Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of Behavioral Activation/Inhibition Systems as Predictors of Substance Abuse in Bipolar Patients

Background: Recently, more evidence has been presented regarding the role of behavioral activation/inhibition systems as predictors of substance use disorders. In fact, these systems are regarded as potentially important factors in the development of this complex psychiatric problem. Objectives: This study aimed to determine how behavioral activation/inhibition systems, namely behavioral activation, behavioral inhibition, and fight-flight freezing systems, affect substance abuse in bipolar patients. Methods: A total of 79 patients with bipolar disorder were selected among hospitalized patients in the psychiatric ward of Kamkar-Arabnia Hospital in Qom, Iran. The participants completed the Gray-Wilson personality questionnaire, Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression, Mood Disorder Questionnaire, and a sociodemographic questionnaire. Results: Behavioral activation and behavioral inhibition systems emerged as significant predictors of substance abuse in bipolar patients (χ2 = 52.511; df = 3; P < 0.0005). Gender and type of bipolar disorder (I or II) showed no significant association with the scores of behavioral activation, behavioral inhibition, or fight-flight freezing systems. Also, the behavioral inhibition system scores could predict manic mood (χ2 = 7.067; df = 3; P < 0.070). Conclusions: The findings of the current study provide further evidence regarding the role of behavioral activation and inhibition systems as predictors of substance abuse in bipolar patients.
Organizational recidivism’ and trust repair: a story of failed detectives

Purpose Over the last decade, trust repair has become an important theoretical and practical concern in HRM. The purpose of this paper is to explain why organisations fail to repair their stakeholders’ trust following a series of trust breaches. Design/methodology/approach Archival data is used to investigate the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). Using the analytical frame of the detective novel, the authors analyse reputational scandals in RBS, and in doing so, they explore the interweaving of two stories: the story of the “crime” (the bank's actions which led to breaches of trust) and the story of the “detectives” (parliamentary, regulatory and press investigators). Findings Based on their analysis, the authors argue that the organisation's failure to repair trust is associated with ineffective detection of what went wrong in the bank and why. Practical implications HR practitioners dealing with similar situations should understand the complicated and unfolding nature of repeated transgressions, and the reasons why previous trust repair efforts may have failed. Social implications An organisation may be showing willingness to accept responsibility for the violation of trust, but while new transgressions happen, trust repair efforts may fail. Therefore, what is needed in organisations is a longitudinal analysis that takes into account organisational history, including earlier wrongdoings. Originality/value The paper is one of the few analysing trust repair from a process perspective and using the metaphor of the detective novel to provide insights into organizational reintegration.
Mixed-initiative in human augmented mapping

In scenarios that require a close collaboration and knowledge transfer between inexperienced users and robots, the “learning by interacting” paradigm goes hand in hand with appropriate representations and learning methods. In this paper we discuss a mixed initiative strategy for robotic learning by interacting with a user in a joint map acquisition process. We propose the integration of an environment representation approach into our interactive learning framework. The environment representation and mapping system supports both user driven and data driven strategies for the acquisition of spatial information, so that a mixed initiative strategy for the learning process is realised. We evaluate our system with test runs according to the scenario of a guided tour, extending the area of operation from structured laboratory environment to less predictable domestic settings.
Measuring Players' Losses in Experimental Games

In some experiments rational players who understand the structure of the game could improve their payoff. We bound the size of the observed losses in several such experiments. To do this, we suppose that observed play resembles an equilibrium because players learn about their opponents' play. Consequently, in an extensive-form game, some actions that are not optimal given the true distribution of opponents' play could be optimal given available information. We find that average losses are small: $0.03 to $0.64 per player with stakes between $2 and $30. In one of the three experiments we examine, this also implies a narrow range of outcome.
Sudanese women entrepreneurs.

The number of female entrepreneurs is growing around the globe. The rate of women's entrepreneurship in Africa is higher than in any other region of the world but no studies have focused on North Sudan. We investigate female entrepreneurs in North Sudan by addressing these questions: (1) What are the major challenges North Sudanese female entrepreneurs face in (a) venture startup, and (b) running their businesses, (2) What are the main support sources enabling North Sudanese female entrepreneurs' (a) venture startup, and (b) successful management of their new ventures? , and (3) Is there family involvement in the North Sudanese female entrepreneurs' businesses; and if so, how? Personal issues, management skills, and obtaining financing are challenges while sources of support include schooling and previous work experience, moral support, and institutional support. Implications are discussed.
Antioxidant Activities of Orange Peel Extracts

This work aimed to evaluate the efficiency of different organic solvents such as, methanol, ethanol, dichloromethane, acetone, hexane and ethyl acetate for extraction of ( flavonoids and polyphenolic compounds(TFC and TPC respectively) from the orange peel. Also, the effect of these solvents on the yield percentage, chelating activity, antioxidant/radical scavenging capacity and reducing power ability of the produced extracts were investigated. The results revealed that all extracts of the orange peel exhibited variable antioxidant activity. Specially, the ethanolic extract showed the highest (p < 0.05) values for yield (%), TPC, TFC, chelating and antioxidant activities (% DPPH scavenging activity). It is concluded that, the solvent play a vital role in the extraction of the plant constituents. Specially, methanol and ethanol are high polar among the solvents used.
Convex Optimization Based Low-Rank Matrix Completion and Recovery for Photometric Stereo and Factor Classification

We present a new approach to robustly solve the photometric stereo problem. We cast the problem of recovering surface normals from images taken under multiple lighting conditions as a one of recovering a low-rank matrix from missing and corrupted observations, which model many different non-Lambertian effects such as shadows and specularities. Unlike previous approaches that use least-squares or heuristic robust techniques, our method uses an advanced convex optimization technique that is guaranteed to find the correct low-rank matrix by simultaneously fixing its missing and erroneous entries. Extensive experimental results demonstrate that our method achieves unprecedentedly accurate estimates of surface normals in the presence of significant amount of shadows and specularities. The new technique can be used to improve virtually any existing photometric stereo method. We not only showcase its effectiveness in the case of photometric stereo, but also extend our method to perform classification of photometric factors. In contrast to existing robust techniques, our method is computationally more efficient and provides theoretical guarantees for robustness to large errors.
What a difference a day makes: reflection retreats as academic development in higher education

ABSTRACT A growing body of research supports the learning and teaching of reflective practice in higher education; however, the application of reflective skills beyond the classroom, and specifically in professional development, is underdeveloped. While the value of reflective practice may not be clearly apparent for academic and professional staff, universities as complex organisations are searching for effective catalysts and supports for development and change. Reflective practice may be this catalyst and support. This paper introduces a new epistemological spectrum of approaches to reflection and examines a range of reflective activities from across the spectrum for their potential application in academic development. A mixed methods research approach generated findings from two reflection retreats: one for Australian university staff and one for Chinese academics. While some similarities and differences were identified across both groups, it is suggested that reflective practice activities can be a catalyst for positive academic and professional development.
Comparison of the NucliSens Basic Kit (Nucleic Acid Sequence-Based Amplification) and the Argene Biosoft Enterovirus Consensus Reverse Transcription-PCR Assays for Rapid Detection of Enterovirus RNA in Clinical Specimens

ABSTRACT Samples were tested for enterovirus by nucleic acid sequence-based amplification (NASBA) (NucliSens Basic kit; BioMerieux), reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR) (Enterovirus Consensus RT-PCR kit; Argene Biosoft), and virus isolation. Eighty-two samples were tested, and 44 were positive, 34 by both NASBA and RT-PCR and 5 each by NASBA or RT-PCR only. Two nasopharyngeal samples positive only by RT-PCR were determined to be rhinovirus. Of 42 enterovirus-positive samples, NASBA detected 39 (92.9%) and RT-PCR detected 37 (88.1%). The NucliSens Basic kit and the Argene Biosoft RT-PCR had comparable sensitivities for detection of enterovirus RNA, and both molecular methods were more sensitive than culture, which detected only 60.5% of positive samples. NASBA could be completed in 6.5 h versus 9 h for the Argene Biosoft RT-PCR kit.
Serum Fetuin-A Levels in Patients with Cardiovascular Disease: A Meta-Analysis

Background. Fetuin-A (FA) suppresses arterial calcification, promotes insulin resistance, and appears to be elevated in patients with cardiovascular diseases (CVD), but the data is still inconsistent. To clarify the correlation between serum FA levels and the presence and severity of CVDs, we performed this meta-analysis. Method. Potential relevant studies were identified covering the following databases: PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, Cochrane Library, CISCOM, CINAHL, Google Scholar, China BioMedicine (CBM), and China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI) databases. Data from eligible studies were extracted and included in the meta-analysis using a random-effects model. Results. Ten case-control studies, including 1,281 patients with CVDs and 2,663 healthy controls, were included. The results showed significant differences in serum levels of FA between the CVDs patients and the healthy controls (SMD = 1.36, 95%CI: 0.37–2.36, P = 0.007). Ethnicity-subgroup analysis implied that low serum FA levels are related to CVDs in Caucasians (SMD = 1.73, 95%CI: 0.20–3.26, P = 0.026), but not in Asians (SMD = 1.04, 95%CI: −0.33–2.40, P = 0.138). Conclusion. The data indicated that decreased serum FA level is correlated with the development of CVDs. FA might be clinically valuable for reflecting the progression of CVDs.
Working memory in healthy ageing

This thesis is concerned with the age-related changes in working memory (WM), and the inter-individual differences in cognitive and neural mechanisms that correspond to healthy versus poor ageing of WM function. The first half of this thesis focusses on the age-related decline in WM and whether preserved top-down attentional control could mitigate such deficits. In Chapter 2, I present a functional MRI study showing that older adults reliably recruit brain networks that subserve cognitive control, which work in concert with the task relevant sensory areas during effective selective WM. In Chapter 3, I show that older adults retain flexible control over WM representations, and this ability corresponded to the reliable recruitment of neural signals of orienting attention qualitatively similar to those observed in younger adults. Magnetoencephalographic recordings showed that the neural dynamics during orienting attention within WM was predictive of good performance, demonstrating that the more efficient the process of orienting within WM to select the target item, the better the memory representation can be preserved for upcoming behaviour. In the second half of this thesis, I explored whether WM for affective content has a special status in healthy ageing. In Chapter 4, I developed an emotional WM precision task to measure WM abilities for emotional content appropriate for elderly adults. In Chapter 5, I tested a group of young and older adults on WM and perceptual-matching abilities for emotional faces. The results suggest that older adults show a general impairment in task performance, but possibly with some preservation in the ability to maintain emotional content in WM. There were marked differences in how the emotional information was processed between age groups, in which older adults have a tendency to represent negative stimuli as less negative than younger adults in perception and WM, and tended to show a positive interpretation of the valence of more ambiguous emotional stimuli. In Chapter 6, I summarise the findings presented in this thesis, discuss the implications of the key findings, and consider some suggestions for future studies that aim to elucidate the mechanisms of WM in healthy ageing.
Development of New Drugs for an Old Target — The Penicillin Binding Proteins

The widespread use of β-lactam antibiotics has led to the worldwide appearance of drug-resistant strains. Bacteria have developed resistance to β-lactams by two main mechanisms: the production of β-lactamases, sometimes accompanied by a decrease of outer membrane permeability, and the production of low-affinity, drug resistant Penicillin Binding Proteins (PBPs). PBPs remain attractive targets for developing new antibiotic agents because they catalyse the last steps of the biosynthesis of peptidoglycan, which is unique to bacteria, and lies outside the cytoplasmic membrane. Here we summarize the “current state of the art” of non-β-lactam inhibitors of PBPs, which have being developed in an attempt to counter the emergence of β-lactam resistance. These molecules are not susceptible to hydrolysis by β-lactamases and thus present a real alternative to β-lactams. We present transition state analogs such as boronic acids, which can covalently bind to the active serine residue in the catalytic site. Molecules containing ring structures different from the β-lactam-ring like lactivicin are able to acylate the active serine residue. High throughput screening methods, in combination with virtual screening methods and structure based design, have allowed the development of new molecules. Some of these novel inhibitors are active against major pathogens, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and thus open avenues new for the discovery of novel antibiotics.
Fanconi Anemia Patients Are More Susceptible to Infection with Tumor Virus SV40

Fanconi anemia (FA) is a recessive DNA repair disease characterized by a high predisposition to developing neoplasms. DNA tumor polyomavirus simian virus 40 (SV40) transforms FA fibroblasts at high efficiency suggesting that FA patients could be highly susceptible to SV40 infection. To test this hypothesis, the large tumor (LT) antigen of SV40, BKV, JCV and Merkel Cell (MC) polyomaviruses were tested in blood samples from 89 FA patients and from 82 of their parents. Two control groups consisting of 47 no-FA patients affected by other genetic bone marrow failure diseases and 91 healthy subjects were also evaluated. Although JCV, BKV and MC were not found in any of the FA samples, the prevalence and viral load of SV40 were higher in FA patients (25%; mean viral load: 1.1×102 copies/105cells) as compared with healthy individuals (4.3%; mean viral load: 0.8×101 copies/105cells) and genetic controls (0%) (p<0.005). A marked age-dependent frequency of SV40 was found in FA with respect to healthy subjects suggesting that, although acquired early in life, the virus can widespread more easily in specific groups of population. From the analysis of family pedigrees, 60% of the parents of SV40-positive probands were positive for the virus compared to 2% of the parents of the SV40-negative probands (p<0.005). It is worthy of note that the relative frequency of SV40-positive relatives detected in this study was the highest ever reported, showing that asymptomatic FA carriers are also more susceptible to SV40. In conclusion, we favor the hypothesis that SV40 spread could be facilitated by individuals who are genetically more susceptible to infection, such as FA patients. The increased susceptibility to SV40 infection seems to be associated with a specific defect of the immune system which supports a potential interplay of SV40 with an underlying genetic alteration that increases the risk of malignancies.
Noise cancellation for electrotactile sensory feedback of myoelectric forearm prostheses

For achieving a closed-loop, bidirectional control over myoelectric prosthetic hands, adopting the electrical stimulation in the sensory feedback channel for providing electrotactile substitution is currently a big trend. However, the electrical pulses used for stimulation may spread to the EMG collection sites which significantly interferes the controlling stability. In this paper, a novel noise cancellation method is proposed to suppress the interference between the electrotactile feedback subsystem and the electromyographic collection subsystem. Based on the propagation model of the stimulation noise, this method integrates the optimization of the stimulation waveform, the special design of the stimulation electrode and the advanced technique of digital signal processing. Experiments on healthy subjects are conducted to verify the feasibility of the proposed method. Primary results show that, through the method, the signal to noise rate (SNR) of the EMG signals reaches to 43dB, without frequency or time multiplexing.
A density functional theory investigation of the electronic structure and spin moments of magnetite

Abstract We present the results of density functional theory (DFT) calculations on magnetite, Fe3O4, which has been recently considered as electrode in the emerging field of organic spintronics. Given the nature of the potential applications, we evaluated the magnetite room-temperature cubic phase in terms of structural, electronic, and magnetic properties. We considered GGA (PBE), GGA + U (PBE + U), and range-separated hybrid (HSE06 and HSE(15%)) functionals. Calculations using HSE06 and HSE(15%) functionals underline the impact that inclusion of exact exchange has on the electronic structure. While the modulation of the band gap with exact exchange has been seen in numerous situations, the dramatic change in the valence band nature and states near the Fermi level has major implications for even a qualitative interpretation of the DFT results. We find that HSE06 leads to highly localized states below the Fermi level while HSE(15%) and PBE + U result in delocalized states around the Fermi level. The significant differences in local magnetic moments and atomic charges indicate that describing room-temperature bulk materials, surfaces and interfaces may require different functionals than their low-temperature counterparts.
A Note on Countercyclicity and Minimalist Grammars

Minimalist grammars (MGs), as introduced in Stabler (1997), have proven a useful instrument in the formal analysis of syntactic theories developed within the minimalist branch of the principles–and– parameters framework (cf. Chomsky 1995, 2000). In fact, as shown in Michaelis (2001), MGs belong to the class of mildly context–sensitive grammars. Interestingly, without there being a rise in (at least weak) generative power, (extensions and variants of) MGs accommodate a wide variety of (arguably) “odd” items from the syntactician’s toolbox, such as head movement (Stabler 1997, 2001), affix hopping (Stabler 2001), (strict) remnant movement (Stabler 1997, 1999), adjunction (Frey and Gartner 2002), and (to some extent) scrambling (Frey and Gartner 2002). Here, we would like to explore the possibility of enriching MGs with another controversial mechanism, namely, countercyclic operations. These operations allow structure building at any node in the tree instead of just at the root. We will first discuss countercyclic ad-
Multiple Domain Associations within the Arabidopsis Immune Receptor RPP1 Regulate the Activation of Programmed Cell Death

Upon recognition of pathogen virulence effectors, plant nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat (NLR) proteins induce defense responses including localized host cell death. In an effort to understand the molecular mechanisms leading to this response, we examined the Arabidopsis thaliana NLR protein RECOGNITION OF PERONOSPORA PARASITICA1 (RPP1), which recognizes the Hyaloperonospora arabidopsidis effector ARABIDOPSIS THALIANA RECOGNIZED1 (ATR1). Expression of the N-terminus of RPP1, including the Toll/interleukin-1 receptor (TIR) domain (“N-TIR”), elicited an effector-independent cell death response, and we used allelic variation in TIR domain sequences to define the key residues that contribute to this phenotype. Further biochemical characterization indicated that cell death induction was correlated with N-TIR domain self-association. In addition, we demonstrated that the nucleotide-binding (NB)-ARC1 region of RPP1 self-associates and plays a critical role in cell death activation, likely by facilitating TIR:TIR interactions. Structural homology modeling of the NB subdomain allowed us to identify a putative oligomerization interface that was shown to influence NB-ARC1 self-association. Significantly, full-length RPP1 exhibited effector-dependent oligomerization and, although mutations at the NB-ARC1 oligomerization interface eliminated cell death induction, RPP1 self-association was unaffected, suggesting that additional regions contribute to oligomerization. Indeed, the leucine-rich repeat domain of RPP1 also self-associates, indicating that multiple interaction interfaces exist within activated RPP1 oligomers. Finally, we observed numerous intramolecular interactions that likely function to negatively regulate RPP1, and present a model describing the transition to an active NLR protein.
Boundary triplets and M‐functions for non‐selfadjoint operators, with applications to elliptic PDEs and block operator matrices

Starting with an adjoint pair of operators, under suitable abstract versions of standard PDE hypotheses, we consider the Weyl M‐function of extensions of the operators. The extensions are determined by abstract boundary conditions and we establish results on the relationship between the M‐function as an analytic function of a spectral parameter and the spectrum of the extension. We also give an example where the M‐function does not contain the whole spectral information of the resolvent, and show that the results can be applied to elliptic PDEs where the M‐function corresponds to the Dirichlet to Neumann map.