Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Academic discourse: Dissociating standardized and conversational measures of language proficiency in bilingual kindergarteners

This study examined the relationship between performance on standardized measures of language proficiency and conversational measures of the same features used in academic discourse among 24 monolingual and 25 bilingual kindergarteners. Academic discourse performance was considered for both its linguistic and its genre features in two discourse forms: narrative and explanation. Bilinguals performed more poorly than monolinguals on standardized measures of language proficiency, yet they performed similarly to monolinguals in the discourse-based linguistic and genre features. Moreover, genre features were more strongly related to linguistic features assessed through discourse than to standardized tests of these same features. These findings indicate that standardized measures of language proficiency underrepresent the abilities of bilingual children and that children's second language proficiency may be more accurately reflected in conversation.
Fundamental Scheme-Based Nonorthogonal LOD-FDTD for Analyzing Curved Structures

In this letter, nonorthogonal locally 1-D finite-difference time domain based on fundamental scheme (F-LOD-NFDTD) is presented for analyzing electromagnetic curved structures. The formulation based on fundamental scheme with curvilinear coordinate is performed in convenient matrix-operator-free forms in the right-hand side of resultant equations. The convolutional perfectly matched layer absorbing boundary condition is also incorporated. The nonorthogonal grids are used to fully mesh the computational domain that leads to efficient computation. A comparison to the conventional LOD-NFDTD in terms of CPU time and memory requirements reveals the merits of the proposed F-LOD-NFDTD method in terms of lighter calculation burden and higher efficiency. Numerical results are presented to illustrate the significance of the proposed approach.
An Advanced Park's Vectors Approach for Bearing Fault Detection

Induction motors vibrations, caused by bearing defects, result in the modulation of the stator current. In this research, a new method based on Park's vector approach for bearing fault detection using 3-phase stator current analysis is presented. In order to evaluate the ability of the proposed method several experiments are done, and sets of data are gathered before and after using defective bearings. Localized and distributed defect is evaluated using this method. The experimental results from our study suggest that the proposed method provides a powerful and general approach to incipient fault detection.
Humor in organization: From function to resistance

Abstract The paper discusses the current state of research and thinking about humor in organizations and the workplace. Perhaps constrained by rationalist assumptions and conceptions of work and organization as domains of the serious, humor in organizations has received relatively little attention in management and organization studies. Such relative neglect notwithstanding, there has been a steady stream of work over the last 50 years, increasing somewhat latterly. The paper reflects, firstly, on this neglect in the face of the pervasiveness and significance of humor in life and in organizations. Next it considers more orthodox, functionalist research on humor in organizations, noting that this is the dominant stream of work. Whilst of value, this work offers a limited and partial perspective: we therefore address alternative, non-functionalist approaches that have emerged latterly, some of which take us towards a more radical view of humor in the workplace as resistance and subversion. This work is a caution against adopting a narrow functionalist view of humor and its appropriation for a managerialist agenda. In this critical evaluation of the literature humor is shown to be heterogeneous, both in its forms and effects and there is a need of better theorization that acknowledges that and which properly contextualizes humor in relation to the specific dynamics and complexities of work and organizations.
Reactive Oxygen Species Abrogate the Anticarcinogenic Effect of Eicosapentaenoic Acid in Atm-Deficient Mice

Recent studies have demonstrated that n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids such as eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) are able to suppress cell proliferation and inhibit tumor growth. The objective of our study was to investigate the influence of a high dose EPA on the development of the tumor phenotype in ataxia-telangiectasia mutated (Atm)-deficient mice, a genetic cancer model that is associated with increased levels of oxidative stress. We analyzed toxicity, proliferation, cell-cycle progression, and apoptosis of EPA in vitro and latency to tumorigenesis in vivo. Because of the impact of reactive oxygen species (ROS) on the tumor incidence in ataxia telangiectasia (AT), we further analyzed the effect of EPA on the generation of ROS and oxidative DNA damage (ODD). EPA effectively inhibited proliferation, altered cell-cycle progression, and induced apoptosis of tumor cells (AT-4). EPA showed no effect on the latency to tumorigenesis in Atm-deficient mice. EPA treatment was accompanied by a significant increase of ROS and ODD. Our results demonstrate the antiproliferative effect of EPA on tumor cells by alteration of cell-cycle progression and induction of apoptosis in vitro. On the other hand, EPA treatment of Atm-deficient mice led to the formation of ROS and accumulation of ODD that might have abrogated the anticarcinogenic effect caused by EPA.
Oriental imagery and American attitudes toward Asia: an exploratory tourism study

The concept of Orientalism has served to define post-colonial thinking, reflecting the West's interpretation of non-Western individuals and cultures. In this binary set, the West/us is approached as representing the standard, while the East/them represents that which is outside the norm. For the last few decades, Orientalism has continued to influence discussions in tourism studies; nevertheless, there is a dearth of empirical studies examining how the discourse lives out in daily tourism practices. Therefore, employing quantitative research methods, this study explores what Orientalism means to contemporary Americans and how it affects their attitudes toward Asian destinations. The result indicates that the imaginary construct of the East has reflected three different dimensions, namely contempt, curiosity, and fear, through which the Western world has traditionally framed the non-Western world; however, Americans generally believe that contemporary Asia cannot be adequately explained in these traditional and fixed ways. This study suggests that two terms, Asia and the East, connote very different meanings in contemporary American society, revealing how the traditional discourse of Orientalism is transformed and reinterpreted, although not totally changed, within the changing nature of the contemporary global environment.
Who's Going to Make the First Move? Pluralistic Ignorance as an Impediment to Relationship Formation

Six studies were conducted to test the hypothesis that individuals contemplating `making the first move' in initiating a romantic relationship experience pluralistic ignorance (N = 544). Studies 1 and 2 established the preconditions for the phenomenon: participants indicated that they were more likely than a potential partner to be inhibited from making an initiative by a fear of rejection. Studies 3 and 4 demonstrated pluralistic ignorance: although participants explained their own inaction in terms of their fear of being rejected, they attributed a potential partner's inaction to a lack of interest in developing a relationship with them. Study 5 utilized an open-ended thought-listing measure to demonstrate that individuals spontaneously perceive a potential partner's inaction as reflective of disinterest more so than they perceive their own inaction in these terms. Finally, Study 6 provided more definitive evidence that participants' divergent perceptions of their own vs their potential partner's underlying feelings stemmed from the biased interpretation of inaction. Implications for the formation of social bonds are discussed.
Increased migration of a human glioma cell line after in vitro CyberKnife irradiation

A human glioblastoma multiforme cell line (U87) and its derived-spheroids were irradiated either using a conventional irradiation (CIR) or a CK-like irradiation (IIR) in which the 8Gy was delivered intermittently over a period of 40 minutes. The ability of glioma cells to migrate into a matrigel matrix was evaluated on days 1-8 from irradiation. Irradiation with CK-driven IIR significantly increased the invasion potential of U87 cells in a matrigel-based assay. In contrast to CIR, IIR was associated with increased levels of TGF-B at four days (Real time PCR), β1-integrin at 4-5 days (real-time PCR and western blot) and no elevation in phosphorylated AKT at days 4 and 5 (western blot). Our data suggests that glioma cell invasion as well as elevations of TGF-B and β1-integrin are associated with IIR and not CIR.
Mentalizing Adolescence: Reflective Functioning Capacities in Parents of Identical Twins and its Relationship to Adolescent Attachment

Previous behavioural genetics studies have converged in finding a shared influence of maternal sensitivity on attachment security at age 1 but contradictory findings were reached when investigating its non-shared effect on attachment organization. However, to date, no research has investigated this association in adolescence. This study was the first aiming to investigate reflective functioning capacities in both, mothers and fathers of adolescent identical twins, and understanding the nature of its relationship to adolescent attachment coherence. One hundred families were interviewed, with each parent asked to complete the Parent Development Interview twice, once about each twin. Adolescent attachment was assessed using a semi-structured interview, the Child Attachment Interview. This study provided some support for predictions of attachment theory suggesting a shared environmental effect of parental reflective on the shared variance in adolescent attachment coherence. Thus, the similarity between twins’ coherence scores was partially explained by consistencies in their experience of parental reflective functioning. Examining maternal and paternal RF separately, strong associations were found between mothers’ and fathers’ RF scores, which were found to, partially independently, influence twins’ coherence scores at a family level only. This study did not quantitatively identify non-shared environmental influences of parental RF which, it was suggested, could reflect some shared genetic effects from twins to parent. Finally, based on a case study analysis, it was suggested that the interaction between a number of non-shared factors, such as twins’ level of psychological maturity, their potential de-identification from each other and from their parents, their perception of the twinship relationship and the parents’ description of each twin, could explain discrepancies between twins’ attachment classification.
RAD Capture (Rapture): Flexible and Efficient Sequence-Based Genotyping

Massively parallel sequencing has revolutionized many areas of biology, but sequencing large amounts of DNA in many individuals is cost-prohibitive and unnecessary for many studies. Genomic complexity reduction techniques such as sequence capture and restriction enzyme-based methods enable the analysis of many more individuals per unit cost. Despite their utility, current complexity reduction methods have limitations, especially when large numbers of individuals are analyzed. Here we develop a much improved restriction site-associated DNA (RAD) sequencing protocol and a new method called Rapture (RAD capture). The new RAD protocol improves versatility by separating RAD tag isolation and sequencing library preparation into two distinct steps. This protocol also recovers more unique (nonclonal) RAD fragments, which improves both standard RAD and Rapture analysis. Rapture then uses an in-solution capture of chosen RAD tags to target sequencing reads to desired loci. Rapture combines the benefits of both RAD and sequence capture, i.e., very inexpensive and rapid library preparation for many individuals as well as high specificity in the number and location of genomic loci analyzed. Our results demonstrate that Rapture is a rapid and flexible technology capable of analyzing a very large number of individuals with minimal sequencing and library preparation cost. The methods presented here should improve the efficiency of genetic analysis for many aspects of agricultural, environmental, and biomedical science.
N-acetyltransferase-2 genotypes among patients with rheumatoid arthritis attending Jordan University Hospital.

AIM To determine the frequency of major N-acetyltransferase (NAT2) alleles and genotypes among Jordanian patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). METHODS The study was approved by the IRB of the Jordan University Hospital. An informed consent was signed by every patient. DNA samples from 150 healthy volunteers and 108 patients with RA were analyzed by polymerase chain reaction followed by a restriction fragment length polymorphism assay (PCR-RFLP) to determine the frequency of four major alleles: NAT2*4, NAT2*5, NAT2*6, and NAT2*7. RESULTS The most prevalent genotypes are those that encode the slow acetylation phenotype. About 59.3% of the patients with RA carried the slow, 33.3% the intermediate, and 7.4% the fast-encoding genotypes. The frequency of NAT2 alleles was 0.241 (95% confidence interval [CI] 0.184-0.298) for NAT2*4, 0.449 (95% CI 0.383-0.515) for NAT2*5, 0.273 (95% CI 0.214-0.332) for NAT2*6, and 0.037 (95% CI 0.012-0.062) for NAT2*7 allele. The overall frequency of the slow acetylation genotype in patients with RA is similar to that in healthy Jordanian volunteers. However, the NAT2*5/7 genotype was found in seven patients (6.5%) with RA and was absent in Jordanian volunteers, and the z test revealed that the difference was statistically significant. This genotype constituted 10.9% of the genotypes encoding slow acetylation. CONCLUSION The overall acetylator genotype in RA is similar to that in healthy volunteers. The overall slow acetylator genotypes do not seem to be a genetic risk factor for RA among Jordanians. However, the NAT2*5/7 genotype seems to be related to RA. The nature of this relationship needs further clarification.
Elevated Carboxy-Terminal Peptide of Procollagen Type I in Elderly Patients with Diastolic Dysfunction

Background:Diastolic dysfunction (DD) is common in elderly people. Myocardial fibrosis is a major determinant of diastolic function. Increased myocardial fibrosis has been observed with advancing age. We hypothesized that plasma levels of carboxy-terminal peptide of procollagen type I (PICP), a marker of fibrosis, is elevated in elderly subjects with DD compared to healthy control subjects. Methods:PICP levels were measured in 29 elderly subjects with DD and 25 healthy control subjects. The relationship between PICP levels and age, gender, hypertension, and the presence of left ventricular hypertrophy were then assessed. Results:PICP levels were significantly higher in elderly subjects with DD than in healthy control subjects (301.0 ± 52.0 vs. 262.9 ± 45.3 ng/mL; P = .006). PICP levels were higher in elderly with DD regardless of the presence of left ventricular hypertrophy. Additionally, PICP levels were not found to correlate with age. Conclusions:PICP levels are elevated in elderly people with DD. PICP may be a useful marker to determine the level of fibrotic activity in this population.
Exact and Stable Recovery of Pairwise Interaction Tensors

Tensor completion from incomplete observations is a problem of significant practical interest. However, it is unlikely that there exists an efficient algorithm with provable guarantee to recover a general tensor from a limited number of observations. In this paper, we study the recovery algorithm for pairwise interaction tensors, which has recently gained considerable attention for modeling multiple attribute data due to its simplicity and effectiveness. Specifically, in the absence of noise, we show that one can exactly recover a pairwise interaction tensor by solving a constrained convex program which minimizes the weighted sum of nuclear norms of matrices from O(nr log2(n)) observations. For the noisy cases, we also prove error bounds for a constrained convex program for recovering the tensors. Our experiments on the synthetic dataset demonstrate that the recovery performance of our algorithm agrees well with the theory. In addition, we apply our algorithm on a temporal collaborative filtering task and obtain state-of-the-art results.
Behavioral Responses of Patients in AIDS Treatment Programs: Sexual Behavior in Kenya

Abstract We estimate changes in sexual behavior for HIV-positive individuals enrolled in an AIDS treatment program using longitudinal household survey data collected in western Kenya. We find that sexual activity is lowest at the time that treatment is initiated and increases significantly in the subsequent six months, consistent with the health improvements that result from ART treatment. More importantly, we find large and significant increases of 10 to 30 percentage points in the reported use of condoms during last sexual intercourse. The increases in condom use appear to be driven primarily by a program effect, applying to all HIV clinic patients regardless of treatment status.
Deterministic Design of Low-Density Parity-Check Codes for Binary Erasure Channels

We propose a deterministic method to design irregular Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) codes for binary erasure channels. Compared to the existing methods, which are based on the application of asymptomatic analysis tools such as density evolution or Extrinsic Information Transfer (EXIT) charts in an optimization process, the proposed method is much simpler and faster. Through a number of examples, we demonstrate that the codes designed by the proposed method perform very closely to the best codes designed by optimization. It can also be proved that, the proposed code ensembles are capacity-achieving and are thus asymptotically optimal.
Screening for illicit drug use in psychiatric hospitals: whose job is it?

This review focuses on screening and assessment in general psychiatric settings, where drug use is unlikely to be known to service providers. It builds on the recurrent finding that psychiatric patients are at high risk of substance misuse. The application of self-report questionnaires and rating scales and more in-depth assessment instruments is outlined, as are biological screening techniques. The use of brief self-completion questionnaires probably offers the most practical approach to routine screening by non-specialist staff in general hospital settings. The importance of implementing such tools lies in reaching an accurate diagnosis, choosing treatments more appropriately and monitoring the management of patients’ psychiatric disorders.
Students’ Conceptions of Assessment

Demonstrating factor invariance across population characteristics is an important facet of validating instruments. A new instrument to examine students’ conceptions of assessment (SCoA) has been demonstrated in studies to show significant relations to secondary school students’ academic performance in mathematics and reading. The research reported here investigates the stability of the factor structure and structural relationships to achievement in reading comprehension across student sex, year-level, and ethnicity. Multiple group confirmatory factor analysis found, in a sample of 3,506 students, that the factor structure of the SCoA was invariant. Conversely, statistically significant differences for sex, year, and ethnicity were found for how the conceptions of assessment related to academic performance in reading. These differences between the structural models may not indicate a deficiency in the instrument but, rather, sensitivity to real-world differences among subgroups. The structural differences .
Morphological phenotyping of mouse hearts using optical coherence tomography

Abstract. Transgenic mouse models have been instrumental in the elucidation of the molecular mechanisms behind many genetically based cardiovascular diseases such as Marfan syndrome (MFS). However, the characterization of their cardiac morphology has been hampered by the small size of the mouse heart. In this report, we adapted optical coherence tomography (OCT) for imaging fixed adult mouse hearts, and applied tools from computational anatomy to perform morphometric analyses. The hearts were first optically cleared and imaged from multiple perspectives. The acquired volumes were then corrected for refractive distortions, and registered and stitched together to form a single, high-resolution OCT volume of the whole heart. From this volume, various structures such as the valves and myofibril bundles were visualized. The volumetric nature of our dataset also allowed parameters such as wall thickness, ventricular wall masses, and luminal volumes to be extracted. Finally, we applied the entire acquisition and processing pipeline in a preliminary study comparing the cardiac morphology of wild-type mice and a transgenic mouse model of MFS.
Word Lists: Problems and Prospects

Acquiring a language is a unique learning experience. This becomes apparent if we consider some of the differences between learning a language and learning a code; between learning English for example, and learning the English alphabet. We cannot say that we know the English alphabet until we know all the symbols that belong to it. We cannot equate knowing 75% of the letters with knowing the alphabet. In the case of language, however, we do not need to know everything that the language includes to be able to say that we know the language. We need only consult a dictionary for a few minutes to confirm that a native speaker of English may not know the meanings of many of the words in his language. Our vocabulary knowledge is limited by our experience, and the lexicon of the language is a reservoir of the experience of all the speakers of the language. Likewise, knowing the grammar of a language cannot be identified with knowing the . inventory of its grammatical items and their possible arrangements. It is possible to know a list of grammatical items and still be unable to use the language, just as it is possible to know a language and never use or encounter many of the grammatical arrangements permitted by its grammar.