Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On the Ultraviolet-bright Phase of Metal-rich Horizontal-Branch Stars

We consider the origin of the UV-bright phase of metal-rich helium-burning stars, the slow blue phase (SBP) that was predicted by various earlier works. Based on improved physics including OPAL opacities, which is the same physics that was used in the construction of the new Yale Isochrones, we confirm the existence of the SBP. In addition to our grid of evolutionary tracks, we provide an analytical understanding of the main characteristics of the SBP phenomenon. The SBP is slow because it is a slow-evolving, helium-shell-burning phase that is analogous to the early asymptotic giant branch phase. The SBP of a more metal-rich star is slower than a metal-poor counterpart if they have the same Teff because a more metal-rich helium-burning star has a smaller mass than a metal-poor one and because lifetime increases as mass decreases. Metal-rich helium-burning stars easily become hot because the luminosity from the hydrogen-burning shell is extremely sensitive to the mean molecular weight μ, whereas the luminosity from the helium-burning core is not. Under the assumption of a positive ΔY/ΔZ, helium abundance plays the most important role in governing μ, and thus Dorman et al. found that the SBP occurs only when Y ≳ 0.4 when ΔY/ΔZ ≳ 0. We suggest that the SBP phenomenon is a major cause of the UV upturn phenomenon in giant elliptical galaxies, as will be shown in subsequent papers. The new HB tracks can be retrieved from S. Y. 's web site http://shemesh.gsfc. nasa.gov/astronomy.html.
Discourses of Authenticity Within a Pagan Community

The commodification of the religious impulse finds its most overt expression in the New Age movement and its subculture neopaganism. This article examines discourses in the pagan community in an Australian state. Pagans, who have been characterized as individualist, eclectic, and diverse in their beliefs and practices, network through electronic mail discussion lists and chat forums as well as through local and national offline gatherings. We explore community building and boundary defining communications in these discourses. In particular, we examine interactions that reveal the mobilization of pagans' concern with authenticity in the context of late-capitalism, consumer lifestyles, and media representations of the “craft. ” Our analysis highlights a series of tensions in pagans' representations of and engagement with consumer culture which are evident in everyday pagan discourse. These notions of in/authenticity are captured by invoking the “fluffy bunny” sanction.
Paths To Participatory Autonomy

This article examines the experiences of working children aged between 9 and 14 years in a German city, and the meanings the children ascribe to their work. This qualitative study is based upon a broad concept of work, which includes both unpaid and paid work. As far as work is concerned, the most important thing for children is being able to act independently and find approval for their work. They prefer to receive adequate payment as a form of recognition, but money is not a necessary motive nor the only motive for working. Children's attitude towards their work differs according to a number of factors: whether it offers the opportunity to perform their skills; the concrete use it has for others, and how far that work is appreciated by adults in their social environment. Work is not regarded as being in competition with school, but is seen as an additional opportunity for children to gain new experiences and expand their scope of activities. Work experience can become an important element in children's participative autonomy. Thus it can potentially strengthen their social status and encourage girls and boys to play an active role in society.
Nooz or nyooz?: The Complex Construction of Canadian Identity

Abstract We examine the diffusion of a phonological feature, namely the deletion of palatal glides in words such as news, tune, duke, and student. Within Canada, the conservative glided and innovative glideless pronunciations are no longer viewed as carrying, respectively, British versus American affiliation. One observes a steep generational decline in glide usage, with older, and especially upper-middle-class, females, resisting this change. This contrasts with broadcast media, where the overall glide usage rate is high: national media adopt the glided variant to a greater degree than their local counterparts; moreover, male media personnel display more glide retention than females. Both variants index different social meanings: the glided variant is associated with cultural erudition but is nevertheless not the formal target for all groups. Thus, the two variants hold different appeal for different segments of the population, and both are viewed as a prestige target within the same speech community.
Recommender System for News Articles using Supervised Learning

In the last decade we have observed a mass increase of information, in particular information that is shared through smartphones. Consequently, the amount of information that is available does not allow the average user to be aware of all his options. In this context, recommender systems use a number of techniques to help a user find the desired product. Hence, nowadays recommender systems play an important role. Recommender Systems' aim to identify products that best fits user preferences. These techniques are advantageous to both users and vendors, as it enables the user to rapidly find what he needs and the vendors to promote their products and sales. As the industry became aware of the gains that could be accomplished by using these algorithms, also a very interesting problem for many researchers, recommender systems became a very active area since the mid 90's. Having in mind that this is an ongoing problem the present thesis intends to observe the value of using a recommender algorithm to find users likes by observing her domain preferences. In a balanced probabilistic method, this thesis will show how news topics can be used to recommend news articles. In this thesis, we used different machine learning methods to determine the user ratings for an article. To tackle this problem, supervised learning methods such as linear regression, Naive Bayes and logistic regression are used. All the aforementioned models have a different nature which has an impact on the solution of the given problem. Furthermore, number of experiments are presented and discussed to identify the feature set that fits best to the problem.
Of Guilt, Defiance, and Repentance: Evidence from the Texas Death Chamber

Despite the longstanding research tradition looking at administration of the death penalty jurisprudentially, scholarship has only begun to examine such punishment within the paradigm of “emotionally intelligent justice. ” By mapping the intersections of sanctions and emotions, emotionally intelligent justice has been advanced as a way to reduce the cruelty of offenders and of the justice system itself. Utilizing executed inmates’ final statements for the period December, 1982 through early June, 2005 and controls for offense and offender characteristics, this study examines the manner in which starkly personal pronouncements manifest in the Texas execution chamber. Descriptive analyses illustrate a broad swath of emotions as offenders approach their deaths, while multivariate models suggest that the presence of homicide survivors (victims’ families and friends) at executions facilitates expressions of guilt and repentance, but not defiance, in offenders. Implications for future research are discussed.
OCT4B1, a novel spliced variant of OCT4, is highly expressed in gastric cancer and acts as an antiapoptotic factor

The octamer‐binding transcription factor 4 (OCT4) is involved in regulating pluripotency and self‐renewal maintenance of embryonic stem cells. Recently, misexpression of OCT4 has been also reported in some adult stem as well as cancer cells; a finding which is still controversial. In addition to the previously described spliced variants of the gene (e.g., OCT4A and OCT4B), we have recently identified a novel variant of the gene, designated as OCT4‐B1. In this study, we investigated a potential expression and function of OCT4B1 in a series of gastric cancer tissues and a gastric adenocarcinoma cell line, AGS. Using the Taqman real‐time PCR approach, we have detected the expression of OCT4B1 in tumors with no or much lower expression in marginal samples of the same patients (p < 0.002). We have also analyzed the effects of OCT4B1 knock‐down in AGS cell line treated with specific siRNA directed toward OCT4B1. Our data revealed that interfering with the expression of OCT4B1 caused profound changes in the morphology and cell cycle distribution of the cells. Furthermore, down‐regulation of OCT4B1 significantly elevated the relative activity of caspase‐3/caspase‐7 and the rate of apoptosis in the cells (more than 30%). All together, our findings suggest that OCT4B1 has a potential role in tumorigenesis of gastric cancer and candidates the variant as a new tumor marker with potential value in diagnosis and treatment of gastric cancer.
On Collision-Tolerant Transmission with Directional Antennas

The application of directional antennas in wireless ad hoc networks brings numerous benefits, such as increased spatial reuse and mitigated interferences. Most MAC protocols with directional antennas are based on the RTS/CTS mechanism which works well in wireless ad hoc networks using omnidirectional antennas. However, RTS/CTS frames cannot mitigate the interference completely. Besides, they also contribute a lot to the performance overhead. This paper studies the problem from a new perspective. We have found that the transmission success probability under directional transmission and directional reception is quite high when the antenna beamwidth is quite narrow. Motivated by the analytical results, we design a lightweight MAC protocol without RTS/CTS frames. The preliminary results demonstrate that this new protocol performs better than MAC protocols based on the RTS/CTS mechanism. The results also show that a collision-tolerant transmission is feasible under the narrow beam configuration.
The Influence of Axial Grooves on Dislodgment Resistance of Prosthetic Metal Crowns in Maxillary Fourth Premolar Teeth of Dogs

The reported failure rate for full veneer crowns in dogs is suboptimal, particularly in teeth with naturally poor retentive features such as the maxillary fourth premolar tooth of dogs. Although the data regarding crown retention on the maxillary fourth premolar in dogs are limited, there are data that suggest the crown failure rate could be similar to that of the canine tooth. Thus, methods to improve retentive features of the preparation design should be pursued. The objective of the present study is to quantify the influence of axial grooves on the dislodgment resistance of full veneer metal crowns in dogs. Crown dislodgment testing was performed on cast alloy dies of the maxillary fourth premolar tooth with unfavorable retentive features prepared with and without axial grooves, to quantify the difference in force required to dislodge a cemented full veneer crown. The force required to cause crown dislodgment was recorded for each crown. Statistical analysis revealed a significant increase (P < .001) in the force required for crown dislodgment in teeth prepared with axial grooves compared to those prepared without axial grooves.
( AISeL ) All Sprouts Content Sprouts 1130-2009 Constructs in the Mist : The Lost World of the IT Artifact

Recent years have seen much discussion in the literature about the core of the IS field. While extreme positions in this debate see IS research either as purely technical or purely behavioral work, we believe that one area of competence and contribution for IS researchers lies at the boundary of technology and individual human psychology. In addressing this question, IS researchers frequently invoke psychological constructs at a high level of abstraction, in order to achieve theories that allow wide knowledge claims. We contend that this fails to provide operationalizable and actionable linkages between the IT artifact and the psychological user model: exactly that area that should represent the contribution of IS research. This paper addresses these shortcomings by urging researchers to focus on the "forgotten" constructs on the "left hand side" of the model, characteristics of the artifact that serve as antecedents to user behavior. We propose a theory template that can be used to instantiate specific theories. We illustrate this template by examining how it can be used to instantiate existing theories and develop new theories.
Social capital in community, family, and work lives of Brazilian migrant parents in Ireland

The paper examines a recent phenomenon of Brazilian migration to Ireland using social capital as a framework of analysis. The analysis specifically makes use of Portes and Sensenbrenner's typology of social capital sources (1993; Portes, 1998): bounded solidarity, value introjection, reciprocity, and enforceable trust. The paper examines the processes and dynamics inhering within these sources of social capital to account for the differential experiences of family, work, and community life in Ireland. The absence or presence of social capital sources, it is argued, is important in the experience of settlement and adaptation, especially in exacerbating or countering the disadvantages facing migrants. The evidence used is based on recent research from qualitative interviews with Brazilian parents in a small town in the west of Ireland, and residing in Ireland for several years.
A Communication-Efficient Parallel Method for Group-Lasso

Group-Lasso (gLasso) identifies important explanatory factors in predicting the response variable by considering the grouping structure over input variables. However, most existing algorithms for gLasso are not scalable to deal with large-scale datasets, which are becoming a norm in many applications. In this paper, we present a divide-and-conquer based parallel algorithm (DC-gLasso) to scale up gLasso in the tasks of regression with grouping structures. DC-gLasso only needs two iterations to collect and aggregate the local estimates on subsets of the data, and is provably correct to recover the true model under certain conditions. We further extend it to deal with overlappings between groups. Empirical results on a wide range of synthetic and real-world datasets show that DC-gLasso can significantly improve the time efficiency without sacrificing regression accuracy.
Determination of the genotoxic effects of Convolvulus arvensis extracts on corn (Zea mays L.) seeds

In this research, the methanolic extracts of Convolvulus arvensis were tested for genotoxic and inhibitor activity on the total soluble protein content and the genomic template stability against corn Zea mays L. seed. The methanol extracts of leaf, stem and root of C. arvensis were diluted to 50, 75 and 100 μl concentrations and applied to corn seed. The total soluble protein and genomic template stability results were compared with the control. The results showed that especially 100 μl extracts of diluted leaf, stem and root had a strong inhibitory activity on the genomic template stability. The changes occurred in random amplification of polymorphic DNA (RAPD) profiles of C. arvensis extract treatment included variation in band intensity, loss of bands and appearance of new bands compared with control. Also, the results obtained from this study revealed that the increase in the concentrations of C. arvensis extract increased the total soluble protein content in maize. The results suggested that RAPD analysis and total protein analysis could be applied as a suitable biomarker assay for the detection of genotoxic effects of plant allelochemicals.
Dasatinib or imatinib (IM) in newly diagnosed chronic myeloid leukemia in chronic phase (CML-CP): Two-year follow-up from DASISION.

6510 Background: In the randomized phase III DASISION trial of dasatinib v IM in newly diagnosed CML-CP, dasatinib showed higher and faster rates of complete cytogenetic response (CCyR) and major molecular response (MMR) (Shah Blood 2010 116 abs 206). METHODS Pts received dasatinib 100 mg once daily (QD) (n=259) or IM 400 mg QD (n=260). Primary endpoint was confirmed CCyR (cCCyR; CCyR on 2 consecutive tests) by 12 mos. RESULTS After 19.7 mos' median follow-up (range 0.1-31.4), 81% and 80% remained on dasatinib and IM. 18-mo response rates for dasatinib v IM were: cCCyR 78% v 70%, P=0.0366; CCyR 84% v 78%, P=0.0932; and MMR 56% v 37%, P<0.0001. MMR occurred more often with dasatinib in all Hasford groups. For dasatinib v IM, 13% v 7% had a BCR-ABL level ≤0.0032%. In time to response analyses, dasatinib pts were 1.8-/1.5-fold more likely to have MMR/CCyR (both P<0.0001). For dasatinib v IM, 6 (2.3%) v 9 (3.5%) pts transformed to accelerated/blast phase (AP/BP) on study; 1 other pt transformed 183 days after discontinuing dasatinib. For dasatinib v IM, 18-mo rates (follow-up ongoing) were overall survival: 96% v 98%; progression-free survival (no AP/BP or loss of response): 95% v 94%; failure-free survival (ELN 2006 criteria): 93% v 90%; and maximum clinical benefit (no progression, failure or intolerance): 87% v 86%. Drug-related adverse events (AEs) are shown (Table). Grade 3/4 nonhematologic AE rates were ≤1%. Pleural effusions seen only with dasatinib (2% gr 1, 9% gr 2, <1% gr 3) did not seem to impact efficacy. Most cytopenias (75%) arose within 4 mos. Gr 3/4 lab abnormality rates were ≤3% except hypophosphatemia (dasatinib 5%, IM 24%). For dasatinib v IM, 56% v 39% had dose interruption, 25% v 14% had dose reduction and 6% v 4% discontinued due to drug-related AEs. Minimum 24-mo follow-up will be presented. CONCLUSIONS At 18 mos, dasatinib continues to show superior efficacy over IM and acceptable tolerability, supporting first-line dasatinib use in newly diagnosed CML-CP. [Table: see text].
Patterns and Yearly Time Trends in the Use of Radiation Therapy During the Last 30 Days of Life Among Patients With Metastatic Rectal Cancer in the United States From 2004 to 2012

Purpose: Although radiation therapy (RT) can provide palliative benefits for patients with metastatic rectal cancer, its role at the end of life remains unclear. The objective of this study was to assess sociodemographic and clinical factors associated with the use of RT during the last 30 days of life and to evaluate yearly time trends in RT utilization among stage IV patients with rectal cancer. Methods: The 2004 to 2012 National Cancer DataBase was queried for patients with metastatic rectal cancer who had a documented death during follow-up. A Bayesian multilevel logistic regression model was used to characterize predictive factors and yearly time trends associated with RT use in the last 30 days of life. Results: Among 10 431 patients who met inclusion criteria, 345 (3%) received RT during the last 30 days of life. Factors independently associated with RT use included older age, female sex, African American race, nonprivate insurance, higher comorbidity burden, and worse grade. The odds of RT use at the end of life decreased by 28% between 2007 and 2009 (odds ratio [OR] = 0.72, 95% Credible Interval (CI) = 0.58-0.93), but then increased by 16% from 2010 to 2012 (OR = 1.16, 95% CI = 1.13-1.33), relative to 2004 to 2006. Conclusion: Radiation therapy use for patients with metastatic rectal cancer is beneficial, and efforts to optimize its appropriate use are important. Several factors associated with RT use during the last 30 days of life included disparities in sociodemographic and clinical subgroups. Research is needed to understand the underlying causes of these inequalities and the role of predictive models in clinical decision-making.
Toward a Cost-effective Correctional System: New Developments in Community-based Corrections in China

Abstract Like many other countries in the world, China faces an increase in prison population. The traditional corrections model that relies heavily on detention and imprisonment has been costly but has not been shown to be effective in reducing recidivism and promoting offender rehabilitation. Since 2003, the Chinese government has turned to community-based corrections as a measure to improve the cost-effectiveness of the correctional system. This article provides an overview of the development of community-based corrections since its inception in China. The review focuses on the motivations underlying this correctional reform, its goals and objectives, key policy components, the scope of implementation, and potential barriers to building effective community-based correctional programs.
Neuromuscular organization of the canine tongue

The tongue manipulates food while chewing and swallowing, dilates the airway during inspiration, and shapes the sounds of speech in humans. While performing these functions the tongue morphs through many complex shapes. At present it is not known how the muscles of the tongue perform these complex shape changes. The difficulty in understanding tongue biomechanics is partly due to gaps in our knowledge regarding the complex neuromuscular anatomy of the tongue. In this study the motor and sensory nerve anatomy of four canine tongues was studied with Sihler's stain, a technique that renders most of the tongue tissue translucent while counterstaining nerves. An additional tongue specimen was serially sectioned to provide a reference for the muscle structure of the tongue.
Dynamic Evolution of Endogenous Retrovirus-Derived Genes Expressed in Bovine Conceptuses during the Period of Placentation

In evolution of mammals, some of essential genes for placental development are known to be of retroviral origin, as syncytin-1 derived from an envelope (env) gene of an endogenous retrovirus (ERV) aids in the cell fusion of placenta in humans. Although the placenta serves the same function in all placental mammals, env-derived genes responsible for trophoblast cell fusion and maternal immune tolerance differ among species and remain largely unidentified in the bovine species. To examine env-derived genes playing a role in the bovine placental development comprehensively, we determined the transcriptomic profiles of bovine conceptuses during three crucial windows of implantation periods using a high-throughput sequencer. The sequence reads were mapped into the bovine genome, in which ERV candidates were annotated using RetroTector© (7,624 and 1,542 for ERV-derived and env-derived genes, respectively). The mapped reads showed that approximately 18% (284 genes) of env-derived genes in the genome were expressed during placenta formation, and approximately 4% (63 genes) were detected for all days examined. We verified three env-derived genes that are expressed in trophoblast cells by polymerase chain reaction. Out of these three, the sequence of env-derived gene with the longest open reading frame (named BERV-P env) was found to show high expression levels in trophoblast cell lines and to be similar to those of syncytin-Car1 genes found in dogs and cats, despite their disparate origins. These results suggest that placentation depends on various retrovirus-derived genes that could have replaced endogenous predecessors during evolution.
EFFECT OF QUANTITY CONSUMED ON MEASURES OF LIKING FOR SALT CONCENTRATIONS IN SOUP

Two studies are reported on the effect ofingestion on the relative-to-ideal ratings of salt in soup. In the first study there was a reduction in the measure of ideal concentration from pre- to post-ingestion, with subjects consuming the soups ad libitum. However, a measure of ideal concentration derived from several small samples presented in each session agreed well with the final post-ingestion ideal. A measure of most preferred concentration of salt based on total soup consumption was unrelated to the other measures. In the second experiment, the post-ingestion decrease in most preferred salt concentration was replicated when subjects consumed a fixed quantity of soup. The post-ingestion ideal was similar to that derived from rating either several small samples in one session or one single small sample per session.