Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Discourse context and the recognition of reduced and canonical spoken words

ABSTRACT In two eye-tracking experiments we examined whether wider discourse information helps the recognition of reduced pronunciations (e.g., “puter”) more than the recognition of canonical pronunciations of spoken words (e.g., “computer”). Dutch participants listened to sentences from a casual speech corpus containing canonical and reduced target words. Target word recognition was assessed by measuring eye fixation proportions to four printed words on a visual display: the target, a “reduced form” competitor, a “canonical form” competitor, and an unrelated distractor. Target sentences were presented in isolation or with a wider discourse context. Experiment 1 revealed that target recognition was facilitated by wider discourse information. It is important that the recognition of reduced forms improved significantly when preceded by strongly rather than by weakly supportive discourse contexts. This was not the case for canonical forms: listeners’ target word recognition was not dependent on the degree of supportive context. Experiment 2 showed that the differential context effects in Experiment 1 were not due to an additional amount of speaker information. Thus, these data suggest that in natural settings a strongly supportive discourse context is more important for the recognition of reduced forms than the recognition of canonical forms.
Chern-Simons number asymmetry from CP violation at electroweak tachyonic preheating

We consider the creation of non-zero Chern-Simons number in a model of the early Universe, where the Higgs field experiences a fast quench at the end of inflation and subsequently rolls down its potential barrier. Neglecting the expansion, we perform numerical lattice simulations in the abelian Higgs model in 1+1 dimensions with an added phenomenological C and P violating term during this stage of so-called tachyonic preheating. The results suggest that even the sign of the Chern-Simons and thus baryon number is dependent on the ratio of the Higgs to W mass. We also discuss the appropriate choice of vacuum initial conditions for classical simulations.
Outcome Predictability Biases Cued Search

Within the domain of associative learning, there is substantial evidence that people (and other animals) select among environmental cues on the basis of their reinforcement history. Specifically, people preferentially attend to, and learn about, cueing stimuli that have previously predicted events of consequence (a predictiveness bias). By contrast, relatively little is known about whether people prioritize some (to-be-predicted) outcome events over others on the basis of their past experience with those outcomes (a predictability bias). The present experiments assessed whether the prior predictability of a stimulus results in a learning bias in a contingency learning task, as such effects are not anticipated by formal models of associative learning. Previously unpredictable stimuli were less readily learned about than previously predictable stimuli. This pattern is unlikely to reflect the use of strategic search processes or blocking of learning by the context. Instead we argue that our findings are most consistent with the operation of a biased learning mechanism.
Cartilage ‘shoe’: a new technique for stabilisation of titanium total ossicular replacement prosthesis at centre of stapes footplate

Abstract Objectives: After tympanoplasty using a total ossicular replacement prosthesis, many unsatisfactory hearing results are due to dislocation of the prosthesis. Material and methods: We developed a cartilage guide for stabilising the total ossicular replacement prosthesis in the oval window niche. An oval-shaped piece of cartilage measuring 2.5 × 3.5 mm with a central hole was precisely punched out of a thin cartilage plate. The cartilage was placed in the oval niche, and its hole centred the prosthesis on the stapes footplate. Results: Hearing results in 52 patients confirmed acoustically the effectiveness of this method of total ossicular replacement prosthesis stabilisation on the stapes footplate. Subsequent ‘second-look’ surgery revealed stable ingrowth of the cartilage ‘shoe’ into the oval niche. Conclusion: Such a cartilage shoe might address one of the causes of unsatisfactory hearing following ossicular chain reconstruction with a total ossicular replacement prosthesis.
A Comparison of Usability Testing Methods for an E-Commerce Website: A Case Study on a Malaysia Online Gift Shop

Customer's perceived trust towards an e-commerce Web site is crucial for the success of online business. Effective design of Web interfaces increases perceived trust of customers. Given many associated usability issues when performing tasks on a Web site, it is important for technopreneurs embarking on online business to understand issues related to usability problems of an e-commerce Web site and the techniques to identify these issues. In this study, usability evaluation was performed on an online gift shop with a group of potential consumers with age range of 18-22. Four different evaluation methods were used: Feedback Capture after Task (FCAT), Retrospective Think Aloud (RTA), Retrospective Think Aloud with Eye Movement (RTE) and observation. This study reveals that the major defects found were language and content, user guidance and support, flexibility and control, and visual clarity. Therefore, this study suggest that applying good user interface design could provide better user experience and thus increase perceived trust and user satisfaction towards the Web site.
Protein Secondary Structure Prediction Using Improved Support Vector Machine And Neural Networks

To solve the Protein folding problem is one of the most important task in computational biology. Protein secondary structure prediction is key step in prediction of protein tertiary structure. There have emerged many methods such as meta predictor based, neighbor based and model based methods to predict protein structure. The model based approaches employ machine learning techniques like neural networks and support vector machines to learn a predictive model trained on sequence of known structure. Historically machine learning methods have shown amazing results Therefore objective of this paper is to compare the performance of Neural Networks (NN) and Support Vector Machines (SVM) in predicting the secondary structure of proteins from their primary sequence. For each NN and SVM, we created classifiers to distinguish between helices (H) strand (E), and coil (C). Finally the output obtained illustrates that out of these top most novel methods for classification purpose Neural Networks performs much better then support vector machine and produces better efficiency in much lesser time.
Safety climate in an automobile manufacturing plant: The effects of work environment, job communication and safety attitudes on accidents and unsafe behaviour

Purpose – The study aims to examine the safety attitudes of workers, supervisors and managers in a UK‐based car manufacturing plant, and their relationship with unsafe behaviour and accidents.Design/methodology/approach – A questionnaire methodology is used to measure safety attitudes and perceptions. The data are analysed using factor analysis and hierarchical multiple regression.Findings – The factor structure of the safety climate at the plant comprised three factors: managers' concern for safety; workers' response to safety; conflict between production and safety, which correspond to those found in previous studies in the UK manufacturing sector. Whilst safety climate did not predict accident involvement at the plant, workers' response to safety and conflict between production and safety significantly predicted unsafe behaviour. Perceptions of the work environment had important effects as a significant predictor of both accidents and unsafe behaviour. However, job communication failed to predict eithe.
Genotypic abundance of carotenoids and polyphenolics in the hull of field pea (Pisum sativum L.).

BACKGROUND Consumption of pulse crops, including field pea, is considered effective for a healthy diet. Hulls (seed coats) play an important role for protection of the cotyledon and embryo, but also as mediating positive effects on health outcomes. The biochemical attributes of field pea hulls were thus assessed to determine the occurrence of specific phytochemicals and their genotypic variability. RESULTS Sequestered bioproducts in mature hulls predominantly consisted of trans-lutein and chlorophylls a and b. Trace amounts of other carotenoid and pheophytin metabolites were identified. In developing hulls, violaxanthin, neoxanthin, lutein, zeaxanthin, chlorophylls a and b and β-carotene were detected. Genotypic differences in the accumulation of lutein and chlorophylls a and b were observed over years and locations. Polyphenolics and hydroxybenzoic acids were detected in the 'dun' and 'maple' field pea types-the only genotypes to have pigmented hulls. Unextractable patches of condensed tannin influenced the visual uniformity of the maple and dun genotypes, CDC Rocket and CDC Dundurn. CONCLUSIONS Within the yellow and green market classes, carotenoid and chlorophyll accumulation was consistent. Green cotyledon varieties sequestered higher concentrations of lutein than the yellow cotyledon varieties. Maple and dun types were more variable, reflective of different selection criteria. The occurrence of flavonoid-related compounds was correlated only with pigmented seed coat genotypes. The dietary potential of the chlorophylls and carotenoids that accumulated in the hulls split from the green and yellow field pea types is discussed as a value-added prospect in food supplements.
Growing Up Vietnamese in Finland - Looking Back 12 Years Later : The Well-Being and Sociocultural Adaptation of Vietnamese as Children or Adolescents and as Young Adults

This study was a longitudinal quantitative study of the acculturation, psychological well-being and sociocultural adaptation of Vietnamese arriving in Finland in 1979 to 1991 as children and adolescents. The first phase was carried out in 1992 on a random nation-wide sample of 97 Vietnamese comprehensive school students, matched with Finnish classmates and a follow-up of 59 of the original Vietnamese participants, now aged 20 – 31, took place in 2004. The aim of this study was to establish the causal effects of important predictors of acculturation outcomes, while duly acknowledging the impact of age and context on psychological well-being and sociocultural adaptation. Individual acculturation dimensions (language, values and identity) were found to be more significant for psychological well-being and sociocultural adaptation than ethnic, national, or bicultural profiles that were composites of the relevant languages, values and identities. Identity change occurred in the (ethnic) Vietnamese direction over time, while value change occurred in the (national) Finnish direction. Language proficiency in both Finnish and Vietnamese increased over time with favorable impacts on both psychological well-being and sociocultural adaptation. Initial psychological well-being predicted well-being (depression and self-esteem) as an adult, but sociocultural adaptation (school achievement) as a child or adolescent did not predict educational attainment as an adult.
Enzymatic treatment of soy protein isolates: effects on the potential allergenicity, technofunctionality, and sensory properties

Abstract Soybean allergy is of great concern and continues to challenge both consumer and food industry. The present study investigates the enzyme‐assisted reduction in major soybean allergens in soy protein isolate using different food‐grade proteases, while maintaining or improving the sensory attributes and technofunctional properties. SDS‐PAGE analyses showed that hydrolysis with Alcalase, Pepsin, and Papain was most effective in the degradation of the major soybean allergens with proteolytic activities of 100%, 100%, and 95.9%, respectively. In the course of hydrolysis, the degree of hydrolysis increased, and Alcalase showed the highest degree of hydrolysis (13%) among the proteases tested. DSC analysis confirmed the degradation of major soybean allergens. The sensory experiments conducted by a panel of 10 panelists considered the overall improved sensory properties as well as the bitterness of the individual hydrolysates. In particular, Flavourzyme and Papain were attractive due to a less pronounced bitter taste and improved sensory profile (smell, taste, mouthfeeling). Technofunctional properties showed a good solubility at pH 7.0 and 4.0, emulsifying capacity up to 760 mL g−1 (Flavourzyme) as well as improved oil‐binding capacities, while the water‐binding properties were generally decreased. Increased foaming activity for all proteases up to 3582% (Pepsin) was observed, whereas lower foaming stability and density were found. The hydrolysates could potentially be used as hypoallergenic ingredients in a variety of food products due to their improved technofunctional properties and a pleasant taste.
A Taxonomy of Scheduling in General-Purpose Distributed Computing Systems

One measure of the usefulness of a general-purpose distributed computing system is the system's ability to provide a level of performance commensurate to the degree of multiplicity of resources present in the system. A taxonomy of approaches to the resource management problem is presented in an attempt to provide a common terminology and classification mechanism necessary in addressing this problem. The taxonomy, while presented and discussed in terms of distributed scheduling, is also applicable to most types of resource management. >
Higher quality primary care is associated with good self-rated health status.

OBJECTIVE To ascertain the association between primary care quality and self-rated health status. METHODS A cross-sectional study using the Korean primary care assessment tool (K-PCAT). The K-PCAT is a validated tool based on the definition of primary care in Korea, consisting of 5 domains and 21 items providing a total primary care quality score. Data were collected from patients of family physicians working at nine private clinics as their usual source of care. The main outcome measure was self-rated health status. RESULTS Data were analyzed for 531 study participants. Bivariate analysis of socio-demographic variables of patients, who participated in this study as primary care quality assessors, revealed that those with high self-ratings of health tended to have higher household incomes and more frequent exercise. Those with high self-ratings of health had higher total primary care scores than those with low self-ratings of health, as determined through bivariate analysis (P < 0.01). After being adjusted for age, sex, the number of diseases being treated, education years, household income, smoking status, alcohol intake and the frequency of regular exercise, the total primary care score was found to be positively associated with good health. CONCLUSIONS Primary care quality, as assessed by the K-PCAT, was positively associated with good self-rated health status.
Job Scheduling without Prior Information in Big Data Processing Systems

Job scheduling plays an important role in improving the overall system performance in big data processing frameworks. Simple job scheduling policies, such as Fair and FIFO scheduling, do not consider job sizes and may degrade the performance when jobs of varying sizes arrive. More elaborate job scheduling policies make the convenient assumption that jobs are recurring, and complete information about their sizes is available from their prior runs. In this paper, we design and implement an efficient and practical job scheduler for big data processing systems to achieve better performance even without prior information about job sizes. The superior performance of our job scheduler originates from the design of multiple level priority queues, where jobs are demoted to lower priority queues if the amount of service consumed so far reaches a certain threshold. In this case, jobs in need of a small amount of service can finish in the topmost several levels of queues, while jobs that need a large amount of service to complete are moved to lower priority queues to avoid head-of-line blocking. Our new job scheduler can effectively mimic the shortest job first scheduling policy without knowing the job sizes in advance. To demonstrate its performance, we have implemented our new job scheduler in YARN, a popular resource manager used by Hadoop/Spark, and validated its performance with both experiments on real datasets and large-scale trace-driven simulations. Our experimental and simulation results have strongly confirmed the effectiveness of our design: our new job scheduler can reduce the average job response time of the Fair scheduler by up to 45%.
Bcl2 and Human Papilloma Virus 16 as Predictors of Outcome following Concurrent Chemoradiation for Advanced Oropharyngeal Cancer

Purpose: Oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma (OPSCC) associated with human papilloma virus (HPV) is rapidly growing in incidence. Despite better prognosis than OPSCC associated with traditional risk factors, treatment failure still occurs in a significant proportion of patients. We had identified the antiapoptotic protein Bcl2 as a marker for poor outcome in advanced OPSCC treated with concurrent chemoradiation. To determine whether Bcl2 and HPV together might further characterize treatment response, we examined whether the prognostic value of Bcl2 was independent of HPV status. Experimental Design: Pretreatment tumor biopsies from 68 OPSCC patients were tested for HPV by in situ hybridization and were immunostained for Bcl2 to evaluate relations with disease-free (DFS) and overall survival following platin-based concurrent chemoradiation. Median follow-up among surviving patients was 47 months (range, 10-131 months). Results: Bcl2 and HPV independently predicted DFS and overall survival. Hazard ratios (with 95% confidence interval) for positive versus negative status in bivariate Cox proportional hazard analysis of DFS were 6.1 (1.8-21) for Bcl2 and 0.11 (0.035-0.37) for HPV. Only 1 of 32 HPV-positive/Bcl2-negative tumors recurred. Pretreatment Bcl2 expression was specifically associated with distant metastasis; five of six distant metastases occurred in the <40% of patients whose primary tumors were Bcl2 positive. Conclusions: Independent of HPV status, pretreatment Bcl2 expression identifies a subset of OPSCC patients having increased risk of treatment failure, particularly through distant metastasis, after concurrent chemoradiation. Considering HPV and Bcl2 together should help in devising better personalized treatments for OPSCC. Clin Cancer Res; 16(7); 2138–46. ©2010 AACR.
Quantified security is a weak hypothesis: a critical survey of results and assumptions

This paper critically surveys previous work on quantitative representation and analysis of security. Such quantified security has been presented as a general approach to precisely assess and control security. We classify a significant part of the work between 1981 and 2008 with respect to security perspective, target of quantification, underlying assumptions and type of validation. The result shows how the validity of most methods is still strikingly unclear. Despite applying a number of techniques from fields such as computer science, economics and reliability theory to the problem it is unclear what valid results exist with respect to operational security. Quantified security is thus a weak hypothesis because a lack of validation and comparison between such methods against empirical data. Furthermore, many assumptions in formal treatments are not empirically well-supported in operational security and have been adopted from other fields. A number of risks are present with depending on quantitative methods with limited or no validation.
Glucose Metabolism in the Progression of Prostate Cancer

Prostate cancer is one of the most common types of cancer in western country males but the mechanisms involved in the transformation processes have not been clearly elucidated. Alteration in cellular metabolism in cancer cells is recognized as a hallmark of malignant transformation, although it is becoming clear that the biological features of metabolic reprogramming not only differ in different cancers, but also among different cells in a type of cancer. Normal prostate epithelial cells have a peculiar and very inefficient energy metabolism as they use glucose to synthesize citrate that is secreted as part of the seminal liquid. During the transformation process, prostate cancer cells modify their energy metabolism from inefficient to highly efficient, often taking advantage of the interaction with other cell types in the tumor microenvironment that are corrupted to produce and secrete metabolic intermediates used by cancer cells in catabolic and anabolic processes. We recapitulate the metabolic transformations occurring in the prostate from the normal cell to the metastasis, highlighting the role of the microenvironment and summarizing what is known on the molecular mechanisms involved in the process.
Noninvasive contrast-enhanced US quantitative assessment of tumor microcirculation in a murine model: effect of discontinuing anti-VEGF therapy.

PURPOSE To determine, by using contrast material-enhanced ultrasonography (US), how quickly renal tumors grafted in mice begin to revascularize after stopping bevacizumab treatment. MATERIALS AND METHODS All experiments were approved by the regional ethics committee. A human tumor cell line SK-NEP-1 was grafted at day 0 in the left kidney of 50 nude mice. Forty-two mice developed tumors and longitudinal follow-up was performed on 32 surviving mice. From day 13, 14 controls received biweekly saline; 11 mice received biweekly bevacizumab until day 35 (continuous); and seven received biweekly bevacizumab until day 22, then biweekly placebo until day 35 (discontinued). Contrast-enhanced US was performed on days 13, 14, 22, 27, and 35. Once the injected contrast material distribution reached an equilibrium phase, high-acoustic pressure pulses were applied to destroy microbubbles in the capillary bed in the imaged plane. Reperfusion was monitored, and time-signal intensity (SI) curves were obtained from the linear average of SIs in intratumoral and matched-depth renal cortex regions of interest. A kinetic parameter calculated from reperfusion curves reflects local perfusion, normalized with respect to adjacent renal cortex perfusion. Normalized perfusion obtained from each group was compared with that from the other groups and with necrosis percentages and microvascular density assessed histologically at day 35. Comparisons were made by using analyses of variance and Tukey-Kramer tests. RESULTS The lowest excised mean tumor weights (+/- standard deviation) corresponded to the longest bevacizumab-treatment duration: 1.4 g +/- 1.1 (continuous-treatment) compared with 2.3 g +/- 2.1 (discontinued) and 3.7 g +/- 1.9 (control) (P = .01). On day 35, the respective control and continuously treated groups had comparable and significantly larger necrotic areas: 37% +/- 14 and 32% +/- 17 larger than the discontinued-treatment group (15% +/- 9; P < .05). Normalized perfusion increased significantly with time (P = .02) in the discontinued-treatment group after therapy ceased (day 22). CONCLUSION Noninvasively measured contrast-enhanced US parameters demonstrated tumor revascularization after stopping antiangiogenic therapy in this murine tumor model.