Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Language use and educational success: An empirical response to Joan Tough's the Development of Meaning’ (1977)

Tough's recently published research on children's use of language, which forms the basis for a large-scale curriculum project, sets out to demonstrate a strong relationship between complexity of language use and social class. This paper1 reports a partial replication of Tough's approach, based on data collected in the Bristol longitudinal study of language development. The main findings are that, using Tough's scheme for analysing language, there is no clear-cut relationship between language use and either social class or educational success after one year of schooling. The discrepancies between the results of the two studies are attributed to (a) the distortion introduced into Tough's study by the comparison of polarised social-class groups, and (b) the non-interactive conception of communication that underlies her analysis of language use. It is suggested that what differentiates children in their preparedness for school is the extent of their experience of ‘negotiation of meaning’ through language, and that such experience can be found in homes from all social classes.
Toxicity and dose-response studies of 1,25-(OH)2-16-ene-23-yne vitamin D3 in transgenic mice.

The vitamin D3 analogue 1,25-(OH)2-16-ene-23-yne vitamin D3 (16,23-D3) in doses with low systemic toxicity has been demonstrated to inhibit retinoblastoma growth in transgenic mice. This study examines the dose-dependent response for inhibition of tumor growth in transgenic mice with retinoblastoma and evaluates the in vivo toxicity of 16,23-D3 in nontransgenic mice. Transgenic 8-10-week-old mice with retinoblastoma (n = 119) were randomly assigned to groups receiving 1.0, 0.75, 0.5, 0.35, 0.2, or 0.05 microg of 16,23-D3 and a vehicle alone (control) group i.p. five times a week for 5 weeks. An additional control group received no injection. Eyes were enucleated one week after the end of treatment, and tumor areas were measured. To determine the toxic dose, transgene-negative littermates received 0.5, 1.0, 1.5, 2.5, 3.5, 4.5, or 5.0 microg of 16,23-D3, and control groups received vehicle alone, 5 days a week for 5 weeks. Serum calcium levels were measured, and necropsies were performed on animals from each group. In the dose-response study, tumor growth inhibition was greatest in the group receiving 0.35 microg (55% inhibition; P = 0.0056) and was also significant in the group receiving 0.5 microg (42% inhibition; P = 0.036). The systemic toxic effects due to hypercalcemia occurred at doses of > or =1.0 microg. 16,23-D3 inhibits tumor growth at doses > or =0.35 microg and shows toxic effects at doses > or =1.0 microg related to hypercalcemia in mice fed an unrestricted diet. No toxicity was observed with lower doses.
A New Oidiodendron maius Strain Isolated from Rhododendron fortunei and its Effects on Nitrogen Uptake and Plant Growth

A new mycorrhizal fungal strain was isolated from hair roots of Rhododendron fortunei Lindl. grown in Huading Forest Park, Zhejiang Province, China. Morphological characterization and internal transcribed spacer rDNA analysis suggested that it belongs to Oidiodendron maius Barron, and we designated it as strain Om19. Methods for culturing Om19 were established, and the ability of Om19 to form mycorrhizae on R. fortunei was evaluated in a peat-based substrate. Microscopic observations showed hyaline hyphae on the surface of hair roots and crowded hyphal complexes (hyphal coils) inside root cortical cells of R. fortunei after inoculation, indicating that the roots were well colonized by Om19. In a second experiment, fresh and dry weight of R. fortunei 2 months after Om19 inoculation were greater than uninoculated plants, and the total nitrogen absorbed by plants inoculated with Om19 was greater than the uninoculated controls. qRT-PCR analysis of five genes related to N uptake and metabolism (two nitrate transporters, an ammonium transporter, glutamine synthetase, and glutamate synthase) showed that these genes were highly upregulated with twofold to ninefold greater expression in plants inoculated with Om19 compared to uninoculated plants. In the third experiment, Om19 was inoculated into the peat-based substrate for growing Formosa azalea (Rhododendron indica ‘Formosa’). ‘Formosa’ azalea plants grown in the inoculated substrate had larger canopies and root systems compared to uninoculated plants. Our results show that Om19 could be an important microbial tool for improving production of Rhododendron plants.
Smoking, Antioxidant Supplementation and Dietary Intakes among Older Adults with Age-Related Macular Degeneration over 10 Years

We aimed to compare the micronutrient usage and other lifestyle behaviors over 10 years among those with and without age-related macular degeneration (AMD). 1612 participants aged 49+ years at baseline were re-examined over 10 years, west of Sydney, Australia. AMD was assessed from retinal photographs. Dietary data were collected using a semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire. Smoking status was self-reported. 56 participants had any AMD at baseline, of these 25% quit smoking at 5 years and were still not smoking at 10-year follow-up. Among participants who had below the recommended intake of vitamins A, C or E supplements at baseline, those who did compared to those who did not develop late AMD over 10 years were more likely to report vitamins A (total), C or E supplement intake above the recommended intake at 10-year follow-up: multivariable-adjusted OR 4.21 (95% CI 1.65-10.73); OR 6.52 (95% CI 2.76-15.41); and OR 5.71 (95% CI 2.42-13.51), respectively. Participants with compared to without AMD did not appreciably increase fish, fruit and vegetable consumption and overall diet quality. Adherence to smoking and dietary recommendations was poor among older adults with AMD. However, uptake of antioxidant supplements increased significantly among those with late AMD.
JYVÄSKYLÄ in Children and Adults with and without Reading Problems Processing of Sound Rise Time

Hämäläinen, Jarmo Processing of sound rise time in children and adults with and without reading problems Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä, 2007, 46 p. (Jyväskylä Studies in Education, Psychology and Social Research ISSN 0075-4625; 322) ISBN 978-951-39-3000-4 (nid.), 978-951-39-5190-0 (PDF) Yhteenveto: Äänten nousuaikojen prosessointi lapsilla ja aikuisilla, joilla on dysleksia ja lapsilla ja aikuisilla, joilla ei ole dysleksiaa Diss. Two competing views on the importance of lower level auditory processing skills on speech perception and representations in dyslexia (or specific reading disability; RD) have generated several hypotheses on the role of auditory processing skills in dyslexia. The auditory problems exhibited by children with RD may be co-occurring with dyslexia, or they may have a causal role in the development leading to reading problems. The present studies focused on the hypothesis that a cue to the perception of speech stress is the more basic feature of sound rise times, perception of which is impaired in dyslexia. The relationship of rapid auditory processing (RAP) with reading problems was also investigated. In Study I, Finnish speaking adults with RD detected fewer deviations in the rise times of paired sounds when the two tones in the pair were 400 ms apart (the target deviation was in the second tone) compared to controls. In contrast, when the two tones were 150 ms apart the groups did not differ from each other. Also, the rise time detection scores were associated with several measures of literacy skills, but only when the tones were 400 ms apart. Study II found event-related potentials (ERPs) to rise time and pitch change in paired stimuli (with deviant in the second tone) to be different in children with RD than in control children. Children with RD differed from controls in responses related to detection of change in rise time when the tones were 255 ms apart. Also, children with RD had a smaller P3a component than controls in response to pitch changes when the tones were presented 10 ms apart. Study III extended the ERP findings to exogenous responses to paired tones with different rise times. The N1 component was larger in children with RD than in controls when the tones in the pair were presented 10 ms apart. P2 was smaller in children with RD than in controls to the first tone in the pair. The findings of these studies indicate that rise time processing deficits are present in a subgroup of adults and children with RD. The findings indicate that rise time processing problems might play a moderator role in relation to the development of reading skills.
Recent physical connections may explain weak genetic structure in western Alaskan chum salmon (Oncorhynchus keta) populations

Low genetic divergence at neutral loci among populations is often the result of high levels of contemporary gene flow. Western Alaskan summer-run chum salmon (Oncorhynchus keta) populations demonstrate weak genetic structure, but invoking contemporary gene flow as the basis for the low divergence is problematic because salmon home to their natal streams and some of the populations are thousands of kilometers apart. We used genotypes from microsatellite and single nucleotide polymorphism loci to investigate alternative explanations for the current genetic structure of chum salmon populations from western Alaska. We also estimated current levels of gene flow among Kuskokwim River populations. Our results suggest that weak genetic structure is best explained by physical connections that occurred after the Holocene Thermal Maximum among the Yukon, Kuskokwim, and Nushagak drainages that allowed gene flow to occur among now distant populations.
Osteosarcoma Microenvironment: Whole-Slide Imaging and Optimized Antigen Detection Overcome Major Limitations in Immunohistochemical Quantification

Background In osteosarcoma survival rates could not be improved over the last 30 years. Novel biomarkers are warranted to allow risk stratification of patients for more individual treatment following initial diagnosis. Although previous studies of the tumor microenvironment have identified promising candidates, novel biomarkers have not been translated into routine histopathology. Substantial difficulties regarding immunohistochemical detection and quantification of antigens in decalcified and heterogeneous osteosarcoma might largely explain this translational short-coming. Furthermore, we hypothesized that conventional hot spot analysis is often not representative for the whole section when applied to heterogeneous tissues like osteosarcoma. We aimed to overcome these difficulties for major biomarkers of the immunovascular microenvironment. Methods Immunohistochemistry was systematically optimized for cell surface (CD31, CD8) and intracellular antigens (FOXP3) including evaluation of 200 different antigen retrieval conditions. Distribution patterns of these antigens were analyzed in formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded samples from 120 high-grade central osteosarcoma biopsies and computer-assisted whole-slide analysis was compared with conventional quantification methods including hot spot analysis. Results More than 96% of osteosarcoma samples were positive for all antigens after optimization of immunohistochemistry. In contrast, standard immunohistochemistry retrieved false negative results in 35–65% of decalcified osteosarcoma specimens. Standard hot spot analysis was applicable for homogeneous distributed FOXP3+ and CD8+ cells. However, heterogeneous distribution of vascular CD31 did not allow reliable quantification with hot spot analysis in 85% of all samples. Computer-assisted whole-slide analysis of total CD31- immunoreactive area proved as the most appropriate quantification method. Conclusion Standard staining and quantification procedures are not applicable in decalcified formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded samples for major parameters of the immunovascular microenvironment in osteosarcoma. Whole-slide imaging and optimized antigen retrieval overcome these limitations.
Dynamic Pricing in Retail Gasoline Markets

This paper tests for price patterns in retail gasoline markets consistent with those predicted by models of implicit collusion among firms. Recent supergame models show that the highest supportable collusive price is a function of today's profit relative to expected future profit: collusive prices are higher when predictable changes in demand or cost lead firms to expect that collusive profits are increasing rather than declining. Ceteris paribus, collusive profits will be expected to increase when demand is expected to increase and/or costs are expected to decline. Using panel data on sales volume, and retail and wholesale prices in 59 cities over 72 months, we find results consistent with these predictions. Controlling for current demand and input price, the elasticity of current retail margins with respect to expected next-month demand is about 0.37. The elasticity of current margins with respect to next-month wholesale price is about -0.37. The results are inconsistent with inventory effects.
First light of the VLT planet finder SPHERE IV : Physical and chemical properties of the planets around HR8799

Context. The system of fourplanets discovered around the intermediate-mass star HR8799 offers a unique opportunity to test planet formation theories at large orbital radii and to probe the physics and chemistry at play in the atmospheres of self-luminous young (~30 Myr) planets. We recently obtained new photometry of the four planets and low-resolution (R ~ 30) spectra of HR8799 d and e with the SPHERE instrument (Paper III). Aims. In this paper (Paper IV), we aim to use these spectra and available photometry to determine how they compare to known objects, what the planet physical properties are, and how their atmospheres work. Methods. We compare the available spectra, photometry, and spectral energy distribution (SED) of the planets to field dwarfs and young companions. In addition, we use the extinction from corundum, silicate (enstatite and forsterite), or iron grains likely to form in the atmosphere of the planets to try to better understand empirically the peculiarity of their spectrophotometric properties. To conclude, we use three sets of atmospheric models (BT-SETTL14, Cloud-AE60, Exo-REM) to determine which ingredients are critically needed in the models to represent the SED of the objects, and to constrain their atmospheric parameters (T_(eff), log g, M/H). Results. We find that HR8799d and e properties are well reproduced by those of L6-L8 dusty dwarfs discovered in the field, among which some are candidate members of young nearby associations. No known object reproduces well the properties of planets b and c. Nevertheless, we find that the spectra and WISE photometry of peculiar and/or young early-T dwarfs reddened by submicron grains made of corundum, iron, enstatite, or forsterite successfully reproduce the SED of these planets. Our analysis confirms that only the Exo-REM models with thick clouds fit (within 2σ) the whole set of spectrophotometric datapoints available for HR8799 d and e for T_(eff) = 1200 K, log g in the range 3.0−4.5, and M/H = +0.5. The models still fail to reproduce the SED of HR8799c and b. The determination of the metallicity, log g, and cloud thickness are degenerate. Conclusions. Our empirical analysis and atmospheric modelling show that an enhanced content in dust and decreased CIA of H_2 is certainly responsible for the deviation of the properties of the planet with respect to field dwarfs. The analysis suggests in addition that HR8799c and b have later spectral types than the two other planets, and therefore could both have lower masses.
Using Social Influence Processes and Psychological Factors to Measure Pervasive Adoption of Social Networking Sites: Evidence from Pakistan

ABSTRACT Social networking sites (SNS) have emerged as a popular and convenient tool for connecting with different groups of people on a specific platform. This study examines the effect of social influence processes and psychological factors on the behavior of students’ pervasive adoption of SNS. Data were collected through a survey questionnaire. Partial least square was used for data analysis. Findings reveal that privacy, identification, and internalization ensure significant association with the intention to use SNS, ultimately has a positive effect on the pervasive adoption of SNS and so does gender. However, men were found to be less aware of privacy issues.
Control of storage insects as a means of limiting yam tuber fungal rots

Yam rots caused by fungal pathogens (mostly Fusarium spp.) are a major cause of storage losses, and previous work has shown that fungal lesions were only found if there was pre-existing physical damage to the tuber. The general perception is that damage in ̄icted in the ®eld prior to storage is far more important in this regard than damage caused during storage, and this has led to much research directed at the minimisation of ®eld damage with relatively little work on the amelioration of insect damage during storage. This study examined whether insect damage in ̄icted on yam tubers during storage in specialised barns is an important agent in the incidence of fungal disease. It was found that treatment of tubers with insecticide dust (Actellic 2% Dust; ai=pirimiphos-methyl) signi®cantly reduced fungal infections resulting from insect attack during storage. In addition, physical damage acquired during harvest appeared to be ameliorated by the insecticide, resulting in signi®cantly fewer fungal lesions. The results suggest that insecticide treatment of yam tubers prior to storage could provide a relatively cheap and eective means of preservation. # 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Projective analysis for 3D shape segmentation

We introduce projective analysis for semantic segmentation and labeling of 3D shapes. The analysis treats an input 3D shape as a collection of 2D projections, labels each projection by transferring knowledge from existing labeled images, and back-projects and fuses the labelings on the 3D shape. The image-space analysis involves matching projected binary images of 3D objects based on a novel bi-class Hausdorff distance. The distance is topology-aware by accounting for internal holes in the 2D figures and it is applied to piecewise-linearly warped object projections to compensate for part scaling and view discrepancies. Projective analysis simplifies the processing task by working in a lower-dimensional space, circumvents the requirement of having complete and well-modeled 3D shapes, and addresses the data challenge for 3D shape analysis by leveraging the massive available image data. A large and dense labeled set ensures that the labeling of a given projected image can be inferred from closely matched labeled images. We demonstrate semantic labeling of imperfect (e.g., incomplete or self-intersecting) 3D models which would be otherwise difficult to analyze without taking the projective analysis approach.
May the force be with you: Looking for resources that build team resilience

ABSTRACT The aim of this study is to analyze team resilience as a collective psychosocial construct in the framework of the conservation of resources theory. Specifically, the authors hypothesize that (a) team-level resources and (b) organizational-level healthy practices would be positively related to team resilience. Multilevel regression modeling was conducted, using data from 1,167 employees nested in 194 work teams (team level) from 38 organizations (organizational level). Results confirmed the hypotheses having team-level resources and organizational-level healthy practices significant relationships with team resilience. This study provides evidence that team and organizational resources have a strong relationship with team resilience. Practitioners and managers must take these results into account for planning how to manage their resources within the organization. This article found what resources are required (at the team and the organizational level) to help work-team resilience.
High-Dimensional Camera Shake Removal With Given Depth Map

Camera motion blur is drastically nonuniform for large depth-range scenes, and the nonuniformity caused by camera translation is depth dependent but not the case for camera rotations. To restore the blurry images of large-depth-range scenes deteriorated by arbitrary camera motion, we build an image blur model considering 6-degrees of freedom (DoF) of camera motion with a given scene depth map. To make this 6D depth-aware model tractable, we propose a novel parametrization strategy to reduce the number of variables and an effective method to estimate high-dimensional camera motion as well. The number of variables is reduced by temporal sampling motion function, which describes the 6-DoF camera motion by sampling the camera trajectory uniformly in time domain. To effectively estimate the high-dimensional camera motion parameters, we construct the probabilistic motion density function (PMDF) to describe the probability distribution of camera poses during exposure, and apply it as a unified constraint to guide the convergence of the iterative deblurring algorithm. Specifically, PMDF is computed through a back projection from 2D local blur kernels to 6D camera motion parameter space and robust voting. We conduct a series of experiments on both synthetic and real captured data, and validate that our method achieves better performance than existing uniform methods and nonuniform methods on large-depth-range scenes.
Local Deep Kernel Learning for Efficient Non-linear SVM Prediction

Our objective is to speed up non-linear SVM prediction while maintaining classification accuracy above an acceptable limit. We generalize Localized Multiple Kernel Learning so as to learn a tree-based primal feature embedding which is high dimensional and sparse. Primal based classification decouples prediction costs from the number of support vectors and our tree-structured features efficiently encode non-linearities while speeding up prediction exponentially over the state-of-the-art. We develop routines for optimizing over the space of tree-structured features and efficiently scale to problems with more than half a million training points. Experiments on benchmark data sets reveal that our formulation can reduce prediction costs by more than three orders of magnitude in some cases with a moderate sacrifice in classification accuracy as compared to RBF-SVMs. Furthermore, our formulation leads to better classification accuracies over leading methods.
Are ranking preferences information methods comparable with the choice experiment information in predicting actual behavior

Parting from the issue which elicited value method best predict real consumer’ behavior, this study compares the ability of hypothetical and non-hypothetical choice experiment respect to incentive compatible ranking conjoint analysis and sequential best worst scaling in terms of estimated partworths, internal and external predictive power, estimated WTP, and participants’ response consistency. In general, the results reveal higher preferences regularity between the respondents across the different treatments implying not statistically difference in the marginal participants’ WTP. Additionally, the participants behave similarly whether there are asked to choose or to state their most preferred through two ranking elicitation mechanism. However, the advantage of the best worst scaling in it cognitive process which could be considered clearness for participants has been illustrated in statistical significant increment of external predictive power of the method compared with ranking conjoint analysis