Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
There Is More(s) In Television. Studying the relationship between television and moral imagination

textabstractIn this dissertation the central focus lies with exploration the relationship of television and moral imagination. The underlying aim was to explore how television might be valuable in reaching moral maturity in order to diminish needless suffering in this world. To give form to these aspirations, the main research question that was the starting point of this dissertation was: How do people in the Netherlands use television narratives as a resource to develop a capacity for moral imagination in order to become morally mature? To answer this question, a framework derived from the literary culture was developed. The authors from the literary culture emphasise that the content of the narrative, as well as the reader are of importance for the development of moral imagination. In this study the television narrative was considered as a 'cultural toolbox' that offers moral insights that the active viewer still needs to give meaning to and can use to give meaning to everyday life experiences. Three studies were conducted that each focused on a different aspect of 'how culture works': the content of the toolbox has been researched as well as the audience(s). One of the leading threads running through this dissertation is the Culture vs. culture dichotomy that delivers us with an instrumental perspective on media. Two features of the debate on television were distinguished. The first dimension, primarily found in public debate, dismisses television in general as a popular medium. The second dimension, found in the public as well as in the academic debate, dismisses certain genres, mostly light entertainment.
Disability Discourses for Online Identities

Beneficial effects of the online medium have been reported for disabled people in terms of providing a 'levelling ground' where they can be treated on their merits as a person, rather than as a disabled person. If this occurs because impairment is invisible online, how then are disabled people managing disability disclosure within this social context? This paper addresses this issue discursively. Participants were recruited from various disability organisations in New Zealand and were invited to take part in an online interview. A 'choice to disclose' repertoire was identified and was organised around three key resources: relevance, anonymity and normality. Embedded within each resource is the idea that the presence or absence of impairment is constructed as a feature controlled by the individual. Positioning identity within a subjectivity removed from impairment was made possible through these resources and was valued by participants. Political implications associated with the absence of impairment are discussed.
Oestradiol Potentiates the Effects of Certain Pyrethroid Compounds in the MCF7 Human Breast Carcinoma Cell Line

Pyrethroids are the most widely used insecticides for indoor pest control, so human exposure to them is common. The main target of pyrethroids is the nervous system, but their endocrine disrupting capabilities may also be of toxicological concern. In the present study, the proliferation of the breast cancer cell line, MCF7, was studied after a 7-day exposure to various concentrations of pyrethrin, permethrin and cypermethrin. The effects of oestradiol and the combined effects of oestradiol (0.10nM) and pyrethroids (0.1–100μM) on MCF7 cell proliferation were also evaluated. Proliferation and cell toxicity were studied by measuring the ATP content with a luminescence method, and mitochondrial metabolic enzyme activity with the WST-1 test. In the ATP test, low concentrations (0.1–1μM) of pyrethroids in co-exposure with oestradiol caused a clear statistically significant increase in the proliferation of MCF7 cells. This was evident when compared to the proliferative effect caused by 0.1nM oestradiol alone. High concentrations were cytotoxic, and the greatest cell toxicity was that of cypermethrin, which has a cyano group in its molecular structure.
Primary school physical education and sports coaches: evidence from a study of School Sport Partnerships in north-west England

Drawing on interview data from a study of one School Sport Partnership (SSP) in north-west England, this paper examines (from the perspective of teachers): (1) some of the ways in which the SSP programme facilitated the increasing use of sports coaches to deliver aspects of physical education (PE) in state primary schools in England and (2) how coaches were accommodated within existing curricular arrangements. The use of coaches was found to be widespread and normalized, especially in extra-curricular PE which was often a coach-only zone. In some schools, coaches delivered all aspects of PE provision without the presence of teachers regardless of when the subject was delivered, and in other schools teachers were present but often acted in a supervisory capacity. This raised questions about the degree to which teachers were meaningfully involved in the planning and delivery of sessions and whether the use of coaches was likely to enhance teachers' confidence in, and specialist knowledge of, PE. Grounded in discussions of the differences between teaching and coaching pupils, teachers felt that coaches made a valuable contribution to the delivery of individual sports but often experienced particular difficulty in controlling pupil behaviour and classroom management, and that their lack of knowledge about pupils limited learning. It is concluded that it is only possible to adequately understand the trend towards using sports coaches and other non-specialists in PE by locating them within the context of broader social processes, especially the globalization of education policy and practices supported by shifts towards the privatization and marketization of education and other public sector reforms occurring in neo-liberal economies.
Integrating and Evaluating Neural Word Embeddings in Information Retrieval

Recent advances in neural language models have contributed new methods for learning distributed vector representations of words (also called word embeddings). Two such methods are the continuous bag-of-words model and the skipgram model. These methods have been shown to produce embeddings that capture higher order relationships between words that are highly effective in natural language processing tasks involving the use of word similarity and word analogy. Despite these promising results, there has been little analysis of the use of these word embeddings for retrieval. Motivated by these observations, in this paper, we set out to determine how these word embeddings can be used within a retrieval model and what the benefit might be. To this aim, we use neural word embeddings within the well known translation language model for information retrieval. This language model captures implicit semantic relations between the words in queries and those in relevant documents, thus producing more accurate estimations of document relevance. The word embeddings used to estimate neural language models produce translations that differ from previous translation language model approaches; differences that deliver improvements in retrieval effectiveness. The models are robust to choices made in building word embeddings and, even more so, our results show that embeddings do not even need to be produced from the same corpus being used for retrieval.
Myocardial efficiency is an important determinant of functional improvement after aortic valve replacement in aortic valve stenosis patients: a combined PET and CMR study.

AIMS The pathophysiology underlying aortic valve stenosis (AVS)-induced cardiac dysfunction and reduced exercise capacity is unclear. We hypothesize that improvement of myocardial external efficiency (MEE)--the ratio between external work and myocardial oxygen consumption (MVO2)--underlies functional improvement of AVS patients after aortic valve replacement (AVR). Therefore, the aim of this proof-of-concept study was to investigate whether myocardial efficiency is reduced in patients with cardiac hypertrophy caused by AVS and to assess the effect of AVR on myocardial efficiency in relation to exercise capacity. METHODS AND RESULTS Echocardiography, cardiopulmonary exercise test, [(11)C]-acetate positron emission tomography and cardiovascular magnetic resonance imaging were performed in 10 AVS patients prior to (pre-AVR) and 4 months after AVR (post-AVR). Fourteen healthy individuals served as control group. MEE was significantly lower in pre-AVR patients (32 ± 7%) than in controls (49 ± 6%). AVR significantly decreased left ventricle mass and MVO2. Also, external work significantly decreased post-AVR reaching similar values as in controls. AVR significantly improved MEE from 32 ± 7 to 37 ± 5% (P = 0.02). Moreover, significant correlations were present between the AVR-induced increase in MEE and changes in both exercise work (r = 0.74, P = 0.01) and peak VO2 (r = 0.67, P = 0.03). However, four AVS patients did not show improved MEE, which was associated with no or minimal improvement in exercise parameters. CONCLUSION MEE is significantly reduced in patients with AVS-induced hypertrophy. Improved MEE is an important predictor of AVR-induced improvement of exercise capacity in AVS patients. Future investigation is needed to confirm our observations in a large prospective, multicenter clinical trial.
A Computer Program for the Objective Analysis of Style and Emotional Connotations of Prose: Hemingway, Galsworthy, and Faulkner Compared

An SPSSX computer program was used to score 48 100-word text passages from novels written by Ernest Hemingway, John Galsworthy, and William Faulkner. The program, called TEXT.NLZ, produced more than 50 objective measures of each passage, including several measures of punctuation, word frequency, and emotionality. Passages written by the three authors were easily discriminable in terms of objective measures, and differences among authors with respect to the objective measures accurately reflected the content of subjective critical comments describing the work of each author.
Attend and Predict: Understanding Gene Regulation by Selective Attention on Chromatin

The past decade has seen a revolution in genomic technologies that enabled a flood of genome-wide profiling of chromatin marks. Recent literature tried to understand gene regulation by predicting gene expression from large-scale chromatin measurements. Two fundamental challenges exist for such learning tasks: (1) genome-wide chromatin signals are spatially structured, high-dimensional and highly modular; and (2) the core aim is to understand what the relevant factors are and how they work together. Previous studies either failed to model complex dependencies among input signals or relied on separate feature analysis to explain the decisions. This paper presents an attention-based deep learning approach, AttentiveChrome, that uses a unified architecture to model and to interpret dependencies among chromatin factors for controlling gene regulation. AttentiveChrome uses a hierarchy of multiple Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) modules to encode the input signals and to model how various chromatin marks cooperate automatically. AttentiveChrome trains two levels of attention jointly with the target prediction, enabling it to attend differentially to relevant marks and to locate important positions per mark. We evaluate the model across 56 different cell types (tasks) in humans. Not only is the proposed architecture more accurate, but its attention scores provide a better interpretation than state-of-the-art feature visualization methods such as saliency maps.1
Three-Dimensional Isotropic MRI of the Cervical Spine: A Diagnostic Comparison With Conventional MRI

Study Design:Retrospective diagnostic trial. Objective:To determine the diagnostic performance of 3-dimensional turbo spin-echo (3D-TSE) isotropic magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) in the assessment of cervical spine pathology. Summary of Background Data:MRI is the imaging modality of choice for many cervical spine pathologies. However, axial imaging may be suboptimal if the image plane is oriented differently than the plane of interest, due to lordosis, kyphosis, or deformity. 3D-TSE isotropic MRI is a promising novel technology that bypasses this limitation by enabling dynamic image reformation in any desired orientation. Methods:Forty-eight patients who underwent 3D-TSE and conventional 2-dimensional fast spin-echo (2D-FSE) T2-weighted cervical spine MRI at our institution were randomly selected. 3D-TSE and 2D-FSE sequences from each subject were independently evaluated by 2 orthopedic spine surgeons and 4 musculoskeletal radiologists. Images were assessed using specific pilot-tested criteria for stenosis, herniation, and degenerative changes. Intermethod, interrater, and intrarater agreements for 3D-TSE and 2D-FSE, and Fleiss &kgr; coefficients were determined. Results:The overall intermethod agreement was 80.7%. The interrater agreement was 75.9% for 3D-TSE and 75.7% for 2D-FSE (P=0.47). The intrarater agreement was 82.2% for 3D-TSE and 81.5% for 2D-FSE (P=0.71). Fleiss &kgr; coefficients were 0.42 for 3D-TSE and 0.43 for 2D-FSE (P=0.62), indicating moderate interrater reliability. The intermethod agreement and the 2D-FSE intrarater agreement were statistically similar (P=0.49). Conclusions:There is a high degree of agreement between 3D-TSE and 2D-FSE MRI in assessing the cervical spine. The intermethod variability was statistically similar to the intrinsic intrarater variability of 2D-FSE MRI. This study demonstrates that 3D-TSE yields at least equivalent diagnostic information as conventional 2D-FSE in the cervical spine. In addition, reviewers noted subjective advantages of 3D-TSE image reprocessing, especially when evaluating greater pathology or deformity, with a simplified image acquisition process.
Shaping Expressive Performance: A Problem-Solving Approach

ears ago, I developed and taught a four-month series of lessons designed to help eighth-grade singers gain skills related to phrase shaping. Using poetic accent (i.e., speech inflection) as a frame of reference, the students made decisions regarding musical emphasis, de-emphasis, and phrase climax. A typical activity consisted of my giving them a phrase from a well-known folk song, allowing them thirty seconds or so to decide how to shape the phrase, and then having the entire ensemble sing the phrase with no direction, coaching, or conducting from me. As I stepped aside and allowed them to determine how to shape phrases on their own, I found that although there were perceptible differences from student to student, there was usually an apparent collective interpretation regarding which syllables to emphasize, which to de-emphasize, and how much-and such interpretations were surprisingly appropriate. I began to wonder how my students were able to do such a thing. What skills did these eighth graders possess that could immediately bring about such a high level of agreement? They were using speech inflection as a basis for their phrase shaping, which involves a complex interweaving of volume, intensity, tempo, pitch, and even color. But despite its complexity, most people helping c oral
Distinct contribution of Fc receptors and angiotensin II-dependent pathways in anti-GBM glomerulonephritis.

BACKGROUND The contribution of antibody and/or immune-complex to the pathogenesis of immunologically-mediated glomerulonephritis is not fully understood, although it has been recently clarified that Fc receptors (FcRs) play critical roles in the inflammatory cascade. We therefore re-evaluated the classical model of glomerulonephritis, anti-glomerular basement membrane antibody-induced glomerulonephritis (Anti-GBM GN), from the standpoint of FcRs and also investigated the residual FcR-independent mechanisms. METHODS We adopted an Anti-GBM GN mouse model that has two strains deficient in the FcR gamma chain [gamma(-/-)] or Fc gammaRIIB [RII(-/-)], and analyzed functional (urinary protein, serum creatinine, BUN) and pathological changes of the glomeruli. For the analyses of FcR-independent mechanisms, several doses of nephrotoxic serum were applied, and then mice were treated either with cobra venom factor or an angiotensin II type 1 receptor antagonist in gamma(-/-) mice. RESULTS In gamma(-/-) mice, renal injuries were dramatically attenuated with an absence of polymorphonuclear cell (PMN) influx, while RII(-/-) mice suffered accelerated glomerular injuries in spite of a normal PMN influx. In the absence of FcR-dependent effects in gamma(-/-) mice, the FcR-independent pathway lead to chronic renal damage characterized by mesangial proliferation and progressive expansion of mesangial area, with monocyte/macrophage accumulation and with the expression of alpha smooth muscle actin in the mesangial cells and interstitium. Those injuries in gamma(-/-) mice were not attenuated by the decomplementation, but completely abolished by using an angiotensin II type 1 receptor antagonist. CONCLUSIONS Our results clearly demonstrate that FcRs play a pivotal role in Anti-GBM GN, especially in its acute phase. We further clarified the existence of FcR and complement-independent but antibody-dependent pathway. Furthermore, we found that those pathological changes were strongly related to the renin-angiotensin system.
Humanitarian inter-organisational collaboration network: investigating the impact of network structure and information and communication technology on organisation performance

In this paper, we report on a study that empirically investigates the impact of information and communication technology (ICT) resources and network structure on performance in humanitarian organisations that respond to natural disasters. We combine two theoretical lenses, resource-based view (RBV) and social network, to analyse data collected through multiple sources including web search, surveys and semi-structured interviews among members of the GlobalSympoNet, a community of interest of organisations engaged in humanitarian information management and exchange. Our findings suggest that organisations that possess a greater variety of ICT and greater network centrality experience superior levels organisational performance. Higher levels of network density also enhance the organisational performance of these organisations.
Unsupervised lexical clustering of speech segments using fixed-dimensional acoustic embeddings

Unsupervised speech processing methods are essential for applications ranging from zero-resource speech technology to modelling child language acquisition. One challenging problem is discovering the word inventory of the language: the lexicon. Lexical clustering is the task of grouping unlabelled acoustic word tokens according to type. We propose a novel lexical clustering model: variable-length word segments are embedded in a fixed-dimensional acoustic space in which clustering is then performed. We evaluate several clustering algorithms and find that the best methods produce clusters with wide variation in sizes, as observed in natural language. The best probabilistic approach is an infinite Gaussian mixture model (IGMM), which automatically chooses the number of clusters. Performance is comparable to that of non-probabilistic Chinese Whispers and average-linkage hierarchical clustering. We conclude that IGMM clustering of fixed-dimensional embeddings holds promise as the lexical clustering component in unsupervised speech processing systems.
Human action recognition using RGB-D sensor and deep convolutional neural networks

In this paper, we propose an approach to recognize human actions by the fusion of RGB and Depth data. Firstly, Motion History Images (MHI) are generated from RGB videos which represent the temporal information about the action. Then the original depth data is rotated in 3D point clouds and three Depth Motion Maps (DMM) are generated over the entire depth sequence corresponding to the front, side and top projection views. A 4 Channel Deep Convolutional Neural Network is trained, where the first channel is for classifying MHIs and the remaining three for the front, side and top view generated from depth data respectively. The proposed method is evaluated on publically available UTD-MHAD dataset which contains both RGB and depth videos. Experimental results show that combining two modalities gives better recognition accuracy than using each modality individually.
The functional recovery of peripheral nerves following defined acute crush injuries

This study evaluates the effect of crushing load on functional recovery of the sciatic nerve. Male Sprague‐Dawley rats were divided into five groups: sham operation, resected sciatic nerve, and 100 g (13 mm Hg/mm2), 500 g (50 mm Hg/mm2), and 15,000 g (1,000 mm Hg/mm2) of sciatic crush load (groups 1–5). In groups 3–5, a 5‐mm segment of sciatic nerve was crushed for 10 min using a specially designed crushing device. Motor functional recovery was assessed from hind‐limb walking tracks by calculating a sciatic functional index. There was no detectable functional deficit in the group receiving sham operations, while the resected sciatic nerve group exhibited complete dysfunction for the full duration of the experiment. All groups subjected to crush exhibited an initial deficit that gradually recovered to normal by day 14 (100‐g crush), day 39 (500‐g crush), and day 53 (15,000‐g crush). Histological changes were also related to the initial crushing load and the length of the recovery period. Results indicate that the crushing device described is able to administer an adjustable, defined crush injury to the rat sciatic nerve, and that the functional deficit resulting from such an injury can be easily monitored with a sciatic functional index. The rate of recovery of crushed nerves was directly related to the initial load. All crushed nerves recovered in this experiment, even after the application of a 15,000‐g load for 10 min.
Proteome analysis of human lung squamous carcinoma

Few lung cancer‐specific molecular markers have been established in regard of “early‐stage” diagnosis and prognosis. In this study the proteome analysis of human lung squamous carcinoma (hLSC) was carried out using two strategies to explore the carcinogenic mechanisms and identify its molecular markers more directly and comprehensively. Comparative proteome analysis on 20 hLSC tissues and paired normal bronchial epithelial tissues revealed 76 differential proteins, among which 68 proteins were identified by PMF. The identified proteins fell into three categories: oncoproteins, cell cycle regulators and signaling molecules. To validate the identified differential proteins, the expressions levels of three differential proteins mdm2, c‐jun and EGFR were determined by immunohistochemical staining and immunoblots. The results verified proteome analysis results. Serological proteome analysis (SERPA) of ten hLSC tissues was performed to identify the tumor‐associated antigens. The results revealed 36 ± 8 differential proteins reactive with patients' autologous sera, of which 14 proteins were identified. Six of the 14 proteins, alpha enolase, pre‐B cell‐enhancing factor precursor, triosephosphate isomerase, phosphoglycerate mutase 1, fructose‐bisphosphate aldolase A, and guanine nucleotide‐binding protein beta subunit‐like protein, were also up‐regulated in hLSCs in the comparative proteomic study, which suggests potential application of these 6 hLSC‐associated antigens in diagnosis and therapy of hLSC.