52 research outputs found
Academic Performance and Behavioral Patterns
Identifying the factors that influence academic performance is an essential
part of educational research. Previous studies have documented the importance
of personality traits, class attendance, and social network structure. Because
most of these analyses were based on a single behavioral aspect and/or small
sample sizes, there is currently no quantification of the interplay of these
factors. Here, we study the academic performance among a cohort of 538
undergraduate students forming a single, densely connected social network. Our
work is based on data collected using smartphones, which the students used as
their primary phones for two years. The availability of multi-channel data from
a single population allows us to directly compare the explanatory power of
individual and social characteristics. We find that the most informative
indicators of performance are based on social ties and that network indicators
result in better model performance than individual characteristics (including
both personality and class attendance). We confirm earlier findings that class
attendance is the most important predictor among individual characteristics.
Finally, our results suggest the presence of strong homophily and/or peer
effects among university students
Transcription factor-based modulation of neural stem cell differentiation using direct protein transduction
Isolation of a novel bio-peptide from walnut residual protein inducing apoptosis and autophagy on cancer cells
Plasmodium falciparum in Kenya: high prevalence of drug-resistance-associated polymorphisms in hospital admissions with severe malaria in an epidemic area.
During an epidemic of Plasmodium falciparum malaria in Chogoria, Kenya, P. falciparum DNA was collected from 24 cases of severe malaria admitted to hospital for parenteral quinine treatment. These patients had all failed first- (chloroquine) and second-line (sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine or amodiaquine) drug treatments. Twenty-two (92%) of the 24 patients sampled carried parasites with the (Asn)86(Tyr) point mutation in the pfmdr1 gene (chromosome 5), 20 (83%) had an (Asp)1246(Tyr) mutation and 18 (82%) had both of these mutations. These alleles are both reported to be associated with chloroquine-resistance. Polymorphisms in the cg2 gene (chromosome 7) are also associated with chloroquine resistance, and 18 (75%) of the 24 parasite samples each had the cg2 and pfmdr1 polymorphisms. These 18 samples also had the mutations associated with resistance to pyrimethamine and sulfadoxine: (Asn)51(Ile), (Cys)59(Arg) and (Ser)108(Asn) of gene dhfr (chromosome 4) and (Ala)437(Gly) and (Lys)540(Glu) of dhps (chromosome 8), respectively. Genotyping of the parasites from all 24 patients revealed extensive diversity in the sequences for the merozoite surface antigens (MSA-1 and MSA-2) and the glutamate-rich protein (GLURP) and indicated that each sample contained more than one parasite clone. Although samples from non-admitted malaria cases were not available, it appears that drug resistance may have played an important role in the development of severe malaria in this epidemic
The protective effect of intraperitoneal splenic autotransplants in mice exposed to an aerosolized suspension of type III Streptococcus pneumoniae
Prosthetic Valve Endocarditis Caused by a Pasteurella dagmatis-Like Isolate Originating from a Patient's Cat
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