Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Detecting Object Motion Using Passive RFID: A Trauma Resuscitation Case Study

We studied object motion detection in an indoor environment using RFID technology. Unlike prior work, we focus on dynamic scenarios, such as emergency medical situations, subject to signal interference by people and many RFID tags. We build a realistic trauma resuscitation setting and record a dataset of around 14000 detection instances. We find that factors affecting radio signal, such as tag motion, have different statistical fingerprints, making them discernible using statistical methods. Our method for object motion detection extracts descriptive features of the received signal strength and classifies them using machine-learning techniques. We report experimental results obtained with several statistical features and classifiers, and provide guidelines for feature and classifier selection in different environments. Experimental results show that object motion could be detected with an accuracy of 80% in complex scenarios and 90% on average. The motion type, on the other hand, could not be identified with such high accuracy using currently available passive RFID technology.
The Effects of Different Types of Reinforcement on Young Children's Incidental Learning.

One hundred and eight kindergarten and elementary school children, 36 at each of three age levels (5, 7, and 9 years) participated in the experiment. All children were presented a three-part successive discrimination task; original learning, presentation of incidental stimuli, and a test of recongition and recall of the incidental material. One-third of the subjects at each age level learned the original task (intentional learning) under one of three reinforcement conditions; Right-blank, Right-Wrong, or Wrong-blank. Contrary to prediction, there were no age differences in incidental recognition or recall (previous studies had found a curvilinear relation between age and incidental learning.) Although the main effect of reinforcement condition was not significant for trails to criterion on intentional learning, children of all ages who learned the original discrimination under the Wrong-blank condition showed significantly higher incidental recognition and recall than subjects tested under the Right-Wrong and Wrong-blank conditions. Results were discussed in terms of the effects of a Wrong-blank reinforcement procedure on the child's attention to the task. (Author)
Kinship in the SRP RNA family

The signal recognition particle (SRP) is a ribonucleoprotein complex which participates in the targeting of protein to cellular membranes. The RNA component of the SRP has been found in all domains of life, but the size of the molecule and the number of RNA secondary structure elements vary considerably between the different phylogenetic groups. We continued our efforts to identify new SRP RNAs, compare their sequences, discover new secondary structure elements, conserved motifs, and other properties. We found additional proof for the variability in the apical loop of helix 8, and we identified several bacteria which lack all of their SRP components. Based on the distribution of SRP RNA features within the taxonomy, we suggest seven alignment groups: Bacteria with a small (4.5S) SRP RNA, Bacteria with a large (6S) SRP RNA, Archaea, Fungi (Ascomycota), Metazoa group, Protozoa group, and Plants. The proposed divisions improve the prediction of more distantly related SRP RNAs and provide a more inclusive representation of the SRP RNA family. Updates of the Rfam SRP RNA sequence collection are expected to benefit from the suggested groupings.
Reflections on the integration of paid work and the rest of life

Despite a wealth of research and policy initiatives on “work‐family”, “work‐life balance” or what we prefer to call work‐personal life integration, societies seem stuck about how to make equitable, satisfactory and sustainable changes in the ways in which paid work can be combined with the rest of life. So what is holding back satisfactory change? And how can people move beyond this apparent deadlock in workplaces and other institutions and really go forward? This paper looks at some of the reasons why issues about work‐personal life integration have become so pressing and then reflects on implications for working towards more fundamental changes at many different levels. It highlights sticking points holding back change and argues that these could be developed into new levers for change by emphasising the need to rethink and question many deeply held – but outdated – assumptions about working practices, families, culture and personal lives.
Social categorization and person memory: The pervasiveness of race as an organizing principle

Two studies investigated the pervasiveness of race as a social categorization and whether the organization of information around racial categories is sensitive to contextual factors. Both studies measured accentuation effects (more intra- than inter-race errors) and own-group bias (fewer confusions between own- than other-group members) in person memory, using the paradigm developed by Taylor, Fiske, Etcoff and Ruderman (1978). Experiment 1 studies the generalization of these effects across ethnic group membership (black/white) and topic (categorization-relevant/irrelevant) in a 2 × 2 [× 4] between-subject design, with type of error as a repeated measure. There was a highly significant accentuation effect, which was not affected by either topic or group membership. Experiment 2, using white subjects only, manipulated anticipated future interaction/no interaction, which affected overall accuracy/error rate, but not the strong accentuation effect. Neither study found any support for an own-group bias. Results are discussed in terms of the automaticity of race as a basis for social categorization.
The Authentic Warmth Dimension of Professional Childcare

The emotional, social and academic problems of children and young people in public care have long been documented and many researchers have named the chief culprits as a deeply flawed corporate care system and an unsympathetic education establishment. While the need for major improvements to both corporate care and education is recognized, in this paper, a perspective, which links early childhood experiences with restricted life outcomes, is presented and it is argued that it is parental rejection (often accompanied by abuse and neglect) which is a major mediating factor in the often restricted life outcomes for many of these children. The approach described here is designed to empower residential staff and foster-carers to provide not only high-quality parenting, but also the sensitive support which can enable children and young people in care to cope with parental rejection, abuse and neglect. It is also argued that these two tasks (good parenting and appropriate emotional support) are key factors in promoting the successful emotional, social and academic development of children in public care.
Application of multivariate methods to an fMRI Brain-Computer Interface

There is a growing interest in using support vector machines (SVMs) to classify and analyze fMRI signals, leading to a wide variety of applications ranging from brain state decoding to functional mapping of spatially and temporally distributed brain activations. Studies so far have generated functional maps using the vector of weight values generated by the SVM classification process, or alternatively by mapping the correlation coefficient between the fMRI signal at each voxel and the brain state determined by the SVM. However, these approaches are limited as they do not incorporate both the information involved in the SVM prediction of a brain state, namely, the BOLD activation at voxels and the degree of involvement of different voxels as indicated by their weight values. An important implication of the above point is that two different datasets of BOLD signals, presumably obtained from two different experiments, can potentially produce two identical hyperplanes irrespective of their differences in data distribution. Yet, the two sets of signal inputs could correspond to different functional maps. With this consideration, we propose a new method called Effect Mapping that is generated as a product of the weight vector and a newly computed vector of mutual information between BOLD activations at each voxel and the SVM output. By applying this method on neuroimaging data of overt motor execution in nine healthy volunteers, we demonstrate higher decoding accuracy indicating the greater efficacy of this method. Hum Brain Mapp 00:000–000, 2010. VC 2010 Wiley-Liss, Inc.
Measuring the Social Return to R&D

Is there too much or too little research and development (R&D)? In this paper we bridge the gap between the recent growth literature and the empirical productivity literature. We derive in a growth model the relationship between the social rate of return to R&D and the coefficient estimates of the empirical literature and show that these estimates represent a lower bound. Furthermore, our analytic framework provides a direct mapping from the rate of return to the degree of underinvestment in research. Conservative estimates suggest that optimal R&D investment is at least two to four times actual investment.
A Profession in Transition: educational policy and secondary school teaching in England in the 1980s

At the heart of this international study are the questions 'what constitutes the job of teaching', 'who defines it? ' and 'why is it defined in a particular way? ' They were also questions at the heart of the industrial dispute in which British teachers were involved between 1985 and 1987 and which have not yet been resolved to their satisfaction. The answers to these apparently simple questions vary at different times, under governments of different political persuasions and in different countries. The aim of this paper is to place teaching in England in its international context so that the "national moral panic" (Ball, 1987) about education and the "crisis of teaching" (Riseborough, 1986) may be seen in the more balanced perspective that effective policy-making requires. It will (i) review policy changes that have affected education in England and Wales since 1965, (ii) examine their effects on teachers and teaching, and (iii) drawing on data gathered in four other countries, examine how the quality of life of English secondary teachers might be enhanced.
Predictors of Post‐Event Rumination Related to Social Anxiety

Post‐event processing is the cognitive rumination that follows social events in cognitive models of social anxiety. The aim of this study was to examine factors that may predict the extent to which individuals engage in post‐event processing. Anxious rumination, social anxiety, anxiety sensitivity and post‐event processing related to a recent anxiety‐provoking social event were assessed in a college student sample (n = 439). Social anxiety and anxious rumination, but not anxiety sensitivity, significantly predicted the extent to which the participants engaged in post‐event processing related to an anxiety‐provoking social event. Factors that appear to impact on the post‐event period include the nature of the social situation and the ethnicity of the participant. It appears that both general rumination over anxious symptoms, and specific rumination related to social events are relevant for cognitive models of social anxiety.
UvA-DARE ( Digital Academic Repository ) Determinants of success in native and non-native listening comprehension : an individual differences approach

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Peflin and ALG-2, Members of the Penta-EF-Hand Protein Family, Form a Heterodimer That Dissociates in a Ca2+-dependent Manner*

Peflin, a newly identified 30-kDa Ca2+-binding protein, belongs to the penta-EF-hand (PEF) protein family, which includes the calpain small subunit, sorcin, grancalcin, and ALG-2 (apoptosis-linkedgene 2). We prepared a monoclonal antibody against human peflin. The antibody immunoprecipitated a 22-kDa protein as well as the 30-kDa protein from the lysate of Jurkat cells. Western blotting of the immunoprecipitates revealed that the 22-kDa protein corresponds to ALG-2. This was confirmed by Western blotting of the immunoprecipitates of epitope-tagged peflin or ALG-2 whose cDNA expression constructs were transfected to human embryonic kidney (HEK) 293 cells. Gel filtration of the cytosolic fraction of Jurkat cells revealed co-elution of peflin and ALG-2 in fractions eluting earlier than recombinant ALG-2, further supporting the notion of heterodimerization of the two PEF proteins. Surprisingly, peflin dissociated from ALG-2 in the presence of Ca2+. Peflin and ALG-2 co-localized in the cytoplasm, but ALG-2 was also detected in the nuclei as revealed by immunofluorescent staining and subcellular fractionation. Peflin was recovered in the cytosolic fraction in the absence of Ca2+ but in the membrane/cytoskeletal fraction in the presence of Ca2+. These results suggest that peflin has features common to those of other PEF proteins (dimerization and translocation to membranes) and may modulate the function of ALG-2 in Ca2+ signaling.
Assessment of Anger in People With Intellectual Disabilities

This paper examines the link between a self-report Anger Inventory (Benson & Ivins, 1992) and incidents of challenging behaviour by people with intellectual disabilities. Records of challenging behaviour were kept by significant others while the people with intellectual disabilities themselves were asked to complete the Anger Inventory on a number of different occasions. The inventory was used to evaluate and follow up the impact of an anger management group, and in some cases other associated interventions. Data are presented on five individuals for time periods of between two and three years. Visual inspection of the data suggests a degree of correspondence between the levels of challenging behaviour reported by staff and scores reported on the Anger Inventory by participants and this relationship is confirmed statistically. The implications of these results are discussed.
An Empirical Study on Improving Severity Prediction of Defect Reports Using Feature Selection

In software maintenance, severity prediction on defect reports is an emerging issue obtaining research attention due to the considerable triaging cost. In the past research work, several text mining approaches have been proposed to predict the severity using advanced learning models. Although these approaches demonstrate the effectiveness of predicting the severity, they do not discuss the problem of how to find the indicators in good quality. In this paper, we discuss whether feature selection can benefit the severity prediction task with three commonly used feature selection schemes, Information Gain, Chi-Square, and Correlation Coefficient, based on the Multinomial Naive Bayes classification approach. We have conducted empirical experiments with four open-source components from Eclipse and Mozilla. The experimental results show that these three feature selection schemes can further improve the predication performance in over half the cases.
Case Studies of Sentence Complement Training and False Belief Performance

It has been hypothesized that sentence complement comprehension is a prerequisite for the development of false belief understanding in young children. Previous research has suggested that training on sentence complements leads to improved false belief performance. This study used a case study design to investigate the effect of sentence complement training on false belief for 2 children. One was a 3-year-old twin girl with typical language development; her twin sister was included, without training, for comparison. The second child was a 3-year-old girl with an expressive language delay. The twins demonstrated sentence complement mastery from the outset of the study, but did not display full competence with false belief. The child with a language delay improved markedly in comprehen- sion of sentence complements but consistently failed false belief tasks. The results suggest that although sentence complement comprehension may play a role in false belief development, the relationship between the two may not be as close as has been suggested.
Talking to Bowie fans

Drawing upon recent interviews of `lifelong' Bowie fans, this article contributes to debates in respect of celebrity and audience studies. In contrast with other approaches to fan identities, it emphasizes the extent to which the fan experience is a gendered way of handling a number of existential questions in respect of individualization processes. Star-texts act as a `guide' or cultural resource to help many men and women deal with a number of threats to their identity. Fears of atomization, disintegration and meaninglessness were an ever-present feature of the interviews. Relations to star-texts resist easy forms of categorization but help to inscribe ambivalent identities. Mainly focusing upon male fans (and the construction of masculine identity), it was discovered that certain hegemonic features of masculinity can be connected to the consumption of so-called `alternative' texts, while exploring a number of other more ambivalent features often ignored by audience research.
Development of a direct viable count procedure for the investigation of VBNC state in Listeria monocytogenes

A viable but non‐culturable (VBNC) bacterial state was originally detected in studies in environmental microbiology. In particular, this state has been demonstrated for a number of human pathogens (Escherichia coli, Salmonella enteritidis, Vibrio cholerae, Legionella pneumophila and Campylobacter jejuni). The presence of VBNC cells poses a major public health problem since they cannot be detected by traditional culturing methods and the cells remain potentially pathogenic under favourable conditions. But, as far as we know, the VBNC state has not been yet described in Listeria monocytogenes. In most studies, this has been assessed by the Kogure procedure based on cellular elongation in the presence of DNA gyrase inhibitors. The antibiotic used was nalidixic acid in order to prevent DNA replication, only efficient in Gram‐negative bacteria studies. In this study, we describe a new DVC procedure to detect and count viable of L. monocytogenes suspended in filtered, sterilized distilled water. We used different concentrations of ciprofloxacin, efficient both in Gram‐negative and Gram‐positive bacteria. Bacteria cells were removed and resuspended in BHI broth, with yeast extract and ciprofloxacin. The mixture was incubated at different incubation times at 37 °C. After different incubation times, cells were filtered through an isopore polycarbonate black membrane filter and covered with a DAPI solution or orange acridine. The filters were prepared and examined by epifluorescence microscopy. Elongated cells were counted as viable cells, whereas normal size was regarded as nonactive ones. This method allows determination of ciprofloxacin concentration and incubation time optimal to detect maximum viable cells percentage in L. monocytogenes.
Adjunct Postquestions in Text: A Critical Review of Methods and Processes

Four overall methods have been developed for assessing prose processes produced by adjunct postquestions and collectively four processes have been found operating in such situations. The four processes are: 1) a specific backward process—mental review of questioned material; 2) a general backward process—mental review of information adjacent to and/or topically related to the material questioned; 3) specific forward process—set to focus on specific kinds of information in text segments following inserted postquestions; and 4) general forward process—increased attention to text segments following adjunct postquestions. The methods for assessing these processes are reviewed, and suggestions for future research are provided.
Peripheral Effects of Nesfatin-1 on Glucose Homeostasis

Aims/hypothesis The actions of peripherally administered nesfatin-1 on glucose homeostasis remain controversial. The aim of this study was to characterize the mechanisms by which peripheral nesfatin-1 regulates glucose metabolism. Methods The effects of nesfatin-1 on glucose metabolism were examined in mice by continuous infusion of the peptide via osmotic pumps. Changes in AKT phosphorylation and Glut4 were investigated by Western blotting and immnuofluorescent staining. Primary myocytes, adipocytes and hepatocytes were isolated from male mice. Results Continuous peripheral infusion of nesfatin-1 altered glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity in mice fed either normal or high fat diet, while central administration of nesfatin-1 demonstrated no effect. Nesfatin-1 increases insulin secretion in vivo, and in vitro in cultured min6 cells. In addition, nesfatin-1 up-regulates the phosphorylation of AKT in pancreas and min6 islet cells. In mice fed normal diet, peripheral nesfatin-1 significantly increased insulin-stimulated phosphorylation of AKT in skeletal muscle, adipose tissue and liver; similar effects were observed in skeletal muscle and adipose tissue in mice fed high fat diet. At basal conditions and after insulin stimulation, peripheral nesfatin-1 markedly increased GLUT4 membrane translocation in skeletal muscle and adipose tissue in mice fed either diet. In vitro studies showed that nesfatin-1 increased both basal and insulin-stimulated levels of AKT phosphorylation in cells derived from skeletal muscle, adipose tissue and liver. Conclusions Our studies demonstrate that nesfatin-1 alters glucose metabolism by mechanisms which increase insulin secretion and insulin sensitivity via altering AKT phosphorylation and GLUT 4 membrane translocation in the skeletal muscle, adipose tissue and liver.
Astragaloside IV inhibits platelet-derived growth factor-BB-stimulated proliferation and migration of vascular smooth muscle cells via the inhibition of p38 MAPK signaling

Astragaloside IV (AS-IV), the major active component extracted from Astragalus membranaceus, has been demonstrated to exhibit protective effects on the cardiovascular, immune, digestive and nervous systems; thus, has been widely used in traditional Chinese medicine. Abnormal proliferation and migration of vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) is closely associated with the initiation and progression of cardiovascular diseases, including atherosclerosis and restenosis. However, the effects of AS-IV on VSMCs remain unknown. For the first time, the present study demonstrated that AS-IV markedly suppressed platelet-derived growth factor (PDGF)-BB-stimulated cellular proliferation and migration of HDMEC-a human dermal VSMCs (HDVSMCs). Further investigation into the underlying molecular mechanisms demonstrated that the administration of AS-IV attenuated the PDGF-BB-stimulated switch of HDVSMCs into a proliferative phenotype. Furthermore, AS-IV inhibited the PDGF-BB-induced expression of cell cycle-associated proteins, as well as the upregulation of matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)2, but not MMP9. In addition, AS-IV was shown to downregulate the activation of p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling induced by PDGF-BB in HDVSMCs. Therefore, the observations of the present study indicate that AS-IV inhibits PDGF-BB-stimulated VSMC proliferation and migration, possibly by inhibiting the activation of the p38 MAPK signaling pathway. Thus, AS-IV may be useful for the treatment of vascular diseases.