Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Serotonin Receptor Type 3 Antagonists Improve Obesity-Associated Fatty Liver Disease in Mice

Obesity is a major cause for nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD). Previous studies suggested that alterations in intestinal motility and permeability contribute to the development of NAFLD. Serotonin and serotonin receptor type 3 (5-HT3R) are key factors in the regulation of intestinal motility and permeability. Therefore, we studied the effect of the 5-HT3R antagonists tropisetron and palonosetron on the development of NAFLD in leptin-deficient obese mice. Four-week-old ob/ob mice and lean controls were treated for 6 weeks orally with tropisetron or palonosetron at 0.2 mg/kg per day. We determined markers of liver damage and inflammation, portal endotoxin levels, and duodenal concentrations of serotonin, serotonin-reuptake transporter (SERT), occludin, and claudin-1. Tropisetron treatment significantly reduced liver fat content (−29%), liver inflammation (−56%), and liver cell necrosis (−59%) in ob/ob mice. The beneficial effects of tropisetron were accompanied by a decrease in plasma alanine aminotransferase and portal vein plasma endotoxin levels, an attenuation of enhanced MyD88 and tumor necrosis factor-α mRNA expression in the liver, and an increase of tight junction proteins in the duodenum. Tropisetron treatment also caused a reduction of elevated serotonin levels and an increase of SERT in the duodenum of ob/ob mice. Palonosetron had similar effects as tropisetron with regard to the reduction of liver fat and other parameters. Tropisetron and palonosetron are effective in attenuating NAFLD in a genetic mouse model of obesity. The effect involves the intestinal nervous system, resulting in a reduction of endotoxin influx into the liver and subsequently of liver inflammation and fat accumulation.
Anticipation of Coincidence in Children: A Test of Schema Theory

The present study tested Schmidt's (1975) schema theory by manipulating the variability of initial conditions information given during training on a task requiring anticipation of coincidence. 36 first grade children attempted to tap a padded and hinged target barrier coincident with the lighting of the last of a series of runway lights. Equal numbers of males and females received either variable practice with each of four stimulus velocities (134, 179, 268, and 313 cm/sec.), constant practice with one of the four velocities, or no practice. All subjects were then given trials with two illumination velocities different from those presented during training. Both constant and variable practice groups demonstrated greater accuracy of transfer performance than control subjects, but only the absolute error of constant practice subjects was significantly lower than that of the controls. All groups responded with early anticipations, i.e., negative constant errors, to the slower of the two transfer velocities. Increasing variability of perceptual stimuli in coincidence-anticipation tasks may not give optimal training for young children.
Binding Items and Contexts

In order to remember a past event, the brain must not only encode the specific aspects of an event but also bind them in a manner that can later specify the spatiotemporal context in which event occurred. Here, I describe recent research aimed at characterizing the functional organization of two brain regions—the medial temporal lobes and the prefrontal cortex—that allow us to accomplish this task. Converging evidence indicates that different regions of the medial temporal lobes may form representations of items, contexts, and item-context bindings and that areas in the prefrontal cortex may implement working-memory control processes that allow us to build meaningful relationships between items that are encountered over time. The results are compatible with an emerging model that generates novel predictions at both the behavioral and neural levels.
Trust, Control, and Risk

This study investigates the interaction among trust, control, and risk by empirically testing Das and Teng's conceptual framework in a long-term supply agreement following a qualitative study of context. Results suggest that only three model propositions were not supported. Goodwill trust was not related to relational risks, whereas output control and social control were positively related to relational risks and performance risks, respectively. The relationship between trust and social control is complementary, whereas that for trust and output control is substitutive. Goodwill trust is positively related to performance risk taking. Also, output control undermines goodwill and competence trust, whereas social control enhances both types of trust. Goodwill trust and competence trust are positively related to social control. Although goodwill trust decreases the need for output control, competence trust does not. The results suggest that Das and Teng's original model is substantially applicable to the given context.
Do developers discuss design?

Design is often raised in the literature as important to attaining various properties and characteristics in a software system. At least for open-source projects, it can be hard to find evidence of ongoing design work in the technical artifacts produced as part of the development. Although developers usually do not produce specific design documents, they do communicate about design in different ways. In this paper, we provide quantitative evidence that developers address design through discussions in commits, issues, and pull requests. To achieve this, we built a discussions' classifier and automatically labeled 102,122 discussions from 77 projects. Based on this data, we make four observations about the projects: i) on average, 25% of the discussions in a project are about design; ii) on average, 26% of developers contribute to at least one design discussion; iii) only 1% of the developers contribute to more than 15% of the discussions in a project; and iv) these few developers who contribute to a broad range of design discussions are also the top committers in a project.
C ASE R
 EPORT: Clostridium septicum infection presenting as liver abscess in a case of choriocarcinoma with liver metastasis

Clostridium septicum is an anaerobic, Gram‐positive bacillus. Infection with this organism has a known association with malignant diseases, especially colon and haematological cancers. Clostridium septicum is rarely found to be a pathogen of liver abscess. Herein, we report the case of a female choriocarcinoma patient with liver metastasis in which C. septicum infection presented as a gas‐forming liver abscess. This case and previous reports indicate that once C. septicum is identified as a pathogen in liver abscess, metastatic liver tumours should be highly suspected.
A Qualitative Study of Factors Influencing Science Teaching Self-Efficacy of Elementary Level Teachers.

Science teaching self-efficacy may be one area of importance which has been over-looked in implementing change to improve science teaching in elementary schools. This qualitative study was designed to examine factors which influence personal science teaching efficacy and science teaching outcome expectancy in elementary teachers. Based on Bandura's psychological construct of self-efficacy, science teaching self-efficacy has been related to teachers' belief in their ability to teach science, called personal science teaching efficacy (PSTE), and their belief in students' ability to learn, called science teaching outcome expectancy (STOE). Data were collected from 23 elementary teachers involved in a project to enhance science, mathematics, and technology education. Initially, data on variables identified as related to science teaching self-efficacy were collected and triangulated from several self-reporting instruments, including the Science Teaching Efficacy Beliefs Instrument, In-service version (STEBI-A) Teachers' scores on personal science teaching efficacy (PSTE) and science teaching outcome expectancy (STOE), two subscales of the STEBI-A, along with other data were used to develop in depth interview questions. Ten of the teachers, with varying PSTE and STOE levels (high, moderate, and low), were purposefully selected for interviews regarding their teacher preparation, professional development, and science-related antecedent experiences. The qualitative data analysis methods of constant-comparison and clustering were used to identify patterns and themes within the interview data. Qualitative analysis of triangulated data provided insights as to development of PSTE and STOE. Results of the interview analysis revealed more definitive findings for the dimension of personal science teaching efficacy than for science teaching outcome expectancy. Theme in the data indicated that antecedent experiences influenced interest in science teaching. Preservice and in-service experiences such as success in high quality science courses and workshops, access to a lesser degree STOE. Findings on experiences which influenced STOE were limited. Implications for early science experiences, teacher preparation and teacher professional development are presented. Recommendations for further research are made for PSTE and STOE. © 1996 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
on Speech Recognition and Understanding , Part 2

T his article is the second part of an updated version of the " MINDS 2006–2007 Report of the Speech Understanding Working Group, " one of five reports emanating from two workshops entitled " Meeting of the MINDS: Future Directions for Human Language Technology, " sponsored by the U.S. Disruptive Technology Office (DTO). (MINDS is an acronym for " machine translation, information retrieval, natural-language processing, data resources, and speech understanding. ") For further information, please see For long-term research, a principal knowledge source that we can exploit to improve automatic speech recognition (ASR) lies in the area of human speech perception, understanding, and cogni-tion. This rich area has its basis in psychological and physiological processes in humans. The physiological aspects of human speech perception that are of most interest include cortical processing in the auditory area and the associated motor area of the brain. One important principle of auditory perception is its modular organization, and recent advances in functional neuroimaging technologies provide a driving force motivating new studies geared to developing integrated knowledge of the modularly organized auditory process in an end-to-end manner. The relevant psychological aspects of human speech perception include the essential psychoa-coustic properties that underlie auditory masking and attention. Such key properties equip human listeners with the remarkable capability to cope with " cocktail party " effects that no current ASR techniques can successfully handle. Intensive studies are needed in order for ASR applications to reach a new level, delivering performance comparable to that of humans. Specific issues to be resolved in the study of how the human brain processes spoken (as well as written) language are the way human listeners adapt to non-native accents and the time course over which human listeners reacquaint themselves with a language known to them. Humans have amazing capabilities to adapt to nonnative accents. Current ASR systems are extremely poor in this regard, and improvement is expected only after we have sufficient understanding of human speech processing mechanisms. One specific issue related to human speech perception (and linked to human speech production) is the temporal span over which speech signals are represented and modeled. One prominent weakness in current hidden Markov models (HMMs) is inadequacy in representing long-span temporal dependency in the acoustic feature sequence of speech, which is an essential property of speech dynamics in both perception and production. The main cause of this handicap is the conditional independence assumptions …
The impact of motivation and teachers’ autonomy support on children’s executive functions

The present study investigates the interplay of executive functions, motivation, and teacher’s autonomy support in school context. In a cross-sectional study design 208 students from different school types completed a standardized motivation questionnaire and processed two executive function tasks. All teachers who teach these students were asked about their autonomy supporting behavior by a standardized test. Multilevel analyses assessed the effects of the student’s motivation and their teachers’ autonomy support on student’s executive functions. Our results show considerable relationships between these variables: high executive function capacities came along with teacher’s autonomy support and student’s intrinsic motivation styles, whereas low executive function capacities were related to external regulation styles. The results indicate the importance of autonomy support in school instruction and disclose the need to popularize the self-regulation approach.
The Transition According to Cambridge, Mass.

This paper reviews the NBER's "The Transition in Eastern Europe. " This book's 18 essays examine privatization, stabilization, fiscal policies, the nascent private sector, bankruptcy, foreign trade, and investment, etc. Individual country performance occupies six studies. These essays, which are of high quality, provide a cross-section of the literature on transition. However, the book's stronger conclusions are not supported by strong evidence. Two conclusions, unemphasized by contributors, emerge. Expectations, which reflect the theories used to design standard reforms, are often unfulfilled during reforms. A plausible explanation for the misplaced expectations is the ahistorical approach of those theories.
Breath Tests in Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine: From Research to Practice in Current Perspectives

Today, exhaled nitric oxide has been studied the most, and most researches have now focusd on asthma. More than a thousand different volatile organic compounds have been observed in low concentrations in normal human breath. Alkanes and methylalkanes, the majority of breath volatile organic compounds, have been increasingly used by physicians as a novel method to diagnose many diseases without discomforts of invasive procedures. None of the individual exhaled volatile organic compound alone is specific for disease. Exhaled breath analysis techniques may be available to diagnose and monitor the diseases in home setting when their sensitivity and specificity are improved in the future.
Media Use and Public Perceptions of DNA Evidence

This study uses survey data to examine how various forms of media use are related to public perceptions of DNA evidence, including self-perceived understanding of DNA, perceptions of DNA evidence as reliable, weight attached to DNA evidence (or the absence thereof) in jury decision making, and support for a national DNA databank.The hypotheses build on cultivation theory, priming theory, and research regarding the “CSI effect. ” The findings indicate that overall television viewing, crime television viewing, and news media use predict perceptions of DNA evidence. Moreover, a question-order experiment produced evidence that priming thoughts about media can influence such perceptions.
Text as Actuator: Text-Driven Response Modeling and Prediction in Politics

The goal of this document is to communicate the intents; What we are going to do, why they are important, and how we are going to achieve them within the proposed timeframe. The first part of the proposal covers thesis statement, motivations, and contributions. The thesis statement identifies three prediction tasks. In the second half of the proposal we will discuss those tasks in turn. Each of the three tasks is self-contained and should be able to read independently in any order. We will develop a series of prediction tasks on actuating text in this work. In our context, actuating text is a text which evokes, or is written to evoke, responses from its readership. Many types of online document collections fit this description. Examples include blog posts with readership comments, product reviews with social tagging or ratings, and news stories amplified and spread by quoting or forwarding. Some long-existing corpora, such as the congressional bill collection or floor debate manuscripts, can be seen as variations of this type of text, as voting results or amendments are, in a sense, a collective reaction from the legislative body to the bill or deliberation. 1 The main task of this dissertation work is to deliver novel prediction models on responses based on statistical analyses of the associated texts. We utilize latent variables to effectively relate documents to the evoked response by learning from data. The interactions between texts and response could reveal a variety of interesting social meanings. Building models which infer the response from the text is one way of inquiring into the nature of those interactions. In this dissertation, we will consider three distinctive kinds of document collections, each with the novel prediction tasks related to politics in the United States. Why should we care about predicting response from text? First, community-oriented documents such as those mentioned above are becoming more and more prevalent, and there are many practical problems concerning these documents. Additionally, many types of user-generated content, often text, are increasingly the subjects of research works in sentiment analysis or knowledge discovery. [70, 96, 8, 89] Moreover, since many of those texts are byproducts of fast-growing modes of public interactions, they are often studied by the social science researchers interested in collective human behavior and its dynamics. [25, 49, 101] Notice that a broad range of pragmatic questions in this domain can be casted as a form of " …
Adopting shelter dogs: Owner experiences of the first month post-adoption

Abstract A number of studies have examined factors associated with the relinquishment of pet dogs to animal welfare shelters. In Australia, however, there has been little investigation of new owners' experiences when they subsequently adopt one of these dogs. To address this, telephone interviews were conducted with 62 persons who had recently adopted a shelter dog in Melbourne, Australia. Data relating to adopter demographics, factors influencing the selection of a dog and problems experienced post-adoption were collected. Shelter dogs were primarily acquired to replace a deceased pet or as companions to humans or other dogs. Selection was influenced by the dog's size, general appearance and behavior, with adopters preferring dogs who behaved in a calm and friendly manner. Common problems reported during the initial post-adoptive period were hyperactivity/boisterousness, compatibility issues with an existing pet and pulling on the lead. Escaping was strongly associated with separation-related problems. Three-quarters of the sample walked their dogs daily for 30 minutes or more, with larger dogs exercised for longer. Most dogs were exercised off-lead for some period, particularly larger dogs. This study indicates that improving assessment and matching procedures, and providing in-house and post-adoptive training could increase rehoming success rates.
Spectrum of Hemoglobin Variants in the Population of Northern Region of West Bengal: An Ethnogenetic Proposition

Context: The birth of transfusion-dependent states of hemoglobinopathies including thalassemias is preventable by population screening and genetic counseling. Magnitude is not addressed in the Northern Region of West Bengal where many ethnic variants inhabit. Aims and Objectives: The aim of the following study is to find out the burden of different entities of hemoglobinopathies, their correlation with ethnicity and the “at risk” groups. Subjects and Methods: A descriptive study was conducted from the Hematology Unit of North Bengal Medical College over 1 year on the subjects underwent screening for hemoglobinopathies for detection of abnormal hemoglobin (Hb) variants by “cation-exchange high-performance liquid chromatography” principle along with other relevant tests. Statistical Analysis: Data was analyzed by frequency distribution and Chi-square test assuming P value as 95% of the level of significance using the SPSS version 16 (SPSS Inc., Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A). Result: Abnormal Hb variant was 47.5% among 1872. Hb E trait (34.4%) was most common followed by Hb E disease (25.3%) and others. Hb E disorders (92.7%) were observed mostly among Rajbangsi population while E-β-thalassemias (40%) in the Muslims and a heterogeneous pattern noted among tribal and mongoloid. Conclusion: Hb E hemoglobinopathies was high among Rajbangsi and Muslims with identification of some other hemoglobinopathies involving tribal and mongoloid.
Tobacco control and the inequitable socio-economic distribution of smoking: smokers’ discourses and implications for tobacco control

Warning: this article contains strong language. This paper focuses on the ways in which social context structures smokers’ views of, and reactions to, tobacco control. This exploratory study examined the interactions between tobacco control and smokers’ social contexts and how this may be contributing to inequalities in smoking. We found in our sample that higher socio-economic status (SES) smokers are more likely to positively respond and adapt to tobacco control messages and policies, viewing them for their future health betterment. Lower SES smokers in our study, on the other hand, are in conflict with tobacco control and feel intransigent with regard to the effects that tobacco control is having on their smoking. A better understanding of how social context structures people's perceptions of tobacco control may help us to understand why social inequalities in smoking are deepening, and potentially what can be done better in tobacco control to decrease them.
The Differential Role of Ridicule in Sarcasm and Irony

Kreuz and Glucksberg (1989) argued that sarcasm and irony are similar in that both are forms of reminder, yet different in that sarcasm conveys ridicule of a specific victim whereas irony does not. This article reports two experiments that provide empirical evidence of this relation. In both experiments, undergraduates read a series of passages. One group rated a target utterance in terms of the extent to which it was a good example of sarcasm, and a second group rated it in terms of the extent to which it was a good example of irony. In Experiment 1, a manipulation of ridicule was found to affect the participants' ratings of sarcasm hut not their ratings of irony. In Experiment 2, it was found that ratings of the extent to which an utterance ridiculed a specific victim were correlated with sarcasm to a greater extent than with irony. These findings provide support for the notion that ridicule of a specific victim is one way in which sarcasm differs from irony.