Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Mediating Role of Ecological Beliefs between Personal Values and Ecological Behaviour

Belief is considered an important component in influencing ecological behaviour. In VBN theory that developed specifically for the study of environmental related actions, ecological belief is being measured by three different variables. This seems making the situation more complex and complicated in measuring a person’s belief. As such, this study aims to explore this value-belief relationship by using another approach. The value-belief relationship was tested by using a new single belief variable that needs to be more validated in more studies. Additionally, the mediating effect of ecological belief which is lack of understanding is also being tested. Results reveal that ecoaltruistic values and openness to change significantly affect both ecological belief and ecological behaviour. It is also found that ecological belief significantly affects ecological behaviour. Additionally, ecological belief mediates the relationships between ecolatruistic values and ecological behaviour as well as between openness to change and ecological behaviour. The present study is among the pioneers to consider ecological belief as the mediator between ecological values and ecological behaviour. The findings elaborate the existing knowledge of individual’s ecological belief in the context of energy efficiency/ saving appliances purchase.
The spatiotemporal transfer function of the Limulus lateral eye

The dynamics of the Limulus retina may be well described by the spatiotemporal transfer function, which measures the response of the eye to moving sinusoidal gratings. We consider a model for this system, which incorporates an excitatory generator potential, and self- and lateral inhibitory processes. Procedures are described which allow estimation of parameters for the model consistent with the empirical transfer function data. Transfer functions calculated from the model show good agreement with laboratory measurements, and may be used to predict accurately the response of the eye to arbitrary moving stimuli. The model allows convenient interpretation of the transfer function measurements in terms of physiological processes which underly the response of the Limulus retina.
Exploring mRNA 3′-UTR G-quadruplexes: evidence of roles in both alternative polyadenylation and mRNA shortening

Guanine-rich RNA sequences can fold into non-canonical, four stranded helical structures called G-quadruplexes that have been shown to be widely distributed within the mammalian transcriptome, as well as being key regulatory elements in various biological mechanisms. That said, their role within the 3′-untranslated region (UTR) of mRNA remains to be elucidated and appreciated. A bioinformatic analysis of the 3′-UTRs of mRNAs revealed enrichment in G-quadruplexes. To shed light on the role(s) of these structures, those found in the LRP5 and FXR1 genes were characterized both in vitro and in cellulo. The 3′-UTR G-quadruplexes were found to increase the efficiencies of alternative polyadenylation sites, leading to the expression of shorter transcripts and to possess the ability to interfere with the miRNA regulatory network of a specific mRNA. Clearly, G-quadruplexes located in the 3′-UTRs of mRNAs are cis-regulatory elements that have a significant impact on gene expression.
Architecture of an automated therapy tool for childhood apraxia of speech

We present a multi-tier system for the remote administration of speech therapy to children with apraxia of speech. The system uses a client-server architecture model and facilitates task-oriented remote therapeutic training in both in-home and clinical settings. Namely, the system allows a speech therapist to remotely assign speech production exercises to each child through a web interface, and the child to practice these exercises on a mobile device. The mobile app records the child's utterances and streams them to a back-end server for automated scoring by a speech-analysis engine. The therapist can then review the individual recordings and the automated scores through a web interface, provide feedback to the child, and adapt the training program as needed. We validated the system through a pilot study with children diagnosed with apraxia of speech, and their parents and speech therapists. Here we describe the overall client-server architecture, middleware tools used to build the system, the speech-analysis tools for automatic scoring of recorded utterances, and results from the pilot study. Our results support the feasibility of the system as a complement to traditional face-to-face therapy through the use of mobile tools and automated speech analysis algorithms.
Identifying Jumps in Financial Assets: A Comparison Between Nonparametric Jump Tests

We perform a comprehensive Monte Carlo comparison between nine alternative procedures available in the literature to detect jumps in financial assets using high-frequency data. We evaluate size and power properties of the procedures under alternative sampling frequencies, persistence in volatility, jump size and intensity, and degree of contamination with microstructure noise. The overall best performance is shown by the Andersen, Bollerslev, and Dobrev (2007) and Lee and Mykland (2008) intraday procedures (ABD-LM), provided the price process is not very volatile. We propose two extensions to the existing battery of tests. The first regards the finite sample improvements based on simulated critical values for the ABD-LM procedure. The second regards a procedure that combines frequencies and tests able to reduce the number of spurious jumps. Finally, we report an empirical analysis using real high frequency data on five stocks listed in the New York Stock Exchange.
Differences in Mathematical Achievement Levels and in Attitudes for Girls and Boys in Twenty Countries.

AUTHOR Hanna, Gila; Kuendiger, Erika TITLE Differences in Mathematical Achievement Levels and in Attitudes for Girls and Boys in Twenty Countries. INSTITUTION Ontario Inst. for Studies in Education, Toronto. ; Windsor Univ. (Ontario). PUB DATE Apr 86 NOTE 48p. ; Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (70th, San Francisco, CA, April 16-20, 1986). PUB TYPE Reports Research/Technical (143) -Speeches /Conference Papers (150)
Assessing the influence of risk/need domains on probation completion among a sample of offenders with mental illness

ABSTRACT A significant body of research has illustrated that the Risk/Need/Responsivity (RNR) paradigm is predictive of recidivism for a variety of offenders, including those with mental illness. This paper builds upon the extant literature in this area by examining how RNR domains specifically predict successful completion of a mental health specialty caseload. To do so, we use data collected from offenders on the Seriously Mentally Ill probation caseload in Maricopa County, Arizona to examine the completion of probation. Using the Offender Screening Tool (OST) to examine how risk/need predicts probation completion (n = 1,430), our findings demonstrate that the OST score overall, as well as participants’ age, whether the probationer received a Petition for Revocation for a technical violation or new crime during their time on probation, and multiple specific OST risk domains (e.g., educational risk, drug risk, mental health risk, and criminal behavior risk) are meaningfully associated with probation completion. We close by contextualizing these findings and discussing their policy implications.
The level of physical activity affects the health of older adults despite being active

Health care in the ageing population is becoming a crucial issue, due to the quality of life. Physical activity, is of primary importance for older adults. This report compared the physical activity in two active older adults population with functionality, quality of life, and depression symptoms. A cross-sectional study was developed with 64 older adults. Physical activity was assessed through the Yale Physical Activity Survey for classification into a less activity (LA) group and a more activity (MA) group. Afterwards, the other health variables were measured through specific questionnaires: the quality of life with the EuroQol (EuroQol five dimensions questionnaire, EQ-5D), functionality with the Berg balance scale (BBS) and depression symptoms with the geriatric depression scale (GDS). There is a statistical significant difference between groups for the BBS (t=2.21; P=0.03, d=0.27). The Pearson correlation analysis shows in LA group a moderate correlation between the BBS and age (r=−0.539; P<0.01) and EQ-5D (r=0.480; P<0.01). Moreover, both groups had a moderate negative correlation between GDS and the the EQ-5D time trade-off (r=−0.543; P=0.02). Active older adults with different amounts of physical activity differ in the BBS. This functional score was higher in the MA group. When observing to quality of life, only the LA group was negatively associated with age while in both groups were associated with depression index.
Hepatitis C Virus-Induced Cytoplasmic Organelles Use the Nuclear Transport Machinery to Establish an Environment Conducive to Virus Replication

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection induces formation of a membranous web structure in the host cell cytoplasm where the viral genome replicates and virions assemble. The membranous web is thought to concentrate viral components and hide viral RNA from pattern recognition receptors. We have uncovered a role for nuclear pore complex proteins (Nups) and nuclear transport factors (NTFs) in the membranous web. We show that HCV infection leads to increased levels of cytoplasmic Nups that accumulate at sites enriched for HCV proteins. Moreover, we detected interactions between specific HCV proteins and both Nups and NTFs. We hypothesize that cytoplasmically positioned Nups facilitate formation of the membranous web and contribute to the compartmentalization of viral replication. Accordingly, we show that transport cargo proteins normally targeted to the nucleus are capable of entering regions of the membranous web, and that depletion of specific Nups or Kaps inhibits HCV replication and assembly.
Neurochemical And Oxidative Stress Of Rat Offspring After Maternal Exposure To Chlorpyrifos During Gestation

The present work aimed at evaluating the oxidative damage and histopathological alteration in postnatal rats whose mothers were exposed to chlorpyrifos (CPF) during gestation (Ges) and up to delivery. Sprague-Dawely rats used for this experiment were divided into two sets, one was not exposed to CPF while the other exposed to CPF until deliver. The offspring from (set I) was divided into: one served as control and group 2 was exposed to CPF postnatal (PN) for 30 days. The offspring from (set II) were divided into : one allow to grow up to 60 days without any more treatment (Ges) (group 3), and group 4 was re-exposed to CPF for 30 days, (Ges+PN). All animals were sacrificed, the brain was dissected into cortex, midbrain, cerebellum and brainstem. Chlorpyrifos treatment resulted in a significant inhibition (P<0.05) of AchE levels in cortex of Ges+PN group, midbrain of PN & Ges+PN groups and in cerebellum all treated groups when compared to control. NO levels showed a significant increase (P<0.05) in PN group of all different brain regions, Ges group in cortex and brainstem regions, Ges+PN group in the brainstem, when compared to the control. GSH reduced showed a significant decrease (P<0.05) in all brain regions when compared with control. LP levels showed a significant increase (P<0.05) in midbrain groups, cerebelum PN group and brainstem, Ges+PN group, when compared to the control. SOD showed significant decrease (P<0.05) when compared to control, while GSHPx showed significant increase (P<0.05) in cortex (Ges+PN) group when compared with control. On conclusion, chlorpyrifos resulted in oxidative stress and histopathological alterations in pups exposed to it during and after gestation. This data of the study may be consider as a contribution to the problem of pregnant mothers and newly born exposed to CPF.
Data augmentation for low resource languages

Recently there has been interest in the approaches for training speech recognition systems for languages with limited resources. Under the IARPA Babel program such resources have been provided for a range of languages to support this research area. This paper examines a particular form of approach, data augmentation, that can be applied to these situations. Data augmentation schemes aim to increase the quantity of data available to train the system, for example semi-supervised training, multilingual processing, acoustic data perturbation and speech synthesis. To date the majority of work has considered individual data augmentation schemes, with few consistent performance contrasts or examination of whether the schemes are complementary. In this work two data augmentation schemes, semisupervised training and vocal tract length perturbation, are examined and combined on the Babel limited language pack configuration. Here only about 10 hours of transcribed acoustic data are available. Two languages are examined, Assamese and Zulu, which were found to be the most challenging of the Babel languages released for the 2014 Evaluation. For both languages consistent speech recognition performance gains can be obtained using these augmentation schemes. Furthermore the impact of these performance gains on a down-stream keyword spotting task are also described. Index Terms: data augmentation, speech recognition, babel
Nucleic Acid-Based Therapy Approaches for Huntington's Disease

Huntington's disease (HD) is caused by a dominant mutation that results in an unstable expansion of a CAG repeat in the huntingtin gene leading to a toxic gain of function in huntingtin protein which causes massive neurodegeneration mainly in the striatum and clinical symptoms associated with the disease. Since the mutation has multiple effects in the cell and the precise mechanism of the disease remains to be elucidated, gene therapy approaches have been developed that intervene in different aspects of the condition. These approaches include increasing expression of growth factors, decreasing levels of mutant huntingtin, and restoring cell metabolism and transcriptional balance. The aim of this paper is to outline the nucleic acid-based therapeutic strategies that have been tested to date.
HEADS: Headline Generation as Sequence Prediction Using an Abstract Feature-Rich Space

Automatic headline generation is a sub-task of document summarization with many reported applications. In this study we present a sequence-prediction technique for learning how editors title their news stories. The introduced technique models the problem as a discrete optimization task in a feature-rich space. In this space the global optimum can be found in polynomial time by means of dynamic programming. We train and test our model on an extensive corpus of financial news, and compare it against a number of baselines by using standard metrics from the document summarization domain, as well as some new ones proposed in this work. We also assess the readability and informativeness of the generated titles through human evaluation. The obtained results are very appealing and substantiate the soundness of the approach.
Real time behavior of data in distributed embedded systems

Nowadays, most embedded systems become distributed systems structured as a set of communicating components. Therefore, they display a less deterministic global behavior than centralized systems and their design and analysis must address both computation and communication scheduling in more complex configurations. We propose a modeling framework centered on data. More precisely, the interactions between the data located in components are expressed in terms of a so-called observation relation. This abstraction is a relation between the values taken by two variables, the source and the image, where the image gets past values of the source. We extend this abstraction with time constraints in order to specify and analyze the availability of timely sound values. The formal description of the observation-based computation model is stated using the formalisms of transition systems. Real time is introduced as a dedicated variable. As a first result, this approach allows to focus on specifying time constraints attached to data and to postpone task and communication scheduling matters. At this level of abstraction, the designer has to specify time properties about the timeline of data such as their freshness, stability, latency. As a second result, a verification of the global consistency of the specified system can be automatically performed. A forward or backward approach can be chosen. The verification process can start from either the timed properties (e.g. the period) of data inputs or the timed requirements of data outputs (e.g. the latency). As a third result, communication protocols and task scheduling strategies can be derived as a refinement towards an actual implementation.
Allocation and Productivity Growth in the OECD Manufacturing Industries

This study is intended to underline the importance of the role played by the cross-industry allocation of R&D resources, as indicated by several indices measuring R&D inequality, within the manufacturing industries of each country, and how it determines cross-country productivity growth. In other words, the main debate is whether national R&D policies for promoting productivity growth should be focused within a narrow range or spread across a wide range of industries. We also divide the allocation modes of R&D resources into research-oriented and development-oriented types, to highlight the role played by the differences in the properties of R&D activities for each industry. As for the estimation method, we take into account the phenomenon with group-wise heterogeneities, serial correlations, and the correlation between pair-wise country comparisons in our sample. We employ the fixed-effect panel data model with cross-sectional dependence, drawing on the panel data from 11 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries for the period from 1981-2000. When the other variables are controlled, we find that the effect of R&D inequality on productivity growth is significantly positive and the coefficient of its squared term is negative. Moreover, the impact of R&D intensity depends on the degree of R&D inequality. This lends support to the notion that concentrating suitable R&D resources on a few industries is an important factor in encouraging cross-country productivity growth. Specialization of R&D activities in certain relevant industries brings better opportunities for promoting productivity performance because of reaching sufficient levels of scale and accumulation of experience. Furthermore, the results from separate samples reflect the fact that development-oriented manufacturing industries can enjoy higher productivity growth from the specification policy. However, for the research-oriented industries the case is relatively weak. JEL: O30, O40, O57, L60
Hydrogenic Fuel Recovery and Retention with Metallic Plasma-Facing Walls in the Alcator C-Mod Tokamak

The retention and recovery of hydrogen (H) and deuterium (D) fuel in the Alcator C-Mod tokamak are studied. C-Mod solely employs high-Z molybdenum (Mo) as its plasma-facing armor material, with intermittent application of thin boron (B) films. The C-Mod wall materials are found to retain large fractions, ~20-40%, of the D2 gas fuelled per shot, regardless if the Mo surfaces are bare or partially covered by B films. The retention appears to be linearly proportional to ion flux to the wall, with ~0.5% D ions incident to the wall retained, and with no indication of the retention rate saturating over 30 s of plasma exposure. The retention is inconsistent with D in Mo retention from laboratory ion beam studies, which would predict rapid saturation of the fuel inventory in the wall a few discharges. Neither is the retention consistent with co-deposition of the B since it occurs with cleaned Mo walls. Overall these results raise concerns for use of high-Z materials in long-pulse D-T devices like ITER. Planned disruptions are exploited to recover H and D from the wall in C-Mod. The disruptions produce rapid heating of the wall surfaces, releasing the H/D from the wall for recovery by the pumps; a technique proposed for tritium recovery in ITER. It is shown that disruptions are effective for removing hydrogen absorbed into the wall during water exposure during vents. Overall control of the H/D wall inventory is demonstrated using frequent, planned disruption, with the result that the C-Mod wall can be net depleted of fuel over a run day.
Multicultural Education Issues: Perceived Levels of Knowledge of Preservice Teachers and Teacher Educators.

This study assessed preservice teachers' and teacher educators' knowledge regarding issues related to multicultural education. Participants were 78 preservice teachers who completed the Multicultural Knowledge Test during the first class period of a Social Foundations of Education course. There were also 45 teacher educators at the same university who completed the test. Researchers collected data on demographics, major and class rank (for preservice teachers), and education and professional experience (for teacher educators). Data analysis involved statistically comparing results on the Multicultural Knowledge Test to the average knowledge level score. Results indicated that there was a statistically significant difference between preservice teachers' and teacher educators' multicultural knowledge levels. The knowledge levels of preservice teachers were significantly below average. The knowledge levels of teacher educators were almost average. This indicates that both teacher educators and preservice teachers need to increase their multicultural knowledge levels. (Contains 23 references.) (SM) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. Multicultural Issues 1 MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION ISSUES MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION ISSUES: PERCEIVED LEVELS OF KNOWLEDGE OF PRESERVICE TEACHERS AND TEACHER EDUCATORS Display Session by Pamela A. Taylor University of Southern Indiana Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Mid-South Educational Research Association November 18, 1999 Clear Point, Alabama 1 PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY
Empirical Pricing Kernels and Investor Preferences

This paper analyzes empirical market utility functions and pricing kernels derived from the DAX and DAX option data for three market regimes. A consistent parametric framework of stochastic volatility is used. All empirical market utility functions show a region of risk proclivity that is reproduced by adopting the hypothesis of heterogeneous individual investors whose utility functions have a switching point between bullish and bearish attitudes. The inverse problem of finding the distribution of individual switching points is formulated in the space of stock returns by discretization as a quadratic optimization problem. The resulting distributions vary over time and correspond to different market regimes.