Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Self-perceptions of ageing from a cross-cultural perspective: do collectivist cultures provide a buffering effect for the impact of negative stereotypes about age?

vi Publications arising from this thesis . viii Glossary.xi Chapter 1: Introduction . 1 1.1 Culture: A working definition . 3 1.2 Gaps in the literature . 7 1.3 Structure of the thesis . 8 Chapter 2: Attitudes to ageing, stereotypes and cultural influences . 10 2.0 Chapter summary . 10 2.1 Subjective ageing, age identity and self-perceptions of ageing. 10 2.2 Relevant theories of self-perception and self-identity . 24 2.3 Sociological, historical and religious perspectives on ageing and self . 27 Chapter 3 – Mixed methods . 36 3.0 Chapter summary . 36 3.
An Instructional Module on Mokken Scale Analysis

Mokken scale analysis (MSA) is a probabilistic-nonparametric approach to item response theory (IRT) that can be used to evaluate fundamental measurement properties with less strict assumptions than parametric IRT models. This instructional module provides an introduction to MSA as a probabilistic-nonparametric framework in which to explore measurement quality, with an emphasis on its application in the context of educational assessment. The module describes both dichotomous and polytomous formulations of the MSA model. Examples of the application of MSA to educational assessment are provided using data from a multiple-choice physical science assessment and a rater-mediated writing assessment.
Design an Enhanced Certificate Based Authentication Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

In wireless sensor networks (WSN's), the broadcast authentication is a critical security service, as it helps users to broadcast the WSN in an authenticable way. µ TESLA and MULTILEVEL µ TESLA are symmetric key based schemes, that have been introduced to provide such services for WSNs, but even they suffer from serious DoS attacks due to the delay in message authentication. Hence in order to overcome the weaknesses presented in the µ TESLA, and such similar schemes, this paper presents several effective key based schemes to achieve immediate broadcast authentication. In order to minimize the scheme overhead regarding the costs on both computation and communication, several schemes, such as hash tree and identity based signature schemes have been adopted. Of the proposed scheme, the quantitative energy consumption analysis is also given in detail. This paper is in all means prepared to solve the important multi sender broadcast authentication hindrance in WSNs.
Candidate Gene Analysis of Femoral Neck Trabecular and Cortical Volumetric Bone Mineral Density in Older Men

In contrast to conventional dual‐energy X‐ray absorptiometry, quantitative computed tomography separately measures trabecular and cortical volumetric bone mineral density (vBMD). Little is known about the genetic variants associated with trabecular and cortical vBMD in humans, although both may be important for determining bone strength and osteoporotic risk. In the current analysis, we tested the hypothesis that there are genetic variants associated with trabecular and cortical vBMD at the femoral neck by genotyping 4608 tagging and potentially functional single‐nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 383 bone metabolism candidate genes in 822 Caucasian men aged 65 years or older from the Osteoporotic Fractures in Men Study (MrOS). Promising SNP associations then were tested for replication in an additional 1155 men from the same study. We identified SNPs in five genes (IFNAR2, NFATC1, SMAD1, HOXA, and KLF10) that were robustly associated with cortical vBMD and SNPs in nine genes (APC, ATF2, BMP3, BMP7, FGF18, FLT1, TGFB3, THRB, and RUNX1) that were robustly associated with trabecular vBMD. There was no overlap between genes associated with cortical vBMD and trabecular vBMD. These findings identify novel genetic variants for cortical and trabecular vBMD and raise the possibility that some genetic loci may be unique for each bone compartment. © 2010 American Society for Bone and Mineral Research
A Strategy for Direct Mapping and Identification of Mutations by Whole-Genome Sequencing

Mutant screens have proven powerful for genetic dissection of a myriad of biological processes, but subsequent identification and isolation of the causative mutations are usually complex and time consuming. We have made the process easier by establishing a novel strategy that employs whole-genome sequencing to simultaneously map and identify mutations without the need for any prior genetic mapping.
A Study of Relationship between Spiritual Intelligence and Adjustment in Relation to their Age and Family System of Working Women

The recent researches have proved that SQ also plays an equal important role in a person life as IQ and EQ play. This study aims to investigate the relationship between spiritual intelligence adjustments of working women. It was conducted on a sample of 100 working women of district Ludhiana. The main findings of this study signify that there is significant and negative relationship between spiritual intelligence and adjustment of working women. The working women with a higher level of spiritual intelligence have a higher level adjustment. However, there was significant difference found in spiritual intelligence of working women in relation to their age and family system.
Factors Associated with Primary School Teachers’ Attitudes Towards the Inclusion of Students with Disabilities

Objective Teachers' attitudes toward inclusion are often based on the practical implementation of inclusive education rather than a specific ideology and understanding of inclusiveness. This study aimed to identify the factors associated with primary school teachers' attitudes towards inclusion of students with all disabilities in regular schools. Method Seventy four primary school teachers participated in a cross-sectional survey conducted in Western Australia. Teachers' attitudes and efficacy toward integration of students with disabilities were measured using the Opinions Relative to Integration of Students with Disabilities scale and Bandura's Teacher Efficacy scale respectively. Results Four teacher attributes—age, gender, teaching self-efficacy and training collectively explained 42% of the variability in teachers' attitude toward including students with disabilities. Conclusion The current study further contributes to the accumulation of knowledge that can unpack the complex pattern of factors that should be considered to promote positive attitudes towards inclusive schools.
Changes in Intestinal Glucocorticoid Sensitivity in Early Life Shape the Risk of Epithelial Barrier Defect in Maternal-Deprived Rats

Glucocorticoids (GC) contribute to human intestine ontogeny and accelerate gut barrier development in preparation to birth. Rat gut is immature at birth, and high intestinal GC sensitivity during the first two weeks of life resembles that of premature infants. This makes suckling rats a model to investigate postpartum impact of maternal separation (MS)-associated GC release in preterm babies, and whether GC sensitivity may shape MS effects in immature gut. A 4 hours-MS applied once at postnatal day (PND)10 enhanced plasma corticosterone in male and female pups, increased by two times the total in vivo intestinal permeability (IP) to oral FITC-Dextran 4 kDa (FD4) immediately after the end of MS, and induced bacterial translocation (BT) to liver and spleen. Ussing chamber experiments demonstrated a 2-fold increase of permeability to FD4 in the colon immediately after the end of MS, but not in the ileum. Colonic permeability was not only increased for FD4 but also to intact horseradish peroxidase 44 kDa in MS pups. In vivo, the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) antagonist RU486 or ML7 blockade of myosin light chain kinase controlling epithelial cytoskeleton contraction prevented MS-induced IP increase to oral FD4 and BT. In addition, the GR agonist dexamethasone dose-dependently mimicked MS-increase of IP to oral FD4. In contrast, MS effects on IP to oral FD4 and BT were absent at PND20, a model for full-term infant, characterized by a marked drop of IP to FD4 in response to dexamethasone, and decreased GR expression in the colon only compared to PND10 pups. These results show that high intestinal GC responsiveness in a rat model of prematurity defines a vulnerable window for a post-delivery MS, evoking immediate disruption of epithelial integrity in the large intestine, and increasing susceptibility to macromolecule passage and bacteremia.
Induction of Specific Humoral and Cellular Immune Responses in a Mouse Model following Gene Fusion of HSP70C and Hantaan Virus Gn and S0.7 in an Adenoviral Vector

Heat shock proteins (HSPs) display adjuvant functions when given as fusion proteins to enhance vaccination efficiency. To evaluate enhanced potency of Hantaan virus (HTNV) glycoprotein (GP) and nucleocapsid protein (NP) immunogenicity by heat shock protein 70 (HSP70), a recombinant adenovirus rAd-GnS0.7-pCAG-HSP70C expression vector was developed by genetically linking the HSP70 C-terminal gene (HSP70 359–610 aa, HSP70C) to the Gn and 0.7 kb fragment of the NP (aa1–274-S0.7). C57BL/6 mice were immunized with these recombinant adenoviral vectors. A series of immunological assays determined the immunogenicity of the recombinant adenoviral vectors. The results showed that rAd-GnS0.7-pCAG-HSP70C induced a stronger humoral and cellular immune response than other recombinant adenoviruses (rAd-GnS0.7-pCAG and rAd-GnS0.7) and the HFRS vaccine control. Animal protection experiments showed that rAd-GnS0.7-pCAG-HSP70C was effective at protecting C57BL/6 mice from HTNV infection. The results of the immunological experiments showed that HSP70C lead to enhanced vaccine potency, and suggested significant potential in the development of genetically engineered vaccines against HTNV.
“Healthy” Identities? Revisiting Rejection‐Identification and Rejection‐Disidentification Models among Voluntary and Forced Immigrants

Rejection-identification and rejection-disidentification models propose that low-status groups identify with their in-group and disidentify with a high-status out-group in response to rejection by the latter. Our research tests these two models simultaneously among multiple groups of foreign-born people living in two cultural contexts. We examined these effects on representative samples of 2446 refugees in the Netherlands (Study 1) and 1234 voluntary immigrants in Spain (Study 2). We found that both ethnic and host national identification are ‘healthy’ and thus predominantly conducive to greater hedonic and eudaimonic well-being. Further, perceived discrimination was associated with host national disidentification among refugees in the Netherlands and voluntary immigrants in Spain. However, our findings regarding the rejection-identification link were less consistent. We discuss the importance of ethnic and host national identification for the well-being of immigrants.
Information in the Idiosyncratic Volatility of Small Firms

Non-systematic volatilities of small firms are special as predictors of stock returns. They are positively related with future returns on all age and size portfolios. They dominate systematic volatility, big-firm volatility and other volatilities. And there is strong evidence that idiosyncratic risk is priced in small-firm returns. Small-firm volatility as a predictor of big-firm returns is in part a proxy for systematic volatility and consumption-wealth ratio. We rule out several hypotheses, including a liquidity premium, as potential explanations of our results, but not the idea that small-firm idiosyncratic volatility is correlated with the risk of the total investor portfolio, which includes non-equity assets.
Manicured landscapes: a video exploration of the Dolomite mountains as memoryscapes

Abstract In 2009 UNESCO’s World Heritage Program inscribed nine mountain parks located in Northeastern Italy under the single Dolomites World Heritage Site (DWHS). Under criterion vii, they were acknowledged by the World Heritage Convention to be ‘widely regarded as being among the most attractive mountain landscapes in the world’ with their beauty being ‘intrinsic’ to the nature of the mountains. In our film and paper we argue for a reconsideration of the ‘intrinsic nature’ of its beauty in a sense that is much different than that intended by UNESCO. Following a relational line of reasoning we argue that the essence of the distinctive landscape of the Dolomites lies in the entanglements occurring among its inhabitants who, in the course of living there, have historically been and are currently immersed in its formation. We suggest that through such entanglements – sometimes consonant and sometimes dissonant with ‘authorized’ notions of the heritage landscape – the Dolomitic landscapes exist as manicured landscapes. By drawing from the concept of memoryscape and non-representational ideas we articulate the notion of a manicured landscape.
Acidic clusters target transmembrane proteins to the contractile vacuole in Dictyostelium cells

The mechanisms responsible for the targeting of transmembrane integral proteins to the contractile vacuole (CV) network in Dictyostelium discoideum are unknown. Here we show that the transfer of the cytoplasmic domain of a CV-resident protein (Rh50) to a reporter transmembrane protein (CsA) is sufficient to address the chimera (CsA-Rh50) to the CV. We identified two clusters of acidic residues responsible for this targeting, and these motifs interacted with the γ-adaptin AP-1 subunit in a yeast protein-protein interaction assay. For the first time we report the existence of an indirect transport pathway from the plasma membrane to the CV via endosomes. Upon internalization, the small fraction of CsA-Rh50 present at the cell surface was first concentrated in endosomes distinct from early and late p80-positive endosomes and then slowly transported to the CV. Together our results suggest the existence of an AP-1-dependent selective transport to the contractile vacuole in Dictyostelium.
Convex Conic Formulations of Robust Downlink Precoder Designs With Quality of Service Constraints

We consider the design of linear precoders (beamformers) for broadcast channels with Quality of Service (QoS) constraints for each user, in scenarios with uncertain channel state information (CSI) at the transmitter. We consider a deterministically-bounded model for the channel uncertainty of each user, and our goal is to design a robust precoder that minimizes the total transmission power required to satisfy the users' QoS constraints for all channels within a specified uncertainty region around the transmitter's estimate of each user's channel. Since this problem is not known to be computationally tractable, we will derive three conservative design approaches that yield convex and computationally-efficient restrictions of the original design problem. The three approaches yield semidefinite program (SDP) formulations that offer different trade-offs between the degree of conservatism and the size of the SDP. We will also show how these conservative approaches can be used to derive efficiently-solvable quasi-convex restrictions of some related design problems, including the robust counterpart to the problem of maximizing the minimum signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio (SINR) subject to a given power constraint. Our simulation results indicate that in the presence of uncertain CSI the proposed approaches can satisfy the users' QoS requirements for a significantly larger set of uncertainties than existing methods, and require less transmission power to do so.
A Multilevel Study of Students in Vietnam: Drinking Motives and Drinking Context as Predictors of Alcohol Consumption

Background: This study used multi-level analysis to estimate which type of factor explains most of the variance in alcohol consumption of Vietnamese students. Methods: Data were collected among 6011 students attending 12 universities/faculties in four provinces in Vietnam. The three most recent drinking occasions were investigated per student, resulting in 12,795 drinking occasions among 4265 drinkers. Students reported on 10 aspects of the drinking context per drinking occasion. A multi-level mixed-effects linear regression model was constructed in which aspects of drinking context composed the first level; the age of students and four drinking motives comprised the second level. The dependent variable was the number of drinks. Results: Of the aspects of context, drinking duration had the strongest association with alcohol consumption while, at the individual level, coping motive had the strongest association. The drinking context characteristics explained more variance than the individual characteristics in alcohol intake per occasion. Conclusions: These findings suggest that, among students in Vietnam, the drinking context explains a larger proportion of the variance in alcohol consumption than the drinking motives. Therefore, measures that reduce the availability of alcohol in specific drinking situations are an essential part of an effective prevention policy.
Characterization of handover orientations used by humans for efficient robot to human handovers

To enable robots to learn handover orientations from observing natural handovers, we conduct a user study to measure and compare natural handover orientations with giver-centered and receiver-centered handover orientations for twenty common objects. We use a distance minimization approach to compute mean handover orientations. We posit that, computed means of receiver-centered orientations could be used by robot givers to achieve more efficient and socially acceptable handovers. Furthermore, we introduce the notion of affordance axes for comparing handover orientations, and offer a definition for computing them. Observable patterns were found in receiver-centered handover orientations. Comparisons show that depending on the object, natural handover orientations may not be receiver-centered; thus, robots may need to distinguish between good and bad handover orientations when learning from natural handovers.
Molecular Diversity of Seed-borne Fusarium Species Associated with Maize in India

A total of 106 maize seed samples were collected from different agro-climatic regions of India. Sixty-two Fusarium isolates were recovered, 90% of which were identified as Fusarium verticillioides based on morphological and molecular characters. Use of the tef-1α gene corrected/refined the morphological species identifications of 11 isolates, and confirmed those of the remaining isolates. Genetic diversity among the Fusarium isolates involved multilocus fingerprinting profiles by Inter Simple Sequence Repeats (ISSR) UPGMA and tef-1α gene phenetic analyses; for which, we observed no significant differences among the isolates based on geographic origin or fumonisin production; most of the subdivision related to species. Genotyping was performed on the F. verticillioides isolates, using 12 primer sets from the fumonisin pathway, to elucidate the molec-ular basis of fumonisin production or non-production. One fumonisin-negative isolate, UOMMF-16, was unable to amplify nine of the 12 fumonisin cluster genes tested. We also used the CD-ELISA method to confirm fumonisin production for our 62 Fusarium isolates. Only 15 isolates were found to be fumonisin-negative. Interestingly, genotypic characterization re-vealed six isolates with various gene deletion patterns that also tested positive for the production of fumonisins via CD-ELISA. Our findings confirm the importance of molecular studies for species delimitation, and for observing genetic and phenotypic diversity, among the Fusaria.
Global properties of the H I distribution in the outer Milky Way - Planar and extra-planar gas

Context. The determination of the global structure of the planar and extra-planar Milky Way H i disk depends critically on a reliable database but also on reasonable assumptions about the shape of the Milky Way rotation curve. Aims. We derive the 3D H i volume density distribution for the Galactic disk out to R ∼ 60 kpc. Methods. Our analysis is based on parameters for the warp and rotation curve derived previously. The data are taken from the Leiden/Argentine/Bonn all sky 21 cm line survey. Results. The Milky Way H i disk is significantly warped but shows a coherent structure out to R ∼ 35 kpc. The radial surface density distribution, the densities in the middle of the warped plane, and the H i scale heights all follow exponential relations. The radial scale length for the surface density distribution of the H i disk is 3.75 kpc. Gas at the outskirts for 40 15 kpc there is more gas in the south. The H i flaring indicates that this asymmetry is caused by a dark matter wake, located at R ∼ 25 kpc in direction of the Magellanic System. Conclusions. The H i disk is made up of two major components. Most prominent is the normal H i disk which can be traced to R ∼ 35 kpc. This is surrounded by a patchy distribution of highly turbulent gas reaching large scale heights but also large radial distances. At the position of the Sun the exponential scale height in the z direction is 3.9 kpc. This component resembles the anomalous gas discovered previously in some galaxies.
Spatial Variation in Population Structure and Its Relation to Movement and the Potential for Dispersal in a Model Intertidal Invertebrate

Dispersal, the movement of an individual away from its natal or breeding ground, has been studied extensively in birds and mammals to understand the costs and benefits of movement behavior. Whether or not invertebrates disperse in response to such attributes as habitat quality or density of conspecifics remains uncertain, due in part to the difficulties in marking and recapturing invertebrates. In the upper Bay of Fundy, Canada, the intertidal amphipod Corophium volutator swims at night around the new or full moon. Furthermore, this species is regionally widespread across a large spatial scale with site-to-site variation in population structure. Such variation provides a backdrop against which biological determinants of dispersal can be investigated. We conducted a large-scale study at nine mudflats, and used swimmer density, sampled using stationary plankton nets, as a proxy for dispersing individuals. We also sampled mud residents using sediment cores over 3 sampling rounds (20–28 June, 10–17 July, 2–11 August 2010). Density of swimmers was most variable at the largest spatial scales, indicating important population-level variation. The smallest juveniles and large juveniles or small adults (particularly females) were consistently overrepresented as swimmers. Small juveniles swam at most times and locations, whereas swimming of young females decreased with increasing mud presence of young males, and swimming of large juveniles decreased with increasing mud presence of adults. Swimming in most stages increased with density of mud residents; however, proportionally less swimming occurred as total mud resident density increased. We suggest small juveniles move in search of C. volutator aggregations which possibly act as a proxy for better habitat. We also suggest large juveniles and small adults move if potential mates are limiting. Future studies can use sampling designs over large spatial scales with varying population structure to help understand the behavioral ecology of movement, and dispersal in invertebrate taxa.
Ground‐ and excited‐state properties of DNA base molecules from plane‐wave calculations using ultrasoft pseudopotentials

We present equilibrium geometries, vibrational modes, dipole moments, ionization energies, electron affinities, and optical absorption spectra of the DNA base molecules adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine calculated from first principles. The comparison of our results with experimental data and results obtained by using quantum chemistry methods show that in specific cases gradient‐corrected density‐functional theory (DFT‐GGA) calculations using ultrasoft pseudopotentials and a plane‐wave basis may be a numerically efficient and accurate alternative to methods employing localized orbitals for the expansion of the electron wave functions. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Comput Chem 1: 112–122, 2004