Women's Mass Incarceration: The Whole Pie 2017

This report provides a first-of-its-kind detailed view of the 219,000 women incarcerated in the United States, and how they fit into the even larger picture of correctional control. Since 2014, the Prison Policy Initiative has quantified the number of people incarcerated in the United States, and calculated the breakdown of people held by each correctional system by offense in an annual Whole Pie: Mass Incarceration report. This report, done in collaboration with the ACLU's Campaign for Smart Justice, finally provides similar data on women incarcerated in the Unites States. We break the data down to show the various correctional systems that control women, and to examine why women in the various systems of confinement are locked up

Does Twitter know your political views? POLiTweets dataset and semi-automatic method for political leaning discovery

Every day, the world is flooded by millions of messages and statements posted on Twitter or Facebook. Social media platforms try to protect users' personal data, but there still is a real risk of misuse, including elections manipulation. Did you know, that only 13 posts addressing important or controversial topics for society are enough to predict one's political affiliation with a 0.85 F1-score? To examine this phenomenon, we created a novel universal method of semi-automated political leaning discovery. It relies on a heuristical data annotation procedure, which was evaluated to achieve 0.95 agreement with human annotators (counted as an accuracy metric). We also present POLiTweets - the first publicly open Polish dataset for political affiliation discovery in a multi-party setup, consisting of over 147k tweets from almost 10k Polish-writing users annotated heuristically and almost 40k tweets from 166 users annotated manually as a test set. We used our data to study the aspects of domain shift in the context of topics and the type of content writers - ordinary citizens vs. professional politicians

Intense myocyte formation from cardiac stem cells in human cardiac hypertrophy

It is generally believed that increase in adult contractile cardiac mass can be accomplished only by hypertrophy of existing myocytes. Documentation of myocardial regeneration in acute stress has challenged this dogma and led to the proposition that myocyte renewal is fundamental to cardiac homeostasis. Here we report that in human aortic stenosis, increased cardiac mass results from a combination of myocyte hypertrophy and hyperplasia. Intense new myocyte formation results from the differentiation of stem-like cells committed to the myocyte lineage. These cells express stem cell markers and telomerase. Their number increased >13-fold in aortic stenosis. The finding of cell clusters with stem cells making the transition to cardiogenic and myocyte precursors, as well as very primitive myocytes that turn into terminally differentiated myocytes, provides a link between cardiac stem cells and myocyte differentiation. Growth and differentiation of these primitive cells was markedly enhanced in hypertrophy, consistent with activation of a restricted number of stem cells that, through symmetrical cell division, generate asynchronously differentiating progeny. These clusters strongly support the existence of cardiac stem cells that amplify and commit to the myocyte lineage in response to increased workload. Their presence is consistent with the notion that myocyte hyperplasia significantly contributes to cardiac hypertrophy and accounts for the subpopulation of cycling myocytes

Design of home automatic coffee machine

Zadáním této bakalářské práce je návrh domácího automatického kávovaru. Mezi hlavní cíle práce patří implementace současných technologií a navrhnutí výrobku, který bude respektovat ergonomické i technické požadavky. Na základě rozsáhlé analýzy byl navržen produkt, který se s těmito výzvami vypořádává originálním způsobem.The aim of this Bachelor’s thesis is to design an automatic coffee maker, which could be used in a household. Implementation of a modern technology as designing a machine, which would fulfill technologic and ergonomic requirements are main goals for this kind of product. Based on a wide analysis there was created an automatic coffee machine, which deals with these challenges in its own, original way.

The effects of traumatic brain injury on neocortical serotonin axon innervation.

It is widely held that injured neurons in the central nervous system do not have the capacity to undergo axonal regeneration. Recently, however, there is mounting evidence that serotonin fibers are an exception to this rule. Serotonin fibers undergo long-distance regeneration in the neocortex after amphetamine lesion. They can also traverse the rift created by a penetrating injury in the neocortex. These new fibers are indistinguishable in morphology from spared axons and have been shown to be competent to release serotonin. While experimentally useful, these models do not mimic the most typical clinical injuries. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is prevalent and can lead to pathologies such as depression that are a result of serotoninergic dysfunction. So whether serotonin fibers can regrow after TBI is an important question. To address this, we used a controlled cortical impact (CCI) model to evoke injury in adult mouse neocortex and assessed serotonin fiber innervation one week, one month, and three months after injury with immunohistochemistry. In the neocortex serotonin fibers traverse in an anterior to posterior direction. CCI, as well as an open skull injury without impact, resulted in decreases in serotonin fiber innervation posterior to the injury site one week after surgery. At one month and three months after surgery there was a significant regrowth of serotonin fibers posterior to the injury. We also quantified reactive astrocytes following TBI using GFAP immunohistochemistry. There was profound reactive astrogliosis one week after surgery that decreased close to control levels by three months. Interestingly, the amount of reactive gliosis was not correlated to the amount of serotonin fiber loss in either regions anterior or posterior to the injury. Microglial density was not affected by TBI. In addition, we investigated whether a repetitive mild TBI model leads to serotonin fiber loss in mouse neocortex. We did not detect serotonin fiber loss across a range of injury severities despite the presence of reactive gliosis in the optic fiber tract accompanying these injuries. These findings indicate that serotonin fibers can be damaged in certain clinically relevant TBI models and are capable of regrowth following injury

Motor skills among high school adolescents : effect of the exercise program

To assess the basic motor skills and the effects of physical training improvement program in a group of adolescents. The study group comprised 133 students (92 women and 41 men) aged 17 to 19 years. First, the subjects' motor skills were tested using the Eurofit Fitness Testing Battery. Second, the general improving program of physical training was implemented during the same school year. Third, the Eurofit test was repeated at one year after the initial one. The SPSS 15.0 software was used to analyse the data. At the first measurement, only 2/133 students performed all the Eurofit tests on satisfactory (above the national sample 50%) level. In four of nine domains the results were below representative national sample. A year later, after completion of the training program, 37/133 students (27.1%) performed all Eurofit domains above the 50th percentile (P<0.001), the improvements were registered in previously deficit Eurofit Test constituencies. A low level of physical fitness has been observed in majority of adolescents. A general program of physical training leads to improvement of motor skills in a significant number of adolescents and the performance in the Eurofit test domains

Quality of life and nutritional status among 65-year-old or older patients with heart failure and/or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Wstęp. Występowanie chorób przewlekłych, jak niewydolność serca (NS), czy przewlekła obturacyjna choroba płuc (POChP), wpływa na stan odżywienia, jak i jakość życia seniorów. Cel. Określenie zależności między stanem odżywienia a jakością życia w grupie pacjentów po 65 roku życia z NS i/lub POChP. Materiał i metody. Badaną grupę stanowiło 120 pacjentów w wieku powyżej 65 lat, z NS i/lub POChP. W badaniach wykorzystano: kwestionariusz własnej konstrukcji, skalę MNA oraz kwestionariusz SF-36v2®Health Survey. Wyniki. Zagrożonych niedożywieniem było 55,8% badanych, a 10,0% - niedożywianych. Średnia wartość indeksu jakości życia wynosiła 62,54±13,15pkt., wymiaru fizycznego - 72±13,67 pkt., a mentalnego - 44,58±18,87 pkt. Indeks jakości życia, jej wymiar fizyczny i mentalny zależały istotnie od stanu odżywienia (p < 0,001). Wnioski. 1) Stan odżywienia większości badanych był niezadowalający. 2) Jakość życia badanych nie była wysoka. 3) Indeks jakości życia, a także jej wymiar fizyczny i psychiczny były znacząco różne w zależności od stanu odżywienia badanych.Introduction. The occurrence of chronic diseases, like heart failure (HF) or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), significantly influences both seniors’ nutritional status and the quality of their life. Aim of the study. Determination of the relationship between a nutritional status and a life quality among patients with HF and/or patients with COPD aged over 65. Material and methods. The study group consisted of 120 hospitalized people aged over 65, suffering from NS and/or COPD. Tools used in the study: own construction questionnaire, MNA scale and SF-36v2®Health Survey. Results 55.8% of patients were in danger of malnutrition, 10.0% were undernourished. An average value of the quality of life index was62.54±13.15pt, physical dimension - 72±13.67 pt and mental - 44.58±18.87 pt. Quality of life index and its physical and mental dimensions dependedon nutritional status assessed by MNA scale (p<0.001). Conclusions. 1) The nutritional status of the majority of respondents was unsatisfactory. 2) The quality of life in the study group was not high. 3) The general level of lifequality, as well as its physical and mental dimensions, were significantly different depending on the nutritional status of the subjects