Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Values and Beliefs of Psychedelic Drug Users: A Cross-Cultural Study

Abstract Psychedelic drugs such as LSD and psilocybin are often claimed to be capable of inducing life-changing experiences described as mystical or transcendental. especially if high doses are taken. The present study examined possible enduring effects of such experiences by comparing users of psychedelic drugs (n = 88), users of nonpsychedelic illegal drugs (e.g., marijuana, amphetamines) (n = 29) and non illicit drug-using social drinkers (n = 66) on questionnaire measures of values, beliefs and emotional empathy. Samples were obtained from Israel (n = 110) and Australia (n = 73) in a cross-cultural comparison to see if values associated with psychedelic drug use transcended culture of origin. Psychedelic users scored significantly higher on mystical beliefs (e.g., oneness with God and the universe) and life values of spirituality and concern for others than the other groups, and lower on the value of financial prosperity, irrespective of culture of origin. Users of nonpsychedelic illegal drugs scored significantly lower on a measure of coping ability than both psychedelic users and non illicit drug users. Both groups of illegal drug users scored significantly higher on empathy than non illicit drug users_ Results are discussed in the context of earlier findings from Pahnke (1966) and Doblin (1991) of the transformative effect of psychedelic experiences, although the possibility remains that present findings reflect predrug characteristics of those who chose to take psychedelic drugs rather than effects of the drugs themselves.
Mapping language changes in real time: A panel study on Finnish

This article is based on an extensive panel study wherein the real-time progress of several language changes was mapped over a period of ten years. Our study suggests that categorical linguistic features are inclined to remain categorical in the idiolect. If a speaker, as a child, “learns” a feature with little or no variation in it, no major changes are likely to take place during the speaker's lifetime. In other words, new changes rarely commence in an idiolect later in life. If, however, a speaker adopts a feature as a variable one, with two or more truly competing variants, it is possible that the balance of the variants will shift during the speaker's lifetime. The more equal the proportions of the rivalling variants are, the more likely it is that one of the variants will gain dominancy during the speaker's lifetime.The present study has been partially funded by the Academy of Finland. For assistance we thank the staff of the Virrat Project at the University of Tampere, Finland.
A Comparison of Cryptosporidium Subgenotypes from Several Geographic Regions

'Division of Parasitic Diseases, Center for Disease Controf and Prevention. Atlanta. GA 3034J, USA, 'Atlanta Research and Education Founahtion. Decotur, GA, ' Unidade de Protozoorws OportunistosfVIH e outras Protozooses. lnstituto de Higiene e Medicina Tropical, Lisbon. Portugal, 'Kenya Medical Research Institute, Nairobi, Kenya, 'National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases, Calcutta, India, and /Center for Epidemiology, Institute of Public Health of Ljubljana, Zaloska 29, I000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
Analysis of the autoimmune response against BP180 and BP230 in ethnic Poles with neurodegenerative disorders and bullous pemphigoid

Recent studies postulated the association between bullous pemphigoid (BP) and neurodegenerative disorders (ND). The autoantibodies to BP180 and/or BP230 may be present not only in BP, but also in ND as neuronal isoforms of these proteins are identified in the central nervous system. However, there are only scant data about the precise pathogenetic mechanisms interlinking ND and BP as well as the immunologic profile in these patients. The aim is to analyze the serological immunopathological profiles (anti-BP180 IgG, anti-BP230 IgG) in BP patients with and without ND in order to identify the specific autoantibody(ies) and corresponding antigens responsible for ND development in BP patients. Altogether, 82 ethnic Poles with BP and their medical records were examined (62 BP-ND; 20 BP+ND). Levels of serum anti-BP180/BP230 IgG in BP patients were evaluated with ELISAs. The statistical analyses involved Pearson chi-squared test, Mann-Whitney U-test and ranking of autoantibodies. The prevalence of ND among BP patients was 24.4%. There were no statistically significant differences in autoantigens profiles (anti-BP180/anti-BP230 IgG) between BP+ND and BP-ND groups. There was no relationship between ND development and anti-BP180/anti-BP230 IgG level (p = 0.5933, p = 0.4701, respectively). The autoantibodies levels of BP+ND and BP-ND patients show insignificant differences suggesting that also in ethnic Poles a hypothetical pathogenetic association of BP and ND, but not only an aging-related epidemiological one, appears to be independent of a particular BP antigen. Nevertheless, it cannot be excluded that phenomena of epitopes spreading, immune cross-reaction and conformational changes in BP180/BP230 may underlie BP development in ND patients.
Mealey street Periodontal disease and diabetes : A two

street Periodontal disease and diabetes: A two-way jada.ada. org (this information is current as Background. The association between diabetes and inflammatory periodontal diseases has been studied extensively for more than 50 years. The author reviews the bidirectional relationships between diabetes and periodontal diseases. Conclusions. A large evidence base suggests that diabetes is associated with an increased prevalence, extent and severity of gingivitis and peri-odontitis. Furthermore, numerous mechanisms have been elucidated to explain the impact of diabetes on the periodontium. While inflammation plays an obvious role in periodontal diseases, evidence in the medical literature also supports the role of inflammation as a major component in the pathogenesis of diabetes and diabetic complications. Research suggests that, as an infectious process with a prominent inflammatory component, periodontal disease can adversely affect the metabolic control of diabetes. Conversely, treatment of periodontal disease and reduction of oral inflammation may have a positive effect on the diabetic condition, although evidence for this remains somewhat equivocal. Clinical Implications. Patients with diabetes who have periodontal disease have two chronic conditions, each of which may affect the other, and both of which require frequent professional evaluations, in-depth patient education and consistent educational reinforcement by health care providers. JADA 2006;137(10 supplement):26S-31S.
Analyzing the Crossdomain Policies of Flash Applications

Adobe Flash is a rich Internet application platform. Flash applications are often deployed to the Web; The Flash Player plugin is installed on a large fraction of all Webconnected PCs. Flash provides a mechanism by which sites can opt in to more expressive information sharing regimes than the same-origin policy for JavaScript allows. A site that wishes to share its content can host a crossdomain policy file, crossdomain.xml, which lists sites authorized to access the sharing site’s content, or even a wildcard to allow all access. Because browsers will typically attach cookies to crossdomain URL requests made by the Flash Player plugin, a site that publishes a crossdomain policy effectively opts out from some of the confidentiality guarantees of the same-origin policy. In some cases, a misconfigured, overly permissive crossdomain policy can expose a site to attacks such as information disclosure or CSRF. In 2008, Jeremiah Grossman surveyed the crossdomain policies of the Alexa Top 500 sites and the sites of the Fortune 500, and found that 7% hosted crossdomain policy files allowing unrestricted access. In this paper, we repeat Grossman’s survey on a larger corpus of sites: the Alexa global Top 50,000 sites. In addition, we use an instrumented Firefox to survey the actual crossdomain requests issued by Flash content hosted on the front pages of the Alexa global Top 50,000 sites. Our survey provides new data about the use of Flash crossdomain policies on popular sites. For example, we find that approximately 6.0% of the surveyed sites allow unrestricted crossdomain access, including 12 sites in the Alexa Top 100, and that, at a minimum, 6.7% of crossdomain requests made by Flash applications we observed were denied by the target site’s crossdomain policy. Our findings suggest that Flash’s crossdomain policy mechanism may be liable to misconfiguration in practice. We propose some techniques for mitigating the security problems that might arise from such misconfiguration.
Learning nonlinear hybrid systems: from sparse optimization to support vector regression

This paper deals with the identification of hybrid systems switching between nonlinear subsystems of unknown structure and focuses on the connections with a family of machine learning algorithms known as support vector machines. In particular, we consider a recent approach to nonlinear hybrid system identification based on a convex relaxation of a sparse optimization problem. In this approach, the submodels are iteratively estimated one by one by maximizing the sparsity of the corresponding error vector. We extend this approach in several ways. First, we relax the sparsity condition by introducing robust sparsity, which can be optimized through the minimization of a modified l1-norm or, equivalently, of the ε-insensitive loss function. Then, we show that, depending on the choice of regularizer, the method is equivalent to different forms of support vector regression. More precisely, the submodels can be estimated by iteratively solving a classical support vector regression problem, in which the sparsity of support vectors relates to the sparsity of the error vector in the considered hybrid system identification framework. This allows us to extend theoretical results as well as efficient optimization algorithms from the field of machine learning to the hybrid system framework.
Uncertainty, Price Setting, and the Real Effects of Monetary Policy

Does time-varying business uncertainty affect the price setting of firms and thus the real effects of monetary policy? To address this question, we first estimate a logit model to examine the role of idiosyncratic uncertainty on the price-setting behavior of German firms. Uncertainty measures are constructed from the German IFO Business Climate Survey. In a second step, we use a stylized New Keynesian business cycle model to gauge the effects of uncertainty on the transmission of monetary policy to output. Our results are threefold. First, idiosyncratic uncertainty can be well approximated by the absolute value of firm-specific expectation errors. Second, heightened uncertainty increases the probability of a price change, though the effect is small: the tripling of uncertainty during the recession of 08/09 caused the average quarterly likelihood of a price change to increase from 31.6% to 32.1%. Third, the effects of this increase in uncertainty on monetary policy are rather small; the initial effect of a 25 basis point monetary policy shock to output declines from 0.347% to 0.342%.
‘Who wants to be a travelling teacher?’ Bilingual teachers and weak forms of bilingual education: the Norwegian experience

In this article, I argue that immigrant bilingual teachers and mother‐tongue teachers are not formally recognised as ‘genuine’ teachers in the Norwegian school system. Norwegian education authorities have invested considerable effort in order to strengthen the competences of bilingual teachers and to both recognise and formalise their home country education. Amongst other things, several university colleges were encouraged to provide specially designed higher education programmes for bilingual teachers in order to integrate teachers with bilingual competences into the Norwegian primary school teaching system. This paper is based on data collected in 2007–2008 during the national evaluation of this education, which is the first of its kind in Norway. Although popular amongst immigrant students, it seems that the competences to be gained by graduates of the BA degree programme are not recognised or utilised in the schools where they work. Due to low social status and an unfavourable structural position within the Norwegian school education sector, these teachers will try to distance themselves from their bilingual roles and identities. Within such a framework, the higher education that is intended to strengthen optimum bilingual tuition in the primary schools sector is, in fact, steering bilingual teachers and mother‐tongue teachers away from these more specialised and less valued professions, seeking instead, access into the more mainstream and higher status teaching jobs.
Abnormal Mitochondrial Function and Impaired Granulosa Cell Differentiation in Androgen Receptor Knockout Mice

In the ovary, the paracrine interactions between the oocyte and surrounded granulosa cells are critical for optimal oocyte quality and embryonic development. Mice lacking the androgen receptor (AR−/−) were noted to have reduced fertility with abnormal ovarian function that might involve the promotion of preantral follicle growth and prevention of follicular atresia. However, the detailed mechanism of how AR in granulosa cells exerts its effects on oocyte quality is poorly understood. Comparing in vitro maturation rate of oocytes, we found oocytes collected from AR−/− mice have a significantly poor maturating rate with 60% reached metaphase II and 30% remained in germinal vesicle breakdown stage, whereas 95% of wild-type AR (AR+/+) oocytes had reached metaphase II. Interestingly, we found these AR−/− female mice also had an increased frequency of morphological alterations in the mitochondria of granulosa cells with reduced ATP generation (0.18 ± 0.02 vs. 0.29 ± 0.02 µM/mg protein; p < 0.05) and aberrant mitochondrial biogenesis. Mechanism dissection found loss of AR led to a significant decrease in the expression of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ (PPARγ) co-activator 1-β (PGC1-β) and its sequential downstream genes, nuclear respiratory factor 1 (NRF1) and mitochondrial transcription factor A (TFAM), in controlling mitochondrial biogenesis. These results indicate that AR may contribute to maintain oocyte quality and fertility via controlling the signals of PGC1-β-mediated mitochondrial biogenesis in granulosa cells.
Modelling Vulnerability and Range Shifts in Ant Communities Responding to Future Global Warming in Temperate Forests

Global warming is likely leading to species’ distributional shifts, resulting in changes in local community compositions and diversity patterns. In this study, we applied species distribution models to evaluate the potential impacts of temperature increase on ant communities in Korean temperate forests, by testing hypotheses that 1) the risk of extinction of forest ant species would increase over time, and 2) the changes in species distribution ranges could drive upward movements of ant communities and further alter patterns of species richness. We sampled ant communities at 335 evenly distributed sites across South Korea and modelled the future distribution range for each species using generalized additive models. To account for spatial autocorrelation, autocovariate regressions were conducted prior to generalized additive models. Among 29 common ant species, 12 species were estimated to shrink their suitable geographic areas, whereas five species would benefit from future global warming. Species richness was highest at low altitudes in the current period, and it was projected to be highest at the mid-altitudes in the 2080s, resulting in an upward movement of 4.9 m yr−1. This altered the altitudinal pattern of species richness from a monotonic-decrease curve (common in temperate regions) to a bell-shaped curve (common in tropical regions). Overall, ant communities in temperate forests are vulnerable to the on-going global warming and their altitudinal movements are similar to other faunal communities.
A Fab-Wide APC Sampling Application

In microprocessor manufacturing it is very important to monitor the processed material on certain metrology steps. This is done in order to characterize the manufacturing process by verifying correct processing and ensuring availability of adequate information on the contributors to process variance. In state-of-the-art technologies it has become increasingly challenging to measure all possible and relevant sources of variation. Because low cycle time (manufacturing duration) is of such high importance, it is necessary to minimize the amount of inspection operations/duration on processed material. This paper details the integrated lot-level and wafer-level sampling application deployed in AMD's Fab30 and Fab36, which is capable of providing the means to capture lot, wafer, and event-based sources of variation by best utilizing the available metrology resources. It will also highlight the connection of this application into the areas of advanced-process-control, run-to-run, fault-detection and classification (APC, RtR, FDC).
The psychological wellbeing of Iranian journalists: a descriptive study

Objective Iran ranks 173 out of 180 countries on an index of press freedom. The purpose of the study was to assess the psychological wellbeing of Iranian journalists and document the stressors encountered in their work. Design A secure website was established and participants were given their unique identifying number and password to access the site. Setting Newsrooms in Iran and the diaspora. Participants Responses were received from 114 journalists (76%) of whom 65.8% were living in the diaspora. The mean age was 37.8 years (SD = 7.30) and 57% male. Main outcomes measures Type of stressor and behavioural data: Impact of Event Scale-revised for posttraumatic stress disorder, Beck Depression Inventory-II for depression. Results Stressors include arrest (41.2%), torture (19.3%), assault (10.5%), intimidation (51.4%) and family threatened (43.1%). Eighty nine (78.1%) journalists had stopped working on a story because of intimidation. Arrest, torture, intimidation and family threatened were associated with more intrusive and arousal PTSD symptoms (p < .01 to .001) and assault and intimidation with more depressive symptoms (p < .05). Almost a third of Iranian journalists regularly used barbiturates, with use correlating with symptoms of intrusion (p < .0001), avoidance (p < .01), arousal (p < .0001) and depression (p < .0001). 46.5% of Iranian journalists were not receiving therapy for their distress. Conclusions The findings, the first of their kind, provide data highlighting the extraordinary degree of danger confronted by Iranian journalists, their emotional distress in response to this and their proclivity to self-medicate with barbiturates.
Men Who Assault Their Wives

INTRODUCTION W H I L S T there is now a substantial amount of literature on the nature of the battered baby phenomenon and the psychiatric disturb­ ances in the parents involved, there is virtually no literature on the psychiatric disturbance of men who assault their wives. T h e following paper is an account of a group of men seen during the period of remand in custody await ing trial on charges o f seriously assaulting their wives.
More than discipline: uncovering multi-dimensional patterns of variation in academic research articles

Research analysing linguistic variation in research articles (RAs) across academic disciplines typically employs a relatively coarse definition of RAs: any text published in an academic journal that reports on primary research. This definition assumes that articles within a single discipline which report on distinct research methodologies are similar linguistically. Yet little empirical work has investigated this assumption. This study uses multi-dimensional analysis to analyse variation in the use of seventy lexical and grammatical features in 270 research articles representing three sub-registers (theoretical, qualitative and quantitative research reports) in six disciplines (philosophy, history, applied linguistics, political science, biology and physics). The resulting dimensions of variation indicate that linguistic variation occurs along multiple parameters, not only across disciplinary lines. For example, variation also corresponds to the differing purposes and types of evidence associated with the.
Social capital and citizenship lessons in England

This article examines the impact of the concept of social capital on the citizenship education initiative in England through its influence on the normative content of the policy, as embodied in the report of the Advisory Group on Citizenship (AGC) — which was one of the immediate causes of the inclusion of citizenship in the National Curriculum in 2002. It argues that the policy is underpinned by what it describes as a hybrid `republican—communitarian' model of citizenship (the model implicitly advanced by the US political scientist Robert Putnam in his work on social capital), which emphasizes the value of political participation by citizens and the extent to which this participation is reliant on community membership. The article argues that the model of citizenship advanced by the AGC embodies crucial tensions between its republican and communitarian elements and by its being situated within the context of an uncritical acceptance of the boundaries prescribed by neo-liberal economic orthodoxy, which necessarily undermines the community attachments that the citizenship education policy seeks to promote.
Fully automatic cardiac motion estimation from Tagged MRI using non-rigid registration techniques

Many different techniques have been proposed to compute motion fields on Tagged MR imaging. However, most of them require tags segmentation or endo- epicardial contours segmentation. Automatic estimation of the myocardial motion field was extracted using a consecutive non-rigid registration algorithm based on a semilocal Bspline parametric model. The sequence was also represented in the Bspline space using this framework to construct the multiresolution pyramid within the optimization process. Validation was performed on sequences from 5 healthy volunteers comparing the estimated trajectories with the manual tracking provided by an expert. Results were also compared to HARP analysis. Subpixel accuracy was obtained, and results were superior in all cases to HARP analysis.