Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Living and dying with dignity: a qualitative study of the views of older people in nursing homes.

BACKGROUND most older people living in nursing homes die there. An empirically based model of dignity has been developed, which forms the basis of a brief psychotherapy to help promote dignity and reduce distress at the end of life. OBJECTIVE to explore the generalisability of the dignity model to older people in nursing homes. METHODS qualitative interviews were used to explore views on maintaining dignity of 18 residents of nursing homes. A qualitative descriptive approach was used. The analysis was both deductive (arising from the dignity model) and inductive (arising from participants' views). RESULTS the main categories of the dignity model were broadly supported: illness-related concerns, social aspects of the illness experience and dignity conserving repertoire. However, subthemes relating to death were not supported and two new themes emerged. Some residents saw their symptoms and loss of function as due to old age rather than illness. Although residents did not appear to experience distress due to thoughts of impending death, they were distressed by the multiple losses they had experienced. CONCLUSIONS these findings add to our understanding of the concerns of older people in care homes on maintaining dignity and suggest that dignity therapy may bolster their sense of dignity.
Power, Metaphor, and the Closing of a Social Networking Site

This project expands root-metaphor analysis by examining the closure of a once popular social networking site, advancing critical interrogation of ownership vs. the idea of online spaces as “communities. ” Yahoo! 360° participants used private sphere root-metaphors of home, family, and community constituting a space of intimacy, camaraderie, and care. The closing exposed previously unseen power differentials between participants and Yahoo! Participants reacted by using the metaphor of war and violence to frame the actions of Yahoo!
Mediated group development and dynamics: an examination of video chatting, Twitter, and Facebook in group assignments

ABSTRACT Instructors incorporate technological tools into the classroom to address short attention spans, appeal to technologically savvy students, and to increase engagement. This study used both quantitative descriptive and qualitative embedded assessment data to examine the use of three popular tools (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, and video chatting) in academic task groups. Qualitatively, the students (N = 28) commented on group affect, computer mediated communication (CMC) affect, and barriers and facilitators to both task accomplishment and relational development. Quantitatively, the students who were randomly assigned to one of the tools did not differ in cohesion, motivation, satisfaction, group hate, affective learning, or cognitive learning.
Distribution of almost division points

1. Introduction. In [10], we proved an equidistribution theorem for small points on abelian varieties, based on the ideas in [7] and [8]. In this paper, we want to generalize this result to almost division points. In the following, we describe our main theorem and its application to the discreteness of almost division points on subvarieties. Let A be an abelian variety defined over a number field K. Let x n (n ∈ N) be a sequence of distinct points in A(¯ K). We assume this is a sequence of almost division points, which means lim n→∞ sup σ ∈G x σ n − x n = 0. Here, G = Gal(¯ K/K), and · · is the square root of the Neron-Tate height function, with respect to some ample and symmetric line bundle on A. Obviously, the notion of almost division does not depend on the choice of the Neron-Tate height functions. If we drop the limit in the above equality, then all x n are division points for A(K). We fix an embedding σ : ¯ K → C; then A(¯ K) can be considered a subgroup of A(C) := A σ (C). The Galois orbits x G n therefore define a sequence δx G n of probability measures on A(C); if f is a continuous function on A(C), then A(C) f δx G n = 1 x G n y∈x G n f (y). In this paper, we address the convergence of δx G n. More precisely, we want to know whether there is a measure dµ on A(C) such that, for any continuous function f on A(C), lim n→∞ A(C) f dx G n = A(C) f dµ. Obviously, such a measure dµ does not exist in general; but, since the space of the continuous functions on A(C) can be topologically generated by countably many functions, dµ does exist if (x n , n ∈ N) is replaced with a subsequence. So, our purpose becomes to describe the following: • the property of the sequence (x n , n ∈ N) which can be obtained by replacing it with a subsequence; • the measure dµ. Let B be an abelian subvariety of A. We define the degree d B (x n) of x n modulo B as the degree [K(¯ x n) : K], where ¯ x n is the image of x n in A/B. …
Promise and Challenge of DNA Barcoding in Venus Slipper (Paphiopedilum)

Orchidaceae are one of the largest families of flowering plants, with over 27,000 species described and all orchids are listed in CITES. Moreover, the seedlings of orchid species from the same genus are similar. The objective of DNA barcoding is rapid, accurate, and automated species identification, which may be used to identify illegally traded endangered species from vegetative specimens of Paphiopedilum (Venus slipper), a flagship group for plant conservation with high ornamental and commercial values. Here, we selected eight chloroplast barcodes and nrITS to evaluate their suitability in Venus slippers. The results indicate that all tested barcodes had no barcoding gap and the core plant barcodes showed low resolution for the identification of Venus slippers (18.86%). Of the single-locus barcodes, nrITS is the most efficient for the species identification of the genus (52.27%), whereas matK + atpF-atpH is the most efficient multi-locus combination (28.97%). Therefore, we recommend the combination of matK + atpF-atpH + ITS as a barcode for Venus slippers. Furthermore, there is an upper limit of resolution of the candidate barcodes, and only half of the taxa with multiple samples were identified successfully. The low efficiency of these candidate barcodes in Venus slippers may be caused by relatively recent speciation, the upper limit of the barcodes, and/or the sampling density. Although the discriminatory power is relatively low, DNA barcoding may be a promising tool to identify species involved in illegal trade, which has broad applications and is valuable for orchid conservation.
Immune checkpoint inhibitors: the new frontier in non-small-cell lung cancer treatment

Lung cancer is the major cause for cancer-related death in the US. Although advances in chemotherapy and targeted therapy have improved the outcome of metastatic non-small-cell lung cancer, its prognosis remains dismal. A deeper understanding of the complex interaction between the immune system and tumor microenvironment has identified immune checkpoint inhibitors as new avenue of immunotherapy. Rather than acting directly on the tumor, these therapies work by removing the inhibition exerted by tumor cell or other immune cells on the immune system, promoting antitumoral immune response. To date, two programmed death-1 inhibitors, namely nivolumab and pembrolizumab, have received the US Food and Drug Administration approval for the treatment of advanced non-small-cell lung cancer that failed platinum-based chemotherapy. This manuscript provides a brief overview of the pathophysiology of cancer immune evasion, summarizes pertinent data on completed and ongoing clinical trials involving checkpoint inhibitors, discusses the different strategies to optimize their function, and outlines various challenges that are faced in this promising yet evolving field.
The Shadow of the Past: Does Personality Change After Lifetime Traumas?

Using large-scale survey data from the four 2006-2012 waves of the US Health and Retirement Study, we shed light on the stability of personality traits by exploring the relationship between individuals’ personality and the occurrence of negative life events out of their control. Our results show that, after controlling for standard socio-demographic variables, i) Openness to Experience is positively correlated with having been victim of physical attacks, personal or familiar illnesses or accidents; ii) Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism are also correlated with negative life events; iii) Conscientiousness is unaltered by traumas; iv) a child death has no bearings on personality. We also offer evidence that the timing of the event matters, as a physical attack becomes relevant only after 20 or more years. Our findings indicate that, even though one’s personality traits are relatively stable, they are not set in stone, as some negative life events can affect one’s personality.
Dynamic Conditional Beta

In empirical finance and in time series applied economics in general, the least squares model is the workhorse. In class there is much discussion of the assumptions of exogeneity, homoskedasticity and serial correlation. However in practice it may be unstable regression coefficients that are most troubling. Rarely is there a credible economic rationale for the assumption that the slope coefficients are time invariant. Econometricians have developed a variety of statistical methodologies for dealing with time series regression models with time varying parameters. The three most common are rolling window estimates, interaction with trends, splines or economic variables, and state space models where the parameters are treated as a state variable to be estimated by some version of the Kalman Filter. Each approach makes very specific assumptions on the path of the unknown coefficients. The first approach specifies how fast the parameters can evolve, and by using least squares on each moving window, employs an inconsistent set of assumptions. The second specifies a family of deterministic paths for the coefficients that may have undesirable or inconsistent implications particularly when extrapolated. The third requires specifying a
The Adult Parental Acceptance–Rejection Questionnaire: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Italian and American Short Forms

SYNOPSIS Objective. The aims of this article were to test the measurement invariance of the Italian and American versions of the Adult Parental Acceptance–Rejection Questionnaire and to compare adults’ remembrances of parental acceptance–rejection across the two nations. Design. The Adult Parental Acceptance–Rejection Questionnaire was administered to 564 Italian adults (M = 23.04 years) and 509 U.S. American adults (M = 22.09 years), matched by gender and age. The measurement invariance of the Parental Acceptance–Rejection Questionnaire was first established by means of multi-group confirmatory factor analyses. Results. The Parental Acceptance–Rejection Questionnaire is fully invariant across the two cultures, and adults organize their remembrances of mothers’ and fathers’ parenting around the same four classes of behavior in both nations. Italian and American adults tend to remember their parents as having been quite loving, with Italian parents being remembered as slightly less warm and more hostile than American parents. Conclusions. The full invariance of the Parental Acceptance–Rejection Questionnaire across the two populations represents additional strong evidence for the universality of interpersonal acceptance–rejection theory. Measurement invariance also confirmed that the Adult Parental Acceptance–Rejection Questionnaire (short form) can be used to measure adult remembrances of parental acceptance–rejection across these two populations.
Entrepreneurship and Advanced Technical Knowledge

This paper proposes a theory according to which one’s capability to deal with uncertainty arising from the adoption of new technology is a key determinant of value creation in entrepreneurship. In a unified conceptual framework, we demonstrate that entrepreneurs possessing sufficiently high skills in and knowledge about advanced technology earn a positive premium as compared to similar paid workers, but entrepreneurs who locate too far away from their set of skills in the technology space earn negative returns. The theoretical prediction about the bi-modal nature of the entrepreneurship premium is tested against data. Our empirical analysis, utilizing information from Scientists and Engineers Statistical Data System (SESTAT), indicates that entrepreneurial rewards crucially depend on the capability to adopt and implement advanced technical knowledge.
Identification of a Gene Sharing a Promoter and Peroxisome Proliferator-Response Elements With Acyl-CoA Oxidase Gene

Many mammalian genes are clustered on the genomes, and hence the genes in the same cluster can be regulated through a common regulatory element. We indeed showed previously that the perilipin/PEX11α gene pair is transactivated tissue-selectively by PPARγ and PPARα, respectively, through a common binding site. In the present study, we identified a gene, named GSPA, neighboring a canonical PPAR target, acyl-CoA oxidase (AOX) gene. GSPA expression was induced by a peroxisome proliferator, Wy14,643, in the liver of wild-type mice, but not PPARα-null mice. GSPA and AOX share the promoter and two peroxisome proliferator-response elements. GSPA mRNA was also found in the heart and skeletal muscle, as well as 3T3-L1 cells. GSPA encodes a protein of 161 amino acids that is enriched in 3T3-L1 cells. Even other gene pairs might be regulated through common sequence elements, and conversely it would be interesting how each gene is aptly regulated in clusters.
Regional Differences in Hospitalizations and Cholecystectomies for Biliary Dyskinesia

Background/Aims Published studies suggest that socioeconomic factors contribute to increasing cholecystectomy rates for biliary dyskinesia (BD). The aim of this study was to identify factors driving admissions and operations for BD by examining regional variability in hospitalizations and cholecystectomies for this disorder. Methods Annual hospitalizations and cholecystectomy rates for biliary diseases were assessed using the State Inpatient Databases of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality based on diagnosis codes for biliary dyskinesia, cholecystolithiasis and cholecystitis. Results Annual admissions for BD varied nearly sevenfold among different states within the United States. Hospitalizations for gallstone disease and its complication showed less variability, differing 2-fold between states. Nearly 70% of admissions for BD and about 85% of admissions for gallstone disease resulted in cholecystectomies. Higher admission rates for BD were best predicted by high overall hospitalization rates, admission rate for gallstone disease and the physician workforce within a state. Cholecystectomy rates for BD were higher in states with low population density and high rates of cholecystectomy for gallstone disease. Conclusions These data suggest that established medical practice patterns significantly contribute to the variability in admissions and operations for biliary dyskinesia. The findings also indicate that lower thresholds for operative interventions are an important determinant in the approach to this disorder. Considering the benign course of functional illnesses, the bar for surgical interventions should be raised rather than lowered; in addition active conservative treatment options should be developed for these patients.
Authentic leadership and employee creativity: testing the multilevel mediation model

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to test a multilevel framework to further explicate how team leaders’ authentic leadership is related to their followers’ individual creativity. Design/methodology/approach This study is based on a questionnaire survey/analysis of analyses of multisource and lagged data from 63 team leaders and 428 followers in Taiwan. Findings The findings demonstrated that leader-member exchange (LMX) and team psychological safe climate mediated the positive relationship of authentic leadership on followers thriving at work. Furthermore, employee thriving at work sequentially mediated the positive relationship between authentic leadership and employee creativity. The author also found that indirect relationship of LMX with employee creativity through thriving at work was stronger when authentic leadership was higher. Originality/value The authors contribute to the existing understanding that authentic leadership relates to individual creativity through three multilevel mechanisms: leaders modeling their authenticity to develop and maintain their dyad-level exchange relationships with their followers (LMX), motivating the team, captured by team-level psychological safe climate and its members, reflected by employee-level thriving at work, and facilitating the relationship between LMX and employee thriving at work.
Students’ Perspective on Teacher Performance and Teacher Effectiveness

Using the mixed method research design, this study attempted to determine the relationship between teacher performance and teacher effectiveness . Two hundred academics were evaluated by 2000 college students from two autonomous universities in Mindanao, Philippines. The two survey questionnaires, namely: Student Assessment of Teacher Performance (SATP) and Teacher Effectiveness Inventory (TEI) served as the main sources of data. While interviews and focus group discussions (FGDs) were used to validate the quantitative data provided by the respondents, correlation statistics was used to test the hypothesis. With regard to the findings, it was found out that teacher performance is strongly correlated with teacher effectiveness . This correlation implies that students can best tell whether or not a teacher is effective. What teachers do and how things are done inside the classroom based on performance standards determine teacher effectiveness . There is a need to develop a program that intends to enhance teacher effectiveness . Likewise, it is imperative that institutions of higher learning evaluate their organizations’ processes of assessing teacher performance and teacher effectiveness . Keywords: Management, teacher performance, teacher effectiveness, mixed method, Philippines
A procedure for setting up high-throughput nanolitre crystallization experiments. II. Crystallization results

An initial tranche of results from day-to-day use of a robotic system for setting up 100 nl-scale vapour-diffusion sitting-drop protein crystallizations has been surveyed. The database of over 50 unrelated samples represents a snapshot of projects currently at the stage of crystallization trials in Oxford research groups and as such encompasses a broad range of proteins. The results indicate that the nanolitre-scale methodology consistently identifies more crystallization conditions than traditional hand-pipetting-style methods; however, in a number of cases successful scale-up is then problematic. Crystals grown in the initial 100 nl-scale drops have in the majority of cases allowed useful characterization of x-ray diffraction, either in-house or at synchrotron beamlines. For a significant number of projects, full x-ray diffraction data sets have been collected to 3 A resolution or better (either in-house or at the synchrotron) from crystals grown at the 100 nl scale. To date, five structures have been determined by molecular replacement directly from such data and a further three from scale-up of conditions established at the nanolitre scale.
Regulation of Estrogen Sulfotransferase Expression by Confluence of MCF10A Breast Epithelial Cells: Role of the Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor

Estrogen sulfotransferase (SULT1E1) catalyzes the sulfonation of estrogens, which limits estrogen mitogenicity. We recently reported that SULT1E1 expression is low in preconfluent MCF10A human breast epithelial cells but increases when the cells become confluent. Pulse-chase labeling experiments with 5-bromouridine demonstrated that the confluence-mediated increase in SULT1E1 expression was due to increased mRNA synthesis. Because aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AhR) activation has been shown to suppress SULT1E1 expression and loss of cell-cell contact has been shown to activate the AhR in other cell types, we tested whether the confluence-associated changes in SULT1E1 expression were mediated by the AhR. Relative to confluent MCF10A cells, preconfluent cells had higher levels of CYP1A1 mRNA and greater activation of an AhR-responsive luciferase reporter, demonstrating that the AhR was active in the preconfluent cells. AhR and aryl hydrocarbon receptor nuclear translocator mRNA and protein levels were also higher in preconfluent than in confluent cultures. Treatment of preconfluent cells with the AhR antagonist, 3′-methoxy-4′-nitroflavone (MNF), or AhR knockdown significantly increased SULT1E1 expression. MCF10A cells stably transfected with a luciferase reporter containing ∼7 kilobases of the SULT1E1 5′-flanking region showed both MNF- and confluence-inducible luciferase expression. Preconfluent cells transiently transfected with the reporter showed both MNF treatment- and AhR knockdown-mediated luciferase induction, but mutation of a computationally predicted dioxin response element (DRE) at nucleotide (nt) −3476 did not attenuate these effects. These results demonstrate that SULT1E1 expression in MCF10A cells is transcriptionally regulated by confluence through a suppressive action of the AhR, which is not mediated through a DRE at nt −3476.
A Software Cache Partitioning System for Hash-Based Caches

Contention on the shared Last-Level Cache (LLC) can have a fundamental negative impact on the performance of applications executed on modern multicores. An interesting software approach to address LLC contention issues is based on page coloring, which is a software technique that attempts to achieve performance isolation by partitioning a shared cache through careful memory management. The key assumption of traditional page coloring is that the cache is physically addressed. However, recent multicore architectures (e.g., Intel Sandy Bridge and later) switched from a physical addressing scheme to a more complex scheme that involves a hash function. Traditional page coloring is ineffective on these recent architectures. In this article, we extend page coloring to work on these recent architectures by proposing a mechanism able to handle their hash-based LLC addressing scheme. Just as for traditional page coloring, the goal of this new mechanism is to deliver performance isolation by avoiding contention on the LLC, thus enabling predictable performance. We implement this mechanism in the Linux kernel, and evaluate it using several benchmarks from the SPEC CPU2006 and PARSEC 3.0 suites. Our results show that our solution is able to deliver performance isolation to concurrently running applications by enforcing partitioning of a Sandy Bridge LLC, which traditional page coloring techniques are not able to handle.
Line detection with adaptive random samples

This paper examines the detection of parameterized shapes in multidimensional noisy grayscale images. A novel shape detection algorithm utilizing random sample theory is presented. Although the method can be generalized, line detection is detailed. Each line in the image corresponds to a point in the line parameter space. The method creates hypothesis lines by randomly selecting parameter space points and tests the surrounding regions for acceptable linear features. The information obtained from each randomly selected line is used to update the parameter distribution, which reducesi the required number of random trials. The selected lines are re-estimated within a smaller search space with a more accurate algorithm like the Hough transform (HT). Faster results are obtained compared to HT, without losing performance as in other faster HT variants. The method is robust and suitable for binary or grayscale images. Results are given from both simulated and experimental subsurface seismic and ground penetrating radar (GPR) images when searching for features like pipes or tunnels.