Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The relation between everyday activities and successful aging: a 6-year longitudinal study.

OBJECTIVES Activity has long been thought to be related to successful aging. This study was designed to examine longitudinally the relation between everyday activities and indicators of successful aging, namely well-being, function, and mortality. METHODS The study was based on the Aging in Manitoba Study, with activity being measured in 1990 and function, well-being, and mortality assessed in 1996. Well-being was measured in terms of life satisfaction and happiness; function was defined in terms of a composite measure combining physical and cognitive function. RESULTS Regression analyses indicated that greater overall activity level was related to greater happiness, better function, and reduced mortality. Different activities were related to different outcome measures; but generally, social and productive activities were positively related to happiness, function, and mortality, whereas more solitary activities (e.g., hand-work hobbies) were related only to happiness. DISCUSSION These findings highlight the importance of activity in successful aging. The results also suggest that different types of activities may have different benefits. Whereas social and productive activities may afford physical benefits, as reflected in better function and greater longevity, more solitary activities, such as reading, may have more psychological benefits by providing a sense of engagement with life.
Effects of Reputation, Relational Satisfaction, and Customer–Company Identification on Positive Word-of-Mouth Intentions

By combining the growing body of knowledge on organizational reputation and organization—public relationships with insights from marketing literature on customer–company identification, this study develops and tests models of customers' positive word-of-mouth (WOM) intentions. Specifically, this study examines the effects of organizational reputation and relational satisfaction on customers' positive WOM intentions, and the critical mediation role of customer–company identification in such effects. The proposed models illustrate tenable data-model fits, and the results indicate that organizational reputation and relational satisfaction predict customers' positive WOM intentions. More important, customer–company identification mediates the influence of organizational reputation on positive WOM intentions. The findings of this study suggest that, to promote customers' positive WOM intentions, companies need to obtain a favorable reputation held by customers and cultivate a satisfactory relationship with customers, while fostering customer–company identification.
On the Reducibility of Submodular Functions

The scalability of submodular optimization methods is critical for their usability in practice. In this paper, we study the reducibility of submodular functions, a property that enables us to reduce the solution space of submodular optimization problems without performance loss. We introduce the concept of reducibility using marginal gains. Then we show that by adding perturbation, we can endow irreducible functions with reducibility, based on which we propose the perturbation-reduction optimization framework. Our theoretical analysis proves that given the perturbation scales, the reducibility gain could be computed, and the performance loss has additive upper bounds. We further conduct empirical studies and the results demonstrate that our proposed framework significantly accelerates existing optimization methods for irreducible submodular functions with a cost of only small performance losses.
Maximum-Likelihood Augmented Discrete Generative Adversarial Networks

Despite the successes in capturing continuous distributions, the application of generative adversarial networks (GANs) to discrete settings, like natural language tasks, is rather restricted. The fundamental reason is the difficulty of back-propagation through discrete random variables combined with the inherent instability of the GAN training objective. To address these problems, we propose Maximum-Likelihood Augmented Discrete Generative Adversarial Networks. Instead of directly optimizing the GAN objective, we derive a novel and low-variance objective using the discriminator's output that follows corresponds to the log-likelihood. Compared with the original, the new objective is proved to be consistent in theory and beneficial in practice. The experimental results on various discrete datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.
Formation of entrepreneurial intentions in a regional context

Research on the impact of the regional environment in the very early phase of the business start-up process is currently limited. This paper contributes to the literature by analysing the influence of regional factors on the formation of entrepreneurial intentions within the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) framework. The rationale is based on the previous literature which posits that regional conditions have implications for individual perceptions, which, in turn, constitute the foundation of the three antecedents of intention in the TPB model: attitudes, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control. A multilevel analysis based on a random sample of 834 Finnish working-age individuals, combined with the official national statistics at the municipality level supports the proposition that regional conditions have an indirect impact on the intent to become an entrepreneur. The population density, the level of education, income and wealth and the rate of public and manufacturing sector employment of a region are found to moderate the individual formation of entrepreneurial intentions. This study supports further development of the theoretical understanding of entrepreneurial intentions by demonstrating that regional characteristics are important moderating influences in the TPB model.
Reel Stories of Teaching: Film and Teacher Education

In this article, findings are presented from a recently completed study conducted with teacher candidates from an educational foundations course in which films were used as part of the text to encourage critical discussion. The work explores teacher candidates' experiences with using films as means to develop critical and creative thinking about teaching practices, democracy, power relationships, and ethics in classroom teaching. Implications and means through which teacher educators can use films in their daily work are also discussed.
Locus of Control and Incentive in Self-Managing Teams.

A simulation game of employees working in self-managed teams was used to test the effects of locus of control and performance-contingent incentives on productivity and job satisfaction. The only performance effect was that participants with external locus of control (externals) in the incentive condition outperformed externals without incentive. Participants with internal locus of control (internals) were more satisfied with their supervisors than were externals. This article discusses implications for employee involvement approaches and makes recommendations for further research.
Genetic Requirement for Pneumococcal Ear Infection

Background Ear infection or otitis media (OM) accounts for most bacterial respiratory infections in children in both developed and developing nations. Streptococcus pneumoniae, nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae, and Moraxella catarrhalis are the major OM pathogens. However, little is known about the genetic basis of bacterial OM largely due to practical difficulties in conducting research in ear infection models and genetically manipulating clinical isolates. Here, we report the first genome-scale in vivo screen for bacterial genes required for ear infection in a chinchilla model by signature tagged mutagenesis (STM), a high throughput mutant screen technique. Methodology/Principal Findings STM strains were constructed with a multi-drug resistant OM isolate ST556 (serotype 19F) and screened in a chinchilla OM model. Out of 5,280 mutants tested, 248 mutants were substantially underrepresented in the mutant pools recovered from the middle ear fluids of the infected chinchillas, indicating the impaired ability to survive and replicate in the middle ears due to genetic disruptions in the chromosome of strain ST556. Further DNA sequencing analysis mapped the mutations to 169 pneumococcal genes. Surprisingly, only 52 of these genes were required for pneumococcal nasopharyngeal colonization in a murine model. This infection site-specific gene requirement was verified by targeted mutagenesis in the selected genes. Conclusions/Significance These findings suggest that there are a subset of pneumococcal genes required for ear infection and that these may be distinct from those required for nasal colonization. Our data thus provide comprehensive gene targets for mechanistic understanding of pneumococcal ear infection. Finally, this study has also developed a model for future genome-scale search for virulence determinants in other pathogens associated with ear infections.
Automatic Calibration of Spinning Actuated Lidar Internal Parameters

Actuated lidar, where a scanning lidar is combined with an actuation mechanism to scan a three‐dimensional volume rather than a single line, has been used heavily in a wide variety of field robotics applications. Common examples of actuated lidar include spinning/rolling and nodding/pitching configurations. Due to the construction of actuated lidar, the center of rotation of the lidar mirror may not coincide with the center of rotation of the actuation mechanism. To triangulate a precise point cloud representation of the environment, the centers of rotation must be brought into alignment using a suitable calibration procedure. We refer to this problem as estimating the internal parameters of actuated lidar. In this work, we focus on spinning/rolling lidar and present a fully automated algorithm for calibration using generic scenes without the need for specialized calibration targets. The algorithm is evaluated on a range of real and synthetic data and is shown to be robust, accurate, and have a large basin of convergence.
Gender Differences in Early Adolescents’ Relationship Qualities, Self-Efficacy, and Depression Symptoms

Relationship qualities and low perceived social self-efficacy might be associated with early adolescents’depression symptoms and with later gender differences in depression prevalence. Gender comparisons in the means, and associations with depression symptoms of self-rated intimate support, conflict, intimate support self-efficacy, and conflict management self-efficacy were examined for predominantly White community-recruited 12-year-olds (114 boys, 109 girls). Perceived low parental intimate support, high conflict with parents, and lower perceived self-efficacy (both types) were related to depression symptoms. Girls reported greater best friend intimate support and less conflict, greater self-efficacy (both types), and stronger conflict-depression associations than did boys. For boys, but not for girls, conflict management self-efficacy contributed unique variance to depression after intimate support and conflict were controlled. Incidentally, sons of fathers with more education reported more paternal intimate support than did sons of less educated fathers; daughters showed the opposite pattern, which generates questions for further research.
Examination of the decline in symptoms of anxiety and depression in generalized anxiety disorder: impact of anxiety sensitivity on response to pharmacotherapy

Pharmacotherapy is an effective treatment for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), but few studies have examined the nature of decline of anxiety and depression during pharmacotherapy for GAD and even fewer studies have examined predictors of symptom decline. This study examined the decline in symptoms of anxiety and depression in patients with GAD during a 6‐week open trial of fluoxetine. Growth curve analyses indicated that pharmacotherapy with fluoxetine led to significant declines in symptoms of anxiety and depression over the 6 weeks of treatment. However, the decay slope observed for anxiety symptoms was significantly greater than that for depressive symptoms. Further analyses revealed that the decline in anxiety remained significant after accounting for the changes in symptoms of depression. However, the effect of treatment on depression was no longer significant after controlling for the reduction in anxiety symptoms. Overall anxiety sensitivity (AS) did not moderate the level of reduction in symptoms of anxiety or depression during pharmacotherapy. However, AS specific to physical concerns demonstated a marginal negative association with decline in anxiety and depression. AS specific to social concerns also demonstrated a marginal negative association with decline in anxiety symptoms. These findings suggest that the decline in anxiety symptoms is independent of the decline in symptoms of depression during pharmacotherapy for GAD and specific AS dimensions may predict symptom change in GAD. Depression and Anxiety 25:167–171, 2008. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Deletion of K1/K10 does not impair epidermal stratification but affects desmosomal structure and nuclear integrity

Keratins K1 and K10 are the most abundant proteins in the upper epidermis where they polymerize to form intermediate filaments (IFs). In addition to their well-established function in providing epidermal stability, K1/K10 (i.e. the dimer between K1 and K10) IFs are supposed to be important for terminal epidermal differentiation and barrier formation. It was previously shown that the imbalanced deletion of one of the partner keratins, K10, disturbed epidermal homoeostasis, although stability was provided by compensatory upregulation of K5/K14, which formed IFs together with the remaining K1. Here, we show that deletion of both partner keratins, K1 and K10, results in lethal postnatal skin fragility in mice. Krt1−/−;Krt10−/− mice revealed that K1/K10 IFs are unexpectedly dispensable for epidermal stratification. Although the stratum corneum was less compact and cornified envelope differentiation was impaired, a dye exclusion assay showed that the development of a functional water barrier was surprisingly independent from the presence of K1/K10 IFs. The deletion of K1/K10 was not compensated by any other keratin pair such as the basal epidermal keratins K5/K14, and electron microscopy revealed total absence of IFs in the suprabasal epidermis. Although plakoglobin was unchanged, the expression of the desmosomal proteins desmoplakin, desmocollin 1 and desmoglein 1 were altered and suprabasal desmosomes were smaller in Krt1−/−;Krt10−/− than in wild-type epidermis suggesting an involvement of K1/K10 IFs in desmosome dynamics. Furthermore, Krt1−/−;Krt10−/− mice showed premature loss of nuclei during epidermal differentiation and lower levels of emerin, lamin A/C and Sun1, revealing a previously unknown function for IFs in maintaining nuclear integrity in the upper epidermis.
Risk-type density diagrams by crash type on two-lane rural roads

The research presented here aims to plot density diagrams per road crash risk type to identify all possible scenarios where driving is less than safe. The starting point was the prediction of injury crash rate on horizontal homogeneous segments of two-lane rural roads for three main injurious crash types (head-on/side collisions, rear-end crashes, and single-vehicle run-off-road crashes) as observed on the network. A careful analysis of the database shows that a wide variety of factors appear to be influenced or associated with the crash dynamic, as follows: the road scenario (combination of infrastructure and environmental conditions found at the site at the time of the crash), mean lane width, the horizontal curvature indicator (measurement of the curvature change rate), and mean speed. Crashes recorded from 2003 to 2010, of which 1597 were injurious, and 645 resulted only in damage to property, were analyzed on more than 3700 km of road network in Southern Italy. Generalized estimating equations with a negative binomial distribution were implemented. Risk-type density charts were plotted to thoroughly identify all possible combinations of existing explicative variables producing hazardous conditions on the road. The different shades in the diagrams represent different ranges of injurious crash rates: the white band shows low levels, while a black band shows high values. It is not possible to consider working on an explanatory variable to reduce hazardous conditions on the road network without also considering how this variation might affect the influence of the remaining explanatory variables on crash phenomena and, consequently, on the predictive model. The risk maps make it possible to keep under control in a simple and immediate approach the way each variable as a result of variations of a part or of all.
Focus on Latino Learners: Developing a Foundational Understanding of Latino Cultures to Cultivate Student Success

With the dramatic increase of diverse student populations in U.S. schools, educators and school professionals are encountering significant difficulties in meeting the needs of struggling students and establishing an overall positive academic climate. This is particularly true with the influx of Latino students, who now constitute the majority of diverse populations in many parts of the country. Furthermore, Latinos are the projected majority population of the United States. Research has indicated a failure to meet the diverse needs of Latino students. As a group, they have historically experienced overrepresentation in disability categories, received a disproportionate number of disciplinary actions, and evidence high dropout rates. In this article, the authors discuss educational and social issues facing Latino populations, present specific points focused on the development of a better understanding of Latino cultures, and offer recommendations regarding ways to better meet the needs of this growing population.
Security event correlation approach for cloud computing

Cloud computing is a new business model, which represents an opportunity for users, companies, and public organisations to reduce costs and increase efficiency, as well as an alternative way for providing services and resources. In this pay-by-use model, security plays a key role. Cyber attacks are a serious danger, which can compromise the quality of the service delivered to the customers, as well as the costs of the provided cloud resources and services. In this paper, a hybrid and hierarchical event correlation approach for intrusion detection in cloud computing is presented. It consists of detecting intrusion symptoms by collecting diverse information at several cloud architectural levels, using distributed security probes, as well as performing complex event analysis based on a complex event processing engine. The escalation process from intrusion symptoms to the identified cause and target of the intrusion is driven by a knowledge-base represented by an ontology. A prototype implementation of the proposed intrusion detection solution is also presented.
Top-Down Versus Bottom-Up Control of Attention in the Prefrontal and Posterior Parietal Cortices

Attention can be focused volitionally by “top-down” signals derived from task demands and automatically by “bottom-up” signals from salient stimuli. The frontal and parietal cortices are involved, but their neural activity has not been directly compared. Therefore, we recorded from them simultaneously in monkeys. Prefrontal neurons reflected the target location first during top-down attention, whereas parietal neurons signaled it earlier during bottom-up attention. Synchrony between frontal and parietal areas was stronger in lower frequencies during top-down attention and in higher frequencies during bottom-up attention. This result indicates that top-down and bottom-up signals arise from the frontal and sensory cortex, respectively, and different modes of attention may emphasize synchrony at different frequencies.
Empirical Tests of Scale Type for Individual Ratings

This article describes eight studies that tested em pirically the hypothesis that rating procedures lead to interval-scale measurements for each single subject. In order to enhance the probability of obtaining interval scales, subjects made numerical ratings and were de liberately instructed to choose their responses so that the algebraic differences between numbers represented the subjective differences between the corresponding objects with respect to the attribute under study. This approach is based on axiomatic measurement theory. It is exemplified by a study from clinical psychologi cal research pertaining to the subjective fear aroused by each of 160 objects or situations. Any subject's ratings are regarded as interval-scale measurements of his or her individual degree of fear if the testable ax ioms of a finite, equally-spaced difference structure are satisfied empirically. These axioms pertain to ordi nal judgments on differences, and they are tested em pirically by deriving statistical hypotheses and using a refined significance-test method as an error theory. For the eight studies criteria were chosen primarily to avoid accepting false interval-scale hypotheses at the expense of relative high risks for false rejections. Nevertheless, empirical data allow acceptance of the hypothesis for 54 of the 114 subjects. As a conse quence, for at least half of the subjects, this rating procedure seems to result in interval scales.
A Reconfigurable Platform and Programming Tools for High-Level Network Applications Demonstrated as a Hardware Honeypot

The security of computer systems and networks is severely threatened today by the combination of novel attack patterns and high traffic volumes. Together, this often exceeds the capabilities of purely software-based network security systems. As an alternative, hardware acceleration has been employed, e.g., for performing deep-packet inspection and pattern matching as well as general packet-header processing. While such implementations, capable of handling lower protocol layers, have been extensively studied in research and industry, their extension to higher communication layers has only rarely been addressed. Such capabilities, including the application level (OSI Layer 7), are the focus of this work. We present the NetStage platform, employing reconfigurable computing for high-throughput low-latency network processing, as well as associated development tools that allow networking domain experts to easily customize the system. As a use-case, we consider the realization of high-performance attack-resilient honeypots based on NetStage. To this end, we introduce the Malacoda language, its programming tools, and the generated target microarchitecture. We then evaluate the performance of Malacoda-generated vulnerability emulation handlers running on the NetStage platform.
Items as Context: Effects of Item Order and Ambiguity on Factor Structure

Based on previous work (Darkes, Greenbaum, & Goldman, 1998), we evaluated the effects of item order and ambiguity on factor structure using items from the Disinhibition subscale of the Sensation Seeking Scales Form V (Zuckerman, 1979). Participants completed the items with order of item-group (alcohol, sex, ambiguous) presentation manipulated between respondents. The factor structure varied as a function of item-group order. In addition, factor covariances varied across the 3 item orders as a function of item-group order. Apparently, ambiguous items were interpreted differently (as related either to alcohol use or to sexual behavior) depending on the content of items that preceded them. Results suggest that item order and ambiguity are important considerations in assessment.