Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Factors shaping the ontogeny of vocal signals in a wild parrot

SUMMARY Parrots rely heavily on vocal signals to maintain their social and mobile lifestyles. We studied vocal ontogeny in nests of wild green-rumped parrotlets (Forpus passerinus) in Venezuela. We identified three successive phases of vocal signaling that corresponded closely to three independently derived phases of physiological development. For each ontogenetic phase, we characterized the relative importance of anatomical constraints, motor skills necessary for responding to specific contexts of the immediate environment, and the learning of signals that are necessary for adult forms of communication. We observed shifts in the relative importance of these three factors as individuals progressed from one stage to the next; there was no single fixed ratio of factors that applied across the entire ontogenetic sequence. The earliest vocalizations were short in duration, as predicted from physical constraints and under-developed motor control. Calls became longer and frequency modulated during intermediate nestling ages in line with motor skills required for competitive begging. In the week before fledging, calls drastically shortened in accordance with the flight-constrained short durations of adult contact calls. The latter constraints were made evident by the demonstrated links between wing-assisted incline running, a widespread prelude to avian flight, just before the shift from long-duration begging calls to short-duration contact calls. At least in this species, the shifting emphases of factors at different ontogenetic stages precluded the morphing of intermediate-stage begging calls into adult contact calls; as shown previously, the latter are influenced by sample templates provided by parents.
Mining and Understanding Online Conversational Media

1 1 Overview 3 1.1 Online Conversational Media . 4 1.2 Research Challenges . 8 1.2. 1 Information Filtering . 8 1.2. 2 User Interest Profiling . 10 1.3 Contributions . 12 1.4 Organization . 15
Dynamic linear precoding for the exploitation of known interference in MIMO broadcast systems

This paper introduces a novel channel inversion (CI) precoding scheme for the downlink of phase shift keying (PSK)-based multiple input multiple output (MIMO) systems. In contrast to common practice where knowledge of the interference is used to eliminate it, the main idea proposed here is to use this knowledge to glean benefit from the interference. It will be shown that the system performance can be enhanced by exploiting some of the existent inter-channel interference (ICI). This is achieved by applying partial channel inversion such that the constructive part of ICI is preserved and exploited while the destructive part is eliminated by means of CI precoding. By doing so, the effective signal to interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) delivered to the mobile unit (MU) receivers is enhanced without the need to invest additional transmitted signal power at the MIMO base station (BS). It is shown that the trade-off to this benefit is a minor increase in the complexity of the BS processing. The presented theoretical analysis and simulations demonstrate that due to the SINR enhancement, significant performance and throughput gains are offered by the proposed MIMO precoding technique compared to its conventional counterparts.
Y chromosome microdeletions in idiopathic infertile men from West Azarbaijan.

INTRODUCTION Although assisted reproduction techniques are used extensively in Iran, screening for Y chromosome microdeletions before intracytoplasmic sperm injection is often undervalued. Our aim was to investigate Y chromosome microdeletions in men with idiopathic azoospermia or severe oligospermia. MATERIALS AND METHODS In 99 selected patients with azoospermia or severe oligospermia and elevated levels of follicle-stimulating hormone and luteinizing hormone in combination with low serum testosterone levels, 20 pairs of sequence-tagged site-based primer sets specific for the Y microdeletion loci were analyzed. Primers were chosen to cover azoospermia factor (AZF) regions as well as deleted in azoospermia (DAZ) and the sex-determining region on Y chromosome (SRY) genes. Also, 100 healthy men served as a control group. RESULTS Twenty-four patients (24.2%) had microdeletions in AZF genes, but no microdeletions were found in men in the control group. In 15 patients (62.5%), 1 deletion was found. Six patients (25%) had 2, and 3 (12.5%) had 3 deletions. The deletions mainly comprised the AZFc region (in 21 of 24 patients; 87.5%), which corresponds to the DAZ gene. Deletions in AZFb were found in 7 patients (29.2%), and 4 (16.7%) had deletions in the proximal part of AZF regions near SRY gene. No microdeletions were seen in the AZFa or SRY gene. CONCLUSION Our results emphasize that Y chromosome microdeletion analysis should be carried out in all patients with idiopathic azoospermia or severe oligospermia who are candidates for intracytoplasmic sperm injection.
Outcomes of domestic violence screening at an acute London trust: are there missed opportunities for intervention?

Objectives Domestic violence screening is advocated in some healthcare settings. Evidence that it increases referral to support agencies or improves health outcomes is limited. This study aimed to (1) investigate the proportion of hospital patients reporting domestic violence, (2) describe characteristics and previous hospital attendances of affected patients and (3) assess referrals to an in-house domestic violence advisor from Camden Safety Net. Design A series of observational studies. Setting Three outpatient clinics at the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust. Participants 10 158 patients screened for domestic violence in community gynaecology, genitourinary medicine (GUM) and HIV medicine clinics between 1 October 2013 and 30 June 2014. Also 2253 Camden Safety Net referrals over the same period. Main outcome measures (1) Percentage reporting domestic violence by age group gender, ethnicity and clinic. (2) Rates of hospital attendances in the past 3 years for those screening positive and negative. (3) Characteristics, uptake and risk assessment results for hospital in-house domestic violence referrals compared with Camden Safety Net referrals from other sources. Results Of the 10 158 patients screened, 57.4% were female with a median age of 30 years. Overall, 7.1% reported ever-experiencing domestic violence, ranging from 5.7% in GUM to 29.4% in HIV services. People screening positive for domestic violence had higher rates of previous emergency department attendances (rate ratio (RR) 1.63, 95% CI 1.09 to 2.48), emergency inpatient admissions (RR 2.27, 95% CI 1.37 to 3.84) and day-case admissions (RR 2.03, 95% CI 1.23 to 3.43) than those screening negative. The 77 hospital referrals to the hospital-based domestic violence advisor during the study period were more likely to be taken up and to be classified as high risk than referrals from elsewhere. Conclusions Selective screening for domestic violence in high-risk hospital clinic populations has the potential to identify affected patients and promote good uptake of referrals for in-house domestic violence support.
Children's Interpretation of Evaluative Feedback: The Effect of Social Cues on Learned Helplessness.

Many alternative interpretations may be given for any event, and it is likely that the interpretation the child provides will affect the way in which he reacts to that event. As my colleagues have demon strated, when one attempts to specify the determinants of children's behavior, it is often insufficient, or even misleading, to look only at the events that the experimenter has explicitly programmed or to view them only in the way that the experimenter views them. Rather, it is necessary also to consider such things as contextual social variables to which the child might be sensitive, along with the child's individual history and how it might interact with the experimental manipulations. The purpose of this paper is to examine some of the ways in which social cues, in conjunction with the child's history, influence the child's interpretation of and reaction to failure feedback in evaluative settings. This interest grows out of our previous research on learned help lessness in achievement situations. Learned helplessness refers to the perception of independence between one's responses and the occur rence or termination of an aversive event (Maier, Seligman, & Solo mon, 1969); that is, independence between what you do and what happens to you. Our work in this area (Dweck, 1975; Dweck & Reppucci, 1973) has yielded three findings that are of interest here, 1 ) children's reactions to failure are related to the way in which they interpret failure, i.e., whether they attribute it to factors within their control or beyond their control (see also Weiner & Kukla, 1970); 2) children's expectancy for control of reinforcement can be brought under the stimulus control of a particular agent; and 3) attributions for and reactions to failure can be altered by training. I would like to describe some of this work and then go on to propose a model which suggests how these findings can be employed to understand
The Political Imagination of the Young Adolescent.

The years of early adolescence, twelve to sixteen, are a watershed era in the emergence of political thought. Ordinarily the youngster begins adolescence incapable of complex political discourse? that is, mute on many issues, and when not mute, then simplistic, primitive, subject to fancies, unable to enter fully the realm of political ideas. By the time this period is at an end, a dramatic change is evident; the youngster's grasp of the political world is now recognizably adult. His mind moves with some agility within the terrain of political concepts; he has achieved abstractness, com plexity, and even some delicacy in his sense of political textures; he is on the threshold of ideology, struggling to formulate a morally coherent view of how society is and might and should be arranged. This essay will explore how this transition takes place. It will lean heavily, though not entirely, on the work my colleagues and I have done during the last several years.1 We have conducted in terviews with about 450 adolescents, a varied group, ranging in age from eleven to eighteen, of both sexes, of normal to extremely high intelligence, through the full spectrum of the social classes, and in three nations, the United States, West Germany, and Great Britain. About fifty of these youngsters form a longitudinal sample, having been interviewed first at thirteen and then at fifteen, or first at fifteen and then at eighteen. Our aim was to discover how adolescents of different ages and circumstances construe the world of political action, and how they organize a political philosophy. Our early, informal interviewing had suggested that it would be best to avoid talking to our young sters about current political realities. To do so would obviously make it difficult to compare children in different cultures, but be yond that we found that to do so risked being misled about the child's grasp of the political. The younger adolescent may be in 1013
Performance analysis of best effort support in broadband IEEE 802.16 networks

This paper presents a performance analysis of best effort support over the MAC protocol proposed in the IEEE 802.16 standard. We focus on the uplink channel since it is the critical element for efficient delivery of services on demand to individual users (i.e., Best Effort service). We describe a modeling approach and derive the resulting analytical model. Such a model allows us to efficiently compute network throughput. We test this model by means of computer simulations which are also reported in this paper. Simulation results and theoretical computations showed a close agreement, thus validating the model.
The Design of a Dual-Polarized Small Base Station Antenna With High Isolation Having a Metallic Cube

A dual-polarized small base station antenna is presented that has a metallic cube and high isolation. The antenna is composed of a micro-strip feed line board, planar dipole radiators, micro-strip coupling feeds, a metallic cube, and a radome. The measured impedance bandwidth is 2.36-2.95 GHz at port-1 and 2.4-2.83 GHz at port-2. The proposed base station antenna has a high isolation of greater than 40 dB at the operating frequency. The measured peak gain is 9 dBi, and the cross polarizations are all less than 25 dB below the co-polarization level.
Risk Assessment in Glaucoma and Ocular Hypertension

Assessing risk and making predictions is an essential part of healthcare. Risk models have been continuously developed in several areas of medicine and their use has significantly contributed to the management of many disorders. The identification of risk factors for development or progression of disease is a fundamental component in the construction of these models. The concept of risk factor has been part of the public lexicon for several decades, ever since the landmark Framingham Heart Study first reported in the early 1960s that cigarette smoking, elevated blood cholesterol, and high blood pressure were predictors of the likelihood of dying from heart disease. During the course of the study, other risk factors were identified and Framingham investigators started developing models to evaluate the global risk of cardiovascular disease on the basis of the summation of all major risk factors. Because longitudinal data were sparse, the initial models predicting risk levels owing to cardiovascular risk factors relied heavily on statistical modeling. As newer data from this and other studies were made available, more robust mathematical models were developed and, eventually, simplified point systems were established to facilitate assessment of an individual’s global risk of progression to an atherosclerotic cardiovascular event. Risk assessment and prevention has contributed significantly to reduce mortality from cardiovascular disease. The successful implementation of risk assessment in cardiovascular medicine has stimulated its application to several other areas. Recently, the concept of risk assessment has also been applied to ophthalmology, more specifically, for assessment of the risk of development and progression of glaucoma. The
Language Learners' "Willingness to Communicate" through Livemocha.com

This case study is based on an investigation into the use that a group of language learners made of Livemocha.com, a Social Networking Site through which language exchange is enabled via social media applications. The learners created profiles in the website and proceeded to interact with speakers of their target languages, reporting back on their experiences over a 10-week period. As communication between language partners can take place through several different channels, and can be asynchronous or synchronous, written or spoken, it was considered that the preferences of learners with different personality types (as indicated by responses to a Myers-Briggs Type Indicator questionnaire) might be accommodated. Several studies have suggested that the anxiety that some language learners feel when communicating in L2, especially when speaking, is reduced in online environments. Under the premise that a reduction in anxiety may lead to an increased "willingness to communicate" (MacIntyre et al., 1998), the principal objective of this project was to examine the type and frequency of online interactions that the participants engaged in with other speakers of their target languages in the Livemocha language learning community.
Selective turnover of p62/A170/SQSTM1 by autophagy

Loss of autophagy causes liver injury, cardiomyopathy, and neurodegeneration, associated with the formation of ubiquitin-positive inclusion bodies. However, the pathogenic mechanism and molecular machinery involved in inclusion formation are not fully understood. We recently identified a ubiquitin-binding protein, p62/A170/SQSTM1, as a molecule involved in inclusion formation. p62 interacts with LC3 which regulates autophagosome formation, through an 11 amino acid sequence rich in acidic and hydrophobic residues, named the LC3-recognition sequence (LRS), and the LC3-p62 complex is degraded by autophagy. Furthermore, structural analysis reveals an interaction of Trp-340 and Leu-343 of p62 with different hydrophobic pockets in the ubiquitin-fold of LC3. p62 mutants, defective in binding the LRS, escape efficient turnover by autophagy, forming ubiquitin- and p62-positive inclusions. Importantly, such ubiquitin- and p62-positive inclusions are identified in various human diseases, implying the involvement of autophagy in their pathogenic mechanisms. Our reports identify an important role for autophagy in the selective turnover of p62, and demonstrate that in addition to the essential role of LC3 in autophagosome formation, LC3 is also involved in sorting autophagy-specific substrate(s). Addendum to: Komatsu M, Waguri S, Koike M, Sou YS, Ueno T, Hara T, Mizushima N, Iwata JI, Ezaki J, Murata S, Hamazaki J, Nishito Y, Iemura SI, Natsume T, Yanagawa T, Uwayama J, Warabi E, Yoshida H, Ishii T, Kobayashi A, Yamamoto M, Yue Z, Uchiyama Y, Kominami E, Tanaka K. Homeostatic levels of p62 control cytoplasmic inclusion body formation in autophagy-deficient mice. Cell 2007; 131:1149-63. and Ichimura Y, Kumanomidou T, Sou YS, Mizushima T, Ezaki J, Ueno T, Kominami E, Yamane T, Tanaka K, Komatsu M. Structural basis for sorting mechanism of p62 in selective autophagy. J Biol Chem 2008; 283:22847-57.
Exchange Rate Regimes, Specialization and Trade Volume

We develop a general equilibrium monetary model of endogenous specialization and international trade to examine the degree of specialization and trade volume under alternative monetary systems, a multiple currency system with a flexible exchange rate and a common currency system. Where demand shocks are important, we demonstrate an increase in specialization, trade and welfare under the common currency relative to flexible exchange rates. The weaker the substitution between exports and imports or the greater the risk aversion, the stronger are these effects. Where supply shocks are important, the effects on specialization and trade are smaller and ambiguous in direction, though the welfare effects are comparable to those for demand shocks. Broadly speaking, the model's results are qualitatively consistent with the empirical results of Rose (2000), which finds an increase in trade due to the adoption of a common currency.
Fertility, schooling, and the economic contribution of children in rural India: an econometric analysis.

A household time-allocative model which explicitly takes into account the economic contribution of children in agricultural areas of less-developed countries is applied to direct-level data pertaining to the rural population of India. Joint family decisions concerning fertility and the allocation of male and female child time to schooling and work activities are examined empirically in a simultaneous equations system. The properties of the formal model are used to derive inferences from the parameter estimates with respect to the shadow price configuration influencing these joint decisions.
Recovering Risk Aversion from Option Prices and Realized Returns

A relationship exists between aggregate risk-neutral and subjective probability distributions and risk aversion functions. Using a variation of the method developed by Jackwerth and Rubinstein (1996), we estimate risk-neutral probabilities reliably from option prices. Subjective probabilities are estimated from realized returns. This paper then introduces a technique to empirically derive risk aversion functions implied by option prices and realized returns simultaneously. These risk aversion functions dramatically change shapes around the 1987 crash: Precrash, they are positive and decreasing in wealth and thus consistent with standard economic theory. Postcrash, they are partially negative and increasing and irreconcilable with the theory. Overpricing of out-of-the-money puts is the most likely cause. A simulated trading strategy exploiting this overpricing shows excess returns even after accounting for the possibility of further crashes and transaction costs.
Percutaneous Mitral Annular Reduction Provides Continued Benefit in an Ovine Model of Dilated Cardiomyopathy

Background—Functional mitral valve regurgitation plays a key role in the symptomatic severity and progression of heart failure. In an ovine model of dilated cardiomyopathy, we examined the chronic functional consequences of mitral regurgitation reduction using a recently developed novel percutaneous mitral annular reduction (PMAR) device. Methods and Results—Fourteen adult sheep were paced right ventricularly at 180 to 190 bpm for 5 weeks, leading to the development of moderate mitral valve regurgitation. After echocardiographic, hemodynamic, and neurohormonal analysis, 9 animals underwent PMAR. All animals were subsequently paced for another 28 days, and a final echocardiographic and hemodynamic study was conducted. Animals that had undergone PMAR showed significantly increased negative and positive dP/dt, whereas pulmonary capillary wedge pressure and mitral valve regurgitation were significantly reduced compared with those at device implant despite continued pacing. In conjunction, significant improvements in plasma norepinephrine and brain natriuretic peptide were apparent. Conclusions—The application of PMAR in animals with pacing-induced dilated cardiomyopathy and functional mitral valve regurgitation resulted in continued improvements in hemodynamic and neurohormonal parameters.
Hydrochemical Analysis and Evaluation of Groundwater Quality in Tumkur Taluk, Karnataka State, India

Tumkur Taluk is located in the southeastern corner of Karnataka state between 13° 06′30″ to 13° 31′ 00″ North latitude and 76° 59′ 00″ to 77° 19′ 00″ East Longitude. The Taluk spreads over an area of 1043 sq.km falling within the semiarid region and frequently facing water scarcity as well as quality problems. The major sources of employment are agriculture, horticulture and animal husbandry, engaging almost 80% of the workforce. Water samples are collected from 269 stations during pre-monsoon and 279 locations during post-monsoon of the year 2006, and were subjected to analysis for chemical characteristics. The type of water that predominates in the study area is Ca-Mg-HCO3 type during both preand post-monsoon seasons of the year 2006, based on hydro-chemical facies. Besides, suitability of water for irrigation is evaluated based on sodium adsorption ratio, residual sodium carbonate, sodium percent, salinity hazard and USSL diagram.