Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Energy-Harvesting Active Networked Tags (EnHANTs)

This article focuses on a new type of wireless devices in the domain between RFIDs and sensor networks—Energy-Harvesting Active Networked Tags (EnHANTs). Future EnHANTs will be small, flexible, and self-powered devices that can be attached to objects that are traditionally not networked (e.g., books, furniture, toys, produce, and clothing). Therefore, they will provide the infrastructure for various tracking applications and can serve as one of the enablers for the Internet of Things. We present the design considerations for the EnHANT prototypes, developed over the past 4 years. The prototypes harvest indoor light energy using custom organic solar cells, communicate and form multihop networks using ultra-low-power Ultra-Wideband Impulse Radio (UWB-IR) transceivers, and dynamically adapt their communications and networking patterns to the energy harvesting and battery states. We describe a small-scale testbed that uniquely allows evaluating different algorithms with trace-based light energy inputs. Then, we experimentally evaluate the performance of different energy-harvesting adaptive policies with organic solar cells and UWB-IR transceivers. Finally, we discuss the lessons learned during the prototype and testbed design process.
H-Scale

To satisfy the explosive growth of data in large-scale data centers, where redundant arrays of independent disks (RAIDs), especially RAID-5, are widely deployed, effective storage scaling and disk expansion methods are desired. However, a way to reduce the data migration overhead and maintain the reliability of the original RAID are major concerns of storage scaling. To address these problems, we propose a new RAID scaling scheme, H-Scale, to achieve fast RAID scaling via hybrid stripe layouts. H-Scale takes advantage of the loose restriction of stripe structures to choose migrated data and to create hybrid stripe structures. The main advantages of our scheme include: (1) dramatically reducing the data migration overhead and thus speeding up the scaling process, (2) maintaining the original RAID’s reliability, (3) balancing the workload among disks after scaling, and (4) providing a general scaling approach for different RAID levels. Our theoretical analysis show that H-Scale outperforms existing scaling solutions in terms of data migration, I/O overheads, and parity update operations. Evaluation results on a prototype implementation demonstrate that H-Scale speeds up the online scaling process by up to 60% under SPC traces, and similar improvements on scaling time and user response time are also achieved by evaluations using standard benchmarks.
Systemic Symptoms in Non-Alcoholic Fatty Liver Disease

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is the most common liver disorder in the Western world and the incidence of the disease is constantly increasing. Most patients with NAFLD do not present with symptoms directly attributable to their underlying liver disease. It is increasingly recognized, however, that those with NAFLD describe a range of non-specific symptoms, which include fatigue and daytime sleepiness, may be the presenting problem and can impact dramatically upon quality of life in this patient group. The recognition of systemic symptoms in NAFLD has important implications for patients as many are potentially modifiable with targeted interventions. Fatigue appears to be a significant problem in NAFLD and the severity of fatigue is not associated with severity of NAFLD or any parameters of liver damage. Instead, fatigue in these patients shows a strong relationship with the symptom of daytime sleepiness and autonomic dysfunction. Daytime sleepiness can frequently be associated with obstructive sleep apnoea in those with NAFLD and is therefore treatable with evidence-based interventions. Recent studies have confirmed the presence of autonomic nervous system dysfunction in those with early stages of NAFLD. The presence of autonomic nervous system dysfunction leads to symptoms such as postural dizziness and syncope and is also associated with a number of clinical consequences in hepatic and non-hepatic diseases such as cognitive dysfunction, falls and fall-related injuries. On direct questioning, problems with memory and concentration are frequently described by those with NAFLD, with our studies confirming that 50% of NAFLD patients experience mild cognitive symptoms and up to 46% moderate or severe cognitive impairment. There were no positive correlations between cognitive symptoms and biochemical or histological markers of liver damage severity, confirming that cognitive impairment in early-stage NAFLD is not related to hepatic encephalopathy. Falls are also considered a direct consequence of autonomic nervous system dysfunction, and our work suggests that a history of falls is common in NAFLD (43%). The proportion of recurrent fallers is significantly higher in a NAFLD cohort compared to controls (p = 0.001), with injuries (p = 0.009), emergency medical attention (p < 0.001), fracture rates (p < 0.001) and hospital admission (p < 0.001) all significantly more common in the NAFLD group. Falls and the aforementioned associations were unrelated to the presence of diabetes or the severity of liver disease. A range of systemic symptoms appear to affect those with NAFLD, the severity of which is unrelated to the underlying liver disease severity. The presence of autonomic dysfunction may provide a unifying mechanism for these symptoms and a therapeutic target. Consideration of these symptoms affecting patients with NAFLD and, where possible, effective treatment will lead to improvements in quality of life and enhance the ability of those with NAFLD to function in their daily lives.
Procrastination in a distance university setting

Procrastination, putting off until tomorrow what should have been done today, is a self-regulation failure that is widespread among students. Although plenty of research has emerged regarding academic procrastination, hardly any research endeavor regarding procrastination in distance university settings exists. This lack of research is even more astonishing when considering that the demands on self-regulation are higher in distance education settings than in traditional university settings. The present (questionnaire) study was intended to shed light on procrastination in an actual distance university setting by exploring its relationship to grades, learning strategies (e.g., cognitive, meta-cognitive strategies), and life satisfaction in students from a distance university in comparison to students from a traditional university.
Bootstrapping Processes in the Development of Students' Commonsense Matter Theories: Using Analogical Mappings, Thought Experiments, and Learning to Measure to Promote Conceptual Restructuring

This study explores whether the development of students' understanding of matter as something that occupies space and has weight involves conceptual change and restructuring rather than only simple belief revision. Based on an analysis of how the concepts in students' initial matter theory (henceforth MT1) may differ from the concepts in the matter theory that is a target of middle school instruction (MT2), I propose ways that concepts in a given theory cohere with each other and identify the sources of the new ideas in MT2 and the learning processes by which those new ideas can be acquired. I test implications of these analyses by designing a curriculum unit that exploits these learning mechanisms, by using the curriculum with 4 classes of eighth-grade Earth Science students, and by assessing 42 students' thinking about matter, object size, and weight (via individual interviews and written tests) before and after the teaching unit. Consistent with the hypothesis of conceptual restructuring, the data not only show coherencies in students' thinking about matter, size, and weight before and after teaching, but also coordinated patterns of change. The implications for the design of science instruction are discussed.
Sources of acute stress and coping styles in competitive sport

Abstract The purposes of this study were: (a) to identify the sources of acute stress experienced by competitive basketball players occurring during a game, and (b) to assess the intensity of these stressful situations as perceived by basketball players. Inductive content analysis procedures from a structured interview with 20 male basketball players identified 25 sources of acute stress, placed into five categories: interpersonal conflicts, refereeing decisions, personal performance problems, opposition influences, and team behaviors. A second group of athletes (n = 69) rated the perceived intensity of each of the 25 acute stressors on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (not at all stressful) to 5 (very stressful). Part 2 of this study examined the players' coping styles with four highly intense stressors which were commonly experienced during competition. A pool of coping strategies was compiled for each of the four stressors and administered to 360 male basketball players. Using the conceptual framework of approach and avoidance coping styles, separate principal-components analyses with varimax rotation revealed that the use of approach and avoidance coping styles were used as a function of the type of stressful event, supporting the transactional coping model. Implications of the results for providing individualized and effective stress management interventions are discussed.
A Reduced Landscape: Toward a Multi-Causal Understanding of Historic Period Agricultural Deintensification in Highland Peru

This article examines the effects of depopulation, resettlement, and the Little Ice Age on local patterns of historic-era Andean agricultural deintensification. Situated in the Colca Valley of Peru, this analysis employs walking simulations between a colonial reducción village (Coporaque) and the locations of its reconstructed 17th century fieldholdings. Multivariate analysis shows how increased frost risk (due to the Little Ice Age) and increased distance to fieldholdings (due to resettlement) impacted the decisionmaking of local, dualistically-organized kindreds (ayllus) in distinct ways. For lower-ranking ayllus in this dualistic structure, distance outweighed frost risk, while for higher ranking ayllus, frost risk was more important. Colonial demographic decline was a distal factor for both.
Acute Lower Respiratory Infection Among Bacille Calmette-Guérin (BCG)–Vaccinated Children

OBJECTIVE: To determine whether Bacille Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccination is linked to the risk of acute lower respiratory infection (ALRI) among children <5 years of age. METHODS: Data from Macro International Demographic and Health Surveys and United Nations Children’s Fund Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys were used to identify a primary cohort of 58 021 children in 19 countries (2005–2010) and a secondary cohort of 93 301 children in 18 countries (2000–2007). Information was collected by trained interviewers during home visits using standardized questionnaires, review of vaccination health cards, and measurement of health indicators. RESULTS: BCG vaccination was associated with a 17% to 37% risk reduction for suspected ALRI in both cohorts. The only vaccine or vitamin supplement to modify the effect of BCG was diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis (DTP; P < .001). The order in which the vaccines were first received was central to this phenomena (BCG before DTP, adjusted/propensity score–weighted relative risk [apRR]: 0.79, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 0.70–0.89; BCG with DTP, apRR: 0.82, 95% CI: 0.71–0.94; and BCG after DTP, apRR: 1.00, 95% CI: 0.87–1.13) but not number of DTP doses received. Other modifiers included vaccine strain used in immunization programs, chlorinating drinking water, using wood-burning fuel cook stoves, and owning livestock. CONCLUSIONS: Children vaccinated with BCG had a significantly lower risk of suspected ALRI. Clarification is needed as to whether this is due to reductions in the underlying risk of tuberculosis or ALRI per se.
Donepezil Rescues Spatial Learning and Memory Deficits following Traumatic Brain Injury Independent of Its Effects on Neurogenesis

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is ubiquitous and effective treatments for it remain supportive largely due to uncertainty over how endogenous repair occurs. Recently, we demonstrated that hippocampal injury-induced neurogenesis is one mechanism underlying endogenous repair following TBI. Donepezil is associated with increased hippocampal neurogenesis and has long been known to improve certain aspects of cognition following many types of brain injury through unknown mechanisms. By coupling donepezil therapy with temporally regulated ablation of injury-induced neurogenesis using nestin-HSV transgenic mice, we investigated whether the pro-cognitive effects of donepezil following injury might occur through increasing neurogenesis. We demonstrate that donepezil itself enhances neurogenesis and improves cognitive function following TBI, even when injury-induced neurogenesis was inhibited. This suggests that the therapeutic effects of donepezil in TBI occur separately from its effects on neurogenesis.
Is General Self-Efficacy a Universal Construct?1

Summary Perceived self-efficacy represents an optimistic sense of personal competence that seems to be a pervasive phenomenon accounting for motivation and accomplishments in human beings. The General Self-Efficacy scale, developed to measure this construct at the broadest level, has been adapted to many languages. The psychometric properties of this instrument is examined among 19,120 participants from 25 countries. The main research question is whether the measure is configurally equivalent across cultures, that is, whether it corresponds to only one dimension. The findings confirm this assumption and suggest the globality of the underlying construct. They also point to a number of cross-cultural differences that merit further investigation.
Receptor choice determinants in the envelope glycoproteins of amphotropic, xenotropic, and polytropic murine leukemia viruses

The envelope glycoproteins (SU) of mammalian type C retroviruses possess an amino-terminal domain of about 200 residues, which is involved in binding a cell surface receptor. In this domain, highly conserved amino acid sequences are interrupted by two segments of variable length and sequence, VRA and VRB. We have studied the role of these variable regions in receptor recognition and binding by constructing chimeric molecules in which portions of the amino-terminal domains from amphotropic (4070A), xenotropic (NZB), and polytropic (MCF 247) murine leukemia virus SU proteins were permuted. These chimeras, which exchanged either one or two variable regions, were expressed at the surface of replication-defective viral particles by a pseudotyping assay. Wild-type or recombinant env genes were transfected into a cell line producing Moloney murine leukemia virus particles devoid of envelope glycoproteins in which a retrovirus vector genome carrying an Escherichia coli lacZ gene was packaged. The host range and sensitivity to interference of pseudotyped virions were assayed, and we observed which permutations resulted in receptor switch or loss of function. Our results indicate that the determinants of receptor choice are found within the just 120 amino acids of SU proteins. Downstream sequences contribute to the stabilization of the receptor-specific structure.
Institution-wide peer mentoring: Benefits for mentors

Extensive research has shown the benefits of mentoring, including peer mentoring, for higher education students, especially in their first year. However, few studies have focussed exclusively on the outcomes for the mentors themselves. This paper reports the findings of data gathered over three years about a university-wide peer mentoring program. Benefits identified by 858 mentors were coded inductively and four major categories emerged: altruistic, cognitive, social and personal growth. The findings have implications for the promotion of mentor programs to administrators and to prospective mentors. The study provides evidence that university-wide peer mentoring programs offer multiple positive outcomes for the mentors involved, and potentially for higher education institutions administering and supporting such programs.
Functional encryption for public-attribute inner products: Achieving constant-size ciphertexts with adaptive security or support for negation

In functional encryption (FE) schemes, ciphertexts and private keys are associated with attributes and decryption is possible whenever key and ciphertext attributes are suitably related. It is known that expressive realizations can be obtained from a simple functional encryption flavor called inner product encryption (IPE), where decryption is allowed whenever ciphertext and key attributes form orthogonal vectors. In this paper, we construct public-attribute inner product encryption (PAIPE) systems, where ciphertext attributes are public (in contrast to attribute-hiding IPE systems). Our PAIPE schemes feature constant-size ciphertexts for the zero and non-zero evaluations of inner products. These schemes respectively imply an adaptively secure identity-based broadcast encryption scheme and an identity-based revocation mechanism that both feature short ciphertexts and rely on simple assumptions in prime order groups. We also introduce the notion of negated spatial encryption, which subsumes non-zero-mode PAIPE and can be seen as the revocation analogue of the spatial encryption primitive of Boneh and Hamburg.
Vitamin C and Microvascular Dysfunction in Systemic Inflammation

Sepsis, life-threatening organ dysfunction caused by a dysfunctional host response to infection, is associated with high mortality. A promising strategy to improve the outcome is to inject patients intravenously with ascorbate (vitamin C). In animal models of sepsis, this injection improves survival and, among others, the microvascular function. This review examines our recent work addressing ascorbate’s ability to inhibit arteriolar dysfunction and capillary plugging in sepsis. Arteriolar dysfunction includes impaired vasoconstriction/dilation (previously reviewed) and impaired conduction of vasoconstriction/dilation along the arteriole. We showed that ascorbate injected into septic mice prevents impaired conducted vasoconstriction by inhibiting neuronal nitric oxide synthase-derived NO, leading to restored inter-endothelial electrical coupling through connexin 37-containing gap junctions. Hypoxia/reoxygenation (confounding factor in sepsis) also impairs electrical coupling by protein kinase A (PKA)-dependent connexin 40 dephosphorylation; ascorbate restores PKA activation required for this coupling. Both effects of ascorbate could explain its ability to protect against hypotension in sepsis. Capillary plugging in sepsis involves P-selectin mediated platelet-endothelial adhesion and microthrombi formation. Early injection of ascorbate prevents capillary plugging by inhibiting platelet-endothelial adhesion and endothelial surface P-selectin expression. Ascorbate also prevents thrombin-induced platelet aggregation and platelet surface P-selectin expression, thus preventing microthrombi formation. Delayed ascorbate injection reverses capillary plugging and platelet-endothelial adhesion; it also attenuates sepsis-induced drop in platelet count in systemic blood. Thrombin-induced release of plasminogen-activator-inhibitor-1 from platelets (anti-fibrinolytic event in sepsis) is inhibited by ascorbate pH-dependently. Thus, under acidotic conditions in sepsis, ascorbate promotes dissolving of microthrombi in capillaries. We propose that protected/restored arteriolar conduction and capillary bed perfusion by ascorbate contributes to reduced organ injury and improved survival in sepsis.
Reverse Ptosis-Induced Corneal Steepening and Decreased Vision After LASIK Surgery

Purpose: To report a patient with a past history of LASIK who had decreased vision and induced corneal steepening after lower eyelid ptosis. Surgical correction of lower eyelid ptosis decreased the corneal steepening and improved visual acuity. Methods: Interventional case report. Results: A 37-year-old woman had a history of bilateral LASIK, childhood strabismus surgery, and multiple surgeries to release scarring and improve motility in her left eye. Last surgery to release scar tissue resulted in reverse ptosis (lower eyelid ptosis) and decreased visual acuity from induced corneal steepening. Correction of lower eyelid ptosis by reinsertion of the retractor complex resulted in decreasing corneal steepening, improved visual acuity, and good anatomic position of the lower eyelid. Conclusion: Lower eyelid ptosis may induce corneal steepening and decreased vision after LASIK. Surgical correction of ptosis can decrease the extent of steepening and improve visual acuity.
‘Why Literacy Matters’: 1 Exploring A Policy Perspective on Literacies, Identities and Social Change

Abstract This article looks at the methodological implications of bringing what has been termed an ‘ethnographic perspective’ on literacies, identity and social change, into the international policy discourse on education and development. Through an analysis of the UNESCO Global Monitoring Report 2006, Literacy for Life, I explore how and whether ethnographic insights can be translated into a policy context dominated by an economistic paradigm of development. The difficulties lie not just in how to avoid simplifying lengthy ethnographic analysis or generalising statistically from tiny unrepresentative samples but, also, around the kind of questions for which answers are being sought from researchers. I suggest that the predominantly instrumental approach to literacy, where literacy is discussed in terms of its ‘benefits’, contrasts with ethnographic research on multiple literacies and identities: for instance the ‘illiterate’ woman who is viewed by herself and others as ‘educated’. These more complex understandings of literacy, identity and social change might complicate the unambiguous message that Literacy for Life aims to put across to national and international policy makers: that ‘Literacy Matters’. I end by reflecting on how ethnographic researchers could contribute more effectively to policy debates on literacy.
Negative results of METLung study: an opportunity to better understand the role of MET pathway in advanced NSCLC.

The negative results of the global METLung phase III trial recently presented at American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) were clearly unexpected (1). The trial assessed the impact on overall survival (OS) of adding onartuzumab, a monovalent monoclonal antibody against mesenchymal-epithelial transition (MET) factor receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK), to erlotinib in second or third-line therapy of advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients with MET overexpression. There was a strong rationale behind this phase III trial: dysregulation of MET signaling in cancer is responsible for cell proliferation, cell cycle progression, cell dissociation, motility, spreading and invasion, overexpression of MET is linked to a worse prognosis for both early and late stages of NSCLC, and crosstalk with other RTKs including EGFR can lead to synergistic activation of downstream pathways. Moreover, amplification of MET seems to be involved in a significant proportion of patients with EGFR mutations developing acquired resistance to EGFR inhibitors.