Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Analytic Model for Performance Analysis of Concurrency Control Strategies in Mobile Environments

Many performance studies have shown that locking based protocols outperform other concurrency control protocols in most database configurations and workloads. However, in mobile environments there are many special characteristics, such as long network delay and the expensive wireless communication. Besides, transactions may be aborted due to forced termination when handoff occurs for the consideration of concurrency control. The performances of concurrency control strategies should be re-evaluated in such environments. In this paper, we develop an analytic model to evaluate the performances of concurrency control strategies. The accuracy of this model is verified by simulation. According to the experimental results we show that the behavior of mobile users and the degree of data contention have a significant impact on the relative performances of the concurrency control strategies. In particular, we point out that the optimistic concurrency control strategy outperforms other strategies over a wide range of system configurations. We also explain why the optimistic algorithm is well suited in mobile environments.
Analysing China's Drive for Olympic Success in 2008

The eyes of the world will be on Beijing in 2008 as China hosts the summer Olympic Games for the first time. A major criterion of success for China will be the ability of its athletes to win (large numbers of) Olympic medals. Yet, although there is a growing literature that explores the experiences of Western nations in their attempts to construct systems for supporting elite (Olympic) athlete development, we have very little in-depth information in this regard about China. Therefore, drawing on a framework of ten elements considered crucial for Olympic success in the West, this article explores China's construction of an elite development system as it strives for Olympic glory in Beijing. Our analysis reveals that there is a remarkable degree of similarity in the mechanisms in place in China with those evident in (Western) nations as diverse as Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. At the same time, however, it is also evident that subtle ‘domestic' (national) variations are apparent in the implementation of these mechanisms in China, thus indicating the significance of a nation's political and cultural histories and traditions.
School-Wide Positive Behavior Support in an Alternative School Setting

Students with disabilities who display serious (e.g., dangerous) problem behaviors are frequently educated in alternative school settings. Although there is considerable research on intervention approaches (e.g., function-based support) to support individual students with challenging behaviors, there is a lack of research on schoolwide intervention approaches to support all students in alternative school settings. A 3-year, descriptive, single-subject case study (AB design) was conducted to examine the impact of introducing School-Wide Positive Behavior Support (SWPBS) into an alternative education setting. Results indicate that introducing SWPBS is associated with an overall decrease in serious incidents and an increase in the percentage of students who refrain from serious physical aggression. The limitations and implications of this study are described.
Relating psychological sense of community to social climate characteristics

The relationship between psychological sense of community and social climate factors was investigated within the context of a university residence community using the Sense of Community Index (SCI) and the University Residence Environment Scale (URES). Multiple regression results indicated that 54% of the variance of SCI scores was attributable to a combination of the involvement, academic achievement, and support characteristics of the residence's social climate. This suggests that perceived psychological sense of community is associated with perceptions of environmental performance demands as well as with interpersonal networks and support.
Individual Versus Aggregate Collateral Constraints and the Overborrowing Syndrome

This paper compares the equilibrium dynamics of an economy facing an aggregate collateral constraint on external debt to the dynamics of an economy facing a collateral constraint imposed at the level of each individual agent. The aggregate collateral constraint is intended to capture an environment in which foreign investors base their lending decisions predominantly upon macro indicators as opposed to individual abilities to pay. Individual agents do not internalize the aggregate borrowing constraint. Instead, in this economy a country interest-rate premium emerges to clear the financial market. The central finding of the paper is that the economy with the aggregate borrowing limit does not generate higher levels of debt than the economy with the individual borrowing limit. That is, there is no overborrowing in equilibrium.
Sequence analysis of VP4 and VP7 genes of nontypeable strains identifies a new pair of outer capsid proteins representing novel P and G genotypes in bovine rotaviruses.

During a limited epidemiological study, the serotype specificities of several isolates of bovine rotavirus, exhibiting identical electropherotypes, from a single cattle farm near Bangalore, India, could not be determined using a panel of serotyping monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) specific for G serotypes 1-6 and 10. To determine the genotypes of these isolates, the nucleotide sequences of the genes encoding the outer capsid proteins VP4 and VP7 of two representative isolates, Hg18 and Hg23, were determined. The corresponding gene sequences from the two isolates were identical, indicating that these isolates represented a single strain of bovine rotavirus. Comparison of the VP4 nucleotide (nt) and the deduced amino acid (aa) sequences with those of several human and animal rotavirus strains representing all of the currently recognized 20 different VP4 (P) genotypes revealed low nt and aa sequence identities of 61.0 to 74.2% and 57.9 to 78.2% for VP4. The percentages of amino acid homology for the VP8* and VP5* regions of VP4 were 37.7 to 67.9 and 68.1 to 84.2%, respectively. The nt and aa sequences of the VP7 gene were also distinct from those of human and animal strains belonging to the previously established 14 VP7(G) serotypes (65.9 to 75.5% nt and 59.5 to 77.6% aa identities). These findings suggest the classification of the VP4 and VP7 genes of the bovine isolates represented by Hg18 as new P and G genotypes and provide further evidence for the vast genetic/antigenic diversity of group A rotaviruses.
Growing Up Under Fire: Building Resilience in Young Children and Parents Exposed to Ongoing Missile Attacks

This article presents data from a project in Sderot, Israel designed to build resilience for 255 young children and their families. During the time of the project, the area was under continual exposure to missile attacks and resulting traumatic events. The phenomenology of living under continual exposure to missiles attacks, as well as the impact of the ongoing fear and uncertainty on both the children and their parents, are presented through voices of the parents. The clinical picture for young children and their parents coping with ongoing terrorism indicated a high level of posttraumatic distress for children (33%) and for mothers (28%). An integrative model was developed and implemented with three major components: clinical screening and treatment with an adjusted dyadic therapy for peritraumatic and posttraumatic circumstances; building resilience intervention by workshops for both parents and teachers; and building local capacity and sustainability by training local therapists, parents, and teachers.
Inferior outcomes for overweight children undergoing allogeneic stem cell transplantation

This retrospective cohort study aimed at determining whether overweight children undergoing allogeneic stem cell transplantation (SCT) had inferior overall survival compared with children who were not overweight. Children ≥2 years of age who received allogeneic SCT were included. Overweight was defined as a body mass index ≥ 95th percentile; 54/325 (17%) children were overweight. Overall survival at 5 years was significantly inferior at 46·6 ± 7·3% in the overweight group compared with 59·5 ± 3·2% in the non‐overweight group (P = 0·02). Our study demonstrated that overweight children who undergo allogeneic SCT had inferior survival compared with children who were not overweight.
Assessing the impact of cigarette package health warning labels: a cross-country comparison in Brazil, Uruguay and Mexico.

OBJECTIVE To assess the impact of different health warning labels (HWL). MATERIAL AND METHODS Data from the International Tobacco Control Survey (ITC Survey) were analyzed from adult smokers in Brazil, Uruguay and Mexico, each of which used a different HWL strategy (pictures of human suffering and diseased organs; abstract pictorial representations of risk; and text-only messages, respectively). Main outcomes were HWL salience and cognitive impact. RESULTS HWLs in Uruguay (which was the only country with a HWL on the front of the package) had higher salience than either Brazilian or Mexican packs. People at higher levels of educational attainment in Mexico were more likely to read the text-only HWLs whereas education was unassociated with salience in Brazil or Uruguay. Brazilian HWLs had greater cognitive impacts than HWLs in either Uruguay or Mexico. HWLs in Uruguay generated lower cognitive impacts than the text-only HWLs in Mexico. In Brazil, cognitive impacts were strongest among smokers with low educational attainment. CONCLUSIONS This study suggests that HWLs have the most impact when they are prominent (i.e., front and back of the package) and include emotionally engaging imagery that illustrates negative bodily impacts or human suffering due to smoking.
Thinking and talking about the past: Why remember?

SUMMARY Following functional theory, the focus of this paper is to examine individuals’ reports of the functions that thinking and talking about the past serves in their daily lives. Younger and older men and women provided reports of the frequency with which they think and talk about their personal past to serve self-continuity, social-bonding and directing-behaviour functions. Younger and older adults endorsed the same frequency of using the past to maintain social bonds. In keeping with the context of their developmental life phase, including the need to forge self-concept clarity and their more open-ended perspective of the future, younger adults reported more often using autobiographical memory to create self-continuity and direct future plans. Copyright # 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The Early Rehabilitation Barthel Index (ERBI)

An extended version of the Barthel index, the so-called "Early Rehabilitation Barthel Index", or ERBI, is widely used in German early neurological rehabilitation centres and even was used in defining early rehabilitation procedures in the German DRG system. It contains highly relevant items like mechanical ventilation, tracheostomy, or dysphagia. This study presents an English version of the ERBI and examines its validity and reliability. Two samples of early neurological rehabilitation patients have been analyzed. In one sample (n=1,669), measures of morbidity and length of stay (LOS) have been compared between certain ERBI categories. In a second sample (n=273), inter-rater reliability (nurses vs. physicians) has been examined. Patients with low ERBI had a significantly longer LOS than those with high ERBI values (p<0.001). Further, parameters of morbidity (patient clinical complexity level, number of co-diagnoses) were significantly higher in a low ERBI subgroup. Inter-rater reliability was r=0.849 (p<0.001). The findings suggest that the ERBI is a reliable and valid scale to assess early neurological rehabilitation patients.
Alternative Strategies for Stroke Care: Cost-Effectiveness and Cost-Utility Analyses From a Prospective Randomized Controlled Trial

Background and Purpose— Although stroke units reduce mortality and institutionalization, their comparative cost-effectiveness is unknown. Methods— Healthcare, social services, and informal care costs were compared for 447 acute stroke patients randomly assigned to stroke unit, stroke team, or domiciliary stroke care. Prospective and retrospective methods were used to identify resource use over 12 months after stroke onset. Cost-effectiveness and cost-utility analyses were undertaken. Results— Mean healthcare and social care costs over 12 months were £11 450 for stroke unit, £9527 for stroke team, and £6840 for domiciliary care. More than half the costs were for the initial episode of care. Institutionalization was a large proportion of follow-up costs. Inclusion of informal care increased costs considerably. When informal care was excluded, the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio per percentage point in deaths or institutionalizations avoided in the first year was £496 for the stroke unit over domiciliary care; incremental cost per quality-adjusted life year quality-adjusted life year gained was £64 097 between these 2 groups. The stroke team was dominated by domiciliary care. Conclusions— Cost perspectives, especially those related to long-term and informal care, are important when stroke services are evaluated. Improved health outcomes in the stroke unit come at a higher cost.
States of Injury: Power and Freedom in Late Modernity

Whether in characterizing Catherine MacKinnon's theory of gender as itself pornographic or in identifying liberalism as unable to make good on its promises, this text pursues a central question: how does a sense of woundedness become the basis for a sense of identity? Brown argues that efforts to outlaw hate speech and pornography powerfully legitimize the state: such apparently well-intentioned attempts harm victims further by portraying them as so helpless as to be in continuing need of governmental protection. "Whether one is dealing with the state, the Mafia, parents, pimps, police, or husbands," writes Brown, "the heavy price of institutionalized protection is always a measure of dependence and agreement to abide by the protector's rules. " True democracy, she insists, requires sharing power, not regulation by it; freedom, not protection. Refusing any facile identification with one political position or another, Brown applies her argument to a panoply of topics, from the basis of litigiousness in political life to the appearance on the academic Left of themes of revenge and a thwarted will to power. These and other provocations in contemporary political thought and political li
Impact of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease on postoperative recurrence in patients with resected non-small-cell lung cancer

Purpose This study aimed to determine whether the severity of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) affects recurrence-free survival in non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients after surgical resection. Patients and methods A retrospective study was performed on 421 consecutive patients who had undergone lobectomy for NSCLC from January 2008 to June 2011. Classification of COPD severity was based on guidelines of the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD). Characteristics among the three subgroups were compared and recurrence-free survivals were analyzed. Results A total of 172 patients were diagnosed with COPD (124 as GOLD-1, 46 as GOLD-2, and two as GOLD-3). The frequencies of recurrence were significantly higher in patients with higher COPD grades (P<0.001). Recurrence-free survival at 5 years was 78.1%, 70.4%, and 46.4% in non-COPD, mild COPD, and moderate/severe COPD groups, respectively (P<0.001). By univariate analysis, the age, sex, smoking history, COPD severity, tumor size, histology, and pathological stage were associated with recurrence-free survival. Multivariate analysis showed that older age, male, moderate/severe COPD, and advanced stage were independent risk factors associated with recurrence-free survival. Conclusion NSCLC patients with COPD are at high risk for postoperative recurrence, and moderate/severe COPD is an independent unfavorable prognostic factor.
Long-term monitoring of electrochemical parameters from stimulated neural tissues

The electrode-tissues interface (ETI) is one of the key issues for the safety, reliability and efficiency of implantable devices such as stimulators and sensors. The aim of this paper is to report an implantable telemetry device, based on a full custom integrated circuit (IC) to monitor the ETI. The proposed system performs various types of measurements, such as impedance spectroscopy, cyclic voltammetry, and galvanostatic double pulse method. Hence, the evolution of various electrochemical parameters of the ETI such as complex impedance, faradic resistance, double layer capacity, rheobase current, and chronaxy time, could be monitored long time after implantation. The full custom IC has been designed and fabricated with the CMOS 0.18 mum technology. The circuit occupies a silicon area of 2 mm2, and consumes less than 3 mW. Characterisation and in-vitro experimental results validate the full functionalities of the implantable monitoring system including the custom IC.
Investigating the Roles of Gambling Interest and Impulsive Sensation Seeking on Consumer Enjoyment of Promotional Games

Promotional games are an increasingly utilized form of sales promotion; yet, few studies exist in this area. Some research suggests that promotional game participants may be similar to gamblers in terms of lifestyles and personality traits, such as sensation seeking. The current study extends existing research on this topic, by utilizing a telephone survey of randomly selected adults from two major cities in the U.S. ( N = 555), to examine this notion. Results support the similarity between promotional game participants and gamblers. Respondents' race, gambling interest levels, variety of gambling activities and sensation seeking are all found to be associated with liking to participate in promotional games.
Social Engineering Detection Using Neural Networks

Social Engineering (SE) is considered to be one of the most common problems facing information security today. Detecting social engineering is important because it attempts to secure organisations, consumers and systems from attempts to gain unauthorized access or to reveal some secrets by manipulating employees. The aim of this work is to introduce a new technique for detecting social engineering using neural networks. In this work we have used benchmark data and developed a new technique to extract features that can be used for neural network testing and training. Initial results are encouraging and indicate that machine learning can add an extra layer of security to protect individuals and organisations from social engineering attacks. Future work includes expanding the data set to include additional attack scenarios and benchmark data.
You’ve Got Answers: Towards Personalized Models for Predicting Success in Community Question Answering

Question answering communities such as Yahoo! Answers have emerged as a popular alternative to general-purpose web search. By directly interacting with other participants, information seekers can obtain specific answers to their questions. However, user success in obtaining satisfactory answers varies greatly. We hypothesize that satisfaction with the contributed answers is largely determined by the asker's prior experience, expectations, and personal preferences. Hence, we begin to develop personalized models of asker satisfaction to predict whether a particular question author will be satisfied with the answers contributed by the community participants. We formalize this problem, and explore a variety of content, structure, and interaction features for this task using standard machine learning techniques. Our experimental evaluation over thousands of real questions indicates that indeed it is beneficial to personalize satisfaction predictions when sufficient prior user history exists, significantly improving accuracy over a "one-size-fits-all" prediction model.
Production, Consumption, Prosumption

This article deals with the rise of prosumer capitalism. Prosumption involves both production and consumption rather than focusing on either one (production) or the other (consumption). It is maintained that earlier forms of capitalism (producer and consumer capitalism) were themselves characterized by prosumption. Given the recent explosion of user-generated content online, we have reason to see prosumption as increasingly central. In prosumer capitalism, control and exploitation take on a different character than in the other forms of capitalism: there is a trend toward unpaid rather than paid labor and toward offering products at no cost, and the system is marked by a new abundance where scarcity once predominated. These trends suggest the possibility of a new, prosumer, capitalism.
‘Hell on earth and paradise all at the same time’: the production of smallholding space in the British countryside

Summary This paper begins to develop an analysis of the geography of smallholding, as a contribution to developing interest in cultural geographies of farming and the nature of the ‘post-productivist’ countryside. The paper uses evidence from a survey of UK smallholders to suggest that they are in a paradoxical position in relation to ideas about ‘real’ farming, production and consumption, leisure and work. Smallholder identity is revealed as constituted through ideas about ‘nature’, food, family, community, work and rural space. The paper concludes by suggesting a framework of ideas for future intensive research into smallholding and its links with farming cultures and rural social and cultural change.
A Ten-Year Follow-Up Study of Southampton Opiate Addicts

A ten-year follow-up study of 74 opiate (most heroin) addicts referred to the Drug Dependence Clinic in Southampton showed that overall, little use was made of the treatment facilities available. Half of the patients on whom we were able to obtain follow-up data appeared to be no longer abusing drugs. An appreciable number of subjects had committed offences prior to abusing drugs and a large proportion offended during the follow-up period, adding support to the view that most addicts are not driven to crime because they are unable to obtain the help they need. The death rate of 15% is that expected in a long-term follow-up study. The results suggest that the natural history of many heroin addicts is uninfluenced by therapeutic intervention.
Unstructured youth recreation centre participation and antisocial behaviour development: Selection influences and the moderating role of antisocial peers

This study involves a two-year longitudinal investigation of adolescent participation in unstructured youth recreation centres and the development of antisocial behaviour. Participants were 1163 adolescents who represented 92% of all eighth-grade students in the town of Örebro, Sweden, during the fall of 1999. Antisocial young people and those with poor relations to parents or school were likely to become involved in the centres. After controlling for these selection influences, the frequency of youth centre participation was associated with a significant increase in antisocial behaviour over time for boys and girls. Youth centres that aggregated many antisocial peers together were particularly likely to promote the antisocial behaviour of new attendees. The findings are consistent with prior theory and research on youth development and out-of-school activities. Activities that lack structure and skill-building aims appear to attract high-risk adolescents and the resulting social environment is conducive to the development of antisocial behaviour.