Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Frugalists, anti-consumers, and prosumers: Chinese philosophical perspectives on consumerism

Abstract: This chapter is a survey of classical Chinese philosophical views of consumption. It mainly focusses on Confucianism, but includes brief treatments of Mohism and Daoism as well. It begins by reviewing earlier discussions of Confucianism and capitalism, which were initiated by Max Weber in his well-known comparative analysis of the Protestant Ethic and the religions of Asia. While Weber concluded that Confucianism was unlikely to stimulate the formation of the kind of industrial capitalism that came to the fore in Europe, some later thinkers sought to contradict his thesis by arguing that Confucianism was a seminal factor in the speedy modernization process of East Asian economies in the twentieth century. As this chapter will show, however, these views have been motivated by suspect intentions and are therefore questionable. The discussion will then move to the classical Confucian and some neo-Confucian texts in order to extract the general Confucian views on consumption, revealing an unmistakable and consistent tendency to consider material wealth and all that it entails as subordinate to virtue and morality. An even stronger aversion to consumption is expressed by Mohist and Daoist thinkers. The conclusion is that Chinese philosophy is overall more likely to discourage than to stimulate consumption, which may possibly be a factor in the low domestic consumption in contemporary China.
Reduced Staphylococcus aureus biofilm formation in the presence of chitosan-coated iron oxide nanoparticles

Staphylococcus aureus can adhere to most foreign materials and form biofilm on the surface of medical devices. Biofilm infections are difficult to resolve. The goal of this in vitro study was to explore the use of chitosan-coated nanoparticles to prevent biofilm formation. For this purpose, S. aureus was seeded in 96-well plates to incubate with chitosan-coated iron oxide nanoparticles in order to study the efficiency of biofilm formation inhibition. The biofilm bacteria count was determined using the spread plate method; biomass formation was measured using the crystal violet staining method. Confocal laser scanning microscopy and scanning electron microscopy were used to study the biofilm formation. The results showed decreased viable bacteria numbers and biomass formation when incubated with chitosan-coated iron oxide nanoparticles at all test concentrations. Confocal laser scanning microscopy showed increased dead bacteria and thinner biofilm when incubated with nanoparticles at a concentration of 500 µg/mL. Scanning electron microscopy revealed that chitosan-coated iron oxide nanoparticles inhibited biofilm formation in polystyrene plates. Future studies should be performed to study these nanoparticles for anti-infective use.
Event-Driven Networked Predictive Control

In networked control systems, random transmission delay significantly degrades the control performance and can cause system instability. To address this problem, the method of networked predictive control (NPC) has been proposed, which takes advantage of the feature of the network that a packet of data can be transferred simultaneously. At the controller side, future control sequences for every possible time delay are generated, which are then packed into a single packet and transmitted to the plant side. The plant side receives the packet and chooses the proper control signal based on the time delay measurement. However, this scheme needs an accurate plant mathematical model and the measurement of time delay. In this paper, a new event-driven NPC method is considered where the control signal is selected according to the plant output rather than the time delay measurement. The new method does not need any time delay measurement and can significantly improve the system performance in the presence of model uncertainty. The stability of the system when the method is used is analyzed. To illustrate the improved performance using the proposed method, the results from both simulations and real Internet-based networked experiments for a servo system are presented
Social and genetic characteristics of geographically isolated populations in the ant Formica cinerea

The ant Formica cinerea in northern Europe has geographically isolated populations that were examined using five microsatellite loci. The populations differ widely regarding the social organization of colonies. Based on genetic relatedness (r) among worker nest mates, the populations were classified as M type with monogynous (single queen) colonies (r > 0.59), as P type with polygynous colonial networks (r < 0.1), or as intermediate with weakly polygynous colonies (0.16 < r < 0.47). The social types showed weak geographical clustering, but the overall distribution indicated that the shift between the social types has occurred several times. The geographically isolated populations had slightly reduced levels of genetic diversity compared to populations from areas where the species is abundant and continuously distributed. Many of the isolated populations consisted of monogynous or weakly polygynous colonies, making their effective population sizes small, and some of them also showed weak bottleneck effects. The overall level of microsatellite diversity within populations was relatively high and differentiation among populations low, indicating recent connections. Isolation of populations may thus be a new phenomenon resulting from reduction of suitable habitats. At the local level, we obtained limited support from a group of nearby subpopulations in southern Finland to the hypothesis that the P type is connected to restricted dispersal. Other P type populations did not, however, show similar elevated levels of differentiation.
Early Left-Hemispheric Dysfunction of Face Processing in Congenital Prosopagnosia: An MEG Study

Background Congenital prosopagnosia is a severe face perception impairment which is not acquired by a brain lesion and is presumably present from birth. It manifests mostly by an inability to recognise familiar persons. Electrophysiological research has demonstrated the relevance to face processing of a negative deflection peaking around 170 ms, labelled accordingly as N170 in the electroencephalogram (EEG) and M170 in magnetoencephalography (MEG). The M170 was shown to be sensitive to the inversion of faces and to familiarity-two factors that are assumed to be crucial for congenital prosopagnosia. In order to locate the cognitive dysfunction and its neural correlates, we investigated the time course of neural activity in response to these manipulations. Methodology Seven individuals with congenital prosopagnosia and seven matched controls participated in the experiment. To explore brain activity with high accuracy in time, we recorded evoked magnetic fields (275 channel whole head MEG) while participants were looking at faces differing in familiarity (famous vs. unknown) and orientation (upright vs. inverted). The underlying neural sources were estimated by means of the least square minimum-norm-estimation (L2-MNE) approach. Principal Findings The behavioural data corroborate earlier findings on impaired configural processing in congenital prosopagnosia. For the M170, the overall results replicated earlier findings, with larger occipito-temporal brain responses to inverted than upright faces, and more right- than left-hemispheric activity. Compared to controls, participants with congenital prosopagnosia displayed a general decrease in brain activity, primarily over left occipitotemporal areas. This attenuation did not interact with familiarity or orientation. Conclusions The study substantiates the finding of an early involvement of the left hemisphere in symptoms of prosopagnosia. This might be related to an efficient and overused featural processing strategy which serves as a compensation of impaired configural processing.
3D vs. 2D: On the Importance of Registration for Hallucinating Faces Under Unconstrained Poses

Face Hallucination (FH) differs from generic single-image super-resolution (SR) algorithms in its specific domain of application. By exploiting the common structures of human faces, magnification of lower resolution images can be achieved. Despite the growing interest in recent years, considerably less attention is paid to a crucial step in FH -- registration of facial images. In this work, registration techniques employed in the literature are first summarized and the importance of using well-aligned training and test images is demonstrated. A novel method to inversely map the high-resolution (HR) 3D training texture to the low-resolution (LR) 2D test image in arbitrary poses is then presented, which prevents information loss in LR images and is thus beneficial to SR. The effectiveness of our 3D approach is evaluated on the Multi-PIE and the PUT face databases. Superior qualitative and quantitative FH results to the state-of-the-art methods in all tested poses prove the necessity of accurate registration in FH. The merit of 3D FH in generating super-resolved frontal faces is also verified, revealing 30% improvement in face recognition over the 2D approach under 30° of yaw rotation on the Multi-PIE dataset.
Soft Switching Behavior of IGCT for Resonant Conversion

Application of the Integrated Gate Commutated Thyristor as a switching element in the medium voltage series resonant converter for DC-DC conversion offers the opportunity for increased conversion efficiency and higher switching frequency of the converter. Low current turn-off, already discussed in the previous works, shows promising results for increasing operating frequency of the converter, thus enabling the use of physically smaller components in the design, decreasing the total volume and weight of the solution. This paper presents the results of the switch characterization under single resonant current pulse operation, providing further insight into the turn-off process, relevant timing intervals and resulting losses, supported by TCAD simulations and experimental results.
Effects of dietary fibre and tea catechin, ingredients of the Japanese diet, on equol production and bone mineral density in isoflavone-treated ovariectomised mice

Equol is a metabolite of the isoflavone daidzein (Dz) and is produced by the bacterial microflora in the distal intestine and colon. Some epidemiological studies have reported an association between increased equol production and intakes of green tea or dietary fibre, which are ingredients of the standard Japanese diet. We examined the effects of a diet supplemented with Dz and tea catechin or dietary fibre on equol production and bone mineral density in ovariectomised (OVX) mice. Female mice of the ddY strain were either sham operated or OVX. OVX mice were fed a control diet, a 0·1 % Dz-supplemented diet or a 0·1 % Dz diet supplemented with one of the food components commonly consumed in the Japanese diet. The mice were given 1 % tea catechin (w/w) as part of the diet in Expt 1 or 5 % polydextrose (PD) and 5 % raffinose (Raf) (w/w) as part of the diet in Expt 2. Catechin reduced serum equol levels and attenuated the beneficial effect of Dz on femoral bone loss. The soluble dietary fibres PD and Raf stimulated equol production, and enhanced the bone-protective effects of Dz on femoral bone. These results suggest that dietary fibre, in particular, PD, may alter the bioavailability of isoflavones and prevent osteopenia in OVX mice.
Plant diversity and root traits benefit physical properties key to soil function in grasslands

Abstract Plant diversity loss impairs ecosystem functioning, including important effects on soil. Most studies that have explored plant diversity effects belowground, however, have largely focused on biological processes. As such, our understanding of how plant diversity impacts the soil physical environment remains limited, despite the fundamental role soil physical structure plays in ensuring soil function and ecosystem service provision. Here, in both a glasshouse and a long‐term field study, we show that high plant diversity in grassland systems increases soil aggregate stability, a vital structural property of soil, and that root traits play a major role in determining diversity effects. We also reveal that the presence of particular plant species within mixed communities affects an even wider range of soil physical processes, including hydrology and soil strength regimes. Our results indicate that alongside well‐documented effects on ecosystem functioning, plant diversity and root traits also benefit essential soil physical properties.
Influence of the dissipation in AC measurements of the quantized Hall resistance

A systematic investigation of the current and frequency dependence of the quantum Hall resistance (QHR) and of the longitudinal resistivity has been carried out at low temperature at the center of the plateau i=2. The deviation of the QHR from the von Klitzing constant is found to be proportional to the longitudinal resistivity and extrapolates to zero, within the measurement uncertainty, when the dissipation in the two-dimensional electron gas vanishes.
Memetic algorithms for timetabling

Course timetabling problems are real world constraint optimization problems that are often coped with educational institutions, such as universities or high schools. In this paper, we present a variety of new operators that can be also applied in evolutionary algorithms for other timetabling problems, such as, exam timetabling. Operators include violation directed mutations, crossovers, and a successful violation directed hierarchical hill climbing method. Tests are performed on a small portion of a real data and results are promising.
Relationship between serum levels of some acute-phase proteins and stage of disease and performance status in patients with lung cancer.

BACKGROUND Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death in both developed and developing countries. The aim of the present study was to compare serum levels of alpha1-acid glycoprotein, ceruloplasmin, transferrin, ferritin, and albumin with tumor stage, distant metastasis, lymphadenopa thy, and patient performance status in patients with non-small-cell lung cancer and those with small-cell lung cancer. MATERIAL/METHODS The study was carried out in 46 patients with primary lung cancer (39 men and 7 women) and 34 healthy subjects as the control group. RESULTS Serum ceruloplasmin and ferritin levels were higher and transferrin and albumin levels were lower both in non-small-cell and small-cell lung cancer patients than in controls. The levels of alpha1-acid glycoprotein and ferritin associated with both performance status and lymph node metastasis. CONCLUSIONS Measurement of alpha1-acid glycoprotein and ferritin levels could be a useful prognostic factor in addition to performance status in patient with primary lung cancer.
Factors affecting quality of life in a multiracial sample of older persons with schizophrenia.

OBJECTIVE There have been few studies of quality of life (QOL) among older persons with schizophrenia. The authors used an adaptation of Lehman's QOL model to examine factors that impact QOL in a multiracial urban sample of older persons with schizophrenia. METHODS The schizophrenia group consisted of 198 community-dwelling persons aged 55 years and older who developed schizophrenia before age 45 years. A community comparison group (N = 113) was recruited using randomly selected block-groups. The QOL model consisted of four variable sets (demographic, objective, clinical, and subjective) comprising 19 independent variables. The dependent variable was the Quality of Life Index (QLI). RESULTS The schizophrenia group had a significantly lower QLI score than the comparison group (21.7 versus 24.2; t = -5.36, df = 362, p = 0.001). Within the schizophrenia group, in bivariate analyses, 11 of 19 variables were significantly related to QLI. In regression analysis, six variables were significantly associated with the QLI: fewer depressive symptoms, more cognitive deficits, fewer acute life stressors, fewer medication side effects, lower financial strain, and better self-rated health. The model explained 55% of the variance in QLI, with the demographic, objective, psychiatric illness, and subjective variable sets accounting for 6%, 35%, 9%, and 5% of the variance, respectively. With the exception of the demographic set, each of the variable sets added significant variance. CONCLUSION Our data confirmed earlier reports that older persons with schizophrenia have lower self-reported quality of life than their age-matched peers. Our findings suggest that the factors impacting on QOL are potentially ameliorable and therefore provide an opportunity to enhance the well-being of this population.
Cell Therapy for Heart Failure: A Comprehensive Overview of Experimental and Clinical Studies, Current Challenges, and Future Directions

Despite significant therapeutic advances, the prognosis of patients with heart failure (HF) remains poor, and current therapeutic approaches are palliative in the sense that they do not address the underlying problem of the loss of cardiac tissue. Stem cell–based therapies have the potential to fundamentally transform the treatment of HF by achieving what would have been unthinkable only a few years ago—myocardial regeneration. For the first time since cardiac transplantation, a therapy is being developed to eliminate the underlying cause of HF, not just to achieve damage control. Since the initial report of cell therapy (skeletal myoblasts) in HF in 1998, research has proceeded at lightning speed, and numerous preclinical and clinical studies have been performed that support the ability of various stem cell populations to improve cardiac function and reduce infarct size in both ischemic and nonischemic cardiomyopathy. Nevertheless, we are still at the dawn of this therapeutic revolution. Many important issues (eg, mechanism(s) of action of stem cells, long-term engraftment, optimal cell type(s), and dose, route, and frequency of cell administration) remain to be resolved, and no cell therapy has been conclusively shown to be effective. The purpose of this article is to critically review the large body of work performed with respect to the use of stem/progenitor cells in HF, both at the experimental and clinical levels, and to discuss current controversies, unresolved issues, challenges, and future directions. The review focuses specifically on chronic HF; other settings (eg, acute myocardial infarction, refractory angina) are not discussed.
Determinants of a Simulated Cross-Country Skiing Sprint Competition using V2 Skating Technique on Roller Skis

Mikkola, J, Laaksonen, M, Holmberg, H-C, Vesterinen, V, and Nummela, A. Determinants of a simulated cross-country skiing sprint competition using V2 skating technique on roller skis. J Strength Cond Res 24(4): 920-928, 2010-The present study investigated the performance-predicting factors of a simulated cross-country (XC) skiing sprint competition on roller skis, on a slow surface. Sixteen elite male XC skiers performed a simulated sprint competition (4 × 850 m heat with a 20-minute recovery) using V2 skating technique on an indoor tartan track. Heat velocities, oxygen consumption, and peak lactate were measured during or after the heats. Maximal skiing velocity was measured by performing a 30-m speed test. Explosive and maximal force production in the upper body was determined by bench press (BP). Subjects also performed maximal anaerobic skiing test (MAST) and the 2 × 2-km double poling (DP) test. The maximal velocity of MAST (VMAST) and velocities at 3 (V3), 5 (V5), 7 (V7) mmol·L−1 lactate levels in MAST were determined. In the 2 × 2-km test, DP economy (&OV0312;O2SUBDP) and maximal 2-km DP velocity (VDP2KM) were determined. The best single performance-predicting factors for the sprint performance were VDP2KM (r = 0.73, p < 0.01), V7 (r = 0.70, p < 0.01), and &OV0312;O2SUBDP (r = −0.70, p < 0.01). Faster skiers in sprint simulation had a higher absolute &OV0312;O2 (L·min−1) (p < 0.05-0.01) during sprint heats, and higher anaerobic skiing power (VMAST, p < 0.05) and better anaerobic skiing economy (V3, V5, V7, p < 0.05-0.001) than slower skiers. Faster skiers were also stronger in BP, with regard to both absolute (p < 0.01) and relative (p < 0.05) values. In addition, anaerobic characteristics seem to be of importance at the beginning of the XC skiing sprint competition, whereas the aerobic characteristics become more important as the XC skiing sprint competition progressed. This study indicates that sprint skiers should emphasize sport-specific upper body training, and training skiing economy at high speeds.
Depression severity is associated with increased risk behaviors and decreased CD4 cell counts

Depression is a common comorbidity among HIV-infected individuals. We studied the relationship between depressive symptoms, risk behaviors (risky-sexual behavior, tobacco, alcohol, and illicit drug use) and HIV outcomes. This cross-sectional study conducted in 2009 at the Washington University HIV Clinic included screening for depression with patient health questionnaire, survey of sexual behavior, illicit drug, alcohol, and tobacco use within 30 days. Sociodemographics, plasma HIV RNA levels, CD4 cell counts, and sexually transmitted disease test results were obtained from medical records. Multivariate logistic and linear regression models were used to assess the association between depressive symptoms severity and risk behaviors, HIV outcomes and combination antiretroviral therapy (cART) adherence. A total of 624 persons completed the assessment of whom 432 (69%) were male and 426 (68%) African-American. The median CD4 cell count was 410 cells/mm3 and 479 persons (77%) were on cART of whom 112 (23%) had HIV RNA level > 400 copies/mL. Overall, 96 (15%) had symptoms of major depressive disorder. Depressive symptom severity was associated with increased likelihood of high-risk drinking (odds ratio [OR], 2.4; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.1–5.1), current tobacco use (OR, 1.8; 95% CI, 1.1–2.9), illicit drug use (OR, 1.7; 95% CI, 1.0–2.8), and risky-sexual behavior (OR, 1.5; 95% CI, 0.8–2.7). Suboptimal cART adherence (visual analog scale < 95%) was also associated with depressive symptoms severity (p < 0.05). After adjustment for age, sex, race, receipt of cART, and cART adherence, depressive symptoms severity was independently associated with lower CD4 cell count (p < 0.05) but not with higher HIV RNA level (p = 0.39). Depression adversely affects HIV-infected individuals, requiring greater effort at utilizing multidisciplinary interventions.
Easy-First Dependency Parsing of Modern Hebrew

We investigate the performance of an easy-first, non-directional dependency parser on the Hebrew Dependency treebank. We show that with a basic feature set the greedy parser's accuracy is on a par with that of a first-order globally optimized MST parser. The addition of morphological-agreement feature improves the parsing accuracy, making it on-par with a second-order globally optimized MST parser. The improvement due to the morphological agreement information is persistent both when gold-standard and automatically-induced morphological information is used.