Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Situational Judgment Test Responding: Best and Worst or Rate Each Response

Situational Judgment Test Responding: Best and Worst or Rate Each Response. (May 2009) Jennifer Lynn Rasmussen, B.S., Florida State University Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Mindy E. Bergman This study explores the differential validity of SJT responding formats (i.e., selecting a response to an SJT item). It was hypothesized that the SJT on which respondents identified the best and worst options would be related to cognitive ability because this type of SJT has a high cognitive load and thus acts like a knowledge test. It was also hypothesized that the SJT on which respondents rated the effectiveness of each option on a Likert scale would be related to personality because it taps into test taker’s behavioral tendencies. Results show that the best-and-worst SJT was not related to measures of education (a proxy for cognitive ability) or measures of personality. The SJT on which respondents rated the effectiveness of each option on a Likert scale was related to measures of personality but not education. Finally, because the Likert SJT has a greater number of responses, it was rescored as following the best-and-worst SJT keying. This converted SJT was related to neither measures of education nor measures of personality. The choose best-and-worst SJT significantly predicted performance, while the Likert SJT and a Likert SJT converted to a best-and-worst SJT did not predict performance.
Some facts on negation: Wode's four-stage developmental theory of negation revisited

the development of negation in children's speech goes through four stages. Stage I consists of one-word negation, i.e. children using a single nein, 'no', to express negation. Stage II of two-word negation, which is developmentally further divided into 11a for anaphoric negation and 116 for non-anaphoric negation. In the former, nein is used correctly in its proper grammatical function, but in the latter, nein for adult nicht 'not'. Stage III consists of intrasentential negation non-anaphoric nein of 116 moves from the utterance-initial position to an utterance-medial position and is at the same time replaced by nicht, the non-anaphoric Neg proper (although the position of nicht still does not always live up to the adult model). IV of
Fast and accurate de novo genome assembly from long uncorrected reads

The assembly of long reads from Pacific Biosciences and Oxford Nanopore Technologies typically requires resource intensive error correction and consensus generation steps to obtain high quality assemblies. We show that the error correction step can be omitted and high quality consensus sequences can be generated efficiently with a SIMD accelerated, partial order alignment based stand-alone consensus module called Racon. Based on tests with PacBio and Oxford Nanopore datasets we show that Racon coupled with Miniasm enables consensus genomes with similar or better quality than state-of-the-art methods while being an order of magnitude faster. Racon is available open source under the MIT license at https://github.com/isovic/racon.git.
Voter Intention to Use E-Voting Technologies: Security, Technology Acceptance, Election Type, and Political Ideology

ABSTRACT This study integrates characteristics of e-voting technologies, political contexts, and behaviors with the technology acceptance model (TAM) to empirically examine how security principles, election types, and political ideology influence overall user intention to use an e-voting system. Structural equation analysis and Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression used on estimates of 228 surveys reveal that perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, accuracy, and confidentiality have direct and indirect impacts on intention to use e-voting. While usefulness has statistically positive effects on voters' intention to use e-voting in different effects of political election types, political ideology does not drive user's adoption of the e-voting system.
Electrical stimulation of acupuncture points enhances gastric myoelectrical activity in humans.

OBJECTIVE Acupuncture is known to enhance gastric motility. Electrical acustimulation has been shown to reduce gastric tachyarrhymia in vection-induced motion sickness. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of electrical stimulation of acupuncture points on gastric myoelectrical activity in healthy humans. METHODS Nine healthy native Chinese were studied. Gastric myoelectrical activity was recorded using surface electrogastrography (EGG). The EGG recording was made in the fasting state, in a study period during which acupuncture points were electrically stimulated continuously, and in a recovery period after stimulation. The percentage of regular slow waves was assessed by computing the percentage of 2 to 4 cycles per minute slow waves in the EGG. RESULTS Electrical stimulation significantly increased the percentage of regular slow waves, which was sustained in the recovery period. The increase of the regular slow wave activity resulted from the normalization of arrhythmia. CONCLUSION Electrical stimulation of acupuncture points may enhance the regularity of gastric myoelectrical activity and may be an option for treatment of gastric dysrhythmia.
Changing patterns of rotavirus strains circulating in Ireland: Re‐emergence of G2P[4] and identification of novel genotypes in Ireland

Worldwide, Group A Rotavirus (RVA) is recognized as the most common aetiological agent of acute diarrheal disease in children. One hundred and ninety seven positive faecal samples were obtained from patients between 2006 and 2008. Reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT‐PCR) was used to amplify the VP7 and VP4 gene segments of these samples, and G and P typing was carried out subsequently. The most common strain type was G1P[8], and the emergent global G9‐type was identified in both years. RVA strain type G2P[4], previously reported in Ireland in 1999, was also detected. Genotypes G2 and G3 in combination with P[4] were detected in 2006–2007 only. There was also an emergence of strain types including G3P[4], G9P[4], G2P[4 + 8] and G2G4P[8] in this study. Molecular analysis of the VP7 genes revealed G1 strains circulating within lineage Ic as previously reported in Ireland. In addition, new sublineage within lineage I of G1 strains was also identified. Analysis of G4 strain NRVL‐Hum‐49 revealed similarity with other human G4 viruses in lineage Ib. G9 strain NRVL‐Hum‐74 clustered with a unique G9 strain, CIT‐254, in lineage IIIc. This data supports the observations made that the profile of RVA strains in Ireland appears to be dynamic. This study demonstrates that the circulation of human rotavirus is changing continuously in Ireland, and continued surveillance of the circulating strains is needed to detect the appearance of new strains, or new variants which may lead to vaccine breakthrough. J. Med. Virol. 87:764–773, 2015. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Nucleosome Positioning and Transcription-associated Chromatin Alterations on the Human Estrogen-responsive pS2 Promoter*

The positioning of nucleosomes on a promoter is a significant determinant in its responsiveness to inducing signals. We have mapped the chromatin structure of the human, estrogen-responsive pS2 promoter at nucleotide level resolution within the context of its normal genomic location in human mammary epithelial cells. In vivo digestion by nucleases followed by ligation-mediated polymerase chain reaction analysis revealed two rotationally phased and translationally positioned nucleosomes within the promoter between nucleotide positions −450 and +7. The estrogen response elements at −400 and TATAA box at −35 are each located at the edge of a nucleosome. The two precisely positioned nucleosomes exist in both transformed and nontransformed human mammary epithelial cells, regardless of estrogen receptor status or transcriptional activity of the gene. However, two structural alterations correlate with the transcriptional potential of the promoter. In MCF-7 cells, in which the pS2 promoter is inducible, the chromatin exhibits an increased sensitivity to DNase I in a region of DNA adjacent to the TATAA box and an additional micrococcal nuclease-hypersensitive site in the linker DNA between the two positioned nucleosomes. We were also able to demonstrate that nucleotides −1100 to +10 of the pS2 promoter are sufficient to determine the positioning of these two nucleosomes. Our results establish the structural features of the chromatin covering the pS2 promoter as well as transcriptionally associated alterations, suggesting how the nucleosomal template influences transcriptional regulation by estrogen receptor.
Visual Attention to Social and Non-Social Objects in the Autism Spectrum

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) are characterised by impairments in social interaction and communication, and restricted interests or repetitive behaviours. Autism traits are theorised to lie on a continuum throughout the general population, with individuals with a clinical diagnosis at one extreme. Those with high levels of autism traits in the general population have been found to display similar characteristics to those with ASD, but to a lesser extent. Differences in visual attention to social and non-social information are thought to contribute to the characteristic behaviours in autism. Whilst social attention may be diminished in ASD, ASD may also be associated with an increase in attention towards objects that are of circumscribed interest. The present thesis investigated visual attention to social and non-social objects in participants with ASD and those from the general population with high and low autism traits, to investigate whether differences in social and non-social visual attention relate to the autism spectrum. Dot probe, peripheral cueing, and eye tracking tasks were used to explore different elements of visual attention, including orienting and disengaging. Overall, social objects captured attention more than non-social objects, revealing the high salience of social information. Participants with high levels of autism traits and a diagnosis of ASD showed reduced social attention in the dot probe and eye tracking tasks, but not the peripheral cueing experiment. Across all experiments, there was no evidence to suggest that the autism spectrum was related to attentional biases towards objects related to circumscribed interests. However, other non-social stimuli appeared to capture attention to a greater extent across the spectrum. The differences in social attention in those with higher autism traits and ASD appeared greater when more stimuli were competing for attention, suggesting reduced social attention may involve interference from non-social stimuli in the visual field. This may indicate that attention is guided more by visual properties of the stimuli than their semantic meaning in the autism spectrum.
Adaptive Coding of Orofacial and Speech Actions in Motor and Somatosensory Spaces with and without Overt Motor Behavior

Abstract Studies of speech motor control suggest that articulatory and phonemic goals are defined in multidimensional motor, somatosensory, and auditory spaces. To test whether motor simulation might rely on sensory–motor coding common with those for motor execution, we used a repetition suppression (RS) paradigm while measuring neural activity with sparse sampling fMRI during repeated overt and covert orofacial and speech actions. RS refers to the phenomenon that repeated stimuli or motor acts lead to decreased activity in specific neural populations and are associated with enhanced adaptive learning related to the repeated stimulus attributes. Common suppressed neural responses were observed in motor and posterior parietal regions in the achievement of both repeated overt and covert orofacial and speech actions, including the left premotor cortex and inferior frontal gyrus, the superior parietal cortex and adjacent intraprietal sulcus, and the left IC and the SMA. Interestingly, reduced activity of the auditory cortex was observed during overt but not covert speech production, a finding likely reflecting a motor rather an auditory imagery strategy by the participants. By providing evidence for adaptive changes in premotor and associative somatosensory brain areas, the observed RS suggests online state coding of both orofacial and speech actions in somatosensory and motor spaces with and without motor behavior and sensory feedback.
Auto-scaling to minimize cost and meet application deadlines in cloud workflows

A goal in cloud computing is to allocate (and thus pay for) only those cloud resources that are truly needed. To date, cloud practitioners have pursued schedule-based (e.g., time-of-day) and rule-based mechanisms to attempt to automate this matching between computing requirements and computing resources. However, most of these “auto-scaling” mechanisms only support simple resource utilization indicators and do not specifically consider both user performance requirements and budget concerns. In this paper, we present an approach whereby the basic computing elements are virtual machines (VMs) of various sizes/costs, jobs are specified as workflows, users specify performance requirements by assigning (soft) deadlines to jobs, and the goal is to ensure all jobs are finished within their deadlines at minimum financial cost. We accomplish our goal by dynamically allocating/deallocating VMs and scheduling tasks on the most cost-efficient instances. We evaluate our approach in four representative cloud workload patterns and show cost savings from 9.8% to 40.4% compared to other approaches.
Association of activated c‐Met with NRAS‐mutated human melanomas

Cutaneous melanomas can be divided into three mutually exclusive genetic subsets: tumors with mutated BRAF, tumors with mutated NRAS and tumors wild type at both loci (wt/wt). Targeted therapy for melanoma has been advancing with agents directed to mutated BRAF, accounting for 50% of melanoma patients. The c‐Met pathway is known to play a role in melanoma tumorigenesis and preliminary data from our laboratory suggested that this pathway is preferentially activated in NRAS‐mutated tumors. The objective of this study was to test the hypothesis that melanomas carrying the mutated NRAS genotype are uniquely sensitively to c‐Met inhibition, thus providing rationale for therapeutic targeting of c‐Met in this patient cohort. Using primary human melanomas with known BRAF/NRAS genotypes, we observed greater immunostaining for phosphorylated (activated) c‐Met in NRAS‐mutated and wt/wt tumors, compared to BRAF‐mutated tumors. NRAS‐mutated and wt/wt cell lines also demonstrated more robust c‐Met activation in response to hepatocyte growth factor (HGF). Knock‐down of mutated N‐Ras, but not wild type N‐Ras, by RNA interference resulted in decreased c‐Met phosphorylation. Compared to BRAF mutants, NRAS‐mutated melanoma cells were more sensitive to pharmacologic c‐Met inhibition in terms of c‐Met activation, Akt phosphorylation, tumor cell proliferation, migration and apoptosis. This enhanced sensitivity was observed in wt/wt cells as well, but was a less consistent finding. On the basis of these experimental results, we propose that c‐Met inhibition may be a useful therapeutic strategy for melanomas with NRAS mutations, as well as some tumors with a wt/wt genotype.
Optimization of α‐Amylase Immobilization in Calcium Alginate Beads

Abstract α‐Amylase enzyme was produced by Aspergillus sclerotiorum under SSF conditions, and immobilized in calcium alginate beads. Effects of immobilization conditions, such as alginate concentration, CaCl2 concentration, amount of loading enzyme, bead size, and amount of beads, on enzymatic activity were investigated. Optimum alginate and CaCl2 concentration were found to be 3% (w/v). Using a loading enzyme concentration of 140 U mL−1, and bead (diameter 3 mm) amount of 0.5 g, maximum enzyme activity was observed. Beads prepared at optimum immobilization conditions were suitable for up to 7 repeated uses, losing only 35% of their initial activity. Among the various starches tested, the highest enzyme activity (96.2%) was determined in soluble potato starch hydrolysis for 120 min at 40°C.
Prediction of the Seizure Suppression Effect by Electrical Stimulation via a Computational Modeling Approach

In this paper, we identified factors that can affect seizure suppression via electrical stimulation by an integrative study based on experimental and computational approach. Preferentially, we analyzed the characteristics of seizure-like events (SLEs) using our previous in vitro experimental data. The results were analyzed in two groups classified according to the size of the effective region, in which the SLE was able to be completely suppressed by local stimulation. However, no significant differences were found between these two groups in terms of signal features or propagation characteristics (i.e., propagation delays, frequency spectrum, and phase synchrony). Thus, we further investigated important factors using a computational model that was capable of evaluating specific influences on effective region size. In the proposed model, signal transmission between neurons was based on two different mechanisms: synaptic transmission and the electrical field effect. We were able to induce SLEs having similar characteristics with differentially weighted adjustments for the two transmission methods in various noise environments. Although the SLEs had similar characteristics, their suppression effects differed. First of all, the suppression effect occurred only locally where directly received the stimulation effect in the high noise environment, but it occurred in the entire network in the low noise environment. Interestingly, in the same noise environment, the suppression effect was different depending on SLE propagation mechanism; only a local suppression effect was observed when the influence of the electrical field transmission was very weak, whereas a global effect was observed with a stronger electrical field effect. These results indicate that neuronal activities synchronized by a strong electrical field effect respond more sensitively to partial changes in the entire network. In addition, the proposed model was able to predict that stimulation of a seizure focus region is more effective for suppression. In conclusion, we confirmed the possibility of a computational model as a simulation tool to analyze the efficacy of deep brain stimulation (DBS) and investigated the key factors that determine the size of an effective region in seizure suppression via electrical stimulation.
Tracking Virus Particles in Fluorescence Microscopy Images Using Multi-Scale Detection and Multi-Frame Association

Automatic fluorescent particle tracking is an essential task to study the dynamics of a large number of biological structures at a sub-cellular level. We have developed a probabilistic particle tracking approach based on multi-scale detection and two-step multi-frame association. The multi-scale detection scheme allows coping with particles in close proximity. For finding associations, we have developed a two-step multi-frame algorithm, which is based on a temporally semiglobal formulation as well as spatially local and global optimization. In the first step, reliable associations are determined for each particle individually in local neighborhoods. In the second step, the global spatial information over multiple frames is exploited jointly to determine optimal associations. The multi-scale detection scheme and the multi-frame association finding algorithm have been combined with a probabilistic tracking approach based on the Kalman filter. We have successfully applied our probabilistic tracking approach to synthetic as well as real microscopy image sequences of virus particles and quantified the performance. We found that the proposed approach outperforms previous approaches.
Understanding the link between older volunteers’ resources and motivation to volunteer

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of older volunteers’ available human, social, and cultural capital on their motivational forces to volunteer, measured through the Volunteer Function Inventory. A large European database of 955 older volunteers (i.e., aged 50+) was employed, and Seemingly Unrelated Regressions showed that older volunteers have different motivations according to different sets of individual resources. Furthermore, lower amounts of human and social capital (e.g., low educational level, poor health, being widowed, divorced or single) are associated with a higher propensity to volunteer to enhance one’s own self-esteem, to avoid thinking of personal problems, and for social reasons. These results have important implications for policy makers and voluntary organizations if they want to enhance volunteering among older people with less resources, i.e., that are more at risk of social exclusion. For example, according to the results of this study, policy makers could consider developing more tailored opportunities for involving older volunteers with low educational level, poor health, widowed, divorced, or single. They could do this by underlying that volunteering offers possibilities to satisfy motivational needs important to the, elderly, e.g., to increase self-esteem, to deal with personal problems in a better way, and to have satisfying social contacts.
0.18 µm CMOS UWB LNA with new feedback configuration for optimization low noise, high gain and small area

In this paper, we present the low noise amplifier using new feedback connection configurations. The UWB LNA is design in 0.18 µm TSMC CMOS technique to achieve high gain, small size and low noise. The LNA achieved 11 dB of average power gain, low 2.87 dB noise figure (NF), −10.9 dB input match, −7 dB return loss, −3 dBm of IIP3 and only 0.54 mm2 size with 15 mW power consumption.
A Study of Applying BTM Model on the Chinese Chunk Bracketing

The purpose of this paper is to automatically generate Chinese chunk bracketing by a bottom-to-top mapping (BTM) model with a BTM dataset. The BTM model is designed as a supporting model with parsers. We define a word-layer matrix to generate the BTM dataset from Chinese Treebank. Our model matches auto-learned patterns and templates against segmented and POS-tagged Chinese sentences. A sentence that can be matched with some patterns or templates is called a matching sentence. The experimental results have shown that the chunk bracketing of the BTM model on the matching sentences is high and stable. By applying the BTM model to the matching sentences and the Ngram model to the non-matching sentences, the experiment results show the F-measure of an N-gram model can be improved.
An Empirical Test of a Diffusion Model: Predicting Clouded Apollo Movements in a Novel Environment

Functional connectivity is a fundamental concept in conservation biology because it sets the level of migration and gene flow among local populations. However, functional connectivity is difficult to measure, largely because it is hard to acquire and analyze movement data from heterogeneous landscapes. Here we apply a Bayesian state‐space framework to parameterize a diffusion‐based movement model using capture‐recapture data on the endangered clouded apollo butterfly. We test whether the model is able to disentangle the inherent movement behavior of the species from landscape structure and sampling artifacts, which is a necessity if the model is to be used to examine how movements depend on landscape structure. We show that this is the case by demonstrating that the model, parameterized with data from a reference landscape, correctly predicts movements in a structurally different landscape. In particular, the model helps to explain why a movement corridor that was constructed as a management measure failed to increase movement among local populations. We illustrate how the parameterized model can be used to derive biologically relevant measures of functional connectivity, thus linking movement data with models of spatial population dynamics.