Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Moderating Role of Commitment on the Spillover Effect of Marketing Communications

Spillover refers to the extent to which a message influences beliefs related to attributes that are not contained in the message. The authors find that when consumers are not familiar with a brand, negative information spills over to attributes that are associated with the target attribute but not mentioned in the message. However, positive information does not. When consumers like the brand, a spillover occurs for the positive information as well. When consumers are committed to the brand, the spillover of negative information is minimized, but positive information spills over more freely to other associated but unmentioned attributes.
Lead exposure affects inflammatory mediators, total and differential white blood cells in sensitized guinea pigs during and after sensitization

Abstract Background: Serum inflammatory mediators and white blood cells (WBC) counts in the blood of sensitized and lead exposed guinea pigs were evaluated. Methods: Guinea pigs were randomly allocated into control (C), sensitized (S) and sensitized groups exposed to three lead concentrations (0.1, 0.2 and 0.4 M) during (DS) and after sensitization (PS), (n = 6 for each group). Animals were sensitized by intra-peritoneal injection and aerosol inhalation of ovalbumin (OA). Serum total protein, PLA2, IgE, histamine, total and differential WBC counts of blood were evaluated. Results: Serum PLA2, total protein, IgE, histamine, total and differential WBC counts in all three sensitized groups were significantly increased, but the percentage of lymphocyte was decreased compared to control group (p < 0.05 to p < 0.001). Serum total protein and total WBC number in all animals exposed to lead as well as the eosinophil and histamine in animals exposed to highest lead concentration and IgE in sensitized groups exposed to lead after sensitization were significantly higher, but the lymphocyte in animals exposed to two higher lead concentrations was lower than non exposed sensitized group (p < 0.05 to p < 0.001). The changes in all parameters in lead exposed animals after sensitization were higher than those during sensitization which was statistically significant for total WBC count in the animals exposed to low lead concentration (p < 0.05). Conclusion: Inhaled lead can increase serum total protein, PLA2, IgE and histamine levels, total and most differential WBC counts in sensitized animal which was more pronounced in animals exposed to lead after compared to those during sensitization.
Cross-lingual Models of Word Embeddings: An Empirical Comparison

Despite interest in using cross-lingual knowledge to learn word embeddings for various tasks, a systematic comparison of the possible approaches is lacking in the literature. We perform an extensive evaluation of four popular approaches of inducing cross-lingual embeddings, each requiring a different form of supervision, on four typographically different language pairs. Our evaluation setup spans four different tasks, including intrinsic evaluation on mono-lingual and cross-lingual similarity, and extrinsic evaluation on downstream semantic and syntactic applications. We show that models which require expensive cross-lingual knowledge almost always perform better, but cheaply supervised models often prove competitive on certain tasks.
Do Electoral Cycles Differ Across Political Systems?

Do fiscal policy variables — overall spending, revenue, deficits and welfare-state spending — display systematic patterns in the vicinity of elections? And do such electoral cycles differ among political systems? We investigate these questions in a data set encompassing sixty democracies from 1960-98. Without conditioning on the political system, we find that taxes are cut before elections, painful fiscal adjustments are postponed until after the elections, while welfare-state spending displays no electoral cycle. Our subsequent results show that the pre-election tax cuts is a universal phenomenon. The post-election fiscal adjustments (spending cuts, tax hikes and rises in surplus) are, however, only present in presidential democracies. Moreover, majoritarian electoral rules alone are associated with pre-electoral spending cuts, while proportional electoral rules are associated with expansions of welfare spending both before and after elections.
Aquatic carbon cycling in the conterminous United States and implications for terrestrial carbon accounting

Significance Inland waters provide habitat for aquatic organisms; are sources of human drinking water; and integrate, transport, and process carbon across continents. Estimates of the accumulation of carbon in terrestrial environments suggest that agricultural and forest ecosystems have annual net gains in carbon storage. These ecosystems are considered sinks of atmospheric carbon dioxide. None of these estimates have considered the loss of carbon to and also through aquatic environments at the national or continental scale. We show that aquatic ecosystems in the conterminous United States export over 100 teragrams of carbon (TgC) per year, highlighting the need to attribute the sources of aquatic carbon more accurately, and assert that inland waters play an important role in carbon accounting. Inland water ecosystems dynamically process, transport, and sequester carbon. However, the transport of carbon through aquatic environments has not been quantitatively integrated in the context of terrestrial ecosystems. Here, we present the first integrated assessment, to our knowledge, of freshwater carbon fluxes for the conterminous United States, where 106 (range: 71–149) teragrams of carbon per year (TgC⋅y−1) is exported downstream or emitted to the atmosphere and sedimentation stores 21 (range: 9–65) TgC⋅y−1 in lakes and reservoirs. We show that there is significant regional variation in aquatic carbon flux, but verify that emission across stream and river surfaces represents the dominant flux at 69 (range: 36–110) TgC⋅y−1 or 65% of the total aquatic carbon flux for the conterminous United States. Comparing our results with the output of a suite of terrestrial biosphere models (TBMs), we suggest that within the current modeling framework, calculations of net ecosystem production (NEP) defined as terrestrial only may be overestimated by as much as 27%. However, the internal production and mineralization of carbon in freshwaters remain to be quantified and would reduce the effect of including aquatic carbon fluxes within calculations of terrestrial NEP. Reconciliation of carbon mass–flux interactions between terrestrial and aquatic carbon sources and sinks will require significant additional research and modeling capacity.
Cerebral MR in ophthalmoplegia plus.

PURPOSE To evaluate MR patterns in ophthalmoplegia plus and correlate them with clinical symptoms. METHODS MR was performed on a 1.5-T whole-body scanner with T2-weighted gradient-echo and spin-echo images. The retrospective analysis included 19 patients with clinically established diagnoses of ophthalmoplegia plus. RESULTS Two types of cerebral MR abnormalities were found in ophthalmoplegia plus: brain atrophy and hyperintensities restricted to the white matter and basal ganglia, which appeared as either focal or diffuse areas of high signal intensity and were of strictly supratentorial location. No specific distribution was found. These findings differ markedly from infarction-like lesions found in mitochondrial myopathy, encephalopathy, lactic acidosis, and stroke-like episodes. CONCLUSIONS MR is sensitive for the detection of central nervous system involvement in ophthalmoplegia plus, but findings are nonspecific. However, cerebral MR in ophthalmoplegia plus is different from other mitochondrial encephalomyopathies and underlines the clinical differentiation of mitochondrial encephalomyopathies.
A multidisciplinary clinic approach improves survival in ALS: a comparative study of ALS in Ireland and Northern Ireland

Background Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a progressive debilitating neurodegenerative disease, with a life expectancy of 3–5 years from first symptom. There is compelling evidence that those who attend a multidisciplinary clinic experience improved survival. The purpose of the study was to explore the survival of patients with ALS ascertained through population-based Registers in the Republic of Ireland (RoI) and Northern Ireland (NI), and to determine whether centralisation of services confers advantage compared with community-based care supported by a specialist care worker. Methods The island of Ireland is divided into two countries, RoI and NI, each with an independent healthcare system. Both countries have population-based ALS Registers with full ascertainment. Data from all 719 incident ALS cases from Ireland and NI, diagnosed between 1 January 2005 and 31 December 2010, were used in the analysis. Results A survival benefit was identified for patients who attended the multidisciplinary ALS clinic in the RoI. (HR 0.59, 95% CI 0.49 to 0.71, p<0.001). This difference was preserved following multivariate analysis. A trend towards improved survival was noted for patients with ALS from NI when compared with RoI patients who did not attend a multidisciplinary clinic. Conclusions Centralised multidisciplinary care confers a survival advantage for patients with ALS and is superior to devolved community-based care. We propose that multiple decision-making processes within a multidisciplinary setting lead to an enriched set of clinical encounters for the patient and carer that enhances clinical outcome.
Scalable distributed inference of dynamic user interests for behavioral targeting

Historical user activity is key for building user profiles to predict the user behavior and affinities in many web applications such as targeting of online advertising, content personalization and social recommendations. User profiles are temporal, and changes in a user's activity patterns are particularly useful for improved prediction and recommendation. For instance, an increased interest in car-related web pages may well suggest that the user might be shopping for a new vehicle.In this paper we present a comprehensive statistical framework for user profiling based on topic models which is able to capture such effects in a fully \emph{unsupervised} fashion. Our method models topical interests of a user dynamically where both the user association with the topics and the topics themselves are allowed to vary over time, thus ensuring that the profiles remain current. We describe a streaming, distributed inference algorithm which is able to handle tens of millions of users. Our results show that our model contributes towards improved behavioral targeting of display advertising relative to baseline models that do not incorporate topical and/or temporal dependencies. As a side-effect our model yields human-understandable results which can be used in an intuitive fashion by advertisers.
An Insect Multiligand Recognition Protein Functions as an Opsonin for the Phagocytosis of Microorganisms*

We characterize a novel pathogen recognition protein obtained from the lepidopteran Galleria mellonella. This protein recognizes Escherichia coli, Micrococcus luteus, and Candida albicans via specific binding to lipopolysaccharides, lipoteichoic acid, and β-1,3-glucan, respectively. As a multiligand receptor capable of coping with a broad variety of invading pathogens, it is constitutively produced in the fat body, midgut, and integument but not in the hemocytes and is secreted into the hemolymph. The protein was confirmed to be relevant to cellular immune response and to further function as an opsonin that promotes the uptake of invading microorganisms into hemocytes. Our data reveal that the mechanism by which a multiligand receptor recognizes microorganisms contributes substantially to their phagocytosis by hemocytes. A better understanding of an opsonin with the required repertoire for detecting diverse invaders might provide us with critical insights into the mechanisms underlying insect phagocytosis.
Chromosome Abnormalities in Domestic Animals as Causes of Disorders of Sex Development or Impaired Fertility

Cytogenetic evaluation is an important step in the diagnosis of infertile or sterile animals. Moreover, the analysis of sex chromosomes is crucial for a proper classification of disor‐ ders of sex development (DSD). For many years, chromosome studies mainly addressed the livestock species, while recently, increasing interest in such analysis in companion an‐ imals is observed. New molecular and cytogenetic tools and techniques have given op‐ portunities for a precise identification of chromosome mutations. Among them, fluorescence in situ hybridization, besides chromosome banding, has become a gold standard. In this chapter, recent advances in the cytogenetic diagnosis of cattle, pigs, horses, dogs and cats are presented.
ϵ-Acetamidocaproic acid pharmacokinetics in rats with gastric ulcer or small bowel inflammation

The pharmacokinetics of ϵ-acetamidocaproic acid (AACA) were evaluated after the intravenous and oral administration of an antiulcer agent, zinc acexamate (ZAC) at a dose of 20 mg kg−1 (ion pairing between zinc and AACA) in rats with indomethacin-induced acute gastric ulcer (IAGU) or indomethacin-induced small bowel inflammation (ISBI). In IAGU rats, the area under the curves (AUCs) of AACA were significantly smaller after both the intravenous (551 versus 1270 μg min ml−1) and oral (397 versus 562 μg min ml−1) administration of ZAC than controls, possible due to the significantly faster CLR of AACA. In ISBI rats, however, the AUCs of AACA were comparable with controls after both the intravenous and oral administration of ZAC. In IAGU rats, the significantly smaller AUCs of AACA were due to the significantly faster CLR (due to the decreased urinary pH by indomethacin treatment) than controls. AACA has a basic secondary amine group. On the other hand, the comparable AUCs of AACA in ISBI rats were due to the comparable CLRs between ISBI and control rats. AACA was excreted in the urine via active renal tubular secretion in all rats studied.
Self-assembled Al nanoparticles on Si and fused silica, and their application for Si solar cells

This paper presents a novel method for the self-assembly of aluminum nanoparticles on Si and fused silica. Due to high reactivity with oxygen, ex-vacuo annealing of thin deposited metal films, a method used extensively with other metals, does not work with aluminum. In the present experiment this problem was overcome by annealing the samples in-vacuo in the deposition chamber. Aluminum was thermally evaporated onto substrates at elevated temperatures (200–400 ° C) and annealed for 60 min without breaking the vacuum. It is shown that at 300 and 400 ° C the average particle size can be controlled by adjusting the amount of evaporated aluminum. Particle diameters ranging from 20 to 130 nm are demonstrated. These particles support localized surface plasmon resonances, a property that can be utilized for enhancing the efficiency of thin Si solar cells. This is explored here, and an increase in external quantum efficiency of up to 15% in a thin-film Si solar cell is demonstrated.
Estimation of low rank density matrices: bounds in Schatten norms and other distances

Let ${\mathcal S}_m$ be the set of all $m\times m$ density matrices (Hermitian positively semi-definite matrices of unit trace). Consider a problem of estimation of an unknown density matrix $\rho\in {\mathcal S}_m$ based on outcomes of $n$ measurements of observables $X_1,\dots, X_n\in {\mathbb H}_m$ (${\mathbb H}_m$ being the space of $m\times m$ Hermitian matrices) for a quantum system identically prepared $n$ times in state $\rho. $ Outcomes $Y_1,\dots, Y_n$ of such measurements could be described by a trace regression model in which ${\mathbb E}_{\rho}(Y_j|X_j)={\rm tr}(\rho X_j), j=1,\dots, n. $ The design variables $X_1,\dots, X_n$ are often sampled at random from the uniform distribution in an orthonormal basis $\{E_1,\dots, E_{m^2}\}$ of ${\mathbb H}_m$ (such as Pauli basis). The goal is to estimate the unknown density matrix $\rho$ based on the data $(X_1,Y_1), \dots, (X_n,Y_n). $ Let $$ \hat Z:=\frac{m^2}{n}\sum_{j=1}^n Y_j X_j $$ and let $\check \rho$ be the projection of $\hat Z$ onto the convex set ${\mathcal S}_m$ of density matrices. It is shown that for estimator $\check \rho$ the minimax lower bounds in classes of low rank density matrices (established earlier) are attained up logarithmic factors for all Schatten $p$-norm distances, $p\in [1,\infty]$ and for Bures version of quantum Hellinger distance. Moreover, for a slightly modified version of estimator $\check \rho$ the same property holds also for quantum relative entropy (Kullback-Leibler) distance between density matrices.
Revealing the Maximum Strength in Nanotwinned Copper

The strength of polycrystalline materials increases with decreasing grain size. Below a critical size, smaller grains might lead to softening, as suggested by atomistic simulations. The strongest size should arise at a transition in deformation mechanism from lattice dislocation activities to grain boundary–related processes. We investigated the maximum strength of nanotwinned copper samples with different twin thicknesses. We found that the strength increases with decreasing twin thickness, reaching a maximum at 15 nanometers, followed by a softening at smaller values that is accompanied by enhanced strain hardening and tensile ductility. The strongest twin thickness originates from a transition in the yielding mechanism from the slip transfer across twin boundaries to the activity of preexisting easy dislocation sources.
Genome-Wide Association Studies of the Human Gut Microbiota

The bacterial composition of the human fecal microbiome is influenced by many lifestyle factors, notably diet. It is less clear, however, what role host genetics plays in dictating the composition of bacteria living in the gut. In this study, we examined the association of ~200K host genotypes with the relative abundance of fecal bacterial taxa in a founder population, the Hutterites, during two seasons (n = 91 summer, n = 93 winter, n = 57 individuals collected in both). These individuals live and eat communally, minimizing variation due to environmental exposures, including diet, which could potentially mask small genetic effects. Using a GWAS approach that takes into account the relatedness between subjects, we identified at least 8 bacterial taxa whose abundances were associated with single nucleotide polymorphisms in the host genome in each season (at genome-wide FDR of 20%). For example, we identified an association between a taxon known to affect obesity (genus Akkermansia) and a variant near PLD1, a gene previously associated with body mass index. Moreover, we replicate a previously reported association from a quantitative trait locus (QTL) mapping study of fecal microbiome abundance in mice (genus Lactococcus, rs3747113, P = 3.13 x 10−7). Finally, based on the significance distribution of the associated microbiome QTLs in our study with respect to chromatin accessibility profiles, we identified tissues in which host genetic variation may be acting to influence bacterial abundance in the gut.
Whole animal knockout of smooth muscle alpha‐actin does not alter excisional wound healing or the fibroblast‐to‐myofibroblast transition

The contractile phenotype and function of myofibroblasts have been proposed to play a critical role in wound closure. It has been hypothesized that smooth muscle α‐actin expressed in myofibroblasts is critical for its formation and function. We have used smooth muscle α‐actin‐null mice to test this hypothesis. Full‐thickness excisional wounds closed at a similar rate in smooth muscle α‐actin‐null and wild‐type mice. In addition, fibroblasts in smooth muscle α‐actin‐null granulation tissue when immunostained with a monoclonal antibody that recognizes all muscle actin isoforms exhibited a myofibroblast‐like distribution and a stress fiber‐like pattern, showing that these cells acquired the myofibroblast phenotype. Dermal fibroblasts from smooth muscle α‐actin‐null and wild‐type mice formed stress fibers and supermature focal adhesions, and generated similar amounts of contractile force in response to transforming growth factor‐β1. Smooth muscle γ‐actin and skeletal muscle α‐actin were expressed in smooth muscle α‐actin‐null myofibroblasts, as shown by immunostaining, real‐time polymerase chain reaction, and mass spectrometry. These results show that smooth muscle α‐actin is not necessary for myofibroblast formation and function and for wound closure, and that smooth muscle γ‐actin and skeletal muscle α‐actin may be able to functionally compensate for the lack of smooth muscle α‐actin in myofibroblasts.
A Service-Based Evaluation of a Therapist-Supported Online Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Program for Depression

Background Evidence suggests that Internet-delivered cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) may be as effective as face-to-face delivery for depression, but attrition and engagement rates remain a challenge. Objective This service-based study aimed to evaluate an online, therapist-supported, CBT-based program for depression. The program was specifically designed to address engagement issues, most notably by integrating online therapist support and communication within the platform. Methods Participants were 80 adults who were registered university students. Participants used the modular online program over 8 weeks, supported by a therapist. Engagement information was gathered automatically by the online system, and analyzed for all participants. Severity of participants’ self-reported symptoms of depression were assessed preintervention and postintervention using the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II). Postintervention measures were completed by 53 participants. Results A high level of engagement was observed compared to a previous study within the same service, along with extensive use of a range of program features. A statistically significant (P<.001) decrease in self-reported depressive symptomatology from preintervention (mean BDI-II 25.47) to postintervention (mean BDI-II 15.53) with a large effect size (d=1.17) was also observed. Conclusions The results indicate the potential of unintrusive and easily provided online support to enhance engagement with online interventions. The system described in the paper also illustrates how such online support can be tightly integrated with interactive online programs by using a range of design strategies intended to improve the user experience.
Measuring conductivity, temperature and hydrogen peroxide concentration using a single sensor structure

Using a single multi purpose sensor structure, consisting of metal films on a substrate only, three electrolyte parameters have been measured. The parameters are temperature, conductivity and hydrogen peroxide concentration, where the latter one represents one example of many species that can be determined amperometrically. The active area of the fabricated devices is about 1 mm/sup 2/.
Ester Boserup: An interdisciplinary visionary relevant for sustainability

Largely unfettered by disciplinary dogma, Ester Boserup observed human–environment relationships through an expansive analytical lens. Her ideas on agricultural change, gender, and development shook up research and practice in the mid-1960s and early 1970s and remain cogent half a century later for the development dimensions of sustainability. In this 100th year since her birth, it is worthwhile to take stock of her impact on research and practice and how her ideas continue to shape and be reshaped by current research.