Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Methods and Tools for the Development of Effective Training Games 1 Methods and Tools for the Development of Effective Training Games

BBN has developed several successful game-based training systems for the military. From these and other development efforts, we have identified a number of capability gaps in current methods and tools for developing effective game-based training applications. Our observations and conclusions are drawn from research studies and reviews of games and game-based training systems, as well as from our own experience in developing and fielding several such systems. We discuss lessons learned and additional enhancements in current methods and tools needed to advance the instructional utility and power of gamebased training technology. Motivation There is little doubt that new and emerging technologies will have an impact on how instructional systems are developed and deployed over the next several decades. In this regard, the area of educational games is receiving growing attention due to the perceived motivational power of video and computer games produced for entertainment. Modern computer gaming technology has created highly entertaining games that provide immersive simulation environments enabling rich interactions among distributed players and facilitating the development of strategic thinking and decision-making skills. Studies of the effectiveness of game-based training have been conducted for a variety of domains from single-player scenarios to those involving large teams. These studies confirm that game-based technology shows great promise for delivering compelling experiential training and for effective assessment of cognitive skills, particularly in stressful situations that call for timely judgment and decision-making. Games have promise for evaluating the impact of psychological traits on leadership, for evaluating the ability of a sailor or marine to adapt to new operating conditions and protocols, and for evaluating the ability of combat units to follow new rules of engagement using new equipment in a hostile environment. However, without the necessary research base to inform instructional design and to guide the development of appropriate training and assessment methods and tools, sizeable investments will likely be made on game-based training systems that are ineffective or marginal. Systematic research is needed for guiding the design, development, and effective use of games that have serious educational goals and for demonstrating their effectiveness in facilitating learning. We review the current state of the art, identify capability gaps and present some thoughts on how to address those gaps. These represent our initial efforts under an ONR-sponsored project, “Tools for Game-Based Training and Assessment of Human Performance”, dedicated to the development of the learning science, instructional methods, and technological tools to respond to these challenges.
Effect of changes in finger skin temperature on vibrotactile perception threshold.

OBJECTIVES The purpose of the study was to determine the influence of finger skin temperature on the vibrotactile perception threshold at fingertips, determined according to the method described in ISO 13091-1 standard. MATERIALS AND METHODS The effect of the cooling and warming of hands on vibration perception was investigated in 21 healthy women. Vibration perception measurements were conducted using P8 pallesthesiometer (EMSON-MAT, Poland) designed according to ISO 13091-1 standard requirements. Vibrotactile perception threshold was measured in two series of experiments performed on the index finger of the right hand at frequencies of 4 Hz, 25 Hz and 125 Hz and skin temperature of 33 degrees C, 28 degrees C, 23 degrees C, 18 degrees C and 15 degrees C. RESULTS The findings of the study showed that as the finger skin temperature decreased, the vibrotactile perception threshold increased, but only at the frequency of 125 Hz. The changes in finger skin temperature did not affect the vibration perception at 4 Hz and 25 Hz. No significant differences in VPT were found between the two experimental series. CONCLUSIONS A short-time cooling and warming of hands had a significant impact on increasing or decreasing vibrotactile perception threshold, only at the highest frequency mediated by Pacinian mechanoreceptors.
Regional growth cycle synchronisation with the Euro Area

This paper investigates the patterns and determinants of the co-movement of economic activity between regions in the European Union and the Euro Area. Using a panel data of 208 EU-15 regions over the period 1989-2002 we estimate a system of four simultaneous equations to analyse the impact of regional trade integration, specialisation and exchange rate volatility on correlations of regional growth cycles with the Euro area. We find that deeper trade integration with the Euro area had a strong direct positive effect on the synchronisation of regional growth cycles with the Euro area. Industrial specialisation and exchange rate volatility were sources of cyclical divergence. Industrial specialisation had however an indirect positive effect on growth cycles synchronisation via its positive effect on trade integration, while exchange rate volatility had an indirect additional negative effect on growth cycle correlations by reducing trade integration. Industrial specialisation had an indirect negative effect on growth cycle correlations by increasing the exchange rate volatility. The direct impact of trade integration on growth cycle correlations was stronger in the pre-EMU sub-period, while in the EMU sub-period, the negative direct effects of industrial specialisation and exchange rate volatility were stronger than in the pre-EMU sub-period. A distinct result is the positive and significant relationship between exchange rate volatility and growth cycle correlations in the pre-EMU sub-period, suggesting that over this period, country-specific exchange rate fluctuations acted as shock absorbers. Our analysis is relevant in the context of the discussion about the macroeconomic adjustment to region-specific shocks in the European Monetary Union.
Effects of plyometric training on skill performance in soccer players

Plyometric training (PT) is a widely used method to improve muscles' ability to generate explosive power. Plyometric may improved skill performance of soccer players; however it is not clear. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of PT on skill performance in soccer players. Twenty soccer players participated in this study as the subject. The subjects were randomly assigned to PT group (n=10, age: 22.5 ± 0.5 years) or control group (n=10, age: 22.4 ± 0.5 years). The PT group performed 8 weeks lower extremities PT besides the soccer team training. The control group performed only the soccer team training during the study. The results showed that the time of sprint running test, dribbling, agility with and without ball and VO2max improve after PT (P<0.05). For accuracy of shooting no significant change was observed after 8 weeks PT. In conclusion, although the time of sprint running test, dribbling, agility with and without ball and VO2max improve after PT, these training have not effective to improve accuracy of shooting in soccer players
The effect of corporate social responsibility on firm risk

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the link between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and risk for a sample of US firms rated by KLD. Design/methodology/approach - – The authors’ approach involves three distinctive features. First, the authors use individual indicators of CSR to highlight which CSR dimension matters most for a firm’s risk. Second, the authors distinguish CSR strengths and concerns to reveal potentially nonlinear relationships. Third, the authors use a measure of risk that takes into account the predictable changes in a firm’s performance and that does not collapse the panel data into a single cross-section. This allows the CSR–risk relationship to be estimated by the variation within each firm and the variation across firms. Findings - – Consistent with existing results, the authors find that CSR concerns relating to diversity, employee relations and corporate governance increase the risk to shareholders. More interestingly, the authors show that CSR strengths relating to diversity and employee relations are also associated with higher risk. The positive influence of both CSR strengths and concerns on a firm’s risk is confirmed using aggregate CSR indicators. Research limitations/implications - – The results confirm that CSR strengths and concerns represent distinct constructs that should not be aggregated into a single measure. The effect of poor CSR on firm risk is more significant than what would appear to be the case using an aggregate index. Practical implications - – Although lack of CSR engagement may not affect (and may even benefit) a firm’s current performance, it may seriously damage its performance in the future. Firms should be aware of this risk. Originality/value - – The positive relationship found between CSR and firm risk underscores the inherent conflict between the interests of employees and those of shareholders. By committing to a more favorable treatment of their employees, firms incur a fixed cost that inevitably transfers more risk to their shareholders.
Oxidant stress as a marker for cardiovascular events: Ox marks the spot.

During the past decade, numerous experimental and clinical studies have demonstrated that many common conditions predisposing to atherosclerosis, such as hypercholesterolemia, hypertension, diabetes, and smoking, are associated with a reduced vascular availability of nitric oxide (NO•). Nitric oxide not only produces vasodilation but also has potent antiatherogenic properties. These properties include inhibition of platelet aggregation, prevention of smooth muscle cell proliferation, reduction of lipid peroxidation, and inhibition of adhesion molecule expression. Thus, the loss of NO• observed in these various conditions not only alters vascular tone but also may explain in part why these conditions are risk factors for atherosclerosis. See p 2673 Given this apparent link between loss of nitric oxide and atherosclerosis, several groups have been interested in the concept that endothelium-dependent vasodilation, a surrogate for NO• bioavailability, may predict cardiovascular events. Indeed, Suwaidi et al1 followed 157 patients with mildly diseased coronary arteries for an average of 28 months and observed cardiac events only in the patients with the lowest tertile of coronary vasodilation to acetylcholine. Similarly, in a study of 147 patients, Schachinger et al2 used 3 different stimuli for endothelial release of NO: acetylcholine, cold pressor testing, and increased blood flow. The authors showed that responses to each of these stimuli were independent predictors of cardiovascular events during a follow-up period of ≈8 years. Perticone et al3 also demonstrated that endothelial dysfunction in the forearm circulation predicts cardiovascular events in hypertensive subjects. There have been several explanations for why the various risk factors impair endothelial function. One that has received substantial attention is increased production of reactive oxygen species within the vessel.4 In particular, superoxide (O2•-) reacts rapidly with NO•, resulting in the formation of the peroxynitrite anion and loss of NO• …
Evaluating Topic Modeling as Preprocessing for a Sentiment Analysis Task

Classifying the sentiment of documents is a well-studied problem in Natural Language Processing (NLP). The existence of excellent discriminative classifiers like Maxent has pushed the main body of research in the direction of feature engineering. In this paper, I examine an unusual class of features, the document-topic proportions assigned by the Latent Dirichlet Allocation topic model. In particular, I evaluate the relative performance of topic proportions alone, topic proportions together with unigrams, and unigrams alone. My findings are that topic proportions do not add enough information to significantly improve classification performance. I also perform domain adaptation experiments, finding that (although topic proportions do not outperform unigram features) there is some promise in classification based on topic proportions.
Local Inversion of the Radon Transform in Even Dimensions Using Wavelets

We use the theory of the continuous wavelet transform to derive inversion formulas for the Radon transform on L 1 \L 2 (R d). These inversion formulas turn out to be local in even dimensions in the following sense. In order to recover a function f from its Radon transform in a ball of radius R > 0 about a point x to within error , we can nd () > 0 such that this can be accomplished by knowing the projections of f only on lines passing through a ball of radius R + () about x. We give explicit a priori estimates on the error in the L 2 and L 1 norms.
Characterization of the Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato AvrRpt2 protein: demonstration of secretion and processing during bacterial pathogenesis

Pseudomonas syringae pv. tomato strain DC3000 (Pst DC3000) expressing avrRpt2 is specifically recognized by plant cells expressing RPS2 activity, resulting in localized cell death and plant resistance. Furthermore, transient expression of this bacterial avrRpt2 gene in plant cells results in RPS2‐dependent cell death. This indicates that the AvrRpt2 protein is recognized inside RPS2 plant cells and is sufficient for the activation of disease resistance‐mediated cell death in planta. We explored the possibility that Pst DC3000 delivers AvrRpt2 protein to plant cells via the hrp (type III) secretion pathway. We now provide direct evidence that mature AvrRpt2 protein is secreted from Pst DC3000 and that secretion is hrp dependent. We also show that AvrRpt2 is N‐terminally processed when Arabidopsis thaliana plants are infected with Pst DC3000 expressing avrRpt2. Similar N‐terminal processing of AvrRpt2 occurred when avrRpt2 was stably expressed in A. thaliana. No cleavage of AvrRpt2 was detected in bacteria expressing avrRpt2 in culture or in the plant extracellular fluids. The N‐terminus of AvrRpt2 was not required for RPS2 recognition in planta. However, this region of AvrRpt2 was essential for Pst DC3000‐mediated elicitation of RPS2‐dependent cell death in A. thaliana leaves.
Molecular epidemiology reveals long-term changes in HIV type 1 subtype B transmission in Switzerland.

BACKGROUND Sequence data from resistance testing offer unique opportunities to characterize the structure of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection epidemics. METHODS We analyzed a representative set of HIV type 1 (HIV-1) subtype B pol sequences from 5700 patients enrolled in the Swiss HIV Cohort Study. We pooled these sequences with the same number of sequences from foreign epidemics, inferred a phylogeny, and identified Swiss transmission clusters as clades having a minimal size of 10 and containing >or=80% Swiss sequences. RESULTS More than one-half of Swiss patients were included within 60 transmission clusters. Most transmission clusters were significantly dominated by specific transmission routes, which were used to identify the following patient groups: men having sex with men (MSM) (38 transmission clusters; average cluster size, 29 patients) or patients acquiring HIV through heterosexual contact (HETs) and injection drug users (IDUs) (12 transmission clusters; average cluster size, 144 patients). Interestingly, there were no transmission clusters dominated by sequences from HETs only. Although 44% of all HETs who were infected between 1983 and 1986 clustered with injection drug users, this percentage decreased to 18% for 2003-2006 (P<.001), indicating a diminishing role of injection drug users in transmission among HETs over time. CONCLUSIONS Our analysis suggests (1) the absence of a self-sustaining epidemic of HIV-1 subtype B in HETs in Switzerland and (2) a temporally decreasing clustering of HIV infections in HETs and IDUs.
Retentive strength of different intracanal posts in restorations of anterior primary teeth: an in vitro study

Objectives To determine the retentive strength and failure mode of undercut composite post, glass fiber post and polyethylene fiber post luted with flowable composite resin and resin-cement. Materials and Methods Coronal parts of 120 primary canine teeth were sectioned and specimens were treated endodontically. The teeth were randomly divided into 6 groups (n = 20). Prepared root canals received intracanal retainers with a short composite post, undercut composite post, glass fiber post luted with flowable resin or resin-cement, and polyethylene fiber post luted with flowable resin or resin-cement. After crown reconstruction, samples were tested for retentive strength and failure mode. Statistical analysis was done with one-way ANOVA and Tukey tests (p < 0.05). Results There were statistically significant differences between groups (p = 0.001). Mean bond strength in the undercut group was significantly greater than in the short composite post (p = 0.030), and the glass fiber post (p = 0.001) and the polyethylene fiber post group luted with resin-cement (p = 0.008). However, the differences between the undercut group and the groups with flowable composite as the luting agent were not significant (p = 0.068, p = 0.557). Adhesive failure was more frequent in the fiber post groups. Conclusions Although the composite post with undercutting showed the greatest resistance to dislodgement, fiber posts cemented with flowable composite resin provided acceptable results in terms of retentive strength and fracture mode.
Pilot Study of Essential Drug Quality in Two Major Cities in India

Background India is an increasingly influential player in the global pharmaceutical market. Key parts of the drug regulatory system are controlled by the states, each of which applies its own standards for enforcement, not always consistent with others. A pilot study was conducted in two major cities in India, Delhi and Chennai, to explore the question/hypothesis/extent of substandard and counterfeit drugs available in the market and to discuss how the Indian state and federal governments could improve drug regulation and more importantly regulatory enforcement to combat these drugs. Methodology/Principal Findings Random samples of antimalarial, antibiotic, and antimycobacterial drugs were collected from pharmacies in urban and peri-urban areas of Delhi and Chennai, India. Semi-quantitative thin-layer chromatography and disintegration testing were used to measure the concentration of active ingredients against internationally acceptable standards. 12% of all samples tested from Delhi failed either one or both tests, and were substandard. 5% of all samples tested from Chennai failed either one or both tests, and were substandard. Spatial heterogeneity between pharmacies was observed, with some having more or less substandard drugs (30% and 0% respectively), as was product heterogeneity, with some drugs being more or less frequently substandard (12% and 7% respectively). Conclusions/Significance In a study using basic field-deployable techniques of lesser sensitivity rather than the most advanced laboratory-based techniques, the prevalence of substandard drugs in Delhi and Chennai is confirmed to be roughly in accordance with the Indian government's current estimates. However, important spatial and product heterogeneity exists, which suggests that India's substandard drug problem is not ubiquitous, but driven by a subset of manufacturers and pharmacies which thrive in an inadequately regulated environment. It is likely that the drug regulatory system in India needs to be improved for domestic consumption, and because India is an increasingly important exporter of drugs for both developed and developing countries. Some poor countries with high burdens of disease have weak drug regulatory systems and import many HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria drugs from India.
Caloric Restriction as a Strategy to Improve Vascular Dysfunction in Metabolic Disorders

Caloric restriction (CR) has proved to be the most effective and reproducible dietary intervention to increase healthy lifespan and aging. A reduction in cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk in obese subjects can be already achieved by a moderate and sustainable weight loss. Since pharmacological approaches for body weight reduction have, at present, a poor long-term efficacy, CR is of great interest in the prevention and/or reduction of CVD associated with obesity. Other dietary strategies changing specific macronutrients, such as altering carbohydrates, protein content or diet glycemic index have been also shown to decrease the progression of CVD in obese patients. In this review, we will focus on the positive effects and possible mechanisms of action of these strategies on vascular dysfunction.
Food security in Public Health and other government programs in British Columbia, Canada: A policy analysis

Public Health has re-emerged as a driver of food security in British Columbia. Food security policy, programs and infrastructure have been integrated into the Public Health sector and other areas of government, including the adoption of food security as a Core Public Health program. This policy analysis of the integration merges findings from forty-eight key informant interviews conducted with government, Civil Society, and food supply representatives involved in the initiatives, along with relevant documents and participant/direct observations. Findings were analyzed according to “contextual”, “diagnostic”, “evaluative” and “strategic” categories from the Ritchie and Spencer framework for Applied Policy Research. While Civil Society was the driver for food security in British Columbia, Public Health was the driver for the integration of food security into the government. Public Health held most of the power, and often determined the agenda and the players involved. While many interviewees heralded the accomplishments of the incorporation of food security into Public Health, stakeholders also acknowledged the relative insignificance of the food security agenda in relation to other “weightier”, competing agendas. Conflict between stakeholders over approaches to food insecurity/hunger existed, and it was only weakly included in the agenda. Looking to consequences of the integration, food security increased in legitimacy within the Public Health sector over the research period. Interviewees described a clash of cultures between Public Health and Civil Society occurring partly as a result of Public Health’s limited food security mandate and inherent top down approach. Marginalization of the Civil Society voice at the provincial level was one of the negative consequences resulting from this integration. A social policy movement toward a new political paradigm - “regulatory pluralism” - calls for greater engagement of Civil Society, and for all sectors to work together toward common goals. This integration of food security into the government exemplifies an undertaking on the cutting edge in progress toward this shift. Recommendations for stakeholders in furthering food security within the government were identified. These include the development of food security policy alternatives for current government agendas in British Columbia, with a focus on health care funding, Aboriginal health and climate change.