Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Differential Impact of Racial Microaggressions on Asian Americans: Relationship to Perpetrator & Power Status

Differential Impact of Racial Microaggressions on Asian Americans: Relationship to Perpetrator & Power Status Rachel Haeyoung Kim The unremitting image of Asian Americans as being “Model Minority” has created a veil that conceals their incessant struggles with discrimination, prejudice and microaggressions on individual, institutional and cultural levels. Previous studies have highlighted the personal and collective struggles of this group and emphasized the harmful consequences to physical, emotional and mental well-being of Asian Americans. The current study explored potential factors that may influence the impact of experiencing racial microaggressions for Asian Americans. More specifically, a 2 x 2 betweensubjects factorial design was utilized to examine whether level of familiarity and role of power in the target’s relationship with the perpetrator differentially impacts the experience of a racial microaggression. A vignette illustrated a microaggressive encounter with a perpetrator who differed on these conditions with a sample of 263 Asian Americans. The findings indicate support for the damaging psychological consequences of receiving racial microaggressions with participants reporting significantly negative experience when the perpetrator was someone familiar in a position of authority. The results of the present study contribute to the literature on racial microaggressions by providing support for the injurious impact it has for Asian Americans and continues to challenge the model minority myth that persists to silence their voices and invalidate their racial reality.
Augmin promotes meiotic spindle formation and bipolarity in Xenopus egg extracts

Female meiotic spindles in many organisms form in the absence of centrosomes, the organelle typically associated with microtubule (MT) nucleation. Previous studies have proposed that these meiotic spindles arise from RanGTP-mediated MT nucleation in the vicinity of chromatin; however, whether this process is sufficient for spindle formation is unknown. Here, we investigated whether a recently proposed spindle-based MT nucleation pathway that involves augmin, an 8-subunit protein complex, also contributes to spindle morphogenesis. We used an assay system in which hundreds of meiotic spindles can be observed forming around chromatin-coated beads after introduction of Xenopus egg extracts. Spindles forming in augmin-depleted extracts showed reduced rates of MT formation and were predominantly multipolar, revealing a function of augmin in stabilizing the bipolar shape of the acentrosomal meiotic spindle. Our studies also have uncovered an apparent augmin-independent MT nucleation process from acentrosomal poles, which becomes increasingly active over time and appears to partially rescue the spindle defects that arise from augmin depletion. Our studies reveal that spatially and temporally distinct MT generation pathways from chromatin, spindle MTs, and acentrosomal poles all contribute to robust bipolar spindle formation in meiotic extracts.
Physical accessibility and its role in landscape development—three historical analyses from South Slovakia

Abstract Physical accessibility is recognised as an important driver or factor affecting landscape development in an increasing number of studies. This work uses cost-distance methods for analysis of landscape accessibility, and presents the analysis in three historical time periods focused on the effect of accessibility on landscape development in South Slovakia. First, from periods when the cultural landscape was forming, the effect of landscape accessibility on the location of settlements is given. The variables explaining the location of historical settlements are: slope steepness, accessibility to water expressed by distance to fluvial sediments and distance within 500 m from suitable soils for agriculture. The second example is from the second half of the twentieth century, when the small-scale agricultural landscape was transformed into large-scale fields suitable for industrial agriculture. Agricultural fields located on steeper slopes and closer to settlements were more likely to survive the collectivisation of agriculture. The third example shows accessibility as a factor affecting the abandonment of the remaining traditional agricultural landscapes (TAL) as a consequence of the economic and cultural changes triggered by the transition to an open market economy. The TAL located on less accessible areas are more likely affected by the abandonment.
Automated Wolf Motor Function Test (WMFT) for Upper Extremities Rehabilitation

The Wolf Motor Function Test (WMFT), which involves real time timing measurements, is used to define the functional ability of the paretic limb of post stroke patients. The accuracy and consistency of the timing results are crucial for scoring, while manual stopwatch measuring introduces mistakes and uncertainty. A technique which uses camera and sensors to automate the test and achieve accurate results is proposed here. This system measures time for seven tasks with a monitor camera and a Xilinx Virtex II Pro Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA). The FPGA was mainly chosen for its better performance compared to general purpose System on Chip (SoC) for computational intensive tasks, such as image processing in this system. The accuracy of the system has been validated in a user study on selected WMFT tasks with ground truth time measurement obtained from pressure sensors. Suggestions are also given on how the framework can be adapted to the remaining tasks.
Evolution of the dark matter distribution with three-dimensional weak lensing

We present a direct detection of the growth of large-scale structure, using weak gravitational lensing and photometric redshift data from the {COMBO-17} survey. We use deep R-band imaging of two 0.5 ? 0.5 deg2 fields, affording shear estimates for over 52000 galaxies; we combine these with photometric redshift estimates from our 17-band survey, in order to obtain a {3D} shear field. We find theoretical models for evolving matter power spectra and correlation functions, and fit the corresponding shear correlation functions to the data as a function of redshift. We detect the evolution of the power at the 4.7? level given reasonable priors, and measure the rate of evolution for 0 {\textless} z {\textless} 1. We also fit correlation functions to our {3D} data as a function of cosmological parameters ? 8 and ? We find joint constraints on ? and ? 8, demonstrating an improvement in accuracy by {\textasciitilde}=40 per cent over that available from {2D} weak lensing for the same area.
Persistence of the Use of Medicinal Plants in Rural Communities of the Western Arid Chaco [Cordoba, Argentina]~!2010-01-05~!2010-04-27~!2010-06-22~!

Rural communities have complex strategies for health conservation: the use of local pharmacopoeia, visits to “curanderos” [traditional healers] and the use of the scientific official system of medicine. Through 129 semi-structured surveys in 6 villages of the Arid Chaco forest of western Cordoba Province 151 plants species (117 natives and 34 exotics) were registered for diverse uses: digestive, external frictions, respiratory, diuretic, circulatory, sedative, magic, feminine, etc. Besides, differential use by men and women was registered associated to particular cultural roles. 90% of the species were previously registered for the region by several botanists, folklorists and geographers. Thus, a historical continuum in the knowledge of medicinal plants can be pointed out. This knowledge on medicinal plants seems to be part of the culture of the “criollos”, inhabitants of the rural areas of Argentina traditionally dedicated to stockbreeding. Although same socio-cultural changes occurred in the last 100 years, still persist an ethno-medic system related to a comprehensive treatment of patients, which try the disorders simultaneously in physical, emotional, mental, spiritual and environmental levels.
The Emotional Rollercoaster called Borderline Personality Disorder; Neural Correlates of Emotion Regulation and Impulsivity

Emotional sensitivity, emotion regulation and impulsivity are fundamental topics in research of borderline personality disorder (BPD). Studies using fMRI examining the neural correlates concerning these topics is growing and has just begun understanding the underlying neural correlates in BPD. However, there are strong similarities but also important differences in results of different studies. It is therefore important to know in more detail what these differences are and how we should interpret these. In present review a critical light is shed on the fMRI studies examining emotional sensitivity, emotion regulation and impulsivity in BPD patients. First an outline of the methodology and the results of the studies will be given. Thereafter important issues that remained unanswered and topics to improve future research are discussed. Future research should take into account the limited power of previous studies and focus more on BPD specificity with regard to time course responses, different regulation strategies, manipulation of self-regulation, medication use, a wider range of stimuli, gender effects and the inclusion of a clinical control group.
Direct numerical simulation of particulate flow via multigrid FEM techniques and the fictitious boundary method

Direct numerical simulation techniques for particulate flow by the fictitious boundary method (FBM) are presented. The flow is computed by a multigrid finite element solver and the solid particles are allowed to move freely through the computational mesh which can be chosen independently from the particles of arbitrary shape, size and number. The interaction between the fluid and the particles is taken into account by the FBM in which an explicit volume based calculation for the hydrodynamic forces is integrated. A new collision model based on papers by Glowinski, Joseph, Singh and coauthors is examined to handle particle–particle and particle–wall interactions. Numerical tests show that the present method provides a very efficient approach to directly simulate particulate flows with many particles. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Youth and trade unions in Spain : re-building links in turbulent times

The relationship between young people and trade unions is of key importance in order to understand the future of trade unions. The ageing of European societies has also a reflection in one of the most important institutions, trade unions, whose share of young workers' membership remains very low and decreasing (Kahmann 2002). In recent years, workers' organizations both at national and supranational level are trying to address this problem with initiatives to organize young people as well as campaigns to make the union visible for this group (Pedersini 2010, ITUC 2010). This has also been the case of Spain, where trade unions find it particularly difficult to organize young people (Mari 2013, Anton 2007).
Search‐based software test data generation: a survey

The use of metaheuristic search techniques for the automatic generation of test data has been a burgeoning interest for many researchers in recent years. Previous attempts to automate the test generation process have been limited, having been constrained by the size and complexity of software, and the basic fact that, in general, test data generation is an undecidable problem. Metaheuristic search techniques offer much promise in regard to these problems. Metaheuristic search techniques are high‐level frameworks, which utilize heuristics to seek solutions for combinatorial problems at a reasonable computational cost. To date, metaheuristic search techniques have been applied to automate test data generation for structural and functional testing; the testing of grey‐box properties, for example safety constraints; and also non‐functional properties, such as worst‐case execution time. This paper surveys some of the work undertaken in this field, discussing possible new future directions of research for each of its different individual areas. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
The malleability of attitudes toward the police: immediate effects of the viewing of police use of force videos

Abstract Purpose: To examine whether videos of controversial police interventions shape individual opinion and, consequently, if attitudes towards use of force are malleable in the short-term. Methodology: A self-administered survey was conducted among 248 undergraduate students as part of a larger project on attitudes towards police use of force. Two groups of respondents were asked general questions about the police: one group was shown fictional videos of controversial police interventions just prior to completing the questionnaire; the other was not. Findings: Results strongly suggest that videos of police interventions have significant effects on reported opinions about use of force: the group that watched the videos was more likely to report that the police frequently use force. Implications: The wide distribution of images by police organizations might have unexpected adverse effects on public attitudes.
Sketch-based Image Retrieval via Shape Words

The explosive growth of touch screens has provided a good platform for sketch-based image retrieval. However, most previous works focused on low level descriptors of shapes and sketches. In this paper, we try to step forward and propose to leverage shape words descriptor for sketch-based image retrieval. First, the shape words are defined and an efficient algorithm is designed for shape words extraction. Then we generalize the classic Chamfer Matching algorithm to address the shape words matching problem. Finally, a novel inverted index structure is proposed to make shape words representation scalable to large scale image databases. Experimental results show that our method achieves competitive accuracy but requires much less memory, e.g., less than 3% of memory storage of MindFinder. Due to its competitive accuracy and low memory cost, our method can scale up to much larger database.
The constrained Ski-Rental problem and its application to online cloud cost optimization

Cloud service providers (CSPs) enable tenants to elastically scale their resources to meet their demands. In fact, there are various types of resources offered at various price points. While running applications on the cloud, a tenant aiming to minimize cost is often faced with crucial trade-off considerations. For instance, upon each arrival of a query, a web application can either choose to pay for CPU to compute the response fresh, or pay for cache storage to store the response so as to reduce the compute costs of future requests. The SkiRental problem abstracts such scenarios where a tenant is faced with a to-rent-or-to-buy trade-off; in its basic form, a skier should choose between renting or buying a set of skis without knowing the number of days she will be skiing. In this paper, we introduce a variant of the classical SkiRental problem in which we assume that the skier knows the first (or second) moment of the distribution of the number of ski days in a season. We demonstrate that utilizing this information leads to achieving the best worst-case expected competitive ratio (CR) performance. Our method yields a new class of randomized algorithms that provide arrivals-distribution-free performance guarantees. Further, we apply our solution to a cloud file system and demonstrate the cost savings obtained in comparison to other competing schemes. Simulations illustrate that our scheme exhibits robust average-cost performance that combines the best of the well-known deterministic and randomized schemes previously proposed to tackle the Ski-Rental problem.
Experienced versus decision utility of income: relative or absolute happiness

A central finding in happiness research is low correlations between income and happiness. This is paradoxical since most people seem to attach a high value to a rise in their income. The various versions of this paradox can be explained in terms of rising aspirations (Easterlin 2001) and positional externalities (Frank 1997). However, econometric/ statistical studies which test these explanations on the level of individual cross-sections are rare and have produced mixed results. A careful analysis of the results of such studies leads to the conclusion that there seems to be considerable support for the explanations mentioned. On the other hand, these explanations seem only partial and do not take into account top-down relations between life satisfaction and aspiration levels as implied by some studies. Therefore, an alternative explanation of the above paradox in terms of the intrinsic/extrinsic-goals distinction of Kasser and Ryan (1993) is investigated. This approach points to a second kind of discrepancy between decision utility and experienced utility of income and implies that life satisfaction depends on absolute rather than relative income. It has some potential, but, in its present stage, it yields less specific predictions with respect to the paradoxes than the theories of aspirations and positional externalities. On the other hand, in the case of top-down relations between life satisfaction and aspiration levels, the intrinsic/extrinsic-goals explanation seems more fundamental.
Circulating inflammatory and endothelial markers and risk of hypertension in white and black postmenopausal women.

BACKGROUND Systemic inflammation and endothelial activation are implicated in the development of hypertension. However, epidemiologic studies have yet to compare multiple corresponding biomarkers in relation to risk of hypertension, particularly in multiethnic populations. METHODS We identified 800 individuals with incident hypertension and 800 matched controls, each group with equal numbers of white and black women, in a nested case-control study within the Women's Health Initiative Observational Study. We measured markers of inflammation [high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP), interleukin (IL)-6, IL-1β, tumor necrosis factor receptor 2 (TNF-r2)] and endothelial activation [soluble intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (sICAM-1)] in baseline blood samples. RESULTS Before adjustment for measures of adiposity, higher hsCRP and IL-6 concentrations were associated with increased risk of hypertension in both white and black women, higher TNF-r2 was associated with increased risk of hypertension in black women only, and IL-1β and sICAM-1 were not associated with risk of hypertension. All the positive associations were attenuated after adjustment for body mass index. The resulting multivariable-adjusted relative risks (95% CI) of hypertension comparing the highest vs lowest quartile were 1.52 (0.94-2.48) and 1.23 (0.76-1.97) for hsCRP and IL-6 in white women and 1.30 (0.81-2.07), 1.58 (0.96-2.59), and 1.49 (0.94-2.36) for hsCRP, IL-6, and TNF-r2 in black women. The results after adjustment for waist circumference were similar. CONCLUSIONS After adjustment for measures of adiposity, there was no significant association of hsCRP, IL-6, IL-1β, TNF-r2, or sICAM-1 with incident hypertension in either white or black women. The interrelationships between inflammation and adiposity in development of hypertension need further investigation.
Heterogeneous Information and Labor Market Fluctuations ∗ Venky Venkateswaran

Idiosyncratic productivity shocks induce larger adjustments to hiring than aggregate shocks, because general equilibrium effects on search frictions and wages partially offset the latter. When firms cannot disentangle the two shocks, they attribute aggregate disturbances partly to idiosyncratic factors and to that extent, respond more aggressively. This translates into increased aggregate volatility, an order of magnitude higher than the benchmark full information model. A calibrated model predicts moments that match closely levels observed in the US data. These results hold under both random and directed search specifications. JEL Classification: D82, E24, E32, J64
An empirical assessment of Bellon's clone benchmark

Context: Clone benchmarks are essential to the assessment and improvement of clone detection tools and algorithms. Among existing benchmarks, Bellon's benchmark is widely used by the research community. However, a serious threat to the validity of this benchmark is that reference clones it contains have been manually validated by Bellon alone. Other persons may disagree with Bellon's judgment. Objective: In this paper, we perform an empirical assessment of Bellon's benchmark. Method: We seek the opinion of eighteen participants on a subset of Bellon's benchmark to determine if researchers should trust the reference clones it contains. Results: Our experiment shows that a significant amount of the reference clones are debatable, and this phenomenon can introduce noise in results obtained using this benchmark.
Evidence for a direct interaction between internal tetra-alkylammonium cations and the inactivation gate of cardiac sodium channels

The effects of internal tetrabutylammonium (TBA) and tetrapentylammonium (TPeA) were studied on human cardiac sodium channels (hH1) expressed in a mammalian tsA201 cell line. Outward currents were measured at positive voltages using a reversed Na gradient. TBA and TPeA cause a concentration-dependent increase in the apparent rate of macroscopic Na current inactivation in response to step depolarizations. At TPeA concentrations < 50 microM the current decay is well fit by a single exponential over a wide voltage range. At higher concentrations a second exponential component is observed, with the fast component being dominant. The blocking and unblocking rate constants of TPeA were estimated from these data, using a three-state kinetic model, and were found to be voltage dependent. The apparent inhibition constant at 0 mV is 9.8 microM, and the blocking site is located 41 +/- 3% of the way into the membrane field from the cytoplasmic side of the channel. Raising the external Na concentration from 10 to 100 mM reduces the TPeA-modified inactivation rates, consistent with a mechanism in which external Na ions displace TPeA from its binding site within the pore. TBA (500 microM) and TPeA (20 microM) induce a use-dependent block of Na channels characterized by a progressive, reversible, decrease in current amplitude in response to trains of depolarizing pulses delivered at 1-s intervals. Tetrapropylammonium (TPrA), a related symmetrical tetra-alkylammonium (TAA), blocks Na currents but does not alter inactivation (O'Leary, M. E., and R. Horn. 1994. Journal of General Physiology. 104:507-522.) or show use dependence. Internal TPrA antagonizes both the TPeA-induced increase in the apparent inactivation rate and the use dependence, suggesting that all TAA compounds share a common binding site in the pore. A channel blocked by TBA or TPeA inactivates at nearly the normal rate, but recovers slowly from inactivation, suggesting that TBA or TPeA in the blocking site can interact directly with a cytoplasmic inactivation gate.
Four-quadrant CMOS transconductance multiplier operating at low voltage and high-speed

The paper presents an analog four-quadrant transconductance multiplier designed in CMOS technology, suitable for low voltage and operating at high-speed. The transconductance multiplier with Gilbert-like architecture uses a cascade of a combination of two linear current dividers implemented by means on the differential pairs to produce a linear dependence between the tail current and the two output currents. To adopt the circuit for low voltage, simple current mirrors have been applied to couple the first- and the second stage of the current dividers cascade. High-speed operation is possible thanks to simple architecture of building blocks using RF CMOS transistors with sufficiently large biasing currents. A complete driving circuits, suitable for low voltage and high speed operation have been also presented.