Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Happy Partisans and Extreme Political Views: The Impact of National versus Local Representation on Well-being

The political party of elected officials can affect the happiness of the voting public through several different channels. Partisan voters will be happier whenever a member of their party controls political office regardless of the policies implemented. It is hypothesized that congruence between individual party identity and state politician affiliations should have a greater impact on citizen happiness than congruence with politicians at the national level due to results from the literature on Tiebout sorting. It is further hypothesized that individuals with extreme ideological views may report greater happiness as their ideology fulfills basic psychological needs for certainty and structure. Using data from the Generalized Social Survey the effect of party congruence of individuals with national and state politicians on happiness is estimated. The effect of extreme ideological political views on happiness is also estimated. Results find that congruence with presidential party affiliation has a much greater impact on happiness than congruence with national legislative affiliation, gubernatorial, or state legislative affiliation contradicting the hypothesis. Those who possess extreme political views are also found to report higher levels of happiness.
The novice programmers' syndrome of design-by-keyword

In the course of reading the description of a given assignment, it is natural that associations with design patterns directly tied to explicit keywords or phrases in the assignment text will evolve. However, explicit keywords may not always be the basis for the desired solution. Implicit cues may yield a better outcome. This paper presents a study of novice programmers who are misguided by explicit keyword associations. The study shows that students' tendency to "design-by-keyword" may sometime lead them to incorrect or inefficient programming solutions. The study displays student solutions to three CSI problems, each answered in three different ways. The first two ways reflect undesirable "design-by-keyword" outcomes, and the third way encloses the desired solution, which demonstrates the importance of looking for implicit cues.
Self-monitoring personality trait at work: An integrative narrative review and future research directions

In this narrative review, we provide an overview of the self-monitoring literature as it applies to the workplace context. Our starting point to the review is a meta-analysis of self-monitoring literature by Day, Schleicher, Unckless, and Hiller (2002). After providing an overview of the theoretical basis of self-monitoring and its measurement, we present a summary of the broad literature on self-monitoring to examine the implications of self-monitoring for employees and organizations. Based on our review, we identify the main outcomes of self-monitoring as well as findings of the literature treating self-monitoring as a moderator. We provide evidence that self-monitoring has potential downsides which would benefit from further investigation. We conclude our review by identifying important potential future research directions.
Pedagogical Requirements for Mobile Learning: A Review on MOBIlearn Task Model

Pedagogically sound design for mobile learning application development is a key factor for providing a pleasant and rich learning experience in a mobile environment. In the context of higher education, this need is very critical as institutions and students begin to recognize the importance of bridging the gap between formal classroom and out-of-classroom informal learning to achieve pedagogical goals. However, there are very few existing research studies on how mobile learning design could be informed specifically to support pedagogical requirements for educational mobile learning application. This paper therefore presents a review on the MOBIlearn task model framework and its contributing factors in an attempt to capture appropriate requirements by generalizing the current state of understanding and discover common grounds and similarities from previous research publications. A number of key mobile learning articles, mostly from conferences and journals containing explanation on any of the factors, have been consulted to get a deeper understanding and insights. At the end of this paper, we discuss our findings as a set of pedagogical requirements identified from the literature by categorizing them based on the task model factors in order to clearly answer our research questions and design a techno-pedagogical tool based on what we have learned in the review.
De novo Transcriptome Analysis and Molecular Marker Development of Two Hemarthria Species

Hemarthria R. Br. is an important genus of perennial forage grasses that is widely used in subtropical and tropical regions. Hemarthria grasses have made remarkable contributions to the development of animal husbandry and agro-ecosystem maintenance; however, there is currently a lack of comprehensive genomic data available for these species. In this study, we used Illumina high-throughput deep sequencing to characterize of two agriculturally important Hemarthria materials, H. compressa “Yaan” and H. altissima “1110. ” Sequencing runs that used each of four normalized RNA samples from the leaves or roots of the two materials yielded more than 24 million high-quality reads. After de novo assembly, 137,142 and 77,150 unigenes were obtained for “Yaan” and “1110,” respectively. In addition, a total of 86,731 “Yaan” and 48,645 “1110” unigenes were successfully annotated. After consolidating the unigenes for both materials, 42,646 high-quality SNPs were identified in 10,880 unigenes and 10,888 SSRs were identified in 8330 unigenes. To validate the identified markers, high quality PCR primers were designed for both SNPs and SSRs. We randomly tested 16 of the SNP primers and 54 of the SSR primers and found that the majority of these primers successfully amplified the desired PCR product. In addition, high cross-species transferability (61.11–87.04%) of SSR markers was achieved for four other Poaceae species. The amount of RNA sequencing data that was generated for these two Hemarthria species greatly increases the amount of genomic information available for Hemarthria and the SSR and SNP markers identified in this study will facilitate further advancements in genetic and molecular studies of the Hemarthria genus.
Factors Affecting Modern Apprenticeship Completion in Scotland

Completing an apprenticeship has been shown to be critical to an individual&#8217;s future employment, earnings and career development when compared with apprentices who do not complete. International research, notably in England, Australia and Germany, has identified factors specific to the apprentice, employer and training provision that are associated with a higher chance of completion. However, to date, there has been no comparable research in Scotland, which operates its own distinct and well&#8208;established apprenticeship system. Based on the factors identified in other countries, logistic regression was conducted on records of apprenticeship leavers in Scotland, covering the period from 2007 to 2015. Data for a total of 78,952 leavers were analysed, consisting of 59,737 completers and 19,215 non&#8208;completers. It was found that women are more likely to complete an apprenticeship than men, while those from deprived areas are less likely to complete. Apprentices employed by a large employer, those receiving training from public sector organizations and those studying for selected technical subjects are more likely to complete, as are apprentices living in an area with a high local unemployment rate. The paper considers the reasons why some apprentices are more likely to complete than others and discusses the implications for apprenticeship policy in Scotland and beyond.
Dietary separation of sympatric carnivores identified by molecular analysis of scats

We studied the diets of four sympatric carnivores in the flooding savannas of western Venezuela by analysing predator DNA and prey remains in faeces. DNA was isolated and a portion of the cytochrome b gene of the mitochondrial genome amplified and sequenced from 20 of 34 scats. Species were diagnosed by comparing the resulting sequences to reference sequences generated from the blood of puma (Puma concolor), jaguar (Panthera onca), ocelot (Leopardus pardalus) and crab‐eating fox (Cerdocyon thous). Scat size has previously been used to identify predators, but DNA data show that puma and jaguar scats overlap in size, as do those of puma, ocelot and fox. Prey‐content analysis suggests minimal prey partitioning between pumas and jaguars. In field testing this technique for large carnivores, two potential limitations emerged: locating intact faecal samples and recovering DNA sequences from samples obtained in the wet season. Nonetheless, this study illustrates the tremendous potential of DNA faecal studies. The presence of domestic dog (Canis familiaris) in one puma scat and of wild pig (Sus scrofa), set as bait, in one jaguar sample exemplifies the forensic possibilities of this noninvasive analysis. In addition to defining the dietary habits of similar size sympatric mammals, DNA identifications from faeces allow wildlife managers to detect the presence of endangered taxa and manage prey for their conservation.
The relationship between phonological coding, syntactic awareness, and semantic processing in reading disabled and normally achieving children who were born prematurely

The relationship between phonological coding, syntactic awareness, and semantic processing in reading disabled and normally achieving children who were born prematurely Doctor of Philosophy, 1999 Margaret Lesperance Department of Human Development and Applied Psychology University of Toronto This study examined phonological, semantic, and syntactic processes, from three to seven years, in a group children who were born prematurely. More specifically, the study explored the development of these language processes before the children were exposed to reading instruction. The children were divided into four groups at 7 years: reading disabled with average and low syntactic awareness (RD/NS and RDILS), and normally achieving readers with average and low syntactic awareness (NNNS, NNLS). In addition to phonological and syntactic measures, tests of reading and listening comprehension were administered. To assess comprehension and syntactic skills, the Stanford Binet Memory for Sentences test was divided into six grammatical categories. The transformations into semantically and syntactically correct, as well as semantically correct, but syntactically incorrect, syntactic errors, and complex pronominal relations were examined. The study found that the NNNS and NNLS obtained significantly higher scores than the RDINS and RDlLS on word reading, word attack, and reading comprehension at seven years, showing that syntactic awareness did not have an impact on word reading and comprehension. Significant differences were not found between the groups in the sentence transformations, therefore, subsequent analyses included only the RD and NA. The RD and NA did not differ on their semantically and syntactically correct transformations. However, the RD made significantly more syntactic errors that included sentence fragments at four years and subject-verb agreement errors at five. In multiple regression modeis, phonological coding was the variable that most consistently contributed to the unique variance in oral doze, word reading, word attack, and working memory at seven years. Phonological coding and syntactic awareness tasks did not contribute to the unique variance in reading and listening comprehension tasks. This study found that phonological coding limitations had a significant impact on verbatim recall. The reading disabled children by-passed limitations in phonological coding, and syntactic weaknesses, to access higher level inferencing processes that permitted the comprehension and transformation of orally presented sentences with very complex syntactic constructions.
DISCRETE SIZE AND DISCRETE-CONTINUOUS CONFIGURATION OPTIMIZATION METHODS FOR TRUSS STRUCTURES USING THE HARMONY SEARCH ALGORITHM

Many methods have been developed for structural size and configuration optimization in which cross-sectional areas are usually assumed to be continuous. In most practical structural engineering design problems, however, the design variables are discrete. This paper proposes two efficient structural optimization methods based on the harmony search (HS) heuristic algorithm that treat both discrete sizing variables and integrated discrete sizing and continuous geometric variables. The HS algorithm uses a stochastic random search instead of a gradient search so the former has a new-paradigmed derivative. Several truss examples from the literature are also presented to demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the new method, as compared to current optimization methods.
Comprehensive Phylogenetic Analysis of Bacterial Group II Intron-Encoded ORFs Lacking the DNA Endonuclease Domain Reveals New Varieties

Group II introns are self-splicing RNAs that act as mobile retroelements in the organelles of plants, fungi and protists. They are also widely distributed in bacteria, and are generally assumed to be the ancestors of nuclear spliceosomal introns. Most bacterial group II introns have a multifunctional intron-encoded protein (IEP) ORF within the ribozyme domain IV (DIV). This ORF encodes an N-terminal reverse transcriptase (RT) domain, followed by a putative RNA-binding domain with RNA splicing or maturase activity and, in some cases, a C-terminal DNA-binding (D) region followed by a DNA endonuclease (En) domain. In this study, we focused on bacterial group II intron ORF phylogenetic classes containing only reverse transcriptase/maturase open reading frames, with no recognizable D/En region (classes A, C, D, E, F and unclassified introns). On the basis of phylogenetic analyses of the maturase domain and its C-terminal extension, which appears to be a signature characteristic of ORF phylogenetic class, with support from the phylogeny inferred from the RT domain, we have revised the proposed new class F, defining new intron ORF varieties. Our results increase knowledge of the lineage of group II introns encoding proteins lacking the En-domain.
Lack of Association of Type 2 Diabetes Susceptibility Genotypes and Body Weight on the Development of Islet Autoimmunity and Type 1 Diabetes

Aim To investigate whether type 2 diabetes susceptibility genes and body weight influence the development of islet autoantibodies and the rate of progression to type 1 diabetes. Methods Genotyping for single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) of the type 2 diabetes susceptibility genes CDKAL1, CDKN2A/2B, FTO, HHEX-IDE, HMGA2, IGF2BP2, KCNJ11, KCNQ1, MTNR1B, PPARG, SLC30A8 and TCF7L2 was obtained in 1350 children from parents with type 1 diabetes participating in the BABYDIAB study. Children were prospectively followed from birth for islet autoantibodies and type 1 diabetes. Data on weight and height were obtained at 9 months, 2, 5, 8, 11, and 14 years of age. Results None of type 2 diabetes risk alleles at the CDKAL1, CDKN2A/2B, FTO, HHEX-IDE, HMGA2, IGF2BP2, KCNJ11, KCNQ1, MTNR1B, PPARG and SLC30A8 loci were associated with the development of islet autoantibodies or diabetes. The type 2 diabetes susceptible genotype of TCF7L2 was associated with a lower risk of islet autoantibodies (7% vs. 12% by age of 10 years, P = 0.015, Pcorrected = 0.18). Overweight children at seroconversion did not progress to diabetes faster than non-overweight children (HR: 1.08; 95% CI: 0.48–2.45, P>0.05). Conclusions These findings do not support an association of type 2 diabetes risk factors with islet autoimmunity or acceleration of diabetes in children with a family history of type 1 diabetes.
Self report in clinical and epidemiological studies with non-English speakers: the challenge of language and culture

Internationally, there is a drive for equality in health care for ethnic groups. To achieve equality, produce sound policies, and provide appropriately targeted services good quality data are essential. Where data are based upon self report, especially from non-English speakers, there are major barriers to the accumulation of reliable and valid information. When data collection instruments designed for English speakers are simply translated into ethnic minority languages, measurement error can result from inadequate translation procedures, inappropriate content, insensitivity of items, and the failure of researchers to make themselves familiar with cultural norms and beliefs. More attention should be paid to conceptual and cultural factors especially in epidemiological and clinical studies where self report is used to gather data. More interdisciplinary collaboration is necessary as well as a modification of customary methods of data collection and the assumptions behind them. The essence of such modifications entails participatory research with members of the linguistic communities concerned.
Generation, Annotation and Analysis of First Large-Scale Expressed Sequence Tags from Developing Fiber of Gossypium barbadense L

Background Cotton fiber is the world's leading natural fiber used in the manufacture of textiles. Gossypium is also the model plant in the study of polyploidization, evolution, cell elongation, cell wall development, and cellulose biosynthesis. G. barbadense L. is an ideal candidate for providing new genetic variations useful to improve fiber quality for its superior properties. However, little is known about fiber development mechanisms of G. barbadense and only a few molecular resources are available in GenBank. Methodology and Principal Findings In total, 10,979 high-quality expressed sequence tags (ESTs) were generated from a normalized fiber cDNA library of G. barbadense. The ESTs were clustered and assembled into 5852 unigenes, consisting of 1492 contigs and 4360 singletons. The blastx result showed 2165 unigenes with significant similarity to known genes and 2687 unigenes with significant similarity to genes of predicted proteins. Functional classification revealed that unigenes were abundant in the functions of binding, catalytic activity, and metabolic pathways of carbohydrate, amino acid, energy, and lipids. The function motif/domain-related cytoskeleton and redox homeostasis were enriched. Among the 5852 unigenes, 282 and 736 unigenes were identified as potential cell wall biosynthesis and transcription factors, respectively. Furthermore, the relationships among cotton species or between cotton and other model plant systems were analyzed. Some putative species-specific unigenes of G. barbadense were highlighted. Conclusions/Significance The ESTs generated in this study are from the first large-scale EST project for G. barbadense and significantly enhance the number of G. barbadense ESTs in public databases. This knowledge will contribute to cotton improvements by studying fiber development mechanisms of G. barbadense, establishing a breeding program using marker-assisted selection, and discovering candidate genes related to important agronomic traits of cotton through oligonucleotide array. Our work will also provide important resources for comparative genomics, polyploidization, and genome evolution among Gossypium species.
Streptococcus pneumoniae-Induced Inhibition of Rat Ependymal Cilia Is Attenuated by Antipneumolysin Antibody

ABSTRACT Ciliated ependymal cells line the ventricular surfaces and aqueducts of the brain. In ex vivo experiments, pneumolysin caused rapid inhibition of the ependymal ciliary beat frequency and caused ependymal cell disruption. Wild-type pneumococci and pneumococci deficient in pneumolysin caused ciliary slowing, but penicillin lysis of wild-type, not pneumolysin-deficient, pneumococci increased the extent of ciliary inhibition. This effect was abolished by antipneumolysin antibody. Ependymal ciliary stasis by purified pneumolysin was also blocked by the addition of antipneumolysin monoclonal antibodies. These data show that antibiotic lysis of Streptococcus pneumoniae can be detrimental to the ciliated ependyma and that antipneumolysin antibody may have a therapeutic potential.
Analysis of dicarboxylic acids by tandem mass spectrometry. High-throughput quantitative measurement of methylmalonic acid in serum, plasma, and urine.

BACKGROUND Methylmalonic acid (MMA) is a dicarboxylic acid whose concentration can be increased in blood and urine in patients with an inborn error of metabolism or vitamin B(12) deficiency. We developed a method for the selective analysis of dicarboxylic acids that exploits the high specificity of tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) and the substantial difference in fragmentation patterns of the isomers methylmalonic (MMA) and succinic acid (SA). METHODS Dicarboxylic acids were extracted from samples with methyl-tert-butyl ether and derivatized with butanolic HCl to form dibutyl esters. The derivative was injected into the liquid chromatography (LC)-MS/MS system using TurboIonSpray (nebulizer-assisted electrospray) ionization and quantified by the multiple reaction monitoring mode of MS/MS. RESULTS The assay for MMA was linear up to 150 micromol/L. The total imprecision was < or =7.5% at both low and high concentrations. The limits of quantification and detection were 0.1 and 0.05 micromol/L, respectively. The degree of interference from SA could be predicted from the branching ratios of the major product ions. CONCLUSIONS The method is specific for dicarboxylic acids. The LC-MS/MS analysis for MMA requires minimal chromatographic separation and takes <60 s per sample. The entire analysis, including sample preparation, for a batch of 100 specimens can be performed in <4 h.