Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Compact focusing von Hamos spectrometer for quantitative x-ray spectroscopy

A compact focusing crystal spectrometer based on the von Hamos scheme is described. Cylindrically curved mica and graphite crystals with a radius of curvature of R=20 mm are used in the spectrometer. A front illuminated charge-coupled device (CCD) linear array detector makes this spectrometer useful for real-time spectroscopy of laser-produced plasma x-ray sources within the wavelength range of λ=1.8–10 A. Calibration of crystals and the CCD linear array makes it possible to measure absolute photon fluxes. X-ray spectra in an absolute intensity scale were obtained from Mg, Ti, and Fe laser-produced plasmas, with a spectral resolution λ/δλ=800–2000 for the mica and λ/δλ=200–300 for graphite crystal spectrometers. The spectrometer has high efficiency in a wide spectral range, it is compact (40 mm diam, 150 mm length), easy to align, and flexible. The spectrometer is promising for absolute spectral measurements of x-ray radiation of low-intensity sources (femtosecond laser-produced plasmas, micropinches, ele.
Do Self Esteem and Family Relations Predict Prosocial Behaviour and Social Adjustment of Fresh Students

Most of the studies about prosocial behaviour and adolescent adjustment focus on some personality factors or peer group influence as separate sources of influence and do not take into account some important variables like self esteem and family relations. The aim of this paper is therefore to analyse the relationship between self esteem and family relations of a sample of Nigerian undergraduates as indicated by their prosocial behaviour and social adjustment. To achieve this, 294 fresh students who have spent at least 30 weeks in the university were randomly selected (using cross-sectional sampling method) from both Ambrose Alli and Adekunle Ajasin universities in Nigeria. Out of these were 161 (54.8%) males while 133 (45.2%) were females. Two hypotheses were stated and tested. Results revealed that self esteem and family relations independently predicted prosocial behaviour. Their joint prediction of prosocial behaviour was also significant [R2= . 279, t = 9.07; p < . 01]. Analysis of the second hypothesis also revealed that self-esteem independently predicted social adjustment but family relations did not predict social adjustment significantly. However, self-esteem and family relation jointly predicted social adjustment [R2= . 384, t = 7.972; p < . 01]. It was recommended that efforts to boost the new students’ self-esteem should not be spared and the relationship between family members should be cordial so as improve the level of prosocial behavior and social adjustment of individuals.
ELECTROLYTE BALANCE STUDIES IN ADRENALECTOMIZED DOGS WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO THE EXCRETION OF SODIUM

1. Balance studies have been made on three dogs before and after adrenalectomy, performed in two stages. 2. It has been shown that the sodium concentration of the blood decreases in adrenalectomized dogs, as is true in patients suffering from Addison's disease and in cats experimentally adrenalectomized. 3. There are also decreases in the chloride and bicarbonate concentrations which together are approximately equivalent to the decrease in sodium. 4. An increase in the potassium concentration of the blood occurs after adrenalectomy, as reported in other studies. There is no obvious correlation of this change with changes in potassium balances. 5. The balance studies show a striking loss of sodium from the body during the development of adrenal insufficiency. This loss of Na results from an increased excretion of sodium in the urine and is not complicated by loss of base as a result of vomiting or diarrhea. 6. Following adrenalectomy, both the total amount of sodium and its concentration in the urine are markedly increased. This increase in concentration of sodium occurs in spite of an augmented urine volume. 7. The behavior of the chloride ion following adrenalectomy parallels that of the sodium ion, but the loss is not equivalent. 8. During the period of accumulation of non-protein nitrogen in the blood, the rate of water excretion by the kidney is even greater than before removal of the adrenal glands. 9. The possibility of a regulatory effect of the adrenal glands upon sodium metabolism and renal function has been discussed.
Renal functional assessment in the failing renal graft: what to do where clearances show discrepancy.

Recently increased attention for chronic renal failurehas stimulated new interest in renal function assess-ment by direct measurement as well as by algorithmsor formulas [1–3]. In the failing renal graft, a situationin which pharmacological therapy may interfere withthe complex adaptation mechanisms of renal failure,the assessment of renal function may be particularlydifﬁcult [4]. Studies of patients with liver or hearttransplantation and advanced kidney disease suggestthat creatinine-based indexes may be poor indicatorsof residual renal function under calcineurin inhibitors[5,6]. The following two cases, displaying a discrepancybetween creatinine and urea clearances, draw attentionto this rather neglected, yet clinically relevant, aspectof renal function assessment.
No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement

Summer is a time for reading and to me there's nothing like a good book, and what better time to read than at the beach or the mountains. Unfortunately, I was at neither the beach nor the mountains, but on a plane. Nevertheless, I still found an incredibly good read, or rather, it found me. One of the few perks of being a journal editor is receiving books for review, which I generally forward to our Book Review Editor, Keith Byrd. However, this time I was so intrigued by the title that I decided to keep the book and read it myself. I know that the Editor's Comment column is a somewhat unusual place for a book review, but as all of you know by now, I don't always do things in a conventional way, so here goes. No Pity: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement is a riveting account of the personalities and process leading to the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Not since Branch Taylor's Parting the Waters have I been so involved with a work of non-fiction. Perhaps it was because No Pity's subject matter involved my professional work or perhaps it was because I am familiar with so many of the names. More likely, it was due to the fact that No Pity was so well written that I found the book difficult to put down once I started. Joseph Shapiro, author of No Pity, points out that it is very difficult for persons who are temporarily able-bodied to really understand persons who have disabilities, just as it is for persons who are not of minority ethnic/racial background to fathom the perspectives of those who are. But understand we must as persons with disabilities, as professionals in rehabilitation, and as part of a nation dedicated to justice and equality of its citizenry. No Pity helps us to understand. No Pity documents a change in the way that persons with disabilities perceive themselves and by extension, the world about them. It is a change in "mindset" and identity that will revolutionize America and the world. Shapiro calls this change a "radical transformation" which has yet to manifest itself fully in American life. No Pity is immensely readable because it intertwines the personal with the public. These are the stories of Marilyn Hamilton, Ed Roberts, and Larry McAfee, but also the stories of major events such as the protests at Gallaudet and the demonstrations of ADAPT. There are vignettes of history with Alexander Graham Bell and how the Jacuzzi was invented as an attempt to provide relief from the pain of arthritis. The ten chapters document the personal and public struggle of self determination, frustration, anger, and victory. This is a book for persons who may have disabilities and for those of us who work with persons with disabilities. Practitioner, consumer, administrator, or educator will benefit from reading No Pity. No Pity is far from perfect. I'm sure that every individual reading it may have heard or observed something a little different from the account in the book. …
Development and validation of an affinity chromatography step using a peptide ligand for cGMP production of factor VIII

An affinity chromatography step was developed for purification of recombinant B‐Domain Deleted Factor VIII (BDDrFVIII) using a peptide ligand selected from a phage display library. The peptide library had variegated residues, contained both within a disulfide bond‐constrained ring and flanking the ring. The peptide ligand binds to BDDrFVIII with a dissociation constant of ∼1 μM both in free solution and when immobilized on a chromatographic resin. The peptide is chemically synthesized and the affinity resin is produced by coupling the peptide to an agarose matrix preactivated with N‐hydroxysuccinimide. Coupling conditions were optimized to give consistent and complete ligand incorporation and validated with a robustness study that tested various combinations of processing limits. The peptide affinity chromatographic operation employs conditions very similar to an immunoaffinity chromatography step currently in use for BDDrFVIII manufacture. The process step provides excellent recovery of BDDrFVIII from a complex feed stream and reduces host cell protein and DNA by 3–4 logs. Process validation studies established resin reuse over 26 cycles without changes in product recovery or purity. A robustness study using a factorial design was performed and showed that the step was insensitive to small changes in process conditions that represent normal variation in commercial manufacturing. A scaled‐down model of the process step was qualified and used for virus removal studies. A validation package addressing the safety of the leached peptide included leaching rate measurements under process conditions, testing of peptide levels in product pools, demonstration of robust removal downstream by spiking studies, end product testing, and toxicological profiling of the ligand. The peptide ligand affinity step was scaled up for cGMP production of BDDrFVIII for clinical trials. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
The 5-Factor Model of Personality and Antidepressant Medication Compliance

Objective: Medication noncompliance is a significant problem for effective pharmacologic treatment of major depressive disorder (MDD). Attempts to explore predictors of compliance have primarily focused on demographic characteristics; for the most part, these have been shown to be unrelated to compliance. Conversely, the relation between personality characteristics and compliance has been relatively understudied. The primary purpose of this study was to explore the relation between personality characteristics and compliance with antidepressant medication in patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). Method: Over 14 weeks, we evaluated a sample of outpatients (n = 65) who were receiving antidepressant treatment. We monitored compliance electronically, using the Medication Event Monitoring System. We assessed personality characteristics with the NEO Five-Factor Inventory–Revised. We also assessed depression severity and the frequency and severity of side effects. Results: Extraversion was a significant negative predictor of compliance. This was largely explained by the relation between compliance and the Activity facet within Extraversion. We also found a negative relation between the Feelings facet and compliance, while the Modesty facet was a significant positive predictor of compliance with antidepressant medication. Neither severity of depression nor side effects predicted compliance. Conclusions: These results suggest that correlates of personality are important, although frequently ignored, predictors of compliance with antidepressant medication. Identifying predictors of medication compliance may help in the development of individualized treatment regimens and lead to improved therapeutic outcome in the treatment of MDD.
The Lack of Clinical Applications Would be the Cause of Low Interest in an Endothelial Dysfunction Classification

Endothelium / dysfunction; Classification; Cardiovascular Diseases; Prevention; Risk Factors. Based on the assumption that a classification system is a very critical subject and may significantly improve the prediction of individual responses to treatment and related diseases, we proposed 16 years ago a classification for endothelial dysfunction including etiological, functional, and evolutionary aspects (Figure 1). 1
Writing with young children: a comparison of paternal and maternal guidance

The increasing involvement of fathers in active parenthood raises questions concerning their parenting style. This study compared mothers and fathers in their writing interactions with their young children, exploring how parents' writing guidance related to children's early literacy. Mothers and fathers of 51 kindergarteners were videotaped separately at home while writing words with their child. Video analysis assessed measures of parental guidance specifically in the writing process and guidance measures that characterised teaching interactions in general. Children's early literacy was assessed. A family style of guidance emerged, where a parent's guidance resembled the spouse's. Moreover, both parents' guidance correlated significantly with children's early literacy. Still, mothers scored higher than fathers on both the writing and the more general guidance measures. The study suggests that encouraging both parents to write with their children, while supplying them with productive methods for guidance, can enhance children's literacy competencies.
Procedural Generation of 3D Caves for Games on the GPU

Procedural Content Generation in Games (PCG) is a thriv- ing field of research and application. Recent presented ex- amples range from levels, stories and race tracks to complete rulesets for games. However, there is not much research to date on procedural 3D modeling of caves, and similar en- closed natural spaces. In this paper, we present a modular pipeline to procedurally generate underground caves in real- time, to be used as part of larger landscapes in game worlds. We propose a three step approach, which can be fully im- plemented using General-Purpose Computing on Graphics Processing (GPGPU) technology: 1) an L-System to em- ulate the expanded cracks and passages which form cave structures in nature, 2) a noise-perturbed metaball approach for virtual 3D carving, and 3) a rendering component for isosurface extraction of the modeled voxel data, and fur- ther mesh enhancement through shader programming. We demonstrate how the interaction between these components produce results comparable to real world caves, and show that the solution is viable for video game environments. For this, we present the findings of a user study we conducted among indie-game developers and players, using our results. (Less)
ALLOANTIBODY PRODUCTION MEASURED BY PLAQUE ASSAY IN RELATION TO STRONG AND WEAK HISTOINCOMPATIBILITY

A plaque technique which provides a sensitive and quantitative determination of allohemolysin (isohemolysin) production by lymphoid cells of mice and Syrian hamsters is described. Much ongoing attention has been given to minimizing sources of spurious plaques while improving the reproducibility of the technique. Primary intravenous immunization with allogeneic blood cells led to the early appearance of plaque-forming spleen cells responding to both strong and weak histocompatibility antigens in inbred strains of mice. The strongest histoincompatibility (A/J → BL/6), characterized by H-2 plus non-H-2 differences and a median skin allograft survival time of 8.2 ± 0.5 days, gave a peak average plaque production of 29.6 per 10 x 106 viable spleen cells after 6 days. At the other extreme with an average allograft survival time of 91 days, C3H(H-1a) → C3H.K(H-1b) showed a feeble production of plaque-forming cells with a peak response of 3.7 per 10 x 106 viable spleen cells at 9 days. Histocompatibility antigens determined by genes at the H-1, H-Y, and H-X loci were demonstrated to be erythrocyte antigens as well. Peak plaque production occurred earlier and reached higher levels across the stronger histocompatibility barriers (H-2 plus non-H-2 or H-2 alone) in temporal accord with the rapidity of skin allograft rejection. Weak H-Y or H-1 differences leading to prolonged allograft survival were associated with moderate, but not commensurate delays in the initial occurrence and recruitment of plaque-forming cells. With one exception (C57BL/10 → B10.A), the average plaque counts found at the peak of the primary responses were inversely proportional to the median survival times of skin allografts in the same strain combinations. Nevertheless, in light of the disparity between the times of allograft rejection and the time course of appearance of plaque-forming cells with the "weaker" congenic combinations, the early 19S antibodies do not appear to be directly involved in allograft rejection. There appears to be no limitation in the weakness of histocompatibility antigens capable of evoking antibodies detectible by plaque assay. The extent to which molecular species of mouse antibodies other than 19S hemolysins are induced and detected under the conditions employed remains to be determined. The responses in strain combinations involving stronger histocompatibility barriers were characterized by exponential increases in plaque-forming cells, for 2 to 4 days until maximal levels were reached. Repeated immunization in several trials led to substantial increases over the maximum primary response in the number of demonstrable plaque-forming cells. Further preliminary results are reported concerning alloimmune plaque production in three strains of Syrian hamsters exhibiting intermediate to weak histocompatibility differences.
DoGSD: the dog and wolf genome SNP database

The rapid advancement of next-generation sequencing technology has generated a deluge of genomic data from domesticated dogs and their wild ancestor, grey wolves, which have simultaneously broadened our understanding of domestication and diseases that are shared by humans and dogs. To address the scarcity of single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) data provided by authorized databases and to make SNP data more easily/friendly usable and available, we propose DoGSD (http://dogsd.big.ac.cn), the first canidae-specific database which focuses on whole genome SNP data from domesticated dogs and grey wolves. The DoGSD is a web-based, open-access resource comprising ∼19 million high-quality whole-genome SNPs. In addition to the dbSNP data set (build 139), DoGSD incorporates a comprehensive collection of SNPs from two newly sequenced samples (1 wolf and 1 dog) and collected SNPs from three latest dog/wolf genetic studies (7 wolves and 68 dogs), which were taken together for analysis with the population genetic statistics, Fst. In addition, DoGSD integrates some closely related information including SNP annotation, summary lists of SNPs located in genes, synonymous and non-synonymous SNPs, sampling location and breed information. All these features make DoGSD a useful resource for in-depth analysis in dog-/wolf-related studies.
From a WebQuest to a ReadingQuest: learners' reactions in an EFL extensive reading class

Most students don’t like reading in a foreign language. They find it a difficult task, mainly due to the high number of unknown words they encounter when reading a text. They consider reading classes boring and uninteresting and as a result our students are poor readers. Concerned with this situation, we conducted a study on the impact of a learning environment based on the WebQuest, a ReadingQuest, and on student engagement in an extensive reading task. The results show that the ReadingQuest is a valuable environment for teaching extensive reading, in contrast to traditional reading classes, as it can enhance motivation and promote constructivist learning.
Stochastic analysis of gradient adaptive identification of nonlinear systems with memory for Gaussian data and noisy input and output measurements

This paper investigates the statistical behavior of two gradient search adaptive algorithms for identifying an unknown nonlinear system comprised of a discrete-time linear system H followed by a zero-memory nonlinearity g(/spl middot/). The input and output of the unknown system are corrupted by additive independent noises. Gaussian models are used for all inputs. Two competing adaptation schemes are analyzed. The first is a sequential adaptation scheme where the LMS algorithm is first used to estimate the linear portion of the unknown system. The LMS algorithm is able to identify the linear portion of the unknown system to within a scale factor. The weights are then frozen at the end of the first adaptation phase. Recursions are derived for the mean and fluctuation behavior of the LMS algorithm, which are in excellent agreement with Monte Carlo simulations. When the nonlinearity is modeled by a scaled error function, the second part of the sequential gradient identification scheme is shown to correctly learn the scale factor and the error function scale factor. Mean recursions for the scale factors show good agreement with Monte Carlo simulations. For slow learning, the stationary points of the gradient algorithm closely agree with the stationary points of the theoretical recursions. The second adaptive scheme simultaneously learns both the linear and nonlinear portions of the unknown channel. The mean recursions for the linear and nonlinear portions show good agreement with Monte Carlo simulations for slow learning. The stationary points of the gradient algorithm also agree with the stationary points of the theoretical recursions.
Culture and nature moving-learn with the mobile phone

This paper describes a case, which demonstrates how a new media, mobile-phones with GPS can be used as a learning instrument. The case demonstrates how the creation process of a historic drama has been done via Contextual Design. The paper discuss how the method of user involving multimedia products and the method of Serious Games can be used for creating learning tools in school. The case study belongs to a developing project of IKT-learning supported by the Danish It and Tele-styrelse. The final goal of the project is to demonstrate how mobile technology can be used as a learning tool in secondary school in different subjects.
The Basal Ganglia Optimize Decision Making over General Perceptual Hypotheses

The basal ganglia are a subcortical group of interconnected nuclei involved in mediating action selection within cortex. A recent proposal is that this selection leads to optimal decision making over multiple alternatives because the basal ganglia anatomy maps onto a network implementation of an optimal statistical method for hypothesis testing, assuming that cortical activity encodes evidence for constrained gaussian-distributed alternatives. This letter demonstrates that this model of the basal ganglia extends naturally to encompass general Bayesian sequential analysis over arbitrary probability distributions, which raises the proposal to a practically realizable theory over generic perceptual hypotheses. We also show that the evidence in this model can represent either log likelihoods, log-likelihood ratios, or log odds, all leading proposals for the cortical processing of sensory data. For these reasons, we claim that the basal ganglia optimize decision making over general perceptual hypotheses represented in cortex. The relation of this theory to cortical encoding, cortico-basal ganglia anatomy, and reinforcement learning is discussed.