Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Commitment to community and political involvement: A cross-cultural study with Italian and American adolescents

The purpose of this study was to test whether personal commitment to community was related to political involvement in two cultural contexts: Italy and the USA. Participants were 566 adolescents (48.2% males) aged 14–19 years (M = 16 years; SD = 1.29): 311 Italians and 255 Americans. Participants filled out a self-report questionnaire. Analyses of variance revealed that American high school students reported higher levels of personal commitment to community than did their Italian peers and that many forms of political involvement were significantly more common among American adolescents. Structural equation modeling analyses revealed that personal commitment to community was strongly and positively associated with involvement in political activities in both adolescent samples. Thus, fostering personal commitments to community could potentially lead youth to political engagement.
Biological therapy of bone defects: the immunology of bone allo-transplantation

Importance of the field: Bone is one of the most transplanted tissues worldwide. Autograft is the ideal bone graft but is not widely used because of donor site morbidity and restricted availability. Allograft is easily accessible but can transmit infections and elicit an immune response. Areas covered in this review: This review identifies all in vitro and in vivo evidence of immune responses following bone transplantation and highlights methods of improving host tolerance to bone allotransplantation. What the reader will gain: In humans, the presence of anti-HLA specific antibodies against freeze-dried and fresh-frozen bone allografts has been demonstrated. Fresh-frozen bone allograft can still generate immune reactions whilst freeze-dried bone allografts present with less immunogenicity but have less structural integrity. This immune response can have an adverse effect on the graft's incorporation and increase the incidence of rejection. Decreasing the immune reaction against the allograft by lowering the immunogenic load of the graft or lowering the host immune response, would result in improved bone incorporation. Take home message: It is essential that the complex biological processes related to bone immunogenicity are understood, since this may allow the development of safer and more successful ways of controlling the outcome of bone allografting.
Exercise and cardiovascular disease: a new perspective.

The oxidation of low density lipoprotein (LDL) has been suggested as a key event in atherogenesis. Paradoxically, exercise, which imposes an oxidative stress, is an important deterrent of cardiovascular disease. In study 1 the oxidizability of LDL was enhanced in exercisers compared with sedentary controls. The lag time of isolated LDL subjected to copper-induced in vitro oxidation was significantly shortened in the exercisers compared with sedentary subjects. This increased sensitivity was not due to a decreased presence of vitamin E. Instead, these findings suggested that the LDL of exercisers may contain increased amounts of preformed lipid peroxides, which account for the increased oxidizability. In study 2, a group x sex ANOVA revealed that male exercisers had a significantly longer mean lag time than male sedentary subjects and that females had similar mean lag times regardless of exercise group. This remained the case when statistical adjustment was made for age, body mass index, blood lipid levels, LDL, and plasma alpha-tocopherol levels. Study 1 exercisers had been in training for a shorter time (< 1 year) than study 2 exercisers (> 2 years). These findings suggest that truly "chronic" exercise (aerobic intensity over several months) decreases the susceptibility of a male exerciser's LDL to undergo oxidation. Conversely, regular aerobic stress during an overall shorter time span creates a more oxidative environment in the body, thus increasing the susceptibility of LDL to undergo oxidation. The oxidative stress of aerobic exercise does not appear to adversely affect the oxidizability of LDL in women.
Using Virtual Technology to Enhance Field Experiences for Pre-Service Special Education Teachers

Teacher educators of pre-service teachers of students with special needs face challenges in providing the unique knowledge and skills required of highly qualified special education teachers. The emerging use of various forms of virtual technology, however, offers realistic solutions to these problems. This systematic review of literature examines 14 studies that utilized these virtual technologies to increase learning outcomes for pre-service special education teachers during field experiences or courses that prepared them for such experiences. Included studies examined the efficacy of learning from digital case studies, supervision via videoconferencing, audio-cued coaching, and participation in virtual reality activities. Results confirmed that these types of technologies can greatly enhance field-based learning opportunities for pre-service special education teachers.
A Novel Biclustering Approach to Association Rule Mining for Predicting HIV-1–Human Protein Interactions

Identification of potential viral-host protein interactions is a vital and useful approach towards development of new drugs targeting those interactions. In recent days, computational tools are being utilized for predicting viral-host interactions. Recently a database containing records of experimentally validated interactions between a set of HIV-1 proteins and a set of human proteins has been published. The problem of predicting new interactions based on this database is usually posed as a classification problem. However, posing the problem as a classification one suffers from the lack of biologically validated negative interactions. Therefore it will be beneficial to use the existing database for predicting new viral-host interactions without the need of negative samples. Motivated by this, in this article, the HIV-1–human protein interaction database has been analyzed using association rule mining. The main objective is to identify a set of association rules both among the HIV-1 proteins and among the human proteins, and use these rules for predicting new interactions. In this regard, a novel association rule mining technique based on biclustering has been proposed for discovering frequent closed itemsets followed by the association rules from the adjacency matrix of the HIV-1–human interaction network. Novel HIV-1–human interactions have been predicted based on the discovered association rules and tested for biological significance. For validation of the predicted new interactions, gene ontology-based and pathway-based studies have been performed. These studies show that the human proteins which are predicted to interact with a particular viral protein share many common biological activities. Moreover, literature survey has been used for validation purpose to identify some predicted interactions that are already validated experimentally but not present in the database. Comparison with other prediction methods is also discussed.
The effect of phase-feeding on the growth performance, carcass characteristics and nitrogen balance of growing and finishing pigs.

A completely randomised design experiment was conducted to determine if group housed grower-finisher pigs (43.9 to 95 kg) show differences in performance and nitro gen utilisation when provided with a single high lysine diet (11 g/kg) or with a mean lysine concentration of 9.5 g/kg, either as a single diet or as a series of two or four diets. Four hundred and forty pigs were assigned to four dietary treatments. The experimen tal treatments were (total lysine) (1) 11 g lysine/kg from day 0 to slaughter (SHD) (2) 10.5 g/kg lysine from day 0 to day 28 and 8.5 g/kg lysine from day 29 to slaughter (DFD) (3) 9.5 g/kg lysine from day 0 to slaughter (RFD) and (4) 11 g/kg lysine from day 0 to day 14,10 g/kg lysine from day 14 to day 28, 9.0 g/kg lysine from day 28 to day 42 and 8.0 g/kg lysine from day 42 to slaughter (PFD). The estimated lysine concentration required for treatments RFD, DFD and PFD was 9.5 g/kg for group-housed pigs. All diets were pelleted and formulated to have a net energy concentration of 9.8 MJ/kg. The pigs were group fed in mixed-sex pens using single space feeders (11 pigs/feeder, 6 boars and 5 gilts). Daily feed intake was lower (P < 0.05) in treatment SHD in comparison to RFD and DFD during the overall grower-finisher period (2.08 vs 2.18 and 2.23 kg/day, respectively). Lysine conversion ratio was poorer for pigs on treatment SHD compared with DFD (P < 0.01), RFD (P < 0.01) or PFD (P < 0.001), while food conversion ratio was better for pigs on treatment SHD compared with treatments DFD (P < 0.01) and PFD (P < 0.001) during the grower-finisher period (2.31 vs 2.43 and 2.48 kg/kg, respectively). N intake and excretion were higher (P < 0.001) for pigs offered SHD compared to all other treatments (3.93 vs 3.51,3.42,3.40 kg and 2.56 vs 2.14, 2.03,2.10 kg for SHD vs DFD RFD and PFD for intake and excretion, respectively). N utilisation
LMI-Based Approach for Global Asymptotic Stability Analysis of Recurrent Neural Networks with Various Delays and Structures

Global asymptotic stability problem is studied for a class of recurrent neural networks with distributed delays satisfying Lebesgue-Stieljies measures on the basis of linear matrix inequality. The concerned network model includes many neural network models with various delays and structures as its special cases, such as the delays covering the discrete delays and distributed delays, and the network structures containing the neutral-type networks and high-order networks. Therefore, many new stability criteria for the above neural network models have also been derived from the present stability analysis method. All the obtained stability results have similar matrix inequality structures and can be easily checked. Three numerical examples are used to show the effectiveness of the obtained results.
Stepfathers With Minor Children Living at Home

This study uses data from the National Survey of Families and Households to examine stepfathers' perceptions about their stepfather role and the quality of their relationship with their oldest minor stepchild living at home. The sample includes 195 stepfathers coresiding with a spouse or nonlegal partner. Results indicate that these stepfathers have diverse perceptions about seven different aspects of the stepfather role. Almost 52% of stepfathers disagree at least somewhat with the notion that it is harder to love stepchildren than your own children while 33% report that it is at least somewhat true that they are more like a friend than a parent to their stepchildren. Stepfathers who (a) live with both step- and biological children in the same household, (b) become a father figure to younger children, and (c) are happy with their marital/cohabitating partner are most likely to report having “fatherlike” perceptions. These data do not support hypotheses that predict that family structure variables and child's gender will be significant predictors of stepfather-stepchild relationship quality. However, stepfathers who have more fatherlike perceptions, socialization values that emphasize conformity to external authority and obedience, and a wife/partner who has a positive relationship with her eldest child report having a more positive relationship with their stepchildren.
Family Advocates' Perspectives on the Early Academic Success of Children Born to Low-Income Adolescent Mothers*

Qualitative analyses were conducted to examine family factors related to individual differences in the early school success of children born to low-income adolescent mothers from the perspective of paraprofessional family advocates. These families were participants in a 5-year family support program. Achievement test scores and teacher ratings were used to identify the most successful and least successful students in first grade. Interviews with the advocates about the life experiences of children in each of these groups revealed differences between them in the areas of caregiving practices, maternal characteristics, child characteristics, and contextual sources of stress and support. Given that family service providers are rarely used as informants in this way, the possible strengths and limitations of this approach are discussed.
Zeta potential in intact natural sandstones at elevated temperatures

We report measurements of the zeta potential of natural sandstones saturated with NaCl electrolytes of varying ionic strengths at temperatures up to 150°C. The zeta potential is always negative but decreases in magnitude with increasing temperature at low ionic strength (0.01 M) and is independent of temperature at high ionic strength (0.5 M). The pH also decreases with increasing temperature at low ionic strength but remains constant at high ionic strength. The temperature dependence of the zeta potential can be explained by the temperature dependence of the pH. Our findings are consistent with published models of the zeta potential, so long as the temperature dependence of the pH at low ionic strength is accounted for and can explain the hitherto contradictory results reported in previous studies.
Curriculum-Based Measurement of Oral Reading: Quality of Progress Monitoring Outcomes

Curriculum-based measurement of oral reading (CBM-R) is frequently used to set student goals and monitor student progress. This study examined the quality of growth estimates derived from CBM-R progress monitoring data. The authors used a linear mixed effects regression (LMER) model to simulate progress monitoring data for multiple levels of progress monitoring duration (i.e., 6, 8, 10 … 20 weeks) and data set quality which was operationalized as residual/error in the model (σε = 5, 10, 15, and 20). The number of data points, quality of data, and method used to estimate growth all influenced the reliability and precision of estimated growth rates. Results indicated that progress monitoring outcomes are sufficient to guide educational decisions if (a) ordinary least-squares regression is used to derive trend lines estimates, (b) a very good progress monitoring data set is used, and (c) the data set comprises a minimum of 14 CBMs-R. The article discusses implications and future directions.
Minding the Gender Gap

Existing studies have been inconclusive on whether and the extent to which gendered social networks contribute to the gender gap in business performance. Drawing on a random sample of Chinese Canadian entrepreneurs, this research examines the nexus of social networks, Internet use, and the gender gap in business performance. Results reveal a marked gender difference in firm size, which becomes narrowed after social networks, voluntary association participation, Internet use, and business characteristics are controlled. More important, network composition and structural position have different implications for men and women entrepreneurs. Men are more effective in converting relational advantages into business advantages. Interaction effects suggest that kin homophily hurts women’s business performance but not men’s. Yet, women gain more from participating in transnational entrepreneurship.
The migration-development nexus: Afghanistan case study.

This paper looks at the relationship between migration and development in the context of Afghanistan. It begins with a brief outline of the historical and : political background to the refugee crisis of the past two decades and looks briefly at the society and economy of Afghanistan. The history and pattern of aid flows are described and analysed in the next section followed by consideration of migration and refugee flows over the past two decades and of remittances and diaspora activities. Repatriation and reconstruction are covered in the following two sections. The penultimate section looks at lessons to be learned for policy making in Afghanistan in the future and is followed by concluding observations. A cautionary note on data on Afghanistan: although the recent months have seen a surge of interest and writing on Afghanistan there has always been a shortage of data on the country. Much writing on Afghanistan both by journalists and a few academics during the 1980s and 1990s relates to politics given the Cold War context of the conflict at the time. Most other data available on Afghanistan tend to come from aid agencies involved in the 2 country. While this provides the bulk of information and data on aid and refugee issues - as reflected in the sources used in this paper - it has little to offer on other aspects of life in Afghanistan especially on recent history and economy. (authors)
Loyalty in Sport Participation Services: An Examination of the Mediating Role of Psychological Commitment

This study aimed to increase the understanding of loyalty’s formative processes in fitness organizations. Building upon recent conceptualizations, the purpose of this study was to test the mediating role of psychological commitment in the relationships between consumers’ satisfaction, perceived value, involvement, identification, informational, and volitional processes and their attitudinal and behavioral loyalty toward a fitness organization. We conducted a questionnaire-based study in a French health and fitness club context with a sample of 252 club members, of which we were able to collect data in regard to repurchasing behavior for 110. This allowed us to confirm the relevance of the research model in regard to behavioral intentions, although including the behavioral-loyalty dimensions of the length of the relationship, frequency of participation, and repurchasing behavior failed to validate it. These findings have managerial implications for sustaining club membership levels.
CLIL and motivation: the effect of individual and contextual variables

Content and language integrated learning (CLIL) is burgeoning all over Europe and this is particularly so in Spain. During the last 10 years, content language instruction through a foreign language (FL) (mainly English) has become a key area of curricular innovation. One of the main reasons put forward by the advocates of this approach is that students are more motivated as a result of participating in CLIL programmes. Since motivation is one of the most influential individual variables when it comes to learning an L2, the benefits of the CLIL approach are assumed. However, there is a dearth of studies which empirically confirm differences in motivation when comparing traditional English as a foreign language (EFL) instruction and CLIL. This article aims to shed light on this issue through a study carried out in the Basque Country (Spain) in two different grades. Three hundred and ninety-three compulsory secondary education students (aged 12–13 and 14–15) enrolled in EFL and CLIL courses participated in the study. The data were gathered by means of a previously piloted and validated quantitative questionnaire. The statistical analyses showed that CLIL students were more motivated; however, these results should be analysed with caution, taking into account a series of individual (age and sex) and contextual (socio-cultural) variables that may influence such results. The effect of these variables, which have little to do with the CLIL approach per se, has not always been sufficiently considered when explaining the positive outcomes of CLIL.
Can Creativity in Conditions of War Trauma be a Danger to Personal Development?

This research study is a result of joint activities carried out by practitioners and scientists with an aim of improving the situation of children affected by the war in the town of Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, which was divided into two parts and governed by two ethnic communities, Bosnians and Croats. The research shows that the more creative children often reacted negatively to psycho-traumatic events; this type of ‘oppositionality’ was an unacceptable form of reaction in their social community, and as a result, they were less able to develop their creative potential.
Picturing Students' Habitus: The Advantages and Limitations of Photo-Elicitation Interviewing in a Qualitative Study in the City of Buenos Aires

In this paper the author examines some advantages and limitations of the use of photo-elicitation interviews in a study on class habitus, identities, and schooling in two secondary schools in the city of Buenos Aires (Argentina). First, she describes her research questions, methodological strategy, and application of photo elicitation technique, which refers to the use of a single or set of photographs as stimulus during a research interview. Second, she assesses the benefits and problems of its application by making comparisons between both different photo-interviews and interviews with and without photographs. This exercise allows the author to identify the benefits of photo-elicitation, such as the opening up of unforeseen dimensions for analysis and the facilitation of a rapport with respondents; and some disadvantages, for example, the possibility of the “closing communication” effect between researcher and participant.
CYP2B6 Non-Coding Variation Associated with Smoking Cessation Is Also Associated with Differences in Allelic Expression, Splicing, and Nicotine Metabolism Independent of Common Amino-Acid Changes

The Cytochrome P450 2B6 (CYP2B6) enzyme makes a small contribution to hepatic nicotine metabolism relative to CYP2A6, but CYP2B6 is the primary enzyme responsible for metabolism of the smoking cessation drug bupropion. Using CYP2A6 genotype as a covariate, we find that a non-coding polymorphism in CYP2B6 previously associated with smoking cessation (rs8109525) is also significantly associated with nicotine metabolism. The association is independent of the well-studied non-synonymous variants rs3211371, rs3745274, and rs2279343 (CYP2B6*5 and *6). Expression studies demonstrate that rs8109525 is also associated with differences in CYP2B6 mRNA expression in liver biopsy samples. Splicing assays demonstrate that specific splice forms of CYP2B6 are associated with haplotypes defined by variants including rs3745274 and rs8109525. These results indicate differences in mRNA expression and splicing as potential molecular mechanisms by which non-coding variation in CYP2B6 may affect enzymatic activity leading to differences in metabolism and smoking cessation.
A Taxonomy of Social Networking Data

Bruce Schneier presents a taxonomy of social networking data-as we continue our conversations about what sorts of fundamental rights people have with respect to their data, and more countries contemplate regulation on social networking sites and user data, it will be important to keep this taxonomy in mind. The sorts of things that would be suitable for one type of data might be completely unworkable and inappropriate for another.