Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of Plyometric Training on Endurance and Explosive Strength Performance in Competitive Middle- and Long-Distance Runners

Abstract Ramírez-Campillo, R, Álvarez, C, Henríquez-Olguín, C, Baez, EB, Martínez, C, Andrade, DC, and Izquierdo, M. Effects of plyometric training on endurance and explosive strength performance in competitive middle- and long-distance runners. J Strength Cond Res 28(1): 97–104, 2014—The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of a short-term plyometric training program on explosive strength and endurance performance in highly competitive middle- and long-distance runners. Athletes were randomly assigned to a control group (CG, n = 18, 12 men) and an explosive strength training group (TG, n = 18, 10 men). Drop jump (DJ) from 20 (DJ20) and 40 cm (DJ40), countermovement jump with arms (CMJA), 20-m sprint time, and 2.4-km endurance run time test were carried out before and after 6 weeks of explosive strength training. Also, the combined standardized performance (CSP) in the endurance and explosive strength test was analyzed. After intervention, the CG did not show any significant change in performance, whereas the TG showed a significant reduction in 2.4-km endurance run time (−3.9%) and 20-m sprint time (−2.3%) and an increase in CMJA (+8.9%), DJ20 (+12.7%), and DJ40 (16.7%) explosive performance. Strength training group also exhibited a significant increase in CSP, although the CG showed significant reduction. We conclude that properly programmed concurrent explosive strength and endurance training could be advantageous for middle- and long-distance runners in their competitive performance, especially in events characterized by sprinting actions with small time differences at the end of the race.
Alcohol consumption and health : contributions to the explanation of the u-shaped curve

Objective: To determine whether the well-known V-shaped relationship between average alcohol intake and mortality also holds for other health lllcasures and for aspects of drinking other than weekly average alcohol intake, such as frequency of heavy-drinking episodes. A1etJlOas: This study 'was carried out 'within the fratnework of a general population survey conducted in Eindhoven, the Netherlands (N=18,973). Apart from mortality the following health measures were considered: self-assessed health (based on perceived general health and the Nottingham health profile questionnaire), a list of chronic conditions, and a list of health complaints. Respondents were categorized as abstainers, light (1-14 units/week), moderate (15-28 units/week) and excessive drinkers (" 29 units/week). Information on the frequency with which heavy-drinking episodes occurred was also available. Reslllts: Light or moderate drinkers not only had lower mortality but other health burdens were lower than for either abstainers or heavier drinkers. Frequent heavy-drinking episodes were observed to be directly related to increased mortality rates, although not significantly. A trend was observed for drinkers reporting seldonl heavy-drinking episodes (once or twice in the previous 6 months) to report less health burdens and to have lower mortality rates than those reporting no heavy drinking episodes. COIlc/IISiOIlS: A Ushaped pattern was observed for mortality as well as for several other health ll1easures. Frequent heavy-drinking episodes were related to an increased likelihood of mortality (not significant but suggesting a Jshaped pattern) and were not related to other health measures.
Consistent calibration of HJM models to cap implied volatilities

This article proposes a calibration algorithm that fits multifactor Gaussian models to the implied volatilities of caps with the use of the respective minimal consistent family to infer the forward‐rate curve. The algorithm is applied to three forward‐rate volatility structures and their combination to form two‐factor models. The efficiency of the consistent calibration is evaluated through comparisons with nonconsistent methods. The selection of the number of factors and of the volatility functions is supported by a principal‐component analysis. Models are evaluated in terms of in‐sample and out‐of‐sample data fitting as well as stability of parameter estimates. The results are analyzed mainly by focusing on the capability of fitting the market‐implied volatility curve and, in particular, reproducing its characteristic humped shape. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Jrl Fut Mark 25:1093–1120, 2005
The Impact of Abuse Exposure on Memory Processes and Attentional Biases in a College-Aged Sample

This research assessed whether attentional biases in response to negative stimuli were related to the poor specificity and low levels of emotional language that have previously been observed in stressed individuals. The relations between abuse and assessments of autobiographical memory, working memory, attentional biases, and psychopathology were examined in eighty college students, thirty-four of whom reported past experiences with abuse or domestic violence. Abuse history was unrelated to memory specificity, but recent abuse was related to lower levels of positive emotional language. Depressive symptoms were related to more negative emotional language and overgeneral memories. The analyses also indicated that child abuse exposure was associated with a subliminal bias to attend to abuse-related stimuli. An unconscious bias toward trauma, in turn, predicted fewer overgeneral, and more specific, memories. One implication is that poor memory specificity may be due to automatic attentional processes instead of strategic avoidance of potentially negative memory content.
The Absorption Hypothesis: Learning to Hear God in Evangelical Christianity

In this article, we use a combination of ethnographic data and empirical methods to identify a process called"absorption,"whichmaybeinvolvedincontemporaryChristianevangelicalprayerpractice(andinthepractices of other religions). The ethnographer worked with an interdisciplinary team to identify people with a proclivity for "absorption. " Those who seemed to have this proclivity were more likely to report sharper mental images, greater focus, and more unusual spiritual experience. The more they prayed, the more likely they were to have these experiences and to embrace fully the local representation of God. Our results emphasize learning, a social process to which individuals respond in variable ways, and they suggest that interpretation, proclivity, and practice are all important in understanding religious experience. This approach builds on but differs from the approach to religion within the culture-and-cognition school.
MAVMM: Lightweight and Purpose Built VMM for Malware Analysis

Malicious software is rampant on the Internet and costs billions of dollars each year. Safe and thorough analysis of malware is key to protecting vulnerable systems and cleaning those that have already been infected. Most current state-of-the-art analysis platforms run alongside the malware, increasing their detectability. This reduces the value of analysis because some malware is known to behave differently when being analyzed. Virtualization offers a compelling platform for malware analysis, with strong isolation and the ability to save and restore guest state. Current virtual machine monitors (VMMs), however, are not designed for malware analysis. Due to their complexity, they often fail to provide transparency and even expose vulnerabilities which could be exploited by the malware running inside guest system. We propose a lightweight VMM (namely MAVMM) that is designed specially for a single job: malware analysis. MAVMM does not implement unnecessary virtualization features commonly found in general purpose hypervisors, including virtual device emulation. We take advantage of hardware virtualization support to make MAVMM more simple, secure and transparent. In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of MAVMM, and the features that we can extract from programs running inside the guest OS. We evaluate our platform in three aspects: functionality, detectability and performance. We show that our system can extract useful information from malicious software, and that it is not susceptible to known virtualization detection techniques.
Emotional roulette? Symmetrical and asymmetrical emotion regulation outcomes from coworker interactions about positive and negative work events

Prior research suggests that, in general, the disclosure of positive emotions at work results in positive consequences for individuals while the disclosure of negative emotions results in negative ones. The current study examines the possibility of asymmetrical emotional outcomes to such disclosures, including those associated with the sharing of positive emotions. Interviews with human service workers elicited 71 detailed descriptions of emotional work events, the majority of which (77%) had been discussed in some manner with coworkers. Qualitative analysis of the incident data shows that both symmetrical and asymmetrical emotion regulation outcomes resulted from these coworker interactions. In regard to the disclosure of negative emotions, an asymmetrical outcome (mitigation) was welcomed, whereas for positive emotions, a symmetrical outcome (capitalization) was desired. Group norms, leader behaviors and coworker responsiveness influenced whether and which emotional events were shared, as well as the net impact on the participant’s emotional state. Overall, participants conveyed less motivation to share their positive emotional experiences with colleagues than their negative ones, largely owing to concerns that an asymmetrical outcome (dampening) would occur. Implications for organizational theories of emotional labor and social support, as well as the practice of effective emotion regulation in the workplace, are presented.
Does a rater’s familiarity with a candidate’s pronunciation affect the rating in oral proficiency interviews?

This study investigated factors that could affect inter-examiner reliability in the pronunciation assessment component of speaking tests. We hypothesized that the rating of pronunciation is susceptible to variation in assessment due to the amount of exposure examiners have to nonnative English accents. An inter-rater variability analysis was conducted on the English pronunciation ratings of three test candidate interlanguages: Chinese, Korean, and Indian English. Pronunciation was rated by 99 International English Language Testing System (IELTS) examiners across five geographically dispersed test centres. The examiners had either prolonged exposure, or no, or little exposure to the interlanguage of the candidates. A significant proportion of examiners rated pronunciation higher when they had prolonged exposure, and lower when they had no, or little, exposure to the candidates’ interlanguage. The location of the test centre also had a significant effect on the pronunciation rating, independent of the familiarity variable, with a significant proportion of NNS raters scoring candidates from their home country higher than those who were not. It is recommended that interlanguage phonology familiarity should be considered in the design of speaking tests and rater training and that research is required into test centre bias and the phonological judgements and awareness of OPI raters.
File Systems Fated for Senescence? Nonsense, Says Science!

File systems must allocate space for files without knowing what will be added or removed in the future. Over the life of a file system, this may cause suboptimal file placement decisions which eventually lead to slower performance, or aging. Traditional file systems employ heuristics, such as collocating related files and data blocks, to avoid aging, and many file system implementors treat aging as a solved problem. However, this paper describes realistic as well as synthetic workloads that can cause these heuristics to fail, inducing large performance declines due to aging. For example, on ext4 and ZFS, a few hundred git pull operations can reduce read performance by a factor of 2; performing a thousand pulls can reduce performance by up to a factor of 30. We further present microbenchmarks demonstrating that common placement strategies are extremely sensitive to file-creation order; varying the creation order of a few thousand small files in a real-world directory structure can slow down reads by 15-175×, depending on the file system. We argue that these slowdowns are caused by poor layout. We demonstrate a correlation between read performance of a directory scan and the locality within a file system's access patterns, using a dynamic layout score. In short, many file systems are exquisitely prone to read aging for a variety of write workloads. We show, however, that aging is not inevitable. BetrFS, a file system based on write-optimized dictionaries, exhibits almost no aging in our experiments. BetrFS typically outperforms the other file systems in our benchmarks; aged BetrFS even outperforms the unaged versions of these file systems, excepting Btrfs. We present a framework for understanding and predicting aging, and identify the key features of BetrFS that avoid aging.
Amelioration of Severe TNBS Induced Colitis by Novel AP-1 and NF-κB Inhibitors in Rats

AP-1 and NF-κB inhibitors, namely, DTCM-G and DHMEQ, were investigated in male Wistar rats with severe colitis, induced by TNBS. The animals were randomized into 3 groups. The control group received 0.5 mL of 0.5% of the vehicle i.p., the DTCM-G group received 22.5 mg/kg body weight DTCM-G in 0.5% i.p., and the DHMEQ group received 15 mg/kg body weight DHMEQ i.p., all twice daily for 5 days. The body weight losses and mortality rates were significantly higher in the control group than those in DTCM-G-treated and DHMEQ-treated groups. The endoscopic inflammation scores in the control, DTCM-G-treated, and DHMEQ-treated groups were 6.3 ± 0.7, 1.0 ± 0.3, and 0.7 ± 0.3, respectively (P = 0.004 and 0.02, resp.). The inflammation scores as assessed by the macroscopic appearance were 4.3 ± 0.8, 0.7 ± 0.3, and 1.2 ± 0.4 in the control, DTCM-G-treated, and DHMEQ-treated groups, respectively (P = 0.01 and 0.009, resp.). The histopathological inflammation scores were 6.4 ± 0.7, 2.0 ± 1.0, and 2.2 ± 0.6 in the control, DTCM-G-treated, and DHMEQ-treated groups, respectively (P = 0.03 and 0.01, resp.). It was concluded that DTCM-G and DHMEQ exhibit strong anti-inflammatory and anticancer activities with no apparent toxicity, which make them excellent drug candidates for clinical use in inflammatory bowel diseases.
Incongruity as a Universal Component of Humor Appreciation: Some Hong Kong Data.

The development of a humor measure was described in a brief report in this journal. In that report, a series of suitable congruous and incongruous pictures were developed with a community sample of children. The findings of that study were consistent with those reported by others (Chik, 2001; Masten, 1989; Schultz, 1972), indicating that incongruity is an essential component of humor appreciation. With a larger (n=140) and more representative sample, we embarked on a follow-up validation study. The findings of the present study provide further support for the universality of the incongruity as an essential component of humor appreciation across age and cultures.
International Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health Caring for Women with Abortion Complications in Ethiopia:national Estimates and Future Implications

cy, treating the complications of women who seek postabortion care or providing a safe, legal alternative to unsafe abortion. Until 2005, the Ethiopian penal code permitted abortion only to save the pregnant woman's life or to preserve her health from grave danger, and required diagnosis and certification by a medical practitioner, as well as confirmation by an obstetrician/gynecologist. In 2005, the penal code was amended to permit abortion under a much broader set of circumstances: in the case of rape, incest or fetal impairment; if pregnancy continuation or birth would endanger the health or life of the woman or fetus; if the woman has physical or mental disabilities; and if the woman is a minor who is physically or mentally unprepared for childbirth. 7 In most cases, a woman's statement is sufficient to establish the legal indication for, and allow her to obtain, the abortion. Although legal reform took place five years ago, social norms regarding abortion are just beginning to change, and the expansion of safe abortion services has progressed slowly. Because recent studies, both in and outside of Africa, suggest that legal reform is not enough to eliminate unsafe abortion, researchers and policymakers have emphasized the need to reduce abortion stigma, inform citizens of their rights and address inequities in abortion accessibility. 1,2,5,7,8 Unsafe abortion poses burdens not only for women and their families, but also for the country's health system. CONTEXT: Ethiopia liberalized its abortion law in 2005,primarily to reduce the incidence of unsafe abortion.However, little is known about the current extent and consequences of unsafe abortion. METHODS: Data were collected in 2007–2008 on 1,932 women seeking postabortion care at a nationally representative sample of 344 public and private health facilities.In addition,staff respondents at 337 facilities provided information on their facility's services and caseload.These data were used to examine patterns of abortion-related morbidity and treatment and to generate national estimates. RESULTS: Almost 58,000 women sought care for complications of induced or spontaneous abortion in 2008.Three-quarters of the women received care in government facilities.Forty-one percent had moderate or severe morbidity, such as signs of infection,that were likely related to an unsafe abortion.Seven percent of all women had signs of a mechanical injury or a vaginally inserted foreign body.More than 13,000 women seeking postabortion care required a hospital stay of at least 24 hours.The case fatality rate among women seeking postabortion care in public hospitals, where the most serious …
Distribution of external cuneate nucleus afferents to the cerebellum: I. Notes on the projections from the main cuneate and other adjacent nuclei. An experimental study with radioactive tracers in the cat

Transport of radioactive leucine was used to demonstrate cerebellar projections from the external cuneate nucleus (NCE) and from adjacent portions of the main cuneate nucleus (NC), of the spinal trigemmal nucleus (N.tr.sp.V) and of the vestibular nuclei. Projections from NCE and NC in part terminate over exclusive regions and in part overlap. After injections limited to NCE, labeling is found in all regions of the anterior lobe and lobule VI, in vermal lobules VII, VIII, and IX, and in medial regions of central folia of the paramedian lobule. Afferents from NC are observed in intermediate and lateral regions of lobules IV‐VI, in lobules VIII and IX, in medial portions of crura I and II, and in lateral parts of central folia of the paramedian lobule as well as in its rostral folia. Afferents from N.tr. sp.V are distributed in lateral regions of lobules II‐VI, in the rostral folium of lobule IX, in medial parts of crura I and II, and in rostral folia of the paramedian lobule. Afferents from the vestibular nuclei are present in vermal lobules VII, IX, and X and in the paramedian lobule. Projections from NCE are bilateral with ipsilateral predominance, whereas those from NC and N.tr. sp.V are ipsilateral. Projections from NCE are generally much denser than those from the other nuclei. Throughout the projection area, afferents from NCE are distributed in greater amounts in folia close to the medullary core and are much less dense near the surface. Afferents from the other nuclei do not show surface‐to‐depth density differences.
Further Understanding of Trust and Performance in Virtual Teams

Trust has been deemed to be critical in ensuring the efficient operation of virtual teams and organizations. This study empirically verifies ability and integrity as being antecedents of trust formation in virtual teams. However, effective team performance was found to be independent of the formation of trust. Further analysis suggests that information symmetry and good communication distinguish high performance teams from low performance teams.
Geographical Dimensions and Correlates of Trust

A sample of 323 residents of New Jersey stratified by neighborhood quality (excellent, good, fair, poor) was gathered to determine if trust in science and technology to protect public health and environment at the societal scale was associated with trust of the local officials, such as the mayor, health officer, developers, mass media, and legislators who are guardians of the local environment. Societal (trust of science and technology) and neighborhood (mayor, health officer) dimensions of trust were found. These societal and neighborhood trust dimensions were weakly correlated. Respondents were divided into four trust-of-authority groups: high societal–high neighborhood, low societal–low neighborhood, high societal–low neighborhood, and low societal–high neighborhood. High societal–high neighborhood trust respondents were older, had lived in the neighborhoods for many years, were not troubled much by neighborhood or societal environmental threats, and had a strong sense of control over their environment. In strong contrast, low societal–low neighborhood trust respondents were relatively young, typically had lived in their present neighborhood for a short time, were troubled by numerous neighborhood and societal environmental threats, did not practice many personal public health practices, and felt little control over their environment.
Cutting Edge: Direct Recognition of Infected Cells by CD4 T Cells Is Required for Control of Intracellular Mycobacterium tuberculosis In Vivo

Effector T cells control intracellular infection by secreting cytokines and through contact-dependent cytolysis. Because cytokines can diffuse and act at a distance, we determined whether cytokine diffusion is sufficient to control Mycobacterium tuberculosis or whether direct recognition of infected cells by CD4 T cells is required. Using MHC class II (MHC II) mixed bone marrow chimeras, we compared the bacterial burdens in lung myeloid cells that were capable (MHC II+/+) or not (MHC II−/−) of being recognized by CD4 T cells. MHC II+/+ cells had lower bacterial burdens than did MHC II−/− cells. CD4 T cell depletion increased the number of bacteria associated with MHC II+/+cells but not MHC II−/− cells, indicating that direct recognition of infected cells by CD4 T cells is required for control of intracellular M. tuberculosis. These results show that the effector mechanisms required for CD4 T cell control of distinct intracellular pathogens differ and that long-range cytokine diffusion does not contribute to control of M. tuberculosis.
Counsellors' perspectives on the use of the Schedule for the Evaluation of Individual Quality of Life (SEIQoL) in an alcohol counselling setting

As part of a randomised controlled trial to investigate the feasibility of using the Schedule for the Evaluation of Individual Quality of Life (SEIQoL) within an alcohol counselling setting, counsellors' views of using the tool were sought. Data about the service users' use of SEIQoL were collected during the counselling session, and focus groups and questionnaires were used to collect data on counsellor perceptions and experiences of using the tool. SEIQoL was easy and quick to use and provided users with a graphic, visual and dynamic means to identify important areas that contributed to their quality of life; it appeared to enhance the reflective process early on in counselling. Counsellors reported that service users requested the tool be used more frequently during the counselling process and they felt it could be a useful review tool.