Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Glutamate Binding to Brain Membranes Is Increased in Pentylenetetrazole‐Kindled Rats

Abstract: The specific binding of L‐[3H]glutamate to its receptors was investigated on crude membrane preparations from different brain regions of pentylenetetrazole‐kindled rats using a binding assay technique. Pentylenetetrazole kindling induced by 10 intraperitoneal applications of 45 mg/kg over a period of 20 days resulted in a significant increase of both the convulsive susceptibility of animals to the convulsant and the specific L‐[3H]glutamate binding in hippocampus and in motor, frontal, and inferiotemporal (acoustic) cortex tested with a L‐[3H]glutamate concentration of 50 nM. No differences were observed in the other brain structures studied. Kinetic studies indicated that the enhanced L‐[3H]glutamate binding to hippocampal membranes from kindled rats reflects changes in the density of the glutamate binding sites rather than an increase in receptor affinity. To study the effect of acute generalized convulsions on L‐[3H]glutamate binding to synaptosomal membranes of hippocampus and visual cortex, rats were treated 24 h before the experiment with 60 mg/kg of pentylenetetrazole, i.p. Under these conditions, no differences between treated and control rats were observed. From these findings, it is concluded that the increase in glutamate receptor density demonstrated in hippocampus and several neocortical brain structures of pentylenetetrazole‐kindled rats may be the expression of a specific enhancement of susceptibility of glutamatergic systems to this excitatory amino acid developing in the course of formation of pentylenetetrazole‐induced kindling.
Evidence for altered vascular responses to exogenous endothelin-1 in patients with advanced cirrhosis with restoration of the normal vasoconstrictor response following successful liver transplantation

Background and aims: There is evidence that dampened responses to endogenous vasoconstrictors contribute to the hyperdynamic circulation that is characteristic of advanced cirrhosis. The aim of this study was to determine whether there is an altered vascular responsiveness to the endothelium derived constricting factor endothelin-1 (ET-1) in patients with decompensated chronic liver disease which might contribute to this abnormal circulatory state, and whether normal endothelin responses are restored following liver transplantation. Methods: Using forearm plethysmography, we studied the vascular response to an intra-arterial ET-1 infusion in six patients with end stage cirrhosis, before and after liver transplantation, compared with six normal control subjects. Responses to the selective endothelin A (ETA) receptor subtype antagonist, BQ123, were also examined. Results: The forearm vessels of patients with cirrhosis vasodilated in response to ET-1 infusion while in healthy controls a marked vasoconstriction response was observed (p<0.0001, area under the curve time-blood flow was normal compared with the cirrhosis groups, ANOVA). Prior to commencement of liver transplant surgery, cirrhotic patients were confirmed to have a hyperdynamic circulation with a high cardiac index (4.07 (0.23) l/min/m2 (normal range 2.8–3.6 l/min/m2)) and low systemic vascular resistance index (1284 (115) dyn×s/cm5/m2 (normal range 1760–2600 dyn×s/cm5/m2)). Following transplantation, normal vasoconstrictor responses to ET-1 were restored. Responses to BQ123 were not different in patients with advanced cirrhosis compared with controls. Conclusion: In patients with end stage cirrhosis, ET-1 produces vasodilatation at a dose that causes marked vasoconstriction in normal control subjects. This effect is not attributable to impairment of ETA receptor responses. Our findings suggest that altered endothelin responses may contribute to the generalised dilatation of the circulation that occurs in patients with advanced liver disease.
Examining the Underrepresentation of Underserved Students in Gifted Programs from a Transformational Leadership Vantage Point

Within the United States, the underrepresentation of historically underserved student groups continues to be a phenomenon in gifted and talented (GT) programs. In a phenomenological study exploring teachers' and African American parents' perceptions of the underrepresentation of gifted African American students, four themes emerged from the study. Those themes are: (a) misperceptions regarding a student's race and ability; (b) the lack of parent awareness programs about issues related to gifted and talented education; (c) the need for professional development training related to the needs of minority gifted students; and (d) issues related to testing and assessment instrumentation. A paradigm shift in leadership and GT program practices must occur to reduce identification and placement gaps. The Chadwell Transformative Model for Gifted Program Reform is a means to improve the identification and placement of historically underserved students into gifted and talented programs.
Efficacy of “high‐intensity” blue‐light and “standard” daylight phototherapy for non‐haemolytic hyperbilirubinaemia

We report our clinical experience with phototherapy in 3802 infants; 3629 were exposed to “standard” daylight phototherapy and 173 to “high‐intensity” blue‐light phototherapy. High‐intensity blue‐light phototherapy was twice as effective as standard daylight phototherapy in decreasing bilirubin concentrations. No failures occurred with high‐intensity phototherapy compared with an overall failure rate of 1.84/1000 with daylight lamps; these cases were transferred to high‐intensity phototherapy with prompt response. Rebound after cessation of phototherapy was greater in those exposed to high‐intensity blue light with a significantly greater number requiring a second exposure. However, the incidence was still low. No third exposure was required in any infant. Nursing of infants under high‐intensity blue light was more difficult and inconvenient as was clinical monitoring. The light also caused more stress on the nursing and medical personnel. However, the infants tolerated both types of phototherapy equally well. High‐intensity blue‐light phototherapy would seem to be the treatment of choice for infants with rapidly increasing or very high bilirubin levels, as well as in those not responding adequately to daylight phototherapy.
The Influence of Pioneer Status and Experience Order on Consumer Brand Preference: A Mediated-Effects Model

Within the behavioral literature, two basic explanations of the pioneering advantage have been offered. Early work focused on order-based explanations. More recently, schema-based explanations have also been suggested. The authors propose a mediated-effects model of the pioneering advantage and test the model in two separate longitudinal studies. Both experiments support the proposed model. The authors find that experience order and pioneer-status have additive effects on brand preference such that perceptions of first-in-market and first-experienced brands are more favorable, suggesting that both explanations are operative. The authors also provide evidence that the effects of pioneer status on brand preference are mediated by attitude toward the brand and company credibility, while the effects of experience order on brand preference are mediated by attitude toward the brand and attribute recall. These data support the notion that the effect of pioneer status on brand preference is the result of both brand-level and company-level associations.
Apache Hadoop YARN: yet another resource negotiator

The initial design of Apache Hadoop [1] was tightly focused on running massive, MapReduce jobs to process a web crawl. For increasingly diverse companies, Hadoop has become the data and computational agorá---the de facto place where data and computational resources are shared and accessed. This broad adoption and ubiquitous usage has stretched the initial design well beyond its intended target, exposing two key shortcomings: 1) tight coupling of a specific programming model with the resource management infrastructure, forcing developers to abuse the MapReduce programming model, and 2) centralized handling of jobs' control flow, which resulted in endless scalability concerns for the scheduler. In this paper, we summarize the design, development, and current state of deployment of the next generation of Hadoop's compute platform: YARN. The new architecture we introduced decouples the programming model from the resource management infrastructure, and delegates many scheduling functions (e.g., task fault-tolerance) to per-application components. We provide experimental evidence demonstrating the improvements we made, confirm improved efficiency by reporting the experience of running YARN on production environments (including 100% of Yahoo! grids), and confirm the flexibility claims by discussing the porting of several programming frameworks onto YARN viz. Dryad, Giraph, Hoya, Hadoop MapReduce, REEF, Spark, Storm, Tez.
Exploring the Overlap Between Offending and Victimization Within Intimate Partner Violence in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Over the past five decades two parallel bodies of literature have emerged; one examines intimate partner violence (IPV), the other examines the overlap between victimization and offending. Until recently, these two bodies of literature had yet to intersect. The current study provides an exploratory investigation into the overlap between victimization and offending within IPV with a Bosnian adult sample. Utilizing self-report data, 200 Bosnian adults were classified into one of four distinct groups: nonviolent (no history of IPV victimization and/or IPV perpetration), victims (history of IPV victimization only), offenders (history of IPV perpetration only), and victim–offenders (history of IPV victimization and IPV perpetration). Over half of the sample (54%) indicated no prior experiences with IPV within their intimate relationships (current or past). For individuals who characterized their intimate relationships as volatile, analyses indicated that more individuals were involved in mutually violent (having experienced both victimization and perpetration) relationships than solely exclusive behaviors (having experienced only victimization or engaged in perpetration but not both). Moreover, a series of bivariate and multivariate analyses revealed important demographic and behavioral differences between the groupings. Policy implications, as well as suggestions for future research, are presented.
The influence of stress, optimism, and music training on music uses and preferences

In the present study we examined how different aspects of a person’s life, such as the amount of stress experienced, levels of optimism, and the amount of musical training received, were related to their motives for listening to music (for emotional regulation and/or for cognitive stimulation) and their preferences for what types of music to listen to. Participants (N = 154) completed surveys measuring stress, optimism, music uses, and music preferences. Results indicate that high stress ratings predicted the use of music for emotional regulation. Additionally, optimistic individuals also tended to use music emotionally, meaning that stress and optimism, though highly negatively correlated, appear to influence uses of music independently. People with more music training followed a different pattern; even though they had higher stress ratings and lower optimism ratings overall, individuals with music training tended to listen to music for cognitive reasons more than for emotional regulation. These findings help us further understand the variables that lead to individual differences in music uses and preferences.
Pit sense: Appropriation of practice-based knowledge in a UK coalmine

Pit sense is a form of knowledge constituted by tunnellers as a way to navigate and assess risk. We discuss how this form of tacit knowledge that was situated in everyday practices came under threat when management introduced more bureaucratic procedures rationalized on the basis of commercial outcomes and health and safety. Yet, while managers were prone to vilify pit sense even though they had grown up with it earlier in their career, they were prepared to turn a blind eye to it as long as it delivered ‘yardage’. We examine the implications of this managerial ambivalence towards pit sense, and demonstrate how, rather than seeking to codify tacit knowledge in order to ensure its diffusion as the literature proposes, the bureaucratization of procedures and work practices not only challenged the legitimacy of pit sense, but also cast pit sense and formalized procedures into an uneasy alliance.
On the Application of Inequality Indices in Comparative Software Analysis

Socio-economic inequality indices, like the Gini coefficient or the Theil index, offer us a viable alternative to central tendency statistics when being used to aggregate software metrics data. The specific value of these inequality indices lies in their ability to capture changes in the distribution of metrics data more effectively than, say, average or median. Knowing whether the distribution of one metrics is more unequal than that of another one or whether its distribution becomes more or less unequal over time is the crucial element here. There are, however, challenges in the application of these indices that can result in ecological fallacies. The first issue relates to occurrences of zeros in metrics data, and not all inequality indices cope well with this event. The second problem arises from applying a macro-level inference to a micro-level analysis of a changing population. The Gini coefficient works for the former, whereas the decomposable Theil index serves the latter. Nevertheless, when used with care, and usually in combination, both indices can provide us with a powerful tool not only to analyze software, but also to assess its organizational health and maintainability over time.
Psychosocial Influences on Physical, Verbal, and Indirect Bullying Among Japanese Early Adolescents

Although bullying among Japanese youth is a current major concern, psychosocial influences on bullying are not fully understood. The purpose of this study was to identify the psychosocial factors associated with physical, verbal, and indirect bullying among Japanese adolescents. Junior high school students between seventh and ninth grade (N = 2,923) completed a self-reported questionnaire. Involvement in bullying and psychosocial factors were investigated. Deviant peer influence, less serious attitude in school, poor self-control of aggressiveness and impulsiveness, poor self-assertive efficacy against bullying, and euphemistic thinking were commonly associated with physical, verbal, and indirect bullying. Experiences of victimization by physical and verbal bullying were associated with both physical and verbal bullying, whereas experiences of victimization by indirect bullying were associated with indirect bullying. Psychosocial factors associated with different types of bullying substantially overlapped. Therefore, interventions focused on these modifiable common factors could be effective in the prevention of adolescent bullying.
Family Therapy and Beyond: Where is the Milan Systemic Approach Today?

This paper reviews the current position of the Milan Approach in the family therapy field. Over the past 20 years this approach has made a major contribution to the development of family therapy theory and practice in the U.K. However, the ideas have been modified in order to fit different client groups in a range of settings; until today, the Milan, or Post-Milan approach is an amalgam of the original concepts and new techniques. This paper describes the development of this approach and highlights the following topics as central to current thinking: language, power, narrative, family resilience, externalising, focusing on change, and solution focused approaches. Several techniques of the Post-Milan approach are demonstrated in a discussion of one case treated by the author.
Who Put the Con in Consultancy? Fads, Recipes and ‘Vodka Margarine’

This article assesses the merits of analyses that have called for a more developed and constructive engagement with the management advice industry. It argues that attempts to reconstitute academic interest in the advice industry will do little to improve our appreciation of the complex and mediated nature of management advice so long as these (i) remain tied to a debunking agenda and (ii) focus exclusively on the production of advice. Accordingly, the article refocuses attention on the consumption of management knowledge and on the users of advice. Directing attention to the users of recipes and cookbooks the article argues that a more constructive relationship with management practitioners awaits those who can conceive of the reasons, circumstances and processes that might translate business process reengineering (BPR) into total quality management (TQM) and ‘brandy butter’ into ‘vodka margarine’.
A novel paleo-bleaching proxy using boron isotopes and high-resolution laser ablation to reconstruct coral bleaching events

Abstract. Coral reefs occupy only ~ 0.1 percent of the ocean's habitat, but are the most biologically diverse marine ecosystem. In recent decades, coral reefs have experienced a significant global decline due to a variety of causes, one of the major causes being widespread coral bleaching events. During bleaching, the coral expels its symbiotic algae, thereby losing its main source of nutrition generally obtained through photosynthesis. While recent coral bleaching events have been extensively investigated, there is no scientific data on historical coral bleaching prior to 1979. In this study, we employ high-resolution femtosecond Laser Ablation Multiple Collector Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometry (LA-MC-ICP-MS) to demonstrate a distinct biologically induced decline of boron (B) isotopic composition (δ11B) as a result of coral bleaching. These findings and methodology offer a new use for a previously developed isotopic proxy to reconstruct paleo-coral bleaching events. Based on a literature review of published δ11B data and our recorded vital effect of coral bleaching on the δ11B signal, we also describe at least two possible coral bleaching events since the Last Glacial Maximum. The implementation of this bleaching proxy holds the potential of identifying occurrences of coral bleaching throughout the geological record. A deeper temporal view of coral bleaching will enable scientists to determine if it occurred in the past during times of environmental change and what outcome it may have had on coral population structure. Understanding the frequency of bleaching events is also critical for determining the relationship between natural and anthropogenic causes of these events.
Occupation: Potential for personal and social transformation

Abstract The author takes the broad view that occupation is the active process of living, not limited to categories of work. Drawing on her two recent ethnographic studies of occupational therapy in mental health day programmes, she poses three questions: 1. What are the key features of the active process of occupation? 2. How does the social organization of occupation confer power on some occupations, but not on others? 3. How might (ought? ) occupation be used for personal or social transformation? To support her argument that the potential to transform ourselves and society lies in occupation, four key features of the active process of occupation are highlighted: learning; organizing time and place; discovering meaning; and, exercising choice and control. The conclusion points to the urgency of changing the ways in which education, health, welfare and other institutions are organized to enable us to focus on occupation in our quest for economic security, personal development, and justice.
Cross-layer multirate interaction with Distributed Source Coding in Wireless Sensor Networks

Distributed Source Coding (DSC) is an effective means in reducing data redundancy in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). However, the issues on designing multirate DSC with multirate transmission in WSNs have not been well addressed in the literature. In this paper, we propose a cross-layer approach to achieve optimal DSC data quality while assuring energy efficiency and latency requirement through adjusting multirate DSC data dependencies and network multirate transmission parameters jointly. Specifically, the DSC coding dependency among multirate source coding sensors are fine-tuned to balance compression efficiency and transmission robustness. Transmission rate and retransmission limit on each wireless link are optimized accordingly to achieve unequal error protection (UEP) among inter-dependent DSC streams. Simulation studies demonstrate that the proposed scheme ensures satisfactory DSC data quality and energy efficiency.
More than Liking and Bookmarking? Towards Understanding Twitter Favouriting Behaviour

Microblogging services, such as Twitter, offer a variety of interactive features that allow users to engage with contacts in their social network and the content they produce. One such feature is the favourite button on Twitter, an icon in the form of a star that users can click on to assign a special status to a particular tweet. Despite evidence suggesting that users increasingly make use of favouriting, little is known about the reasons people have for favouriting or the utility the feature offers. This contrasts with other core features, such as “following” and “retweeting”, which have been studied extensively. In this paper we argue that by investigating the motivations for favouriting tweets we can enhance our understanding of what people want to achieve with Twitter and the types of content users find interesting or useful. With these goals in mind we conducted a large-scale survey (n=606), questioning Twitter users on various aspects of their favouriting behaviour. Of these users only 395 were aware of the function and 290 make use of the functionality. The survey responses from these users demonstrate that motives for favouriting tweets are extremely heterogeneous and not always consistent within and between users. Moreover, our findings reveal that user needs when favouriting such as the need for re-finding a tweet or the wish for a more private conversation are often poorly supported and sometimes even go unmet by the Twitter user interface.
Bayesian Inference for a Semi-Parametric Copula-based Markov Chain

This paper presents a method to specify a strictly stationary univariate time series model with particular emphasis on the marginal characteristics (fat tailedness, skewness etc.). It is the rst time in time series models with speci ed marginal distribution, a non-parametric speci cation is used. Through a Copula distribution, the marginal aspect are separated and the information contained within the order statistics allow to efficiently model a discretely-varied time series. The estimation is done through Bayesian method. The method is invariant to any copula family and for any level of heterogeneity in the random variable. Using count times series of weekly rearm homicides in Cape Town, South Africa, we show our method efficiently estimates the copula parameter representing the first-order Markov chain transition density. JEL classification: C11 ; C14 ; C20