Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Serological Evidence of Rift Valley Fever Virus Circulation in Domestic Cattle and African Buffalo in Northern Botswana (2010–2011)

Rift Valley fever (RVF) is endemic in many countries in Sub-Saharan Africa and is responsible for severe outbreaks in livestock characterized by a sudden onset of abortions and high neonatal mortality. During the last decade, several outbreaks have occurred in Southern Africa, with a very limited number of cases reported in Botswana. To date, published information on the occurrence of RVF in wild and domestic animals from Botswana is very scarce and outdated, despite being critical to national and regional disease control. To address this gap, 863 cattle and 150 buffalo sampled at the interface between livestock areas and the Chobe National Park (CNP) and the Okavango Delta (OD) were screened for the presence of RVF virus (RVFV) neutralizing antibodies. Antibodies were detected in 5.7% (n = 863), 95% confidence intervals (CI) (4.3–7.5%) of cattle and 12.7% (n = 150), 95% CI (7.8–19.5%) of buffalo samples. The overall prevalence was significantly higher (p = 0.0016) for buffalo [12.7%] than for cattle [5.7%]. Equally, when comparing RVF seroprevalence in both wildlife areas for all pooled bovid species, it was significantly higher in CNP than in OD (9.5 vs. 4%, respectively; p = 0.0004). Our data provide the first evidence of wide circulation of RVFV in both buffalo and cattle populations in Northern Botswana and highlight the need for further epidemiological and ecological investigations on RVF at the wildlife–livestock–human interface in this region.
Cognitive, affective and social psychological correlates of psychopathic personality traits in offenders and non-offenders

This thesis aimed to investigate the cognitive, affective and social-psychological correlates of primary (selfish, uncaring) and secondary (reckless, prone to boredom) psychopathic traits. The results of Chapter 2 indicate that both primary and secondary psychopathic traits are associated with reduced empathic functioning. These results were supported by findings from Chapter 3, which suggest that elevated levels of secondary psychopathic traits may be linked with a lack of generosity for the out-group, but pro-social sentiment for the in-group. Chapter 4 used eye tracking to examine the cognitive mechanisms underlying empathic functioning and showed that primary psychopathic traits were linked with abnormal eye scan paths during an expression recognition task, indicated by reduced dwell time on the eye region of emotional faces. Chapter 5 further examined emotion recognition in an offending sample and revealed poor fearful face recognition among sexual and violent offenders. Furthermore, primary psychopathic traits were linked with greater impairment in fearful face recognition. Taken together, these findings show that primary and secondary psychopathic traits are linked with different patterns of performance on psychological tests. These results support the view that the variance accounted for by these traits should be considered separately in research and in clinical practice
Search for pair-produced third-generation squarks decaying via charm quarks or in compressed supersymmetric scenarios in pp collisions at √s = 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Aad, G. ; et al., [Unknown]; Aben, R. ; Angelozzi, I. ; Beemster, L.J.; Bentvelsen, S. ; Berge, D. ; Bobbink, G.J.; Bos, K. ; Boterenbrood, H. ; Butti, P.; Castelli, A. ; Colijn, A.P.; de Jong, P.; de Nooij, L. ; Deigaard, I. ; Deluca, C. ; Deviveiros, P.O. ; Dhaliwal, S. ; Ferrari, P.; Gadatsch, S. ; Geerts, D.A. A. ; Hartjes, F. ; Hessey, N.P.; Hod, N. ; Igonkina, O. ; Kluit, P.; Koffeman, E. ; Lee, H.C. ; Linde, F. ; Mahlstedt, J.; Mechnich, J.; Oussoren, K.P.; Pani, P.; Salek, D. ; Valencic, N. ; van den Wollenberg, W. ; van der Deijl, P.C. ; van der Geer, R. ; van der Graaf, H. ; van der Leeuw, R. ; van Vulpen, I. ; Verkerke, W. ; Vermeulen, J.C. ; Vreeswijk, M. ; Weits, H. DOI 10.1103/PhysRevD.90. 052008 Publication date 2014 Document Version Final published version Published in Physical Review D. Particles, Fields, Gravitation, and Cosmology
A Case of Pyomyoma following Uterine Fibroid Embolization and a Review of the Literature

Background. Since its introduction in 1996, uterine fibroid embolization (UFE) has become standard medical practice in the management of symptomatic uterine fibroids. An extremely rare complication, pyomyoma, has been reported only 5 times previously in the literature following UFE. Case. A 37-year-old woman underwent UFE for symptomatic leiomyomas of the uterus. Signs and symptoms of uterine infection ensued, beginning at 6 days following the procedure. Recurrent fevers and increasing leukocytosis despite the intravenous administration of appropriate antibiotics eventually necessitated surgical intervention on postprocedure day #18. Conclusion. An extremely rare complication of UFE is herein presented, pyomyoma, with a review of other reported cases. Commonalities are sought among these few reported cases with the hope of increasing diagnostic acumen in the detection of this disease.
Comparison of Two Locus of Control Scales in Predicting Relapse in an Alcoholic Population

A 3-mo. follow-up was made of 64 male veterans who were discharged from a 21-day Alcohol Detoxification Treatment Program at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center at Lyons, NJ. Scores on the Rotter I-E and Alcohol Responsibility Scales were significantly correlated with tendencies toward a more external direction among the 13% who relapsed, significant on the I-E scale and nonsignificant on the Alcohol Responsibility Scale. When tests were compared as possible predictor variables of alcoholic relapse, the difference in favor of the I-E scale was statistically nonsignificant.
Correlates of Depressive and Anxiety Disorders among Young Canadians

Objective: The current study presents data on the prevalence of depressive and anxiety disorders in the Canadian population aged between 15 and 24 years and examines their potential correlates. Methods: The study is based on the 2002 Canadian Community Health Survey: Mental Health and Well-Being (CCHS 1.2). This survey was administered to a representative sample of 36 984 Canadians. A subsample of 5673 Canadians aged between 15 and 24 years was available for the analyses. We used descriptive analyses to calculate lifetime and 12-month prevalence of depressive and anxiety disorders, and we used logistic regressions to measure odds ratios. Results: Among Canadian youths, 10.2% had suffered from depressive disorders during their lifetime, whereas 12.1% had suffered from anxiety disorders. For 12-month prevalence, the rates were 6.4% and 6.5% for depressive and anxiety disorders, respectively. Depressive disorders were more frequent among youth aged 20 to 24 years and among those no longer in school. Both disorders were more common among women and people under extreme stress. Conclusions: The prevalence rates found are comparable with other studies, and most of the correlates are concordant with the literature. Results indicate that there is a turning point for depression between late adolescence and adulthood that could be crucial for intervention planning.
Kidneys for Sale: Who Disapproves, and Why?

The shortage of transplant kidneys has spurred debate about legalizing monetary payments to donors to increase the number of available kidneys. However, buying and selling organs faces widespread disapproval. We survey a representative sample of Americans to assess disapproval for several forms of kidney market, and to understand why individuals disapprove by identifying factors that predict disapproval, including disapproval of markets for other body parts, dislike of increased scope for markets and distrust of markets generally. Our results suggest that while the public is potentially receptive to compensating kidney donors, among those who oppose it, general disapproval toward certain kinds of transactions is at least as important as concern about specific policy details. Between 51% and 63% of respondents approve of the various potential kidney markets we investigate, and between 42% and 58% want such markets to be legal. A total of 38% of respondents disapprove of at least one market. Respondents who distrust markets generally are not more disapproving of kidney markets; however we find significant correlations between kidney market disapproval and attitudes reflecting disapproval toward certain transactions—including both other body markets and market encroachment into traditionally nonmarket exchanges, such as food preparation.
Poly(D,L-lactic-co-glycolic acid) microsphere delivery of adenovirus for vaccination.

PURPOSE To study the effect of encapsulation of recombinant adenovirus type 5 encoding Beta-galactosidase (Ad5-Betagal) in poly (D,Llactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) microspheres on viral delivery to professional antigen presenting cells (APCs) in vitro, viral dissemination in vivo, and induction of protective immune responses in vivo. METHODS PLGA microspheres containing Ad5-alphagal were prepared by a double emulsion solvent evaporation method. Encapsulation efficiency, in vitro release profile, in vitro cellular uptake and in vivo biodistribution of Ad5-alphagal loaded PLGA microspheres were determined using 125I-labeled Ad5-alphagal (125I-Ad5-alphagal). To evaluate the potential of PLGA microsphere delivery of Ad-alphagal for induction of antigen specific immune responses in vivo, Balb/c mice were immunized with the subcutaneous injection of the formulations then splenocytes of the immunized mice were assayed for cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) activity against a variety of target cells in a 51Cr-release assay. Anti-alphagal antibody responses were assessed in the sera of the immunized mice by enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). The effect of encapsulated Ad5-alphagal immunization on protection against a tumor challenge was tested in a murine artificial metastatic lung tumor model with alphagalexpressing tumor cells, CT26.CL25. RESULTS PLGA microspheres encapsulated Ad5-alphagal with 24.8 +/- 1.4 % encapsulation efficiency and 11.4 +/- 3.6 % of the encapsulated virus retained the functional activity. In vitro release study showed slow release (15% in 11 days) of the virus from the microspheres. PLGA microsphere delivery of Ad5-alphagal resulted in enhanced uptake of the virus by APCs with an increase in the transgene expression in vitro. Administration of the virus in the encapsulated form resulted in substantially decreased viral dissemination to remote organs and tissues as compared to the free virus. Encapsulated virus were capable of eliciting antigen specific CTL as well as antibody responses against alphagal and induced protective immune responses against lethal tumor challenge at a significantly lower infectious viral dose as compared to the free virus. CONCLUSION PLGA microsphere with Ad5-alphagal enhances the delivery of virus to APCs with reduced viral dissemination in other organs and induces protective antigen specific immune responses against viral encoded transgene.
Prediction of contact maps using support vector machines

Contact map prediction is of great interest for its application in fold recognition and protein 3D structure determination. In this paper we present a contact-map prediction algorithm that employs Support Vector Machines as the machine learning tool and incorporates various features such as sequence profiles and their conservation, correlated mutation analysis based on various amino acid physicochemical properties, and secondary structure. In addition, we evaluated the effectiveness of the different features on contact map prediction for different fold classes. On average, our predictor achieved a prediction accuracy of 0.2238 with an improvement over a random predictor of a factor 11.7, which is better than reported studies. Our study showed that predicted secondary structure features play an important roles for the proteins containing beta structures. Models based on secondary structure features and CMA features produce different sets of predictions. Our study also suggests that models learned separately for different protein fold families may achieve better performance than a unified model.
Optimal Injectivity Conditions for Bilinear Inverse Problems with Applications to Identifiability of Deconvolution Problems

We study identifiability for bilinear inverse problems under sparsity and subspace constraints. We show that, up to a global scaling ambiguity, almost all such maps are injective on the set of pairs of sparse vectors if the number of measurements $m$ exceeds $2(s_1+s_2)-2$, where $s_1$ and $s_2$ denote the sparsity of the two input vectors, and injective on the set of pairs of vectors lying in known subspaces of dimensions $n_1$ and $n_2$ if $m\geq 2(n_1+n_2)-4$. We also prove that both these bounds are tight in the sense that one cannot have injectivity for a smaller number of measurements. Our proof technique draws from algebraic geometry. As an application we derive optimal identifiability conditions for the deconvolution problem, thus improving on recent work of Li et al. [1].
Combining particle swarm optimisation with angle modulation to solve binary problems

The optimisation process of a particular problem generally has many influencing factors including the parameter choices, problem constraints as well as the complexity of the optimisation algorithm and optimisation problem among others. The dimensionality of a problem influences the computational complexity in converging to a valid solution. With problems defined in larger and more abstract dimensions, complexity becomes a problem as the solutions presented by the algorithm are more likely to be sub-optimal. An interesting and unique manner to reduce the complexity of binary problems is developed in this paper: angle modulation is applied to generate a bit string to solve binary problems, using particle swarm optimisation (PSO) to evolve the function coefficients of a trigonometric model. Instead of evolving a high dimensional bit vector, angle modulation reduces the problem to a four-dimensional problem defined in continuous space. Experimental results show that the angle modulation method is faster than the standard binary PSO, and that accuracy is improved for most benchmark functions used
L1 prosodic transfer and priming effects: a quantitative study on semispontaneous dialogues

This paper represents a pilot investigation of accentuation patterns produced by advanced Dutch speakers of Italian as a second language (L2). Contrastive accent patterns within phrases were elicited in a semi-spontaneous dialogue entertained with a confederate native speaker of Italian. The aim of the analysis was to compare learners’ contrastive accentual configurations induced by the confederate speaker’s prime against those produced by Italian and Dutch natives in the same testing conditions. F0 and speech rate data were analysed by applying powerful data-driven techniques available in the Functional Data Analysis statistical framework. Results reveal different accentual configurations in L1 and L2 Italian in response to the confederate’s prime. We conclude that learner’s accentual patterns mirror those ones produced by their L1 control group (prosodic-transfer hypothesis), although the hypothesis of a transient priming effect on learners’ choice of contrastive patterns cannot be completely ruled out.
Possible Sentences: Predicting Word Meanings to Teach Content Area Vocabulary.

Stahl, an associate professor in the Department of Reading Education, The University of Georgia, has writ ten widely on vocabulary knowledge and instruction. Kapinus, Specialist in Reading and Communication Skills in the Maryland State Depart ment of Education, has been re cently serving as Coordinator of the NAEP Reading Consensus Project. Content area textbooks are an impor tant part of many elementary class rooms. Although textbooks are not and should not be the only materials used to develop understandings in the content areas, textbook material can be interwoven with
Bakke, Minority Admissions, and the Usual Price of Racial Remedies

Issues of race in America are perceived through a kaleidoscope. They excite attention and elicit emotions of great intensity, but rarely motivate serious or sustained consideration. Like the vivid patterns in a kaleidoscope, racial issues change constantly. Fascination with the changing patterns and colors distracts first eye and then mind from noticipg that the basic elements of the mosaic are always the same. The often fever-pitched debate over affirmative action in general, and minority admissions to colleges and professional schools in particular, obscures the real issues. Indeed, controversy is sustained because so few persons have sought to examine why white-dominated institutions have assumed, without the pressure of law, the responsibility for opening schooling and employment areas to minorities long excluded by the debilitating effects of racial discrimination. Close examination of the legal and social problems that spawned the Bakke' litigation reveals in minority admissions policies the same contradictions that have frustrated racial remedies for almost two centuries. There is an implicit, often unacknowledged stumbling block in our society's approach to racial remedies. The central issue in remedying past discrimination commonly has been conceived in the following terms: "Conceding that blacks have been harmed by slavery, or segregation, or discrimination, which groups of whites should pay the price or suffer the disadvantage that may be incurred in implementing a policy nominally directed at rectifying that harm? " This question, which focuses on the cost to whites of racial remedies rather than on the ne-
Can Weblogs and Microblogs Change Traditional Scientific Writing?

This paper describes a follow-up Web 2.0 approach to a technology enhanced master course for students of Graz University of Technology. The lecture “Social Aspects of Information Technology” has a long tradition for using new didactical scenarios as well as modern e-Learning technologies. After using a blogosphere one year ago, this year microblog channels helped to expand the traditional lecture. Students choose (on a voluntary basis) whether they want to participate in a blogging/microblogging group instead of using conventional methods called Scientific Writer/Scientific Reviewer. This study addresses the question whether this method can change the learning outcome into a more reflective one. Furthermore, peer-reviewing groups judge the quality of essays and blog contributions. In this paper we examine if microblogging can be an appropriate technology for assisting the process. This publication comes to the conclusion that an amazing potential and a new way to work with information is opened when using microblogging. Students seem to be more engaged, reflective and critical in as much as they presented much more personal statements and opinions than years before.
Financial Development and International Agricultural Trade: Is There a Connection?

This study empirically investigates the possible link between financial development and international agricultural trade using binomial models of the gravity equations. Financial development is measured by a constructed financial reforms index. The results provide some evidence on the positive impacts of financial reform on agricultural exports. The results further indicate that countries with a greater degree of financial development as exhibited by advanced countries tend to have larger impacts on agricultural exports. Bilateral trade involving advanced countries has a larger magnitude of impacts of financial reforms on agricultural trade than those involving developing countries
Continuous second-order sliding mode control: Convergence time estimation

The contribution of this paper is threefold. First, a vector super-twisting algorithm is designed to provide a direct extension of the conventional scalar supertwisting control, without any additional terms. An upper estimate of its convergence time is calculated. Second, a fixed time convergent continuous vector super-twisting-like algorithm is presented and its fixed convergence time is estimated. Third, an estimate of the finite convergence time of the scalar supertwisting algorithm is obtained as a particular case of the vector super-twisting one, which occurs to be less conservative than the one derived specially for the scalar case. The proposed theory is applied to F-16 jet-fighter flight control.
Learning Mixtures of Submodular Functions for Image Collection Summarization

We address the problem of image collection summarization by learning mixtures of submodular functions. Submodularity is useful for this problem since it naturally represents characteristics such as fidelity and diversity, desirable for any summary. Several previously proposed image summarization scoring methodologies, in fact, instinctively arrived at submodularity. We provide classes of submodular component functions (including some which are instantiated via a deep neural network) over which mixtures may be learnt. We formulate the learning of such mixtures as a supervised problem via large-margin structured prediction. As a loss function, and for automatic summary scoring, we introduce a novel summary evaluation method called V-ROUGE, and test both submodular and non-submodular optimization (using the submodular-supermodular procedure) to learn a mixture of submodular functions. Interestingly, using non-submodular optimization to learn submodular functions provides the best results. We also provide a new data set consisting of 14 real-world image collections along with many human-generated ground truth summaries collected using Amazon Mechanical Turk. We compare our method with previous work on this problem and show that our learning approach outperforms all competitors on this new data set. This paper provides, to our knowledge, the first systematic approach for quantifying the problem of image collection summarization, along with a new data set of image collections and human summaries.
Validating component compositions in software system generators

Generators synthesize software systems by composing components from reuse libraries. In general, not all syntactically correct compositions are semantically correct. We present domain independent algorithms for the GenVoca model of software generators to validate component compositions. Our work relies on attribute grammars and offers powerful debugging capabilities with explanation based error reporting. We illustrate our approach by showing how compositions are debugged by a GenVoca generator for container data structures.