Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Investigating the determinants and age and gender differences in the acceptance of mobile learning

With the proliferation of mobile computing technology, mobile learning (m-learning) will play a vital role in the rapidly growing electronic learning market. M-learning is the delivery of learning to students anytime and anywhere through the use of wireless Internet and mobile devices. However, acceptance of m-learning by individuals is critical to the successful implementation of m-learning systems.Thus, there is a need to research the factors that affect user intention to use m-learning. Based on the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT), which integrates elements across eight models of information technology use, this study was to investigate the determinants of m-learning acceptance and to discover if there exist either age or gender differences in the acceptance of m-learning, or both. Data collected from 330 respondents inTaiwan were tested against the research model using the structural equation modelling approach. The results indicate that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, perceived playfulness, and self-management of learning were all significant determinants of behavioural intention to use m-learning. We also found that age differences moderate the effects of effort expectancy and social influence on m-learning use intention, and that gender differences moderate the effects of social influence and self-management of learning on m-learning use intention.These findings provide several important implications for m-learning acceptance, in terms of both research and practice.
Non‐specific pleuritis in patients with active malignancy

Pleuroscopy is the test of choice for patients with suspected malignant pleural effusion and negative cytology. Biopsies negative for malignancy are frequently attributed to non‐specific pleuritis, which poses a dilemma in patients with a known active malignancy, raising concern for a false‐negative result. Our primary objective was to determine the outcomes of patients with active malignancy who had a non‐malignant diagnosis on pleuroscopy.
Hallucinations and two types of free-recall intrusion in schizophrenia

Background Previous research has demonstrated that various types of verbal source memory error are associated with positive symptoms in patients with schizophrenia. Notably, intrusions in free recall have been associated with hallucinations and delusions. We tested the hypothesis that extra-list intrusions, assumed to arise from poor monitoring of internally generated words, are associated with verbal hallucinations and that intra-list intrusions are associated with global hallucination scores. Method A sample of 41 patients with schizophrenia was administered four lists of words, followed by free recall. The number of correctly recalled words and the number of extra- and intra-list intrusions were tallied. Results The verbal hallucination score was significantly correlated with the number of extra-list intrusions, whereas it was unrelated to the number of correctly recalled words. The number of intra-list intrusions was significantly correlated with the global, but not with the verbal, hallucination score in the subsample of hallucinating patients. It was marginally significantly correlated with the delusion score in delusional patients. Conclusions The data corroborate the view that verbal hallucinations are linked to defective monitoring of internal speech, and that errors in context processing are involved in hallucinations and delusions.
Mice Lacking M1 and M3 Muscarinic Acetylcholine Receptors Have Impaired Odor Discrimination and Learning

The cholinergic system has extensive projections to the olfactory bulb (OB) where it produces a state-dependent regulation of sensory gating. Previous work has shown a prominent role of muscarinic acetylcholine (ACh) receptors (mAChRs) in regulating the excitability of OB neurons, in particular the M1 receptor. Here, we examined the contribution of M1 and M3 mAChR subtypes to olfactory processing using mice with a genetic deletion of these receptors, the M1−/− and the M1/M3−/− knockout (KO) mice. Genetic ablation of the M1 and M3 mAChRs resulted in a significant deficit in odor discrimination of closely related molecules, including stereoisomers. However, the discrimination of dissimilar molecules, social odors (e.g., urine) and novel object recognition was not affected. In addition the KO mice showed impaired learning in an associative odor-learning task, learning to discriminate odors at a slower rate, indicating that both short and long-term memory is disrupted by mAChR dysfunction. Interestingly, the KO mice exhibited decreased olfactory neurogenesis at younger ages, a deficit that was not maintained in older animals. In older animals, the olfactory deficit could be restored by increasing the number of new born neurons integrated into the OB after exposing them to an olfactory enriched environment, suggesting that muscarinic modulation and adult neurogenesis could be two different mechanism used by the olfactory system to improve olfactory processing.
Determining the Optimal Timeout Values for a Power-Managed System based on the Theory of Markovian Processes: Offline and Online Algorithms

This paper presents a timeout-driven DPM technique which relies on the theory of Markovian processes. The objective is to determine the energy-optimal timeout values for a system with multiple power saving states while satisfying a set of user defined performance constraints. More precisely, a controllable Markovian process is exploited to model the power management behavior of a system under the control of a timeout policy. Starting with this model, a perturbation analysis technique is applied to develop an offline gradient-based approach to determine the optimal timeout values. Online implementation of this technique for a system with dynamically-varying system parameters is also described. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach
Percolation and connectivity on the signal to interference ratio graph

A wireless communication network is considered where any two nodes are connected if the signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) between them is greater than a threshold. Assuming that the nodes of the wireless network are distributed as a Poisson point process (PPP), percolation (formation of an unbounded connected cluster) on the resulting SIR graph is studied as a function of the density of the PPP. It is shown that for a small enough threshold, there exists a closed interval of densities for which percolation happens with non-zero probability. Conversely, it is shown that for a large enough threshold, there exists a closed interval of densities for which the probability of percolation is zero. Connectivity properties of the SIR graph are also studied by restricting all the nodes to lie in a bounded area. Assigning separate frequency bands or time-slots proportional to the logarithm of the number of nodes to different nodes for transmission/reception is shown to be necessary and sufficient for guaranteeing connectivity in the SIR graph.
Spectrum of malignancies in Jaipur region (2004-2008).

CONTEXT Cancer data from Rajasthan is limited. Only three studies, one from Western Rajasthan, and the other two from Eastern Rajasthan have been published previously. AIMS To find out the spectrum of malignant neoplasms in Jaipur region by studying the proportion and site wise distribution of malignancy cases reported at five major hospitals and pathology centers in Jaipur region. SETTINGS AND DESIGN A retrospective analysis of histopathology records of 5 years (2004-2008) was done. Approximately 200,000 histopathology and cytology reports were analyzed and 34,486 new cancer cases were identified. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS USED Percentages and proportions. RESULTS A total of 34,486 new cases of cancers were recorded in five years. There were 58.58% (20202) males and 41.42% (14284) females, with the male to female ratio being 1.41:1. Organ wise, Lung (13.25%), Larynx (5.35%), Oropharynx (5.09%), Brain (4.84%), Tongue (4.62%) and Prostate (4%) were the most common sites involved in males, whereas Breast (25.6%), Cervix (10.26%), Ovary (5.4%), Brain (3.68%), Esophagus (3.4%), Lung (3.01%) and Gall Bladder (2.35%) were common sites for malignancies in females. CONCLUSIONS Significant findings were, a higher frequency of tobacco related cancers i.e., Lung cancer and Head and neck cancer in males, and screening detectable cancers (Breast and Cervix) in females. A higher frequency of Lung cancer in females was also noted as compared to previous studies. An unusually high frequency of Gall Bladder Cancers especially among the female population in this region is also a cause of concern. Our data was compared with the national data.
Guiding Evolutionary Search with Association Rules for Solving Weighted CSPs

Weighted constraint satisfaction problems are difficult optimization problems that could model applications from various domains. Evolutionary algorithms are not the first option for solving such type of problems. In this work, the evolutionary algorithm uses the information extracted from the previous best solutions to guide the search in the next iterations. After the archive of previous best solutions has been sufficiently (re)filled, a data mining module is called to find association rules between variables and values. The generated rules are used to improve further the search process. Different methods of applying the association rules are investigated. Computational experiments are done on academic and real-world problem instances. The obtained results validate the approach and show that it is competitive with existing approaches in literature.
ROC Generated Thresholds for Field-Assessed Aerobic Fitness Related to Body Size and Cardiometabolic Risk in Schoolchildren

Objectives 1. to investigate whether 20 m multi-stage shuttle run performance (20mSRT), an indirect measure of aerobic fitness, could discriminate between healthy and overweight status in 9–10.9 yr old schoolchildren using Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) analysis; 2. Investigate if cardiometabolic risk differed by aerobic fitness group by applying the ROC cut point to a second, cross-sectional cohort. Design Analysis of cross-sectional data. Participants 16,619 9–10.9 year old participants from SportsLinx project and 300 11–13.9 year old participants from the Welsh Schools Health and Fitness Study. Outcome Measures SportsLinx; 20mSRT, body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, subscapular and superilliac skinfold thicknesses. Welsh Schools Health and Fitness Study; 20mSRT performance, waist circumference, and clustered cardiometabolic risk. Analyses Three ROC curve analyses were completed, each using 20mSRT performance with ROC curve 1 related to BMI, curve 2 was related to waist circumference and 3 was related to skinfolds (estimated % body fat). These were repeated for both girls and boys. The mean of the three aerobic fitness thresholds was retained for analysis. The thresholds were subsequently applied to clustered cardiometabolic risk data from the Welsh Schools study to assess whether risk differed by aerobic fitness group. Results The diagnostic accuracy of the ROC generated thresholds was higher than would be expected by chance (all models AUC >0.7). The mean thresholds were 33 and 25 shuttles for boys and girls respectively. Participants classified as ‘fit’ had significantly lower cardiometabolic risk scores in comparison to those classed as unfit (p<0.001). Conclusion The use of the ROC generated cut points by health professionals, teachers and coaches may provide the opportunity to apply population level ‘risk identification and stratification’ processes and plan for “at-risk” children to be referred onto intervention services.
Hypertonic media inhibit receptor-mediated endocytosis by blocking clathrin-coated pit formation

Two seemingly unrelated experimental treatments inhibit receptor mediated endocytosis: (a) depletion of intracellular K+ (Larkin, J. M., M. S. Brown, J. L. Goldstein, and R. G. W. Anderson. 1983. Cell. 33:273- 285); and (b) treatment with hypertonic media (Daukas, G., and S. H. Zigmond. 1985. J. Cell Biol. 101:1673-1679). Since the former inhibits the formation of clathrin-coated pits (Larkin, J. M., W. D. Donzell, and R. G. W. Anderson, 1986. J. Cell Biol. 103:2619-2627), we were interested in determining whether hypertonic treatment has the same effect, and if so, why. Fibroblasts (human or chicken) were incubated in normal saline made hypertonic with 0.45 M sucrose, then broken open by sonication and freeze-etched to generate replicas of their inner membrane surfaces. Whereas untreated cells display typical geodesic lattices of clathrin under each coated pit, hypertonic cells display in addition a number of empty clathrin "microcages". At first, these appear around the edges of normal coated pit lattices. With further time in hypertonic medium, however, normal lattices largely disappear and are replaced by accumulations of microcages. Concomitantly, low density lipoprotein (LDL) receptors lose their normal clustered distribution and become dispersed all over the cell surface, as seen by fluorescence microscopy and freeze-etch electron microscopy of LDL attached to the cell surface. Upon return to normal medium at 37 degrees C, these changes promptly reverse. Within 2 min, small clusters of LDL reappear on the surfaces of cells and normal clathrin lattices begin to reappear inside; the size and number of these receptor/clathrin complexes returns to normal over the next 10 min. Thus, in spite of their seeming unrelatedness, both K+ depletion and hypertonic treatment cause coated pits to disappear, and both induce abnormal clathrin polymerization into empty microcages. This suggests that in both cases, an abnormal formation of microcages inhibits endocytosis by rendering clathrin unavailable for assembly into normal coated pits.
Extended exposure paradigms and alcohol-related attentional bias in light and heavy social drinkers and in problem drinkers

It is well-established that the attention of alcoholics (as compared to non-alcoholics, or social drinkers) is captured more by alcohol-related than by neutral stimuli. This phenomenon is called an alcohol-related attentional bias (AAB). The traditional paradigms for measuring AAB have been the modified Stroop and visual dot-probe paradigms. I have adapted the flicker paradigm for induced change blindness paradigm (flicker ICB paradigm) from visual cognition. In the traditional use of the flicker ICB paradigm a singe change is implemented in a visual scene and then removed. If the change process is masked and the implementation/removal of the change is cycled, the change takes a surprisingly long time to spot. The theoretical underpinning of this phenomenon implies that the change is not detected unless attention is directed to the object carrying the change. In my own modification of this paradigm, two (not one) changes are simultaneously made and instructions to detect “the change” are given. In this way an alcohol-related and a neutral change are made to compete for attention. Using this paradigm the AAB hypothesis is that those detecting the alcohol-related change will have higher usual consumption that those detecting the neutral change. In a series of 12 studies, I have shown that social drinkers detecting the alcohol-related change have consumption levels above those detecting the neutral change: a differential AAB within social drinkers. Further, when the object carrying the alcohol-related change is embedded in the neutral group and the neutral object carrying the change is embedded in the alcohol group, the direction of the AAB is reversed. This suggests that the group of objects in which the changing object is embedded drives the change detection rather than the changing object, itself. A similar conclusion is reached when both changing objects are identically-alcohol or identically-neutral. Finally, the role of the context or group in driving change detection was confirmed by embedding the alcohol-changing and neutral-changing objects in groups that did not provide differential alcohol-related and neutral information. Under these latter conditions of test, the AAB disappeared. In the penultimate experiment reported in this thesis continuous eye-movement monitoring over 30 seconds to the same stimuli as described above (but not incorporating changes or masks) was used to measure attention towards alcohol-related objects even more directly. Using this method a differential AAB within social drinkers was shown. In a final experiment the more traditional version of the flicker ICB paradigm (containing a single change) was used to explore AAB in drinkers in treatment in which for the first time it was shown that AAB increased with alcohol problem severity.
THE TIME VARIABILITY OF GEOMETRICALLY THIN BLACK HOLE ACCRETION DISKS. II. VISCOSITY-INDUCED GLOBAL OSCILLATION MODES IN SIMULATED DISKS

We examine the evolution and influence of viscosity-induced diskoseismic modes in simulated black hole accretion disks. Understanding the origin and behavior of such oscillations will help us to evaluate their potential role in producing astronomically observed high-frequency quasi-periodic oscillations in accreting black hole binary systems. Our simulated disks are geometrically thin with a constant half-thickness of 5% the radius of the innermost stable circular orbit. A pseudo-Newtonian potential reproduces the relevant effects of general relativity, and an alpha-model viscosity achieves angular momentum transport and the coupling of orthogonal velocity components in an otherwise ideal hydrodynamic numerical treatment. We find that our simulated viscous disks characteristically develop and maintain trapped global mode oscillations with properties similar to those expected of trapped g-modes and inner p-modes in a narrow range of frequencies just below the maximum radial epicyclic frequency. Although the modes are driven in the inner portion of the disk, they generate waves that propagate at the trapped-mode frequencies out to larger disk radii. This finding is contrasted with the results of global magnetohydrodynamic disk simulations, in which such oscillations are not easily identified. Such examples underscore fundamental physical differences between accretion systems driven by the magneto-rotational instability and those for which alpha viscosity serves as a proxy for the physical processes that drive accretion, and we explore potential approaches to the search for diskoseismic modes in full magnetohydrodynamic disks.
The benefit of a sentinel lymph node biopsy and adjuvant therapy in thick (>4 mm) melanoma: multicenter, retrospective study of 291 Japanese patients

The benefit of a sentinel lymph node (SLN) biopsy and adjuvant therapy for patients with thick (>4 mm) melanoma has not been well studied in the Asian population. We examined the benefit of an SLN biopsy and adjuvant therapy on prognosis in Japanese patients with thick melanoma. A review of the melanoma database collected from 26 institutions in Japan identified 291 patients with thick melanoma between 2005 and 2010. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed to evaluate the factors predictive of the overall survival (OS) and the disease-free survival (DFS). Of the 242 patients with thick melanoma who underwent an SLN biopsy, the results for 96 (40%) were positive. On multivariate analysis, increased Breslow thickness (relative risk, 1.11; 95% confidence interval, 1.05–1.17; P=0.0002) and SLN metastasis (2.14; 1.04–4.43; P=0.040) were associated with a poor OS. Increased Breslow thickness (1.11; 1.04–1.18; P =0.0018), ulceration (3.11; 1.25–7.72; P=0.014), satellitosis (3.89; 1.62–9.31; P=0.0023), and SLN metastasis (2.24; 1.16–4.36; P=0.017) were associated with DFS. Adjuvant chemotherapy had no impact on either OS or DFS. Adjuvant use of a monthly dermal injection of interferon-&bgr; (IFN-&bgr;) was associated with a improvement in both OS (0.34; 0.17–0.67; P=0.0022) and DFS (0.42; 0.20–0.86; P=0.018). An SLN biopsy provided useful prognostic information and the adjuvant use of IFN-&bgr; improved both OS and DFS in Japanese patients with thick melanoma. These results were consistent with those of previous studies carried out on a white population. Therefore, we suggest that an SLN biopsy and adjuvantIFN should be considered for patients with thick melanoma irrespective of the Breslow thickness or ethnicity.
A multimodal approach to emotion recognition ability in autism spectrum disorders.

BACKGROUND Autism spectrum disorders (ASD) are characterised by social and communication difficulties in day-to-day life, including problems in recognising emotions. However, experimental investigations of emotion recognition ability in ASD have been equivocal, hampered by small sample sizes, narrow IQ range and over-focus on the visual modality. METHODS We tested 99 adolescents (mean age 15;6 years, mean IQ 85) with an ASD and 57 adolescents without an ASD (mean age 15;6 years, mean IQ 88) on a facial emotion recognition task and two vocal emotion recognition tasks (one verbal; one non-verbal). Recognition of happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise and disgust were tested. Using structural equation modelling, we conceptualised emotion recognition ability as a multimodal construct, measured by the three tasks. We examined how the mean levels of recognition of the six emotions differed by group (ASD vs. non-ASD) and IQ (≥ 80 vs. < 80). RESULTS We found no evidence of a fundamental emotion recognition deficit in the ASD group and analysis of error patterns suggested that the ASD group were vulnerable to the same pattern of confusions between emotions as the non-ASD group. However, recognition ability was significantly impaired in the ASD group for surprise. IQ had a strong and significant effect on performance for the recognition of all six emotions, with higher IQ adolescents outperforming lower IQ adolescents. CONCLUSIONS The findings do not suggest a fundamental difficulty with the recognition of basic emotions in adolescents with ASD.
Lifestyle‐Based Prediction Model for the Prevention of CVD: The Healthy Heart Score

Background Clinical practice focuses on the primary prevention of cardiovascular (CV) disease (CVD) through the modification and pharmacological treatment of elevated risk factors. Prediction models based on established risk factors are available for use in the primary prevention setting. However, the prevention of risk factor development through healthy lifestyle behaviors, or primordial prevention, is of paramount importance to achieve optimal population‐wide CV health and minimize long‐term CVD risk. Methods and Results We developed a lifestyle‐based CVD prediction model among 61 025 women in the Nurses’ Health Study and 34 478 men in the Health Professionals Follow‐up Study, who were free of chronic disease in 1986 and followed for ≤24 years. Lifestyle factors were assessed by questionnaires in 1986. In the derivation step, we used the Bayes Information Criterion to create parsimonious 20‐year risk prediction models among a random two thirds of participants in each cohort separately. The scores were validated in the remaining one third of participants in each cohort. Over 24 years, there were 3775 cases of CVD in women and 3506 cases in men. The Healthy Heart Score included age, smoking, body mass index, exercise, alcohol, and a composite diet score. In the validation cohort, the risk score demonstrated good discrimination (Harrell's C‐index, 0.72; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.71, 0.74 [women]; 0.77; 95% CI, 0.76, 0.79 [men]), fit, and calibration, particularly among individuals without baseline hypertension or hypercholesterolemia. Conclusions The Healthy Heart Score accurately identifies individuals at elevated risk for CVD and may serve as an important clinical and public health screening tool for the primordial prevention of CVD.