Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Youth Empowerment in Oppressive Systems: Opportunities for School Consultants

Empowerment of youth, particularly in urban settings, is critical to addressing issues of social injustice. Programs that support the development of empowerment, or action taken by an individual to facilitate his or her own ability to act in the face of oppression, have demonstrated great promise in dimensions such as creating stronger group bonding and improved mental health and school performance (Bemak, 2005; Bemak, Chi-Ying, & Siroskey-Sabdo, 2005; Wallerstein, 2006). Yet, there are challenges inherent to implementing, supporting, and sustaining empowerment programs in many school settings given the hierarchical structure and contextual norms of these environments (Yowell & Gordon, 1996). This article reviews the Teen Empowerment program and offers strategies for consultants as they support programs and encourage socially just practices in the school setting. The use of Participatory Action Research methods, and its application to creating positive social change and the empowerment of community members, is also reviewed.
IMPULSIVITY AND TIME PERCEPTION AS PREDICTORS OF PATHOLOGICAL GAMBLING

Current study examined multivariate relationships between impulsivity, time perception, gambling behavior and co-variates as age, gender, education and nationality. Impulsivity, time perception and risk for pathological gambling (PG) was assessed in 3500 participants aged between 15 and 74 years (1506 men and 2024 woman, 2455 Estonians and 1075 non-Estonian residents of Estonia) with different educational and socio-economical background. Participants completed the South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS) and the modified Impulsive Behavior Scale (mUPPS). Time Production Task (TPT) was presented to all participants. As the result, impulsive subjects tend to perceive time intervals as shorter and they under produce time intervals more than self-controlled subjects. Impulsivity was associated with PG to the extent that this association can be interpreted as causal but it is not mediated by time perception as was hypothesized.
Social determinants, sexual behaviour, and sexual health

© Oxford University Press, 2014. This chapter discusses the complex relationship between social determinants, sexual behaviour, and sexual health. It focuses on patterns of sexual health and behaviour in Britain in the context of changing social and economic conditions of the 20th century, and of the emergence of HIV in its closing decades. It then contrasts the contemporary impact of HIV and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in Britain with that in low-income countries where social and economic determinants interact with behavioural and biological factors to fuel the continuing spread of HIV, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa.
Repeatable, accurate, and high speed multi-level programming of memristor 1T1R arrays for power efficient analog computing applications

Beyond use as high density non-volatile memories, memristors have potential as synaptic components of neuromorphic systems. We investigated the suitability of tantalum oxide (TaOx) transistor-memristor (1T1R) arrays for such applications, particularly the ability to accurately, repeatedly, and rapidly reach arbitrary conductance states. Programming is performed by applying an adaptive pulsed algorithm that utilizes the transistor gate voltage to control the SET switching operation and increase programming speed of the 1T1R cells. We show the capability of programming 64 conductance levels with <0.5% average accuracy using 100 ns pulses and studied the trade-offs between programming speed and programming error. The algorithm is also utilized to program 16 conductance levels on a population of cells in the 1T1R array showing robustness to cell-to-cell variability. In general, the proposed algorithm results in approximately 10× improvement in programming speed over standard algorithms that do not use the transistor gate to control memristor switching. In addition, after only two programming pulses (an initialization pulse followed by a programming pulse), the resulting conductance values are within 12% of the target values in all cases. Finally, endurance of more than 106 cycles is shown through open-loop (single pulses) programming across multiple conductance levels using the optimized gate voltage of the transistor. These results are relevant for applications that require high speed, accurate, and repeatable programming of the cells such as in neural networks and analog data processing.
A Comparative Investigation of a Three-Phase Induction Machine Drive with a Component Minimized Voltage-Fed Inverter under Different Control Options

Possibilities for minimizing component cost in variable- speed drives with frequency control by solid-state converter are investigated. It is shown that in a three-phase system voltage and frequency control of a three-phase squirrel-cage machine may be attained by PWM of the output of a simplified bridge inverter with only four switches. As the phase voltages are in principle asymmetrical, this technique is called phase asymmetric PWM (PAPWM). The operational region of PAPWM control is investigated theoretically in the frequency plane, compared to PWM control of a six-element bridge, and shown to have application possibilities. The system was experimentally tested on a 1O-kVA four-transistor inverter and experimentally compared to the operation of a six-transistor inverter of the same rating. The entire signal electronics subsystem was also minimized regarding components by using a specially dedicated IC circuit developed for PWM applications in three-phase systems. These results prove that a PAPWM system with a B4 bridge can be operated to give the same operational drive characteristics as a B6 bridge with PWM. The price to be paid for using a bridge with only four switches lies in the higher pulse frequencies required to give the PAPWM the same characteristics as a conventional system. Since transistor switches may be operated at high switching frequencies with low switching losses, the system is well suited to transistor inverter control of induction machine drives.
International Bias in Gymnastic Judging: Conscious or Unconscious Influences?

A clear pattern of international bias in gymnastic judging is that judges award gymnasts from their own country higher scores than other judges who have evaluated the same routine. Two experiments tested whether international bias in gymnastic judging could be partially explained by unconscious influences in the form of exposure or perceptual fluency effects. It was reasoned that repeated exposure to a gymnast's routine would lead to perceptual fluency effects that would be misattributed to increased appreciation of the routine. This misattribution could result in judges awarding higher scores. No support was provided for the hypothesis of unconscious influences. The results are discussed in terms of the possible factors that contributed to a null effect and the practical implications for gymnastic judging.
Macroeconomic Conditions and a Firm's Investment Decisions

We propose a model of a firm’s reversible investment decision with macroeconomic conditions based on optimal switching of a diffusion regime. The switching costs and the cash flow generated from the firm depend on a business cycle alternating via a Markov chain, and the triggers of investment and disinvestment in each state are determined endogenously. Provided the investment costs are cyclical due to high wages and rents in a boom, the investment tends to be delayed in boom, while the disinvestment is likely to be made earlier in terms of the level of switching triggers. This result shows us that the ‘hysteresis’ of investment is a rigorous phenomenon that does not change dramatically depending on business cycle. Yet, the business cycle may still amplify and propagate the exogenous shocks from macroeconomic conditions as far as the persistence of business cycle is concerned. In particular, the investment is deferred and the disinvestment occurs earlier when recession lasts longer and boom ends soon.
Open Access Bmc Pregnancy and Childbirth Still Too Far to Walk: Literature Review of the Determinants of Delivery Service Use

Background: Skilled attendance at childbirth is crucial for decreasing maternal and neonatal mortality, yet many women in low-and middle-income countries deliver outside of health facilities, without skilled help. The main conceptual framework in this field implicitly looks at home births with complications. We expand this to include "preventive" facility delivery for uncomplicated childbirth, and review the kinds of determinants studied in the literature, their hypothesized mechanisms of action and the typical findings, as well as methodological difficulties encountered.
Asymptotic Stability of Stationary Solutions of a Free Boundary Problem Modeling the Growth of Tumors with Fluid Tissues

This paper aims at proving asymptotic stability of the radial stationary solution of a free boundary problem modeling the growth of nonnecrotic tumors with fluid-like tissues. In a previous paper we considered the case where the nutrient concentration $\sigma$ satisfies the stationary diffusion equation $\Delta\sigma=f(\sigma)$ and proved that there exists a threshold value $\gamma_*>0$ for the surface tension coefficient $\gamma$, such that the radial stationary solution is asymptotically stable in case $\gamma>\gamma_*$, while unstable in case $\gamma \gamma_*$, there is a corresponding constant $\varepsilon_0(\gamma)>0$ such that for any $0<\varepsilon<\varepsilon_0(\gamma)$, the radial stationary solution is asymptotically stable with respect to sma.
Discriminative Analysis of Migraine without Aura: Using Functional and Structural MRI with a Multi-Feature Classification Approach

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is by nature a multi-modality technique that provides complementary information about different aspects of diseases. So far no attempts have been reported to assess the potential of multi-modal MRI in discriminating individuals with and without migraine, so in this study, we proposed a classification approach to examine whether or not the integration of multiple MRI features could improve the classification performance between migraine patients without aura (MWoA) and healthy controls. Twenty-one MWoA patients and 28 healthy controls participated in this study. Resting-state functional MRI data was acquired to derive three functional measures: the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations, regional homogeneity and regional functional correlation strength; and structural MRI data was obtained to measure the regional gray matter volume. For each measure, the values of 116 pre-defined regions of interest were extracted as classification features. Features were first selected and combined by a multi-kernel strategy; then a support vector machine classifier was trained to distinguish the subjects at individual level. The performance of the classifier was evaluated using a leave-one-out cross-validation method, and the final classification accuracy obtained was 83.67% (with a sensitivity of 92.86% and a specificity of 71.43%). The anterior cingulate cortex, prefrontal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex and the insula contributed the most discriminative features. In general, our proposed framework shows a promising classification capability for MWoA by integrating information from multiple MRI features.
Recovery of Salmonella from retail broilers by a whole-carcass enrichment procedure.

Fresh whole broiler carcasses were purchased from grocery stores over a 20-week period. Carcasses were selected on the basis of their having intact packages and unique U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) plant numbers and sell-by dates, such that each bird represented a single processing plant-processing day combination. Carcasses were tested for Salmonella with a rinse aliquot obtained after whole-bird incubation in the rinse media for 24 h. On the basis of the number of unique processing plants (USDA plant numbers) and expiration dates involved, the number of birds available each week ranged from 6 to 17. Over the 20-week period, 251 independent carcasses from 14 processing plants were tested. The percentages of carcasses testing positive for Salmonella ranged from 0 (for 1 week) to >60% (for 3 weeks). For only 4 of the 20 weeks was an incidence of Salmonella-positive carcasses of <20% found. For the entire 20-week study, 85 (33.9%) of the 251 carcasses tested were found to be Salmonella positive. For those processing plants from which >10 carcasses were obtained, the percentages of carcasses testing positive for Salmonella ranged from <20 (two plants) to >40% (four plants). These results indicate that a whole-carcass enrichment may be more sensitive for the detection of Salmonella-positive carcasses than the traditional whole-carcass rinse followed by immediate testing of a subsample aliquot when small numbers of Salmonella are expected.
Cardiomyocyte Cell Cycle Activation Ameliorates Fibrosis in the Atrium

MHC-TGFcys33ser transgenic mice have elevated levels of active transforming growth factor (TGF)-&bgr;1 in the myocardium. Previous studies have shown that these animals develop atrial, but not ventricular, fibrosis. Here we show that atrial fibrosis was accompanied with cardiomyocyte apoptosis. Although similar levels of cardiomyocyte apoptosis were present in the right and left atria of MHC-TGFcys33ser hearts, the extent of fibrosis was more pronounced in the right atrium. Thus, additional factors influence the degree of atrial fibrosis in this model. Tritiated thymidine incorporation studies revealed cardiomyocyte cell cycle activity in left atrial cardiomyocytes, but not in right atrial cardiomyocytes. These observations suggested that cardiomyocyte cell cycle activation ameliorated the severity of atrial fibrosis. To directly test this hypothesis, MHC-TGFcys33ser mice were crossed with MHC-cycD2 mice (which have constitutive cardiomyocyte cell cycle activity in the right atrium). Mice inheriting both transgenes exhibited right atrial cardiomyocyte cell cycle activity and a concomitant reduction in the severity of right atrial fibrosis, despite the presence of a similar level of cardiomyocyte apoptosis as was observed in mice inheriting the MHC-TGFcys33ser transgene alone. These data support the notion that cardiomyocyte cell cycle induction can antagonize fibrosis in the myocardium.
Cyberwars of Words: Expressing the Unspeakable in Burundi's Diaspora

As Burundi has moved from ethnic conflict and political exclusion towards peace, reconciliation and democracy, the role of the diaspora has changed as well. Previously, Hutu exiles saw it as their duty to provide uncensored information on the conflict and to fight for the right to express a multitude of opinions. By exploring changes in Burundian websites, the article shows how some Burundian exiles have recently embraced a position of nation-building. Meanwhile, the democratic reforms do not eliminate the anxieties and doubts of many exiled Burundians. These anxieties find their expression on websites where Burundians from all over the world create communities where they can express the unspeakable and float opinions that would never be acceptable in the political field. The article argues that the ideology of democracy and human rights depends on an exclusion of certain opinions—and that diasporic cyberspace may function as a repository for such surplus opinion where the unspeakable may be aired.
Real-Time Systems Security through Scheduler Constraints

Real-time systems (RTS) were typically considered to be invulnerable to external attacks, mainly due to their use of proprietary hardware and protocols, as well as physical isolation. As a result, RTS and security have traditionally been separate domains. These assumptions are being challenged by a series of recent events that highlight the vulnerabilities in RTS. In this paper we focus on integrating security as a first class principle in the design of RTS: we show that certain security requirements can be specified as real-time scheduling constraints. Using information leakage as a motivating problem, we illustrate our techniques with fixed-priority (FP) real-time schedulers. We evaluate our approach and discuss tradeoffs. Our evaluation shows that many real-time task sets can be scheduled under the proposed constraints without significant performance impact.
Randomized Experiments on Crime and Justice

An experiment investigates the effect of changes in one factor (the independent variable) on another (the dependent variable). The independent variable is under the control of the researcher. A randomized experiment is one in which people (or other units) are assigned to conditions according to a table of random numbers, with every person having the same probability of being assigned to each condition. These experiments are especially useful for testing causal hypotheses. Their unique advantage over other methods is their high internal validity, or high ability to demonstrate the effect of one factor on another. The randomization ensures that people assigned to one condition are equivalent in every possible way to those assigned to another condition, within the limits of statistical fluctuation. Despite their methodological advantages, very few randomized experiments have been carried out on crime and justice topics. Most have investigated the effects of providing special help for offenders, and in most cases this help proved no more effective in reducing reoffending than did existing alternative treatment methods. It is difficult to arrange randomized experiments because program administrators are unwilling to relinquish control of assignment to experimenters, and because of ethical problems of denial of treatment. Randomized experiments are most feasible when the effects of a treatment are unknown and when it is impossible to treat everyone. Because of their high internal validity, hypotheses should be tested, and technologies should be evaluated, using randomized experiments whenever possible.
Purchase Behavior and Psychophysiological Responses to Different Price Levels

The aim of the study was to examine emotional processes when product prices for different brands were changed. In a within-subjects design, the participants were presented purchase decision trials with 14 different products (seven private label and seven national brand products) whose price levels were changed while their facial electromyography (EMG) and electrodermal activity were recorded. The results suggest that low prices and national brand products induce higher positive emotions indexed with zygomatic EMG compared to high prices and private label products. Also, positive emotions are related to greater purchase intent. Naturally, a low price has also a direct positive influence on purchase intent. However, the involvement of emotions and the influence that price and brand have on elicitation of emotions may be one explanation for consumers’ varying purchase behavior. The results highlight the importance of emotional factors in pricing research and support the usefulness of psychophysiological measures in the consumer research.
Dissociations Between Categorization and Recognition in Amnesic and Normal Individuals: An Exemplar-Based Interpretation

In recent work, the finding of dissociations between categorization and recognition in amnesic and normal individuals has been taken as evidence of multiple memory systems mediating these tasks. The present research provides support for the alternative idea that these dissociations can be interpreted in terms of a single-system exemplar-memory model that makes allowance for parameter differences across groups. In one experiment, a parameter change in memory sensitivity was induced by testing classification and recognition at varying delays; the results closely matched the ones observed by Knowlton and Squire (1993) for normal and amnesic participants. The exemplar model also yielded good quantitative predictions of the categorization-recognition dissociation. A second analysis demonstrated that dissociations between early versus late probabilistic classification learning and memory sensitivity were also well predicted by the single-system exemplar model. Limitations of the exemplar interpretation and future research directions are also discussed.
Evaluating Malingering in Contested Injury or Illness

Abstract: An interdisciplinary task force of physicians and neuropsychologists with advanced training in impairment and disability assessment provided a review of the literature on malingering in chronic pain, medical disorders, and mental/cognitive disorders. Our review suggests that treating health care providers often do not consider malingering, even in cases of delayed recovery involving work injuries or other personal injuries, where there may be a significant incentive to feign or embellish symptoms or delay recovery. This report discusses the implications of this issue and offers recommendations to evaluating physicians and other health care professionals.
Centres of research excellence in economics in the Republic of Ireland

Using publication, citation and h-numbers from the Scopus and Web of Science databases, we find that research output and academic influence of economists in the Republic of Ireland are heavily skewed by researcher and by institution. A subset of the results is confirmed by similar analyses based on EconLit, Google Scholar and IDEAS/REPEC. The analysis shows that while one university dominates in terms of numbers of economists, the more productive and most cited Irish research economists are spread across a range of institutions that are heavily concentrated in the Greater Dublin Area.
The early Miocene balaenid Morenocetus parvus from Patagonia (Argentina) and the evolution of right whales

Balaenidae (right and bowhead whales) are a key group in understanding baleen whale evolution, because they are the oldest surviving lineage of crown Mysticeti, with a fossil record that dates back ∼20 million years. However, this record is mostly Pliocene and younger, with most of the Miocene history of the clade remaining practically unknown. The earliest recognized balaenid is the early Miocene Morenocetus parvus Cabrera, 1926 from Argentina. M. parvus was originally briefly described from two incomplete crania, a mandible and some cervical vertebrae collected from the lower Miocene Gaiman Formation of Patagonia. Since then it has not been revised, thus remaining a frequently cited yet enigmatic fossil cetacean with great potential for shedding light on the early history of crown Mysticeti. Here we provide a detailed morphological description of this taxon and revisit its phylogenetic position. The phylogenetic analysis recovered the middle Miocene Peripolocetus as the earliest diverging balaenid, and Morenocetus as the sister taxon of all other balaenids. The analysis of cranial and periotic morphology of Morenocetus suggest that some of the specialized morphological traits of modern balaenids were acquired by the early Miocene and have remained essentially unchanged up to the present. Throughout balaenid evolution, morphological changes in skull arching and ventral displacement of the orbits appear to be coupled and functionally linked to mitigating a reduction of the field of vision. The body length of Morenocetus and other extinct balaenids was estimated and the evolution of body size in Balaenidae was reconstructed. Optimization of body length on our phylogeny of Balaenidae suggests that the primitive condition was a relatively small body length represented by Morenocetus, and that gigantism has been acquired independently at least twice (in Balaena mysticetus and Eubalaena spp.), with the earliest occurrence of this trait in the late Miocene–early Pliocene as represented by Eubalaena shinshuensis.