Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Quantitative Genetics Identifies Cryptic Genetic Variation Involved in the Paternal Regulation of Seed Development

Embryonic development requires a correct balancing of maternal and paternal genetic information. This balance is mediated by genomic imprinting, an epigenetic mechanism that leads to parent-of-origin-dependent gene expression. The parental conflict (or kinship) theory proposes that imprinting can evolve due to a conflict between maternal and paternal alleles over resource allocation during seed development. One assumption of this theory is that paternal alleles can regulate seed growth; however, paternal effects on seed size are often very low or non-existent. We demonstrate that there is a pool of cryptic genetic variation in the paternal control of Arabidopsis thaliana seed development. Such cryptic variation can be exposed in seeds that maternally inherit a medea mutation, suggesting that MEA acts as a maternal buffer of paternal effects. Genetic mapping using recombinant inbred lines, and a novel method for the mapping of parent-of-origin effects using whole-genome sequencing of segregant bulks, indicate that there are at least six loci with small, paternal effects on seed development. Together, our analyses reveal the existence of a pool of hidden genetic variation on the paternal control of seed development that is likely shaped by parental conflict.
Intrauterine insemination catheters for assisted reproduction: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND Intrauterine insemination (IUI) is the oldest and most practised form of assisted reproduction worldwide. We systematically reviewed the literature so that we could evaluate the use of soft versus firm catheters in subfertile women undergoing IUI. METHODS Extensive searches were conducted for full-text manuscripts, conference abstracts, ongoing and unpublished trials. Primary outcomes were clinical pregnancy (CPR) and ongoing pregnancy (OPR)/live birth rates (LBRs) per woman. Secondary outcomes were multiple pregnancy rate (MPR) per clinical pregnancy, difficulty cannulating the cervix, bleeding and patient discomfort. Meta-analysis was performed using the Peto-modified Mantel-Haenszel fixed-effect model. RESULTS Seven randomized trials were identified, and four were excluded. No significant differences were noted for CPR and LBR per woman [OR = 0.96, 95% CI = 0.70-1.32 and OR = 0.82, 95% CI = 0.43-1.58, respectively]. As for the secondary outcomes, MPRs per cycle were also not significantly different. More difficulty was noted with soft catheters and more patient discomfort with firm catheters. Bleeding following the procedure was similar between the two groups. CONCLUSIONS Catheter choice during IUI does not seem to be a detrimental factor for success, as in other assisted reproduction techniques (ART). More studies are warranted to draw definitive conclusions and support the results of this systematic review.
Why does a GSS fail to enhance group consensus and satisfaction? An investigation from an influence process perspective

Literature review shows that a group support system (GSS) generally fails to increase group consensus and satisfaction. The reasons for this failure are not fully known. This research investigates this issue from an influence process perspective. The independent variables were support (computer support versus non-computer support) and task type (intellective task versus preference task). The dependent variables were three influence process variables (informational influence, normative influence, and influence distribution) and three outcome variables (consensus, decision satisfaction, and decision process satisfaction). The findings suggest that the failure, from the influence process perspective, may be attributed to the offset effect of GSS. In the preference task, the increased part of group consensus and satisfaction, due to the GSS increased influence distribution balance, were offset at the same time by the decreased part, due to the GSS attenuated normative influence. Likewise, in the intellective task, the increased part of consensus and satisfaction, due to the GSS enhanced informational influence, were offset at the same time by the decreased part, due to the GSS decreased influence distribution balance. The implications for the offset effect is discussed.
Finite element analysis of PMMA pattern formation during hot embossing process

Hot embossing process for thermoplastic polymers is one of the manufacturing technologies for microfluidics and optical components. It combines both micro-scale resolution and high throughput. This is a thermal process where a rigid stamp is pressed onto a polymer substrate so that micro-sized features or patterns can be replicated. PolyMethyl-MethAcrylate (PMMA) is one of the important engineering materials for this process; however, its nonlinear relationship between temperature and elastic-plastic behaviour, until now, has not been very well understood. This paper explores the development and use of finite element simulations to study how PMMA substrate would behave during hot embossing. This is achieved by converting stress-strain-temperature experimental data points into a mathematical form, matrix representation, without losing any salient behaviours of the PMMA material. The simulation results showed the flow behaviour of PMMA inside the mould during hot embossing process. This may assist future improvement of manufacturing quality and production throughput. Hot embossing experiments were also conducted and the results obtained were compared with the simulated ones. Although there was discrepancy between the two results, the current work laid path for future development and improvement.
The herpetofauna of Timor-Leste: a first report

Abstract Fieldwork conducted throughout Timor-Leste in September 2004 and July 2009 resulted in a collection or recording of 263 herpetological specimens (100 amphibians, 163 reptiles), comprising at least seven species of frogs and toads, 20 species of lizards, seven species of snakes, two species of turtles, and one species of crocodile. Among the amphibians, the most frequently encountered species were toads (Duttaphrynus melanostictus), rice paddy frogs (genus Fejervarya), and rhacophorid treefrogs (Polypedates cf. leucomystax). All three variants of rice paddy frogs encountered represent undescribed species similar to Fejervarya verruculosa from neighboring Wetar Island. Records of Fejervarya cancrivora and Fejervarya limnocharis for Timor Island are apparently errors based on misidentification. We obtained voucher specimens for a total of 147 lizards and voucher photographs only for four specimens of Varanus timorensis. Aside from geckos frequently associated with human habitations (e.g., Gehyra mutilata, Gekko gecko, Hemidactylus frenatus, Hemidactylus platyurus), we discovered an as yet undescribed species of bent-toed gecko, genus Cyrtodactylus, in the Same valley. Our specimens of Hemidactylus platyurus are the first record of this species from Timor-Leste. Commonly encountered skinks included four-fingered skinks (genus Carlia), wedge skinks (genus Sphenomorphus), and night skinks (genus Eremiascincus). Notable among the 15 snakes collected was the frequency of pitvipers (Cryptelytrops insularis), which amounted to over 25% of all snakes. Our specimen of the wolfsnake Lycodon subcinctus is the first record of this species for Timor-Leste. Based on these findings, it appears that the biodiversity of amphibians and reptiles in this remote corner of Wallacea is much greater than previously thought, particularly with respect to scincid lizards. The detail we provide in the species accounts is designed to allow the use of this report as a preliminary field guide to the amphibians and reptiles of Timor-Leste. However, survey work is ongoing.
The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology on the Flexibility of Letter Position Coding during Lexical Processing: Evidence from Eye Movements When Reading Thai

distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.
On the foundations of final coalgebra semantics: non-well-founded sets, partial orders, metric spaces

This paper, a revised version of Rutten and Turi (1993), is part of a programme aiming at formulating a mathematical theory of structural operational semantics to complement the established theory of domains and denotational semantics to form a coherent whole (Turi 1996; Turi and Plotkin 1997). The programme is based on a suitable interplay between the induction principle, which pervades modern mathematics, and a dual, non-standard ‘coinduction principle’, which underlies many of the recursive phenomena occurring in computer science. The aim of the present survey is to show that the elementary categorical notion of a final coalgebra is a suitable foundation for such a coinduction principle. The properties of coalgebraic coinduction are studied both at an abstract categorical level and in some specific categories used in semantics, namely categories of non-well-founded sets, partial orders and metric spaces.
The Impact of Customer Contact on Collective Human Energy in Firms

This article investigates how and when a firm’s level of customer contact influences the collective organizational energy. For this purpose, we bridge the literature on collective human energy at work with the job impact framework and organizational sensemaking processes and argue that a firm’s level of customer contact is positively linked to the collective organizational energy because a high level of customer contact might make the experience of prosocial impact across the firm more likely. However, as prior research at the individual level has indicated that customers could also deplete employees’ energy, we introduce transformational leadership climate as a novel contingency factor for this linkage at the organizational level. We propose that a medium to high transformational leadership climate is necessary to derive positive meaning from customer contact, whereas firms with a low transformational leadership climate do not get energized by customer contact. We tested the proposed moderated mediation model with multilevel modeling and a multisource data set comprising 9,094 employees and 75 key informants in 75 firms. The results support our hypotheses and offer important theoretical contributions for research on collective human energy in organizations and its interplay with customers.
Conceptual model of multiparty conferencing and telemeeting quality

The paper presents a novel conceptual framework that enables a better understanding of the quality formation process in the mind of a participant in a multiparty conferencing setting. The model is built on previous fundamental work on quality formation and is integrating knowledge obtained from empirical multiparty quality studies. The model enables to more precisely specify the test scenario when investigating multiparty quality in terms of test planning, conduction and reporting.
Productivity performance in developing countries Country case studies Nigeria

ii This paper has not been formally edited. The designations employed and the presentation of material in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the Secretariat of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area, or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. The opinions, figures and estimates set forth are the responsibility of the author and should not necessarily be considered as reflecting the views or carrying endorsement of UNIDO. The designations " developed " and " developing " economies are intended for statistical convenience and do not necessarily express a judgment about the stage reached by a particular country or area in the development process. Mention of firm names or commercial products does not imply endorsement by UNIDO. Material in this paper may be freely quoted but acknowledgement is requested with a copy of the publication containing the quotation or reprint.
Second Prize

The post-communist countries of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union introduced, at least initially, political and economic reforms simultaneously. This paper explores the consequences of simultaneous implementation of economic and political liberalisation for economic growth. It is found that democracy indeed had a negative marginal effect on growth during early phases of transition (1990-93). Nevertheless, democracy reinforces progress in economic liberalisation, which in turn has a strongly positive effect on growth. When accounting for this indirect effect, the overall effect of democracy on growth turns out overwhelmingly positive.
THE INFLUENCE OF RESIGNATION ON THE PRIVACY CALCULUS IN THE CONTEXT OF SOCIAL NETWORKING SITES: AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS

Individuals conduct a privacy calculus before they disclose information by weighing benefits with privacy risks of disclosure. In line with the privacy calculus, if benefits outweigh privacy risks individuals disclose information, otherwise they do not. However, research has also challenged the privacy calculus because individuals also disclose information even in light of low benefits and high privacy risks. Given explanations refer to 1) altering the perceptions of benefits and privacy risks or 2) altering the effect of benefits and privacy risks on disclosure. Whereas studies focusing on the first part have provided explanations for why the privacy calculus is sometimes not confirmed, studies on the second part do not do so. This study is therefore considering the second part and is integrating an individual’s level of resignation to protect one’s privacy in the context of social networking sites. We consider resignation as a reaction of individuals to given privacy threats. Results show that when including resignation the effect of benefits becomes stronger and the effect of privacy risks becomes weaker. Implications for theory include that resignation helps in explaining why individuals disclose information even when only small benefits and high privacy risks are present.
Political Identity and Trust

We explore how political identity affects trust. Using an incentivized experimental survey conducted on a representative sample of the U.S. population, we vary information about partners' partisan identity to elicit trust behavior, beliefs about trustworthiness, and actual reciprocation. By eliciting beliefs, we are able to assess whether differences in trust rates are due to stereotyping or a "taste for discrimination. " By measuring actual trustworthiness, we are able to determine whether beliefs are statistically correct. We find that trust is pervasive and depends on the partisan identity of the trustee. Differential trust rates are explained by incorrect stereotypes about the other's lack of trustworthiness rather than by a "taste for discrimination. " Given the importance of beliefs, we run additional treatments in which we disclose previous reciprocation rates before participants decide whether to trust. We find that beliefs are slightly more optimistic compared with the previous treatments, suggesting that incorrect stereotypes are hard to change.
Human Scalp Electroencephalography Reveals that Repetition Suppression Varies with Expectation

Repetitions of a sensory event elicit lower levels of brain activity than its initial presentation (“repetition suppression,” RS). According to one view, RS depends on the biophysics of neuronal discharge, and is thus an automatic consequence of stimulus processing (“fatigue” model). Another account suggests that RS depends on the statistical structure of the environment, and occurs when repeated stimuli are less surprising than novel stimuli (“surprise reduction” model). In support of the latter view, functional magnetic resonance imaging studies have shown that RS is modulated by the local probability of repetition. However, single-cell recordings from macaque inferotemporal area (IT) have failed to replicate this finding. Here, we recorded scalp electroencephalography from human participants viewing pairs of faces that repeated (face1–face1) or alternated (face1–face2), in contexts in which repetitions were expected or unexpected. As previously described, event-related potentials in the range of 100–400 ms recorded at posterior electrode sites and at the vertex differed between repetitions and alternations. Critically, at central electrodes, we observed that the difference between repeated and alternating stimuli was attenuated when repetitions were unexpected, as predicted by the surprise reduction model. These findings demonstrate that the modulation of RS by repetition probability is observable using direct neural recording methods in human participants, and that it occurs relatively late (>300 ms) post-stimulus. Finally, we found that theta-band (4–8 Hz) spectral power over central electrodes varied with the three-way interaction between of repetition, expectation, and the rate of change of the environment, consistent with recent reports that frontal theta may be a hallmark of learning processes originating in the anterior cingulate and medial prefrontal cortex.
Management of Diabetes Associated with Nephrotic Syndrome: Therapeutic Potential of Dapagliflozin for Protracted Volume Retention

A 48-year-old female was admitted to our hospital presenting with a chief complaint of progressive swelling because of diabetic nephrotic syndrome. Dapagliflozin seemed to play a role in accelerating the patient's urinary sodium excretion as well as reducing gross fluid retention despite the fact that her nephrotic condition was resistant to furosemide. Our experience emphasizes a potential novel approach to overcoming loop diuretic resistance using this agent among some subsets of type 2 diabetic subjects complicated with severe volume accumulation. We believe that combination treatment consisting of dapagliflozin and furosemide may produce diuretic synergy via sequential nephron blockade. The accumulation of more experience with additional cases similar to ours requires continuous and careful attention.
Dissecting the expanded cognitive reflection test: an item response theory analysis

ABSTRACT This study presents a psychometric evaluation of the Expanded Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT7) based on item response theory. The participants (N = 1204) completed the CRT7 and provided self-reported information about their cognitive styles through the Preference for Intuition and Deliberation Scale (PID). A two-parameter logistic model was fitted to the data to obtain the item difficulty and discrimination parameters of the CRT7. The results showed that the items had good discriminatory power (αs = .80 − 2.92), but the range of difficulty was restricted (βs ranged from −.60 to .32). Moreover, the CRT7 showed a pattern of correlations with the PID which was similar to that of the original CRT. When taken together, these results are evidence of the adequacy of the CRT7 as an expanded tool for measuring cognitive reflection; however, one of the newer items (the pig item) was consistently problematic across analyses, and so it is recommended that in future studies it should be removed from the CRT7.
Resilient Virtual Network Service Provision in Network Virtualization Environments

Network Virtualization has recently emerged to provide scalable, customized and on-demand virtual network services over a shared substrate network. How to provide VN services with resiliency guarantees against network failures has become a critical issue, meanwhile the service resource usages should be minimized under the strict constraints such as link bandwidth capability and service resiliency guarantees etc. In this paper, we present a resource allocation algorithm to balance the tradeoff between service resource consumptions and service resiliency. By exploiting a heuristic VN mapping scheme and a restoration path selection scheme based on intelligent bandwidth sharing, the algorithm simultaneously makes cost-effective usage of network resources and protects VN services against network failures. We perform evaluations and find that the algorithm is near optimal in terms of network resource usage, especially the additional restoration bandwidth cost for resiliency protection.
Temperatures of extremal black holes

The temperature of an extremal Reissner - Nordstrom black hole is not restricted by the requirement of absence of a conical singularity. It is demonstrated how Kruskal-like coordinates may be constructed corresponding to any temperature whatsoever. A recently discovered stringy extremal black hole which apparently has an infinite temperature is also shown to have its temperature unrestricted by conical singularity arguments.
Blind Haze Separation

Outdoor imaging is plagued by poor visibility conditions due to atmospheric scattering, particularly in haze. A major problem is spatially-varying reduction of contrast by stray radiance (airlight), which is scattered by the haze particles towards the camera. Recent computer vision methods have shown that images can be compensated for haze, and even yield a depth map of the scene. A key step in such a scene recovery is subtraction of the airlight. In particular, this can be achieved by analyzing polarization-filtered images. However, the recovery requires parameters of the airlight. These parameters were estimated in past studies by measuring pixels in sky areas. This paper derives an approach for blindly recovering the parameter needed for separating the airlight from the measurements, thus recovering contrast, with neither user interaction nor existence of the sky in the frame. This eases the interaction and conditions needed for image dehazing, which also requires compensation for attenuation. The approach has proved successful in experiments, some of which are shown here.
The Effect of Blended Learning on Student's Learning Achievement and Science Process Skills in Plant Tissue Culture Course

The purpose of this research was to know the effect of blended learning strategy on learning achievement and science process skills of students in plant tissue culture course in the Universitas Negeri Medan. The research method was quasi experiment. The population of this study was all semester VIII students of biology education program. The study sample consists of two classes, namely: class A known as control class who were taught by conventional learning strategy and class C known as experiment class who were taught by blended learning strategy. They were selected using cluster random sampling technique. The results of the study showed that tcount = 3.769, P= 0.001 at the level significance of 0.05 in learning achievements score. It also showed that tcount = 5.435 > ttable = 1.661 P= 0.001 at the level significance of 0.05 in science process skills score. Based on the study result, it can be concluded the blended learning strategy found significantly more effective in enhancing students’ learning achievement and science process skills in plant tissue culture course as compared to the conventional learning strategy.