Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Prenatal Predictors of Postnatal Quality of Caregiving Behavior in Mothers and Fathers

SYNOPSIS Objective. The quality of parental caregiving has been shown to affect children’s development from birth onward. Therefore, it is important to detect parents at risk for low-quality caregiving as early as possible – preferably before birth. Design. Observations of expectant mothers’ and fathers’ behavior when exposed to infant crying were examined as predictors of the quality of caregiving toward their own infant 6 weeks postpartum. Eighty-eight expectant mothers and 57 of their male partners were tested during the third trimester of pregnancy. Parents were filmed individually while caring for a crying Simulator Infant for 15 min; the quality of their caregiving was rated on sensitivity and cooperation. Also, cognitive interference on a working memory task and the ability to regulate physical force when exposed to infant crying were assessed. When their baby was 6 weeks old, parents were filmed and rated for sensitivity and cooperation during a 15-min interaction with their own infant at home. Results. Prenatal quality of caregiving behavior toward a simulator infant predicted postnatal quality of caregiving toward the own infant in both mothers and fathers. Cognitive interference and the ability to regulate physical force did not predict postnatal quality of caregiving behavior. Conclusions. Expectant parents’ quality of caregiving behavior toward a crying simulator infant predicted both mothers’ and fathers’ postnatal quality of caregiving behavior. Future research is needed to determine whether the simulator infant may be a useful screening instrument and training tool for parenting skills in at risk groups of parents-to-be.
Coding of Predicted Reward Omission by Dopamine Neurons in a Conditioned Inhibition Paradigm

Animals learn not only about stimuli that predict reward but also about those that signal the omission of an expected reward. We used a conditioned inhibition paradigm derived from animal learning theory to train a discrimination between a visual stimulus that predicted reward (conditioned excitor) and a second stimulus that predicted the omission of reward (conditioned inhibitor). Performing the discrimination required attention to both the conditioned excitor and the inhibitor; however, dopamine neurons showed very different responses to the two classes of stimuli. Conditioned inhibitors elicited considerable depressions in 48 of 69 neurons (median of 35% below baseline) and minor activations in 29 of 69 neurons (69% above baseline), whereas reward-predicting excitors induced pure activations in all 69 neurons tested (242% above baseline), thereby demonstrating that the neurons discriminated between conditioned stimuli predicting reward versus nonreward. The discriminative responses to stimuli with differential reward-predicting but common attentional functions indicate differential neural coding of reward prediction and attention. The neuronal responses appear to reflect reward prediction errors, thus suggesting an extension of the correspondence between learning theory and activity of single dopamine neurons to the prediction of nonreward.
Malaria in HIV-Infected Children Receiving HIV Protease-Inhibitor- Compared with Non-Nucleoside Reverse Transcriptase Inhibitor-Based Antiretroviral Therapy, IMPAACT P1068s, Substudy to P1060

Background HIV and malaria geographically overlap. HIV protease inhibitors kill malaria parasites in vitro and in vivo, but further evaluation in clinical studies is needed. Methods Thirty-one children from Malawi aged 4–62 months were followed every 3 months and at intercurrent illness visits for ≤47 months (September 2009-December 2011). We compared malaria parasite carriage by blood smear microscopy (BS) and confirmed clinical malaria incidence (CCM, or positive BS with malaria symptoms) in children initiated on HIV antiretroviral therapy (ART) with zidovudine, lamivudine, and either nevirapine (NVP), a non-nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor, or lopinavir-ritonavir (LPV-rtv), a protease inhibitor. Results We found an association between increased time to recurrent positive BS, but not CCM, when anti-malarial treatment and LPV-rtv based ART were used concurrently and when accounting for a LPV-rtv and antimalarial treatment interaction (adjusted HR 0.39; 95% CI (0.17,0.89); p = 0.03). Conclusions LPV-rtv in combination with malaria treatment was associated with lower risk of recurrent positive BS, but not CCM, in HIV-infected children. Larger, randomized studies are needed to confirm these findings which may permit ART optimization for malaria-endemic settings. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT00719602
Moderate and Radical Islam

Abstract : This report presents the statement of Angel Rabasa, PhD, Senior Policy Analyst, The RAND Corporation, to the Committee on Armed Services, Defense Review Terrorism and Radical Islam Gap Panel, United States House of Representatives, on November 3, 2005. The testimony examines the following topics: Radical and Moderate Islam, Sources of Radical Influence, Radical Recruitment, and the Role of Violence as a Recruitment Tool.
Multidisciplinary Integrated Project-based Learning to Improve Critical Thinking Skills and Collaboration

The purpose of this study was to look at the effectiveness of multidisciplinary integrated project-based learning models in enhancing critical thinking and collaboration among elementary school students. The study used a quasi-experimental research technique with three subjects as experimental subjects and 65 students, and three subjects as control subjects and 65 students. The results of the study indicate that multi-disciplinary integrated project-based learning can improve critical thinking skills and student collaboration. This is evidenced by the t-test. T table obtained at the significance level of 5% is 2006. So the value of t count> t table (30,570> 2,006) and the significance value is less than 0.05 (p = 0,000 <0,05). It can be concluded that critical thinking skills and collaboration differ significantly in the experimental class and the control class. https://doi.org/10.26803/ijlter.18. 1. 2
REAL-TIME CORPUS-BASED CONCATENATIVE SYNTHESIS WITH CATART

The concatenative real-time sound synthesis system CataRT plays grains from a large corpus of segmented and descriptor-analysed sounds according to proximity to a target position in the descriptor space. This can be seen as a content-based extension to granular synthesis providing direct access to specific sound characteristics. CataRT is implemented in Max/MSP using the FTM library and an SQL database. Segmentation and MPEG-7 descriptors are loaded from SDIF files or generated on-the-fly. CataRT allows to explore the corpus interactively or via a target sequencer, to resynthesise an audio file or live input with the source sounds, or to experiment with expressive speech synthesis and gestural control.
Shape-from-Shading Depends on Visual, Gravitational, and Body-Orientation Cues

The perception of shading-defined form results from an interaction between shading cues and the frames of reference within which those cues are interpreted. In the absence of a clear source of illumination, the definition of ‘up’ becomes critical to deducing the perceived shape from a particular pattern of shading. In our experiments, twelve subjects adjusted the orientation of a planar disc painted with a linear luminance gradient from one side to the other, until the disc appeared maximally convex—that is, until the luminance gradient induced the maximum perception of a three-dimensional shape. The vision, gravity, and body-orientation cues were altered relative to each other. Visual cues were manipulated by the York Tilted Room facility, and body cues were altered by simply lying on one side. The orientation of the disc that appeared maximally convex varied in a systematic fashion with these manipulations. We present a model in which the direction of perceptual ‘up’ is determined from the sum of three weighted vectors corresponding to the vision, gravity, and body-orientation cues. The model predicts the perceived direction of ‘up’, contributes to our understanding of how shape-from-shading is deduced, and also predicts the confidence with which the ‘up’ direction is perceived.
Relativistic charged spheres: II. Regularity and stability

We present new results concerning the existence of static, electrically charged, perfect fluid spheres that have a regular interior and are arbitrarily close to a maximally charged black-hole state. These configurations are described by exact solutions of Einstein's field equations. A family of these solutions had already been found (de Felice et al 1995 Mon. Not. R. Astron. Soc. 277 L17) but here we generalize that result to cases with different charge distributions within the spheres and show, in an appropriate parameter space, that the set of such physically reasonable solutions has a non-zero measure. We also perform a perturbation analysis and identify the solutions which are stable against adiabatic radial perturbations. We then suggest that the stable configurations can be considered as classic models of charged particles. Finally, our results are used to show that a conjecture of Kristiansson et al (1998 Gen. Rel. Grav. 30 275) is incorrect.
House Price Dynamics: A Survey of Theoretical and Empirical Issues

During the past decade, the number of studies on intertemporal changes in house prices has increased rapidly because of wider availability of extensive micro-level data sets, improvements in modeling techniques, and expanded business applications. This article reviews the main theoretical, empirical, and methodological issues related to analyzing house price dynamics. The theoretical issue that has received the most attention is informational efficiency. The literature in this regard generally supports our intuition that real estate markets are not efficient—that is, short-run intertemporal changes in house prices and excess returns are found to be positively serially correlated. No trading rule has emerged that consistently yields abovenormal returns, however, because of the substantial transaction costs. The second part of the article surveys various methodological issues in estimating house price indices and excess returns. Given severe measurement problems and biases in models, the literature increasingly indicates that any result might be an artifact of the price index used rather than a real feature of the market. More research is needed before firm conclusions can be reached about inefficiency in the residential real estate market.
Some antecedents and effects of participation in Spanish virtual brand communities

Virtual brand communities are increasing their importance day by day due to the fact that many consumers are using several online tools to share ideas and contact fellow consumers. For this reason, this work explores some antecedents and outcomes of consumer participation in virtual brand communities. The data, obtained through a web survey using Spanish-speaking members of several virtual communities, show that propensity to trust, familiarity with the community, satisfaction in previous interactions with other community members and communication in the community are the main precursors of consumers intentions to participate in a virtual community. Additionally, consumer participation in the activities carried out in a virtual brand community may enhance consumer loyalty to the brand around which the community is centred.
Scheduler support for application management of CPU contention

We introduce CPU Futures, a system designed to enable application control of scheduling for server workloads, even during system overload. CPU Futures contains two novel components: an in-kernel herald that anticipates application CPU performance degradation and a user-level feedback controller that responds to these predictions on behalf of t he application. In combination, these two subsystems enable fine-grained application control of scheduling; with this c ontrol applications can define their own policies for avoiding or mitigating performance degradation under overload. We implement CPU Futures within two different Linux schedulers, and show its utility by building two case studies on to p of the system: Empathy, which limits the CPU interference caused by low-importance batch programs, and SheepDog, which prevents web requests from starving on a heavilyloaded web server. Through experiment, we find that CPU Futures are not only useful, but also have a low-overhead.
The Effect of Institutional Ownership on Payout Policy : A Regression Discontinuity Design Approach

We show that higher institutional ownership causes firms to pay more dividends and repurchase more shares. Our identification strategy relies on a discontinuity in ownership based on the annual composition of the Russell 1,000 and 2,000 indices. We also find evidence of a causal effect on proxy voting, corporate investment, R&D, and equity issuance. Overall, results support agency models where concentrated ownership lowers the marginal cost of delegated monitoring.
Smooth matter and source size in microlensing simulations of gravitationally lensed quasars

Several gravitationally lensed quasars are observed with anomalous magnifications in pairs of images that straddle a critical curve. Simple theoretical arguments suggest that the magnification of these images should be approximately equivalent, whereas one image is observed to be significantly demagnified. Microlensing provides a possible explanation for this discrepancy. There are two key parameters when modelling this effect. The first, the fraction of smooth matter in the lens at the image positions, has been explored by Schechter & Wambsganss. They have shown that the anomalous flux ratio observed in the lensed quasar MG 0414+0534 is a priori a factor of 5 more likely if the assumed smooth matter content in the lens model is increased from 0 to 93 per cent. The second parameter, the size of the emission region, is explored in this paper, and shown to be more significant. We find that the broadening of the magnification probability distributions due to smooth matter content is washed out for source sizes that are predicted by standard models for quasars. We apply our model to the anomalous lensed quasar MG 0414+0534, and find a 95 per cent upper limit of 2.62 × 10 16 h -1/2 70 (M/M ⊙ ) 1/2 cm on the radius of the I-band emission region. The smooth matter percentage in the lens is unconstrained.
Cooperative Commercialization Strategies for Technology Start-ups in the Enterprise Software Industry*

We analyze a startup’s decision to partner with a platform provider to certify its software compatibility and integration—e.g., to participate in a platform. A stylized model is used to formalize the main tradeoff affecting the incentives to join the platform and analyze its key determinants. Theoretical predictions are tested using data on the decisions of 1220 independent software vendors (ISVs) to partner with a leading enterprise software platform provider over the period of 1996-2004. We find that appropriability strategies based on intellectual property rights and downstream capabilities tend to favor the formation of partnerships, and that these mechanisms are used as substitutes in preventing imitation by competitors. We also find that the larger the platform’s installed base - a key complementary asset controlled by the platform owner - the higher an ISV’s propensity to partner. Finally, we find that the effect of IPR on the likelihood of partnering is higher when the threat of imitation by the competitors is large, such as when the markets served by the ISV are growing faster.
Determination of the Sensory Attributes of Dried Milk Powders and Dairy Ingredients

A standardized descriptive language for skim milk powder and dried dairy ingredients was developed. The lexicon was initially identified from a large sample set of dried dairy ingredients (138). A highly trained descriptive panel (n = 14) refined terms and identified references. Dried dairy ingredients (36) were then evaluated using the developed language. Twenty-one descriptors were identified for dried dairy ingredients. Seventeen flavors and tastes were identified in skim milk powders (27) with nine flavors/tastes observed in all skim milk powders. Dried dairy ingredients were differentiated using the language (P C 0.05). There were flavors common to all dried dairy ingredients while other flavors were specific to particular products.
Implications of E-Government on Public Policy and Challenges of Adopting Technology: The case of Kenya

E-government is increasingly becoming a fundamental tool for enhancing public administration. This paper discusses e-government’s implications on public policy formulation and implementation in Kenya. In addition, the challenges of adopting technology and organizational change are examined. Research conducted outside Sub-Saharan Africa showed that information and communication technologies (ICTs) have the potential to enhance efficiency, policy effectiveness, citizens’ participation, and democratic values. Based on the concept of democratic values, the paper explores how e-government impacts the political agenda, rule making, and public service delivery. The central argument is that e-government is not only a tool or platform that enhances delivery of public services but also has the potential to reform the way policies are formulated and implemented in terms of efficiency, accountability, transparency, and citizens’ participation. The Key findings show that the Kenyan government has failed in disseminating information about e-government, sensitizing Kenyans on how to make use of technology to access government services, and providing incentives to encourage use of technology. Hence despite the advantages touted globally for implementing e-government, literature showed no evidence that any of the Kenyan e-government’s objectives: enhancing delivery of public services, improving information flow to citizens, promoting productivity among public servants, and encouraging citizens’ participation has been achieved. Key Words: e-government; public policy; policy formulation; public implementation; resistance to change
Distribution of speech recognition results with the Clarion cochlear prosthesis.

INTRODUCTION When summarizing the performance achieved by users of a cochlear prosthesis, results are typically reported as means and standard deviations of speech recognition scores1 (also Brimacombe and Beiter, unpublished observations, 1992). These statistics constitute a valid description of the data only when scores are distributed normally, ie, as a bell-shaped On the basis of theoretical considerations, however, a bimodal distribution might be expected. Patients with poor auditory nerve survival or atrophic central auditory systems would be expected to have uniformly poor results, while patients with intact auditory nervous systems should, in general, achieve excellent results with a well-designed and -fitted cochlear prosthesis. The Clarion cochlear prosthesis provides both the Multi-Strategy speech processof' and the University of CaliforniaSan Francisco (UCSF) radial bipolar electrode: a combination that provides capabilities to fit the stimulation strategy to the auditory nervous system of each individual patient. We have examined the distributions of speech recognition scores in order to understand the relative importance of biological versus technological limits in the benefits derived from cochlear prostheses.
GATE-TO-GATE LIFE-CYCLE INVENTORY OF ORIENTED STRANDBOARD PRODUCTION

A life-cycle Inventory (LCI) for Southeast oriented strandboard (OSB) manufacturing was conducted by surveying four OSB manufacturing plants in the Southeast. The survey responses were returned for 1999 production data and represented approximately 18% of OSB production in the survey region. All LCI data presented herein were based on a standard production unit of 0.88 m 3 OSB panel product (1000 ft 2 , 3/8-inch basis). Southeastern OSB requires 771.6 kg (1701 lb, oven-dry basis) of roundwood raw material input. 545.7 kg (1203 lb) of this input ends in final OSB product, giving a total wood recovery of 71%. The remaining wood input ends as wood residue for fuel, wood residues sold as co-products, and wood waste sent to the landfill. On-site energy requirements for southeastern OSB are 5261 MJ (4.99 million BTU). Heat energy is the largest energy need, 89.6% of which is generated from combustion of wood residues. 182 kWh (655 MJ heat equivalent) of electricity is required for processing OSB. The highest use of fossil fuel (natural gas) is used to reduce VOC emissions in the emission control process at 465 MJ (4.4 million BTU). Considering the carbon cycle for on-site OSB production for a unit of product, OSB requires 396 kg (873 lb) of carbon from wood raw material. Other carbon input is utilized in the form of resins/wax (11.4 kg/25 lb) and fuels (12.3kg/27 lb). OSB holds 290 kg (640 lb or 69% of total carbon input) carbon. A small percentage of carbon (4%) is held in the form of co-products (e.g. mulch and wood residues). The remainder of carbon is released back to nature in the form of non-fossil CO 2 (24%), fossil CO 2 (3%), VOCs and other emissions (0.4%).
A Lower Bound for the DRT* with Complete Correction Technique

The DRT* is an order preserving Scalable Distributed Data Structures with an almost constant amortized upper bound costs for exact searches and insertions. The result is based on the correction techinque the DRT* uses when a given request produces an address error. This technique mainly consists in exchanging information among servers about the distribution of data by means of messages. Servers can exchange the maximum (complete correction technique) or the minimum (restricted correction technique) information they know. Here, we investigate the amortized lower bound of such distributed searching technique, proving that there is not any advantage in using complete correction technique, because the lower bound result of the complete correction technique is the same of the restricted one. ∗This work has been partially supported by the CNR-Agenzia 2000 Program, under Grants No. CNRC00CAB8 and CNRG003EF8, and by the Research Project REAL-WINE, partially funded by the Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research.
An ant algorithm for single-hop wavelength assignment in WDM mesh network

A RWA linear programming formulation was formulated and ILP solver was used along with good approximation techniques (heuristic) to solve the static RWA problem The objective was to maximize the one hop traffic, given a set of lightpath requests/traffic demand. However, the proposed heuristic has the limitation of stagnation. Thus we applied ant colony optimization (ACO) combined with heuristic algorithm to solve the assignment problem to obtain best assignment with highest objective value. The ACO based algorithm can outperform the comparison scheme and provide a better performance and more reliable than the proposed heuristic and ILP solver. The claim made in the paper for the proposed new heuristic and ACO are supported by experimental results
Second Generation of the Automated Cobas Amplicor HCV Assay Improves Sensitivity of Hepatitis C Virus RNA Detection and Yields Results That Are More Clinically Relevant

ABSTRACT The first and second generations of the Cobas Amplicor HCV assay were compared among patients at risk of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. The second-generation test was found to be of greater sensitivity and of good specificity among clinical specimens containing HCV RNA of different genotypes. Finally, this new test is shown to predict the outcome of interferon therapy better.