Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Accumulation of Selected Carotenoids, α-Tocopherol and Retinol in Human Ovarian Carcinoma Ascitic Fluid

Background: Patients with severe forms of cancer are reported to have reduced concentrations of micronutrients in plasma due to the chronic reduction of food intake and an increased metabolism of these components. The purpose of this study was to evaluate if an accumulation of carotenoids, α-tocopherol and retinol in malignant ascitic fluid in women with ovarian cancer might contribute to a loss of these components from plasma. Methods: Blood and ascitic fluid samples obtained from 21 women with ovarian carcinomas and 17 healthy controls were analyzed for retinol, retinol-binding protein (RBP), α-tocopherol and carotenoids. Results: Plasma concentrations of all micronutrients were lower in cancer patients compared to controls. Ascitic fluid concentration of all investigated components was comparable (73–110%) to plasma. While the mean concentration of retinol in malignant ascites represented 73% of that in plasma, the concentration of RBP was less than 10% resulting in an increased mean molar ratio of retinol to RBP from 1.18 to 10.5. Conclusions: The results suggest that lower plasma concentrations of micronutrients in women suffering from ovarian carcinoma are not only caused by a cachexia-induced decrease of food intake and a higher rate of metabolic utilization, but also by a substantial yet not considered transfer from plasma into ascitic fluid possibly associated with plasma lipoproteins. This raises questions with regard to the protective function of these plasma components in ascitic fluid, the consequences of paracentesis on an additional supplementation and finally the possibility to use one or a combination of these components as an additional marker to discriminate between benign and malignant ascites.
The use and misuse of structural equation modeling in management research

The research practice in management research is dominantly based on structural equation modeling, but almost exclusively, and often misguidedly, on covariance-based SEM. We adumbrate theoretical foundations and guidance for the two SEM streams: covariance-based, also known as LISREL, covariance structure analysis, latent variable analysis, etc.; and variance-based SEM, also known as a component-based SEM, PLS, etc. Our conceptual framework discusses the two streams by analysis of theory, measurement model specification, sample and goodness-of-fit. We question the usefulness of Cronbach’s alpha research paradigm and discuss alternatives that are well-established in social science, but not well-known in the management research community. We conclude with discussion of some open questions in management research practice that remain under-investigated and unutilized.
Effects of d-Cycloserine on Craving to Alcohol Cues in Problem Drinkers: Preliminary Findings

Background: It has been shown that the partial N-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) agonist d-cycloserine (DCS) facilitates exposure-based learning in humans with anxiety disorders. However, the effects of DCS on exposure to substance cues are still uncertain. Objective: The primary aim of the study was to examine the effects of DCS on exposure sessions to alcohol cues. Methods: Twenty non-treatment-seeking problem drinkers were randomly assigned to receive 50 mg of DCS or placebo 50 minutes prior to each of 3 alcohol cue exposure sessions consisting of 5 exposure trials within an 8-day period. Following this, participants underwent two test sessions without the administration of any medication. The test sessions occurred 3 and 7 days after the last cue exposure session, respectively. Dependent measures included drinking urge and heart rate and drinking urge during the test sessions. Results: Individuals who received DCS showed increased craving to alcohol cues as compared with individuals who received placebo during the first test session. No group difference in drinking urge was found during the second test session. Furthermore, the groups did not differ in heart rate at any of the assessment points. Conclusions: The results suggest that DCS may temporarily augment cue-elicited craving for alcohol. Scientific Significance: As in an earlier study with cocaine-dependent individuals, DCS appears to exhibit a different profile in problem drinkers to those with anxiety disorders. Dose, timing, arousal, and treatment motivation as considerations are discussed, as are methodological considerations and the need for additional studies in this area.
Symbolic Interaction and ‘Uses and Gratification’: Towards a Theoretical Integration

Theoretically coherent accounts of human action are sought by most practitioners of the human sciences, including students of communications. I wish to address a few key issues which penetrate some recent thinking in mass communications theory, but which may have also been a bit obscured by different language and terminology. Briefly, I will suggest that many of the assumptions, perspectives, and claims of the general theoretical position often referred to as "uses and gratifications" (U-G) are clearly embedded in the more comprehensive theoretical view of "symbolic interaction" (S-I). In the few pages to follow, this complex matter will be dealt with in terms of some common assumptions about: (1) the nature of meaningful communication in social life; (2) the actor's perspective and role in the act of communication; (3) the situational and definitional features of symbolic communication Γ (4) the essentially symbolic nature of all aspects of the communication process.
‘The Worst Thing is the Screwing’ (1): Consumption and the Management of Identity in Sex Work

This paper reviews qualitative data from academic research into prostitution, accounts from prostitutes themselves in the UK and Australia, and data from one of the authors' own research in New South Wales to analyse the ways in which female sex workers negotiate and construct their sense of themselves. This analysis is informed by the suggestion that, in the act of commercial sex, the prostitute's own body is being consumed by the client, which can be seen to place certain pressures on the relationship between sex workers' professional and personal identities. Our review suggests that individual workers' tactics for managing the contradictions of working as a prostitute and preserving self-esteem are both similar and different, even within two broadly culturally commensurable contexts, and, moreover, that not all prostitutes necessarily want to maintain a strict divide between work sex and non-work sex in every encounter. Moreover, even for those who do, the trials of maintaining the divide are considerable, as is the permeability of boundaries between work and intimate sex.
Sustainable development in early childhood education: in‐service students' comprehension of the concept

The purpose of this article is to explore day care attendants' comprehension of the concept of sustainable development (SD) and to analyse the associated pedagogical practices at their place of work in pre‐schools. The empirical data comprise written exam reports from 32 practising day care attendants attending an in‐service education course. The participants study early childhood education (ECE) part time at Mälardalen University, Sweden, and the rest of their time they work in their pre‐schools. The analysis was based on a qualitative content analysis approach, and the results show a multi‐faceted understanding of the concept. SD was seen as a holistic approach, an environmental issue or a democratic issue. The article explores how these different ways of approaching the concept relate to different attitudes and day‐to‐day practices in the pedagogical programme in the pre‐schools.
Integration of IEEE 802.11 WLANs with IEEE 802.16-based multihop infrastructure mesh/relay networks: A game-theoretic approach to radio resource management

One of the promising applications of IEEE 802.16 (WiMAX)-based wireless mesh/relay networks is to provide infrastructure/backhaul support for IEEE 802.11-based mobile hotspots. In this article we present an architecture for integrating IEEE 802.11 WLANs with IEEE 802.16-based multihop wireless mesh infrastructure to relay WLAN traffic to the Internet. The major research issues in this integrated architecture are outlined and related work is reviewed. A game-theoretic model is developed for radio resource management in this integrated network architecture. In particular, a multiplayer bargaining game formulation is used for fair bandwidth allocation and optimal admission control of different types of connections (e.g., WLAN connections, relay connections, and connections from standalone subscriber stations) in an IEEE 802.16 base station/mesh router. Both connection-level and inconnection-level performances for this bandwidth management and admission control framework are presented
Levels and their Correlations of Decision-Making-Competency, Adjustment to College Life, Satisfaction to College Life in Freshmen

The purpose of this study was to identify the levels and to analyze their correlations of decision-making-competency, adjustment to college life, satisfaction to college life in freshmen. The subjects were 325 freshmen. Data were collected through structured questionnaire from September to October, 2009, and analyzed with SPSS 17.0. The results of this study were as follows: decision-making-competency of college freshmen was , adjusting to college life was , and satisfaction to college life was . Relationships between adjusting to college life and decision-making-competency in college freshmen (r
From innovation to use: Ten eclectic theses on the historiography of technology

Abstract The paper argues that most (Anglo‐Saxon) historiography of technology, including recent sociologically‐oriented work, is concerned with innovation rather than technology, and that there has been an unfortunate conflation between the two. Distinguishing innovation from use allows an engagement between the history of technology and history more generally, and is essential to the investigation of questions concerned with gender, race, and class in the history of technology. Moreover a focus on use allows us to make better sense of such terms as “technological determinism”. The history of innovation, while interesting and important, cannot address many issues which should be central to the history of technology, and cannot answer many of the questions historians of technology pretend to ask. A history of technology‐in‐use does so and, at the same time, opens up new areas for investigation, including the history of maintenance, repair and remodelling, as well as further developing accounts of innovati.
Chapter 7 : Infrastructure Development in Malaysia

At independence Malaysia inherited a reasonably well-developed set of infrastructure facilities. The Government built on the initial stock of infrastructure and all categories of infrastructure have since expanded manifold and facilities have also been modernised. By and large the Malaysian Government has succeeded in meeting the growing demand for infrastructure. The Government has also made considerable progress in making infrastructure available in the less developed parts of the country. The development of infrastructure has required very large investments. The infrastructure sector has received the largest share of public sector development expenditure in every one of the Malaysia Plans. However from the early 1990s because of resource constraints faced by the public sector, among other reasons, the Government has encouraged and facilitated private sector participation in infrastructure development. In the more recent period the private sector has been investing more in infrastructure than the public sector. Inspite of the success achieved in the development of infrastructure there are many areas where policy formulation and implementation can be improved. The formulation of medium-term plans for all segments of the infrastructure sector is one area where the Government needs to act. Such plans will help avoid ad hoc project selection. There should also be a clearer specification of the areas for private sector participation in infrastructure development and all privatisation exercises should be through an open tender bidding process. Also more rigorous project evaluation is necessary to avoid 205 costly project failures. Other areas for improvement include better monitoring of performance of service providers. A new policy also needs to be formulated to promote public transport in urban areas. Finally, the development of infrastructure in the less developed parts of the country should be accorded higher priority.
Active MEMS Valves for Flow Control in a High-Pressure Micro-Gas-Analyzer

We present active electrostatic MEMS gas valves for Micro-Gas-Analyzer (MGA) flow control. These unique valves enable extremely low dead volume, highly integrated flow control chips for the MGA application, and potentially others (e.g., propulsion, pneumatic, and thermodynamic microsystems). We have demonstrated low leak rates ( <; 0.025 sccm, <; 0.0025 sccm on a similar passive valve design), high operating pressures 6.9×105 N/m2 (100 psig), a high-pressure record for valves of this size and type, and high flow rates (>; 25 sccm) using control voltages on the order of 100 V. The valve designs presented eliminate charge build-up issues associated with insulating materials and are closely tied to a base-lined microfabrication process (SUMMiT), allowing mass production. Using this process, which incorporates only CMOS compatible materials, eliminates outgassing and absorption problems inherent to microvalve designs that incorporate elastomers or organic bonding layers, and reduces contamination when the valve is part of the chemical analysis flowpath. The results obtained indicate that even higher performance level valves (>; 1.4 × 106 N/m2 or 200 psig operating pressure, at similar control voltage, flow rates, and leak rates) are possible.
Bidding Asymmetries in Multi-Unit Auctions: Implications of Bid Function Equilibria in the British Spot Market for Electricity

This paper introduces and tests Bid Function Equilibria (BFE) in the British spot market for electricity. BFE extend von der Fehr and Harbord's (1993) multi-unit auction model of wholesale electricity markets by allowing firms to have heterogeneous costs for different generating units. Pure-strategy equilibria in BFE predict asymmetric bidding by producers: a single firm (the “price-setter") bids strategically while other firms (“non-price-setters") bid their costs. We test for asymmetries in firms' bid functions in the British spot market between 1993 and 1995 and find strong empirical support for the theory. We conclude that BFE have important implications for the design and governance of electricity markets.
Overexpression of a Mutant Basic Helix-Loop-Helix Protein HFR1, HFR1-ΔN105, Activates a Branch Pathway of Light Signaling in Arabidopsis1

The HFR1, a basic helix-loop-helix protein, is required for a subset of phytochrome A-mediated photoresponses in Arabidopsis. Here, we show that overexpression of the HFR1-ΔN105 mutant, which lacks the N-terminal 105 amino acids, confers exaggerated photoresponses even in darkness. Physiological analysis implied that overexpression of HFR1-ΔN105 activated constitutively a branch pathway of light signaling that mediates a subset of photomorphogenic responses, including germination, de-etiolation, gravitropic hypocotyl growth, blocking of greening, and expression of some light-regulated genes such as CAB, DRT112, PSAE, PSBL, PORA, and XTR7, without affecting the light-responsiveness of anthocyanin accumulation and expression of other light-regulated genes such as CHS and PSBS. Although the end-of-day far-red light response and petiole elongation were suppressed in the HFR1-ΔN105-overexpressing plants, flowering time was not affected by HFR1-ΔN105. In addition, the HFR1-ΔN105-overexpressing plants showed hypersensitive photoresponses in the inhibition of hypocotyl elongation, dependently on phytochrome A, FHY1, and FHY3 under FR light or phyB under R light, respectively. Moreover, our double mutant analysis suggested that the hypersensitive photoresponse is due to functional cooperation between HFR1-ΔN105 and other light-signaling components including HY5, a basic leucine zipper protein. Taken together, our results of gain-of-function approach with HFR1-ΔN105 suggest the existence of a complex and important basic helix-loop-helix protein-mediated transcriptional network controlling a branch pathway of light signaling and provide a useful framework for further genetic dissection of light-signaling network in Arabidopsis.
Peer Contagion and Adolescent Depression: The Role of Failure Anticipation

The current study investigated the mechanisms underlying peer contagion of depressive symptoms in adolescence. Five annual measurements of data were gathered from a large (N = 842) community-based network of adolescents (M = 14.3 years at first measurement). Results showed that, after controlling for selection and deselection of friends on the basis of depressive symptoms, peers' depressive symptoms predicted increases in adolescents' depressive symptoms over time. Failure anticipation mediated effects of peers' depressive symptoms on adolescents' depressive symptoms, particularly for girls. Thus, results suggest that peers' depressive symptoms place adolescents at risk of developing depressive symptoms through increasing in failure anticipation.
EASEAndroid: Automatic Policy Analysis and Refinement for Security Enhanced Android via Large-Scale Semi-Supervised Learning

Mandatory protection systems such as SELinux and SEAndroid harden operating system integrity. Unfortunately, policy development is error prone and requires lengthy refinement using audit logs from deployed systems. While prior work has studied SELinux policy in detail, SEAndroid is relatively new and has received little attention. SEAndroid policy engineering differs significantly from SELinux: Android fundamentally differs from traditional Linux; the same policy is used on millions of devices for which new audit logs are continually available; and audit logs contain a mix of benign and malicious accesses. In this paper, we propose EASEAndroid, the first SEAndroid analytic platform for automatic policy analysis and refinement. Our key insight is that the policy refinement process can be modeled and automated using semi-supervised learning. Given an existing policy and a small set of known access patterns, EASEAndroid continually expands the knowledge base as new audit logs become available, producing suggestions for policy refinement. We evaluate EASEAndroid on 1.3 million audit logs from real-world devices. EASEAndroid successfully learns 2,518 new access patterns and generates 331 new policy rules. During this process, EASEAndroid discovers eight categories of attack access patterns in real devices, two of which are new attacks directly against the SEAndroid MAC mechanism.
Sex-Linked Inheritance in Macaque Monkeys: Implications for Effective Population Size and Dispersal to Sulawesi

Sex-specific differences in dispersal, survival, reproductive success, and natural selection differentially affect the effective population size (Ne) of genomic regions with different modes of inheritance such as sex chromosomes and mitochondrial DNA. In papionin monkeys (macaques, baboons, geladas, mandrills, drills, and mangabeys), for example, these factors are expected to reduce Ne of paternally inherited portions of the genome compared to maternally inherited portions. To explore this further, we quantified relative Ne of autosomal DNA, X and Y chromosomes, and mitochondrial DNA using molecular polymorphism and divergence information from pigtail macaque monkeys (Macaca nemestrina). Consistent with demographic expectations, we found that Ne of the Y is lower than expected from a Wright–Fisher idealized population with an equal proportion of males and females, whereas Ne of mitochondrial DNA is higher. However, Ne of 11 loci on the X chromosome was lower than expected, a finding that could be explained by pervasive hitchhiking effects on this chromosome. We evaluated the fit of these data to various models involving natural selection or sex-biased demography. Significant support was recovered for natural selection acting on the Y chromosome. A demographic model with a skewed sex ratio was more likely than one with sex-biased migration and explained the data about as well as an ideal model without sex-biased demography. We then incorporated these results into an evaluation of macaque divergence and migration on Borneo and Sulawesi islands. One X-linked locus was not monophyletic on Sulawesi, but multilocus data analyzed in a coalescent framework failed to reject a model without migration between these islands after both were colonized.
Identifying associated factors with social capital using path analysis: A population-based survey in Tehran, Iran (Urban HEART-2)

Background: Social capital has been defined as norms, networks, and social links that facilitate collective actions. Social capital is related to a number of main social and public health variables. Therefore, the present study aimed to determine the factors associated with social capital among the residents of Tehran, Iran. Methods: In this large cross-sectional population-based study, 31531 residents aged 20 years and above were selected through multi-stage sampling method from 22 districts of Tehran in 2011. The social capital questionnaire, 28-item General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28), and Short-Form Health Survey (SF-12) were used. Hypothetical causal models were designed to identify the pathways through which different variables influenced the components of social capital. Then, path analysis was conducted for identifying the determinants of social capital. Results: The most influential variables in ‘individual trust’ were job status (β=0.37, p=0.02), marital status (β=0.32, p=0.01), Physical Component Summary (PCS) (β=0.37, p=0.02), and age (β=0.34, p=0.03). On the other hand, education level (β=0.34, p=0.01), age (β=0.33, p=0.02), marital status (β=0.33, p=0.01), and job status (β=0.32, p=0.01) were effective in ‘cohesion and social support’. Additionally, age (β=0.18, p=0.02), PCS (β=0.36, p=0.01), house ownership (β=0.23, p=0.03), and mental health (β=0.26, p=0.01) were influential in ‘social trust/collective relations’. Conclusion: Social capital can be improved in communities by planning to improve education and occupation status, paying more attention to strengthening family bonds, and provision of local facilities and neighborhood bonds to reduce migration within the city.
Switching from Epoetin Alpha to Darbepoetin Alpha in Japanese Hemodialysis Patients: Dose Conversion Ratio

Background/Aims: Darbepoetin alpha is an erythropoietic agent with a 3-fold longer elimination half-life than epoetin. The recommended conversion ratio from epoetin to darbepoetin alpha is 1:200 (1 μg of darbepoetin alpha = 200 IU of epoetin), but several observations have suggested that this ratio overestimates the required dose of darbepoetin alpha. This study assessed the actual conversion ratio for stable Japanese hemodialysis patients and investigated whether darbepoetin alpha promotes uniform erythropoiesis. Methods: A total of 104 hemodialysis patients who were stable on epoetin alpha therapy at Hakuai Clinic in Japan were switched to intravenous darbepoetin alpha according to the 1:200 rule. They were followed for 24 weeks to assess changes of hemoglobin and the dose of darbepoetin alpha, as well as changes of the reticulocyte count. Results: One hundred patients completed the 24-week study and the final conversion ratio was 1:350.5. Darbepoetin alpha showed a similar effect in diabetics and nondiabetics. Data on the reticulocyte count demonstrated that darbepoetin alpha had a sustained effect on erythropoiesis. Conclusion: Darbepoetin alpha is effective for Japanese dialysis patients at a lower dose than expected.