Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
First polarimetry results of two candidate high-mass protostellar objects

We present 850 µm imaging polarimetry of two high-mass star forming regions - W48 and S152. Within these regions we have identified two candidate high-mass protostellar objects - W48W and S152SE. The submillimetre continuum emission from the candidate HMPOs is bright in comparison to the nearby H  regions. W48W is a cold dense source, with no radio or mid-infrared emission. S152SE has an IRAS source IRAS 22566 +5828 in the Southwestern part of the region, which appears in the mid-infrared 8.28 µm emission, but there is no radio emission. The 850 µm data shows another core within the region, in the Northeast. The polarimetry is ordered and the degree of polarisation is high over the candidate HMPOs - ∼6% for W48W and ∼8% for S152SE. Polarimetry results of this nature indicate a strong, ordered magnetic field threading the candidate HMPOs. The magnetic field direction in both S152SE and W48W is perpendicular to the direction of elongation of the cloud which would imply collapse along the field lines. Estimates of the magnetic field strength are derived using the Chandrasekhar & Fermi method. We calculate plane of the sky field strengths of ∼0.7 mG for W48W and ∼0.2 mG for S152SE. We discuss the drawbacks of using the Chandrasekhar & Fermi method with a large beam size. Mass-to-flux ratios have been calculated and both clouds are found to be roughly critical.
Development and validation of a formative and a reflective measure for the assessment of online store usability

The aim of this study was to develop and validate a reflective and a formative measure of online store usability. Perceived usability, related constructs (i.e. trust and aesthetics), controls (i.e. user and product characteristics) and consequences (i.e. intention to buy and purchase) were examined within a nomological network. Three hundred and seventy-eight participants completed an experimental study. Each participant visited 2 out of 35 online stores and rated the usability and intention to buy for both stores. Purchase behaviour was determined by combining the participants' reward with the decision to buy. Results from partial least squares (PLS) structural equation modelling indicate that the formative usability measure forms a valid set of items for the user-based assessment of online store usability and that both measures are positively related to the intention to buy, suggesting criterion validity. As hypothesised, positive relationships of usability with trust and aesthetics were supported. Furthermore, both measures provided a good prediction of the decision to buy, indicating overall predictive validity. Limitations and implications for usability measures and human–computer interaction research are discussed.
Adoption of e-government services: an empirical study of the online tax filing system in Taiwan

– The purpose of this paper is to investigate the factors that influence the willingness of the public to adopt online tax filing services. , – An online survey was conducted from which 400 valid questionnaires were recovered. The questionnaire data were used to research the degree of acceptance among Taiwanese taxpayers with regard to the online tax filing system. Respondents were classified into existing users (who were sub‐categorised into early adopters and late adopters) and potential adopters. , – The results demonstrate that the perceived attributes of trialability and observability significantly influence the adoption intention of late adopters. However, these attributes did not have a significant influence on early adopters. Social norms and the perceived attributes of relative advantage, compatibility, and complexity significantly influence the adoption intention of current users. For potential adopters, only social norms had a significant effect on their intention to use the online tax filing system. , – This study recommends that a more convenient and user‐friendly design for online tax‐filing processes would enhance the perception of the system and encourage taxpayers to continue or consider using this e‐government service. , – While online tax‐filing systems are getting more attention in e‐government development, little is known about why people are willing to use them. This paper investigates the reasons by applying innovation diffusion theory, social cognitive theory and contingency theory. The results could be applicable to other e‐government services.
Role of changes in accommodation and convergence in the perception of size.

The effect on perceived size of changes in accommodation and convergence was determined at various observation distances. Accommodation and convergence were varied by lenses and prisms chosen so as to preserve the normal relationship between these two functions for all conditions of observation. For observation distances up to about one meter, perceived size is proportional to the distance at which the accommodation and convergence in force would normally obtain. At greater distances, this relationship becomes progressively less marked. It is concluded that accommodation and convergence could mediate size constancy only at observation distances of one meter or less, and that other mechanisms must be operative at greater distances of observation.
Autonomous reconstruction of unknown indoor scenes guided by time-varying tensor fields

Autonomous reconstruction of unknown scenes by a mobile robot inherently poses the question of balancing between exploration efficacy and reconstruction quality. We present a navigation-by-reconstruction approach to address this question, where moving paths of the robot are planned to account for both global efficiency for fast exploration and local smoothness to obtain high-quality scans. An RGB-D camera, attached to the robot arm, is dictated by the desired reconstruction quality as well as the movement of the robot itself. Our key idea is to harness a time-varying tensor field to guide robot movement, and then solve for 3D camera control under the constraint of the 2D robot moving path. The tensor field is updated in real time, conforming to the progressively reconstructed scene. We show that tensor fields are well suited for guiding autonomous scanning for two reasons: first, they contain sparse and controllable singularities that allow generating a locally smooth robot path, and second, their topological structure can be used for globally efficient path routing within a partially reconstructed scene. We have conducted numerous tests with a mobile robot, and demonstrate that our method leads to a smooth exploration and high-quality reconstruction of unknown indoor scenes.
Physico-chemical and sensory characteristics of jellies made from seven grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.) varieties

Jellies of seven grapevine varieties were physico-chemical and sensorial characterized for the first time. Jellies differed significantly in moisture and ash contents, colour, pH, acidity and antioxidant activities. ‘Tinta Carvalha’ was the darkest and redness jelly, showing the highest antioxidant activity. Regarding sensory characteristics, no significant differences in the appearance, taste, sweetness, acidity and global assessment were observed among jellies. Nevertheless, these attributes were positively evaluated. In conclusion, the production of different jellies will allow the valorisation of grapevine varieties with less potential for wine production, helping to preserve biodiversity, and be an economic alternative to grape producers who may elaborate an enjoyable product with interesting bioactivity.
Effect of Dance Instructors' Education Support on Instructor' Trust and Dance Attachment

The major purpose of this study is to examine how the support for dance education of dance majors affects the instructor` trust and dance attachment. This research was executed as the subjects who are currently the student of dance majors of a college in Seoul, Kyonggi, Daejeon and Chungchungnam-do, one college were selected from each district. And by using purposive sampling method, total of 262 peoples that were used in final analysis was extracted. In this study, adequacy and reliability of the questionnaire were verified by factor analysis, reliability analysis, regression analysis and course analysis by using SPSS18.0. The conclusion is as follows. First, instructor`s support for dance education influences on instructor` trust. Secondly, support for dance education partly influences on dance attachment. Thirdly, instructor` trust influences on dance attachment. Lastly, support for dance education influences dance attachment throughout instructor` trust. Especially, support for dance education` influence for dance attachment throughout instructor` trust is more influential than support for dance education` influence for dance attachment directly. Now it is obvious that instructor` trust is the important variable that intermediate support for dance education and dance attachment.
Helping Children to Help Themselves: A Case Study of Enuresis and Nail Biting

Objective: The Self-Control Dual Intervention Model, which is based on cognitive self-control principles, is presented. Method: In the first stage, the client is taught self-control skills and how to apply them to the referred problem, and in the second stage, the client is encouraged to independently apply these skills to another problem with minimal guidance from the therapist. The authors describe how SCDIM is used with a 10-year-old boy whose referred problem was enuresis and the other problem was nail biting. Results: While being treated for enuresis, the child was taught by the therapist self-control skills, which he later applied to resolving his nail-biting problem with minimal help from the therapist. Conclusion: The case study demonstrates how self-control training can promote children’s independent functioning via the ability to apply learned skills to other, future problematic areas.
Nondifferentiable higher order symmetric duality under invexity/generalized invexity

In this paper, we introduce a pair of nondi erentiable higher-order symmetric dual models. Weak, strong and converse duality theorems for this pair are established under the assumption of higher- order invexity/generalized invexity. Self duality has been discussed assuming the function involved to be skew-symmetric. Several known results are obtained as special cases.
Interhelical angles in the solution structure of the oligomerization domain of p53: correction

tasks are described by L. Kaufman, S. Curtis, J. Z. Wang, and S. J. Williamson [Electroencephalogr. Clin. Neurophysiol. 82, 266 (1992)] and M. Fahle, J. Albrecht, H. Buelthoff, and D. Braun [Soc. Neurosci. Abstr. 20, 319 (1994)]. 22. K. Nakamura, A. Mikami, K. Kubota, Neuroreports 3, 117 (1992). 23. Pyramidal cells are modeled as identical integrateand-fire neurons. The membrane potential for each pyramidal cell is given by
Tobacco and Alcohol Use and Medical Symptoms Among Cocaine Dependent Patients

Despite the widespread use of tobacco and alcohol by illicit drug users, the medical effects of smoking and alcohol use remain understudied among such individuals. We investigated the relationship between smoking and alcohol use, and medical symptoms among 125 cocaine dependent patients. Subjects were assessed for smoking, alcohol use, and medical problems using a standardized self-report instrument (MILCOM). Medical symptoms were compared among nonsmokers, moderate smokers (less than 10 cigarettes per day), and heavy smokers (10 or more cigarettes per day) using partial chi-square statistics. Similar comparisons of medical symptoms were made between alcohol users (more than 2 drinks per day) and nonusers. Contrary to our expectations, there were no significant differences between nonsmokers, moderate smokers, and heavy smokers across most of the 14 major medical systems. However, regardless of the level of cocaine use, nonsmokers reported the fewest symptoms on the general subscale (p < 0.05) while moderate smokers reported the most nose/throat and respiratory symptoms (p < 0.01) among the three groups. As expected, significant relationships were observed between medical symptoms and alcohol use. Alcohol users reported more respiratory (p < 0.05), cardiovascular (p < 0.01), digestive (p < 0.05), head/neck (p < 0.001), eye (p < 0.01), and general (p < 0.05) symptoms than nonusers. While the findings generally support the link between alcohol and medical problems, it seems that the relationship between medical symptoms and smoking among cocaine patients may be more complex than that observed in the general population.
Effects of minimally invasive surgery on hypochlorous acid production by neutrophils

The production of chlorinated oxidants such as hypochlorous acid is a central antimicrobial and immunoregulatory function of neutrophils. Neutrophil hypochlorous acid production was compared in patients undergoing uncomplicated laparoscopic surgery (group 1) and those submitted to conventional open surgery (group 2). Preoperative peak hypochlorous acid production was similar in the two groups (mean(s.e.m.) 0·60(0·05) versus 0·69(0·06) nmol/min respectively). In group 2, mean (s.e.m.) neutrophil hypochlorous acid production fell significantly on day 1 after surgery (0·36(0·05) nmol/min; P<0·01) but this did not occur in group 1 (0·63(0·07) nmol/min). By day 6 hypochlorous acid kinetics had returned to preoperative levels in both groups. Minimally invasive surgery is less disruptive of neutrophil function than conventional open procedures.
Jointly optimizing word representations for lexical and sentential tasks with the C-PHRASE model

We introduce C-PHRASE, a distributional semantic model that learns word representations by optimizing context prediction for phrases at all levels in a syntactic tree, from single words to full sentences. C-PHRASE outperforms the state-of-theart C-BOW model on a variety of lexical tasks. Moreover, since C-PHRASE word vectors are induced through a compositional learning objective (modeling the contexts of words combined into phrases), when they are summed, they produce sentence representations that rival those generated by ad-hoc compositional models.
Consumer reactions to crowded retail settings: Cross‐cultural differences between North America and the Middle East

Most of the research dealing with consumer–consumer interactions emphasizes the negative consequences of sharing the service experience with other consumers. Crowding, in particular, represents one of the important environmental factors affecting consumers' retail experience. However, recent studies in the context of hedonic services (e.g., amusement parks, concerts, etc.) have mentioned that crowds may potentially enhance consumers' service experience. The present study aims at demonstrating the presence of these positive consumer responses in a crowded hedonic situation, while investigating the influence of cultural differences in crowd-related issues. With the use of consumers from different cultures (North America and the Middle East), reactions to similarly crowded situations in a hedonic situation are compared. Results suggest that Middle Eastern respondents perceive both a lower level of density and appreciate crowded situations more than their North American counterparts. Potential explanations are discussed. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Toxins-Antitoxins: Plasmid Maintenance, Programmed Cell Death, and Cell Cycle Arrest

Antibiotic resistance, virulence, and other plasmids in bacteria use toxin-antitoxin gene pairs to ensure their persistence during host replication. The toxin-antitoxin system eliminates plasmid-free cells that emerge as a result of segregation or replication defects and contributes to intra- and interspecies plasmid dissemination. Chromosomal homologs of toxin-antitoxin genes are widely distributed in pathogenic and other bacteria and induce reversible cell cycle arrest or programmed cell death in response to starvation or other adverse conditions. The dissection of the interaction of the toxins with intracellular targets and the elucidation of the tertiary structures of toxin-antitoxin complexes have provided exciting insights into toxin-antitoxin behavior.
Compatibility and Regression Testing of COTS-Component-Based Software

Software engineers frequently update COTS components integrated in component-based systems, and can often chose among many candidates produced by different vendors. This paper tackles both the problem of quickly identifying components that are syntactically compatible with the interface specifications, but badly integrate in target systems, and the problem of automatically generating regression test suites. The technique proposed in this paper to automatically generate compatibility and prioritized test suites is based on behavioral models that represent component interactions, and are automatically generated while executing the original test suites on previous versions of target systems.
ESTIMATOR CHOICE AND FISHER'S PARADOX: A REEVALUATION OF THE EVIDENCE

This paper argues that Fisher’s paradox can be explained away in terms of estimator choice. We analyse by means of Monte Carlo experiments the small sample properties of a large set of estimators (including virtually all available single-equation estimators), and compute the critical values based on the empirical distributions of the t-statistics, for a variety of Data Generation Processes (DGPs), allowing for structural breaks, ARCH effects etc. We show that it is precisely the estimator most commonly used in the literature, namely OLS, which (together with the FMLS estimator) has the worst performance in small samples, and produces rejections of the Fisher hypothesis. If one employs the estimators with the most desirable properties (i.e., the smallest downward bias and the minimum shift in the distribution of the associated t-statistics), or if one uses the empirical critical values, the evidence based on US data is strongly supportive of the Fisher relation, consistently with many theoretical models.
Myeloid DAP12-associating lectin (MDL)-1 regulates synovial inflammation and bone erosion associated with autoimmune arthritis

DNAX adaptor protein 12 (DAP12) is a trans-membrane adaptor molecule that transduces activating signals in NK and myeloid cells. Absence of functional Dap12 results in osteoclast defects and bone abnormalities. Because DAP12 has no extracelluar binding domains, it must pair with cell surface receptors for signal transduction. There are at least 15 known DAP12-associating cell surface receptors with distinct temporal and cell type–specific expression patterns. Our aim was to determine which receptors may be important in DAP12-associated bone pathologies. Here, we identify myeloid DAP12-associating lectin (MDL)-1 receptor (also known as CLEC5A) as a key regulator of synovial injury and bone erosion during autoimmune joint inflammation. Activation of MDL-1 leads to enhanced recruitment of inflammatory macrophages and neutrophils to the joint and promotes bone erosion. Functional blockade of MDL-1 receptor via Mdl1 deletion or treatment with MDL-1-Ig fusion protein reduces the clinical signs of autoimmune joint inflammation. These findings suggest that MDL-1 receptor may be a therapeutic target for treatment of immune-mediated skeletal disorders.
A BOLD Perspective on Age-Related Neurometabolic-Flow Coupling and Neural Efficiency Changes in Human Visual Cortex

Age-related performance declines in visual tasks have been attributed to reductions in processing efficiency. The neural basis of these declines has been explored by comparing the blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) index of neural activity in older and younger adults during visual task performance. However, neural activity is one of many factors that change with age and lead to BOLD signal differences. We investigated the origin of age-related BOLD changes by comparing blood flow and oxygen metabolic constituents of BOLD signal. Subjects periodically viewed flickering annuli and pressed a button when detecting luminance changes in a central fixation cross. Using magnetic resonance dual-echo arterial spin labeling and CO2 ingestion, we observed age-equivalent (i.e., similar in older and younger groups) fractional cerebral blood flow (ΔCBF) in the presence of age-related increases in fractional cerebral metabolic rate of oxygen (ΔCMRO2). Reductions in ΔCBF responsiveness to increased ΔCMRO2 in elderly led to paradoxical age-related BOLD decreases. Age-related ΔCBF/ΔCMRO2 ratio decreases were associated with reaction times, suggesting that age-related slowing resulted from less efficient neural activity. We hypothesized that reduced vascular responsiveness to neural metabolic demand would lead to a reduction in ΔCBF/ΔCMRO2. A simulation of BOLD relative to ΔCMRO2 for lower and higher neurometabolic-flow coupling ratios (approximating those for old and young, respectively) indicated less BOLD signal change in old than young in relatively lower CMRO2 ranges, as well as greater BOLD signal change in young compared to old in relatively higher CMRO2 ranges. These results suggest that age-comparative studies relying on BOLD signal might be misinterpreted, as age-related BOLD changes do not merely reflect neural activity changes. Age-related declines in neurometabolic-flow coupling might lead to neural efficiency reductions that can adversely affect visual task performance.
Characterization of a Novel Amylolytic Enzyme Encoded by a Gene from a Soil-Derived Metagenomic Library

ABSTRACT It has been estimated that less than 1% of the microorganisms in nature can be cultivated by conventional techniques. Thus, the classical approach of isolating enzymes from pure cultures allows the analysis of only a subset of the total naturally occurring microbiota in environmental samples enriched in microorganisms. To isolate useful microbial enzymes from uncultured soil microorganisms, a metagenome was isolated from soil samples, and a metagenomic library was constructed by using the pUC19 vector. The library was screened for amylase activity, and one clone from among approximately 30,000 recombinant Escherichia coli clones showed amylase activity. Sequencing of the clone revealed a novel amylolytic enzyme expressed from a novel gene. The putative amylase gene (amyM) was overexpressed and purified for characterization. Optimal conditions for the enzyme activity of the AmyM protein were 42°C and pH 9.0; Ca2+ stabilized the activity. The amylase hydrolyzed soluble starch and cyclodextrins to produce high levels of maltose and hydrolyzed pullulan to panose. The enzyme showed a high transglycosylation activity, making α-(1, 4) linkages exclusively. The hydrolysis and transglycosylation properties of AmyM suggest that it has novel characteristics and can be regarded as an intermediate type of maltogenic amylase, α-amylase, and 4-α-glucanotransferase.
Building Plug-and-Play Smart Homes Using the Atlas Platform 1

Pervasive computing environments such as smart homes require a mechanism to easily integrate and manage numerous and heterogeneous sensors and actuators into the system. Additionally, the smart space should be assembled programmatically by software developers instead of hardwired by engineers and system integrators. However, most available sensor platforms are not adequate for this task. Atlas is a new, commercially available sensor and actuator platform that facilitates self-integration and pervasive space programmability. It allows for cost-effective development, enables extensibility, and simplifies change management in smart spaces. This paper gives a brief overview of the Atlas platform and describes how to use and program Atlas to build a smart space. The paper also presents several use cases of Atlas in the Gator Tech Smart House -- a real-life smart home dedicated to successful aging and independent living research.