Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cognition During Marital Conflict: The Relationship of Thought and Talk

This article describes and analyzes the stream of thought occurring concurrently with overt communication about marital conflict. The research considers how marital conflicts may be affected by selective attention to different elements of conflict (different emotions, issues, interactional behaviors, and background events) and by spontaneous attributions about communicative intentions and outcomes. One hundred eighteen couples discussed a current conflict issue, then individually watched a videotape of the discussion and reported thoughts and feelings experienced during the discussion. Descriptively, the thoughts revealed limited complexity, infrequent perspective taking, a predominant concern for implicit relationship issues over content issues, and frequent direct analysis of the communication process. Spouses viewed their own communication in more favorable terms than their partner's communication. Husbands and wives also viewed the interactions differently, with wives appearing, in certain respects, more other-directed, relationship-sensitive, and objective. Interaction-based thoughts were especially subjective in the most severe conflicts, as suggested by a lack of correspondence between attributions about communication and observer coding of the interactions. Furthermore, in severe conflicts and dissatisfied relationships, the individuals had more angry, blaming, and pessimistic thoughts and less focus on content issues.
Epidemiological Characteristics of Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Isolates from Children with Eczematous Atopic Dermatitis Lesions

ABSTRACT In this study, we investigated the rate of colonization of skin of children with atopic dermatitis (AD) by methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and characterized the isolates. Active skin lesions in pediatric AD patients were cultured with Rodac Staph (Komed, Korea). S. aureus isolates were examined for drug susceptibilities, analyzed for the eta, etb, tst, and pvl genes, and typed using agr polymorphism, pulsed-field gel electrophoresis of SmaI-restricted chromosomal DNA, and staphylococcal cassette chromosome mec (SCCmec) typing. Eighty-seven (75.4%) of 115 patients had cultivable S. aureus isolates, 16 of which (18.3%) were MRSA. All MRSA isolates were susceptible to chloramphenicol, rifampin, cotrimoxazole, and ciprofloxacin. While methicillin-susceptible S. aureus (MSSA) isolates were composed of 23 isolates of singular types and nine clusters comprising 48 isolates, MRSA isolates were typed into three clones: eight isolates of pulsotype A-agr-1-SCCmec IV, five isolates of pulsotype B-agr-3-SCCmec IIb-etb positive, and three isolates of pulsotype C-agr-3-SCCmec IV. Three SCCmec IVA MRSA isolates were tst positive, but none were positive for the pvl or eta gene. Among 71 MSSA isolates, 7 isolates were tst positive, 6 of which were pulsotype F-agr-3, and 9 of 10 agr-4 isolates were eta positive. The average ages of patients carrying MSSA, SCCmec IVA MRSA, and SCCmec IIb MRSA were 7.7 ± 4.6, 3.1 ± 1.5, and 8.2 ± 3.1 years, respectively. Among the patients carrying MRSA, two patients had been treated with oral antimicrobials, and one had been admitted to the hospital 18 months previously. In conclusion, community-acquired MRSA isolates of a few clones colonized the skin of patients with AD without risk factors for the acquisition of hospital-acquired MRSA, which suggested that the skin of children with AD may represent a significant reservoir of MRSA colonization in the community.
Using Infrared Spectroscopy to Identify New Amorphous Phases - A Case Study of Carbonato Complex Formed by Mechanochemical Processing

Since the first laboratory experiments of M. Carey Lea and the original definition by F. W. Ostwald at the end of the 19th century, mechanochemistry, a field treating chemical changes induced in substances as a result of applied mechanical stress, has been evolved as an important area of chemistry from the viewpoint of both the fundamental research and applications (Takacs, 2004; Boldyrev & Tkacova, 2000). Whereas the fundamentals of mechanochemistry are still being extensively explored, the mechanical alloying, a powder metallurgy process involving ball milling of particles under high-energy impact conditions, met the commercial ground as early as in 1966 and was used to produce improved nickeland iron-based alloys for aerospace industry (Suryanarayana et al., 2001). In addition to metallurgy, the science and technology of mechanochemical processes are continuously developing within various other fields, including ceramics processing, processing of minerals, catalysis, pharmaceutics, and many others.
Acoustic and tongue kinematic vowel space in speakers with and without dysarthria

Abstract Purpose: The purpose is to investigate acoustic and tongue body kinematic vowel dispersion patterns and vowel space in speakers with and without dysarthria secondary to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Method: Acoustic and tongue kinematic vowel spaces were examined at the same time sampling point using electromagnetic articulography in 11 speakers with dysarthria secondary to ALS and 11 speakers without dysarthria. Tongue kinematic data were collected from the tongue body sensor (∼25 mm posterior from the tongue apex). A number of acoustic and tongue body kinematic variables were tested. Result: The result showed that the acoustic and tongue kinematic vowel dispersion patterns are different between the groups. Acoustic and tongue body kinematic vowel spaces are highly correlated; however, unlike acoustic vowel space, tongue body kinematic vowel space was not significantly different between the groups. Conclusion: Both acoustic and tongue kinematic vowel dispersion patterns are sensitive to the group difference, especially with high vowels. The tongue kinematic vowel space approach is too crude to differentiate the speakers with dysarthria secondary to ALS from speakers without dysarthria. To examine tongue range of motion in speakers with dysarthria, a more refined articulatory kinematic approach needs to be examined in the future.
Radar aided beam alignment in MmWave V2I communications supporting antenna diversity

Millimeter wave (mmWave) communication is the only viable approach for high bandwidth connected vehicles exchanging raw sensor data. A main challenge for mmWave in connected vehicles, is that it requires frequent link reconfiguration in mobile environments, which is a source of high overhead. In this paper we introduce the concept of radar aided mmWave vehicular communication. Side information derived from radar mounted on the infrastructure operating in a given mmWave band is used to adapt the beams of the vehicular communication system operating in another millimeter wave band. We propose a set of algorithms to perform the beam alignment task in a vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) scenario, from extracting information from the radar signal to configuring the beams that illuminate the different antennas in the vehicle. Simulation results confirm that radar can be a useful source of side information that helps configure the mmWave V2I link.
Changing Trends in Dental Caries Experience in Great Britain

Periodic national surveys of dental health since 1968, and a coordinated program of local surveys of children since 1985, have provided a comprehensive picture of trends in dental caries experience in Great Britain over the course of two decades. This review of some of the findings examines changes in adult caries experience, together with the related phenomenon of total tooth loss; presents evidence of a cohort effect in the decline in caries among children and young adults; and considers likely future trends and their implications for the dental services. Conclusions drawn were: (1) Although the proportion of the population with no natural teeth is declining rapidly among young adults, levels of edentulousness among older age groups will remain high for some time to come; (2) in England and Wales, a modest decline in caries experience of young adults between 1968 and 1978 accelerated between 1978 and 1988 [The greatest change in annual rate of reduction over two decades was in 16-24-year-olds, and in absolute terms, mean DMFT in this age group decreased from 15.7 to 10.4 during the period. ]; (3) a cohort effect is discernible in the changing pattern [Thus, caries has apparently stabilized in young children, whereas in adolescents and young adults the rate of decline has increased. ]; and (4) smaller improvements in dental health have occurred in Scotland than in England and Wales.
Dewey’s neglected psychology: Rediscovering his transactional approach

Unlike his ideas about education and philosophy, John Dewey’s psychology has been largely neglected. This article begins the rediscovery of his transactional psychology by seeking a synthesizing reading of those of his works that pertain to psychology. The article first outlines his transactional approach and also his metapsychology, which conceived of psychology as involved in the constitution of its own subject matter. Then some central psychological concepts such as habit, thinking, self, mind, meaning, and consciousness are explained within the transactional framework, and some similarities are highlighted between Dewey’s psychology and ecological psychology. It is argued that Dewey’s psychology is still very relevant in the 21st century.
Constraints on the radial distribution of the dust properties in the CQ Tauri protoplanetary disk

Context. Grain growth in protoplanetary disks is the first step towards the formation of the rocky cores of planets. Models predict that grains grow, migrate, and fragment in the disk and predict varying dust properties as a function of radius, age, and physical properties. High-angular resolution observations at more than one (sub-)mm wavelength are the essential tool for constraining grain growth and migration on the disk midplane. Aims. We developed a procedure to analyze self-consistently multiwavelength (sub-)mm continuum interferometric observations of protoplanetary disks to constrain the radial distribution of dust properties. Methods. We apply this technique to existing multifrequency continuum mm observations of the disk around CQ Tau, a A8 pre-main sequence star with a well-studied disk. Results. We demonstrate that our models can be used to simultaneously constrain the disk and dust structure. In CQ Tau, the best-fitting model has a radial dependence of the maximum grain size, which decreases from a few cm in the inner disk (<40 AU) to a few mm at 80 AU. Nevertheless, the currently available dataset does not allow us to exclude the possibility of a uniform grain size distribution at a 3σ level.
Cache based optimization of stencil computations : an algorithmic approach

We are witnessing a fundamental paradigm shift in computer design. Memory has been and is becoming more hierarchical. Clock frequency is no longer crucial for performance. The on-chip core count is doubling rapidly. The quest for performance is growing. These facts have lead to complex computer systems which bestow high demands on scientific computing problems to achieve high performance. Stencil computation is a frequent and important kernel that is affected by this complexity. Its importance stems from the wide variety of scientific and engineering applications that use it. The stencil kernel is a nearest-neighbor computation with low arithmetic intensity, thus it usually achieves only a tiny fraction of the peak performance when executed on modern computer systems. Fast on-chip memory modules were introduced as the hardware approach to alleviate the problem. There are mainly three approaches to address the problem, cache aware, cache oblivious, and automatic loop transformation approaches. In this thesis, comprehensive cache aware and cache oblivious algorithms to optimize stencil computations on structured rectangular 2D and 3D grids are presented. Our algorithms observe the challenges for high performance in the previous approaches, devise solutions for them, and carefully balance the solution building blocks against each other. The many-core systems put the scalability of memory access at stake which has lead to hierarchical main memory systems. This adds another locality challenge for performance. We tailor our frameworks to meet the new performance challenge on these architectures. Experiments are performed to evaluate the performance of our frameworks on synthetic as well as real world problems.
DEVELOPMENT, VALIDATION, AND APPLICATION OF A QUANTITATIVE POLYMERASE CHAIN REACTION ASSAY TO ASSESS HEMATODINIUM PEREZI PREVALENCE IN ENVIRONMENTAL SAMPLES

Dinoflagellate parasites in the Hematodinium genus have emerged as important pathogens of economically important crustaceans worldwide, causing significant economic losses to fisheries and aquaculture. An understanding of the routes of infection in blue crab (Callinectes sapidus) populations would be facilitated by an improved knowledge of environmental reservoirs. A previously used PCR assay, based on small subunit rRNA sequences, lacked the specificity needed for Hematodinium perezi detection of environmental samples. Therefore a quantitative PCR assay based on the internal transcribed spacer 2 (ITS2) region Title of Document: DEVELOPMENT, VALIDATION AND APPLICATION OF A QUANTITATIVE POLYMERASE CHAIN REACTION ASSAY TO ASSESS ENVIRONMENTAL SAMPLES FOR HEMATODINIUM PEREZI PREVALENCE Ammar W. Hanif, MS, 2012 Directed By: Assistant Professor Eric J. Schott, Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology, University of Maryland Center of Environmental Science Associate Professor Rosemary Jagus, Coadvisor, Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology, University of Maryland Center of Environmental Science of H. perezi rRNA genes was developed, validated, and applied to examine temporal and spatial incidences of environmental reservoirs in Delmarva coastal bays. H. perezi was detected in sediment and water in several Delmarva coastal bays, as well as the host, C. sapidus. Results suggest the existence of localized sediment reservoirs in areas where hydrological and geophysical features allow for the formation of cell deposits. DEVELOPMENT, VALIDATION, AND APPLICATION OF A QUANTITATIVE POLYMERASE CHAIN REACTION ASSAY TO ASSESS HEMATODINIUM PEREZI PREVALENCE IN ENVIRONMENTAL SAMPLES
Black + White = Black

Historically, the principle of hypodescent specified that individuals with one Black and one White parent should be considered Black. Two experiments examined whether categorizations of racially ambiguous targets reflect this principle. Participants studied ambiguous target faces accompanied by profiles that either did or did not identify the targets as having multiracial backgrounds (biological, cultural, or both biological and cultural). Participants then completed a speeded dualcategorization task requiring Black/not Black and White/not White judgments (Experiments 1 and 2) and deliberate categorization tasks requiring participants to describe the races (Experiment 2) of target faces. When a target was known to have mixed-race ancestry, participants were more likely to rapidly categorize the target as Black (and not White); however, the same cues also increased deliberate categorizations of the targets as “multiracial. ” These findings suggest that hypodescent still characterizes the automatic racial categorizations of many perceivers, although more complex racial identities may be acknowledged upon more thoughtful reflection.
Lymphoproliferative disorders in chronic hepatitis C

Summary. Chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection is associated with the development of lymphoproliferative disorders (LPDs). The aim of this investigation was to determine the prevalence and characterization of monoclonal gammopathy and benign and malignant LPDs in individuals with chronic hepatitis C. A total of 233 subjects diagnosed with chronic hepatitis C (male/female ratio: 131/102, median age; 49 years) were studied. Serum and urine were examined for the presence of a monoclonal gammopathy. A bone marrow aspirate and biopsy was obtained in individuals with a monoclonal gammopathy. Thirty‐two patients (13.7%, 32 of 233) had a monoclonal gammopathy; 75% of them were benign and were not associated with malignant disorders (24 of 32) while 25% were associated with malignant LPDs or a plasma cell disorder (eight of 32). Two additional subjects without monoclonal gammopathy were diagnosed as having a malignant LPDs. The prevalence of malignant LPDs/plasma cell disorder in individuals with HCV‐induced chronic liver disease was 4.3%. No difference was found in terms of disease duration, HCV genotype, viral load, alanine aminotransferase level or histopathologic score between the subjects with or without a monoclonal gammopathy. The presence of mixed cryoglobulinaemia was strongly associated with the presence of an underlying malignant disorder. Hence a monoclonal gammopathy is found in 14% of patients with chronic hepatitis C and is associated with malignant B‐cell LPD in more than a quarter of such patients. The prevalence of LPDs in individuals with HCV‐induced chronic liver disease is greater than that of the normal healthy population.
The effect of high variability phonetic training on the production of English vowels and consonants

This study evaluated Korean early learners’ production of English vowels and consonants before and after high variability phonetic training (HVPT), for the purpose of investigating the effects of perceptual training on speech production. Korean learners aged 11-12 were trained to discriminate multiple sets of English vowel and consonant contrasts, and their preand posttraining recordings were evaluated by native speakers of English. Although the trainees showed significant improvements for some sounds, the overall results demonstrated that the effect of perceptual learning on speech production is not significant and the improvements in the two domains (i.e., perception and production) are not correlated.
Interaction in bilingual Cantonese-Putonghua phonological acquisition

This study investigated the existence and mechanism of interaction in bilingual phonological acquisition of two tonal languages (Cantonese and Putonghua). A total of 60 children aged 3;00 to 4;00 were recruited from Hong Kong and Shenzhen, including 20 Cantonese-Putonghua successive bilinguals, 20 Cantonese and 20 Putonghua monolinguals. Cantonese Segmental Phonology Test (So, 1992) and Putonghua Segmental Phonology Test (So & Zhou, 2000) were administered. Occurrences of phonological transfer, phonetic inventories, percentage accuracy of syllable component and accuracy by manner class were measured. The accuracies of shared and unshared sounds were compared in each group to examine if sound categorisation (Flege, 1981) is a systematic pattern of interaction. Results indicated interaction exists between the two phonological systems. In addition, sound categorisation was evident in bilingual phonological acquisition. A clearer picture of bilingual Cantonese-Putonghua phonological acquisition was provided, allowing speech pathologists to make appropriate diagnosis and plan intervention.
Physical health and depressive symptoms in older Europeans. Results from EURODEP.

BACKGROUND Associations between physical health and depression are consistent across cultures among adults up to 65 years of age. In later life, the impact of physical health on depression is much more substantial and may depend on sociocultural factors. AIMS To examine cross-national differences in the association between physical health and depressive symptoms in elderly people across western Europe. METHOD Fourteen community-based studies on depression in later life in nine western European countries contributed to a total study sample of 22 570 respondents aged 65 years and older. Measures were harmonized for depressive symptoms (EURO-D scale), functional limitations and chronic physical conditions. RESULTS In the majority of the participating samples, the association of depressive symptoms with functional disability was stronger than with chronic physical conditions. Associations were slightly more pronounced in the UK and Ireland. CONCLUSIONS The association between physical health and depressive symptoms in later life is consistent across western Europe.
Within-Individual Stability of Obesity-Related Biomarkers among Women

Objective: Novel biomarkers including proinflammatory cytokines and adipokines are being explored as potential mediators of cancer and other obesity-related conditions. Prospective studies linking biomarker levels with disease outcomes often measure biomarkers at a single time point and assume that the within-individual variation in levels is small compared with the interindividual variation. However, this assumption is seldom tested. Methods: This study examined the within-individual stability over time of plasma adiponectin, resistin, leptin, plasma activator inhibitor type 1, hepatocyte growth factor, tumor necrosis factor α, interleukin 6, and insulin among healthy young women. Results: The study included 17 women (9 Black non-Hispanic, 2 Black Hispanic, 2 White Hispanic, and 4 other race/ethnicity) with mean age of 32.3 years, mean body mass index of 31.2 kg/m2, and 76% prevalence of smoking. Analysis of intraclass correlation (ICC) suggested high to moderate correlation over repeated samples taken over 3 years in levels of resistin (ICC = 0.95), hepatocyte growth factor (0.91), plasma activator inhibitor type 1 (0.84), adiponectin (0.73), insulin (0.62), and leptin (0.58). ICCs were weaker for levels of proinflammatory cytokines, tumor necrosis factor α (0.39), and interleukin 6 (0.47). Conclusion: In this population of minority young females with a high prevalence of overweight and smoking, several obesity-related endocrine markers were stable over a period of 3 years. This supports the feasibility of longitudinal studies relating these biomarkers to the future occurrence of cancer and other health consequences of obesity. (Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2007;16(6):1291–3)
The Spoken Dutch Corpus. Overview and First Evaluation

In this paper the Spoken Dutch Corpus project is presented, a joint Flemish-Dutch undertaking aimed at the compilation and annotation of a 10-million-word corpus of spoken Dutch. Upon completion, the corpus will constitute a valuable resource for research in the fields of computational linguistics and language and speech technology. The paper first gives an overall description of the project, its aims, structure and organization. It then goes on to discuss the considerations % both methodological and practical % that have played a role in the design of the corpus as well as in its compilation and annotation. The paper concludes with an account of the data that are available in the first release of the first part of the corpus that came out on March 1st, 2000.
Layered Coding for Energy Harvesting Communication Without CSIT

Due to stringent constraints on resources, it may be infeasible to acquire the current channel state information at the transmitter in energy harvesting communication systems. In this paper, we optimize an energy harvesting transmitter, communicating over a slow fading channel, using layered coding. The transmitter has access to the channel statistics, but does not know the exact channel state. In layered coding, the codewords are first designed for each of the channel states at different rates, and then the codewords are either time-multiplexed or superimposed before the transmission, leading to two transmission strategies. The receiver then decodes the information adaptively based on the realized channel state. The transmitter is equipped with a finite-capacity battery having non-zero internal resistance. In each of the transmission strategies, we first formulate and study an average rate maximization problem with non-causal knowledge of the harvested power variations. Further, assuming statistical knowledge and causal information of the harvested power variations, we propose a sub-optimal algorithm, and compare with the stochastic dynamic programming based solution and a greedy policy.