Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Attitudes Toward Disability: Teacher education for inclusive environments in an Australian university

The Interaction with Disabled Persons Scale (IDP) was used to explore the attitudes of preservice teachers at a large Australian University to people with disabilities. Using structural equation modelling, the factor structure of the IDP Scale was tested. The best fitting model was found to be one in which there were four factors (Discomfort, Sympathy, Embarrassment, and Vulnerability) that were derived from 16 items. Although significant effects were found for type of course, age, gender, language, and frequency of contact, the magnitude of these effects was minimal. Changes in student teachers’ attitudes toward disability over a one year general teacher training course were found to be minimal.
Appearance of a Robot Affects the Impact of its Behaviour on Perceived Trustworthiness and Empathy

Abstract An increasing number of companion robots have started reaching the public in the recent years. These robots vary in their appearance and behavior. Since these two factors can have an impact on lasting human–robot relationships, it is important to understand their effect for companion robots.We have conducted an experiment that evaluated the impact of a robot’s appearance and its behaviour in repeated interactions on its perceived empathy, trustworthiness and anxiety experienced by a human. The results indicate that a highly humanlike robot is perceived as less trustworthy and empathic than a more machinelike robot. Moreover, negative behaviour of a machinelike robot reduces its trustworthiness and perceived empathy stronger than for highly humanlike robot. In addition, we found that a robot which disapproves of what a human says can induce anxiety felt towards its communication capabilities. Our findings suggest that more machinelike robots can be more suitable as companions than highly humanlike robots. Moreover, a robot disagreeing with a human interaction partner should be able to provide feedback on its understanding of the partner’s message in order to reduce her anxiety.
Survival analysis of heart failure patients: A case study

This study was focused on survival analysis of heart failure patients who were admitted to Institute of Cardiology and Allied hospital Faisalabad-Pakistan during April-December (2015). All the patients were aged 40 years or above, having left ventricular systolic dysfunction, belonging to NYHA class III and IV. Cox regression was used to model mortality considering age, ejection fraction, serum creatinine, serum sodium, anemia, platelets, creatinine phosphokinase, blood pressure, gender, diabetes and smoking status as potentially contributing for mortality. Kaplan Meier plot was used to study the general pattern of survival which showed high intensity of mortality in the initial days and then a gradual increase up to the end of study. Martingale residuals were used to assess functional form of variables. Results were validated computing calibration slope and discrimination ability of model via bootstrapping. For graphical prediction of survival probability, a nomogram was constructed. Age, renal dysfunction, blood pressure, ejection fraction and anemia were found as significant risk factors for mortality among heart failure patients.
Diversity and composition of herbaceous angiosperms along gradients of elevation and forest-use intensity

Terrestrial herbs are important elements of tropical forests; however, there is a lack of research on their diversity patterns and how they respond to different intensities of forest-use. The aim of this study was to analyze the diversity of herbaceous angiosperms along gradients of elevation (50 m to 3500 m) and forest-use intensity on the eastern slopes of the Cofre de Perote, Veracruz, Mexico. We recorded the occurrence of all herbaceous angiosperm species within 120 plots of 20 m x 20 m each. The plots were located at eight study locations separated by ~500 m in elevation and within three different habitats that differ in forest-use intensity: old-growth, degraded, and secondary forest. We analyzed species richness and floristic composition of herb communities among different elevations and habitats. Of the 264 plant species recorded, 31 are endemic to Mexico. Both α- and γ-diversity display a hump-shaped relation to elevation peaking at 2500 m and 3000 m, respectively. The relative contribution of between-habitat β-diversity to γ-diversity also showed a unimodal hump whereas within-habitat β-diversity declined with elevation. Forest-use intensity did not affect α-diversity, but β-diversity was high between old-growth and secondary forests. Overall, γ-diversity peaked at 2500 m (72 species), driven mainly by high within- and among-habitat β-diversity. We infer that this belt is highly sensitive to anthropogenic disturbance and forest-use intensification. At 3100 m, high γ-diversity (50 species) was driven by high α- and within-habitat β-diversity. There, losing a specific forest area might be compensated if similar assemblages occur in nearby areas. The high β-diversity and endemism suggest that mixes of different habitats are needed to sustain high γ-richness of terrestrial herbs along this elevational gradient.
Community, Communication, and Participation: The Role of Mass Media and Interpersonal Discussion in Local Political Participation

This study examines the role of community integration and mass and interpersonal communication in predicting two types of local political participation; more conventional, "institutionalized" acts of participation and less traditional acts of participating and speaking out in a forum. An analysis of survey data (N = 389) showed a strong role of newspaper readership and a somewhat lower impact of interpersonal discussion on institutionalized participation. Different patterns emerged for participation in a civic forum, with interpersonal discussion having the strongest impact of the three communication variables. Television news use had no direct impact on either type of participation, but it did have a modest indirect impact on institutionalized participation. The data also showed direct effects of dimensions of community integration for participation in a forum only. Orientations toward the larger community rather than the local neighborhood were positively related to participating in a civic forum.
VulHunter: Toward Discovering Vulnerabilities in Android Applications

With the prosperity of the Android app economy, many apps have been published and sold in various markets. However, short development cycles and insufficient security development guidelines have led to many vulnerable apps. Although some systems have been developed for automatically discovering specific vulnerabilities in apps, their effectiveness and efficiency are usually restricted because of the exponential growth of paths to examine and simplified assumptions. In this article, the authors propose a new static-analysis framework for facilitating security analysts to detect vulnerable apps from three aspects. First, they propose an app property graph (APG), a new data structure containing detailed and precise information from apps. Second, by modeling app-related vulnerabilities as graph traversals, the authors conduct graph traversals over APGs to identify vulnerable apps for easing the identification process. Third, they reduce the workload of manual verification by removing infeasible paths and generating attack inputs whenever possible. They have implemented the framework in a system named VulHunter with 9,145 lines of Java code and modeled five types of vulnerabilities. Checking 557 popular apps that are randomly collected from Google Play and have at least 1 million installations, the authors found that 375 apps (67.3 percent) have at least one vulnerability.
Exposure to Cigarette Tar Inhibits Ribonucleotide Reductase and Blocks Lymphocyte Proliferation1

Cigarette smoking causes profound suppression of pulmonary T cell responses, which has been associated with increased susceptibility to respiratory tract infections and decreased tumor surveillance. Exposure of human T cells to cigarette tar or its major phenolic components, hydroquinone and catechol, causes an immediate cessation of DNA synthesis without cytotoxicity. However, little is known of the mechanisms by which this phenomenon occurs. In this report we demonstrate that hydroquinone and catechol inhibit lymphocyte proliferation by quenching the essential tyrosyl radical in the M2 subunit of ribonucleotide reductase.
A phase-contrast microscopy-based method for modeling the mechanical behavior of mesenchymal stem cells

Abstract We present three-dimensional (3D) finite element (FE) models of single, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), generated from images obtained by optical phase-contrast microscopy and used to quantify the structural responses of the studied cells to externally applied mechanical loads. Mechanical loading has been shown to affect cell morphology and structure, phenotype, motility and other biological functions. Cells experience mechanical loads naturally, yet under prolonged or sizable loading, damage and cell death may occur, which motivates research regarding the structural behavior of loaded cells. For example, near the weight-bearing boney prominences of the buttocks of immobile persons, tissues may become highly loaded, eventually leading to massive cell death that manifests as pressure ulcers. Cell-specific computational models have previously been developed by our group, allowing simulations of cell deformations under compressive or stretching loads. These models were obtained by reconstructing specific cell structures from series of 2D fluorescence, confocal image-slices, requiring cell-specific fluorescent-staining protocols and costly (confocal) microscopy equipment. Alternative modeling approaches represent cells simply as half-spheres or half-ellipsoids (i.e. idealized geometries), which neglects the curvature details of the cell surfaces associated with changes in concentrations of strains and stresses. Thus, we introduce here for the first time an optical image-based FE modeling, where loads are simulated on reconstructed 3D geometrical cell models from a single 2D, phase-contrast image. Our novel modeling method eliminates the need for confocal imaging and fluorescent staining preparations (both expensive), and makes cell-specific FE modeling affordable and accessible to the biomechanics community. We demonstrate the utility of this cost-effective modeling method by performing simulations of compression of MSCs embedded in a gel.
From Poverty to Perversity: Ideas, Markets, and Institutions over 200 Years of Welfare Debate

To understand the rise of market fundamentalism from the margins of influence to mainstream hegemony, we compare the U.S. 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunities Reconciliation Act and the English 1834 New Poor Law—two episodes in which existing welfare regimes were overturned by market-driven ones. Despite dramatic differences across the cases, both outcomes were mobilized by “the perversity thesis”—a public discourse that reassigned blame for the poor's condition from “poverty to perversity. ” We use the term “ideational embeddedness” to characterize the power of such ideas to shape, structure, and change market regimes. The success of the perversity thesis is based on the foundations of social naturalism, theoretical realism, and the conversion narrative. In the poverty to perversity conversion narrative, structural blame for poverty is discredited as empiricist appearance while the real problem is attributed to the corrosive effects of welfare's perverse incentives on poor people themselves—they become sexually promiscuous, thrust aside personal responsibility, and develop longterm dependency. This claim enables market fundamentalism to delegitimate existing ideational regimes, to survive disconfirming data, and to change the terms of debate from social problems to the timeless forces of nature and biology. Coupling economic sociology with a sociology of ideas, we argue that ideas count; but not all ideas are created equal. Only some have the capacity to fuel radical transformations in the ideational embeddedness of markets.
The Psychophysiology of Digital Gaming: The Effect of a Non Co-Located Opponent

This article examines the effects of a non co-located opponent on self-reported emotions, psychophysiological responses, and presence experiences during digital game playing. In a within-subjects design, participants played Super Monkey Ball Jr. and Duke Nukem Advance against a computer, a non co-located friend, and a non co-located stranger. In addition to self-report ratings, electromyographic (EMG) activity over zygomaticus major, corrugator supercilii, and orbicularis oculi; cardiac interbeat intervals; and skin conductance level were measured to index positive activation, negative activation, and physiological arousal. When compared to playing against a computer, playing against a human elicited more positive emotional responses and higher arousal, spatial presence, and engagement. In addition, playing against a friend elicited more positive emotional responses (as indexed by facial EMG) and higher self-reported arousal and engagement compared to playing against a stranger. The influence of opponent type on facial EMG responses was dependent on dispositional behavioral activation system (BAS) and behavioral inhibition system (BIS) sensitivities of the player. Orbicularis oculi EMG responses to game violence varied also as a function of the player's impulsivity. These data show that the mere knowledge of who is controlling the opponent character strongly influences emotional and other responses to digital games.
State-Tribal Warfare and Male-biased Casualties Among the Bari

Une decouverte recente dans l'etude des soi-disant guerres primitives est que les mâles adultes -usuellemnt des jeunes hommes- forment une excessive partie des pertes au combat. Il semblerait que leur propension a proteger leur famille de la guerre les pousse au sacrifice au combat, comme le prouve l'exemple des Bari du Venezuela
Interactions in the Error-prone Postreplication Repair Proteins hREV1, hREV3, and hREV7*

Most mutations after DNA damage in yeastSaccharomyces cerevisiae are induced by error-prone translesion DNA synthesis employing scRev1 and DNA polymerase ζ that consists of scRev3 and scRev7 proteins. Recently, the humanREV1 (hREV1) and REV3(hREV3) genes were identified, and their products were revealed to be involved in UV-induced mutagenesis, as observed for their yeast counterparts. Human REV7 (hREV7) was also cloned, and its product was found to interact with hREV3, but the biological function of hREV7 remained unknown. We report here the analyses of precise interactions in the human REV proteins. The interaction between hREV1 and hREV7 was identified by the yeast two-hybrid library screening using a bait of hREV7, which was confirmed by in vitro and in vivo binding assays. The homodimerization of hREV7 was also detected in the two-hybrid analysis. In addition, the precise domains for interaction between hREV7 and hREV1 or hREV3 and for hREV7 homodimerization were determined. Although hREV7 interacts with both hREV1 and hREV3, a stable complex formation of the three proteins was undetectable in vitro. These findings suggest the possibility that hREV7 might play an important role in regulating the enzymatic activities of hREV1 and hREV3 for mutagenesis in response to DNA damage.
Predicting Winning Price in Real Time Bidding with Censored Data

In the aspect of a Demand-Side Platform (DSP), which is the agent of advertisers, we study how to predict the winning price such that the DSP can win the bid by placing a proper bidding value in the real-time bidding (RTB) auction. We propose to leverage the machine learning and statistical methods to train the winning price model from the bidding history. A major challenge is that a DSP usually suffers from the censoring of the winning price, especially for those lost bids in the past. To solve it, we utilize the censored regression model, which is widely used in the survival analysis and econometrics, to fit the censored bidding data. Note, however, the assumption of censored regression does not hold on the real RTB data. As a result, we further propose a mixture model, which combines linear regression on bids with observable winning prices and censored regression on bids with the censored winning prices, weighted by the winning rate of the DSP. Experiment results show that the proposed mixture model in general prominently outperforms linear regression in terms of the prediction accuracy.
1-Benzyl-2-acetamido-2-deoxy-α-D-galactopyranoside Blocks the Apical Biosynthetic Pathway in Polarized HT-29 Cells*

In previous work we reported that long term treatment of polarized HT-29 cells by 1-benzyl-2-acetamido-2-deoxy-α-d-galactopyranoside (GalNAcα-O-bn) induced undersialylation and intracellular distribution of apical glycoproteins such as dipeptidyl peptidase IV (DPP-IV), and we suggested therefore that sialylation could act as an apical targeting signal. In this work, the apical direct biosynthetic route was studied after transfection of polarized enterocyte-like HT-29 5M12 cloned cells with a murine cDNA coding for a soluble form of DPP-IV, which was secreted into the apical medium. A 24-h treatment of transfected cells by GalNAcα-O-bn markedly inhibited the apical secretion and the sialylation of this soluble murine DPP-IV, which became blocked inside the cell. A similar short GalNAcα-O-bn treatment also induced an intracellular distribution of both endogenous transmembrane DPP-IV and proteins involved in the regulation of the apical trafficking such as the apical t-SNARE syntaxin-3 and the raft-associated protein annexin XIIIb, whereas the basolateral t-SNARE syntaxin-4 kept its normal localization. These apical membrane proteins moved efficiently from trans-Golgi network to apical carrier vesicles but failed to be transported from carrier vesicles to the apical plasma membrane. Isolation of membrane microdomains showed that GalNAcα-O-bn induced the formation of abnormal lipid-rich microdomains in comparison to normal rafts, as shown by their lower buoyant density and their depletion in annexin XIIIb. In conclusion, GalNAcα-O-bn blocks the anterograde traffic to the apical surface of polarized HT-29 cells at the transport level or docking/fusion level of carrier vesicles.
Electric signals for separation of earthworms (Eudrilus eugeniæ)

The worm Eudrilus eugeniA¦ is a species adapted to tropical climates and is highly demanded as fishing bait, therefore possessing high economic value. Separation of worms from humus is typically performed by manual, mechanical, behavioral and electric methods. The objective of this study was to characterize electric pulses for separation of worms (Eudrilus eugeniA¦) from humus. To determine separation efficiency of worms from humus, a controlled pulse generator was used with frequencies of 1 and 5 Hz, voltages of 100 and 200Â V, peak widths of 2, 3 and 4 x 10-3 s and exposure times of 15 and 30 min. The electrical pulse characteristics which resulted in greatest separation efficiency were: 1 Hz, 2 x 10-3 s and 200Â V; and the maximum displacement index was 80% which occurred under these conditions. The survival index was 100% for the pulses which resulted in the greatest separation indices.
A Cross‐Cultural Study of Color‐Grouping: Tests of the Perceptual‐Physiology Account of Color Universals

Kay and McDaniel (1978) proposed that Berlin and Kay's (1969) linguistic color universals were based on universal perceptual physiology. If this is so then speakers of languages with relatively few basic color terms should have perceptual structures corresponding to the "missing" linguistic categories—the nascent categories hypothesis. Further, speakers of languages with the full set of terms for the 11 universal categories should still retain the perceptual structure that yields the evolutionary path embodied on the hierarchy—the recapitulation hypothesis. This article tests these complementary hypotheses by comparing speakers of English, Russian, and Setswana— languages that have 11, 12, and 5 basic color terms respectively —using a color-grouping task. The fit to the latest version of the theory (Kay et al. 1991) was closer than to earlier versions of the theory, but even so there were still discrepancies. Thus there is support for the universalist's position (there are strong similarities across languages in color grouping despite linguistic differences), but Berlin and Kay's framework may not encapsulate the full extent of color-category universalism.
Who Is Easier to Nudge

We study heterogeneity in the responsiveness to choice architecture, focusing on the propensity of low-income versus high-income employees to opt out of the default contribution rate in 401(k) retirement savings plans. We develop a statistical model to distinguish between two underlying sources of heterogeneity: low-income employees may be more likely to remain at the default because it is similar to contribution rates they would have selected for themselves anyway or because they are simply slower to opt out of the default, controlling for the contribution rate that they would select upon opting out. Applying the model to employees at ten large companies, we find that both sources of heterogeneity are important. Holding fixed the degree of alignment between the default and the contribution rate an employee would select upon opting out, a low-income employee is 7.2 percentage points more likely than a high-income employee to remain at the default despite having a different target contribution rate.
Instruments as agents: on the nature of semantic relations

There is a widespread current assumption that the semantic relations underlying linguistic constructions reflect the way human beings ineluctably, and hence universally, perceive events and situations. This assumption will be questioned in this paper. To make the point, a linguistic construction purportedly expressing the instrumental case will be examined. It will be convenient here to juxtapose my treatment of this construction with the one proposed by case grammarians, and by Fillmore in particular. However, the discussion has implications for semantic relations in any linguistic theory, whether they appear there as semantic roles, thematic relations, theta roles, or whatever. These implications will be discussed in the final section.