Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Lévy Simple Structural Models

This paper considers credit portfolio models based on Levy processes in general, and the gamma model in particular. It describes both single-name and multi-name situations using the gamma model, along with calibration fits and a comparison of various simple Levy models. There is also extensive historical data, including the May 2005 Auto crisis, which can be described in terms of the model. Parameter-based risk management using the gamma model is also discussed along with implementation details.
Ecology of ebola virus: a first clue?

The identity, if any, of the natural reservoirs and biological vectors of the related Marburg and Ebola viruses, which have caused several dramatic nosocomial outbreaks of acute hemorrhagic fever in Africa, has been an unsolved riddle with few clues to the answer for the past 13 years. The failure to find evidence of infection with Marburg virus in wild monkeys captured in Uganda [1], where the fateful group of Cercopithicus aethiops delivered this virus to the first known human vic-
Circulating microRNAs, miR-939, miR-595, miR-519d and miR-494, Identify Cirrhotic Patients with HCC

The performance of circulating biomarkers for the diagnosis of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is sub-optimal. In this study we tested circulating microRNAs as biomarkers for HCC in cirrhotic patients by performing a two stage study: a discovery phase conducted by microarray and a validation phase performed by qRT-PCR in an independent series of 118 patients. Beside miRNAs emerged from the discovery phase, miR-21, miR-221, miR-519d were also tested in the validation setting on the basis of literary and tissue findings. Deregulated microRNAs were assayed in HCC-derived cells in the intracellular compartment, cell culture supernatant and exosomal fraction. Serum and tissue microRNA levels were compared in 14 patients surgically treated for HCC. From the discovery study, it emerged that seven circulating microRNAs were differentially expressed in cirrhotic patients with and without HCC. In the validation set, miR-939, miR-595 and miR-519d were shown to differentiate cirrhotic patients with and without HCC. MiR-939 and miR-595 are independent factors for HCC. ROC curves of miR-939, miR-595 and miR-519d displayed that AUC was higher than AFP. An exosomal secretion of miR-519d, miR-21, miR-221 and miR-1228 and a correlation between circulating and tissue levels of miR-519d, miR-494 and miR-21 were found in HCC patients. Therefore, we show that circulating microRNAs deserve attention as non-invasive biomarkers in the diagnostic setting of HCC and that exosomal secretion contributes to discharging a subset of microRNAs into the extracellular compartment.
Differential Effects of Whole Language and Traditional Instruction on Reading Attitudes

This article reports a three-part study comparing the effects of whole-language practice versus traditional basal instruction on children's reading attitudes. In Experiment 1, children in two whole-language elementary schools (Grades 1–5, N=485) and children in two traditional schools (Grades 1–5, N=433) responded to the Elementary Reading Attitude Survey (ERAS). Although significant main effects of grade level and gender were observed, there was no main effect of instructional approach. The possibility that whole language had been too broadly defined was addressed in a second study. In Experiment 2, Bergeron's (1990) definition was used to identify a third whole-language school, meeting more specific criteria. All students in Grades 1–5 (N=713) were compared with the original basal group. Only the recreational ERAS subscale was administered because of the inapplicability of certain items of the academic subscale to the new whole-language setting. As before, no main effect of approach was observed, nor was any interaction of approach with other factors significant. Experiment 3 involved follow-up structured observations of two first-grade teachers in the second whole-language school. The attitude means of these teachers' classes differed significantly. Although the two teachers exhibited many similarities, notable differences emerged that warrant further study in order to examine a possible causal relationship between practice and attitude. Important differences in practice within a general whole-language philosophy may affect reading attitude differentially.
A General Theory of Expropriative Crime: An Evolutionary Ecological Approach

Ever since Durkheim, many social scientists have subscribed to the premise that deviance and crime anre "normal" properties of naturally functioning social systems. When trying to explain the causes of these behaviors, however, many social scientists typically resort to the idea of "pathological" origins. On the whole, social scientists have yet to explain how and why "normal" individuals operating in unexceptional social environments deviate and commit crimes, Recent developments in behavioral ecology and evolutionary biology provide new insights that promise to explain how deviance and crime arise naturally in populations of interacting individuals without necessarily implying genetic influences. We interpret criminal behaviors by which offenders expropriate goods or services from others as expressions of diverse behavioral strategies that derive from normal patterns of population-level social organization and interaction. This views accommodates both explanations that focus on individual causes of crime and those directed toward social factors. Our approach permits the generation of novel hypotheses and fully accommodates, simplifies, and helps unify important and diverse insights and findings amassed by a wide range of disciplines and theories that have tried to account for the nature and distribution of crime.
Cognitive appraisal of the menopause: The menopause representations questionnaire (MRQ)

This study describes the development of the Menopause Representations Questionnaire (MRQ), which, based on Leventhal's self-regulation model (Leventhal et al., 1984), samples a range of cognitions about menopause, including identity, consequences, time frame and perceptions of control and cure. Items were derived from a qualitative interview study of 45 women aged 49-51. Identity included attributions of general symptoms as well as hot flushes and menstrual changes; positive and negative consequences were evident, as were both short and long time lines. The MRQ was given to a sample of 80 women aged 49-56 years. Internal consistency and test-retest reliability were reasonable. Perceptions of control/cure were negatively associated with depressed mood (Women's Health Questionnaire, WHQ; Hunter, 1992), and perceptions of negative consequences were associated with medical help-seeking.
Tigecycline for carbapenem-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae infections in the intensive care unit

From the 1 Alfa Institute of Biomedical Sciences, Athens, 2 Department of Internal Medicine-Infectious Diseases, Iaso General Hospital, Athens, 3 Intensive Care Unit, Attikon University Hospital, Athens, 4 Intensive Care Unit, Genimatas General Hospital, Thessaloniki, 5 Department of Microbiology, Agios Pavlos General Hospital, Thessaloniki, Greece, and 6 Department of Medicine, Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, USA
Constitution by Committee? Legislative Competence Orders under the Government of Wales Act (2007–2011)

There are increasing calls for parliamentary select committees to take on additional tasks, becoming more involved in the legislative process with the aim of enhancing scrutiny of the executive. Analysis of the role of the Commons Welsh Affairs Select Committee in the process of devolving additional powers to the National Assembly for Wales under the Government of Wales Act (GoWA) 2006 highlights some of the challenges that select committees face in undertaking such work, particularly in a complex constitutional context where the aims of scrutiny are subject to conflicting interpretations. Although the referendum result in Wales on 3 March 2011 and the consequent coming into effect of Part 4 of the GoWA have rendered the Legislative Competence Order procedure largely obsolete, there are also lessons to be drawn from the Welsh Affairs Committees experiences in the 2005–2010 Parliament about the role of select committees in providing a bridge between the devolved legislatures of the UK and Westminster.
Links Between Children’s Use of Critical Thinking and an Expert Teacher’s Teaching in Creative Dance

The purpose of this study was to describe how children’s use of critical thinking skills in their movement actions was inspired and elicited by an “expert” teacher’s task design, task presentation, and instructional strategies during children’s creative dance lessons. The data sources included videotaping 16 creative dance lessons and written anecdotal descriptions. The findings indicated that by presenting sequential open-ended tasks and learning cues and providing instructional scaffolding, the teachers helped the students generate divergent and original movement responses and refinement of dance quality and expression, which are critical thinking elements.
Unlocking the clubhouse: the Carnegie Mellon experience

In the fall of 1995, just seven of 95 students entering the undergraduate program in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University were women. In 2000, 54 of 130, or 42%, were women. What happened? This article presents a brief history of the transformation at Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science, and the research project that lay behind it. A fuller discussion, set in an analysis of gender issues in computing from childhood through college, is found in our book, Unlocking the Clubhouse: Women in Computing [2]. The story begins with a research study designed specifically to diagnose and find remedies for the gender gap in Carnegie Mellon's undergraduate computer science program. Female enrollment had hovered below 10% for a number of years, and the fraction of women leaving the program was approximately twice that for men. In 1995, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation funded our proposal for a two-year program, which was followed up two years later with a two-year extension. The goal was to understand the experiences and choices of both men and women with respect to studying computer science, and to design interventions that would involve more women.
Informal care in social context: A social psychological analysis of participation, impact and intervention in care of the elderly

Abstract Concern about the provision and effects of care to elderly people by unpaid family, relatives and friends has arisen in the contexts of changing demographic structures of populations and, in Britain at least, explicit policy by Government which seeks to promote familial responsibility for the financial, physical and emotional needs of elderly populations. The present review examines the extent and nature of informal care to elderly people, assesses the evidence to support sociological models of care work participation and the extent to which such models are reflected in beliefs concerning care of elderly people and intentions to cease direct provision of care. Studies of the psychological impacts of care work and of interventions to modify carer wellbeing are critically reviewed. It is suggested that future psychological research should focus on modeling the modifiable psychological processes which explain variance in care work participation, impact and uptake of services, and on the impacts of c.
Mining Scenario-Based Triggers and Effects

We present and investigate the problem of mining scenario-based triggers and effects from execution traces, in the framework of Damm and Harel's live sequence charts (LSC); a visual, modal, scenario-based, inter-object language. Given a 'trigger scenario', we extract LSCs whose pre-chart is equivalent to the given trigger; dually, given an 'effect scenario', we extract LSCs whose main-chart is equivalent to the given effect. Our algorithms use data mining methods to provide significant sound and complete results modulo user-defined thresholds. Both the input trigger and effect scenarios, and the resulting candidate modal scenarios, are represented and visualized using a UML2- compliant variant of LSC. Thus, existing modeling tools can be used both to specify the input for the miner and to exploit its output. Experiments performed with several applications show promising results.
FATORES QUE INTERFEREM NO DESEMPENHO DE USUÁRIOS DE IMPLANTE COCLEAR EM TESTES DE PERCEPÇÃO DE FALA

Purpose : to analyze the relation between speech perception tests in cochlear implant users.Methods : questionnaires and speech perception tests were applied in 25 individuals from both genders with sensorioneural hearing loss and users of unilateral cochlear implant.Results : 48% of the participants had a good performance (50%) on speech perception tests. The participants who had the best results are not the ones with higher auditory age. 12 participants had a score higher than 50% and 10 (83%) of those, did the cochlear implant surgery before 5 years old. The use of hearing aid contralateral to the cochlear implant had a significant influence on the participants performances on tests. The participants who started using hearing aids earlier did not have the best results on the tests.Conclusion : the early activation of the cochlear implant is an important variable on the tests performance. The use of hearing aid contralateral to the cochlear implant had a significant influence on the speech recognition tests.
Time Perspective as a Predictor of Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game Playing

This article focuses on the relationship between the time perspective (TP) personality trait and massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) playing. We investigate the question of frequency of playing. The TP was measured with Zimbardo's TP Inventory (ZTPI), which includes five factors-past negative, past positive, present hedonistic, present fatalistic, and future. The study used data from 154 MMORPG players. We demonstrated that TP partially explained differences within a group of players with respect to the frequency of playing. Significant positive correlations were found between present factors and the amount of time spent playing MMORPGs, and significant negative correlation was found between the future factor and the time spent playing MMORPGs. Our study also revealed the influence of future-present balance on playing time. Players who scored lower in future-present balance variables (their present score was relatively high compared with their future score) reported higher values in playing time. In contrast to referential studies on TP and drug abuse and gambling, present fatalistic TP was demonstrated to be a stronger predictor of extensive playing than present hedonistic TP, which opened the question of motivation for playing. The advantage of our study compared with other personality-based studies lies in the fact that TP is a stable but malleable personality trait with a direct link to playing behavior. Therefore, TP is a promising conceptual resource for excessive playing therapy.
Bullying in schools: Mainstream and special needs

The school bully has always been with us. Many examples appear in the literature, some portrayals of which have not fully conveyed the true horror that sustained intimidation can bring to the victim. Surprisingly, we still know very little about this problem and particularly how it affects pupils with special needs. One might intuitively expect them to figure in either of the two main roles. The Sheffield team set out to remedy our ignorance. Here they introduce us to a survey undertaken in local schools. The position of special needs pupils, initially, is far from clear. However, subsequent investigations prove more revealing. Now that the work at Sheffield has attracted support from the Department of Education and Science we can look forward to more detailed findings in a year or so.
Leukocyte antimicrobial function in patients with leprosy.

Patients with lepromatous leprosy are unresponsive to lepromin skin-test material and possess defective lymphocyte function in vitro, including impaired mitogenesis in response to antigens of Mycobacterium leprae. It has been claimed that their macrophages cannot digest M. leprae in vitro; such a defect could explain both lepromin nonreactivity and impaired lymphocyte function on the basis of failure of the afferent limb of the immune response (i.e., defective macrophage "processing" of M. leprae). The present studies indicate that macrophages from patients with lepromatous and tuberculoid leprosy and from normal donors do not differ in their ability to digest heat-killed M. leprae in vitro, or in their ability to sustain the viability of M. leprae in tissue culture; that monocytes, macrophages, and polymorphonuclear leukocytes of leprosy patients and controls possess equivalent microbicidal activity against Listeria monocytogenes, Escherichia coli, Proteus vulgaris, Staphylococcus aureus, and Candida albicans; and that polymorphonuclear leukocytes from patients with lepromatous leprosy iodinate ingested bacteria normally. Whether the basic immune defect leading to the development of lepromatous leprosy resides in the lymphocyte or in the macrophage remains to be determined. However, the present study shows that phagocytic cells from patients with either principal form of leprosy function normally in a variety of sophisticated tests of antimicrobial function.
An Ethological Study of Dominance Formation and Maintenance in a Group of Human Adolescents.

SAVIN-WILLIAMS, RICHARD C. An Ethological Study of Dominance Formation and Maintenance in a Group of Human Adolescents. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1976, 47, 972-979. A stable, ordered dominance hierarchy was found via observational and sociometric methods for a group of 13-year-old boys during a 5-week camp. This group structure was formed early in camp and was stable across settings, time, and types of dominance interactions. The hierarchy correlated significantly with the rank ordering of bed position and highly, but not significantly, with hiking position, athletic ability, physical fitness, chronological age, and late popularity. Group characteristics and individual differences, especially in regard to Alpha and Omega, are noted. The dominance hierarchy appears to serve in the reduction of agonistic behaviors and, on an individual level, to provide knowledge of where one's place is among one's peers.
Pitch Enumeration: Failure to Subitize in Audition

Background Subitizing involves recognition mechanisms that allow effortless enumeration of up to four visual objects, however despite ample resolution experimental data suggest that only one pitch can be reliably enumerated. This may be due to the grouping of tones according to harmonic relationships by recognition mechanisms prior to fine pitch processing. Poorer frequency resolution of auditory information available to recognition mechanisms may lead to unrelated tones being grouped, resulting in underestimation of pitch number. Methods, Results and Conclusion We tested whether pitch enumeration is better for chords of full harmonic complex tones, where grouping errors are less likely, than for complexes with fewer and less accurately tuned harmonics. Chords of low familiarity were used to mitigate the possibility that participants would recognize the chord itself and simply recall the number of pitches. We found that accuracy of pitch enumeration was less than the visual system overall, and underestimation of pitch number increased for stimuli containing fewer harmonics. We conclude that harmonically related tones are first grouped at the poorer frequency resolution of the auditory nerve, leading to poor enumeration of more than one pitch.
Linguistic universals, markedness and learnability: comparing two different approaches

There are currently two different linguistically-based approaches to universals in second language acquisition, one stemming from typological universals (Greenberg, 1966) and the other from Chomskyan Universal Grammar. Associated with each approach is a concept of markedness. Typologists define markedness implicationally; current theories of language learnability define markedness in terms of the Subset Principle. Although coming from very different perspectives, these two definitions of markedness coincide in a number of predictions they make for L1 and L2 acquisition. Similarities and differences between these two approaches to markedness and acquisition are discussed in this paper.
Reinforcement Learning of Local Shape in the Game of Go

We explore an application to the game of Go of a reinforcement learning approach based on a linear evaluation function and large numbers of binary features. This strategy has proved effective in game playing programs and other reinforcement learning applications. We apply this strategy to Go by creating over a million features based on templates for small fragments of the board, and then use temporal difference learning and self-play. This method identifies hundreds of low level shapes with recognisable significance to expert Go players, and provides quantitive estimates of their values. We analyse the relative contributions to performance of templates of different types and sizes. Our results show that small, translation-invariant templates are surprisingly effective. We assess the performance of our program by playing against the Average Liberty Player and a variety of computer opponents on the 9×9 Computer Go Server. Our linear evaluation function appears to outperform all other static evaluation functions that do not incorporate substantial domain knowledge.
How Guilt and Pride Shape Subsequent Self-Control

The present research utilized experience sampling data to investigate how guilt and pride experiences in response to self-control failure versus success affect future self-control when encountering the same type of temptation (thematic self-control). Guilt showed signs of a “mixed blessing” such that previous guilt led to an increase in subsequent self-regulatory goal importance and conflict awareness; however, accounting for these beneficial effects, guilt also had a detrimental residual effect on the successful inhibition of recurring temptation. Pride, in contrast, had uniformly positive effects on subsequent self-control in the form of increased goal importance, increased conflict, and increased likelihood to use self-control to resist temptation. These results contrasted in theoretically important ways from an analysis of short-term spillover effects of incidental guilt and pride on thematically unrelated subsequent self-control. Potential mechanisms and implications of these findings are discussed.
Class-Wide Positive Behavior Support and Group Contingencies

The Good Behavior Game (GBG) is a powerful group contingency with a history of documented empirical support. The purpose of this study was to compare two interdependent group contingencies, the GBG and a positive variation, the Caught Being Good Game (CBGG), in a school implementing school-wide positive behavior support. A kindergarten and fourth-grade classroom teacher with 17 and 20 students, respectively, implemented both versions of the game in a counterbalanced fashion. Using a withdrawal design, results showed similar effects on disruptive and on-task behaviors. The CBGG is discussed as an effective variation of the GBG that is acceptable to both teachers and students.