Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Noise-limited frequency signal transmission in gene circuits.

To maintain normal physiology, cells must properly process diverse signals arising from changes in temperature, pH, nutrient concentrations, and other factors. Many physiological processes are controlled by temporal aspects of oscillating signals; that is, these signals can encode information in the frequency domain. By modeling simple gene circuits, we analyze the impact of cellular noise on the fidelity and speed of frequency-signal transmission. We find that transmission of frequency signals is "all-or-none", limited by a critical frequency (f(c)). Signals with frequencies f(c) are severely corrupted or completely lost in transmission. We argue that f(c) is an intrinsic property of a gene circuit and it varies with circuit parameters and additional feedback or feedforward regulation. Our results may have implications for understanding signal processing in natural biological networks and for engineering synthetic gene circuits.
Feature extraction in carpal-bone analysis

Hand-bone analysis with image processing techniques using a digital radiograph can be used to assess skeletal age. The analysis consists of two steps: phalangeal and carpal bone analysis. The carpal bone analysis is discussed. First, the carpal bone region of interest (CROI) is defined using a standard thresholding technique to separate the hand from the background. Then, a dynamic thresholding method with variable window sizes is used to differentiate between the bones and the soft tissue. Next, the radius, ulna, and metacarpals intersecting the borders of the CROI are removed by using mathematical morphology. Finally, all objects included in the corrected CROI are separated and described in terms of features. These features describe the size, shape, and location and include some gray-scale pixel value information. On the basis of this analysis, the separation of the noncarpal bone objects from the carpal bone is possible. The feature selection step removes features of low discriminant power and reduces the space dimension. The remaining carpal bone parameters are used for further analysis leading to skeletal age assessment.
Treating Youth Depression and Anxiety: A Randomised Controlled Trial Examining the Efficacy of Computerised versus Face‐to‐face Cognitive Behaviour Therapy

Barriers to accessing psychologists for the treatment of depression and anxiety include a shortage of specialised therapists, long waiting lists, and the affordability of therapy. This study examined the efficacy of a computerised‐based self‐help program (MoodGYM) delivered in‐conjunction with face‐to‐face cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) to expand the delivery avenues of psychological treatment for young adults (aged 18–25 years). Eighty‐nine participants suffering from depression and/or generalised anxiety were randomly allocated to a control intervention or to one of three experimental groups: receiving face‐to‐face CBT, receiving computerised CBT (cCBT), or receiving treatment in‐conjunction (face‐to‐face CBT and cCBT). While MoodGYM did not significantly decrease depression in comparison to the control group, significant decreases were found for anxiety. MoodGYM delivered in‐conjunction with face‐to‐face CBT is more effective in treating symptoms of depression and anxiety compared with standalone face‐to‐face or cCBT. This study suggests that for youth who are unable to access face‐to‐face therapy—such as those in rural or remote regions, or for communities in which there is stigma attached to seeking help—computerised therapy may be a viable option. This is an important finding, especially in light of the current capacity‐to‐treat and accessibility problems faced by youth when seeking treatment for depression and/or anxiety.
Pandora: A Tool to Estimate Dimensionality Reduction Stability of Genotype Data

Motivation Genotype datasets typically contain a large number of single nucleotide polymorphisms for a comparatively small number of individuals. To identify similarities between individuals and to infer an individual’s origin or membership to a cultural group, dimensionality reduction techniques are routinely deployed. However, inherent (technical) difficulties such as missing or noisy data need to be accounted for when analyzing a lower dimensional representation of genotype data, and the uncertainty of such an analysis should be reported in all studies. However, to date, there exists no stability estimation technique for genotype data that can estimate this uncertainty. Results Here, we present Pandora, a stability estimation framework for genotype data based on bootstrapping. Pandora computes an overall score to quantify the stability of the entire embedding, perindividual support values, and deploys a k-means clustering approach to assess the uncertainty of assignments to potential cultural groups. In addition to this bootstrap-based stability estimation, Pandora offers a sliding-window stability estimation for whole-genome data. Using published empirical and simulated datasets, we demonstrate the usage and utility of Pandora for studies that rely on dimensionality reduction techniques. Data and Code Availability Pandora is available on GitHub https://github.com/tschuelia/Pandora. All Python scripts and data to reproduce our results are available on GitHub https://github.com/tschuelia/PandoraPaper. Contact julia.haag@h-its.org
HEALTH ASSESSMENT OF CAPTIVE TINAMIDS (AVES, TINAMIFORMES) IN BRAZIL

Abstract: Ninety-five (95) captive tinamids (Aves, Tinamiformes) of species Crypturellus obsoletus (brown tinamou), Crypturellus parvirostris (small-billed tinamou), Crypturellus tataupa (Tataupa tinamou), Crypturellus undulatus (undulated tinamou), Rhynchotus rufescens (red-winged tinamou), and Tinamus solitarius (solitary tinamou) were evaluated for diseases of mandatory control in the Brazilian Poultry Health Program (PNSA). Antibodies were detected by serum agglutination test (SAT) in 4 birds for Mycoplasma gallisepticum (MG) and in 27 birds for Salmonella Pullorum (SP) and Salmonella Gallinarum (SG). However, by hemagglutination inhibition (HI), sera were negative to MG and Mycoplasma synoviae (MS). Bacteriology was negative for SP and SG. No antibody was detected by HI to avian paramyxovirus type 1. However, antibodies to infectious bursal disease virus were detected in 9.4% (9/95) by ELISA. Fecal parasitology and necropsy revealed Capillaria spp. in 44.2% (42/95), Eimeria rhynchoti in 42.1% (40/95), Strongyloides spp. in 100% (20/20), Ascaridia spp. , and unknown sporozoa in small-billed tinamou. Ectoparasites were detected in 42.1% (40/95) by inspection, and collected for identification. The louse Strongylocotes lipogonus (Insecta: Phthiraptera) was found on all Rhynchotus rufescens. An additional four lice species were found on 14 individuals. Traumatic lesions included four individual R. rufescens (4/40, 10%) with rhinotheca fracture, one with mandible fracture and three with posttraumatic ocular lesions (3/40, 7.5%). One C. parvirostris had phalangeal loss, another had tibiotarsal joint ankylosis and another had an open wound on the foot. Results suggest that major poultry infections/diseases may not be relevant in tinamids, and that this group of birds, as maintained within distances for biosecurity purposes, may not represent a risk to commercial poultry. Ecto- and endoparasites were common, disseminated, and varied; regular monitoring of flocks is recommended for best performance.
Value relevance of Financial Statements Information: Evidence from listed firms in Kenya

This study examined the relationship between share prices and dividends, earnings and book values for companies listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) in Kenya for the six years period between 2005 and 2010. Using panel data analysis the study found evidence that there is a positive and significant relationship between stock prices and dividends, earnings and book values for the firms listed on the NSE. The study established that dividends have more explanatory power compared to earnings and book values.
Temporary Employment and Perceived Employability: Mediation by Impression Management

Perceived employability (PE) has been advanced as the upcoming resource for career development, particularly for temporary workers. The question is how temporary workers become employable. Our hypothesis is that temporary workers more than permanent workers use impression management to become employable, both on the internal and the external labor market. This hypothesis was tested with a sample of 371 Belgian temporary and permanent workers from the educational sector and using structural equation modeling (SEM). The results suggest that (a) temporary workers were more likely than permanent workers to use impression management; (b) impression management related positively to the worker’s perception of being employable, both on the internal and the external labor market, which; (c) in turn, related to the perception of availability of better job opportunities. That is to say, impression management is an important mechanism available to temporary workers to first secure their labor market position and then for career advancement.
The Joplin Plan: An Evaluation

School personnel have long attempted to meet children's needs through various organizational patterns. In 1847, John Philbrick organized the first graded elementary school in Quincy, Massachusetts. Since then public schools have experimented with various plans for grouping in attempts to improve instruction. Shane has listed thirty-two types of grouping plans that have been used in classrooms in the United States (1). The Joplin plan is one such plan. Basically it is a device for grouping children in the intermediate grades homogeneously on an interclass basis. The plan embodies the following successive steps: measuring the achievement and needs of children in the inter-
The Growth of Scientific Method

The prestige of the physical sciences has stimulated the application of their methods to social phenomena. Thus there is in sociology a strong trend toward empirical research, quantitative methods, the development of instruments, and a type of theory susceptible to objective testing. Attention is turning toward the study and generalization of simple systems rather than historical and philosophic approaches. The training of sociologists will be modified accordingly. The war work of sociologists has interrupted, for the most part, their scientific work; but they may be expected to play an increasing scientific role in government. The relation of sociologists to social movements is the same as that of other scientists.
Metabonomic Understanding of Probiotic Effects in Humans With Irritable Bowel Syndrome

Goals This study was undertaken to evaluate the effects of probiotics on adult patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) through clinical parameters and 1H nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)-based metabonomics. Background As systematic effect of probiotics on inflammatory bowel disease through metabonomics approach has been extensively studied to date, metabonomic characterization of the probiotics effect on IBS is also needed for better understanding the effect with respect to host metabolic mechanism. Study Seventy-four IBS patients meeting Rome criteria were randomized to receive probiotics and placebo through a parallel-group, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical study. Probiotic fermented milk and placebo were administered 3 times daily for 8 weeks. Improvements of IBS were assessed according to Rome III questionnaires and 1H NMR metabolic profiling of serum and fecal samples from all participants was used to characterize a significant change in serum and fecal metabolome before and after probiotics. Results Fecal counts of the Lactobacilli, but not Bifidobacteria species, which included in the probiotic milk, were increased significantly in feces of IBS patients receiving treatment (P=0.014). NMR data set coupled with multivariate statistical analysis identified intrinsically elevated serum levels of glucose (P=0.0265) and tyrosine (P=0.0016) in IBS patients. These levels normalized to those of healthy individuals in the probiotic administration group, but not the placebo group. Conclusions This metabonomic study suggests that in a subset of IBS patients there exists a potential dysregulation in energy homeostasis (serum glucose) and liver function (serum tyrosine) that may be improved through probiotics supplementation. Moreover, global metabolic profiling highlights the potential of metabonomic approach for assessing bowel diseases or symptoms with respect to host metabolic perturbation.
Rate of Return Regulation and Emission Permits Trading Under Uncertainty

This paper analyzes the dynamic effects of rate-of-return regulation on firms’ emissions compliance behavior when the price of emissions permits is uncertain. The paper shows that uncertainty regarding the price of permits would motivate a regulated firm to adopt a more self-sufficient strategy and would reduce the cost-effectiveness of emission allowance trading. When allowance transactions are treated as capital investments, uncertainty could reverse the classic Averch-Johnson effect, so that a regulated firm would purchase fewer permits in the ex ante period than its unregulated counterpart. These results are driven by the asymmetric impact of a price change on the expected marginal value of allowances under rate-of-return regulation. A wider variation in the permit price and a decline in the regulated rate of return would amplify the asymmetry. These results have implications for the efficiency of the proposed global carbon trading system.
Seven Capital Devices for the Future of Stroke Rehabilitation

Stroke is the leading cause of long-term disability for adults in industrialized societies. Rehabilitation's efforts are tended to avoid long-term impairments, but, actually, the rehabilitative outcomes are still poor. Novel tools based on new technologies have been developed to improve the motor recovery. In this paper, we have taken into account seven promising technologies that can improve rehabilitation of patients with stroke in the early future: (1) robotic devices for lower and upper limb recovery, (2) brain computer interfaces, (3) noninvasive brain stimulators, (4) neuroprostheses, (5) wearable devices for quantitative human movement analysis, (6) virtual reality, and (7) tablet-pc used for neurorehabilitation.
Revisiting the agentic shift: Weakening personal control increases susceptibility to social influence.

What happens when people experience a reduced sense of personal control? Among the various strategies to defend against a perception of randomness, people may show an increased acceptance of external sources of control. Indeed, in one of the most classic studies in social psychology, Stanley Milgram referred to an agentic shiftthe tendency to relinquish personal control to an external agentto explain his dramatic obedience effects. We propose that his account is a specific manifestation of a more general phenomenon: the tendency for increased susceptibility to various forms of external social influence when perceived personal control is reduced. In a series of (lab and field) studies using a variety of perceived control manipulations, we demonstrate that a reduction in the sense of personal control increases people's vulnerability to the bystander effect, promotes obedience to authority and fosters compliance with behavioral requests. Copyright (C) 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Factors Influencing College Selection by NCAA Division I, II, and III Softball Student-Athletes

Abstract The purpose of this investigation was to examine factors influencing college selection by NCAA Division I, II and III softball players. The Influential Factors Survey for Student-Athletes was used to collect data from 21 teams representing 323 female collegiate softball student-athletes. Descriptive statistics showed the most influential factors were: university offers specific major of interest, academic reputation of university, coach's personality/style, academic facilities, opportunity to play early in career, and graduation rate of athletes. Descriptive analysis further revealed the academics category to have the greatest overall influence in the college selection process. A MANOVA revealed significant differences in the college selection process by softball student-athletes at NCAA Division I, II, and III institutions (p < .05). Recommendations for collegiate softball coaches and athletic department personnel as well as for future research are discussed.
Revisiting Postman and Weingartner’s ‘New education’ – is teaching citizenship a subversive activity?

This article revisits many of the characteristics of the ‘New Education’ as identified and discussed by Postman and Weingartner (1976), and considers them as central in the development of citizenship as a National Curriculum subject in England. The content of the original is briefly reframed to address this suggested centrality within a specific and specified meaning of ‘subversive’. In being influenced by a number of contemporaneous contributions to the sociology of education such as those of Bernstein (1973), Illich (1973), Goodman (1975), Bowles and Gintis (1976), and Willis (1977), reference is made to the significance to current educational developments of what was described some thirty years ago as the New Education. The paper concludes that, if citizenship education in English schools is not being subversive, it is not achieving its objectives. citizenship (education) . hammers one more nail into the concept of the teacher as an authority in a particular subject whose job it is to teach it. Chris Woodhead, former Chief Inspector of Schools for England [1] Load up on guns and bring your friends, it’s fun to lose and to pretend She’s over bored and self-assured: oh no, I know a dirty word. With the lights out it’s less dangerous. Here we are now, entertain us. Nirvana ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ [2]
Perceived Competence: A Validation Study in the Field of Motoric Remedial Teaching

IN THIS STUDY the relationship between perceived competence and performance was addressed, notably with respect to motor behaviour. In addition to Harter's (1985) perceived competence questionnaire, a motor skills test was administered to a group of 128 4th grade children of regular elementary schools. From this sample two samples were chosen. One group (N= 40) was involved in motoric remedial teaching classes, a group of classmates (N =38) was selected as a matched comparison group from the remainder of the sample. Both groups were compared on each of the measuring instruments. The motoric remedial teaching group scored significantly lower than the group of classmates on perceived athletic competence and on motor skills performance. Further, a significant difference was observed between both groups on the correlation coefficient between perceived athletic competence and motor skills performance. The results provide information which externally validates the notion of perceived competence; they also under.
Moving house: migration and the place of the household on the Thai periphery.

This article describes the various issues associated with migration of peoples from one territory to another. Many issues delve deeper than traditional reasons to migrate; these reasons can include relationships between ethnic groups social arrangements and population control. However the primary reason for migration of the Mien Yao people in Thailand is rooted in historical arrangements and relationships between courts. The courts include founding lineages kings priests and historic rulers. The pattern of social relations between ethnic groups over time reflects the relationships between these leaders. As populations migrate they must adapt to the changing social political and ritual norms in their region.
Optimization of Frequent Itemset Mining on Multiple-Core Processor

Multi-core processors are proliferated across different domains in recent years. In this paper, we study the performance of frequent pattern mining on a modern multi-core machine. A detailed study shows that, even with the best implementation, current FP-tree based algorithms still under-utilize a multi-core system due to poor data locality and insufficient parallelism expression. We propose two techniques: a cache-conscious FP-array (frequent pattern array) and a lock-free dataset tiling parallelization mechanism to address this problem. The FP-array efficiently improves the data locality performance, and makes use of the benefits from hardware and software prefetching. The result yields an overall 4.0 speedup compared with the state-of-the-art implementation. Furthermore, to unlock the power of multi-core processor, a lock-free parallelization approach is proposed to restructure the FP-tree building algorithm. It not only eliminates the locks in building a single FP-tree with fine-grained threads, but also improves the temporal data locality performance. To summarize, with the proposed cache-conscious FP-array and lock-free parallelization enhancements, the overall FP-tree algorithm achieves a 24 fold speedup on an 8-core machine. Finally, we believe the presented techniques can be applied to other data mining tasks as well with the prevalence of multi-core processor.
Space, time and visual analytics

Visual analytics aims to combine the strengths of human and electronic data processing. Visualisation, whereby humans and computers cooperate through graphics, is the means through which this is achieved. Seamless and sophisticated synergies are required for analysing spatio-temporal data and solving spatio-temporal problems. In modern society, spatio-temporal analysis is not solely the business of professional analysts. Many citizens need or would be interested in undertaking analysis of information in time and space. Researchers should find approaches to deal with the complexities of the current data and problems and find ways to make analytical tools accessible and usable for the broad community of potential users to support spatio-temporal thinking and contribute to solving a large range of problems.
Interferon-α Induces G1 Cell-Cycle Arrest in Renal Cell Carcinoma Cells Via Activation of Jak-Stat Signaling

The purpose of this study was to clarify the mechanism of IFN-α resistance in RCC. The effects of IFN-α on induction of apoptosis and cell-cycle arrest were analyzed by flow cytometric analysis. Jak-Stat pathway components induced by IFN-α was evaluated using Western blotting. The results suggested that IFN-α caused growth inhibition of RCC cell lines via arrest in the G1 phase without inducing apoptosis. The resistance of RCC to IFN-α was associated with the low expression of Stat1. This study indicated that the Jak-Stat pathway should be considered a primary target for improving the response of RCC to IFN-α treatment.
Microtubule Dynamic Instability Controls Podosome Patterning in Osteoclasts through EB1, Cortactin, and Src

ABSTRACT In osteoclasts (OCs) podosomes are organized in a belt, a feature critical for bone resorption. Although microtubules (MTs) promote the formation and stability of the belt, the MT and/or podosome molecules that mediate the interaction of the two systems are not identified. Because the growing “plus” ends of MTs point toward the podosome belt, plus-end tracking proteins (+TIPs) might regulate podosome patterning. Among the +TIPs, EB1 increased as OCs matured and was enriched in the podosome belt, and EB1-positive MTs targeted podosomes. Suppression of MT dynamic instability, displacement of EB1 from MT ends, or EB1 depletion resulted in the loss of the podosome belt. We identified cortactin as an Src-dependent interacting partner of EB1. Cortactin-deficient OCs presented a defective MT targeting to, and patterning of, podosomes and reduced bone resorption. Suppression of MT dynamic instability or EB1 depletion increased cortactin phosphorylation, decreasing its acetylation and affecting its interaction with EB1. Thus, dynamic MTs and podosomes interact to control bone resorption.