Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Development and assessment of film excerpts used for emotion elicitation

OBJECTIVES: Presentation of a film story is useful tool for inducting positive and negative emotional states. The aim of the present study was to select appropriate film clips that would be effective in the induction of certain emotion. METHODS: The assessment of film excerpts was conducted on the sample of 173 Slovak university students. A set of 11 film excerpts was presented to participants. We analyzed the distribution of elicited emotions, the discre teness of target emotion as well as gender differences in emotional reactivity. Film excerpts were compared also according to the rate of valence and arousal of induced emotional state. RESULTS: Each of the 11 film clips elicited the target emotion (amusement, sadness, neutral emotional state). Women reported higher level of sadness than men after film clips with that specific target emotion. Moreover, mute film clips were as effective as excerpts with dialogues. COCNLUSION: Our results indicate that presentation of film clips (whether mute or with dialogues) is effective method for emotions inducing.
Modeling of Current Consumption in 802.15.4/ZigBee Sensor Motes

Battery consumption is a key aspect in the performance of wireless sensor networks. One of the most promising technologies for this type of networks is 802.15. 4/ZigBee. This paper presents an empirical characterization of battery consumption in commercial 802.15. 4/ZigBee motes. This characterization is based on the measurement of the current that is drained from the power source under different 802.15. 4 communication operations. The measurements permit the definition of an analytical model to predict the maximum, minimum and mean expected battery lifetime of a sensor networking application as a function of the sensor duty cycle and the size of the sensed data.
The processes of inference

Mental models represent possibilities, and the theory of mental models postulates three systems of mental processes underlying inference: (0) the construction of an intensional representation of a premise's meaning – a process guided by a parser; (1) the building of an initial mental model from the intension, and the drawing of a conclusion based on heuristics and the model; and (2) on some occasions, the search for alternative models, such as a counterexample in which the conclusion is false. System 0 is linguistic, and it may be autonomous. System 1 is rapid and prone to systematic errors, because it makes no use of a working memory for intermediate results. System 2 has access to working memory, and so it can carry out recursive processes, such as the construction of alternative models. However, it too is fallible when the limited processing capacity of working memory becomes overburdened. The three systems are embodied in a unified computational implementation of the model theory, called mReasoner, wh.
Evolution of Auxin Response Factors in plants characterized by phylogenomic synteny network analyses

Auxin response factors (ARFs) have long been a research focus and represent a class of key regulators of plant growth and development. Previous studies focusing genes from limited number of species were unable to uncover the evolutionary trajectory of this family. Here, more than 3,500 ARFs collected from plant genomes and transcriptomes covering major streptophyte lineages were used to reconstruct the broad-scale family phylogeny, where the early origin and diversification of ARF in charophytes was delineated. Based on the family phylogeny, we proposed a unified six-group classification system for angiosperm ARFs. Phylogenomic synteny network analyses revealed the deeply conserved genomic syntenies within each of the six ARF groups and the interlocking syntenic relationships connecting distinct groups. Recurrent duplication events, such as those that occurred in seed plant, angiosperms, core eudicots and grasses contributed the expansion of ARF genes which facilitated functional diversification. Ancestral transposition activities in important plant families, including crucifers, legumes and grasses, were unveiled by synteny network analyses. Ancestral gene duplications along with transpositions have profound evolutionary significance which may have accelerated the functional diversification process of paralogues. Our study provides insights into the evolution of ARFs which will enhance our current understandings for this important transcription factor family.
Study of effective ecological factors on distribution of vegetation types (Case study: Southern margin of Haj Aligholi Kavir, Damghan)

Abstract The objective of current research is to investigate distribution patterns of vegetation types and its relation with environmental factors in southern margin of Haj Aligholi Kavir of Damghan. Three vegetation types including Halecnemum strobilaceum, Sedlitzia rosmarinus and Artemisia sieberi were studied in marginal arid regions and uplands of the study area. Firstly, geographic location of vegetation types was determined using GPS. Then the boundary of the region was delineated on the topographic map in scale 1:50000. Elevation, slope and aspect of vegetation types were determined as well. Ten plots were established in the field based on randomized – systematic approach. The area of each plot was determined according to the kind of plant species and distribution of plants. Floristic list, canopy cover and average percent of species canopy cover were determined in each plot. Finally, five soil samples were taken in each vegetation type. The characteristics of soil samples including texture, EC, pH, %CaCO3, %CaSO4, %OM, SAR and ESP were measured too. ANOVA and Duncan's test were used to analyze the collected data. The result of analysis of variance showed that F test of all studied characteristics except %CaCO3, %CaSO4, %OM and elevation is significant in %1. The results of Duncan's test showed that soil texture, EC, SAR, ESP and pH of Halecnemum strobilaceum type is significantly different from two other types. Also, SAR, ESP and slope in habitat of Artemisia sieberi and Sedlitzia rosmarinus types were significantly different
Deep intronic APC mutations explain a substantial proportion of patients with familial or early‐onset adenomatous polyposis

To uncover pathogenic deep intronic variants in patients with colorectal adenomatous polyposis, in whom no germline mutation in the APC or MUTYH genes can be identified by routine diagnostics, we performed a systematic APC messenger RNA analysis in 125 unrelated mutation‐negative cases. Overall, we identified aberrant transcripts in 8% of the patients (familial cases 30%; early‐onset manifestation 21%). In eight of them, two different out‐of‐frame pseudoexons were found consisting of a 167‐bp insertion from intron 4 in five families with a shared founder haplotype and a 83‐bp insertion from intron 10 in three patients. The pseudoexon formation was caused by three different heterozygous germline mutations, which are supposed to activate cryptic splice sites. In conclusion, a few deep intronic mutations contribute substantially to the APC mutation spectrum. Complementary DNA analysis and/or target sequencing of intronic regions should be considered as an additional mutation discovery approach in polyposis patients. Hum Mutat 33:1045–1050, 2012. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Tunable microwave components based on KTa/sub x/Nb/sub 1-x/O/sub 3/ ferroelectric material

We made tunable microwave ferroelectric interdigital capacitors (IDCs) and resonators with different KTa/sub x/Nb/sub 1-x/O/sub 3/ (KTN) materials. Measurement results highlighted interesting variations, i.e. about 9.27% at 2 GHz on the capacitance value, at low bias voltage (/spl sim/15 kV/cm). This study enabled us to choose KTa/sub 0.5/Nb/sub 0.5/O/sub 3/ among three KTN compositions because, at room temperature, it showed the best properties for achievement of tunable devices. To our knowledge, among the few circuits based on a ferroelectric thin film other than Ba/sub x/Sr/sub 1-x/TiO/sub 3/ (BST) material, the ones we proposed demonstrate very promising performances for microwave applications. In the future, KTNs could compete with BSTs for tunable devices.
Mathematical analysis of the relationship between blood flow and uptake of nutrients in the mammary glands of a lactating cow

Summary A dynamic mathematical model of blood flow regulation in the mammary glands of a lactating cow was constructed from a principle of local vasodilator release in response to changes in intracellular adenylate charge. An equation was derived to predict uptake of the milk precursors acetate, glucose, amino acids and fatty acids, as affected by mammary blood flow rate. Metabolism of the precursors to milk components and CO2 was simulated with a set of empirically derived equations. Relative rates of ATP production and utilization regulated both the number of perfused capillaries and the conductance of arteriolar segments in the mammary glands. The model simulated local control phenomena of functional and reactive hyperaemia, and simulation of autoregulation under changing arterial pressure suggested a predominance of precapillary sphincter regulation. It was predicted that an increase in blood flow without the mammary capacity to utilize blood metabolites efficiently would be detrimental to milk synthesis. Conversely, increased blood flow through changes in mammary activity resulted in predictions of higher milk production. It was proposed that the equation for uptake, be used in analysis of mammary arteriovenous differences.
Monosodium glutamate is not associated with overweight in Vietnamese adults

Abstract Objective To determine the prevalence of and associated factors for overweight, especially to determine the relationship between the intake of monosodium glutamate (MSG) as a seasoning and overweight in Vietnam. Design A cross-sectional survey was conducted of Vietnamese adults aged ≥20 years in 2008. Dietary intake was assessed by the 24 h recall method for 3 d. MSG intake was evaluated by the weighing method on three consecutive days. Physical activity was assessed based on the Global Physical Activity Questionnaire recommended by the WHO. Overweight was defined as BMI ≥ 23·0 kg/m2. Other characteristics such as age and lifelong occupation were determined by a structured questionnaire. Setting Some rural and urban areas of Hanoi, Thua Thien Hue Province and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Subjects A total of 1528 adults living in surveyed areas were randomly selected by the multistage cluster sampling method. Results The prevalence of overweight was 27·9 %, and 81·0 % of participants were MSG users. Average MSG intake was 2·2 (sd 1·8) g/d. Multiple logistic regression analysis revealed that factors associated with overweight were age, region of residence, lifelong occupation, physical activity and intakes of energy, carbohydrates, saturated fat and animal protein. There was no significant association between MSG intake and overweight. Conclusions The study demonstrated that overweight was not associated with MSG intake in Vietnamese adults. Further longitudinal studies should be done in different populations to determine the relationship between MSG and overweight.
Uncontrolled counter-knowledge: its effects on knowledge management corridors

ABSTRACT Disinformation and misconceptions based on unverified information (e.g., hoaxes, exaggerations, or gossip) is what is called “counter-knowledge”. Knowledge management corridors establish a framework for relationships between the external and internal knowledge processes to enhance organisational performance. This study proposes three knowledge management processes (i.e., realised absorptive capacity, organisational memory, and knowledge application) as those that constitute such critical corridors. The analysis of the role of uncontrolled counter-knowledge in the relationship between those knowledge management processes is the value of this paper. Hypotheses were tested using a SEM approach based on composites (PLS-SEM). Data were collected from 151 branch-office managers belonging to the Spanish banking industry. The results show that counter-knowledge is only related to realised absorptive capacity and knowledge application, being the influence negative. The link between counter-knowledge and the other two constructs (i.e., organisational memory and organisational performance) provides surprising results being statistically insignificant.
Speech Emotion Recognition Using Capsule Networks

Speech emotion recognition (SER) is a fundamental step towards fluent human-machine interaction. One challenging problem in SER is obtaining utterance-level feature representation for classification. Recent works on SER have made significant progress by using spectrogram features and introducing neural network methods, e.g., convolutional neural networks (CNNs). However the fundamental problem of CNNs is that the spatial information in spectrograms is not captured, which are basically position and relationship information of low-level features like pitch and formant frequencies. This paper presents a novel architecture based on the capsule networks (CapsNets) for SER. The proposed system can take into account the spatial relationship of speech features in spectrograms, and provide an effective pooling method for obtaining utterance global features. We also introduce a recurrent connection to CapsNets to improve the model’s time sensitivity. We compare the proposed model to previous published results based on combined CNN-long short-term memory (CNN-LSTM) models on the benchmark corpus IEMOCAP over four emotions, i.e., neutral, angry, happy and sad. Experimental results show that our model achieves better results than the baseline system on weighted accuracy (WA) (72.73% vs. 68.8%) and un-weighted accuracy (UA) (59.71% vs. 59.4%), which demonstrates the effectiveness of CapsNets for SER.
Impact of Electronic Faucets and Water Quality on the Occurrence of Pseudomonas aeruginosa in Water: A Multi-Hospital Study

OBJECTIVE To compare Pseudomonas aeruginosa prevalence in electronic and manual faucets and assess the influence of connecting pipes and water quality. SETTING Faucets in 4 healthcare centers in Quebec, Canada. METHODS Water samples from 105 electronic, 90 manual, and 14 foot-operated faucets were analyzed for P. aeruginosa by culture and enzymatic detection, and swab samples from drains and aerators were analyzed by culture. Copper and residual chlorine concentrations, temperature, and flow rate were measured. P. aeruginosa concentrations were analyzed in 4 consecutive volumes of cold water and a laboratory study was conducted on copper pipes and flexible hoses. RESULTS P. aeruginosa contamination was found in drains more frequently (51%) than in aerators (1%) or water (culture: 4%, enzyme detection: 16%). Prevalence in water samples was comparable between manual (14%) and 2 types of electronic faucets (16%) while higher for foot-operated faucets (29%). However, type 2 electronic faucets were more often contaminated (31%) than type 1 (14%), suggesting that faucet architecture and mitigated volume (30 mL vs 10 mL) influence P. aeruginosa growth. Concentrations were 100 times higher in the first 250 mL than after flushing. Flexible hoses were more favorable to P. aeruginosa growth than copper and a temperature of 40°C led to higher counts. CONCLUSIONS The types of faucets and connecting pipes, flow rate, and water quality are important parameters influencing the prevalence and the concentrations of P. aeruginosa in faucets. High concentrations of P. aeruginosa in the first 250 mL suggest increased risk of exposure when using the first flush. Infect Control Hosp Epidemiol 2014;00(0): 1–9
A new motion compensation design for H.264/AVC decoder

Motion compensation is always the main bottleneck in real-time or high quality video applications; thus, fast and efficient motion compensation is necessary. A new motion compensation design is presented to overcome the large calculation time of the complicated motion vector prediction (MVP) algorithm and high motion resolution in H.264/AVC. By applying 4/spl times/4 block based parallelism and context switch buffers in our design, it can efficiently reduce memory access and increase data reuse probability such that real-time decoding can be achieved with 1080HD (1920/spl times/1088) at 100 MHz and search range [-64, +63.75].
Crosstalk During Fruit Ripening and Stress Response Among Abscisic Acid, Calcium-Dependent Protein Kinase and Phenylpropanoid

Abstract Phenylpropanoids are secondary metabolites produced by plants. They, by differential expression, are involved in responses to biotic and abiotic stresses and confer plant plasticity. In addition, they are synthesized under normal conditions during the fruit-ripening process. Therefore, the understanding of the mechanics involved in the accumulation of these compounds in plants is of extreme importance for the development of plants with greater resistance and tolerance to biotic and abiotic stresses, and plants with greater functional potential. There is evidence that one of the pathways of the induction of phenylpropanoids is dependent on abscisic acid (ABA) and it is generated by a signaling cascade involving calcium (Ca2+) and Ca2+-dependent protein kinases (CDPKs). Plants have several Ca2+ binding proteins that act as cellular sensors and represent the first points of signal transduction. CDPKs are mono-molecular Ca2+-sensor/kinase-effector proteins, which perceive Ca2+ signals and translate them into protein phosphorylation and thus represent an ideal tool for signal transduction. However, the mechanisms involved in the ABA–CDPK–phenylpropanoids crosstalk under stress conditions and during fruit ripening remains uncertain. Therefore, this review seeks to surface a new line of evidence as an attempt to understand the manner in which the induction of phenylpropanoids occurs in plants.
Prevalence and Risk Factors of Cervical Intraepithelial Neoplasia and Cervical Cancer among Ever Married Adult Females in Egypt: A Survey Study

Background: Cervical cancer is one of the leading cancers among women globally. In Egypt, prevalence of cervical cancer is increasing, however prevalence and risk factors of its precursors; cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) were not fully defined. Aim of the Study: To define the prevalence of CIN and cervical cancer among ever married adult females in Assiut, Egypt and to define their risk factors. Patients and Methods: A cross-section, analytic, survey study design was used. One thousand and six hundred normal married adult females were recruited. Conventional Pap smears were taken and examined, those with abnormal smear results were subjected to colposcopic biopsy taking for pathologic examination. Results: Prevalence of epithelial abnormalities was 8.25%. Prevalence of CIN and cervical cancer was 3.18%; CIN I, II, III, and cervical cancer were 2.25%, 0.69%, 0.18%, and 0.06%; respectively. The mean ages of women in CIN I, II, and III/CIS/cancer were 41.7, 46.5, and 56.7 years; respectively (P=0.005). The significant socio-demographic risk factors were the lowest education (OR=3.82), occupation (OR=3.67), and social level (OR=2.16). The significant sexual behavior risk factor was sexual partner with STIs or symptomatic (OR=4.47). The significant reproductive risk factors were vaginal delivery (OR= 8.77), birth spacing 5 years (OR=3.39), and multiparity >5 (OR= 2.81). History of STIs (OR=2.78) and BMI ≥ 30 (OR=2.22) were significant risk factors. Significant lifestyle risk factors were ever smoked (OR=4.52), low fruits and vegetables intake (OR=3.67), and poor genital hygiene (OR=2.39). Conclusions and Recommendations: CIN is prevalent in Assiut, Egypt. CIN risk factors are fully preventable. More surveys must be conducted to define the exact prevalence, epidemiology, and situation of CIN and cervical cancer in Egypt. Efforts must be doubled to prevent them through a national program.
Estimating Interest Rate Setting Behavior in Brazil : A LSTR Model Approach

Given limited research on monetary policy rules in emerging markets, this paper challenges the applicability of a nonlinear Taylor rule in characterizing the monetary policy behavior of the Brazilian Central Bank. It also investigates whether and how the process of setting interest rates has been developed in response to contingencies and special events. We extend the linear Taylor rule to a regime-switching framework, where the transition from one regime to another occurs in a smooth way, using a Logistic Smooth Transition Regression (LSTR) approach. In this sense, we empirically analyze the movement of the nominal short term interest rate of the Brazilian Central Bank using quarterly data, covering the period 1994.Q4–2012.Q2. We find that the nonlinear Taylor rule provides a better description of the Brazilian interest rate setting and is consistent with historical macroeconomic events. In particular, our results show that adopting a nonlinear specification, instead of the linear, leads to a costs reduction in terms of fit: 190 basis points in 1995 and 140 basis points in the mid-2002 presidential election campaign in Brazil. Moreover, the Brazilian monetary policy exhibits nonlinear patterns that better captures special events and may contain relevant information rendering it applicable to unusual conditions, i.e., a financial crisis, which require disconnection from the automatic pilot rule and use of judgement to make decision.
Child Sexual Abuse, Links to Later Sexual Exploitation/High-Risk Sexual Behavior, and Prevention/Treatment Programs

This paper reviews the literature on the nature and incidence of child sexual abuse, explores the link between child sexual abuse and later sexual exploitation, and reviews the literature on prevention strategies and effective interventions in child sexual abuse services. Our understanding of the international epidemiology of child sexual abuse is considerably greater than it was just 10 years ago, and studies from around the world are examined. Childhood sexual abuse can involve a wide number of psychological sequelae, including low self-esteem, anxiety, and depression. Numerous studies have noted that child sexual abuse victims are vulnerable to later sexual revictimization, as well as the link between child sexual abuse and later engagement in high-risk sexual behaviour. Survivors of child sexual abuse are more likely to have multiple sex partners, become pregnant as teenagers, and experience sexual assault as adults. Various models which attempt to account for this inter-relationship are presented; most invoke mediating variables such as low self-esteem, drug/alcohol use, PTSD and distorted sexual development. Prevention strategies for child sexual abuse are examined including media campaigns, school-based prevention programmes, and therapy with abusers. The results of a number of meta-analyses are examined. However, researchers have identified significant methodological limitations in the extant research literature that impede the making of recommendations for implementing existing therapeutic programmes unreservedly.