Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Who Supports U.S. Veterans and Who Exaggerates Their Support?

Support for U.S. military personnel appears high, but does it extend to veterans after service ends? This study evaluates public support for social engagement with veterans and spending on recent military veterans’ health care and estimates the extent of socially desirable reporting on these forms of support. It uses a list experiment to identify the extent of socially desirable reporting on topics. Findings demonstrate that the public offers overwhelming support for spending on veterans’ health care and social engagement with the group, but they somewhat overstate this support. Support differs by age, race, and political ideology, and social desirability bias varies by race, political ideology, and prior military experience. African Americans express the lowest levels of support for returning veterans and the greatest extent of socially desirable reporting on that support. This is despite generally high rates of service and greater labor market returns to that service among this demographic group.
Calcium Silicate-Based Cements Associated with Micro- and Nanoparticle Radiopacifiers: Physicochemical Properties and Bioactivity

Objective. The aim of this study was to evaluate the physicochemical properties and bioactivity of two formulations of calcium silicate-based cements containing additives (CSCM) or resin (CSCR), associated with radiopacifying agents zirconium oxide (ZrO2) and niobium oxide (Nb2O5) as micro- and nanoparticles; calcium tungstate (CaWO4); and bismuth oxide (Bi2O3). MTA Angelus was used as control. Methods. Surface features and bioactivity were evaluated by scanning electron microscopy and the chemical composition by energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry (EDS-X). Results. CSCM and CSCR presented larger particle sizes than MTA. Hydroxyapatite deposits were found on the surface of some materials, especially when associated with the radiopacifier with ZrO2 nanoparticles. All the cements presented calcium, silicon, and aluminum in their composition. Conclusion. Both calcium silicate-based cements presented composition and bioactivity similar to MTA when associated with the radiopacifiers evaluated.
Sequence Transduction with Recurrent Neural Networks

Many machine learning tasks can be expressed as the transformation---or \emph{transduction}---of input sequences into output sequences: speech recognition, machine translation, protein secondary structure prediction and text-to-speech to name but a few. One of the key challenges in sequence transduction is learning to represent both the input and output sequences in a way that is invariant to sequential distortions such as shrinking, stretching and translating. Recurrent neural networks (RNNs) are a powerful sequence learning architecture that has proven capable of learning such representations. However RNNs traditionally require a pre-defined alignment between the input and output sequences to perform transduction. This is a severe limitation since \emph{finding} the alignment is the most difficult aspect of many sequence transduction problems. Indeed, even determining the length of the output sequence is often challenging. This paper introduces an end-to-end, probabilistic sequence transduction system, based entirely on RNNs, that is in principle able to transform any input sequence into any finite, discrete output sequence. Experimental results for phoneme recognition are provided on the TIMIT speech corpus.
Initial Evidence of Religious Practice and Belief in Depressed African American Cancer Patients

Objective: This study examined spiritual coping (beliefs and practices) of depressed African American cancer patients through a comparison with depressed White cancer patients and non-depressed African American cancer patients. Methods: Using mixed methods, 74 breast (n=41) and prostate (n=33) cancer survivors including 34 depressed and 23 nondepressed African Americans and 17 depressed Whites were interviewed. The interviews were audiotaped and transcribed. Qualitative data analysis identified themes that were coded. The codes were entered into SPSS software. The Fisher’s exact test was performed to examine group differences in self-reported spiritual coping. Results: Significantly more depressed African Americans questioned God when learning of a cancer diagnosis than the non-depressed African Americans (p=.03), but they did not differ from the depressed Whites in this regard (p=.70). Significantly more depressed African Americans reported having faith in God (p=.04), reading the bible (p=.02), and conversing with God (p=.01) than did the depressed Whites. They also reported praying alone (p=.01) more frequently than the depressed Whites who, on the other hand, reported praying with others (non-family members) together for one’s own health more frequently (p=.04). Conclusions: Depression is associated with a deepening need for spirituality and it affects religious beliefs and practices more in African American than White cancer patients. Given its important role in the lives of African American cancer patients, spirituality may be utilized as a reasonable, culturally-based approach to better assess and treat depression in these patients.
Augmenting packet delivery rate in outdoor wireless sensor networks through frequency optimization

The deployment of a wireless sensor network for real-time monitoring applications encounters numerous challenges. In a typical outdoor scenario the propagation of the radio signal can be affected by several factors like the rainfall, foliage, path loss effect and fading effect. These factors can confront dynamic changes in link quality which will affect the packet delivery rates and can result in the failure of the system. This paper presents an optimized frequency selection for any wireless sensor networks which can enhance the packet delivery ratio at any worst environmental scenarios through a simulated framework in QualNet 5.0. 2.
Explaining Variation in Protester Commitment: Survey Evidence from Ukraine's EuroMaidan, 2013-2014

Why do some protesters place themselves into situations with a high-risk of personal injury, while others dissipate at the first threat of repression? The anti-government protests in Ukraine provided an ideal setting for answering this question, due to the government’s known preference to keep up the semblance of freedom of assembly during the day, while engaging in violent repression against the protesters under the cover of the night. Our analysis of survey data collected from over 110 protesters in December, 2013 reveals that, contrary to the conventional media story of an East–West divide, night-time protesters originated from all over the country and consisted of both Russian- and Ukrainian-speakers. We explore four competing explanations—cultural, political, economic, and educational—to explain protester goals, and to identify what characteristics made a protester more likely to remain in Maidan at night. We then compare the explanatory powers of each theoretical model using Clarke’s distributionfree test, which allows for non-nested model comparison. Our analysis provides one of the few studies examining costly forms of unconventional political participation at the time of that participation, rather than retrospectively.
Effects of the Epichloë fungal endophyte symbiosis with Schedonorus pratensis on host grass invasiveness

Initial studies of grass–endophyte mutualisms using Schedonorus arundinaceus cultivar Kentucky-31 infected with the vertically transmitted endophyte Epichloë coenophiala found strong, positive endophyte effects on host-grass invasion success. However, more recent work using different cultivars of S. arundinaceus has cast doubt on the ubiquity of this effect, at least as it pertains to S. arundinaceus–E. coenophiala. We investigated the generality of previous work on vertically transmitted Epichloë-associated grass invasiveness by studying a pair of very closely related species: S. pratensis and E. uncinata. Seven cultivars of S. pratensis and two cultivars of S. arundinaceus that were developed with high- or low-endophyte infection rate were broadcast seeded into 2 × 2-m plots in a tilled, old-field grassland community in a completely randomized block design. Schedonorus abundance, endophyte infection rate, and co-occurring vegetation were sampled 3, 4, 5, and 6 years after establishment, and the aboveground invertebrate community was sampled in S. pratensis plots 3 and 4 years after establishment. Endophyte infection did not enable the host grass to achieve high abundance in the plant community. Contrary to expectations, high-endophyte S. pratensis increased plant richness relative to low-endophyte cultivars. However, as expected, high-endophyte S. pratensis marginally decreased invertebrate taxon richness. Endophyte effects on vegetation and invertebrate community composition were inconsistent among cultivars and were weaker than temporal effects. The effect of the grass–Epichloë symbiosis on diversity is not generalizable, but rather specific to species, cultivar, infection, and potentially site. Examining grass–endophyte systems using multiple cultivars and species replicated among sites will be important to determine the range of conditions in which endophyte associations benefit host grass performance and have subsequent effects on co-occurring biotic communities.
An Exploration of Trainee Practitioners’ Experiences When Using Observation

Observation provides applied sport psychologists with a direct assessment of client behavior within the sporting environment. Despite the unique properties and the insightful information that observation allows, it has received limited literary attention within the applied sport psychology domain. The current study aimed to explore and further understand the observation practices of current trainee practitioners. All participants were enrolled on a training program towards becoming either a chartered psychologist (BPS) or an accredited sport and exercise scientist (BASES). In total, five focus groups were conducted and analyzed using an interpretative phenomenological approach (IPA; Smith, 1996). Four superordinate themes emerged: value of observation, type of observation, challenges of observation, and suggestions for observation training. Results demonstrate the increased value that observation brings to effective service delivery and intervention. Specifically, informal observation is commended for its propensity to build greater contextual intelligence and to develop stronger client relationships.
On the estimate of the noice variance used in A Posteriori Probability based turbo-equalisers

In this paper, we revisit some fundamental results on turbo-equalisation and more precisely on the prediction of the turbo-equaliser’s performance using the EXIT chart. We provide an explaination as to why the performance of certain equalisers do not match the one predicted by the EXIT chart and we propose a method for choosing a single parameter which allows not only a better performance prediction but also improves the overall convergence properties of Aposteriori Probability (APP) based equalisers.
S100A8/A9 as a biomarker for synovial inflammation and joint damage in patients with rheumatoid arthritis

S100A8 and S100A9 are major leukocyte proteins, known as damage-associated molecular patterns, found at high concentrations in the synovial fluid of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). A heterodimeric complex of S100A8/A9 is secreted by activated leukocytes and binds to Toll-like receptor 4, which mediates downstream signaling and promotes inflammation and autoimmunity. Serum and synovial fluid levels of S100A8/A9 are markedly higher in patients with RA than in patients with osteoarthritis or miscellaneous inflammatory arthritis. Serum levels of S100A8/A9 are significantly correlated with clinical and laboratory markers of inflammation, such as C-reactive protein, erythrocyte sedimentation rate, rheumatoid factor, and the Disease Activity Score for 28 joints. Significant correlations have also been found between S100A8/A9 and radiographic and clinical assessments of joint damage, such as hand radiographs and the Rheumatoid Arthritis Articular Damage score. In addition, among known inflammatory markers, S100A8/A9 has the strongest correlation with total sum scores of ultrasonography assessment. Furthermore, baseline levels of S100A8/A9 are independently associated with progression of joint destruction in longitudinal studies and are responsive to change during conventional and biologic treatments. These findings suggest S100A8/A9 to be a valuable diagnostic and prognostic biomarker for RA.
A Regularity-Based Preprocessing Method for Collaborative Recommender Systems

Recommender systems are popular applications that help users to identify items that they could be interested in. A recent research area on recommender systems focuses on detecting several kinds of inconsistencies associated with the user preferences. However, the majority of previous works in this direction just process anomalies that are intentionally introduced by users. In contrast, this paper is centered on finding the way to remove non-malicious anomalies, specifically in collaborative filtering systems. A review of the state-of-the-art in this field shows that no previous work has been carried out for recommendation systems and general data mining scenarios, to exactly perform this preprocessing task. More specifically, in this paper we propose a method that is based on the extraction of knowledge from the dataset in the form of rating regularities (similar to frequent patterns), and their use in order to remove anomalous preferences provided by users. Experiments show that the application of the procedure as a preprocessing step improves the performance of a data-mining task associated with the recommendation and also effectively detects the anomalous preferences.
Bronchiectasis in the Last Five Years: New Developments

Bronchiectasis, a chronic lung disease characterised by cough and purulent sputum, recurrent infections, and airway damage, is associated with considerable morbidity and mortality. To date, treatment options have been limited to physiotherapy to clear sputum and antibiotics to treat acute infections. Over the last decade, there has been significant progress in understanding the epidemiology, pathophysiology, and microbiology of this disorder. Over the last five years, methods of assessing severity have been developed, the role of macrolide antibiotic therapy in reducing exacerbations cemented, and inhaled antibiotic therapies show promise in the treatment of chronic Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection. Novel therapies are currently undergoing Phase 1 and 2 trials. This review aims to address the major developments within the field of bronchiectasis over this time.
A Literature Survey of the Software Quality\\ Economics of Defect-Detection Techniques

Over the last decades, a considerable amount of empirical knowledge about the effciency of defect-detection techniques has been accumulated. Also a few surveys have summarised those studies with different focuses, usually for a speci? c type of technique. This work reviews the results of empirical studies and associates them with a model of software quality economics. This allows a better comparison of the different techniques and supports the application of the model in practice as several parameters can be approximated with typical average values. The main contributions are the provision of average values of several interesting quantities w.r. t. defect detection and the identi? cation of areas that need further research b ecause of the limited knowledge available.
Innovative textile electrodes for muscles electrostimulation

The textile electrodes are used to muscles electrostimulation during the therapy. The textile electrodes are new product which can replace the traditional metal or graphite electrodes. They are elastic and good fitted to body shape (legs or arms). The presented solution decreased contact resistance between textile electrodes and human skin. The elaborated electrodes are located in textile band, ortez or socks in electrostimulation places. This kind of product we called textronic. In the article the method of textile electrodes production is described. To the manufactured electrodes new electroconductive textile materials are used. They consist of silver particles. New technologies, like plasma treatment, impregnate method or printing technology, was used to the modification of textile layers. In the articles authors also described the method of surface resistance distribution measurement, which is quality evaluation criterion of innovative textile materials to electrodes construction.
4~6 year-old children’s trust in economic game and its influencing factors

Trust is essential to personal well-being and economic success. Trust is a kind of rational behavior, and it is also a kind of social behavior, which may be influenced by the development of individual cognitive ability (perspective taking) and the environment (negative feedback and intergenerational transmission). Research on children’s trust can help us understand the development of trust, and help us establish better informed education programs. To measure trust, prior work has used the Trust Game, a game that requires children to decide how many tokens to invest to other players. However, research on the development of preschoolers’ trust using economic trust game is rare. The current work explores young children’s trust in economic trust game and its influencing factors. To explore these factors, we tested 189 4~6-year-old preschoolers on multiple tasks employed to investigate preschooler’s development of trust. In study 1, the revised version of Evans’ (2013) Trust Game (Surprise Bag Task) was used to explore the preschoolers’ trust. Each game began with introducing the potential trustee. The strange child (trustee) was referred to as “a boy (or girl) the same age as you who attend a different kindergarten. ” Then children were given a “surprise bag” (the opaque plastic bag contained toys). After giving the bag to the children, children were told that they could keep the bag or give it to the trustee. Children were told that if they give it to the trustee, the trustee would receive four bags and children were asked if they believed trustee and were willing to give “surprise bag” to trustee (willingness to give as a trust behavior). If they trusted, children were asked how many surprise bags would return from trustee. In study 2, we explored how negative feedback (trustee refused to return supervise bag to the child) affected whether children still chose to trust strangers in later “surprise bag” games. We also explored the role of perspective taking ability (Unexpected location task) in children’s trust decisions. Finally, we investigated the relationship between children’s trust (“Surprise bag” Task) and their parents’ trust. Parents’ trust were measured by trust game questionnaire, they were given 100 tokens. Parents were told that they could keep the tokens or give all of the tokens to the trustee. If parents were willing to give tokens to trustee, the trustee would get 400 tokens. This would demonstrate a willingness to give tokens to trustee as a trust behavior.
Recovery Capital: A Primer for Addictions Professionals

The history of addiction treatment in America contains within it a history of key ideas that have transformed service philosophies and practices. In the early history of modern treatment, for example, chemical dependency emerged as a core idea that helped integrate what were then two separate fields: one focused on alcoholism, the other on drug addiction. Other concepts, such as codependency, dual diagnosis, gender-specific, developmental appropriateness, cultural competence, trauma-informed, evidence-based, stages of change, motivational enhancement, recovery management, and recovery coaching helped, or are now helping, transform addiction treatment into a more person-centered, holistic, family-centered, and recovery-focused system of care. Addiction professionals across America are witnessing the field’s paradigmatic shift from a pathology and intervention focus to a recovery focus (White, 2004, 2005). Attention on the lived solution to alcohol and other drug (AOD) problems is reflected in the growing interest in defining recovery, conducting recovery prevalence surveys, illuminating the varieties of recovery experiences, and mapping the patterns, processes, and stages of long-term recovery (Betty Ford Institute Consensus Panel, 2007; White & Kurtz, 2006). One of the key ideas at the core of this shift is that of recovery capital. This article defines recovery capital and explores how attention to recovery capital can be integrated into the service practices of front-line addiction professionals.
Taxonomic Systems for School Refusal Behaviour

The heterogeneous nature of school refusal has led to much confusion surrounding the conceptualisation of this phenomenon. A number of researchers have developed taxonomic systems in an effort to enhance our understanding of school refusal and to facilitate communication among professionals working in the field. The current paper explores the evolution of these systems and outlines the limitations of each. Non-empirical classificatory systems are reviewed first, followed by empirical systems based on factor analyses and diagnostic profiles. A functional taxonomic system for problematic school attendance is then reviewed. Future research based on sound methodological procedures should aim to examine a broad range of child and family characteristics in order to develop reliable, homogenous subtypes for this population.
Regionalization of daily flow characteristics in part of the Eastern Cape, South Africa

A method is described that allows long-term 1-day annual and seasonal flow duration curves at any ungauged location in one of the drainage regions of South Africa to be established. The method is based on normalization of observed flow duration curves by a long-term mean daily flow and subsequent averaging of normalized ordinates of the curves. The estimate of mean daily discharge for an ungauged site is obtained using the information from the existing national data base of flow characteristics. The established set of flow duration curves at a site is further translated into actual daily streamflow time series using a simple nonlinear spatial interpolation technique. Regionalisation des caracteristiques des debits journaliers dans une region du Cap Oriental (Afrique du Sud) Resume La methode decrite permet d'etablir pour n'importe quel site non jauge de l'une des regions de drainage d'Afrique du Sud, les courbes des debits journaliers classes annuelles et saisonnieres. La methode est basee sur la normalisation , par le debit journalier moyen, des courbes de debits journaliers classes observees, dont on moyenne ensuite les ordonnees. L'estimation du debit journalier moyen pour un site non jauge est obtenue a partir de l'information contenue dans la base de donnees nationale des caracteristiques d'ecoulement. Les courbes des debits classes ainsi calculees sont converties en series temporelles d'ecoulement journalier, en utilisant une simple technique d'interpolation spatiale non lineaire.