Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Major histocompatibility complex-restricted CD8+ cytotoxic T lymphocytes from horses with equine infectious anemia virus recognize Env and Gag/PR proteins

Cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL) can control some viral infections and may be important in the control of lentiviruses, including human immunodeficiency virus type 1. Since there is limited evidence for an in vivo role of CTL in control of lentiviruses, dissection of immune mechanisms in animal lentiviral infections may provide needed information. Horses infected with equine infectious anemia virus (EIAV) a lentivirus, have acute plasma viremia which is terminated in immunocompetent horses. Viremic episodes may recur, but most horses ultimately control infection and become asymptomatic carriers. To begin dissection of the immune mechanisms involved in EIAV control, peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) from infected horses were evaluated for CTL to EIAV-infected cells. By using noninfected and EIAV-infected autologous equine kidney (EK) cells in 51Cr-release assays, EIAV-specific cytotoxic activity was detected in unstimulated PBMC from three infected horses. The EIAV-specific cytotoxic activity was major histocompatibility complex (MHC) restricted, as determined by assaying EIAV-infected heterologous EK targets, and was mediated by CD8+ T lymphocytes, as determined by depleting these cells by a panning procedure with an anti-CD8 monoclonal antibody. MHC-restricted CD8+ CTL in unstimulated PBMC from infected horses caused significant specific lysis of autologous EK cells infected with recombinant vaccinia viruses expressing EIAV genes, either env or gag plus 5' pol. The EIAV-specific MHC-restricted CD8+ CTL were detected in two EIAV-infected horses within a few days after plasma viremia occurred and were present after viremia was terminated. The detection of these immune effector cells in EIAV-infected horses permits further studies to determine their in vivo role.
Campaign Finance Laws and Political Efficacy: Evidence from the States

The decline of political efficacy and trust in the United States is often linked to the rise of money in politics. Both the courts and reform advocates justify restrictions on campaign donations and spending as necessary for the improvement of links between the government and the governed. We conduct the first test of whether campaign finance laws actually influence how citizens view their government by exploiting the variation in campaign finance regulations both across and within states during the last half of the 20th century. Our analysis reveals no large positive effects of campaign finance laws on political efficacy. Public disclosure laws and limits on contributions from organizations are in some cases associated with modest increases in efficacy, but public financing is associated with a similarly modest decrease in efficacy.
Changes of Grain Sizes and Flow Stresses of AA2014 and AA6063 Aluminum Alloys at High Temperatures in Various Strain Rates

Changes in the grain sizes and flow stresses of AA2014 and AA6063 aluminum alloys subjected to compression tests at high temperatures in various constant compression head speeds were investigated. When assessing the test results, constant strain rates were considered instead of compression head speeds of the uniaxial compression testing system after making the necessary mathematical transformation. Specimens used in the test were prepared in cylindrical form and deformed until 0.7 true strain. As a result of compression tests, true stress-true strain curves were obtained. Test specimens were quenched as soon as the tests ended. The microstructures that occurred after various hot deformations, which materials better mechanical properties were studied with respect to experimental work. Data dealing with mechanical and microstuctural properties under isothermal forging conditions were obtained for industrial applications.
Effects of Mindfulness Meditation Program on the physiological sign and depression in Breast Cancer Patients in Korea

The object of this study was to assess the effects of the mindfulness based stress reduction (MBSR) program on blood pressure, and depression in breast cancer survivors. This was a quasi-experimental study with a non-equivalent control group pre-post test design. A convenience sample of eligible breast cancer survivors enrolled after giving informed consent. Fifty breast cancer survivors who had completed breast cancer treatment (25 for experimental group, 25 for control group) participated in this study. The MBSR group conducted in 8-week MBSR program for 3 hours per 1 session on 1week. Data were analyzed using SPSS program x 2 -test and t-test for subject homogeneity verification, and ANCOVA to examine the hypotheses. The MBSR group had significantly lower scores for blood pressure, depression compared to the non MBSR group. In summary, MBSR is a program that is feasible for breast cancer survivors and the results provide preliminary evidence of beneficial effects of MBSR on physiological sign as blood pressure. According to the results, Mindfulness Meditation program was useful for decreasing the Depression. Therefore, this program was an effective nursing intervention to decrease the physiological sign and psychological symptom of the breast cancer patients. MBSR program seems to require more than one year long-term follow-up study in order to know the effect on immune globulin A.
Improving Memory Through N-back Training

have claimed that fluid intelligence (Gf) may be improved through a cognitive training regime utilising the n-back task. They have maintained that the improvement in Gf is realised through melioration in working memory (WM). To date there has been no evidence to support this assertion, however Jaeggi et al. (2008) obtained a significant improvement in short term memory (STM).  The current study examined the near transfer mechanisms of the single n-back task; specifically STM span and attention, short term auditory memory span and divided attention, and WM as operationalised through the Woodcock-Johnson III: Tests of cognitive abilities (WJ-III).
Automated progress monitoring based on photogrammetric point clouds and precedence relationship graphs

Construction progress monitoring is an essential but time-consuming work on all construction sites. This research introduces a method to facilitate the asplanned versus as-built comparison through image based monitoring. A dense point cloud is reconstructed from the images that is compared to an existing 4D building information model (BIM). However, due to the numerous obstructions found on a construction site, only a minority of building elements can be detected directly. In this paper, we discuss how the detection results are significantly refined and enriched by using additional spatial and temporal information gained from the 4D BIM. In this regard, a precedence relationship graph is derived which helps to identify occluded elements and enhance the detection algorithm.
Taking a new look at empirical models of adoption: average treatment effect estimation of adoption rates and their determinants

This article shows that the "observed" sample adoption rate does not consistently estimate the population adoption rate even if the sample is random. It is proved that instead the sample adoption rate is a consistent estimate of the population joint exposure "and" adoption rate, which does not inform about adoption per se. Likewise, it is shown that a model of adoption with observed adoption outcome as a dependent variable and where exposure to the technology is not observed and controlled for cannot yield consistent estimates of the determinants of adoption. The article uses the counterfactual outcomes framework to show that the true population adoption rate corresponds to what is defined in the modern policy evaluation literature as the "average treatment effect" (ATE), which measures the effect or impact of a "treatment" on a person randomly selected in the population. In the adoption context, a "treatment" corresponds to exposure to the technology. The article uses the ATE estimation framework to derive consistent nonparametric and parametric estimators of population adoption rates and their determinants and applies the results to consistently estimate the population adoption rates and determinants of the NERICA (New Rice for Africa) rice varieties in Cote d'Ivoire. The ATE methodological approach developed in the article has significant policy implications with respect to judging the intrinsic merit of a new technology in terms of its potential demand by the target population independently of issues related to its accessibility and in terms of the decision to invest or not in its wide-scale dissemination. Copyright 2007 International Association of Agricultural Economists.
Discussing the Flynn Effect: From Causes and Interpretation to Implications

Clark, Lawlor-Savage, and Goghari (this issue) point out that evidence of IQ rises had been documented decades before it was named the Flynn effect. These previous studies, however, were conducted sporadically and in isolated samples. Flynn (1984, 1987) examined them in a large-scale manner and was able to show their systematic and global nature. These findings still remained relatively unknown until they were cited in The Bell Curve by Herrnstein and Murray (1994), who were among the first to call them the Flynn effect. Since then, numerous researchers (e.g., Pietschnig & Voracek, 2015) have continued to find similar results. These results indicate that IQ is rising throughout the world (with no exceptions to date), and the rise is higher in tests of fluid reasoning than in tests of crystallized reasoning. Further, the Flynn effect is experienced at the same rate by individuals throughout the distribution, including the upper and lower tails (Kanaya, Scullin, & Ceci, 2003; Wai & Putallaz, 2011). These findings have led Flynn and others to question: (a) What could cause these specific, secular and global patterns? and (b) What do these gains mean? The authors have outlined many of the theories and go further to propose one that is similar to Flynn’s (2009): that societal demands have changed such that abstract reasoning skills are relied upon and reinforced more now than in the past. They also argue that the gains do not reflect changes in intellectual abilities and begin to tease apart the difference between intelligence and IQ. This latter distinction is quite important. Indeed, even Spearman stated that intelligence is “mere vocal sound, a word with so many meanings that finally it has none” (Spearman, 1961, p. 246). To define and to operationalize “intelligence” is a daunting task (see Neisser et al., 1996, for an excellent review). On the other hand, IQ (by definition) is a concrete score derived from a specific test. Therefore, assuming that the Flynn effect (a trend in IQ) can be interpreted as gains in intelligence (“a mere vocal sound”) may be inherently problematic.
The level of subjective visibility at different stages of memory processing

ABSTRACT Recent research suggests that the content of iconic memory (IM) and fragile visual short-term memory could be associated with a similar level of conscious accessibility as working memory (WM). The results of our studies, in which we used a subjective visibility scale in a partial-report change detection paradigm, indicate that it is possible to distinguish separate stages of memory based on both discriminative accuracy and conscious accessibility. The highest scores were associated with IM and the lowest with WM, while somewhere in the middle there was fragile memory. Based on classical assumptions, WM accessibility should be greater than the other two types of memory; however, our study showed that this might not always be the case. We discuss the potential sources of this outcome, of which one may be the task construction, as we only tested items that were directly in the focus of attention.
Different actors, different factors? A comparison of the news factor orientation between newspaper journalists and civil-society actors

Abstract News factors can be conceptualized as general relevance indicators guiding the attention of all humans. However, that doesn’t mean that they are the only factors influencing selection processes or that all news factors have the same importance across different actor types. Within the concept of news factors it is still unclear to what degree those news factors also apply to the communication outside of traditional mass media. We therefore ask whether and how actors with varying degrees of professionalization employ news factors in their communication differently. To answer our research question, we conducted a quantitative content analysis and compared the coverage in traditional newspapers with the communication of civil society actors with varying degrees of professionalization. We analyzed the relevance of news factors within the presentation of a specific issue, namely climate change in Germany. Our results show that news factors are – at least partly – also applied by non-journalist actors. The mass media and the more professionalized civil society actors do not apply news factors more strongly to their communication than do non-professionalized civil society actors. Instead, we find that different actors focus on different news factors.
Use of Dietary Supplements among Professional Athletes in Saudi Arabia

The objective of this study was to understand the usage patterns of dietary supplements among professional athletes in Saudi Arabia. The survey consisted of sixteen questions divided into four categories: use of supplements, reason for consumption of supplements, personal beliefs about supplements, and behavior. The questionnaires were given to the three teams residing in Riyadh: Al Hilal, Al Nasr, and Al-Shabab. Out of the 105 athletes surveyed, we found that only 98 are currently taking dietary supplements and the mean age and standard deviation were 25.74 ± 2.90. The survey results showed a high percentage of athletes (93.3%; n = 98) using different dietary supplements throughout the season, 43.8% (n = 43) reported using supplements for performance, and 32.6% (n = 32) believed in health benefits as a reason for using dietary supplements. Our results showed that a total of 87 (88.7%), 81 (82.6%), and 51 (52.0%) athletes are consuming sports drinks, vitamin C, and multivitamins, respectively. Meanwhile, those supplements ranking among the least used included omega 6 (18.6%), creatine (16.3%), and Ginkgo biloba (10.2%). A majority of athletes indicated that their use of supplements was for the purpose of improving their health and performance.
IT Alignment and Organizational Performance in Small Firms

This study focused on the alignment of business strategy and IT strategy among 256 small UK manufacturing firms. IT alignment was explored using both the matching and moderation approaches, leading to a measure of alignment for each firm. The group of firms with high IT alignment achieved better organisational performance than firms with low IT alignment. As well as confirming prior findings in large firms, the study extended our understanding of IT alignment in small firms.
Nonrandom Local Circuits in the Dentate Gyrus

The dentate hilus has been extensively studied in relation to its potential role in memory and in temporal lobe epilepsy. Little is known, however, about the synapses formed between the two major cell types in this region, glutamatergic mossy cells and hilar interneurons, or the organization of local circuits involving these cells. Using triple and quadruple simultaneous intracellular recordings in rat hippocampal slices, we find that mossy cells evoke EPSPs with high failure rates onto hilar neurons. Mossy cells show profound synapse specificity; 87.5% of their intralamellar connections are onto hilar interneurons. Hilar interneurons also show synapse specificity and preferentially inhibit mossy cells; 81% of inhibitory hilar synapses are onto mossy cells. Hilar IPSPs have low failure rates, are blocked by the GABAA receptor antagonist gabazine, and exhibit short-term depression when tested at 17 Hz. Surprisingly, more than half (57%) of the mossy cell synapses we found onto interneurons were part of reciprocal excitatory/inhibitory local circuit motifs. Neither the high degree of target cell specificity, nor the significant enrichment of structured polysynaptic local circuit motifs, could be explained by nonrandom sampling or somatic proximity. Intralamellar hilar synapses appear to function primarily by integrating synchronous inputs and presynaptic burst discharges, allowing hilar cells to respond over a large dynamic range of input strengths. The reciprocal mossy cell/interneuron local circuit motifs we find enriched in the hilus may generate sparse neural representations involved in hippocampal memory operations.
Predictors of teachers' emotion language and its association with toddlers' social emotional competence

The current study examined teachers’ emotion language (verbalization of emotions using labeling, questioning, explaining, and minimizing language) within naturally-occurring teacher–toddler interactions with 28 teachers and 115 toddlers in 28 toddler early childhood education classrooms. First, this study explored relationships between teachers’ beliefs about toddlers and their emotions, teachers’ knowledge about toddlers’ development, and teachers’ characteristics (such as education, experience, and ethnicity) predicting teachers’ use of emotion language. Second, this study assessed associations between teachers’ emotion language and toddlers’ social emotional competence. Analyses controlled for program quality, child age, and child gender. Results suggest that aspects of teachers’ beliefs about toddlers and their emotions, teachers’ knowledge, and teachers’ characteristics are predictive of teachers’ emotion language. Toddlers in classrooms with teachers who used emotion minimizing were rated as exhibiting less social emotional competence in toddler classrooms. Implications regarding the connection between teachers’ beliefs and knowledge to their practice, and the potential effects of teachers’ emotion language on toddlers’ social emotional functioning in classrooms are discussed.
A Prospective Study of Trans-Fatty Acid Levels in Blood and Risk of Prostate Cancer

Background: Previous studies suggest a positive association between markers of trans-fatty acid intake and prostate cancer. We therefore prospectively evaluated the association between blood trans-fatty acid levels and risk of prostate cancer. Methods: We conducted a nested case-control study among 14,916 apparently healthy men who provided blood samples in 1982. Blood fatty acid levels were determined for 476 men diagnosed with prostate cancer during a 13-year follow-up and their matched controls. Controls were individually matched to cases according to age and smoking status at baseline. Conditional logistic regression was used to estimate the relative risk and 95% confidence interval of total, nonaggressive (stage A/B and low grade), and aggressive (stage C/D, high grade, subsequent distant metastasis or death) prostate cancer associated with blood levels of specific trans-fatty acids. Results: Blood levels of all the trans-fatty acids examined were unrelated to total prostate cancer risk. When results were divided according to tumor aggressiveness, blood levels of 18:1n-9t, all the 18:2t examined, and total trans-fatty acids were positively associated to nonaggressive tumors. The relative risks (95% confidence intervals; P trend) comparing top with bottom quintile trans-fatty acid levels were 2.16 (1.12-4.17; 0.11) for 18:1n-9t, 1.97 (1.03-3.75; 0.01) for total 18:2t, and 2.21 (1.14-4.29; 0.06) for total trans-fatty acids. None of the trans fats examined was associated with aggressive prostate tumors. Conclusion: Blood levels of trans isomers of oleic and linoleic acids are associated with an increased risk of nonaggressive prostate tumors. As this type of tumors represents a large proportion of prostate cancer detected using prostate-specific antigen screening, these findings may have implications for the prevention of prostate cancer. (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2008;17(1):95–101)
Can Sentiment Analysis Help Mimic Decision-Making Process of Loan Granting? A Novel Credit Risk Evaluation Approach Using GMKL Model

Credit risk assessment is a crucial process for financial institutions when granting commercial loans. However, the manual analysis of the overall condition of firms through customer due diligence reports is costly for both time and labor. This paper proposes a novel credit risk evaluation approach using GMKL model to automate the decision-making process. Sentiment indexes are generated by mining the opinions of the text content in customer due diligence reports and further used as input for model construction. The method distinguishes itself by innovatively employing sentiment analysis in credit risk assessment. A real-life loans granting dataset is utilized for verifying the performance of the method. The experiment results show that, when combining the traditional financial indicators along with the sentiment indexes, the classifiers trained by GMKL model can outperform several baseline models, successfully improving the accuracy of classification and also detecting the default loans.
Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience Developmental Changes in Brain Function Underlying the Influence of Reward Processing on Inhibitory Control

Adolescence is a period marked by changes in motivational and cognitive brain systems. However, the development of the interactions between reward and cognitive control processing are just beginning to be understood. Using event-related functional neuroimaging and an incentive modulated antisaccade task, we compared blood-oxygen level dependent activity underlying motivated response inhibition in children, adolescents, and adults. Behaviorally, children and adolescents performed significantly worse than adults during neutral trials. However, children and adolescents showed significant performance increases during reward trials. Adults showed no performance changes across conditions. fMRI results demonstrated that all groups recruited a similar circuitry to support task performance, including regions typically associated with rewards (striatum and orbital frontal cortex), and regions known to be involved in inhibitory control (putative frontal and supplementary eye fields, and posterior parietal cortex, and prefrontal loci). During rewarded trials adolescents showed increased activity in striatal regions, while adults demonstrated heightened activation in the OFC relative to children and adolescents. Children showed greater reliance on prefrontal executive regions that may be related to increased effort in inhibiting responses. Overall, these results indicate that response inhibition is enhanced with reward contingencies over development. Adolescents' heightened response in striatal regions may be one factor contributing to reward-biased decision making and perhaps risk taking behavior.