prevalence of high distress was similar between the groups in all three surveys. The multinomial regression analyses using the HILDA survey showed the following subgroups of students to be at a greater risk of high distress relative to those with low distress: younger university students, and university and VET students with financial problems. Compared to VET students and non-students, younger university students and those who worked 1–39 hours per week in paid employment were at a greater risk of high distress.

Conclusions: There is evidence that tertiary students have a greater prevalence of moderate, but not high distress than non-students. Financial factors increase the risk of high distress and are likely to take on more importance as the participation rate of socio-economically disadvantaged students increases.
Education and employment levels among Jamaican patients newly diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder
Authors: Burgess Bertilee , Curtis-Downes Desdemona , Gibson Roger C.
Published: January 2012

Background:

Comparisons between persons with bipolar disorder and those with schizophrenia are not well researched in the Caribbean.

Aims:

To compare the educational and occupational attainments in Jamaicans diagnosed with these two disorders.

Methods:

Data on diagnosis, educational level, type of employment and other basic socio-demographic variables were collected from Jamaican hospital patients who were newly diagnosed with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Fisher’s exact and χ2 tests, as well as binary logistic regression, were used to explore how these characteristics varied according to diagnosis. Statistical significance was taken at p < .05.

Results:

Schizophrenia was associated with significantly lower educational attainment than bipolar disorder ( p = .022 for educational level attained; p = .026 for completion of secondary school). The majority (87.1%) of the 93 patients included in the analysis had no specific marketable job skills. However, the proportion of persons with bipolar disorder who had such skills was three times the corresponding proportion of persons with schizophrenia.

Conclusions:

The low educational achievement among persons with schizophrenia makes education a potentially important area for interventions targeted at this group. Because gross deficiencies in job skills were common to both patient groups, improvement in job skill levels is an important goal for persons with either of these disorders.
Making a Spectacle of Restraint: The Deutschland Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels Exposition
Authors: Castillo Greg
Published: January 2012

The Deutschland pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World’s Fair depicted West Germany not only as culturally and technologically modern but also as the antithesis of socialist East Germany and the disgraced Third Reich. International-style architecture and modernist exhibition design were mobilized as instruments of cultural soft power to convey these multiple messages. Hans Schwippert of the postwar German Werkbund choreographed exhibition design, deploying the miracle economy’s modern consumer culture to celebrate the emergence of a post-Nazi society. Egon Eiermann, aided by Sep Ruf, designed the International-style pavilion, celebrated as the architecture of postwar modernity, but in fact derived from a precedent in Third Reich industrial architecture. As an exercise in cold war soft power, West Germany’s Brussels pavilion celebrated the emergence of a West German consumer citizen, while suppressing the presence of a Third Reich past.
Improved soiling resistance of polypropylene fibers on the addition of synthetic compounds
Authors: Takahashi Tetsuya , Kimura Yoshikazu
Published: January 2012

With the aim of enhancing the soil resistance of polypropylene (PP) fibers, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) and/or oleamide (OA) were added, and the soiling and wear resistances of the obtained fibers were evaluated. Films made from PP with the addition of PDMS and/or OA were fabricated and their water repellencies were evaluated by using droplets to measure their contact angles. The water contact angle increased with increasing amount of PDMS and/or OA added to PP. These blended resins were then used to produce fibers, which were in turn used to form fabrics. The soil resistances of these fabrics were evaluated by immersing them in aqueous solutions of a water-soluble artificial soiling substance for 1 min. Fiber G, for which both PDMS and OA had been added to PP, had a soiling ratio that was about 8–15% lower than that of pure PP fibers to which nothing had been added. Longer immersion of 24 h resulted in Fiber E, for which only PDMS had been added, having the lowest soiling ratio. In contrast, Fibers L and G (produced by adding OA) had relatively high soiling ratios when immersed for a long time. The wear resistances of knitted fabrics were evaluated using an abrasion tester. Fabric made from pure PP fibers had holes after 20 cycles of abrasion, whereas fabrics formed from fibers to which PDMS and/or OA had been added did not have holes even after 100 cycles of abrasion, which represents a remarkable improvement in wear resistance.
Policy Discourse and Exclusion-Inclusion of Women in Higher Education in India
Authors: Chanana Karuna
Published: January 2012

Indian educational policies are conceptualised within a very narrow framework and, therefore, gender concerns find little meaningful space in the final policy documents. This is because the cultural concerns colour the vision and value frames of the policy makers. The article interrogates the process of policy formulation by looking at selected XI Plan documents. The aim is to analyse the process of policy development, unravel the rhetoric of inclusion-exclusion and the myopic decisions which hardly touch the structures of exclusivity. The exercise for the XII Plan is underway and one hopes it will move away from mere rhetoric and be an improvement both in terms of conceptualisation and delivery.
Education Beyond Class Rooms
Authors: Das Vidhya
Published: January 2012

School education is seen as a fundamental right of the child. But the quality of schools and the approach to education the poor find it too costly, just in terms of time, as their children learn hardly anything in the government schools. While ‘mainstreaming’ into almost defunct government schools is what is offered to poor children, the rich children have any number of options in the education market. On the other hand, the learning outside the schools, which is equally if not more important is ignored in today’s education. The focus on exam scores leads to increasing juvenile stress and high suicide rates. The work of the ‘uneducated’ in this country upholds the economy. Can these things be factored in for a more holistic system of education?
Protect the individual or protect the relationship? A dual-focus model of indirect risk exposure, trust, and caution
Authors: MacKinnon Stacey L. , Boon Susan D.
Published: January 2012

The current study extends work by both Boon and Holmes (1999) and Murray, Holmes and Collins (2006) by providing a theoretical model and the first experimental examination of the connection between more subtle forms of risk exposure and the levels of trust third-party evaluators have in their own partners when giving advice to others about their relationship difficulties. One hundred and fifty-two participants initially completed trust and self-esteem scales. They returned to the laboratory one week later and read either a narrative designed to prime the risks inherent in romantic relationships or a control narrative. All participants then read and evaluated an account of events that occurred in someone else’s romantic relationship and gave advice to the victim. The results of our study suggest that indirect risk exposure and trust, in combination, do significantly predict initial evaluations of the event, the attribution of responsibility and blame, focus of caution, and advice to the victim. The only exception to this pattern was the absence of an interaction between risk and trust on our measures of suspicion and desire for further information. A dual-focus model of indirect risk exposure, trust, and caution is proposed.
The politics of autonomous space
Authors: Woodward Keith , Jones John Paul , Marston Sallie A.
Published: January 2012

This paper offers a further exploration of ‘flat ontology’, an account of the world that takes the immanence of localized, material process to be fundamentally different from and ontologically prior to transcendent, structured, and formal treatments of space. Our previous work in this area aimed at developing the concept of the site – via site ontology – as an ‘event-space’ that describes the differential contours and pressures of aggregating and dispersing bodies. This paper’s contribution lies in considering how politics and political potentials are specified by such event-spaces. In geography and other fields, politics has nearly always been thought to proceed from and to exist for subjects, regardless of how they get theorized. Here we explore how the site might initiate politics that neither presuppose nor undergird individual subject positionalities or mass identitarian categories. We argue that subjectivity – widely understood to be the motive force in organizing politics – is often ‘suspended’ where bodies encounter or get enlisted in the unanticipated connections and relations that site ontology describes. Thus, our account understands the site as autonomous with respect to the subject in two crucial ways. The site is: (1) organizationally autonomous: its rules emerge from its specific, localized relations and this material immanence makes the site the legislator of its own assembly; and (2) politically autonomous: that is, not conditioned by the political schemata of subjectivity per se, even though sites diversely and differently enlist and reshuffle bodies that often attend to, direct, participate in, and inhabit subjective politics.
Self-reported muscle pain in adolescents with migraine and tension-type headache
Authors: Blaschek Astrid , Milde-Busch Astrid , Straube Andreas , Schankin Christoph , Langhagen Thyra , Jahn Klaus , Schröder Sebastian Andreas , Reiter Karl , von Kries Rüdiger , Heinen Florian
Published: January 2012

Aim: To identify possible associations between muscular pain and headache in adolescents in a large population-based sample.

Methods: Grammar school students were invited to fill in a questionnaire on headache and associated lifestyle factors. Headache was classified according to the German version of the International Classification of Headache Disorders (2nd edition). Muscular pain was assessed via denoting affected areas in schematic drawings of a body and via provoked muscular pain on controlled movements of head, neck and shoulder regions.

Results: Prevalence of any headache within the previous 6 months exceeded 80%. In all subjects muscular pain or pain on movement was most prominent in the neck and shoulder region, ranging from 9% to 27% in the non-headache population to up to 63% for individuals with migraine or mixed migraine and tension-type headache (TTH). Frequency of muscular pain increased significantly with growing chronicity of TTH.

Interpretation: A strong association between muscle pain in the neck/shoulder region and headache was observed, pointing to the importance of muscular pain for headache in adolescents. Also, in this age group muscular pain appears to be of particular importance in chronic TTH and – unexpectedly – in migraine, which is the most important new finding in our study.
Regional unemployment impacts of the global financial crisis in the new member states of the EU in Central and Eastern Europe
Authors: Blažek Jiří , Netrdová Pavlína
Published: January 2012

The article analyses changes in the regional variability of unemployment rates resulting from the global crisis, at the NUTS 3 and LAU 1 levels in the new member states of the European Union in Central and Eastern Europe. Although the coefficient of variation, the Gini coefficient and the Theil index each show a clear tendency towards convergence, in all of the states and at both of the scale levels observed, the range of variation has increased throughout the region, with the exception of the LAU 1 level in Hungary. The analysis therefore shows the ambiguous nature of the relationship between an economic crisis and the intensity of micro-regional differences or, rather, their dependence, owing to the nature and severity of the crisis as well as the statistical measures of variability. We found a number of mutual and contradictory tendencies concerning regional development during the global economic crisis in the observed countries. Based upon these findings, several groups of countries with similar changes in their regional pattern during the crisis have been identified.
Grid generation in hydrodynamic and elastohydrodynamic lubrication using algebraic multigrid method
Authors: Noutary MP , Venner CH , Lubrecht AA
Published: January 2012

This article analyses the generation of ‘optimal’ grids for lubrication problems including hydrodynamic and elastohydrodynamic lubrication. It does this by using existing numerical solutions on (very) fine and regular grids, and studying the coarse grids generated by algebraic multigrid. This article analyses two hydrodynamic lubrication applications, the circular hydrodynamic lubrication contact and the rough surface lubrication. The latter subject is currently attracting a large interest from both industry and university. A third elastohydrodynamic lubrication application highlights the strong coupling in the high-pressure zone.
A systematic review of training programs for parents of children with autism spectrum disorders: Single subject contributions
Authors: Patterson Stephanie Y. , Smith Veronica , Mirenda Pat
Published: January 2012

Aim:

The purpose of this systematic review was to examine research utilizing single subject research designs (SSRD) to explore the effectiveness of interventions designed to increase parents’ ability to support communication and social development in children with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs).

Method:

Included studies were systematically assessed for methodological quality (Logan et al., 2008; Smith et al., 2007) and intervention effects. Data examining participant characteristics, study methodology, outcomes, and analysis were systematically extracted.

Results:

Eleven SSRD parent-training intervention studies examining 44 participants with ASD were included. Overall, the studies were of moderate quality and reported increases in parent skills and child language and communication outcomes.

Interpretation:

The results supported by improvement rate difference (IRD) analysis indicated several interventions demonstrated positive effects for both parent and child outcomes. However, limited generalization and follow-up data suggested only one intervention demonstrated parents’ accurate and ongoing intervention implementation beyond training.