Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Children’s Questions in Cross-Cultural Perspective

This study investigated language data collected in 1978-1979 from ninety-six 3- to 5-year-old children in four different non-Western cultures: Garifuna in Belize, Logoli in Kenya, Newars in Nepal, and Samoans in America Samoa. There were 24 children per culture; half of the children were 3 years of age, and half were 5 years of age. The study examined the use of information-seeking questions in everyday life situations and the proportion of explanation-seeking questions (why-questions) in these communities relative to those reported among Western samples. Results revealed that the number of information-seeking questions does not differ from those of Western samples, but the proportion of explanation-seeking questions was much lower than that reported for Western children. Implications of these findings are discussed.
Enamel Proteases in Secretory and Maturation Enamel of Rats Ingesting 0 and 100 ppm Fluoride in Drinking Water

Dental enamel formed during ingestion of high levels of fluoride in drinking water has an increased organic content in the maturation stage, which may be due to a delay in the breakdown of amelogenins during the early-maturation stage of enamel formation. This delay in the breakdown of amelogenins in fluorosed enamel suggests an effect of fluoride on enamel proteases which hydrolyze the early secreted enamel proteins. In this study, we compared the proteases present in fluorosed and control secretory-stage and maturation-stage enamel. Enamel was demineralized and separated in SDS gels containing 0.1% gelatin. After incubation in 100 mmol/L Tris-HCI, pH 8, with 10 mmol/L CaCl2, the gels were stained with Coomassie Blue, and proteases were seen as clear zones of degraded gelatin. Similar bands of proteolytic activity were seen in fluorosed and in control enamel. In the maturation stage, more proteases were present than in the secretory stage of enamel formation. Less digestion of gelatin substrate occurred in several proteases found in the fluorosed maturation-stage enamel as compared with the control maturation-stage enamel. This suggests that the amount of protease secreted or the activity of the proteases may be altered in fluorosed maturation-stage enamel.
Realising the potential for an Olympic legacy; teaching medical students about sport and exercise medicine and exercise prescribing

Background Physicians are increasingly being called upon to promote physical activity (PA) among patients. However, a paucity of exercise medicine teaching in the UK undergraduate medical curricula prevents students from acquiring the necessary knowledge and skills to do so. To address this issue, King's College London School of Medicine introduced an exercise medicine strand of teaching. This study evaluated the acceptability of exercise promotion behaviour change lectures and explored the knowledge and attitudes of the students who received it. Methods Students were invited to complete a 6-item online questionnaire prior to and after exercise medicine lectures. The questionnaire assessed beliefs regarding the importance of PA in disease prevention and management, in addition to their confidence in advising patients on PA recommendations. A focus group (n=7) explored students’ attitudes towards and knowledge of PA promotion and exercise prescribing. Results In total, 121 (15%) first-year and second-year MBBS students completed the questionnaire. Students’ beliefs regarding the importance of PA in managing disease and their confidence in PA promotion among patients increased after the teaching (p<0.001). More students were able to correctly identify the Chief Medical Officer recommended adult PA guidelines (p<0.05). Students were enthusiastic about the exercise medicine teaching, strongly supportive of its continued inclusion in the curriculum and advocated its importance for patients and themselves as future doctors. Conclusions Behaviour change teaching successfully improved students’ knowledge of and confidence regarding PA promotion. These improvements are a step forward and may increase the rates and success of physician PA counselling in the future.
Sulfhydryls and the in vitro polymerization of tubulin

The free sulfhydryls of brain tubulin prepared by cyclic polymerization procedures both with and without glycerol have been examined. The average free sulfhydryl titer of tubulin prepared with glycerol (7.0 sulfhydryls/55,000 mol wt) is greater than that of tubulin prepared without glycerol (4.0 sulfhydryls/55,000 mol wt). Diamide, a sulfhydryl- oxidizing agent, inhibits the polymerization of tubulin. Diamide also disperses the 20S and 30S oligomers of tubulin seen in analytical ultracentrifuge patterns of tubulin solutions and, depending on the temperature at which diamide is added, converts all or part of the oligomeric material to 6S dimers. Electron microscopy demonstrates that diamide also destroys the 450-A ring structures characteristic of tubulin solutions. All diamide effects are reversible by the addition of 10 mM dithioerythreitol, a sulfhydryl-reducing agent. That diamide interacts with sulfhydryls on tubulin is directly demonstrated by a 50% decrease in the free sulfhydryl titer of tubulin measured after diamide treatment. Concentrations of CaCl2 which inhibit polymerization also decrease the free sulfhydryl titer of tubulin.
Bi-layer segmentation of binocular stereo video

This paper describes two algorithms capable of real-time segmentation of foreground from background layers in stereo video sequences. Automatic separation of layers from colour/contrast or from stereo alone is known to be error-prone. Here, colour, contrast and stereo matching information are fused to infer layers accurately and efficiently. The first algorithm, layered dynamic programming (LDP), solves stereo in an extended 6-state space that represents both foreground/background layers and occluded regions. The stereo-match likelihood is then fused with a contrast-sensitive colour model that is learned on the fly, and stereo disparities are obtained by dynamic programming. The second algorithm, layered graph cut (LGC), does not directly solve stereo. Instead the stereo match likelihood is marginalised over foreground and background hypotheses, and fused with a contrast-sensitive colour model like the one used in LDP. Segmentation is solved efficiently by ternary graph cut. Both algorithms are evaluated with respect to ground truth data and found to have similar p performance, substantially better than stereo or colour/contrast alone. However, their characteristics with respect to computational efficiency are rather different. The algorithms are demonstrated in the application of background substitution and shown to give good quality composite video output.
A Measurement of Anisotropy in the Cosmic Microwave Background on 7'–22' Scales

We report a measurement of anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) on 7'–22' scales. Observations of 36 fields near the North Celestial Pole (NCP) were made at 31.7 and 14.5 GHz, using the 5.5 m and 40 m telescopes at the Owens Valley Radio Observatory (OVRO) from 1993 to 1996. Multiepoch VLA observations at 8.5 and 15 GHz allow removal of discrete source contamination. After point-source subtraction, we detected significant structure, which we identify with emission from a combination of a steep-spectrum foreground and the CMBR. The foreground component is found to correlate with IRAS 100 μm dust emission. Lack of Hα emission near the NCP suggests that this foreground is either high-temperature thermal bremsstrahlung (Te ≳ 106 K), flat-spectrum synchrotron, or an exotic component of dust emission. On the basis of low-frequency maps of the NCP, we can restrict the spectral index of the foreground to β ≥ −2.2. Although the foreground signal dominates at 14.5 GHz, the extracted CMBR component contributes 88% of the variance at 31.7 GHz, yielding an rms fluctuation amplitude of 82 μK, including 4.3% calibration uncertainty and 12% sample variance (68% confidence). In terms of the angular power spectrum, Cl = ⟨|a|2⟩, averaged over a range of multipoles l = 361-756, the detected broadband amplitude is δTle ≡ [l(l + 1)Cl/(2π)]1/2 = 59 μK. This measurement, when combined with small angular scale upper limits obtained at the OVRO, indicates that the CMBR angular power spectrum decreases between l ~ 600 and l ~ 2000 and is consistent with flat cosmological models.
Subgenomic hepatitis C virus replicons inducing expression of a secreted enzymatic reporter protein.

We constructed dicistronic, subgenomic hepatitis C virus (HCV) replicons in which the sequence encoding the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) tat protein was placed in the upstream cistron, between the HCV 5'NTR and a picornaviral 2A proteinase sequence fused to the selectable marker Neo. Stably transformed Huh7 cells expressing secreted alkaline phosphatase (SEAP) under transcriptional control of the HIV LTR promoter actively secreted SEAP following transfection with these replicon RNAs. Extracellular SEAP activity correlated closely with intracellular HCV RNA levels, as determined by Northern blotting and real-time RT-PCR analysis. These RNAs replicated efficiently despite the absence of core-protein-coding sequence downstream of the HCV IRES. The replication efficiency of replicons derived from the HCV-N strain of HCV was significantly greater than those derived from Con1 in transiently transfected cells. Using this reporter system, we have demonstrated significant differences in the response to interferon alpha-2b in cell lines containing replicons derived from these two strains of HCV.
Strong NP-hardness of the quantum separability problem

Given the density matrix ρ of a bipartite quantum state, the quantum separability prob-lem asks whether ρ is entangled or separable. In 2003, Gurvits showed that this problemis NP-hard if ρ is located within an inverse exponential (with respect to dimension) dis-tance from the border of the set of separable quantum states. In this paper, we extendthis NP-hardness to an inverse polynomial distance from the separable set. The resultfollows from a simple combination of works by Gurvits, Ioannou, and Liu. We applyour result to show (1) an immediate lower bound on the maximum distance between abound entangled state and the separable set (assuming P ≠ NP), and (2) NP-hardnessfor the problem of determining whether a completely positive trace-preserving linearmap is entanglement-breaking.
Different Emotional Disturbances in Two Experimental Models of Temporal Lobe Epilepsy in Rats

Affective symptoms such as anxiety and depression are frequently observed in patients with epilepsy. The mechanisms of comorbidity of epilepsy and affective disorders, however, remain unclear. Diverse models are traditionally used in epilepsy research, including the status epilepticus (SE) model in rats, which are aimed at generating chronic epileptic animals; however, the implications of different SE models and rat strains in emotional behaviors has not been reported. To address this issue, we examined the emotional sequelae of two SE models of temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) – the lithium-pilocarpine (LIP) model and the kainic acid (KA) model – in two different rat strains (Wistar and Sprague-Dawley), which differ significantly in the pattern and extent of TLE-associated brain lesions. We found differences between LIP- and KA-treated animals in tests for depression-like and anxiety-like behaviors, as well as differences in plasma corticosterone levels. Whereas only LIP-treated rats displayed increased motivation to consume saccharin, both SE models led to reduced motivation for social contact, with LIP-treated animals being particularly affected. Evaluation of behavior in the open field test indicated very low levels of anxiety in LIP-treated rats and a mild decrease in KA-treated rats compared to controls. After exposure to a battery of behavioral tests, plasma corticosterone levels were increased only in LIP-treated animals. This hyperactivity in the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis was highly correlated with performance in the open field test and the social interaction test, suggesting that comorbidity of epilepsy and emotional behaviors might also be related to other factors such as HPA axis function. Our results indicate that altered emotional behaviors are not inherent to the epileptic condition in experimental TLE; instead, they likely reflect alterations in anxiety levels related to model-dependent dysregulation of the HPA axis.
Microbial Diversity of Hydrothermal Sediments in the Guaymas Basin: Evidence for Anaerobic Methanotrophic Communities

ABSTRACT Microbial communities in hydrothermally active sediments of the Guaymas Basin (Gulf of California, Mexico) were studied by using 16S rRNA sequencing and carbon isotopic analysis of archaeal and bacterial lipids. The Guaymas sediments harbored uncultured euryarchaeota of two distinct phylogenetic lineages within the anaerobic methane oxidation 1 (ANME-1) group, ANME-1a and ANME-1b, and of the ANME-2c lineage within the Methanosarcinales, both previously assigned to the methanotrophic archaea. The archaeal lipids in the Guaymas Basin sediments included archaeol, diagnostic for nonthermophilic euryarchaeota, and sn-2-hydroxyarchaeol, with the latter compound being particularly abundant in cultured members of the Methanosarcinales. The concentrations of these compounds were among the highest observed so far in studies of methane seep environments. The δ-13C values of these lipids (δ-13C = −89 to −58‰) indicate an origin from anaerobic methanotrophic archaea. This molecular-isotopic signature was found not only in samples that yielded predominantly ANME-2 clones but also in samples that yielded exclusively ANME-1 clones. ANME-1 archaea therefore remain strong candidates for mediation of the anaerobic oxidation of methane. Based on 16S rRNA data, the Guaymas sediments harbor phylogenetically diverse bacterial populations, which show considerable overlap with bacterial populations of geothermal habitats and natural or anthropogenic hydrocarbon-rich sites. Consistent with earlier observations, our combined evidence from bacterial phylogeny and molecular-isotopic data indicates an important role of some novel deeply branching bacteria in anaerobic methanotrophy. Anaerobic methane oxidation likely represents a significant and widely occurring process in the trophic ecology of methane-rich hydrothermal vents. This study stresses a high diversity among communities capable of anaerobic oxidation of methane.
Rapid heartbeat, but dry palms: reactions of heart rate and skin conductance levels to social rejection

Background: Social rejection elicits negative mood, emotional distress, and neural activity in networks that are associated with physical pain. However, studies assessing physiological reactions to social rejection are rare and results of these studies were found to be ambiguous. Therefore, the present study aimed to examine and specify physiological effects of social rejection. Methods: Participants (n = 50) were assigned to either a social exclusion or inclusion condition of a virtual ball-tossing game (Cyberball). Immediate and delayed physiological [skin conductance level (SCL) and heart rate] reactions were recorded. In addition, subjects reported levels of affect, emotional states, and fundamental needs. Results: Subjects who were socially rejected showed increased heart rates. However, social rejection had no effect on subjects' SCLs. Both conditions showed heightened arousal on this measurement. Furthermore, psychological consequences of social rejection indicated the validity of the paradigm. Conclusions: Our results reveal that social rejection evokes an immediate physiological reaction. Accelerated heart rates indicate that behavior activation rather than inhibition is associated with socially threatening events. In addition, results revealed gender-specific response patterns suggesting that sample characteristics such as differences in gender may account for ambiguous findings of physiological reactions to social rejection.
The acquisition of a new phonological contrast: the case of stop consonants in French-English bilinguals.

Cross‐language studies have shown that Voice Onset Time (VOT) is a sufficient cue to separate initial stop consonants into phonemic categories. The present study used VOT as a linguistic cue in examining the perception and production of stop consonants in three groups of subjects: unilingual Canadian French, unilingual Canadian English, and bilingual French‐English speakers. Perception was studied by having subjects label synthetically produced stop‐vowel syllables while production was assessed through spectrographic measurements of VOT in word‐initial stops. Six stop consonants, common to both languages, were used for these tasks. On the perception task, the two groups of unilingual subjects showed different perceptual crossovers with those of the bilinguals occupying an intermediate position. The production data indicate that VOT measures can separate voicing contrasts for speakers of Canadian English, but not for speakers of Canadian French. The data also show that language switching in bilinguals is w.
Science Arts & Métiers (SAM)

stereophotogrammetry multi-body When the joint of is the improvement of this approach requires deﬁning subject-speciﬁc relevant kinematic constraints. The aim of this work was to provide these constraints in the form of plausible values for the distances between origin and insertion of the main ligaments (ligament lengths), during loaded healthy knee ﬂexion, taking into account the indeterminacies associated with landmark identiﬁcation during anatomical calibration. Ligament attachment sites were identiﬁed through virtual palpation on digital bone templates. Attachments sites were estimated for six knee specimens by matching the femur and tibia templates to low-dose stereoradiography images. Movement data were obtained using stereophotogrammetry and pin markers. Relevant ligament lengths for the anterior and posterior cruciate,lateral collateral, and deep and superﬁcial bundles of the medial collateral ligaments (ACL, PCL, LCL, MCLdeep, MCLsup) were calculated. The effect of landmark identiﬁcation variability was evaluated performing a Monte Carlo simulation on the coordinates of the origin-insertion centroids. The ACL and LCL lengths were found to decrease, and the MCLdeep length to increase signiﬁcantly during ﬂexion, while variations in PCL and MCLsup length was concealed by the experimental indeterminacy. An analytical model is provides subject-speciﬁc plausible ligament length variations as functions of the knee ﬂexion angle and that can be incorporated in a multi-body optimization procedure.
Research on e-learner personality grouping based on fuzzy clustering analysis

Many clustering methods have been adopted by personalized e-learning system to find interested groups or common characteristics of members within the same group. However, hard boundary during discretization on collected data or subjective influences was introduced, and corresponding methods were utilized. Aiming at this problem, a fuzzy clustering method based on fuzzy statistic is proposed to cluster the learners according to their personality and learning strategy data collected from an online system. Then, an analysis method based on frequent pattern is introduced to testify the result of the proposed unsupervised clustering methods. The clustering results correspond with viewpoints of pedagogy.
Salience and Temporal Sequencing of Time-Related Actions in Boys with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

Twenty-four 8- to 12–year-old boys with ADHD and 24 non-ADHD boys matched on age and IQ viewed an edited, nondialogue portion of a humorous television program to examine performance on a task requiring attention to and recall of temporal information. Participants were required to retell the story as closely as possible, to complete a picture-prompted sequencing task taken from the story, and to identify time-saving actions taken by the central character. Measures were also obtained of the number of prospective, retrospective, or present time-related references made and whether participants correctly identified the overarching time theme of the story. Significant group differences in favor of the comparison boys were evident in the total number of actions recalled and the number of events recalled in sequence. When controlling for poorer memory performance in boys with ADHD, however, there was no significant main effect of diagnostic group. A logistic regression analysis controlled for poorer memory performance indicated no significant differences between the number of boys with and without ADHD who correctly identified the overarching time theme of the story.
Multifaceted Regulation of Translational Readthrough by RNA Replication Elements in a Tombusvirus

Translational readthrough of stop codons by ribosomes is a recoding event used by a variety of viruses, including plus-strand RNA tombusviruses. Translation of the viral RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) in tombusviruses is mediated using this strategy and we have investigated this process using a variety of in vitro and in vivo approaches. Our results indicate that readthrough generating the RdRp requires a novel long-range RNA-RNA interaction, spanning a distance of ∼3.5 kb, which occurs between a large RNA stem-loop located 3'-proximal to the stop codon and an RNA replication structure termed RIV at the 3'-end of the viral genome. Interestingly, this long-distance RNA-RNA interaction is modulated by mutually-exclusive RNA structures in RIV that represent a type of RNA switch. Moreover, a different long-range RNA-RNA interaction that was previously shown to be necessary for viral RNA replicase assembly was also required for efficient readthrough production of the RdRp. Accordingly, multiple replication-associated RNA elements are involved in modulating the readthrough event in tombusviruses and we propose an integrated mechanistic model to describe how this regulatory network could be advantageous by (i) providing a quality control system for culling truncated viral genomes at an early stage in the replication process, (ii) mediating cis-preferential replication of viral genomes, and (iii) coordinating translational readthrough of the RdRp with viral genome replication. Based on comparative sequence analysis and experimental data, basic elements of this regulatory model extend to other members of Tombusviridae, as well as to viruses outside of this family.