Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Florida's Sexually Violent Predator Program

Sex offender civil commitment (SOCC) has been enacted in 16 states amid widespread controversy. A critical component of civil commitment is the risk assessment process that determines recommendations for civil confinement once a prison term has expired. This study analyzes the first stage of a two-stage risk assessment process that determines whether eligible sex offenders are referred for clinical evaluation in Florida's Sexually Violent Predator Program. A sample of 773 offenders referred to the program between July 2000 and August 2003 is examined to identify group differences between released and referred sex offenders and the unique effects of legal, clinical, and other factors on the decision to refer for clinical evaluation. Despite considerable discretion given evaluators in assessing risk, the findings indicate substantial and salient group differences between those released and referred and that the primary factors informing referral decisions are consistent with legislative intent, actuarial instruments, and sex offender recidivism research.
The effect of busyness on survey participation: being too busy or feeling too busy to cooperate?

‘I am too busy’ is one of the most commonly cited reasons for people not to participate in survey research. Yet, empirical data on the association between ‘busyness’ and survey participation are scarce, due to a lack of data on busyness or time pressure among the non-respondents. This article sets off with an overview of the strategies and types of auxiliary data that can be used to assess the effects of busyness on survey participation. Then, using data of a two-wave SCV/ISSP-survey of 2002 that includes an elaborate section on time use and combining work and family life, we employ survey variables of the first wave to investigate effects of busyness on survey participation in the second wave. Interestingly, we find that the subjective experience of busyness – feeling too busy – has a significant effect on participation, whereas more objective measures of busyness do not.
Spread of excitation in the smooth muscle of the rat portal vein.

The longitudinal musculature of the rat portal vein is characterized by spontancous, rhythmic contractions indicating effective intercellular conduction in this vascular smooth muscle. The present study was done in order to evaluate the relative importance of neurogenic and myogrnic mechanisms for the spread of excitation in an isolated preparation of this vessel. A local anesthetic agent, in concentrations which blocked impulse transmission in autonomic nerves, failed to interfere with conduction in the smooth muscle of the portal vein whereas hyperosmolarity. which is considered to preclude electro tonic spread of action potentials between muscle cells (Barr. Dewey and Rerger 1965), caused desynchronization of the contractile activity. It is concluded that conduction in this vascular smooth muscle is myogenic in nature. The fact that the portal vein, in contrast to most other vessels, is equipped with a “double plexus” of adrenergic nerve fibres (Fuxe. personal communication) does not seem to be important for coordination of its spontaneous contractions. The influence of the hyperosmotic environment on the electrical and mechanical activity of the portal vein is illustrated by experiments with a sucrose-gap technique. The mode of action of hyperosmotic solutions is discussed.
The Civic Attitudes of Ethnic Minority Youth and the Impact of Citizenship Education

This paper compares the civic attitudes of migrant and native youth in five West European countries, and explores the effect of citizenship education on the civic orientations of migrant children. Use is made of data from the IEA Civic Education survey. This survey involved a large study among 14-year-olds in 28 countries. The paper finds that migrant youth generally are at least as supportive of civic values as the ethnic majority. They do not embrace the civic notions of patriotism, institutional trust and gender equality to the same extent as the dominant group, though. Differences between the two groups on gender equality and to some degree also on institutional trust disappear, however, when social background variables are controlled for. It is concluded that differences between the allochtonous and autochthonous groups in the espousal of civic values are mostly a reflection of social differences and that migrant cultures are not obstructing the adoption of these values. This contradicts the conserva.
Effect of the antenna-human body distance on the antenna matching in UWB WBAN applications

In this paper, the interaction between the ultra wideband (UWB) antenna and human body is considered and demonstrated in the range of 0-30 mm above the body surface, which could be practical operation distance for the on-body antenna. Two different planar UWB antennas (loop and dipole) are used for the examinations. First, the antenna performance in free space (FS) is shown. Then, the effect of the antenna-body distance on the antenna operation is analysed in the terms of the matching, i.e., reflection coefficient S11. Measurements are carried out in the proximity of a real human body while the simulations are run by using the whole body model having a frequency-dependent behaviour. Observations are concluded to commensurate with the antenna field regions and the size of antenna's reactive near-field was satisfied to be an important factor in the evaluation of an acceptable on-body operation. No significant differences between different antennas were observed through investigations. Both antennas perform satisfactory when the distance is high enough. The results of this study are helpful to engineers and designers evaluating antennas for the use in UWB wireless body area network (WBAN) applications.
Increased root hair density by loss of WRKY6 in Arabidopsis thaliana

Root hairs are unicellular elongations of certain rhizodermal cells that improve the uptake of sparingly soluble and immobile soil nutrients. Among different Arabidopsis thaliana genotypes, root hair density, length and the local acclimation to low inorganic phosphate (Pi) differs considerably, when analyzed on split agar plates. Here, genome-wide association fine mapping identified significant single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with the increased root hair density in the absence of local phosphate on chromosome 1. A loss-of-functionmutant of the candidate transcription factor gene WRKY6, which is involved in the acclimation of plants to low phosphorus, had increased root hair density. This is partially explained by a reduced cortical cell diameter in wrky6-3, reducing the rhizodermal cell numbers adjacent to the cortical cells. As a consequence, rhizodermal cells in positions that are in contact with two cortical cells are found more often, leading to higher hair density. Distinct cortical cell diameters and epidermal cell lengths distinguish other Arabidopsis accessions with distinct root hair density and −Pi response from diploid Col-0, while tetraploid Col-0 had generally larger root cell sizes, which explain longer hairs. A distinct radial root morphology within Arabidopsis accessions and wrky6-3explains some, but not all, differences in the root hair acclimation to –Pi.
Stable suppression of gene expression by RNAi in mammalian cells

In a diverse group of organisms including plants, Caenorhabditis elegans, Drosophila, and trypanosomes, double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) is a potent trigger of gene silencing. In several model systems, this natural response has been developed into a powerful tool for the investigation of gene function. Use of RNA interference (RNAi) as a genetic tool has recently been extended to mammalian cells, being inducible by treatment with small, ≈22-nt RNAs that mimic those produced in the first step of the silencing process. Here, we show that some cultured murine cells specifically silence gene expression upon treatment with long dsRNAs (≈500 nt). This response shows hallmarks of conventional RNAi including silencing at the posttranscriptional level and the endogenous production of ≈22-nt small RNAs. Furthermore, enforced expression of long, hairpin dsRNAs induced stable gene silencing. The ability to create stable “knock-down” cell lines expands the utility of RNAi in mammalian cells by enabling examination of phenotypes that develop over long time periods and lays the groundwork for by using RNAi in phenotype-based, forward genetic selections.
Increased Expression of Mitotic Checkpoint Genes in Breast Cancer Cells with Chromosomal Instability

Purpose: Most breast cancers have chromosomal instability that seems related to defective mitotic spindle checkpoints. Because the molecular basis of this defect is unknown, we evaluated breast cancer cell lines and tissues for possible defects involving the major mitotic checkpoint genes responsible for maintaining chromosomal stability. Experimental Design: We analyzed sequences and expression levels (RNA and protein) of eight major spindle checkpoint genes (MAD1L1, MAD2L1, MAD2L2, BUB1, BUB1B, BUB3, CDC20, and TTK) in a panel of 12 breast cancer cell lines, most with established genetic instability and defective spindle damage checkpoint response. mRNA levels of these genes were also measured in primary tumor samples, and immunohistochemical staining was used to evaluate BUB1B protein levels in a panel of 270 additional cases of breast cancer. Results: No functionally significant sequence variations were found for any of the eight genes in the breast cancer cell lines with chromosomal instability. More surprisingly, the mRNA and protein levels for these checkpoint genes are significantly higher in the genetically unstable breast cancer cell lines and in high-grade primary breast cancer tissues than in the stable (and checkpoint proficient) MCF-10A and normal mammary epithelial cells, or in normal breast tissues. In fact, overexpression of the BUB1B protein is a marker that recognizes nearly 80% of breast cancers in paraffin-embedded tissues. Conclusions: Defective mitotic spindle checkpoints in breast cancer are most likely not caused by low expression or mutations of these eight checkpoint genes. High levels of these particular transcripts could represent a cellular compensation for defects in other molecular components of the mitotic spindle damage checkpoint, and increased expression of these genes might be markers of breast cancers with chromosomal instability.
Chronic morphine induces the concomitant phosphorylation and altered association of multiple signaling proteins: A novel mechanism for modulating cell signaling

Traditional mechanisms thought to underlie opioid tolerance include receptor phosphorylation/down-regulation, G-protein uncoupling, and adenylyl cyclase superactivation. A parallel line of investigation also indicates that opioid tolerance development results from a switch from predominantly opioid receptor Giα inhibitory to Gβγ stimulatory signaling. As described previously, this results, in part, from the increased relative abundance of Gβγ-stimulated adenylyl cyclase isoforms as well as from a profound increase in their phosphorylation [Chakrabarti, S. , Rivera, M. , Yan, S. -Z. , Tang, W. -J. & Gintzler, A. R. (1998) Mol. Pharmacol. 54, 655–662; Chakrabarti, S. , Wang, L. , Tang, W. -J. & Gintzler, A. R. (1998) Mol. Pharmacol. 54, 949–953]. The present study demonstrates that chronic morphine administration results in the concomitant phosphorylation of three key signaling proteins, G protein receptor kinase (GRK) 2/3, β-arrestin, and Gβ, in the guinea pig longitudinal muscle myenteric plexus tissue. Augmented phosphorylation of all three proteins is evident in immunoprecipitate obtained by using either anti-GRK2/3 or Gβ antibodies, but the phosphorylation increment is greater in immunoprecipitate obtained with Gβ antibodies. Analyses of coimmunoprecipitated proteins indicate that phosphorylation of GRK2/3, β-arrestin, and Gβ has varying consequences on their ability to associate. As a result, increased availability of and signaling via Gβγ could occur without compromising the membrane content (and presumably activity) of GRK2/3. Induction of the concomitant phosphorylation of multiple proteins in a multimolecular complex with attendant modulation of their association represents a novel mechanism for increasing Gβγ signaling and opioid tolerance formation.
Differences in responses to flooding by germinating seeds of two contrasting rice cultivars and two species of economically important grass weeds

Barnyard grasses are serious weeds in direct seeded rice. We assessed the effectiveness of using controlled flooding for its control using two rice cultivars and two barnyard grasses contrasting in flood tolerance during germination. Flooding with 100 mm water after seeding suppressed barnyard grasses; but delaying flooding by 2-4 days was ineffective. Flooding increased the activity of alcohol dehydrogenase and pyruvate decarboxylase; the increase was higher in the tolerant rice cultivar but similar in both barnyard grasses. Aldehyde dehydrogenase activity increased only in flood-tolerant types of rice and weeds, but not in flood-sensitive types, implying potential role in tolerance.
The Commercialization of Children's Television in Postsocialist Europe

Abstract By the beginning of the twenty-first century, the children's television business had become one of the fastest growing sectors of the European media industries. The emerging postsocialist media markets have become a high priority for both transnational and regional media companies looking for new audience groups. In this article, the author provides a historical overview of the transformations that occurred in the arena of children's media culture in Eastern Europe during the last thirty years. Children's television, which attained a symbolic importance in national public debates throughout the region after 1989, can provide a unique lens to examine broader social, political, and cultural issues related to the transformations of postsocialist media systems. The author analyzes the emergence of a new conceptualization of the child media user, who is more influential than ever before, but whose power is given, expressed, and experienced primarily through consumption. Children's television in Hungary is used as a case study to provide an in-depth and detailed analysis of such transformations using diverse sources including TV guides, television programs, and in-depth interviews conducted with media professionals and policymakers between 1998 and 2008.
Peer-Mediated Conversational Repair in Students with Moderate and Severe Disabilities

Conversation skills are critical to learning and the development of social relationships. Some students with severe disabilities have a difficult time conversing with their nondisabled classmates because of their unintelligible verbalizations or an inability to correct or repair a message that may have been misunderstood by their conversational partner. For intervention purposes, extant literature strongly suggests that typical similar-age peers are effective change agents. In a study using a multiple baseline design with generalization probes, nine typical peers were taught to request repairs in response to unintelligible verbalizations. Three peers were assigned to each of the three target students. Teaching peers to request repair resulted in increased repaired messages and frequency of turns taken during conversation.
Cardiac autonomic adaptations in elite Spanish soccer players during preseason.

PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to evaluate changes in autonomic control of heart rate (HR) and fitness in a group of elite soccer players during the preseason. METHODS Eight professional male soccer players competing in the Spanish First Division were evaluated in July (wk 1) and September (wk 8) with night-time HR variability (HRV) over 4 different days, ultra-short-term HR recovery (HRR) during a small-sided-games session, Yo-Yo Intermittent Recovery test level 1 (Yo-Yo IR1), and a field test for determination of maximum aerobic speed. RESULTS Players exhibited a greater HRV and a faster ultra-short-term HRR at wk 8, with the players with a lower HRV at wk 1 exhibiting the greatest improvements at wk 8. However, there were unclear improvements in performance parameters, with maximum HR (HRmax) being reduced over the preseason period. This change in HRmax was correlated with the change in short-term HRV parameters (ρ = 0.829, P = .042). Large correlations were observed among HRV, ultra-short-term HRR, and field performance parameters only at wk 8. Furthermore, the variation (%) of the root-mean-square of successive differences between R-R intervals was increased during the preseason (12.95% ± 15.14% to 29.39% ± 21.93%, P = .013) and significantly correlated (r = .898, P = .006) with Yo-Yo IR1 performance (~2600 ± 786 m) at wk 8. CONCLUSIONS The current results support the appropriateness and practicality of night-time HRV and ultra-short-term HRR for evaluation of autonomic adaptations in professional soccer players, despite the unclear improvements in specific field performance parameters.
Intelligent design: student perceptions of teaching and learning in large social work classes

Research into the effects of large classes demonstrates that students are disadvantaged in terms of higher order learning because interactions between teachers and students occur at lower cognitive levels. This has significance for social work education, with its emphasis on the development of critical thinking and problem solving, both higher order cognitive skills. This paper reports on quantitative and qualitative research that explored social work students’ perceptions of different teaching and learning strategies in a large mental health course designed with reference to principles of student‐centred learning and constructive alignment. Findings revealed that well‐integrated design, relevance to the real world and teacher enthusiasm were seen as most useful by students, rather than particular learning strategies per se. Higher satisfaction ratings and grades were also associated with this student‐centred course compared with an earlier traditional lecture‐style course. The paper concludes that design based on the interplay between diverse learning activities, including lecture input, strengthened the student‐centred orientation of learning and recommends further research that compares learning outcomes associated with these contrasting approaches to professional education.
Development of Visual Preference for Natural Environments

Human visual preferences for slides of five natural landscapes or biomes-tropical rain forest, temperate deciduous forest, coniferous forest, savanna, and desert-were examined. Subjects were third graders, sixth graders, ninth graders, college students, adults, senior citizens, and a group of professional foresters. A series of 20 slides, 4 examples of each biome, was shown twice to each group of subjects. On one pass through the slides, subjects judged how much they would like to live in an area similar to the one represented; on the other pass, subjects rated the slides for how much they would like to visit an area similar to the one shown. Judgments were made on a 6-point Likert scale. Elementary schoolchildren showed a significant preference for savanna over all other biomes. From midadolescence and through adulthood, more familiar natural environments were equally preferred to savanna. Results were interpreted as providing limited support for the hypothesis that humans have an innate preference for savanna-like settings that arises from their long evolutionary history on the savannas of East Africa.
Connectionist Temporal Classiﬁcation: Labelling Unsegmented Sequence Data with Recurrent Neural Networks

Many real-world sequence learning tasks require the prediction of sequences of labels from noisy, unsegmented input data. In speech recognition, for example, an acoustic signal is transcribed into words or sub-word units. Recurrent neural networks (RNNs) are powerful sequence learners that would seem well suited to such tasks. However, because they require pre-segmented training data, and post-processing to transform their outputs into label sequences, their applicability has so far been limited. This paper presents a novel method for training RNNs to label un-segmented sequences directly, thereby solving both problems. An experiment on the TIMIT speech corpus demonstrates its advantages over both a baseline HMM and a hybrid HMM-RNN.
Functional Specialization and Evolution of Leader Proteinases in the Family Closteroviridae

ABSTRACT Members of the Closteroviridae andPotyviridae families of the plant positive-strand RNA viruses encode one or two papain-like leader proteinases. In addition to a C-terminal proteolytic domain, each of these proteinases possesses a nonproteolytic N-terminal domain. We compared functions of the several leader proteinases using a gene swapping approach. The leader proteinase (L-Pro) of Beet yellows virus (BYV; a closterovirus) was replaced with L1 or L2 proteinases of Citrus tristeza virus (CTV; another closterovirus), P-Pro proteinase of Lettuce infectious yellows virus (LIYV; a crinivirus), and HC-Pro proteinase of Tobacco etch virus(a potyvirus). Each foreign proteinase efficiently processed the chimeric BYV polyprotein in vitro. However, only L1 and P-Pro, not L2 and HC-Pro, were able to rescue the amplification of the chimeric BYV variants. The combined expression of L1 and L2 resulted in an increased RNA accumulation compared to that of the parental BYV. Remarkably, this L1-L2 chimera exhibited reduced invasiveness and inability to move from cell to cell. Similar analyses of the BYV hybrids, in which only the papain-like domain of L-Pro was replaced with those derived from L1, L2, P-Pro, and HC-Pro, also revealed functional specialization of these domains. In subcellular-localization experiments, distinct patterns were observed for the leader proteinases of BYV, CTV, and LIYV. Taken together, these results demonstrated that, in addition to a common proteolytic activity, the leader proteinases of closteroviruses possess specialized functions in virus RNA amplification, virus invasion, and cell-to-cell movement. The phylogenetic analysis suggested that functionally distinct L1 and L2 of CTV originated by a gene duplication event.
CRF06-cpx is the predominant HIV-1 variant in AIDS patients from Ouagadougou, the capital city of Burkina Faso.

No data on HIV-1 genetic subtypes in Burkina Faso have yet been reported. Among 70 samples obtained in 2001, the predominant env subtype was CRF06-cpx, followed by CRF02-AG, subtypes A and G. Nineteen of the 70 samples from 2001 had discordant subtype or circulation recombinant form (CRF) designations between env and gag. In contrast to surrounding countries, CRF06 is predominant in Burkina Faso. This virus was probably introduced early in the HIV epidemic because of its high representation in strains tested in 1996.
A low-cost radiation hardened flip-flop

The aggressive scaling of semiconductor devices has caused a significant increase in the soft error rate caused by radiation hits. This has led to an increasing need for fault-tolerant techniques to maintain system reliability. Conventional radiation hardening techniques, typically used in safety-critical applications, are prohibitively expensive for non-safety-critical electronics. This work proposes a novel flip-flop architecture named SETTOFF which significantly improves circuit resilience to radiation hits over previous techniques. In addition, compared to other techniques such as a TMR latch, SETTOFF reduces the area and performance overheads by up to 50% and 80%, respectively; the power consumption overhead is also reduced by up to 85%. In addition, a novel reliability metric called radiation-induced failure rate is developed which can be a valuable tool to predict the impact of radiation hits and quantitatively compare the reliability of various radiation hardened techniques. Our analysis shows that the proposed technique can achieve zero SEU failure rate, and significantly reduce the SET failure rate.