Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
CXCL16 regulates cisplatin-induced acute kidney injury

The pathogenesis of cisplatin-induced acute kidney injury (AKI) is characterized by tubular cell apoptosis and inflammation. However, the molecular mechanisms are not fully understood. We found that CXCL16 was induced in renal tubular epithelial cells in response to cisplatin-induced AKI. Therefore, we investigated whether CXCL16 played a role in cisplatin–induced tubular cell apoptosis and inflammation. Wild-type and CXCL16 knockout mice were administrated with vehicle or cisplatin at 20 mg/kg by intraperitoneal injection. CXCL16 knockout mice had lower blood urea nitrogen and less tubular damage following cisplatin-induced AKI as compared with wild-type mice. Genetic disruption of CXCL16 reduced tubular epithelial cell apoptosis and decreased caspase-3 activation. Furthermore, CXCL16 deficiency inhibited infiltration of macrophages and T cells into the kidneys following cisplatin treatment, which was associated with reduced expression of the proinflammatory cytokines in the kidneys. Taken together, our results indicate that CXCL16 plays a crucial role in the pathogenesis of cisplatin–induced AKI through regulation of apoptosis and inflammation and maybe a novel therapeutic target for cisplatin-induced AKI.
Cost and Utilization Optimization of Amazon EC2 Instances

The monitoring and the analysis of public clouds gains momentum, due to their widespread exploitation by individual users, researchers and companies for their daily tasks. We propose an algorithm for optimizing the cost and the utilization of a set of running Amazon EC2 instances by resizing them appropriately. The algorithm, namely Cost and Utilization Optimization (CUO) algorithm, receives information regarding the current set of instances used (their number, type, utilization) and proposes a new set of instances for serving the same load, so as to minimize cost and maximize utilization, or increase performance efficiency. CUO is integrated in Smart cloud Monitoring (SuMo), an open-source tool we develop for collecting monitoring data from Amazon Web Services (AWS) and analyzing them. A number of experiments are performed, using input data that correspond to realist AWS configuration scenarios, which exhibit the benefits of the CUO algorithm.
Psychosocial, adjustment in patients reporting cardiac illness

Abstract This study tests an integrative cross-sectional model of psychosocial adjustment in a late-middle-aged sample of patients repohg diagnoses of cardiac illness. Findings based on 362 individuals diagnosed with chronic cardiac illness and 390 healthy controls strongly supported hypotheses. Individuals with chronic cardiac illness scored significantly higher than did than did persons free of illness on both Depressed Mood and Depressive Features. In addition, women experienced more Depressed Mood and Depressive Features than did men. An integrative structural equation model demonstrated that, for both men and women with chronic cardiac illness, social support and adaptive coping strategies were related to less depressive symptoms. Social support predicted less depressive symptoms both directly and indirectly through coping strategies.
The catalyst effect: : The impact of transactive memory system structure on team performance

Research on transactive memory systems (TMSs) implicitly assumes that metaknowledge (i.e., the “knowledge of who knows what”) is uniformly distributed among team members. Relaxing this assumption results in a more realistic notion of team cognition in which the distribution of metaknowledge can take different forms. Demonstrating the importance of this conceptual shift, we compare teams in which metaknowledge is concentrated within one central member (a centralized TMS structure) with teams in which metaknowledge is distributed evenly among the members (a decentralized TMS structure). We predict that centralized metaknowledge can give teams a performance advantage over decentralized metaknowledge, because centralized metaknowledge can allow the central member to function as a catalyst for information exchange and integration. We propose this catalyst effect to be contingent on the extent to which the distribution of task information among members poses high coordination demands to effectively integrate members’ knowledge. In a laboratory team decision-making experiment (n 112), we found the predicted interaction effect between TMS structure and the distribution of task information. Furthermore, the experiment supported our hypotheses about the mediating role of the transactive retrieval process and the ensuing team information elaboration
Toddlers’ understanding of basic emotions: identification, labeling and causality / La comprensión temprana de las emociones básicas: identificación, etiquetado y causalidad

Abstract The aim of this paper is to explore the early acquisition pattern of the understanding of basic emotions. Many studies indicate that three-year-old children identify emotions such as joy or sadness, but it is not known how this knowledge arises. Fifty-seven boys and girls between 21 and 32 months were assessed using the Brunet-Lezine-R developmental scale (BL-R) (Josse, 1997) and the Affective knowledge Test (AKT) (Denham, 1986). Through this test we evaluated the children’s knowledge of four basic emotions (happiness, sadness, anger and fear) in three of its components (identification, causality and linguistic labeling). In order to track knowledge acquisition longitudinally, a small subgroup of 19 children was evaluated again six months later. The result of the evaluation by emotions and components allows some conclusions: first, the emotion that older children better understand is anger, followed by happiness and sadness. Second, the first component that children manage is the identification of facial expressions. They then progressively incorporate knowledge about typical causality, and finally, the linguistic labels together with some understanding of atypical causality. The results are discussed from a developmental point of view. This typical developmental pattern also allows some educational and clinical implications.
Investigating Customer-Oriented Deviance (COD) from a frontline employee's perspective

Abstract While frontline employees (FLEs) are known to bend the rules or act in non-conforming ways for customers, the phenomenon of FLEs over-servicing customers is not well understood. This paper proposes a behavioural concept termed customer-oriented deviance (COD) and a conceptual model of its key drivers. Using a qualitative study involving 22 in-depth interviews with FLEs, the analysis reveals three categories of COD behaviours: deviant service adaptation (DSA), deviant service communication (DSC), and deviant use of resources (DUR). The drivers of COD are categorised as individual (risk-taking, service aptitude, and pro-social moral values), situational (resource availability, social capita with customers, legitimacy of customer problems, and avoidance of hassles), and organisational (unconducive service climate and anticipated rewards). This paper contributes to understanding how and why FLEs over-service customers and extends current research by exploring multiple categories of behaviours within a services marketing context.
The Role of Associative History in Models of Associative Learning: A Selective Review and a Hybrid Model

Associative learning theories strive to capture the processes underlying and driving the change in strength of the associations between representations of stimuli that develop as a result of experience of the predictive relationships between those stimuli. Historically, formal models of associative learning have focused on two potential factors underlying associative change, namely processing of the conditioned stimulus (in terms of changes in associability) and processing of the unconditioned stimulus (in terms of changes in error). This review constitutes an analysis of the proper role of these two factors, specifically with regard to the way in which they are influenced by associative history (the prior training undergone by cues). A novel “hybrid” model of associative learning is proposed and is shown to provide a more satisfactory account of the effects of associative history on subsequent learning than any previous single-process theory.
Perceived retirement savings adequacy in Hong Kong: an interdisciplinary financial planning model

ABSTRACT Using an interdisciplinary model of financial planning, we investigated the factors contributing to perceived adequacy of retirement savings among Hong Kong workers by replicating a previous study of American and Dutch workers. The model was also tested for age differences in the way in which the variables operated within the model. These questions were examined using data from a phone survey conducted with 999 Hong Kong workers in 2012. We examined three psychological factors (future time orientation, goal clarity and financial knowledge), three social support variables (early learning from parents, spousal support and friend support) and three institutional factors (quality of employer pensions, trust in banks and fund managers, and trust in the government), as well as retirement savings planning activity and perceived retirement savings adequacy. Path analyses were used to test the model for the whole sample and separately for younger (N=437) and older (N=562) workers. Although a few age differences were found in the path analyses, the model was found to be useful in explaining the factors contributing to retirement savings planning and practices. Finally, we discuss how our findings differ from those of prior studies, and we assess their theoretical and practical implications.
Native English speakers learning Arabic: The influence of novel orthographic information on second language phonological acquisition

ABSTRACT Recent research has indicated that learners exposed to second language words’ orthographic forms of words can often use this information to make inferences about the words’ phonological forms. Here we asked, do learners benefit even when the orthography is unfamiliar? We taught native English speakers minimal nonword pairs differentiated by the Arabic velar–uvular contrast (e.g., [kubu], [qubu]) and manipulated the quality of orthographic input. We found that participants were consistently unable to associate the novel phonemes with novel words. Results are discussed in terms of (a) the role of orthographic input in second language word form learning, (b) the influence of orthographic familiarity in moderating the role of orthographic input, and (c) the issue of talker variability in word learning.
Simulation of Mexico City plumes during the MIRAGE-Mex field campaign using the WRF-Chem model

Abstract. The quantification of tropospheric O3 production in the downwind of the Mexico City plume is a major objective of the MIRAGE-Mex field campaign. We used a regional chemistry-transport model (WRF-Chem) to predict the distribution of O3 and its precursors in Mexico City and the surrounding region during March 2006, and compared the model with in-situ aircraft measurements of O3, CO, VOCs, NOx, and NOy concentrations. The comparison shows that the model is capable of capturing the timing and location of the measured city plumes, and the calculated variability along the flights is generally consistent with the measured results, showing a rapid increase in O3 and its precursors when city plumes are detected. However, there are some notable differences between the calculated and measured values, suggesting that, during transport from the surface of the city to the outflow plume, ozone mixing ratios are underestimated by about 0–25% during different flights. The calculated O3-NOx, O3-CO, and O3-NOz correlations generally agree with the measured values, and the analyses of these correlations suggest that photochemical O3 production continues in the plume downwind of the city (aged plume), adding to the O3 already produced in the city and exported with the plume. The model is also used to quantify the contributions to OH reactivity from various compounds in the aged plume. This analysis suggests that oxygenated organics (OVOCs) have the highest OH reactivity and play important roles for the O3 production in the aging plume. Furthermore, O3 production per NOx molecule consumed (O3 production efficiency) is more efficient in the aged plume than in the young plume near the city. The major contributor to the high O3 production efficiency in the aged plume is the reaction RO2+NO. By contrast, the reaction of HO2+NO is rather uniformly distributed in the plume.
Forgiveness and purpose in life as spiritual mechanisms of recovery from substance use disorders

Spirituality has often been associated with recovery from substance use disorders through its emphasis in faith-based rehabilitation programs. The purpose of this article is to describe some psychological dynamics that may explain how spirituality aids in the treatment of substance abuse and dependence. Forgiveness and purpose in life are proposed as “spiritual mechanisms” that partially mediate a spiritually directed recovery. Recent empirical studies on spirituality and recovery from substance use disorders are discussed in relation to 12-steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and Christian principles in order to describe how forgiveness and purpose in life interact with spiritual development in substance use disorder treatment programs. A theoretical model detailing the relationship between spirituality, forgiveness, purpose, and recovery is presented based on anecdotal and empirical literature.
Youth Sport Coaches' Qualities for Successful Coaching

Abstract This study was conducted to identify the most important qualities that youth sport coaches need for successful coaching. It used the Delphi Technique among 67 of the 93 youth sport coaches from Daejon Sport Council in South Korea. In the first Delphi round, 52 items suggested by the coaches were divided into seven categories by a panel of professors: (a) characteristics and attitudes, 15 items, (b) abilities and skills, 9 items, (c) knowledge, 8 items, (d) education and experience, 4 items, (e) instructional methods, 9 items, (f) interpersonal relationships, 3 items, and (g) management, 4 items. In round two the 67 youth sports coaches rated the 52 qualities on a 7-point Likert scale. In the third and final round, the highest means for any single items were scored by enthusiasm, ability to motivate athletes, sports management, BA degree in exercise or sport, provide instruction without discrimination, establish open and harmonious relationships with youth's parents, and risk management. The results of this study lead to the conclusion that these items should be a major concern for youth sport coaches who wish to be successful on the job, and they should be aware of the need to modify or revamp their qualities accordingly.
Rural Be/longing and Rural Social Organizations: Conviviality and Community-Making in the English Countryside

This article considers how structures of community feeling and ways of belonging are produced, maintained and recreated in local rural environments. It argues that rural social organizations, which operate through, and are embedded in, notions of conviviality and community, have taken up a particular role in this process. While using the concept of community with all the usual sociological caveats in place, the article seeks to emphasize a) the importance of the sociality of community and b) the need to understand the ways in which this sociality is continually shaped by the potent imaginary of what `community' and, more specifically, what `rural community' mean and represent. Drawing on a qualitative data set the article details the emotional connectivity participants made between the local and the social and the everyday routine practices involved in constructing a community sensibility. It concludes by examining how ambiguity and governance are part of these processes.
Power-efficient downlink communication using large antenna arrays: The doughnut channel

Large antenna arrays at the base station can facilitate power efficient single user downlink communication due to the inherent array power gain, i.e., under an average only total transmit power constraint, for a fixed desired information rate, the required total transmit power can be reduced by increasing the number of base station antennas (e.g. with i.i.d. fading, the required total transmit power can be reduced by roughly 3 dB with every doubling in the number of base station antennas, i.e., an O(N) array power gain can be achieved with N antennas). However, in practice, building power efficient large antenna arrays would require power efficient amplifiers/analog RF components. With current technology, highly linear power amplifiers generally have low power efficiency, and therefore linearity constraints on power amplifiers must be relaxed. Under such relaxed linearity constraints, the transmit signal that suffers the least distortion is a signal with constant envelope (CE). In this paper, we consider a single user Gaussian multiple-input single-output (MISO) downlink channel where the signal transmitted from each antenna is constrained to have a constant envelope (i.e., for every channel-use the amplitude of the signal transmitted from each antenna is constant, irrespective of the channel realization). We show that under such a per-antenna CE constraint, the complex noise-free received signal lies in the interior of a “doughnut” shaped region in the complex plane. The per-antenna CE constrained MISO channel is therefore equivalent to a doughnut channel, i.e., a single-input single-output (SISO) AWGN channel where the channel input is constrained to lie inside a “doughnut” shaped region. Using this equivalence, we analytically compute a closed-form expression for an achievable information rate under the per-antenna CE constraint. We then show that, for a broad class of fading channels (i.i.d. and direct-line-of-sight (DLOS)), even under the more stringent per-antenna CE constraint (compared to the average only total power constraint), an O(N) array power gain can still be achieved with N base station antennas. We also show that with N ≫1, compared to the average only total transmit power constrained channel, the extra total transmit power required under the per-antenna CE constraint, to achieve a desired information rate is small and bounded for a broad class of fading channels (i.i.d. and DLOS). We also propose novel CE precoding algorithms. The analysis and algorithms presented are general and therefore applicable to conventional systems with a small number of antennas. Analytical results are supported with numerical results for the i.i. d. Rayleigh fading channel.
Development of Character Constancy of Self and Other.

RoTENBERG, KEN J. Development of Character Constancy of Self and Other. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1982, 53, 505-515. The research was designed to investigate the development of character constancy-the belief that other's or self's personality characteristics (identity) are stable across time (stability) and do not change despite changes in appearance (consistency). Experiment 1 investigated the development of character constancy of other, while Experiment 2 investigated the development of character constancy of self. In both experiments kindergarten through third-grade children were tested. It was found that character constancy of other and of self were (1) acquired at a similar rate with age; (2) acquired in a stagelike pattern of identity, stability, and consistency; and (3) correlated with the conservation of number and mass. Character constancy of other was correlated with the prediction of character-consistent behavior, and character constancy of self was correlated with the use of traits in self-description. The correlations above were significant across all subjects, with age partialled out, but their strength varied by grade. It was proposed that character constancy of self and other was a product of both cognitive and social development.
Scalable Minimum Bayes Risk Training of Deep Neural Network Acoustic Models Using Distributed Hessian-free Optimization

Training neural network acoustic models with sequencediscriminative criteria, such as state-level minimum Bayes risk (sMBR), been shown to produce large improvements in performance over cross-entropy. However, because they entail the processing of lattices, sequence criteria are much more computationally intensive than cross-entropy. We describe a distributed neural network training algorithm, based on Hessianfree optimization, that scales to deep networks and large data sets. For the sMBR criterion, this training algorithm is faster than stochastic gradient descent by a factor of 5.5 and yields a 4.4% relative improvement in word error rate on a 50-hour broadcast news task. Distributed Hessian-free sMBR training yields relative reductions in word error rate of 7–13% over cross-entropy training with stochastic gradient descent on two larger tasks: Switchboard and DARPA RATS noisy Levantine Arabic. Our best Switchboard DBN achieves a word error rate of 16.4% on rt03-FSH.
Orientation and Shape Effects on Ballistic Transport Properties in Gate-All-Around Rectangular Germanium Nanowire nFETs

The electron transport properties of square and rectangular cross-sectional germanium nanowire (GeNW) field-effect transistors (FETs) with [001], [110], [111], and [112] crystal orientations are investigated. The electronic states of GeNWs are calculated by using an sp3d5s* tight-binding model coupled to a Poisson equation self-consistently. A semiclassical ballistic FET model is used to evaluate the electron transport characteristics. For the square cross section, electron injection velocity dominates the drive current in GeNW FETs because the inversion electron density in the GeNW channels is mainly determined by the capacitance of the gate insulator, and a [110] GeNW FET achieves the highest drive current of all the orientations. In the case of rectangular cross section, the electron density in GeNWs is dependent on their orientations and cross-sectional geometries due to the small quantum capacitance, and the difference of the density of states of GeNWs significantly affects the drive current. A [112] GeNW FET on a (11̅0) face exhibits the highest injection velocity of all the calculated FETs but low drive current because of its insufficient density of states. As a result, a [110] GeNW FET on a (001) face, which has both large density of states and high injection velocity, achieves the highest drive current.
Assessment of Hyperbolic Heat Transfer Equation in Theoretical Modeling for Radiofrequency Heating Techniques

Theoretical modeling is a technique widely used to study the electrical-thermal performance of different surgical procedures based on tissue heating by use of radiofrequency (RF) currents. Most models employ a parabolic heat transfer equation (PHTE) based on Fourier’s theory, which assumes an infinite propagation speed of thermal energy. We recently proposed a one-dimensional model in which the electrical-thermal coupled problem was analytically solved by using a hyperbolic heat transfer equation (HHTE), i.e. by considering a non zero thermal relaxation time. In this study, we particularized this solution to three typical examples of RF heating of biological tissues: heating of the cornea for refractive surgery, cardiac ablation for eliminating arrhythmias, and hepatic ablation for destroying tumors. A comparison was made of the PHTE and HHTE solutions. The differences between their temperature profiles were found to be higher for lower times and shorter distances from the electrode surface. Our results therefore suggest that HHTE should be considered for RF heating of the cornea (which requires very small electrodes and a heating time of 0.6 s), and for rapid ablations in cardiac tissue (less than 30 s).