Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Intelligent ray launching algorithm for indoor scenarios

This article describes the indoor IRLA (Intelligent Ray Launching Algorithm), which originates from an efficient outdoor propagation prediction model. Implementation and validation are given in detail. An indoor office scenario is selected and simulations via the IRLA model and two other reference models have been performed. Predictions are analyzed and recommendations are given. Results show that the indoor IRLA model is suitable for indoor wireless network planning and optimization process.
Holographic Wilson loops

We show that all half-BPS Wilson loop operators in = 4 SYM – which are labeled by Young tableaus – have a gravitational dual description in terms of D5-branes or alternatively in terms of D3-branes in AdS5 × S5. We prove that the insertion of a half-BPS Wilson loop operator in the = 4 SYM path integral is achieved by integrating out the degrees of freedom on a configuration of bulk D5-branes or alternatively on a configuration of bulk D3-branes. The bulk D5-brane and D3-brane descriptions are related by bosonization.
Antirheumatic drug use and the risk of acute myocardial infarction.

OBJECTIVE To assess the risk of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) associated with the use of disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs) and other medications commonly used in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). METHODS We conducted a nested case-control analysis within a cohort of subjects with RA, observed between 1999 and 2003, identified from the PharMetrics claims database. For each first AMI hospitalization identified during followup, 10 controls matched on sex, age, and time of study entry were randomly selected from the cohort. Conditional logistic regression was used to estimate the rate ratio (RR) of AMI associated with the current use of anti-RA therapy, as measured from dispensed prescriptions, after adjustment for AMI risk factors. RESULTS The cohort included 107,908 subjects (average age 54 years at cohort entry). During followup, 558 AMI cases occurred (3.4 per 1,000 per year). AMI rate was significantly decreased with the current use of any DMARD (adjusted RR 0.80, 95% confidence interval [95% CI] 0.65-0.98). This effect was consistent across all DMARDs, including methotrexate (RR 0.81, 95% CI 0.60-1.08), leflunomide (RR 0.28, 95% CI 0.12-0.65), and other traditional DMARDs (RR 0.67, 95% CI 0.46-0.97), but not biologic agents (RR 1.30, 95% CI 0.92-1.83). AMI rate increased with the use of glucocorticoids (RR 1.32, 95% CI 1.02-1.72) but not with nonselective nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs (RR 1.05, 95% CI 0.81-1.36) or cyclooxygenase 2 (COX-2) inhibitors (RR 1.11, 95% CI 0.87-1.43). CONCLUSION DMARD use is associated with a reduction in AMI risk in patients with RA. No risk increase was found with the COX-2 inhibitors in this population.
Psychopathy: A viable alternative to antisocial personality disorder?

This paper reviews existing literature on psychopathy. In particular, the diagnosis of Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD) in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (3rd edition and the 3rd edition revised; DSM-III-R) and Hare's conceptualisation of psychopathy are reviewed. It discusses in detail: (a) the relationship between the DSM-III-R's APD and traditional conceptualisations of psychopathy; (b) a viable alternative to the DSM-III-R's diagnosis of APD (Hare's Psychopathy Checklist and the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, and their self-report versions, the Self-Report Psychopathy and Self-Report Psychopathy-II scales); and (c) the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th edition) Field Trials and their reconsideration of APD criteria.
Emotional impact of a paediatric exon‐skipping therapy trial

Maria Elena Garralda, Maria Kinali, Sebahattin Cirak, Kate Bushby, Michela Guglieri, Volker Straub, Francesco Muntoni 1 Academic Unit of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Imperial College, London. 2 Department of Paediatric Neurology, Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London. 3 The Dubowitz Neuromuscular Centre, UCL Institute of Child Health, London. 4 Institute of Genetic Medicine, Newcastle University, Newcastle, UK. Correspondence to: e.garralda@imperial.ac. uk
Norms of Premarital Sexual Behavior

In doing cross-cultural research, one is consistently struck by the inventiveness with which societies approach and elaborate the universal givens of human existence. Societies take what are essentially straightforward, biologically grounded dispositions, for example puberty, or pregnancy, or menstruation, and weave around them the most intricate webs of custom, attitude, and belief. One area in which cultural elaboration of human universals is especially evident is that of sexuality. The range of variation in, for instance, attitudes toward sex, in sexual technique, in degree of interest in sex, or in regulation of sexual behavior is enormous across cultures. While in some societies sex is regarded as a pleasurable but also innocuous affair, in others even sexual intercourse between spouses is potentially dangerous and is surrounded by all
Light‐Triggered Assembly of Gold Nanoparticles for Photothermal Therapy and Photoacoustic Imaging of Tumors In Vivo

Photocross-linkable Au nanoparticles are prepared through surface decoration of photolabile diazirine moieties. Both in vitro and in vivo studies indicate that the light-triggered cross-linking can dramatically shift the surface plasmon resonance of Au nanoparticles to near-infrared regions, which in consequence remarkably enhances their efficacy for photothermal therapy and photoacoustic imaging of tumors in vivo.
Energy, entropy and mass scaling relations for elliptical galaxies. Towards a physical understanding of their photometric properties

In the present paper, we show that elliptical galaxies (Es) obey a scaling relation between potential energy and mass. Since they are relaxed systems in a post violent-relaxation stage, they are quasi-equilibrium gravitational systems and therefore they also have a quasi-constant specific entropy. Assuming that light traces mass, these two laws imply that in the space defined by the three S\\ersic law parameters (intensity Sigma_0, scale a and shape nu), elliptical galaxies are distributed on two intersecting 2-manifolds: the Entropic Surface and the Energy-Mass Surface. Using a sample of 132 galaxies belonging to three nearby clusters, we have verified that ellipticals indeed follow these laws. This also implies that they are distributed along the intersection line (the Energy-Entropy line), thus they constitute a one-parameter family. These two physical laws (separately or combined), allow to find the theoretical origin of several observed photometrical relations, such as the correlation between absolute magnitude and effective surface brightness, and the fact that ellipticals are located on a surface in the [log R_eff, -2.5 log Sigma_0, log nu] space. The fact that elliptical galaxies are a one-parameter family has important implications for cosmology and galaxy formation and evolution models. Moreover, the Energy-Entropy line could be used as a distance indicator.
The cerebellum in autism

Autism is considered as a neurodevelopmental disorder which affects boys more than girls, in a proportion 4:1 respectively. Autism presents neuroanatomical abnormalities located in the frontal cortex, the amygdala and the cerebellum. Autistic cerebellar postmortem studies have revealed a reduced number of Purkinje cells as well as a reduced Purkinje cell size when compared with non-autistic subjects. These anatomical alterations compromise the role of the cerebellum in cognitive, motor, emotional, learning and memory neural processes resulting in a different interpretation of the world, and therefore a different way to respond and behave. There are both biological and environmental insults causing the behavioral and neuroanatomical autistic phenotype. Valproic acid, an antiepileptic drug, has been related to some autistic cases after mothers were under medication with this drug during the first trimester of gestation and given birth autistic children. Therefore, in this brief review we analyzed the most recent advances of autism research in humans, with a primary focus on the use of valproic acid as a teratogen that mimics in rats some of the neuroanatomical alterations seen in autistic humans. In addition to the peculiar cerebellar pathology, all of this to shed light on a better understating of this disorder.
Influences on Academic Achievement Across High and Low Income Countries: A Re-Analysis of IEA Data.

Turner, R. H. 1964 "Some aspects of women's ambition. " American Journal of Sociology 70:271-85. U.S. Bureau of the Census 1976 Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1976 (97th ed.). Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. U.S. Department of Labor 1975 U.S. Working Women-A Chartbook. Bulletin 1880. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. Woodworth, J. M. 1981 "Predicting degree of sex atypicality of occupational choice among high school seniors: The role of occupational values, abilities, and structural location. " Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Michigan.
Self‐reflection on the quality of decisions in health care

In the Australian study a higher number of patients refused consent when a woman in the 15–44 years age group was consulting a female doctor and the medical student was male. In the UK study the number of patients agreeing to the presence of medical students fell to 67– 70% if the consultation was for emotional problems and to 50% if the consultation was related to a sexual problem. Obstetric patients are also reluctant to have students involved in their care. In one study only 62% of a sample of 203 antenatal patients were prepared to have students participating in their intrapartum care although 84% agreed in principle that such participation was important for the student’s education.
Radiocontrast-Induced Acute Renal Failure

The intravascular administration of iodinated radiocontrast media can lead to acute renal dysfunction. Even small changes in renal function have been associated with increased morbidity and mortality, making the prevention of radiocontrast nephropathy of paramount importance. This review summarizes the principal risk factors for radiocontrast nephropathy and evidence-based preventive strategies that should be used to limit its occurrence. Risk factors for radiocontrast nephropathy include preexistent kidney disease, diabetes mellitus, dose of radiocontrast used, advanced congestive heart failure, and intravascular volume depletion. Proven preventive measures include volume expansion with intravenous saline or sodium bicarbonate and the use of low-osmolar or iso-osmolar radiocontrast media. Studies evaluatingN-acetylcysteine have been conflicting, with meta-analyses suggesting a small beneficial effect. Studies of other pharmacologic agents have not demonstrated clinical benefit.
How family business members learn about continuity

Continuity is about connection and cohesion over time. A defining question in the study of family business is how the family and the business can endure and survive across generations. Learning about continuity is fundamental in addressing that question. This study explores how family business members learn about continuity. It draws on concepts of communities of practice and legitimate peripheral participation derived from Lave and Wenger’s (1991) situated learning perspective. These are used as theoretical lenses to explore the relationship between family members and learning through an interpretive and inductive study of 18 respondents from family businesses in Canada. This study shows learning in the family business context is about continuity, but the process of learning in which the family engages is uneven, non-linear, and unpredictable. To deal with these complexities and learn about continuity, family members participate in multiple ways, often gradually over time. In this study gradual participation to build legitimacy is revealed as a multi-generational learning phenomenon. It involves multiple forms of co-participation influenced by family members from the past, present and future.
Interpersonal Discussion: A Critical Predictor of Leisure Activity1

This study develops the most efficient predictor sets for the leisure activities of 363 tenth grade teenagers from four high schools in Santa Clara County, California. The results indicate that media play a relatively small part in teenage lives. Interpersonal discussion is a major component of almost all teenage leisure behavior. Different cognitive styles predict different behavior: intelligence correlates highly with print consumption while creativity is strongly associated with non-media pursuits (e.g., clubs and hobbies). Socio-economic variables are less powerful in prediction equations than the interrelationship of all measured leisure time activities. As much as 40 percent of the variance is explained in a leisure activity, but refinement of communication measures, validation of predictive relationshpis, and longitudinal extension of the study design are recommended.
Word-Sense Distinguishability and Inter-Coder Agreement

It. is common in NLP that the categories into which text is classified do not have fully objective def initions. Examples of such categories are lexical distinctions such as part-of-speech tags and word sense distinctions, sentence level distinctions such as phrase attachment, and discourse level distinc t.icms such as topic or speech-act categorization. This p>1per presents an approach to analy? -ing the agrcen1ent arnong lnnnan judges for the purpose of formulating a refined and more reliable set of category designations. We use these techniques to analyze the sense tags assigned by five judgps to the noun intcr·est. The initial tag set is takmi from Longman's Dictionary of Contemporary }i:nglish. Through this process of analysis, we automatically identify and assign a revised set of sense tags for the data. The revised tags exhibit high reliabil ity as measured by Cohen's r;. Such techniques are important for formulating and evaluating both human and automated classification systems.
A Novel Translation Framework Based on Rhetorical Structure Theory

Rhetorical structure theory (RST) is widely used for discourse understanding, which represents a discourse as a hierarchically semantic structure. In this paper, we propose a novel translation framework with the help of RST. In our framework, the translation process mainly includes three steps: 1) Source RST-tree acquisition: a source sentence is parsed into an RST tree; 2) Rule extraction: translation rules are extracted from the source tree and the target string via bilingual word alignment; 3) RST-based translation: the source RST-tree is translated with translation rules. Experiments on Chinese-to-English show that our RST-based approach achieves improvements of 2.3/0.77/1.43 BLEU points on NIST04/NIST05/CWMT2008 respectively.
The Impact of Parenting Practices and Early Childhood Curricula on Children's Academic Achievement and Social Competence

Title of Document: THE IMPACT OF PARENTING PRACTICES AND EARLY CHILDHOOD CURRICULA ON CHILDREN’S ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT AND SOCIAL COMPETENCE Anne Townsend Kessenich, Doctor of Philosophy, 2006 Directed By: Professor Sandra L. Hofferth Department of Family Studies Current research highlights the importance of early social competence for later academic success. Nevertheless, despite that documented importance, the emphasis in both policy and practice has been on academic achievement in early learning curricula. The proposed research had three objectives: 1) to understand how parenting behaviors toward children in kindergarten influence their academic achievement in third grade, 2) to understand how curriculum in kindergarten influences academic achievement in third grade, and 3) to ascertain whether social competence mediates the relationship between parenting factors in kindergarten and academic achievement in third grade and curriculum factors in kindergarten and academic achievement in the third grade. Data are drawn for the period 1998-2003 from an existing data set, the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study – Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K) and analyzed using multiple regression analyses. After controlling for background characteristics and academic achievement in kindergarten, these analyses revealed that the presence of spanking in kindergarten was significantly related to academic achievement in third grade. The presence of spanking in kindergarten was also related to children‘s learning related skills in third grade. Spanking and higher levels of warmth in kindergarten were related to children’s interpersonal skills in third grade. Curriculum in kindergarten was unrelated to third grade academic achievement, social competence, and behavior problems. Social competence in third grade was related to academic achievement in third grade, while behavior problems were not. Finally, social competence mediated the relationship between spanking in kindergarten and academic achievement in third grade. THE IMPACT OF PARENTING PRACTICES AND EARLY CHILDHOOD CURRICULA ON CHILDREN’S ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT AND SOCIAL COMPETENCE
Materialism and Well–Being in the Uk and Chile: Basic Need Satisfaction and Basic Need Frustration as Underlying Psychological Processes

A growing body of evidence shows that materialistic values are linked to lower well–being. Self–determination theory offers an explanation through the low fulfilment of the basic psychological needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. However, recent research suggests that frustration of these psychological needs may also play an additional role. Using structural equation modelling in adult samples from an established mass–consumer society (UK: N = 958) and a fast–developing new economy (Chile: N = 257) and employing more comprehensive measures to tap into a materialistic orientation than used in previous studies, we found that a materialistic value orientation related negatively to well–being and positively to ill–being and that both psychological need satisfaction and psychological need frustration played an explanatory role herein. The model was found to be highly equivalent across both samples, supporting the cross–cultural generality of the mechanisms involved. Copyright © 2014 European Association of Personality Psychology
Opportunities for practice and development: newly qualified teachers and the use of information and communications technologies in teaching foreign languages in English secondary school contexts

This study explores the experiences of newly qualified teachers of foreign languages in English secondary school contexts as they both seek opportunities and develop their abilities to use information and communications technologies (ICT) as a tool to support foreign language learning. A cohort of newly qualified foreign language teachers from the University of Manchester was first surveyed to establish a picture of teacher experience and confidence in the use of ICT after their initial training year. Based on self‐declared interest in ICT as a development area, indicated in career entry profiles, six case‐study teachers were subsequently identified and their experiences in specific school environments were explored. Cross‐case analysis determined not only the impact of specific factors on opportunities for ICT use and personal development, but also an ecological dimension to the school contexts resulting in an interplay between factors with varying effects on newly qualified teachers.
The Thing Never Speaks for Itself: Lacan and the Pedagogical Politics of Clarity

In this article, Douglas Sadao Aoki argues that teaching conceived as the translation of complex materials into plain language is actually a refusal to teach. He challenges the commonsensical conviction that good teaching, like good writing, makes its meaning clear and accessible — a thing that speaks for itself. The authority of that conviction, he shows, has elevated the desire for clarity into an institutional demand. Yet, like many other commonsensical convictions and institutional demands, teaching framed by clarity is suspect in its politics and radical in its limitations. Aoki uses the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, which reveals the suspect exclusionary practices of those pedagogical politics, to show that the love of clear writing turns out to be a hatred of language, a hatred that motivates a refusal to teach. Aoki suggests that the crucial recognition that neither teaching nor language ever speaks for itself is what gives us the chance to refuse the refusal to teach.
Derivatives of Xanthic Acid are Novel Antioxidants: Application to Synaptosomes

Xanthic acids have long been known to act as reducing agents. Recently, D609, a tricyclodecanol derivative of xanthic acid, has been reported to have anti-apoptotic and anti-inflammatory properties that are attributed to specific inhibition of phosphatidyl choline phospholipase C (PC-PLC). However, because oxidative stress is involved in both of these cellular responses, the possibility that xanthates may act as antioxidants was investigated in the current study. Finding that xanthates efficiently scavenge hydroxyl radicals, the mechanism by which D609 and other xanthate derivatives may protect against oxidative damage was further examined. The xanthates studied, especially D609, mimic glutathione (GSH). Xanthates scavenge hydroxyl radicals and hydrogen peroxide, form disulfide bonds (dixanthogens), and react with electrophilic products of lipid oxidation (acrolein) in a manner similar to GSH. Further, upon disulfide formation, dixanthogens are reduced by glutathione reductase to a redox active xanthate. Supporting its role as an antioxidant, D609 significantly ( p <0.01) reduces free radical-induced changes in synaptosomal lipid peroxidation (TBARs), protein oxidation (protein carbonyls), and protein conformation. Thus, in addition to inhibitory effects on PC-PLC, D609 may prevent cellular apoptotic and inflammatory cascades by acting as antioxidants and novel GSH mimics. These results are discussed with reference to potential therapeutic application of D609 in oxidative stress conditions.
Enhanced Dissolution and Oral Bioavailability of Piroxicam Formulations: Modulating Effect of Phospholipids

Several biologically relevant phospholipids were assessed as potential carriers/additives for rapidly dissolving solid formulations of piroxicam (Biopharmaceutics Classification System Class II drug). On the basis of in vitro dissolution studies, dimyristoylphosphatidylglycerol (DMPG) was ranked as the first potent dissolution rate enhancer for the model drug. Subsequently, the solid dispersions of varying piroxicam/DMPG ratios were prepared and further investigated. Within the concentration range studied (6.4-16.7 wt %), the dissolution rate of piroxicam from the solid dispersions appeared to increase as a function of the carrier weight fraction, whereas the cumulative drug concentration was not significantly affected by piroxicam/DMPG ratio, presumably due to a unique phase behavior of the aqueous dispersions of this carrier phospholipid. Solid state analysis of DMPG-based formulations reveled that they are two-component systems, with a less thermodynamically stable form of piroxicam (Form II) being dispersed within the carrier. Finally, oral bioavailability of piroxicam from the DMPG-based formulations in rats was found to be superior to that of the control, as indicated by the bioavailability parameters, cmax and especially Tmax (53 μg/mL within 2 h vs. 39 μg/mL within 5.5 h, respectively). Hence, DMPG was regarded as the most promising carrier phospholipid for enhancing oral bioavailability of piroxicam and potentially other Class II drugs.