Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
THE BREEDING BIOLOGY OF THE WILLOW TIT IN NORTHEASTERN SIBERIA

we studied the breeding biology of the Willow Tit (Parus montanus) during 1987-1990 in the Magadan region of northeastern Siberia. Clutch size and number of fledg- lings averaged 7.5 and 6.5, respectively, and both were correlated negatively with the date of the first egg. Nestling growth rate was correlated positively with the date of the first egg, but was not related to brood size. Body mass at fledging was related negatively to brood size. Males fed nestlings significantly more often than did females, while females spent more time attending nestlings. The number of parental visits per young did not change significantly with brood size. During the first 13 days of the nestling period, female feeding rate per young was positively related to brood size while for males this relationship was negative. The nestling diet consisted mostly of Lepidoptera larvae, Arachnoidea, and Dip-
Turnover Intentions and Desire Among Executives

We propose a typology of turnover intentions that uses desire to stay and intent to stay with the firm. The typology has four categories, leavers, stayers, locked-ins, and jilteds. Two questions are addressed. First, does the typology discriminate among executives empirically? Second, how do executives in one category differ from those in other categories? Using surveys from a sample of executives, we find empirical support for the typology. Results from three-category discriminant analysis indicate stayers are line employees characterized by high job satisfaction, integration into the management team, and perception that the company provides employment security. Leavers are more likely to be staff employees and have the opposite opinions of stayers about their jobs. Jilted executives are distinguished by moderate seniority, high outside career opportunity, and somewhat low inside career opportunity. The results suggest development of a non-linear model of unplanned turnover.
Phosphate Starvation Promotes Swarming Motility and Cytotoxicity of Pseudomonas aeruginosa

ABSTRACT We investigated the transcriptional responses of Pseudomonas aeruginosa under phosphate-deficient (0.2 mM) conditions compared to phosphate sufficiency (1 mM). This elicited enormous transcriptional changes in genes related to phosphate acquisition, quorum sensing, chemotaxis, toxin secretion, and regulation. This dysregulation also led to increased virulence-associated phenotypes, including swarming motility and cytotoxicity.
Low Subthreshold Swing HfLaO/Pentacene Organic Thin-Film Transistors

We have integrated a high-kappa HfLaO dielectric into pentacene-based organic thin-film transistors. We measured good device performance, such as a low subthreshold swing of 0.078 V/dec, a threshold voltage of -1.3 V, and a field-effect mobility of 0.71cm2/ Vldrs . This occurred along with an ON-OFF state drive current ratio of 1.0 times 105, when the devices were operated at only 2 V. The performance is due to the high gate-capacitance density of 950 nF/cm2 that is given by the HfLaO dielectric, which is achieved at an equivalent oxide thickness of only 3.6 nm with a low leakage current of 5.1 times 10-7 at 2 V.
İlköğretim Okullarında Örgütsel Güven Hakkında Öğretmen Görüşleri

Bu calismanin amaci, orgutsel guven konusunda ilkogretim okullarindaki ogretmenlerin goruslerini belirlemek ve bu gorusleri cesitli degiskenler acisindan incelemektir. Tarama modelindeki arastirmanin verileri Yilmaz (2006) tarafindan gelistirilen “Orgutsel Guven Olcegi” ile toplanmistir. Arastirmanin calisma grubu Ankara'nin Cankaya ve Altindag ilcelerindeki yedi ilkogretim okulunda gorev yapan 205 ogretmenden olusmaktadir. Bu calisma kapsaminda oncelikle “Orgutsel Guven Olcegi”nin faktor yapisinin gecerli bir model olup olmadigi dogrulayici faktor analizi ile test edilmis ve uc faktorlu yapinin dogrulandigi saptanmistir. Ayrica ogretmenlerin orgutsel guven toplam ve alt olcek puanlari cinsiyete, bransa ve kideme gore karsilastirilmis, farklarin anlamli olmadigi belirlenmistir. Okuldaki ogrenci ve ogretmen sayisina gore yapilan karsilastirmalarda ise anlamli farklar bulunmustur. Buna gore okuldaki ogrenci ve ogretmen sayisi azaldikca, genel anlamda orgutsel guven artmaktadir.
Epigenetic mechanisms in pulmonary arterial hypertension: the need for global perspectives

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a severe and progressive disease, characterised by high pulmonary artery pressure that usually culminates in right heart failure. Recent findings of alterations in the DNA methylation state of superoxide dismutase 2 and granulysin gene loci; histone H1 levels; aberrant expression levels of histone deacetylases and bromodomain-containing protein 4; and dysregulated microRNA networks together suggest the involvement of epigenetics in PAH pathogenesis. Thus, PAH pathogenesis evidently involves the interplay of a predisposed genetic background, epigenetic state and injurious events. Profiling the genome-wide alterations in the epigenetic mechanisms, such as DNA methylation or histone modification pattern in PAH vascular cells, may explain the great variability in susceptibility and disease severity that is frequently associated with pronounced remodelling and worse clinical outcome. Moreover, the influence of genetic predisposition and the acquisition of epigenetic alterations in response to environmental cues in PAH progression and establishment has largely been unexplored on a genome-wide scale. In order to gain insights into the molecular mechanisms leading to the development of PAH and to design novel therapeutic strategies, high-throughput approaches have to be adopted to facilitate systematic identification of the disease-specific networks using next-generation sequencing technologies, the application of these technologies in PAH has been relatively trivial to date. An epigenetic component is hypothesised in PAH: an overview of the current literature and future perspectives http://ow.ly/7miS3002BYw
An investigation of psychophysiological stress in competitive golf

Psychophysiological stress responses to competition golf were examined in three groups of players, professional trainee (PRO), recreational (REC) and elite amateur (AMA). The PRO and REC golfers, comprising a high and moderate ability group respectively, were additionally studied during a practice golf round. Competition stress was determined by comparing psychophysiological responses during competition to those in practice. Relationships between psychophysiological stress parameters and performance were also examined. In a further study, the AMA group underwent an eight week aerobic training program and their psychophysiological responses in a second competition round were compared to their pre-training levels.
IMPACT OF OBESITY AND INSULIN RESISTANCE ON VASOMOTOR TONE: NITRIC OXIDE AND BEYOND

1 Obesity is rapidly increasing in Western populations, driving a parallel increase in hypertension, diabetes and vascular disease. Prior to the development of overt diabetes or hypertension, obese patients spend years in a state of progressive insulin resistance and metabolic disease. Mounting evidence suggests that this insulin‐resistant state has deleterious effects on the control of blood flow, thus placing organ systems at a higher risk for end‐organ damage and increasing cardiovascular mortality. 2 The purpose of the present review is to examine the current literature on the effects of obesity and insulin resistance on the acute control of vascular tone. Effects on nitric oxide (NO)‐mediated control of vascular tone are particularly examined with regard to proximal causes and distal mechanisms of the impaired NO‐mediation of vasodilation. 3 Finally, novel pathways of impaired control of perfusion are summarized from the recent literature to identify new avenues of exploring impaired vascular function in patients with metabolic disease.
Rules of Everyday Family Life: The Development of Social Rules in Mother-Child and Sibling Relationships

The aims of this study were: (1) to characterise changes in the frequency and kind of social rules used in mother-child and sibling relationships over a 14-month period; (2) to assess the degree to which conflict functioned as a forum for social rules; and (3) to describe the nature of the association between references to social rules and the quality of family relationships. Naturalistic home observations of 47 families were conducted when focal younger siblings were 33 and 47 months of age. Family conversations were coded for a variety of rules. Over time, mothers referred to rules less frequently per hour, whereas elder siblings referred to rules more frequently per hour. Proportionately, mothers employed rules relatively more often than children; however, conventional rules were utilised by mothers more than moral rules. As hypothesised, moral rules were more symmetrical in sibling relationships and more complementary in mother-child dyads. Mothers mentioned social rules more often during conflicts, whereas siblings did not. Finally, moral rules mentioned by both younger and elder siblings were associated with less harmonious sibling relationships. Results were discussed with regard to theories of moral socialisation and the nature of family relationships.
Indian Premier League (IPL), Cricket, Online Social Media

In recent past online social media has played a pivotal role in sharing of information and opinions on real time events. Events in physical space are reflected in digital world through online social networks. Event based studies for such content have been widely done on Twitter in the computer science community. In this report, we performed a detailed analysis of a sports event called the Indian Premier League (IPL'13) for both Facebook and Twitter. IPL is the most popular cricket league in India with players from across the world. We analysed more than 2.6 million tweets and 700 thousand Facebook posts for temporal activity, text quality, geography of users and the spot-fixing scandal which came up during the league. We were able to draw strong correlations between the brand value of teams and how much they were talked about on social media across Facebook and Twitter. Analysis of geo-tagged data showed major activity from metropolitan suburbs however activity was not restricted to the regions geographically associated with each team. We present a decay calculation methodology, using which we derive that activity died down on both Twitter and Facebook in a very similar manner. Such analysis can be used to model events and study their penetration in social networks. We analysed text for spot-fixing and found that user response to allegations about matches being fixed was cold. The complete analysis presented in this report, can be particularly useful for studying events involving crisis or events of political importance having similar structure.
Automatic 3D segmentation of the prostate on magnetic resonance images for radiotherapy planning

Accurate segmentation of the prostate, the seminal vesicles, the bladder and the rectum is a crucial step for planning radiotherapy (RT) procedures. Modern radiotherapy protocols have included the delineation of the pelvic organs in magnetic resonance images (MRI), as the guide to the therapeutic beam irradiation over the target organ. However, this task is highly inter and intra-expert variable and may take about 20 minutes per patient, even for trained experts, constituting an important burden in most radiological services. Automatic or semi-automatic segmentation strategies might then improve the efficiency by decreasing the measured times while conserving the required accuracy. This thesis presents a fully automatic prostate segmentation framework that selects the most similar prostates w.r. t. a test prostate image and combines them to estimate the segmentation for the test prostate. A robust multi-scale analysis establishes the set of most similar prostates from a database, independently of the acquisition protocol. Those prostates are then non-rigidly registered towards the test image and fusioned by a linear combination. The proposed approach was evaluated using a MRI public dataset of patients with benign hyperplasia or cancer, following different acquisition protocols, namely 26 endorectal and 24 external. Evaluating under a leave-one-out scheme, results show reliable segmentations, obtaining an average dice coefficient of 79%, when comparing with the expert manual segmentation.
Targeted disruption of NBS1 reveals its roles in mouse development and DNA repair

Nijmegen breakage syndrome (NBS) is an autosomal recessive hereditary disease that shares some common defects with ataxia–telangiectasia. The gene product mutated in NBS, named NBS1, is a component of the Mre11 complex that is involved in DNA strand‐break repair. To elucidate the physiological roles of NBS1, we disrupted the N‐terminal exons of the NBS1 gene in mice. NBS1m/m mice are viable, growth retarded and hypersensitive to ionizing radiation (IR). NBS1m/m mice exhibit multiple lymphoid developmental defects, and rapidly develop thymic lymphoma. In addition, female NBS1m/m mice are sterile due to oogenesis failure. NBS1m/m cells are impaired in cellular responses to IR and defective in cellular proliferation. Most systematic and cellular defects identified in NBS1m/m mice recapitulate those in NBS patients, and are essentially identical to those observed in Atm−/− mice. In contrast to Atm−/− mice, spermatogenesis is normal in NBS1m/m mice, indicating that distinct roles of ATM have differential requirement for NBS1 activity. Thus, NBS1 and ATM have overlapping and distinct functions in animal development and DNA repair.
Performance Comparison of Coscheduling Algorithms for Non-Dedicated Clusters Through a Generic Framework

In this paper, we address several key issues in designing coscheduling algorithms for clusters. First, we propose a generic framework for deploying coscheduling techniques by providing a reusable and dynamically loadable kernel module. Second, we implement several communication-driven coscheduling algorithms [dynamic coscheduling (DCS), spin block (SB) and periodic boost (PB)] on a 16- node Linux cluster using the above framework. Third, with exhaustive experimentation using mixed workloads, we observe that unlike PB, which provided the best performance on a Solaris platform, the SB scheme outperforms all other techniques on a Linux platform. Finally, we investigate the impact of several job placement strategies, multiprogramming level (MPL), communication intensity and CPU and I/O intensive jobs on the performance of these coscheduling schemes. The experimental results show that the blocking-based coscheduling scheme (SB) has better tolerance to system workload variation compared with the spin-based schemes (DCS and PB), and overall, the blocking-based coscheduling scheme seems a better choice for non-dedicated Linux clusters.
Peranan Keluarga dalam Pemeliharaan Penduduk Lanjut Usia

Dewasa ini, isu mengenai penuaan penduduk telah menjadi isu yang diperhatikan secara serius baik di negara maju maupun negara berkembang. Penduduk dunia menjadi semakin tua karena harapan hidup yang lebih panjang yang diikuti oleh penurunan tingkat kelahiran yang terjadi pada sebagian besar negara. Transisi penduduk ini telah membawa implikasi luas di banyak bidang dalam masyarakat diantaranya yang terkait dengan pasar tenaga kerja, perawatan anak, perawatan lansia, perawatan kesehatan, dan lainnya. Paper ini secara khusus merupakan literatur review terkait dengan peranan keluarga dalam pemeliharaan penduduk lanjut usia.
Challenging parenting behavior from infancy to toddlerhood: Etiology, measurement, and differences between fathers and mothers

Based on evidence that fathers show more challenging and physical play than mothers, it has been theorized that fathers have a different parenting role, more focused at stimulating exploration and taking chances. Challenging parenting behavior (CPB) may foster confidence and buffer against anxiety development in children. In this study, CPB was assessed in fathers and mothers at child ages of 4 months, 1 year, and 2.5 years, using newly developed questionnaires and observational tasks. Reliability of the questionnaire and observational measures was good, and fathers' and mothers' self-rated CPB showed a similar factor structure. Modest and significant convergence between questionnaires and observations provided support for validity of CPB, whereas negative correlations with overprotection supported divergent validity. CPB correlated positively with warmth. We further found moderate to high stability of CPB from early infancy to toddlerhood, and interparental correspondence in CPB. Fathers and mothers did not differ in observed CPB, but fathers rated themselves higher than mothers in toddlerhood. It is concluded that the development of the instruments to assess CPB was successful. Overall, the results reveal similarities rather than differences between fathers' and mothers' CPB in early childhood. The potential relevance of CPB in child development and psychopathology is discussed.
Modelling Air Pollution Crises Using Multi-agent Simulation

This paper describes an agent based approach for simulating the control of an air pollution crisis. A Gaussian Plum air pollution dispersion model (GPD) is combined with an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) to predict the concentration levels of three different air pollutants. The two models (GPM and ANN) are integrated with a MAS (multi-agent system). The MAS models pollutant sources controllers and air pollution monitoring agencies as software agents. The population of agents cooperates with each other in order to reduce their emissions and control the air pollution. Leaks or natural sources of pollution are modelled as uncontrolled sources. A cooperation strategy is simulated and its impact on air pollution evolution is assessed and compared. The simulation scenario is built using data about Annaba (a city in North-East Algeria). The simulation helps to compare and assess the efficiency of policies to control air pollution during crises, and takes in to account uncontrolled sources.
Changing Boundaries of Ethnic Identity and Feelings Toward Ingroup/ Outgroup: Examining Taiwan Residents From a Psycho-Historical Perspective

Subjective group identification may not always be based on common biological origins or group salience, but rather, due to changes in group power. The present cross-temporal meta-analysis documents the transformation of Taiwan residents’ identification as both Taiwanese and Chinese during recent decades, in which the legitimacy of Chinese power over Taiwan was changed. The relations between identification and feelings toward Taiwanese and Chinese were also examined. Results suggest that historical memories and the political ascendancy of Taiwanese culture, rather than relative size of groups, increased identification with Taiwanese over Chinese. Historical and ethnic differences are compared to address ingroup favoritism, outgroup derogation, and other issues in social identity theory.
Evidence for an additive inhibitory component of contrast adaptation

Author(s): Gaudry, Kate S; Reinagel, Pamela | Abstract: The latency of visual responses generally decreases as contrast increases. Recording in the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN), we find that response latency increases with increasing contrast in ON cells for some visual stimuli. We propose that this surprising latency trend can be explained if ON cells rest further from threshold at higher contrasts. Indeed, while contrast changes caused a combination of multiplicative gain change and additive shift in LGN cells, the additive shift predominated in ON cells. Modeling results supported this theory: the ON cell latency trend was found when the distance-to-threshold shifted with contrast, but not when distance-to-threshold was fixed across contrasts. In the model, latency also increases as surround-to-center ratios increase, which has been shown to occur at higher contrasts. We propose that higher-contrast full-field stimuli can evoke more surround inhibition, shifting the potential further from spiking threshold and thereby increasing response latency.
Putting Ant-Acacia Mutualisms to the Fire

Various complex trade-offs determine the vitality and survival of acacias in dynamic savannas. Recently, T. M. Palmer et al. (“Breakdown of an ant-plant mutualism follows the loss of large herbivores from an African savanna,” Reports, 11 January, p. [192][1]) illustrated how exclusion of large
Performance of College Students: Impact of Study Time and Study Habits

Available empirical research investigating the relationship that study time has with college student performance has seen mixed results. Positive, negative, and no relationship between the two variables has been reported (G. A. Krohn & C. M. O'Conner, 2005; A. G. Lahmers & C. Zulauf, 2000; R. M. Schmidt, 1983). At a time when there is overwhelming evidence that students are devoting less time to their studies (Higher Education Research Institute, 2003), it is critical for educators who desire to encourage and motivate their students to engage in productive study behavior to first understand the true nature of this relationship. The authors investigated the influence of a third variable, study habits. Based on a sample of business students, results showed some study habits had a positive direct relationship on student performance but others had a negative direct relationship. Results also showed 1 study habit moderated the relationship between study time and student performance positively, but another study habit moderated the relationship negatively. Discussion of the findings, implications, and directions for further research are also provided.
Binary differential evolution for the unit commitment problem

The Unit Commitment Problem (UCP) is the task of finding an optimal turn on and turn off schedule for a group of power generation units over a given time horizon to minimize operation costs while satisfying the hourly power demand constraints. Various approaches exist in the literature for solving this problem. This paper reports the results of experiments performed on a series of the UCP test data using the binary differential evolution approach combined with a simple local search mechanism. In the future stages of the project, the algorithm will be applied to solve the UCP for the Turkish interconnected power system.
A survey of exemplar-based texture synthesis

Exemplar-based texture synthesis is the process of generating, from an input sample, new texture images of arbitrary size and which are perceptually equivalent to the sample. The two main approaches are statistics-based methods and patch re-arrangement methods. In the first class, a texture is characterized by a statistical signature; then, a random sampling conditioned to this signature produces genuinely different texture images. The second class boils down to a clever "copy-paste" procedure, which stitches together large regions of the sample. Hybrid methods try to combine ideas from both approaches to avoid their hurdles. The recent approaches using convolutional neural networks fit to this classification, some being statistical and others performing patch re-arrangement in the feature space. They produce impressive synthesis on various kinds of textures. Nevertheless, we found that most real textures are organized at multiple scales, with global structures revealed at coarse scales and highly varying details at finer ones. Thus, when confronted with large natural images of textures the results of state-of-the-art methods degrade rapidly, and the problem of modeling them remains wide open.