Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Give Them a Chance: Public Attitudes to Sentencing Young Offenders in Western Australia

Public opinion is often reported as punitive towards sentencing young people. Attitudes remain important to investigate given their potential to influence policy within the criminal justice system. Therefore, it is important to understand the formation of these attitudes and their consistency with sentencing principles. Semi-structured interviews (n = 72) and surveys (n = 502) were used to gauge opinions of sentencing young people under different scenario manipulations (age, weapon, drug treatment, prior record). The findings revealed the public expected punishment, but favoured rehabilitation with an opportunity to repent, suggesting the public are open to alternatives to ‘tough on crime’ approaches.
The role of myostatin and the calcineurin-signalling pathway in regulating muscle mass in response to exercise training in the rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss Walbaum

SUMMARY Rainbow trout Oncorhynchus mykiss Walbaum were exercised at 0.8 and 1.6 body lengths s-1 for 18 h a day over a 30 day period. Exercise resulted in a 24-30% increase in the average cross-sectional area of fast muscle fibres relative to tank-rested controls. The concentrations of growth factors and transcription factors hypothesised to play a role in regulating exercise-induced muscle fibre hypertrophy were measured. Exercise training resulted in a minor increase in calcineurin localisation in the nucleus. However, nuclear factor of T-cells 2 (NFAT2) nuclear localisation did not follow a pattern that was consistent with NFAT2-mediated transcriptional activity and changes in calcineurin signaling. The active peptide of myostatin, a negative regulator of muscle growth in mammals, was downregulated in exercise groups relative to tank-rested controls, but only by 6-7%. It was concluded that myostatin and calcineurin signaling do not play a major role in regulating exercise-induced muscle hypertrophy in trout.
Determinants of Outstanding Mortgage Loan to Value Ratios: Evidence from the Netherlands

This paper studies the determinants and behavior of outstanding mortgage loan to value (LTV) ratios for a panel data set of 5,179 households over the period 1992-2005. We find that outstanding LTVs are driven by household characteristics, life-cycle eects and mortgage type characteristics. LTV declines with the time elapsed since mortgage commencement, but its level is consistently higher (by around 10%) for non-repayment mortgages (such as interest-only or endowment mortgages) than for repayment mortgages (such as linear or annuity mortgages). The dierence results from higher debt capacity associated with the possibility of deferring the principal repayment for non-repayment mortgages. Our results indicate that the recent proliferation of non-repayment mortgages is driven by tightening financing constraints due to declining aordability in
Confidence distribution (CD) -- distribution estimator of a parameter

The notion of confidence distribution (CD), an entirely frequentist concept, is in essence a Neymanian interpretation of Fisher's Fiducial distri- bution. It contains information related to every kind of frequentist inference. In this article, a CD is viewed as a distribution estimator of a parameter. This leads naturally to consideration of the information contained in CD, com- parison of CDs and optimal CDs, and connection of the CD concept to the (profile) likelihood function. A formal development of a multiparameter CD is also presented.
Biopolymer Blends Based on Poly (lactic acid): Shear and Elongation Rheology/Structure/Blowing Process Relationships

This study was dedicated to the blown film extrusion of poly(lactic acid), which mainly presents poor shear and elongation viscosities, and its blends. In order to enhance its melt strength, two main routes were selected (i) a structural modification through chain extension and branching mechanisms by adding a reactive multifunctional epoxide (named Joncryl) and (ii) blending with poly(butylene adipate-co-terephtalate), named PBAT in presence (or not) of Joncryl. The effects of the reactive agent on the shear and elongation rheology, morphological, and interfacial properties of the blends were systematically investigated. A decrease of the interfacial tension has been also demonstrated according to the deformed drop retraction method (DDRM). Hence, the role of Joncryl as a compatibilizer was highlighted. Consequently, finer morphology of the dispersed phase was obtained. Furthermore, the impact of the two modification routes on the blown film extrusion ability of PLA has been studied. Based on the improved shear and elongational rheological properties, a great enlargement of the blowing processing window of PLA modified with Joncryl was demonstrated. Indeed, with the addition of Joncryl into
Explaining Gender Differences in Caries: A Multifactorial Approach to a Multifactorial Disease

Many studies have demonstrated that caries rates are higher in women than in men. This review attempts to provide an explanation for this trend by examining each factor which contributes to caries and how the factor differs in men and women. Evidence has been provided to demonstrate that caries risk factors for women include a different salivary composition and flow rate, hormonal fluctuations, dietary habits, genetic variations, and particular social roles among their family. Systemic diseases that have been found to be associated with caries have also been found to have an association with the female gender. An extended exposure to the oral cavity or a more cariogenic oral microflora has not been proven to contribute to higher caries in women. Further research in these areas could be done in the future to explain their contribution, or lack thereof, to a higher caries rate in women.
Multimodal Compact Bilinear Pooling for Multimodal Neural Machine Translation

In state-of-the-art Neural Machine Translation, an attention mechanism is used during decoding to enhance the translation. At every step, the decoder uses this mechanism to focus on different parts of the source sentence to gather the most useful information before outputting its target word. Recently, the effectiveness of the attention mechanism has also been explored for multimodal tasks, where it becomes possible to focus both on sentence parts and image regions. Approaches to pool two modalities usually include element-wise product, sum or concatenation. In this paper, we evaluate the more advanced Multimodal Compact Bilinear pooling method, which takes the outer product of two vectors to combine the attention features for the two modalities. This has been previously investigated for visual question answering. We try out this approach for multimodal image caption translation and show improvements compared to basic combination methods.
Coffee, Alcohol, Smoking, Physical Activity and QT Interval Duration: Results from the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey

Background Abnormalities in the electrocardiographic QT interval duration have been associated with an increased risk of ventricular arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death. However, there is substantial uncertainty about the effect of modifiable factors such as coffee intake, cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, and physical activity on QT interval duration. Methods We studied 7795 men and women from the Third National Health and Nutrition Survey (NHANES III, 1988–1994). Baseline QT interval was measured from the standard 12-lead electrocardiogram. Coffee and tea intake, alcohol consumption, leisure-time physical activities over the past month, and lifetime smoking habits were determined using validated questionnaires during the home interview. Results In the fully adjusted model, the average differences in QT interval comparing participants drinking ≥6 cups/day to those who did not drink any were −1.2 ms (95% CI −4.4 to 2.0) for coffee, and −2.0 ms (−11.2 to 7.3) for tea, respectively. The average differences in QT interval duration comparing current to never smokers was 1.2 ms (−0.6 to 2.9) while the average difference in QT interval duration comparing participants drinking ≥7 drinks/week to non-drinkers was 1.8 ms (−0.5 to 4.0). The age, race/ethnicity, and RR-interval adjusted differences in average QT interval duration comparing men with binge drinking episodes to non-drinkers or drinkers without binge drinking were 2.8 ms (0.4 to 5.3) and 4.0 ms (1.6 to 6.4), respectively. The corresponding differences in women were 1.1 (−2.9 to 5.2) and 1.7 ms (−2.3 to 5.7). Finally, the average differences in QT interval comparing the highest vs. the lowest categories of total physical activity was −0.8 ms (−3.0 to 1.4). Conclusion Binge drinking was associated with longer QT interval in men but not in women. QT interval duration was not associated with other modifiable factors including coffee and tea intake, smoking, and physical activity.
Disclosure, Liquidity, and the Cost of Capital

This paper shows that revealing public information to reduce information asymmetry can reduce a firm's cost of capital by attracting increased demand from large investors due to increased liquidity of its securities. Large firms will disclose more information since they benefit most. Disclosure also reduces the risk-bearing capacity available through market makers. If initial information asymmetry is large, reducing it will increase the current price of the security. However, the maximum current price occurs with some asymmetry of information: further reduction of information asymmetry accentuates the undesirable effects of exit from market making. Copyright 1991 by American Finance Association.
Sources of carbonaceous aerosols and deposited black carbon in the Arctic in winter-spring: implications for radiative forcing

Abstract. We use a global chemical transport model (GEOS-Chem CTM) to interpret observations of black carbon (BC) and organic aerosol (OA) from the NASA ARCTAS aircraft campaign over the North American Arctic in April 2008, as well as longer-term records in surface air and in snow (2007–2009). BC emission inventories for North America, Europe, and Asia in the model are tested by comparison with surface air observations over these source regions. Russian open fires were the dominant source of OA in the Arctic troposphere during ARCTAS but we find that BC was of prevailingly anthropogenic (fossil fuel and biofuel) origin, particularly in surface air. This source attribution is confirmed by correlation of BC and OA with acetonitrile and sulfate in the model and in the observations. Asian emissions are the main anthropogenic source of BC in the free troposphere but European, Russian and North American sources are also important in surface air. Russian anthropogenic emissions appear to dominate the source of BC in Arctic surface air in winter. Model simulations for 2007–2009 (to account for interannual variability of fires) show much higher BC snow content in the Eurasian than the North American Arctic, consistent with the limited observations. We find that anthropogenic sources contribute 90% of BC deposited to Arctic snow in January-March and 60% in April–May 2007–2009. The mean decrease in Arctic snow albedo from BC deposition is estimated to be 0.6% in spring, resulting in a regional surface radiative forcing consistent with previous estimates.
The Automatic Creation of Literature Abstracts

Excerpts of technical papers and magazine articles that serve the purposes of conventional abstracts have been created entirely by automatic means. In the exploratory research described, the complete text of an article in machine-readable form is scanned by an IBM 704 data-processing machine and analyzed in accordance with a standard program. Statistical information derived from word frequency and distribution is used by the machine to compute a relative measure of significance, first for individual words and then for sentences. Sentences scoring highest in significance are extracted and printed out to become the "auto-abstract. "
Knowledge, attitude, and practice regarding voluntary blood donation among adult residents of Harar town, Eastern Ethiopia: a community-based study

Background The availability of safe blood and blood products is a critical factor in improving health care. In Ethiopia, lack of voluntary blood donors is a major challenge. This could be due to low community knowledge, unfavorable attitude, and poor donation practice regarding voluntary blood donation. Thus, the aim of this study was to assess community knowledge, attitude, and practice regarding voluntary blood donation among adults in Harar town, Ethiopia. Materials and methods A community-based cross-sectional study was conducted from July 1 to July 31, 2015. A total of 845 adults were randomly selected and interviewed using a pretested, structured questionnaire. Six trained data collectors conducted a face-to-face interview. Data were entered into EpiData Version 3 and analyzed using STATA Version 11. Results Comprehensive knowledge of the study participants toward voluntary blood donation was 43.5%. Multivariable logistic regression demonstrated that male sex (adjusted odds ratio [AOR] = 1.69, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.19–2.39), age (31–45 years; AOR = 0.50, 95% CI: 0.34–0.74) and >45 years (AOR = 0.60, 95% CI: 0.38–0.95), and higher education (AOR = 15.34, 95% CI: 5.01–46.91) were significantly associated with comprehensive knowledge about voluntary blood donation. A total of 278 (32.9%) study participants had positive attitude toward voluntary blood donation. College graduates (AOR = 13.05, 95% CI: 4.12–41.29) were significantly associated with positive attitude toward voluntary blood donation. Only 191 (22.6%) subjects had ever donated blood. However, the proportion of study participants who donated blood voluntarily with good knowledge about voluntary blood donation was significantly lower than the study participants who donated blood voluntarily with low knowledge (X2 = 6.1746, P = 0.013). Conclusion This study showed an inauspicious attitude toward blood donation and poor blood donation practices. Subjects with good comprehensive knowledge about voluntary blood donation were less likely to donate blood voluntarily compared to those with lower comprehensive knowledge about voluntary blood donation.
Emotional Impairment and Persistent Upregulation of mGlu5 Receptor following Morphine Abstinence: Implications of an mGlu5-MOPr Interaction

Background: A difficult problem in treating opioid addicts is the maintenance of a drug-free state because of the negative emotional symptoms associated with withdrawal, which may trigger relapse. Several lines of evidence suggest a role for the metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 in opioid addiction; however, its involvement during opioid withdrawal is not clear. Methods: Mice were treated with a 7-day escalating-dose morphine administration paradigm. Following withdrawal, the development of affective behaviors was assessed using the 3-chambered box, open-field, elevated plus-maze and forced-swim tests. Metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 autoradiographic binding was performed in mouse brains undergoing chronic morphine treatment and 7 days withdrawal. Moreover, since there is evidence showing direct effects of opioid drugs on the metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 system, the presence of an metabotropic glutamate receptor 5/μ-opioid receptor interaction was assessed by performing metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 autoradiographic binding in brains of mice lacking the μ-opioid receptor gene. Results: Withdrawal from chronic morphine administration induced anxiety-like, depressive-like, and impaired sociability behaviors concomitant with a marked upregulation of metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 binding. Administration of the metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 antagonist, 3-((2-Methyl-4-thiazolyl)ethynyl)pyridine, reversed morphine abstinence-induced depressive-like behaviors. A brain region-specific increase in metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 binding was observed in the nucleus accumbens shell, thalamus, hypothalamus, and amygdala of μ-opioid receptor knockout mice compared with controls. Conclusions: These results suggest an association between metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 alterations and the emergence of opioid withdrawal-related affective behaviors. This study supports metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 system as a target for the development of pharmacotherapies for the treatment of opioid addiction. Moreover, our data show direct effects of μ-opioid receptor system manipulation on metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 binding in the brain.
THE CORRELATION BETWEEN BIOMECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF NORMAL CORNEA WITH TOMOGRAPHIC PARAMETERS OF PENTACAM

Purpose: To investigate the correlation between corneal biomechanical properties and tomographic parameters of Pentacam Methods: Corneal biomechanical properties and tomographic results of 36 normal subjects were measured by Ocular Response Analyzer (ORA) and Pentacam and the correlation between these two measurements were analyzed with Pearson correlation test with SPSS version16. Results: Significant correlation was found between corneal hysteresis (CH) and central corneal thickness (CCT), depth and angle of the anterior chamber, corneal shape factor and corneal volume (P 0.05). Conclusion: Corneal thickness had an effective role in determining biomechanical properties of this tissue. In addition, significant correlation between CH and corneal volume was also found. Since corneal volume is a three dimensional parameter, it can play a more effective role than corneal thickness, the two dimensional parameter, in determining biomechanical properties of cornea.
A single polymorphic amino acid on Toxoplasma gondii kinase ROP16 determines the direct and strain-specific activation of Stat3

Infection by Toxoplasma gondii down-regulates the host innate immune responses, such as proinflammatory cytokine production, in a Stat3-dependent manner. A forward genetic approach recently demonstrated that the type II strain fails to suppress immune responses because of a potential defect in a highly polymorphic parasite-derived kinase, ROP16. We generated ROP16-deficient type I parasites by reverse genetics and found a severe defect in parasite-induced Stat3 activation, culminating in enhanced production of interleukin (IL) 6 and IL-12 p40 in the infected macrophages. Furthermore, overexpression of ROP16 but not ROP18 in mammalian cells resulted in Stat3 phosphorylation and strong activation of Stat3-dependent promoters. In addition, kinase-inactive ROP16 failed to activate Stat3. Comparison of type I and type II ROP16 revealed that a single amino acid substitution in the kinase domain determined the strain difference in terms of Stat3 activation. Moreover, ROP16 bound Stat3 and directly induced phosphorylation of this transcription factor. These results formally establish an essential and direct requirement of ROP16 in parasite-induced Stat3 activation and the significance of a single amino acid replacement in the function of type II ROP16.
Quantifying How Staining Methods Bias Measurements of Neuron Morphologies

The process through which neurons are labeled is a key methodological choice in measuring neuron morphology. However, little is known about how this choice may bias measurements. To quantify this bias we compare the extracted morphology of neurons collected from the same rodent species, experimental condition, gender distribution, age distribution, brain region and putative cell type, but obtained with 19 distinct staining methods. We found strong biases on measured features of morphology. These were largest in features related to the coverage of the dendritic tree (e.g., the total dendritic tree length). Understanding measurement biases is crucial for interpreting morphological data.
Private Net Benefits of Residential Solar PV: The Role of Electricity Tariffs, Tax Incentives, and Rebates

With dramatic declines in the cost of solar PV technology since 2010, the electricity industry is in the midst of debates about whether to use this low-polluting renewable energy source in grid-scale generation or in distributed rooftop generation (DG). California has led the growth in DG solar in the United States. I use 2007 to early 2014 residential data from Pacific Gas & Electric—the utility with the largest number of residential solar customers in the United States—to examine the full range of private incentives for installing residential solar, from direct rebates and tax credits to indirect incentives that result from the residential tariff design and the crediting of solar production under “net energy metering. ” I then study the income distribution of solar adopters and how that has changed over time. I find the skew to wealthy households adopting solar is still significant but began to lessen after 2011. Adoption continued to be dominated by the heaviest electricity-consuming households, probably because the steeply tiered tariff structure greatly increased the private value of solar to such customers while reducing the incentive for consumers who are below median consumption. In fact, the financial incentive for those who actually adopted solar over the sample period may have been due nearly as much to California’s tiered tariff structure as to the 30% federal tax credit. The California experience suggests that rate design can greatly influence the economic incentives for residential solar adoption and which customers receive those benefits.
Low gait speed is associated with low physical activity and high sedentary time following stroke

Abstract Purpose This study describes physical activity levels and factors associated with physical activity at the end of stroke rehabilitation. Methods Primary stroke survivors were assessed at completion of physical rehabilitation. Outcomes included physical activity (e.g. step count, moderate-vigorous physical activity duration) and sedentary time measured with the Sensewear Armband, gait speed, and cognition. The number of participants meeting physical activity recommendations was calculated. Differences in physical activity were examined between household ambulators (gait speed <0.4 m/s), limited community ambulators (0.4–0.8 m/s), and unlimited community ambulators (>0.8 m/s). The influence of age, cognition, and gait speed on physical activity was determined by multiple regression. Results Seventy-nine stroke survivors participated. Twenty-one participants achieved 30 min/day of moderate-vigorous physical activity accumulated in 10 min bouts. Unlimited community ambulators took more steps/day (median 4975 vs. 469 limited, 355 household, p < 0.001), had higher moderate-vigorous physical activity (median 74 min/day vs. 22 limited, 31 household, p < 0.001) and lower sedentary time (mean 1105 vs. 1239 limited, 1232 household minutes/day, p < 0.001). Age, gait speed, and cognition predicted 21.3% of the variance in moderate-vigorous physical activity (p = 0.001); adding employment status to the model predicted 57.3% of the variance in step count (p < 0.001). Conclusions Physical activity is low following stroke and should be a target for treatment, particularly in those with gait speeds ≤0.8 m/s. Implications for rehabilitation Seventy-three percent of stroke survivors performed ≥30 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity throughout the day. Twenty-seven percent of stroke survivors accumulated ≥30 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity in 10 minute bouts. Despite relatively good physical ability, daily step count was low in this sample. Those with gait speeds ≤0.8 m/s had lower physical activity levels and higher sedentary time.