Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Writing and Literacy in Chinese, Korean and Japanese

This edition has been replaced by a new edition and is no longer available for purchase. Chinese, Japanese, South (and North) Koreans in East Asia have a long, intertwined and distinguished cultural history and have achieved, or are in the process of achieving, spectacular economic success. Together, these three peoples make up one quarter of the world population. They use a variety of unique and fascinating writing systems: logographic Chinese characters of ancient origin, as well as phonetic systems of syllabaries and alphabets. The book describes, often in comparison with English, how the Chinese, Korean and Japanese writing systems originated and developed; how each relates to its spoken language; how it is learned or taught; how it can be computerized; and how it relates to the past and present literacy, education, and culture of its users. Intimately familiar with the three East Asian cultures, Insup Taylor with the assistance of Martin Taylor, has written an accessible and highly readable book. Writing and Literacy in Chinese, Korean and Japanese is intended for academic readers (students in East Asian Studies, linguistics, education, psychology) as well as for the general public (parents, business, government). Readers of the book will learn about the interrelated cultural histories of China, Korea and Japan, but mainly about the various writing systems, some exotic, some familar, some simple, some complex, but all fascinating.
Self-Attribution Theory and the Sun-Sign

Summary Mayo, White, and Eysenck found that S s born under the odd-numbered sun-signs had higher mean extraversion scores than others and that S s born under the water signs had higher mean neuroticism scores than others. Pawlik and Buse reasoned that these findings might be attributable to the S s' knowledge of the alleged characteristics of people born under their signs (self-attribution theory). In order to investigate the Pawlik and Buse argument with S s who were assumed to be naive with regard to astrological knowledge, the EPI was administered to 245 student nurses. Neither of the two findings of Mayo et al. was substantiated, but a significant seasonal effect was found post hoc: summer-born S s obtained a higher mean extraversion score than winter-born S s.
The HIV-1 HLA-A2-SLYNTVATL Is a Help-Independent CTL Epitope1

The CTL response to the HLA-A*0201-restricted, HIV-1 p17 Gag77–85 epitope (SLYNTVATL; SL9) has been extensively studied in patients. Although this reactivity is exceptionally prominent in chronically infected patients and inversely correlated to viral load, SL9-specific CTLs (SL9-CTLs) are rarely detected in acute infection. To explore the cellular basis for this unusual manifestation, SL9-CTLs primed ex vivo from naive circulating CD8+ T cells of healthy, seronegative donors were generated and characterized. SL9 appeared to differ from other well-studied A*0201-restricted epitopes in several significant respects. In contrast to published reports for influenza and melanoma peptides and the HIV gag IV9 epitope studied here in parallel, SL9-CTLs were primed by immature but not mature autologous dendritic cells. Highly activated SL9-CTLs produce sufficient autocrine mediators to sustain clonal expansion and CTL differentiation for months without CD4+ T cells or exogenous IL-2. Moreover, SL9-CTLs were sensitive to paracrine IL-2-induced apoptosis. IL-2 independence and sensitivity to paracrine IL-2 were also characteristic of SL9-CTLs immunized by dendritic cells transduced by a nonreplicating lentiviral vector encoding full-length Gag. In vitro-primed SL9-CTLs resembled those derived from patients in degeneracy of recognition and functional avidities for both SL9 and its natural mutations. Together, these data show that SL9 is a highly immunogenic, help-independent HIV epitope. The scarcity of SL9-CTLs in acute infection may result from cytokine-induced apoptosis with the intense activation of the innate immunity. In contrast, SL9-CTLs that constitutively produce autocrine help would predominate during CD4-diminished chronic infection.
Perceived Fairness in Personnel Selection: Determinants and Outcomes in Different Stages of the Assessment Procedure

This study addresses the determinants and outcomes of fairness perceptions in a real assessment procedure as performed by a selection agency. Fairness perceptions were investigated at three points in time: before the assessment, right after the assessment but before assessment feedback, and after assessment feedback. Using structural equation modeling, we tested how fairness perceptions develop throughout the assessment procedure. Applicants' openness to experiences affected their test beliefs before the actual test-taking. These beliefs remained powerful in the subsequent stages of the assessment procedure in that they influenced applicants' perceptions of performance, feedback and fairness. In the context of selection by an external selection agency, post-feedback fairness perceptions were not related to job attractiveness. Perceived feedback treatment and feedback content directly affected job attractiveness.
Team Reflexivity, Development of Shared Task Representations, and the Use of Distributed Information in Group Decision Making

Decision-making groups often exchange and integrate distributed information to a lesser extent than is desirable for high-quality decisions. One important reason for this lies in group members' understanding of the decision task-their task representations-specifically the extent to which they understand the importance of exchange and integration of information. The authors hypothesized that a group's development of a (shared) understanding of the information elaboration requirements of their task is influenced by collective reflection on the task. When not all group members initially realize the importance of information elaboration, team reflexivity increases the degree to which the group understands the importance of information elaboration. In an experiment, the authors showed that team reflection fostered the development of task representations emphasizing information elaboration and subsequent information elaboration and decision quality. When all members initially already held representations emphasizing information elaboration, team reflection promoted elaboration and performance to a lesser degree.
The cytotoxic effects of a traditional Zulu remedy, impila (Callilepis laureola)

The traditional Zulu remedy impila (Callilepis laureola) can cause acute fatal hepatocellular necrosis, especially in children. We investigated the mechanism(s) of toxicity using HuH-7 hepatocytes. Impila tubers were extracted with boiling water and the aqueous extract was used at different concentrations to study the effects on the morphology of the cells. Flow cytometry and labelling with fluorescent antibodies to tubulin were also used. At high concentrations, necrosis occurred; however, at lower concentrations, the extracts gave rise to a variety of changes including hypercondensation of chromatin, multinucleate cells, nuclear fragmentation and apoptosis. In addition, we observed destruction of cytoplasmic tubulin. These findings give further insight into the mechanism of toxicity of herbal remedies containing atractyloside.
Efficient Time Synchronization in a Wireless Sensor Network by Adaptive Value Tracking

A desirable flooding-based time synchronization protocol in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) should neither demand fast propagation of up-to-date time information nor keeping track of the neighboring nodes. Moreover, such a protocol is strictly required to have low computational and communication overhead as well as small memory footprint. Would there be a protocol which meets these requirements' We answer this question positively by introducing a novel time synchronization protocol whose main component is “adaptive-value tracking”. Thanks to this component, each sensor node synchronizes the rate of its clock to that of a reference clock through successive feedbacks with a considerably low computational and memory overhead. By adjusting time offset of the rate-synchronized clocks, the network-wide synchronization is established even without demanding rapid propagation of the reference clock and keeping track of the neighboring nodes. In the light of our experimental evaluation in a testbed of 20 MICAz sensor nodes, we observed that the proposed protocol provides similar synchronization under the same communication frequency with an approximately 97% less CPU overhead and 80% less memory allocation compared to the recent flooding based time synchronization protocols in WSNs.
The hypothalamus and photoperiodic control of FSH secretion by melatonin in the male Syrian hamster.

In the photoinhibited castrated male Syrian hamster, removal of the pineal gland or transfer to long photoperiods was followed by a rapid increase in the serum concentration of FSH. Levels were significantly above those of controls within 10 days. Central passive immunization of pineal-intact photoinhibited castrated animals against melatonin had a stimulatory effect on serum FSH levels, comparable with that observed following pinealectomy or transfer to short days. The effects of pinealectomy were blocked by programmed s.c. infusions of melatonin in a time-dependent manner. Serum FSH levels remained low in animals receiving 100 ng melatonin delivered over 10 h but the same mass of melatonin delivered over 4 h had no effect on the response to pinealectomy. Lesions of the anterior hypothalamus had no effect on the pinealectomy-induced increase of serum FSH in animals receiving saline infusions. However, in lesioned animals, programmed infusions of melatonin were no longer able to suppress the rise in FSH following pinealectomy. These results demonstrated that pineal melatonin is the mediator of central photoperiodic control of FSH secretion. The duration of the melatonin signal determines its effectiveness and an intact anterior hypothalamus is necessary for the signal to be read and/or the appropriate neuroendocrine response expressed.
Off-topic Response Detection for Spontaneous Spoken English Assessment

© 2016 Association for Computational Linguistics. Automatic spoken language assessment systems are becoming increasingly important to meet the demand for English second language learning. This is a challenging task due to the high error rates of, even state-of-the-art, non-native speech recognition. Consequently current systems primarily assess fluency and pronunciation. However, content assessment is essential for full automation. As a first stage it is important to judge whether the speaker responds on topic to test questions designed to elicit spontaneous speech. Standard approaches to off-topic response detection assess similarity between the response and question based on bag-of-words representations. An alternative framework based on Recurrent Neural Network Language Models (RNNLM) is proposed in this paper. The RNNLM is adapted to the topic of each test question. It learns to associate example responses to questions with points in a topic space constructed using these example responses. Classification is done by ranking the topic-conditional posterior probabilities of a response. The RNNLMs associate a broad range of responses with each topic, incorporate sequence information and scale better with additional training data, unlike standard methods. On experiments conducted on data from the Business Language Testing Service (BULATS) this approach outperforms standard approaches.
Use of insulin glargine in Japanese patients with type 1 diabetes.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the results of treatment with an insulin glargine-based regimen as compared with those of an NPH insulin-based regimen. METHODS We reviewed the charts of 83 Japanese patients with Type 1 diabetes treated with insulin glargine for 12 months. PATIENTS Median age, 56.9 years (range, 24.6-74.8 years), mean (+/-S.D.) body mass index, 21.2 (+/-2.2) kg/m2. RESULTS The average HbA1c level of the cohort was 7.8 +/- 1.2% at baseline and 7.7 +/- 1.0% at the end of the 12-month treatment (P=0.34). The average insulin requirement per day in the cohort remained unchanged after the 12-month treatment (35.0 +/- 11.6 units/day versus 35.2 +/- 11.2 units/day (P=0.58). Of the 36 patients who were receiving twice or three times daily injections of NPH insulin, 30 could be switched to a single-daily injection of insulin glargine. The frequency of severe hypoglycemia with unconsciousness became lower after switching to the insulin glargine-based regimen than during treatment with the NPH-based regimen. The average ratio of the daily usage of insulin glargine to that of total insulin after 12 months was smaller than that reported from other countries (0.34 +/- 0.09). CONCLUSION These results obtained from a larger number of patients as compared to previous Japanese studies confirm earlier reports that insulin glargine provides equivalent glycemic control to human NPH insulin, with a lower incidence of severe hypoglycemia. Thus, treatment with insulin glargine provides some benefits to Japanese patients with Type 1 diabetes.
Improving handoff performance of micro-mobility protocol in NEMO and a comparison with SINEMO

Network Mobility (NEMO) basic support protocol is standardized by IETF to provide seamless and uninterrupted services to the mobile hosts in NEMO. Seamless IP diversity based NEMO (SINEMO) outperforms NEMO BSP in terms of handoff latency and related packet loss by utilizing the advanced loss recovery mechanism and multi-homing feature of stream control transmission protocol (SCTP). To support micro mobility in NEMO, HMIPv6 can be used with NEMO BSP which together reduce handoff latency and related packet loss significantly. For further improvement of handoff performance of NEMO BSP, FHMIPv6, the extension of FMIPv6 and HMIPv6 could be utilized in NEMO. In this paper, handoff performance of NEMO BSP along with micro mobility support of HMIPv6 (M-NEMO) and FHMIPv6 (FM-NEMO) are analytically compared with SINEMO based on handoff latency, handoff blocking probability and packet loss during handoff. The numerical results show that FM-NEMO outperforms M-NEMO and SINEMO in terms of above metrics.
Offenders’ Family Members’ Responses to Capital Crimes

Discussions of punishment for homicide usually focus on either retributive justice or deterrence. This article attempts to broaden these discussions to include using restorative justice to supplement the traditional judicial process in capital cases. Qualitative interviews with 19 family members of offenders tried in capital cases in the South are used to explore the need for restorative justice in capital cases. Results indicate that offenders’ family members often experience trauma; express empathy for victims and their families, as well as a desire to connect with them; and the community plays a critical role in their ability to cope with the homicide and its aftermath. The authors conclude that restorative justice practices should be explored to help victims’ and offenders’ family members cope with homicide and the trial that follows.
Engineering inhibitory proteins with InSiPS: the in-silico protein synthesizer

Engineered proteins are synthetic novel proteins (not found in nature) that are designed to fulfill a predetermined biological function. Such proteins can be used as molecular markers, inhibitory agents, or drugs. For example, a synthetic protein could bind to a critical protein of a pathogen, thereby inhibiting the function of the target protein and potentially reducing the impact of the pathogen. In this paper we present the In-Silico Protein Synthesizer (InSiPS), a massively parallel computational tool for the IBM Blue Gene/Q that is aimed at designing inhibitory proteins. More precisely, InSiPS designs proteins that are predicted to interact with a given target protein (and may inhibit the target's cellular functions) while leaving non-target proteins unaffected (to minimize side-effects). As proof-of-concepts, two InSiPS designed proteins have been synthesized in the lab and their inhibitory properties have been experimentally verified through wet-lab experimentation.
Signaling Pathways Involved in Adenosine Triphosphate-Induced Endothelial Cell Barrier Enhancement

Endothelial barrier dysfunction caused by inflammatory agonists is a frequent underlying cause of vascular leak and edema. Novel strategies to preserve barrier integrity could have profound clinical impact. Adenosine triphosphate (ATP) released from endothelial cells by shear stress and injury has been shown to protect the endothelial barrier in some settings. We have demonstrated that ATP and its nonhydrolyzed analogues enhanced barrier properties of cultured endothelial cell monolayers and caused remodeling of cell–cell junctions. Increases in cytosolic Ca2+ and Erk activation caused by ATP were irrelevant to barrier enhancement. Experiments using biochemical inhibitors or siRNA indicated that G proteins (specifically G&agr;q and G&agr;i2), protein kinase A (PKA), and the PKA substrate vasodilator-stimulated phosphoprotein were involved in ATP-induced barrier enhancement. ATP treatment decreased phosphorylation of myosin light chain and specifically activated myosin-associated phosphatase. Depletion of G&agr;q with siRNA prevented ATP-induced activation of myosin phosphatase. We conclude that the mechanisms of ATP-induced barrier enhancement are independent of intracellular Ca2+, but involve activation of myosin phosphatase via a novel G-protein–coupled mechanism and PKA.
Assessment of social competence in preschoolers: Teachers versus peers.

The predictive validity and the reliability of a teacher-based ranking method of assessing popularity were compared with those of the traditional picture sociometric approach. In each of two studies, both popularity measures were administered in several day-care classrooms. Behavioral observations of social interaction and teacher ratings of social competence were also collected. Very hi^h reliability estimates were obtained for the teacher popularity measure, with lower estimates obtained for the picture sociometric measure^ In both studies, when validated relative to the social competence ratings and behavioral observations, the teacher popularity measure was a more effective predictor. Stepwise multiple regression analyses were computed in which social competence measures were regressed on the popularity measures, with age treated as a covariate. With age effects partialed out, teacher popularity entered the equation prior to sociometric popularity and was a significant predictor of social competence. The sociometric popularity measure did not significantly improve this prediction. These findings support the use of teacher rankings of popularity as a measure of social competence in the preschool. Peer group social competence in preschoolers is currently a topic of considerable developmental and clinical importance. The methodology by which to adequately assess this construct is not yet clearly established. A common approach is to use indices of peer group popularity based on the sociometric technique (Oden & Asher, 1977). Until recently, the most frequently used technique for obtaining such popularity data with preschoolers was the picture sociometric method developed by McCandless and Marshall (1957). Children are shown photographs of their classmates and are asked in a variety of ways to indicate the pictures of their preferred playmates. In addition, rejection scores may be derived by asking the child to indicate those children with whom they do not like to play. Two factors are regularly cited in support of the sociometric approach to the assess
Perfectionism and Junior Athlete Burnout: The Mediating Role of Autonomous and Controlled Motivation

Certain dimensions of perfectionism appear to place junior athletes at greater risk of burnout. The current study adopted self-determination theory to explain why this is the case. Specifically, as athlete burnout is believed to have a motivational signature that can be described using motivational regulation, the study examined whether autonomous motivation and controlled motivation mediated the perfectionism–burnout relationship. Junior athletes (n = 211, M age = 15.61 years, s = 1.73) completed measures of multidimensional perfectionism, athlete burnout, and motivational regulation. Structural equation modeling revealed that autonomous motivation and controlled motivation partially mediated the relationship between perfectionism and burnout. Perfectionistic concerns had a positive direct and indirect (via controlled motivation) relationship with burnout. In contrast, perfectionistic strivings had a negative direct and indirect (via autonomous motivation) relationship with burnout. The findings suggest that perfectionistic concerns encompass a pattern of motivational regulation, which contributes to the occurrence of athlete burnout, whereas perfectionistic strivings encompass a pattern of motivational regulation inversely associated with athlete burnout.
The lectin jacalin specifically triggers cell signaling in CD4+ T lymphocytes.

The lectin jacalin was shown to specifically stimulate CD4(+) lymphocytes. This lectin, which presents a peptide highly similar to a sequence of the HIV external glycoprotein, interacts with CD4 and is able to inhibit in vitro HIV infection. Since jacalin binds also CD8, its mitogenic specificity cannot exclusively be attributed to its interaction with CD4. We therefore hypothesized that the lectin could trigger signals specifically associated with CD4. Here we show that jacalin triggers IL2 gene transcription only in CD4(+) lymphocytes. In parallel, we show that numerous proteins are tyrosine phosphorylated in this cell subset while only a restricted number of them are phosphorylated in CD8(+) cells. Moreover, we show that the tyrosine kinase p56lck, which is associated with both CD4 and CD8, is activated only in CD4(+) lymphocytes, making this lectin a good model for the study of cell signaling triggered in this restricted subpopulation.
Algorithms and Results in Content-Based Visual Query of the Image Databases Resulting from Dicom Files

The article presents a series of algorithms used in the content-based visual query process on databases with color medical images extracted from DICOM files provided by medical tools used in the diagnosis area. Also, the paper presents a detailed study on several directions inside the content-based visual query process. In studying the content-based image query on color feature the transformation from RGB color space to HSV and the quantization at 166 colors was used. For computing the dissimilitude between the query and the target image three metrics were implemented: the Euclidian distance, the histograms intersection and the quadratic distance between histograms. The next study was made on content-based image query on color texture feature. In order to compute the color texture characteristics vectors two methods were implemented: the co-occurrence matrices and Gabor filters. The third studied problem was the content-based region query. For detecting color regions the color set back-projection algorithm was implemented. Statistic studies for this algorithm in keeping track of the patient evolution during the treatment of the peptic ulcers were made