Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Strategic Household Purchase: Consumer House Buying Behavior

The aim of this study is to examine consumer house-buying behavior from the consumers’ perspective. In view of the existing literature exploring consumer decision making, the purpose of this research was threefold: (a) to propose a conceptual model of consumer decision making within the frame of consumer behavior; (b) to gain knowledge of factors impacting this process from the empirical standpoint with the focus on prefabricated house purchases; and (c) to offer implications for beneficial purchases of prefabricated houses. The results of our in-depth interviews with recent owners and potential buyers of a custom-made prefabricated house suggest that cognitive and rational factors do not offer sufficient explanation of consumer behavior in the case of a high-involvement product such as a house. In addition to the idiosyncratic characteristics of the customer, his/her personal situation and environmental factors, the role of feelings, experience, subconscious factors, needs and goals should to be taken into account to better understand this kind of decision making.
Social, Emotional, and Relational Distinctions in Patterns of Recent Masturbation Among Young Adults:

3 Introduction 3 Demographic and Social Patterns in Previous Masturbation Estimates 4 Masturbation and Emotional Well-Being 5 Analytic Approach: Data, Measures, and Methods 6 Data Source 6 Measures and Analytic Approach 7 Results 8 Masturbation and Recent Sexual Intercourse 10 Masturbation and Emotion Wellbeing 11 Multivariate Analyses 12 Discussion 14 What Seems Stable 14 What May Be Changing 15 Conclusion 15 References 16 Table 1: Unweighted Summary Statistics by Gender 18 Males 18 Females 18 Table 2: Odds Ratios from Logistic Regressions Predicting Masturbation Within the Past Day 20 Table 3: Odds Ratios from Logistic Regressions Predicting Masturbation Within the Past Week . 21 Appendix A: Comparison of Weighted NFSS Results with Parallel National Survey Results 22 Appendix B: Data Quality Checks 23
Crystal Structure of Plasmodium knowlesi Apical Membrane Antigen 1 and Its Complex with an Invasion-Inhibitory Monoclonal Antibody

The malaria parasite Plasmodium knowlesi, previously associated only with infection of macaques, is now known to infect humans as well and has become a significant public health problem in Southeast Asia. This species should therefore be targeted in vaccine and therapeutic strategies against human malaria. Apical Membrane Antigen 1 (AMA1), which plays a role in Plasmodium merozoite invasion of the erythrocyte, is currently being pursued in human vaccine trials against P. falciparum. Recent vaccine trials in macaques using the P. knowlesi orthologue PkAMA1 have shown that it protects against infection by this parasite species and thus should be developed for human vaccination as well. Here, we present the crystal structure of Domains 1 and 2 of the PkAMA1 ectodomain, and of its complex with the invasion-inhibitory monoclonal antibody R31C2. The Domain 2 (D2) loop, which is displaced upon binding the Rhoptry Neck Protein 2 (RON2) receptor, makes significant contacts with the antibody. R31C2 inhibits binding of the Rhoptry Neck Protein 2 (RON2) receptor by steric blocking of the hydrophobic groove and by preventing the displacement of the D2 loop which is essential for exposing the complete binding site on AMA1. R31C2 recognizes a non-polymorphic epitope and should thus be cross-strain reactive. PkAMA1 is much less polymorphic than the P. falciparum and P. vivax orthologues. Unlike these two latter species, there are no polymorphic sites close to the RON2-binding site of PkAMA1, suggesting that P. knowlesi has not developed a mechanism of immune escape from the host’s humoral response to AMA1.
Computer Vision and Image Understanding

Self-monitoring) project. The project aims to translate the semeiotic code of the human face into computational descriptors and measures, automatically extracted from videos, multispectral images, and 3D scans of the face. The multisensory platform, being developed as the result of that project, in the form of a smart mirror, looks for signs related to cardio-metabolic risks. The goal is to enable users to self-monitor their well-being status over time and improve their life-style via tailored user guidance. This paper is focused on the description of the part of that sys-tem, utilising computer vision and machine learning techniques to perform 3D morphological analysis of the face and recognition of psycho-somatic status both linked with cardio-metabolic risks. The paper describes the concepts, methods and the developed implementations as well as reports on the results obtained on both real and synthetic datasets.
Function of β‐amyloid in cholesterol transport: a lead to neurotoxicity

Amyloid β‐peptide (Aβ), Aβ precursor protein (APP), apolipoprotein E (apoE), and elevated cholesterol levels have been linked to Alzheimer's disease (AD) pathology. High cholesterol levels increase APP and apoE expression in human NT2 neuron progenitor cells. A cholesterol‐ rich environment also induces processing of APP, leading to the formation of Aβ and Aβ peptide fragments. Using a novel method, we determined that 1) cholesterol binds to Aβ at a‐secretase cleavage site; 2) Aβ17–40 rather than Aβ1–40 prevents cholesterol from binding to apoE; 3) Aβ1–40 inhibits cholesterol from binding to low‐density lipoprotein (LDL), leading to decrease cholesterol influx and intracellular cholesterol levels; 4) the binding of cholesterol to apoE or LDL was abolished completely in presence of Aβ1–42. Increased extracellular free cholesterol levels are toxic to neurons; this toxicity is prevented by specific lipoproteins, such as high‐ density lipoproteins, which maintain their ability to bind cholesterol in the presence of Aβ. We propose that one of the physiological functions of Aβ and APP is to control cholesterol transport. AD is associated with increased Aβ production. High cholesterol levels also lead to overproduction of Aβ. Aβ blocks cholesterol trafficking and changes cholesterol homeostasis leading to neurodegeneration and the onset and/or progression of AD pathology.
Insecurity of Quantum Secure Computations

It had been widely claimed that quantum mechanics can protect private information during public decision in, for example, the so-called two-party secure computation. If this were the case, quantum smart-cards, storing confidential information accessible only to a proper reader, could prevent fake teller machines from learning the PIN (personal identification number) from the customers' input. Although such optimism has been challenged by the recent surprising discovery of the insecurity of the so-called quantum bit commitment, the security of quantum two-party computation itself remains unaddressed. Here I answer this question directly by showing that all one-sided two-party computations (which allow only one of the two parties to learn the result) are necessarily insecure. As corollaries to my results, quantum one-way oblivious password identification and the so-called quantum one-out-of-two oblivious transfer are impossible. I also construct a class of functions that cannot be computed securely in any two-sided two-party computation. Nevertheless, quantum cryptography remains useful in key distribution and can still provide partial security in ``quantum money'' proposed by Wiesner.
An Exploratory Study on Malay Processing Tool for Acquisition of Taxonomy Using FCA

In an effort to develop a tool for automatic ontology building from Malay text based on formal concept analysis, an effective natural language processing (NLP) tool as the pre-processing components is needed. The goal of the study is to investigate whether existing Malay NLP tools can be a viable component to be part of the ontology learning tool. This paper discusses the outcome of the study on three NLP applications. The annotated corpus approach was adopted in this study as deemed suitable for exploratory research. Using the metrics relative subject recall and precision, the results obtained show that statistical modeling technique outperformed pola grammar technique.
Generation of Regulatory T Cells Semiallogeneic Heart Transplant through the Cells Prolongs the Survival of a Pretransplant Infusion of Mesenchymal Stem

In this study, we investigated whether mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) had immunomodulatory properties in solid organ allotransplantation, using a semiallogeneic heart transplant mouse model, and studied the mechanism(s) underlying MSC tolerogenic effects. Either single (portal vein, day (cid:1) 7) or double (portal vein, day (cid:1) 7 and tail vein, day (cid:1) 1) pretransplant infusions of donor-derived B6C3 MSC in B6 recipients induced a profound T cell hyporesponsiveness and prolonged B6C3 cardiac allograft survival. The protolerogenic effect was abrogated when donor-derived MSC were injected together with B6C3 hematopoietic stem cells (HSC), suggesting that HSC negatively impact MSC immunomodulatory properties. Both the induction (pretransplant) and the maintenance phase ( > 100 days posttransplant) of donor-derived MSC-induced tolerance were associated with CD4 (cid:2) CD25 (cid:2) Foxp3 (cid:2) Treg expansion and impaired anti-donor Th1 activity. MSC-induced regulatory T cells (Treg) were donor-speciﬁc since adoptive transfer of splenocytes from tolerant mice prevented the rejection of fully MHC-mismatched donor-speciﬁc secondary allografts but not of third-party grafts. In addition, infusion of recipient-derived B6 MSC tolerized a semiallogeneic B6C3 cardiac allograft, but not a fully MHC-mismatched BALB/c graft, and expanded Treg. A double i.v. pretransplant infusion of recipient-derived MSC had the same tolerogenic effect as the combined intraportal/i.v. MSC infusions, which makes the tolerogenic protocol applicable in a clinical setting. In contrast, single MSC infusions given either peritransplant or 1 day after transplant were less effective. Altogether these ﬁndings indicate that MSC immunomodulatory properties require HSC removal, partial sharing of MHC Ags between the donor and the recipient and pretransplant infusion, and are associated with expansion of donor-speciﬁc Treg. The Journal of Immunology, 2008, 181: 3933–3946.
Methylated BSA Mimics Amyloid-Related Proteins and Triggers Inflammation

The mechanistic study of inflammatory or autoimmune diseases requires the generation of mouse models that reproduce the alterations in immune responses observed in patients. Methylated bovine serum albumin (mBSA) has been widely used to induce antigen-specific inflammation in targeted organs or in combination with single stranded DNA (ssDNA) to generate anti-nucleic acids antibodies in vivo. However, the mechanism by which this modified protein triggers inflammation is poorly understood. By analyzing the biochemical properties of mBSA, we found that mBSA exhibits features of an intermediate of protein misfolding pathway. mBSA readily interact with a list of dyes that have binding specificity towards amyloid fibrils. Intriguingly, mBSA displayed cytotoxic activity and its binding to ssDNA further enhanced formation of beta-sheet rich amyloid fibrils. Moreover, mBSA is recognized by the serum amyloid P, a protein unanimously associated with amyloid plaques in vivo. In macrophages, we observed that mBSA disrupted the lysosomal compartment, signaled along the NLRP3 inflammasome pathway, and activated caspase 1, which led to the production of IL-1β. In vivo, mBSA triggered rapid and prominent immune cell infiltration that is dependent on IL-1β induction. Taken together, these data demonstrate that by mimicking amyloidogenic proteins mBSA exhibits strong innate immune functions and serves as a potent adjuvant. These findings advance our understanding on the underlying mechanism of how aberrant immune responses lead to autoimmune reactions.
The Feasibility of Through-the-Cycle Ratings

It has been proposed that the potential procyclicality of Basel II could be alleviated by using through-the-cycle (TTC) ratings in IRBA models. A TTC rating would be based on the structural component of the debtor s credit risk ignoring cyclical fluctuations. This paper tests for the existence of such fluctuations in corporate sector credit risk and finds vietually no evidence for their existence at the company level. It is not possible to assign satisfactory TTC ratings to debtors if there are no cyclical variations to be filtered out. Keywords: through-the-cycle rating, credit risk, procyclicality JEL classification numbers: G21, G33, L16
Regional Differences in the Refractory Period of the Hemodynamic Response: An Event-Related fMRI Study

We investigated the characteristics of the hemodynamic response (HDR) to paired presentations of visual face stimuli using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Photographs of faces were presented singly or in pairs with either a 1-s or 6-s intrapair interval (IPI). Each trial (single face or face pairs) was followed by an intertrial interval of 16-20 s. Faces were presented at fixation and passively viewed by the 10 subjects. Images were acquired at 1.5 Tesla using a gradient-echo echo-planar imaging sequence sensitive to blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) contrast. To examine the refractory properties of the HDR, we subtracted the single-stimulus hemodynamic response from the composite response evoked by face pairs for all voxels significantly active on single face trials. The residual represents the contribution of the second stimulus to the fMRI signal. Event-related presentation of faces evoked activity in medial calcarine cortex and the fusiform gyrus bilaterally. In both calcarine and fusiform regions, the hemodynamic response to the second face in a pair was of lower amplitude and of increased latency at 1 s IPI, with significant recovery of both amplitude and latency toward single-stimulus values at 6 s IPI. At 1 s IPI, significantly greater recovery was found in posterior fusiform regions (50-60%) than in midfusiform regions (10-40%). These regional differences were not apparent at 6 s IPI. No differences were found across slices in calcarine cortex. There was a significant difference in mean latency to HDR peak between calcarine and fusiform cortex, with the HDR peaking about 400 ms earlier in calcarine cortex. We conclude that characteristics of the HDR, notably its amplitude, latency, and refractory properties, differ across visual cortical areas.
Correlates of Learning in Simulations

This study attempted to identify variables that correlate with learning in simulations. The researchers explored whether simulation learning varied with (1) simulation performance, (2) the degree to which players were struggling with the simulation, (3) type of simulation goals, and (4) common sense variables often associated with learning such as confidence. The subjects were college seniors; the simulation lasted eleven quarters; learning was measured by Instructor designed instruments; other variables were measured by questionnaire. The results were that students who expressed game related financial goals, such as to maximize profits, early in game learned more and that those that perceived the game to be understandable and simple early in the game also learned more. Learning did not correlate with performance and the degree of struggle.
Jamming of molecular motors as a tool for transport cargos along microtubules

The hopping model for cargo transport by molecular motors introduced in Refs. goldman1, goldman2, is extended here in order to incorporate the movement of cargo-motor complexes. In this context, hopping process expresses the possibility for cargo to be exchanged between neighbor motors at a microtubule where the transport takes place. Jamming of motors is essential for cargos to execute long-range movement in this way. Results from computer simulations performed using the extended model indicate that cargo may execute bidirectional movement in the presence of motors of a single polarity, confirming previous analytical results. Moreover, these results suggest the existence of a balance between cargo hopping and the movement of the complex that may control the efficiency of cargo transfer and cargo delivering. Considerations about the energy involved in the transport process show that the model presented here offers a considerable advantage over other models in the literature for which cargo movement is restricted to the movement of cargo-motor complexes.
Secure hamming distance based biometric authentication

Concerns of privacy, template security and efficiency of biometric authentication systems have received considerable research attention in the recent past. Binary template representations have been shown to provide significant improvements in efficiency without compromising accuracy for a variety of biometric modalities including fingerprints, palmprints and iris. Most of the secure authentication protocols work with generic feature representations or propose new secure templates for specific modalities. In this work, we propose an authentication protocol that works with any binary biometric representation that employs hamming distance for comparison and convert it into a secure, privacy preserving protocol that provides template protection. We also provide the ability to use masks while computing the hamming distance. The protocol retains the accuracy of the underlying representation as demonstrated by our experiments.
Associations among Task Self-Efficacy, Physical Activity and Subjective Wellbeing

Associations among Task Self-Efficacy, Physical Activity and Subjective Wellbeing Abigail M. Nehrkorn The physical and psychological health benefits resulting from physical activity engagement have been documented in previous literature, including the connection between physical activity and subjective wellbeing (SWB). Associations have also been found between task-related self-efficacy and physical activity, connecting these concepts to Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory (SCT; Bandura, 1982, 1997), such that retaining a higher belief in one’s physical activity abilities has been associated with successful physical activity engagement. Previous literature has documented these separate associations, but not as much focus has been placed on examining task self-efficacy, physical activity, and SWB in one model, especially during the time of physical activity adoption. Utilizing data from 58 adults, we conducted a path analysis to examine autoregressive and cross-lagged paths that encompassed 4 waves of data and 3 weeks of time. Significant autoregressive trends were observed for task self-efficacy, physical activity, and SWB, such that these variables increased over time, but the included cross-lagged paths were not found to be significant, indicating a lack of a relationship between task selfefficacy and physical activity, between physical activity and SWB, and between task selfefficacy and SWB. Significant age effects did not emerge, indicating similar scores in task selfefficacy, physical activity, and SWB across younger, middle-aged, and older adults. Similarities and differences between our study and the previous literature are discussed, along with proposing crucial aspects to consider in future studies and interventions on this topic.
Zic1 and Zic3 Regulate Medial Forebrain Development through Expansion of Neuronal Progenitors

The medial telencephalon is a source of neurons that follow distinct tangential trajectories of migration to various structures such as the cerebral cortex, striatum, and olfactory bulb. In the present study, we characterized the forebrain anomalies in Zic1/Zic3 compound mutant mice. Zic1 and Zic3 were strongly expressed in the medial structures, including the septum, medial cerebral cortex, and choroid plexus. Mice homozygous for the Zic1 mutant allele together with the null Zic3 allele showed medial forebrain defects, which were not obvious in either Zic1 or Zic3 single mutants. Absence of both Zic1 and Zic3 caused hypoplasia of the hippocampus, septum, and olfactory bulb. Analysis of the cell cycle revealed that the cell cycle exit rate was increased in the septa of double mutants. Misexpression of Zic3 in the ventricular layer of the cerebral cortex inhibited neuronal differentiation. These results indicated that both Zic1 and Zic3 function in maintaining neural precursor cells in an undifferentiated state. The functions of these genes may be essential to increasing neural cell numbers regionally in the medial telencephalon and to proper mediolateral patterning of the telencephalon.
Prepatterning and patterning of the thalamus along embryonic development of Xenopus laevis

Previous developmental studies of the thalamus (alar part of the diencephalic prosomere p2) have defined the molecular basis for the acquisition of the thalamic competence (preparttening), the subsequent formation of the secondary organizer in the zona limitans intrathalamica, and the early specification of two anteroposterior domains (rostral and caudal progenitor domains) in response to inducing activities and that are shared in birds and mammals. In the present study we have analyzed the embryonic development of the thalamus in the anuran Xenopus laevis to determine conserved or specific features in the amphibian diencephalon. From early embryonic stages to the beginning of the larval period, the expression patterns of 22 markers were analyzed by means of combined In situ hybridization (ISH) and immunohistochemical techniques. The early genoarchitecture observed in the diencephalon allowed us to discern the boundaries of the thalamus with the prethalamus, pretectum, and epithalamus. Common molecular features were observed in the thalamic prepatterning among vertebrates in which Wnt3a, Fez, Pax6 and Xiro1 expression were of particular importance in Xenopus. The formation of the zona limitans intrathalamica was observed, as in other vertebrates, by the progressive expression of Shh. The largely conserved expressions of Nkx2.2 in the rostral thalamic domain vs. Gbx2 and Ngn2 (among others) in the caudal domain strongly suggest the role of Shh as morphogen in the amphibian thalamus. All these data showed that the molecular characteristics observed during preparttening and patterning in the thalamus of the anuran Xenopus (anamniote) share many features with those described during thalamic development in amniotes (common patterns in tetrapods) but also with zebrafish, strengthening the idea of a basic organization of this diencephalic region across vertebrates.