Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Critical Consciousness Raising as an Element of Empowering Practice with Survivors of Domestic Violence

ABSTRACT Many practitioners who work with survivors of domestic violence (DV) attempt to raise survivors' consciousness about DV dynamics as well as about oppression they may encounter from the systems with which they interact. Such critical consciousness raising is one component of the “empowering practices” that many DV advocates aim to implement. Despite the significance of empowering practices for those working with DV survivors, the literature is not clear about the frequency with which practitioners engage in consciousness raising or how critical consciousness is related to psychological outcomes such as self-efficacy among survivors. To explore these effects, 98 women from two DV shelter programs in two midsized Midwest cities were interviewed shortly after they left the shelters about their experiences while accessing services. Women who reported that their advocates engaged in DV consciousness-raising practice also reported developing greater DV critical consciousness and self-efficacy while in shelter. These findings suggest that gaining greater understanding of the effects of society-wide oppression on their experiences can lead survivors to a greater belief in their general ability to meet their goals. Future research should explore the effects of such changes on survivors' lives over time, as well as the most effective practices to raise critical consciousness.
Revisiting the Campo Del Cielo, Argentina Crater Field: A New Data Point from a Natural Laboratory of Multiple Low Velocity, Oblique Impacts

multiple low velocity, oblique impacts S.P. Wright, M.A. Vesconi, A. Gustin, K.K. Williams, A.C. Ocampo, and W.A. Cassidy, Department of Geological Sciences, Arizona State University, Box 6305, Tempe, AZ 85287-6305, Shawn.P.Wright@asu.edu; Servicios Informaticos Integrales, Resistencia, Chaco Province, Argentina; Center for Earth and Planetary Studies, Smithsonian Institute, Washington, D.C. 20013-7012; NASA HQ, Science Mission Directorate, 300 E St. SW, 3C66, Washington, D.C. 20546; Department of Geology and Planetary Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260-3332, ansmet@pitt.edu
Rethinking the 'debate on environmental refugees': from 'maximilists and minimalists' to 'proponents and critics'

The debate over 'environmental refugees' is prominent in the literature on environmental change and human migration. Protagonists in the debate are 'maximilists' and 'minimalists' depending on their support for the concept. This article argues for the use of 'proponents' and 'critics' of the term. A nuanced critique of the 'proponent account' is offered, showing how the 'environmental refugee' is a particular representation of the relationship between environmental change and migration. There are conceptual problems in 'proponent' models, regarding both migration and development. These pertain to a sedentary bias and a reliance on pushpull, neo-classical models of both migration and the migrant. Some accounts are ahistorical and apolitical. The article advocates a research agenda that focuses on the interactions between environmental and nonenvironmental factors in mobility decisions, and that is historically relevant and contextually specific. Keywords: environment, migration, environmental refugee, discourse, representation
Increased Circulating Levels of Vitamin D Binding Protein in MS Patients

Vitamin D (vitD) low status is currently considered a main environmental factor in multiple sclerosis (MS) etiology and pathogenesis. VitD and its metabolites are highly hydrophobic and circulate mostly bound to the vitamin D binding protein (DBP) and with lower affinity to albumin, while less than 1% are in a free form. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the circulating levels of either of the two vitD plasma carriers and/or their relationship are altered in MS. We measured DBP and albumin plasma levels in 28 MS patients and 24 healthy controls. MS patients were found to have higher DBP levels than healthy subjects. Concomitant interferon beta therapy did not influence DBP concentration, and the difference with the control group was significant in both females and males. No significant correlation between DBP and albumin levels was observed either in healthy controls or in patients. These observations suggest the involvement of DBP in the patho-physiology of MS.
A secure keyless image steganography approach for lossless RGB images

This paper proposes an improved steganography approach for hiding text messages within lossless RGB images. The objective of this work is to increase the security level and to improve the storage capacity while incurring minimal degradation of the image. The security level is increased by distributing the message over the entire image instead of clustering within specific image portions, as also by including a password authentication scheme to ensure that the message can be retrieved only by the intended recipient. Storage capacity is increased by utilizing all the color channels for storing information instead of reserving one of the channels as pixel indicator. Image degradation is minimized by changing only one LSB bit per color channel for hiding the information thereby incurring the least change in the original image. Experimentations done for analyzing the storage capacity and quality degradation, establish the superiority of the proposed approach vis-à-vis contemporary existing approaches.
School-aged reading skills of children with family history of dyslexia : predictors, development and outcome

Eklund, Kenneth School-aged reading skills of children with family history of dyslexia – predictors, development and outcome Jyväskylä: University of Jyväskylä, 2017, 66 p. (Jyväskylä Studies in Education, Psychology and Social Research ISSN 0075-4625; 574) ISBN 978-951-39-6962-2 ISBN 978-951-39-6963-9 (PDF) In this research I focused on reading skill development in school-age children with family history of dyslexia. I was interested in the effects of children’s cognitive skills (language, phonological awareness, rapid serial naming, verbal short term memory, and letter knowledge), and gender in addition to family risk for dyslexia as predictors of children’s reading development. In addition, I examined whether shared reading with parents, time spent reading alone, or task-focused behaviour could serve as potential protective factors against reading disability. One of my aims was to find out whether there exist subgroups of children who have different developmental trajectories, and to characterize these subgroups according to their own and their parents’ cognitive profiles. Finally, I examined the literacy readiness of adolescents to meet the challenges of future societies abundant in printed material by administering them the PISA reading literacy task. All participants were drawn from the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Dyslexia (JLD) in which 200 children have been followed from birth. The development of approximately 100 children with a family risk for dyslexia was compared to the development of a similar number of control children without such risk. In line with earlier studies, it was found that family-risk children, boys in particular, showed deficient cognitive and reading skills throughout their first 15 years. Moreover, the associations between early cognitive skills and reading literacy skills were strong, suggesting high developmental predictability for this group of children. However, children with family risk for dyslexia did not form a single homogenous group. First, for approximately 55% of these children their reading skill development followed that of their peers, showing no clear signs of difficulties during primary and secondary school. Second, a substantial proportion of the family-risk children, despite having high early cognitive risk on top of family risk, were able to avoid reading disability in Grade 2. Those children were characterized by not avoiding challenges at school. Third, reading disability in Grade 2 did not inevitably lead to similar status in Grade 8, although in Grade 8 this group of children on average lagged approximately five years behind their peers in their reading skill development: 38% of the children with family risk and reading disability in Grade 2, mainly girls, had been resolved by Grade 8. Finally, especially among boys with family risk for dyslexia, early cognitive skills proved to be a good predictor of deficient reading literacy skills at the end of secondary school, a finding which opens up possibilities for intervention and early support.
On the stability of non-supersymmetric attractors in string theory

We study non-supersymmetric attractors obtained in Type IIA compactifications on Calabi Yau manifolds. Determining if an attractor is stable or unstable requires an algebraically complicated analysis in general. We show using group theoretic techniques that this analysis can be considerably simplified and can be reduced to solving a simple example like the STU model. For attractors with D0? D4 brane charges, determining stability requires expanding the effective potential to quartic order in the massless fields. We obtain the full set of these terms. For attractors with D0? D6 brane charges, we find that there is a moduli space of solutions and the resulting attractors are stable. Our analysis is restricted to the two derivative action.
QuickSAN: a storage area network for fast, distributed, solid state disks

Solid State Disks (SSDs) based on flash and other non-volatile memory technologies reduce storage latencies from 10s of milliseconds to 10s or 100s of microseconds, transforming previously inconsequential storage overheads into performance bottlenecks. This problem is especially acute in storage area network (SAN) environments where complex hardware and software layers (distributed file systems, block severs, network stacks, etc.) lie between applications and remote data. These layers can add hundreds of microseconds to requests, obscuring the performance of both flash memory and faster, emerging non-volatile memory technologies. We describe QuickSAN, a SAN prototype that eliminates most software overheads and significantly reduces hardware overheads in SANs. QuickSAN integrates a network adapter into SSDs, so the SSDs can communicate directly with one another to service storage accesses as quickly as possible. QuickSAN can also give applications direct access to both local and remote data without operating system intervention, further reducing software costs. Our evaluation of QuickSAN demonstrates remote access latencies of 20 μs for 4 KB requests, bandwidth improvements of as much as 163x for small accesses compared with an equivalent iSCSI implementation, and 2.3-3.0x application level speedup for distributed sorting. We also show that QuickSAN improves energy efficiency by up to 96% and that QuickSAN's networking connectivity allows for improved cluster-level energy efficiency under varying load.
The importance of context when applying social cognitive theory in organizations

It is argued that whilst Social Cognitive Theory has universal application in work organizations, and human functioning generally, it should not be applied without taking account of the work context. Three broad contextual categories, conceptually distinct from general organizational contexts, are canvassed: individual, team and cultural. Specific sub-contexts are discussed, not with the view of providing an exhaustive typology, but rather to provide some examples from the very large number of contextual factors that could have been selected. It is concluded that investigation of contextual differences is likely to be a fruitful pursuit for future research into the application of Social Cognitive Theory in organizations.
Time machines and virtual portals

It is frequently argued that the ‘digital divide’ is one of the most significant development issues facing impoverished regions of the world. Yet, even though the term is inherently spatial, there have been no sustained efforts to examine the geographic assumptions underlying discourses of the ‘digital divide. ’ This article traces the history of the term, reviewing some of its tangible effects and placing a focus on the temporal and spatial assumptions underpinning ‘digital divide’ discourses. Alternative formulations of the ‘digital divide’ are offered which take into account the hybrid, scattered, ordered and individualized nature of cyberspaces.
Objective Measures of Emotion Related to Brand Attitude: A New Way to Quantify Emotion-Related Aspects Relevant to Marketing

With this study we wanted to test the hypothesis that individual like and dislike as occurring in relation to brand attitude can be objectively assessed. First, individuals rated common brands with respect to subjective preference. Then, they volunteered in an experiment during which their most liked and disliked brand names were visually presented while three different objective measures were taken. Participant's eye blinks as responses to acoustic startle probes were registered with electromyography (EMG) (i) and their skin conductance (ii) and their heart rate (iii) were recorded. We found significantly reduced eye blink amplitudes related to liked brand names compared to disliked brand names. This finding suggests that visual perception of liked brand names elicits higher degrees of pleasantness, more positive emotion and approach-oriented motivation than visual perception of disliked brand names. Also, skin conductance and heart rate were both reduced in case of liked versus disliked brand names. We conclude that all our physiological measures highlight emotion-related differences depending on the like and dislike toward individual brands. We suggest that objective measures should be used more frequently to quantify emotion-related aspects of brand attitude. In particular, there might be potential interest to introduce startle reflex modulation to measure emotion-related impact during product development, product design and various further fields relevant to marketing. Our findings are discussed in relation to the idea that self reported measures are most often cognitively polluted.
TLR2 and neutrophils potentiate endothelial stress, apoptosis and detachment: implications for superficial erosion.

AIMS Superficial erosion of atheromata causes many acute coronary syndromes, but arises from unknown mechanisms. This study tested the hypothesis that Toll-like receptor-2 (TLR2) activation contributes to endothelial apoptosis and denudation and thus contributes to the pathogenesis of superficial erosion. METHODS AND RESULTS Toll-like receptor-2 and neutrophils localized at sites of superficially eroded human plaques. In vitro, TLR2 ligands (including hyaluronan, a matrix macromolecule abundant in eroded lesions) induced endothelial stress, characterized by reactive oxygen species production, endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress, and apoptosis. Co-incubation of neutrophils with endothelial cells (ECs) potentiated these effects and induced EC apoptosis and detachment. We then categorized human atherosclerotic plaques (n = 56) based on morphologic features associated with superficial erosion, 'stable' fibrotic, or 'vulnerable' lesions. Morphometric analyses of the human atheromata localized neutrophils and neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) near clusters of apoptotic ECs in smooth muscle cell (SMC)-rich plaques. The number of luminal apoptotic ECs correlated with neutrophil accumulation, amount of NETs, and TLR2 staining in SMC-rich plaques, but not in 'vulnerable' atheromata. CONCLUSION These in vitro observations and analyses of human plaques indicate that TLR2 stimulation followed by neutrophil participation may render smooth muscle cell-rich plaques susceptible to superficial erosion and thrombotic complications by inducing ER stress, apoptosis, and favouring detachment of EC.
Low-power wireless system for temperature and humidity monitoring in artificial ventilation

Artificial ventilators are commonly used with Passive Heat-Moisture Exchangers (HME) to warm and humidify the inspired air in order to ensure a proper conditioning of inspired gases to the artificially ventilated patients. However, different aspects potentially affect their performances and this change in performance should be analyzed in-vivo during HME operation. In this paper, a wireless measurement system is proposed for the monitoring of air temperature and humidity in-vivo. The system is composed by a measuring device connected to the ventilating tube near the HME and a reading device connected to a Personal Computer (PC). Each device integrates a wireless transmission via low-power Bluetooth module that allows limiting power consumption. For the measuring device, the calculated power consumption when all the on-board components are working is about 15 mA, permitting a continuous monitoring for about 5 days and 16 hours with a rechargeable Li-Ion battery of 2050 mAh. A first prototype was manufactured and tested in the laboratory. Then, this prototype was tested with a setup specially developed to simulate human breath. The tests were conduced changing the respiratory rate and minute volume. Preliminary results are reported showing interesting aspects, such as the warm-up time of the HME. Furthermore, the results shows a direct dependence of humidity loss on frequency-volume ratio requiring future investigations. Clinicians are expected to use this system in-vivo to identify the correlations between clinical issues and HME performances.
Operator-Valued Bochner Theorem, Fourier Feature Maps for Operator-Valued Kernels, and Vector-Valued Learning

This paper presents a framework for computing random operator-valued feature maps for operator-valued positive definite kernels. This is a generalization of the random Fourier features for scalar-valued kernels to the operator-valued case. Our general setting is that of operator-valued kernels corresponding to RKHS of functions with values in a Hilbert space. We show that in general, for a given kernel, there are potentially infinitely many random feature maps, which can be bounded or unbounded. Most importantly, given a kernel, we present a general, closed form formula for computing a corresponding probability measure, which is required for the construction of the Fourier features, and which, unlike the scalar case, is not uniquely and automatically determined by the kernel. We also show that, under appropriate conditions, random bounded feature maps can always be computed. Furthermore, we show the uniform convergence, under the Hilbert-Schmidt norm, of the resulting approximate kernel to the exact kernel on any compact subset of Euclidean space. Our convergence requires differentiable kernels, an improvement over the twice-differentiability requirement in previous work in the scalar setting. We then show how operator-valued feature maps and their approximations can be employed in a general vector-valued learning framework. The mathematical formulation is illustrated by numerical examples on matrix-valued kernels.
Kinetic analysis and modeling of firefly luciferase as a quantitative reporter gene in live mammalian cells

Firefly luciferase has proven to be a highly sensitive and quantitative reporter gene for studying gene delivery and regulation, and its recent use in live cells and organisms promises to further expand its utility. However, the intracellular behavior and properties of the enzyme are not well characterized. Specifically, information on the intracellular kinetics and stability of luciferase activity is necessary for real‐time luminescence counts from live cells to be quantitatively meaningful. Here, we report a dynamic analysis of luciferase activity in the context of living mammalian cells. We have determined the relative light units measured in living cells to be proportional to that found in cell lysate. We have also calculated the Km of luciferase in living cells to be ≈ 1 mM, a value much higher than the 10 μM found for pure enzyme in vitro. In addition, a 2‐hour half‐life of luciferase activity in live cells was measured in real time. Finally, we have modeled luciferase activity in live cells for the purposes of understanding and translating the luciferase signal into a more effective metric of gene expression and cell behavior. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Molecular Mechanisms of Neonatal Brain Injury

Fetal/neonatal brain injury is an important cause of neurological disability. Hypoxia-ischemia and excitotoxicity are considered important insults, and, in spite of their acute nature, brain injury develops over a protracted time period during the primary, secondary, and tertiary phases. The concept that most of the injury develops with a delay after the insult makes it possible to provide effective neuroprotective treatment after the insult. Indeed, hypothermia applied within 6 hours after birth in neonatal encephalopathy reduces neurological disability in clinical trials. In order to develop the next generation of treatment, we need to know more about the pathophysiological mechanism during the secondary and tertiary phases of injury. We review some of the critical molecular events related to mitochondrial dysfunction and apoptosis during the secondary phase and report some recent evidence that intervention may be feasible also days-weeks after the insult.
Spectroscopic binaries with elliptical orbits

The radial velocity curves of many spectroscopic binaries (SBs) are perturbed by gas streams or proximity effects. For SBs with circular orbits, these perturbations can give rise to spurious orbital eccentricities of high statistical significance. But tests to identify such anomalous orbits can be constructed since perturbed velocity curves are in general no longer Keplerian. The derived tests are applied both to synthetic and to observed velocity curves.
Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Working Paper Series Financial Integration in East Asia First Draft, No Quotation Please Financial Integration in East Asia

This paper examines the degree of integration into world financial markets and the impacts on several key macroeconomic variables of selected East Asian economies, and draws policy implications. According to our analysis, the degrees of integration into world financial markets in those economies are increasing. Regarding the impacts of increasing integration into world financial markets on several macroeconomic variables, we find three results. First, casual two-way plots among macroeconomic variables do not support the theoretical prediction of reduction in relative consumption volatility. Second, the saving-investment correlation is higher than those of in Euro area economies. Third, the degrees of smoothing of idiosyncratic shock by cross-holding of financial assets are lower than Euro area economies. Those results suggest two policy implications. First, there's some room for improvement in welfare gains in those economies by further risk sharing. Second, holding all other conditions given, the increasing integration into world financial markets alone is unlikely to provide a sound ground for a currency union in East Asia at this stage. The authors thank Eswar Prasad and his co-authors for sharing their dataset on de-jure integration. We also thank Maurice Obstfeld and the staff of the Bank of Japan for their helpful comments. Hiroyuki Ooi and Kiyoshi Watanabe provided excellent research assistance. Views expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official views of the Bank of Japan.
Broad-line radio galaxies: Old and feeble?

Far-infrared photometry of broad-line radio galaxies shows this class of AGN to consist of many hot and some cool infrared emitters, with peaks in their spectral energy distributions around 25 mum or longward of 60 mum, respectively. Quantitative analysis indicates that this distribution relates to a substantial dispersion in the strength of the cool dust component: broad-line radio galaxies are relatively poor in large-scale dust. Possibly they have undergone a different merger evolution, or are relatively old AGN.