Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Covert Reminders: The Use of Distraction to Enhance Memory in Older Adults

Aging is associated with difficulty down-regulating attention to distraction and increased forgetting in explicit memory tests. This thesis explored whether older adults’ distractibility can counterintuitively boost memory when presentations of distraction provide an opportunity for memory-strengthening rehearsal between learning and a delayed memory test. Four studies used the same general procedure: Younger and older participants studied and recalled a list of words on an initial test and again on a surprise test following a 15-min delay. During the delay, participants completed a 1-back task in which half of the studied words appeared as distractors. The first two studies examined whether repeating studied words as distraction midway through (Study 1a) or at the end of a delay interval (Study 2) would reduce forgetting for older, but not younger adults, who previous research has shown can effectively ignore distraction. Studies 3a and 3b explored whether younger and older adults can retroactively take advantage of rehearsal opportunities presented as distraction when directly instructed about their relevance at retrieval. Finally, Study 4 explored whether positive and neutral moods, which are known to affect attentional control abilities, influence the costs and benefits of distraction as a rehearsal device in younger adults.
Design and Performance of SMPs With Asynchronous Caches

Asynchronous, cache coherence, shared-memory multiprocessor, SMP We propose and evaluate a cache-coherent symmetric multiprocessor system (SMP) based on asynchronous caches. In a system with asynchronous caches, processors and memory controllers may observe the same coherence request at different points in time. All protocol transactions are unidirectional and processors do not report snoop results. The need for an extensive interlocking protocol between processor nodes and memory controller which is characteristic of snooping buses is thus removed.
Genetic Risk for Recurrent Urinary Tract Infections in Humans: A Systematic Review

Urinary tract infections (UTIs) are a frequent cause of morbidity in children and adults and affect up to 10% of children; its recurrence rate is estimated at 30–40%. UTI may occur in up to 50% of all women in their lifetimes and frequently require medication. Recent advances have suggested that a deregulation of candidate genes in humans may predispose patients to recurrent UTI. The identification of a genetic component of UTI recurrences will make it possible to diagnose at-risk adults and to predict genetic recurrences in their offspring. Six out of 14 genes investigated in humans may be associated with susceptibility to recurrent UTI in humans. In particular, the HSPA1B, CXCR1 & 2, TLR2, TLR4, TGF-β1 genes seem to be associated with an alteration of the host response to UTIs at various levels.
Fixed-Income Portfolio Selection

The equity portfolio selection problem is the subject of a substantial literature. Though equally important in practice, the optimization problem for a fixed-income portfolio, which may contain corporate and government bonds, industrial loans and credit derivatives such as credit swaps, is less well-understood. The fixed-income portfolio problem presents unique challenges: the risk of issuer default induces skewed return distributions, the correlation of defaults significantly influences portfolio returns, and credit derivative positions have complex risk/return implications. This paper formulates and solves the static selection problem for a fixed-income portfolio. It proposes to optimize the portfolio mark-to-market profit or loss at the investment horizon, which incorporates the premium and default cash flows of long and short cash and derivative positions, and the survival-contingent market value of these positions at the horizon. The selection problem is cast as a polynomial goal program that involves a two-stage constrained optimization of preference weighted moments of the portfolio mark-to-market. The decision variable is the vector of contract notionals. A capital constraint guarantees the solvency of the portfolio manager during the investment period. The multi-moment formulation takes account of the non-normal distribution of the portfolio mark-to-market. It also leads to a computationally tractable problem for the large portfolios common in practice. This is because we obtain analytical expressions for the moments of the portfolio mark-to-market, which are given in terms of nested expectations under different probability measures. The expressions are valid for a broad class of intensity-based, doubly-stochastic models of correlated default timing that are widely used in portfolio credit risk and derivatives pricing. A numerical case study treats the mean-variance-skewness mark-to-market optimization problem for a portfolio of credit swaps, whose reference names default at correlated Feller diffusion intensities. The analysis illustrates the implications for fixed-income portfolio selection of idiosyncratic default risk and default correlation. It also indicates the robustness of the optimal policies with respect to estimation errors.
The Impact of Job Satisfaction on Turnover Intention by the Existence of Organizational Commitment, and Intent to Stay as Intermediates Variables Using approach PLS in Sample Worker Department of Transport Saida

The current research aims to knowing the relationship between Job Satisfaction, Organizational Commitment, and Intent to Stay on Turnover Intention among sample of workers Departments of Transport -Saida-. Therefore, the objective of practical side of the research is an attempt to know the impact of the analysis of Job Satisfaction and Turnover Intention using the structural equations modeling (PLS approach). The study, after statistical treatment using SmartPLS3 program had shown a strong impact for Job Satisfaction on Turnover Intention by the existence of Organizational Commitment, and Intent to Stay as intermediates variables.
SCIENCE EDUCATION FOR STUDENTS WITH INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY: A CASE STUDY

Scientific literacy is a principle objective of education almost in every country. It is mostly underlined in science education. Science education helps students become more productive individuals with the knowledge they acquire by promoting their thinking and learning skills and these skills help individuals to improve their scientific literacy. This research aims to determine the needs and problems in teaching science & technology course in a special education middle school, attended by students with mild intellectual disability. This is a case study based on collecting and analyzing qualitative data. Semi-structured interviews, conducted with two teachers, 11 students, and their parents, researcher’s diary, in class artifacts, field notes, and video recordings were used to depict the situation in the science & technology course mentioned above. The data were analyzed through content analysis via Nvivo 10. Research findings display that the school in which this research study took place must be enriched with high technological tools; special education teachers’ attitudes towards the necessity of the science & technology course for students with special needs must be improved; and teachers must be provided with knowledge and skills of differentiation and adaptation techniques to provide science & technology activities in order for the science & technology course to be taught in a more inclusive manner. Key words: case study, science for all, students with special needs.
Embryo quality and IVF treatment outcomes may correlate with different sperm comet assay parameters.

BACKGROUND Standard semen parameters have proven poor at predicting the outcomes of IVF treatment cycles. As recent studies suggest that the male genome may play an important role in early embryogenesis, this study attempts to correlate the level of sperm DNA damage in fresh semen and prepared sperm with the outcomes of conventional IVF treatment cycles. METHODS Forty patients embarking on IVF treatment were recruited into this prospective observational study. Both fresh semen and PureSperm-prepared sperm were processed using a modified comet assay 3-6 months prior to the patients' IVF treatment cycles. Comet head DNA (mean and integrated head density) and tail DNA parameters (length and moment) were measured separately. RESULTS Significant correlations between total sperm concentration and between comet length, moment, mean head density with embryo quality were detected in fresh semen and prepared sperm. Surprisingly, no significant correlations between head and tail parameters were detected. CONCLUSIONS Comet head and tail DNA parameters appear to be potentially useful as predictors of embryo quality and IVF outcomes, especially in couples with unexplained subfertility. The lack of correlation between head and tail parameters may be due to a different mechanism of DNA damage within these two compartments.
Nateglinide, but not repaglinide, stimulates growth hormone release in rat pituitary cells by inhibition of K channels and stimulation of cyclic AMP-dependent exocytosis.

OBJECTIVE GH causes insulin resistance, impairs glycemic control and increases the risk of vascular diabetic complications. Sulphonylureas stimulate GH secretion and this study was undertaken to investigate the possible stimulatory effect of repaglinide and nateglinide, two novel oral glucose regulators, on critical steps of the stimulus-secretion coupling in single rat somatotrophs. METHODS Patch-clamp techniques were used to record whole-cell ATP-sensitive K(+) (K(ATP)) and delayed outward K(+) currents, membrane potential and Ca(2+)-dependent exocytosis. GH release was measured from perifused rat somatotrophs. RESULTS Both nateglinide and repaglinide dose-dependently suppressed K(ATP) channel activity with half-maximal inhibition being observed at 413 nM and 13 nM respectively. Both compounds induced action potential firing in the somatotrophs irrespective of whether GH-releasing hormone was present or not. The stimulation of electrical activity by nateglinide, but not repaglinide, was associated with an increased mean duration of the action potentials. The latter effect correlated with a reduction of the delayed outward K(+) current, which accounts for action potential repolarization. The latter effect had a K(d) of 19 microM but was limited to 38% inhibition. When applied at concentrations similar to those required to block K(ATP) channels, nateglinide in addition potentiated Ca(2+)-evoked exocytosis 3.3-fold (K(d)=3 microM) and stimulated GH release 4.5-fold. The latter effect was not shared by repaglinide. The stimulation of exocytosis by nateglinide was mimicked by cAMP and antagonized by the protein kinase A inhibitor Rp-cAMPS. CONCLUSION Nateglinide stimulates GH release by inhibition of plasma membrane K(+) channels, elevation of cytoplasmic cAMP levels and stimulation of Ca(2+)-dependent exocytosis. By contrast, the effect of repaglinide was confined to inhibition of the K(ATP) channels.
Complete Ricci-flat K\"ahler metrics on the canonical bundles of toric Fano manifolds

We prove the existence of a complete Ricci-flat K\"ahler metric on the total space of the canonical line bundle $K_M$ of a toric Fano manifold $M$ as an application of the existence result of toric Sasaki-Einstein metrics by H.Ono, G.Wang and the author. We also prove the existence of a complete scalar-flat K\"ahler metric on the toric K\"ahler cone manifold (minus the apex) constructed from a toric diagram with a constant height, and in particular there exists a complete scalar-flat K\"ahler metric on the total space of $K_M$ minus the zero section. These are part of results obtained by extending Calabi ansatz developed by A.Hwang and M.Singer to Sasakian $\eta$-Einstein manifolds.
The Effects of Transition and Political Instability on Foreign Direct Investment Inflows: Central Europe and the Balkans

This paper examines the effect of transition and of political instability on FDI flows to the transition economies of Central Europe, the Baltics and the Balkans. We find that FDI to transition economies unaffected by conflict and political instability exceed those that would be expected for comparable West European countries. Success with stabilization and reform tends to increase FDI inflows. In the case of Balkan counties, conflict and instability have reduced FDI inflows below what one would expect for comparable West European countries, and reform and stabilization failures have further reduced FDI to the region. Thus the economic costs of instability in the Balkans have been quite high.
The effects of space weathering on Apollo 17 mare soils: Petrographie and chemical characterization

Abstract— The lunar soil characterization consortium, a group of lunar‐sample and remote‐sensing scientists, has undertaken the extensive task of characterization of the finest fractions of lunar soils, with respect to their mineralogical and chemical makeup. These compositional data form the basis for integration and modeling with the reflectance spectra of these same soil fractions. This endeavor is aimed at deciphering the effects of space weathering of soils on airless bodies with quantification of the links between remotely sensed reflectance spectra and composition. A beneficial byproduct is an understanding of the complexities involved in the formation of lunar soil.
The Perfect Hypnotic?

A compound that blocks a neurotransmitter receptor is the newest hope for getting a good night's sleep without the bad side effects. The market for hypnotics is big business, with 10 to 15% of the population in the United States suffering from chronic insomnia (1, 2). Although the pathology is unknown, and likely heterogeneous, patients with insomnia are in a state of hyperarousal (even during the day), suggesting that wake-promoting systems are hyperactive (3). The search for the ideal hypnotic has been marked by cycles of exuberance followed by disappointment, as adverse side effects associated with each new class of drug have emerged following wide use. Although insomnia therapy increasingly uses cognitive behavioral therapy, the enormous number of sufferers mandates new pharmacological approaches. Uslaner et al. (4) report the prospect of a new class of compound with a new mode of action that may usher in a new era for insomnia treatment, with the potential for fewer side effects.
CSCAT: the Compaq Supply Chain Analysis Tool

In today's business environment, the dynamics of the business drive many decisions in the supply chain. Companies buffer their inventory, carry excess capacity and head-count, and have costly marketing initiatives in order to handle the dynamics of the business. In order to better analyze the business dynamics and define supply chains that are robust to changes in the business environment, Compaq has developed an internal package, called the Compaq Supply Chain Analysis Tool (CSCAT). CSCAT is an ARENA/sup (R)/ discrete-event simulation that allows for the easy configuration of a supply chain and the analysis of the dynamics of a supply chain. CSCAT has been used by Compaq to address strategic supply chain issues and certain product-specific supply chain issues. This paper gives an overview of CSCAT.
Context-Aware Semi-Local Feature Detector

How can interest point detectors benefit from contextual cues? In this articles, we introduce a context-aware semi-local detector (CASL) framework to give a systematic answer with three contributions: (1) We integrate the context of interest points to recurrently refine their detections. (2) This integration boosts interest point detectors from the traditionally local scale to a semi-local scale to discover more discriminative salient regions. (3) Such context-aware structure further enables us to bring forward category learning (usually in the subsequent recognition phase) into interest point detection to locate category-aware, meaningful salient regions. Our CASL detector consists of two phases. The first phase accumulates multiscale spatial correlations of local features into a difference of contextual Gaussians (DoCG) field. DoCG quantizes detector context to highlight contextually salient regions at a semi-local scale, which also reveals visual attentions to a certain extent. The second phase locates contextual peaks by mean shift search over the DoCG field, which subsequently integrates contextual cues into feature description. This phase enables us to integrate category learning into mean shift search kernels. This learning-based CASL mechanism produces more category-aware features, which substantially benefits the subsequent visual categorization process. We conducted experiments in image search, object characterization, and feature detector repeatability evaluations, which reported superior discriminability and comparable repeatability to state-of-the-art works.
Nonlinear stability of high Lewis number combustion fronts

In this paper a mathematical model is considered that describes combustion processes characterized by a very high Lewis number. The model is known to support a wavefront that asymptotically connects the completely burned and the unburned states, and that is unique up to translation. The stability of the front has not yet been investigated beyond the spectral level. The essential spectrum of the linearization of the system about the front touches the imaginary axis, therefore, even in a parameter regime that guarantees absence of the unstable discrete spectrum, spectral information is not definitive. There exists an exponentially weighted norm that stabilizes the front on the linear level. The nonlinear stability in that exponentially weighted norm cannot be simply inferred from the spectral stability because the nonlinearity is not smooth in that norm. We use the interplay of the norms with and without exponential weight to overcome this issue, and show that the front in the co-moving frame is nonlinearly stable in the exponentially weighted norm with respect to a special class of perturbations.
Effect of the Presence of a Mobile Phone during a Spatial Visual Search

Recent studies suggest that the “mere presence” of a mobile phone impairs social interactions and neuropsychological test performance. The present study examined whether the presence of a mobile phone causes spatial bias toward the device during a visual search task. Participants identified a target among spatially distributed non-targets. We manipulated three factors: device presence (mobile phone or notepad), target congruency (congruent or incongruent), and attentional load (set size 8 or 24). A mobile phone (or a notepad in the control condition) was placed on the left side of the computer screen. Participants also completed a questionnaire to measure Internet usage and attachment. Participants with high scores on the questionnaire rapidly identified the target at the congruent (same side as the phone) location, but the mere presence effect did not occur in this condition. In contrast, participants with low scores on the questionnaire demonstrated the mere presence effect, but no spatial bias was observed. These results suggest that the mere presence effect can be modulated by individual differences in the degree to which a device is appealing.
High Excitation Molecular Gas in the Magellanic Clouds

We present the first survey of submillimeter 12CO J = 4 → 3 emission in the Magellanic Clouds. The survey is comprised of 15 6′ × 6′ maps obtained using the AST/RO telescope toward the molecular peaks of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds. We have used these data to constrain the physical conditions in these objects, in particular, their molecular gas density and temperature. We find that there are significant amounts of warm molecular gas associated with most of these molecular peaks and that high molecular gas temperatures are pervasive throughout our sample. We discuss whether this may be due to the low metallicities and the associated dearth of gas coolants in the Clouds and conclude that the present sample is insufficient to assert this effect.
Coaches’ Perceptions of the Reduction of Athletic Commitment for Division II Student-Athletes: Development and Validation of a Measure of Athletic/Academic Balance

Growing concerns exist regarding the amount of time student-athletes spend honing their athletic craft at the potential expense of their academic pursuits. Recently, the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division II Management Council approved the Life in the Balance (LITB) initiative to allow student-athletes more time for academics and other extracurricular activities beyond their sport(s). The purpose of this study was to develop a reliable and valid measurement scale assessing coaches’ perceptions of balancing athletics and academics for studentathletes. Results of this study indicated three factors comprise the Athletic Academic Balance Scale (AABS): (a) policy impact, (b) contest reductions, and (c) midyear break. The AABS represents a reliable and valid scale to measure policy effectiveness for balancing athletics and academics for student-athletes. The scale extends role theory into student-athlete literature and helps assess the perception of internal stakeholders regarding future N.
Variational Sturmian approximation: A nonperturbative method of solving time-independent Schrödinger equation

A variationally improved Sturmian approximation for solving time-independent Schrodinger equation is developed. This approximation is used to obtain the energy levels of a quartic anharmonic oscillator, a quartic potential, and a Gaussian potential. The results are compared with those of the perturbation theory, the WKB approximation, and the accurate numerical values.
© 2012 Landes Bioscience. Do not distribute. TOPLESS co-repressor interactions and their evolutionary conservation in plants

Large-scale protein-protein interaction studies recently demonstrated that the Arabidopsis TPL/TPR family of transcriptional co-repressors is involved in a broad range of developmental processes. TPL/TPRs predominantly interact with transcription factors that contain repression domain (RD) sequences. Interestingly, RDs reported in the literature are quite diverse in sequence, yet TPL/TPRs interact with proteins containing all of the known motifs. These data lead us to conclude that the TPL/TPRs act as general repressors of gene transcription in plants. To investigate this further, we examined interactions between TPL/TPR proteins encoded by the moss Physcomitrella patens genome and components of the auxin signaling pathway. As in Arabidopsis, moss TPL proteins interact with AUX/IAA and ARF proteins, suggesting that they act in both forms of ARF-mediated transcriptional repression. These data suggest that the involvement of TPL in auxin signaling has been conserved across evolution, since mosses and angiosperms diverged approximately 450 million years ago.
Learning Trees and Rules with Set-Valued Features

In most learning systems examples are represented as fixed-length "feature vectors", the components of which are either real numbers or nominal values. We propose an extension of the feature-vector representation that allows the value of a feature to be a set of strings; for instance, to represent a small white and black dog with the nominal features size and species and the set-valued feature color, one might use a feature vector with size=small, species=canis-familiaris and color-{white, black}. Since we make no assumptions about the number of possible set elements, this extension of the traditional feature-vector representation is closely connected to Blum's "infinite attribute" representation. We argue that many decision tree and rule learning algorithms can be easily extended to set-valued features. We also show by example that many real-world learning problems can be efficiently and naturally represented with set-valued features; in particular, text categorization problems and problems that arise in propositionalizing first-order representations lend themselves to set-valued features.