Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The UV luminosity function of nearby clusters of galaxies

We present the UV composite luminosity function for galaxies in the Virgo, Coma and Abell 1367 clusters. The luminosity function (LF) is well fitted by a Schechter function with $M_{\rm UV}^* - 5~ \log\,h_{\rm 75}= -20.75 \pm 0.40$ and $\alpha = -1.50 \pm 0.10$ and does not differ significantly from the local UV luminosity function of the field. This result is in agreement with recent studies carried out in the $\rm H\alpha$ and B -bands which find no difference between the LFs of star forming galaxies in clusters and in the field. This indicates that, whatever mechanisms are responsible for quenching the star formation in clusters, they influence similarly the giant and the dwarf populations, leaving the shape of the LF unchanged and only modifying its normalization.
Positive beliefs about errors as an important element of adaptive individual dealing with errors during academic learning

Abstract Research on learning from errors gives reason to assume that errors provide a high potential to facilitate deep learning if students are willing and able to take these learning opportunities. The first aim of this study was to analyse whether beliefs about errors as learning opportunities can be theoretically and empirically distinguished from adaptive reactions to errors in an affective-motivational sense (including the maintenance of motivation and activating emotions), and in terms of learning behaviour and metacognitive activities specifically adjusted in response to a specific error. The second aim was to validate the proposed distinction across different domains. The third aim was to investigate the added value of beliefs about errors besides domain-specific self-concept and mastery goal orientation for understanding the preconditions for adaptive reactions to errors at school. We assessed all variables in three different school subjects (N = 614 students, Grades 5–7). Confirmatory factor analyses indicated distinctness and a moderate domain specificity of error-related reactions. Positive error-related beliefs predicted students’ affective-motivational and action adaptivity of error reactions, above and beyond self-concepts and goal orientations. Taken together, the current findings provide a more complete understanding of the intra-personal mechanisms of adaptive responses to errors in different school subjects.
Identiﬁcation and molecular characterization of the nicotianamine synthase gene family in bread wheat

phytosiderophores (MAs) in graminaceous plant species. Nicotianamine synthase (NAS) genes, which encode enzymes that synthesize NA from S-adenosyl-L-methionine (SAM), are differentially regulated by iron (Fe) status in most plant species and plant genomes have been found to contain anywhere from 1 to 9 NAS genes. This study describes the identiﬁcation of 21 NAS genes in the hexaploid bread wheat ( Triticum aestivum L . ) genome and their phylogenetic classiﬁcation into two distinct clades. The TaNAS genes are highly expressed during germination, seedling growth and reproductive development. Fourteen of the clade I NAS genes were up-regulated in root tissues under conditions of Fe deﬁciency. Protein sequence analyses revealed the presence of endocytosis motifs in all of the wheat NAS proteins as well as chloroplast, mitochondrial and secretory transit peptide signals in four proteins. These results greatly expand our knowledge of NAS gene families in graminaceous plant species as well as the genetics underlying Fe nutrition in bread wheat. clade I, and in our these as three comprising only wheat and barley NAS genes. This suggests that each Triticeae subgroup is derived from distinct ancestors.
Predicting, Decrypting, and Abusing WPA2/802.11 Group Keys

We analyze the generation and management of 802.11 group keys. These keys protect broadcast and multicast Wi-Fi traffic. We discovered several issues and illustrate their importance by decrypting all group (and unicast) traffic of a typical Wi-Fi network. First we argue that the 802.11 random number generator is flawed by design, and provides an insufficient amount of entropy. This is confirmed by predicting randomly generated group keys on several platforms. We then examine whether group keys are securely transmitted to clients. Here we discover a downgrade attack that forces usage of RC4 to encrypt the group key when transmitted in the 4-way handshake. The per-message RC4 key is the concatenation of a public 16-byte initialization vector with a secret 16-byte key, and the first 256 keystream bytes are dropped. We study this peculiar usage of RC4, and find that capturing 231 handshakes can be sufficient to recover (i.e., decrypt) a 128-bit group key. We also examine whether group traffic is properly isolated from unicast traffic. We find that this is not the case, and show that the group key can be used to inject and decrypt unicast traffic. Finally, we propose and study a new random number generator tailored for 802.11 platforms.
Model-Based Collaborative Filtering as a Defense against Profile Injection Attacks

The open nature of collaborative recommender systems allows attackers who inject biased profile data to have a significant impact on the recommendations produced. Standard memory-based collaborative filtering algorithms, such as k- nearest neighbor, have been shown to be quite vulnerable to such attacks. In this paper, we examine the robustness of model-based recommendation algorithms in the face of profile injection attacks. In particular, we consider two recommendation algorithms, one based on k-means clustering and the other based on Probabilistic Latent Semantic Analysis (PLSA). These algorithms aggregate similar users into user segments that are compared to the profile of an active user to generate recommendations. Traditionally, model-based algorithms have been used to alleviate the scalability problems associated with memory-based recommender systems. We show, empirically, that these algorithms also offer significant improvements in stability and robustness over the standard k- nearest neighbor approach when attacked. Furthermore, our results show that, particularly, the PLSA-based approach can achieve comparable recommendation accuracy.
Potential Involvement of IL-17F in Asthma

The expression of IL-17F is seen in the airway of asthmatics and its level is correlated with disease severity. Several studies have demonstrated that IL-17F plays a pivotal role in allergic airway inflammation and induces several asthma-related molecules such as CCL20. IL-17F-induced CCL20 may attract Th17 cells into the airway resulting in the recruitment of additional Th17 cells to enhance allergic airway inflammation. We have recently identified, for the first time, that bronchial epithelial cells are its novel cell source in response to IL-33 via ST2-ERK1/2-MSK1 signaling pathway. The receptor for IL-17F is the heterodimeric complex of IL-17RA and IL-17RC, and IL-17F activates many signaling pathways. In a case-control study of 867 unrelated Japanese subjects, a His161 to Arg161 (H161R) substitution in the third exon of the IL-17F gene was associated with asthma. In atopic patients with asthma, prebronchodilator baseline FEV1/FVC values showed a significant association with the H161R variant. Moreover, this variant is a natural antagonist for the wild-type IL-17F. Moreover, IL-17F is involved in airway remodeling and steroid resistance. Hence, IL-17F may play an orchestrating role in the pathogenesis of asthma and may provide a valuable therapeutic target for development of novel strategies.
“Your Brain Becomes a Rainbow”: Perceptions and Traits of 4th-Graders in a School-Based Mindfulness Intervention

ABSTRACT Although mindfulness, or the self-regulation of attention, has been found beneficial in reducing teacher stress and burnout and in increasing students’ cognitive and emotional regulatory skills, no study has explored students’ attitudes toward meditation practices in depth. This mixed-methods study reports results from a randomized, controlled trial of a 10-week mindfulness intervention in a public school setting with 28 4th-grade students from lower income and ethnic minority backgrounds. Over the course of the intervention, students were asked to respond to writing and drawing prompts about their feelings and attitudes toward mindfulness. At the end of the intervention, the experimental teacher rated students on how often they had practiced mindfulness breathing during class. Qualitative analysis of journal entries yielded personality traits of students who were receptive or resistant to mindfulness training. Practical strategies for identifying and remediating resistant students and for implementing mindfulness interventions in a school setting are discussed.
[JOB MARKET PAPER] Sophisticated Trading and Market Efficiency: Evidence from Macroeconomic News Announcements

This paper studies how the views of sophisticated traders are impounded into stocks and bonds around macroeconomic news announcements. I find evidence that sophisticated traders trade on predictions of macroeconomic news reports before announcements and obtain their informational advantage using public information. Specifically, consensus forecasts of upcoming data releases suffer from anchoring bias and overweight past data releases. By correcting this bias, sophisticated traders can predict news reports. The results suggest that stock and bond markets are inefficient in this setting. Over time, there is a late trading puzzle: sophisticated traders can predict news reports days before announcements but appear to trade these predictions into stock and bond prices just hours before announcements. Across assets there is a related puzzle: the predictable component of news reports is eventually fully impounded into bonds but only partially impounded into stocks. Stocks but not bonds react to announcements of the predictable component and display return momentum. Using a model, I argue that market inefficiency can arise when unsophisticated traders neglect public information that predicts news reports, and risk management concerns deter sophisticated traders from acting on their informational edge. Trading earlier and trading riskier assets such as stocks exposes sophisticated traders to greater risk. As a result, sophisticated traders wait to trade and trade safer assets such as bonds.
On the Analysis of Twitter Spam Accounts in Saudi Arabia

Twitter spam accounts try to spread malicious content, deceive or advertise certain thoughts over Twitter network. Different approaches have been presented both in industry and academia to identify spammers on Twitter. This study aims at understanding the behavior of Twitter spam accounts targeting Saudi Arabia. In this study the author performs an empirical analysis of Twitter spam accounts in Saudi Arabia by applying previous techniques found in various research studies for extracting and analyzing such accounts. The activity levels of spam accounts as well as their content were gathered over a two months period. The study not only analyzes the content of spam accounts but also recognizes their behavior. Results show that Twitter spam accounts targeting Saudi Arabia are naive and still in their infancy. Third party tools are used to control them for spreading duplicate content and perform retweets. Also trendy hashtags are polluted with specific content in a way to frame the public opinion.
Congenital toxoplasmosis: evaluation of molecular and serological methods for achieving economic and early diagnosis among Egyptian preterm infants.

BACKGROUND Early diagnosis of congenital toxoplasmosis (CT) is difficult when specific immunoglobulin M (IgM) antibodies are absent, or if persist for months, in the newborn infant's blood. OBJECTIVES To study the risk factors of neonatal toxoplasmosis and to compare different immunologic profiles (Toxoplasma-specific IgM, IgA antibodies and the avidity of IgG antibodies) with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for reaching economic and early postnatal diagnosis. MATERIALS AND METHODS We prospectively studied 80 preterm neonates, recruited from neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) of Cairo University hospitals. Whose gestational age ≤ 34 weeks with (n = 60) or without (n = 20) CT risk. Serum samples for specific IgA, IgM antibodies and avidity of IgG toxoplasma antibodies were measured by ELISA then compared to PCR. RESULTS Of the 60 studied cases, 16 (26.7%) were positive for toxoplasmosis by PCR, of which 15 (25%) had low avidity of IgG antibodies (positive), 14 (23.3%) were positive for IgA and 10 (16.7%) were positive for IgM, with sensitivity for avidity of IgG, IgA and IgM: 93.2%, 87.5% and 62.5%, respectively. CONCLUSION Determination of avidity of IgG toxoplasma antibodies and/or serological detection of specific IgA for toxoplasmosis offer, simple tests for diagnosis of congenital toxoplasmosis with (better sensitivity) than IgM.
Trajectory Improves Data Delivery in Urban Vehicular Networks

Efficient data delivery is of great importance, but highly challenging for vehicular networks because of frequent network disruption, fast topological change and mobility uncertainty. The vehicular trajectory knowledge plays a key role in data delivery. Existing algorithms have largely made predictions on the trajectory with coarse-grained patterns such as spatial distribution or/and the inter-meeting time distribution, which has led to poor data delivery performance. In this paper, we mine the extensive data sets of vehicular traces from two large cities in China, i.e., Shanghai and Shenzhen, through conditional entropy analysis, we find that there exists strong spatiotemporal regularity with vehicle mobility. By extracting mobility patterns from historical vehicular traces, we develop accurate trajectory predictions by using multiple order Markov chains. Based on an analytical model, we theoretically derive packet delivery probability with predicted trajectories. We then propose routing algorithms taking full advantage of predicted probabilistic vehicular trajectories. Finally, we carry out extensive simulations based on three large data sets of real GPS vehicular traces, i.e., Shanghai taxi data set, Shanghai bus data set and Shenzhen taxi data set. The conclusive results demonstrate that our proposed routing algorithms can achieve significantly higher delivery ratio at lower cost when compared with existing algorithms.
S-adenosylmethionine ( SAMe ) for Treatment of Depression December

A young woman sits in your exam room complaining of chronic headaches and sleep disturbances. She is clearly depressed, but when you raise the possibility of an antidepressant she shudders. " A chemical like that in my body? Never. " And therein lies the source of the multimillion dollar nutritional supplement industry aimed at people suffering from depression. The most recent addition to the growing cadre of " natural mood-enhancers " in the United States is SAMe, a common intermediary molecule found throughout the body, whose formal biochemical name is S-adenosylmethionine. The efficacy claims for SAMe in commercial advertising are subtle, as required by law, but they are glowing nonetheless. Unfortunately, although a modest amount of data suggests that the parenteral form of SAMe is probably effective, there are minimal data to support the efficacy of oral SAMe. History SAMe was first discovered in 1953 in Italy. Reports that SAMe could treat depression were widely disseminated in Europe in the early 1970s, and in 1977 it became commercially available there for that purpose. SAMe was not available in the United States until the spring of 1999. Mechanism of Action SAMe is a ubiquitous methyl-donor molecule located throughout the body. It plays a key role in numerous metabolic pathways that involve the transfer of methyl groups. SAMe is not present in the diet in a significant amount, but is formed in the body by the combination of adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and the amino-acid methionine. (See Figure 1.) SAMe then donates its methyl group to any of a wide range of molecules and is subsequently transformed to homocysteine. 1 As it is for other common conditions for which SAMe is sometimes used (osteoarthritis and liver disease), the mechanism by which SAMe might treat depression is a mystery. Possible hypotheses include: increasing the synthesis of neurotransmitters such as serotonin and norepinephrine, increasing the responsiveness of neurotransmitter receptors, and increasing the fluidity of cell membranes through the production of phospholipids. 2 Unfortunately, the evidence for any of these hypotheses is scant. Pharmacology Oral SAMe has a very low bioavailability, estimated to be < 1%, so its usefulness as an oral agent is open to question. 3 In a study by Bell et al, only 71% of the patients treated with oral SAMe had a rise in their serum SAMe concentrations. 4 Parenterally administered SAMe does appear to cross the blood brain barrier. 5 The …
Situoid Theory - An ontological approach to Situation Theory

Situations are entities that have been discussed in philosophy, ontology and computer science for applications in the field of knowledge representation, conceptual modelling and natural language semantic. On the basis of an extensive literature review, situations and entities we call situoids, which are more basic than situations, will be discussed and their ontological features investigated. As far as possible, the results of this investigation are formulated as axioms. This is done with respect to a background top-level ontology, the ontology of GOL. The belief that situoids are “parts of reality that can be comprehended as a whole” is central to this research, and will be investigated thoroughly. Situations as derived entities are not given as much attention, but some of their features will be discussed as well. While attempting to describe situoids, other categories have to be mentioned, such as states of affairs and infons. The theory is built up systematically from states of affairs over infons, situoids to situations. Some applications known from situation theory are revisited in the framework of situoids. Finally, it is shown how the theory if situoids can be used to introduce modality in GOL.
Ensemble-based observation impact estimates using the NCEP GFS

The impacts of the assimilated observations on the 24-hour forecasts are estimated with the ensemble-based method proposed by Kalnay et al. using an ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF). This method estimates the relative impact of observations in data assimilation similar to the adjoint-based method proposed by Langland and Baker but without using the adjoint model. It is implemented on the National Centers for Environmental Prediction Global Forecasting System EnKF that has been used as part of operational global data assimilation system at NCEP since May 2012. The result quantifies the overall positive impacts of the assimilated observations and the relative importance of the satellite radiance observations compared to other types of observations, especially for the moisture fields. A simple moving localisation based on the average wind, although not optimal, seems to work well. The method is also used to identify the cause of local forecast failure cases in the 24-hour forecasts. Data-denial experiments of the observations identified as producing a negative impact are performed, and forecast errors are reduced as estimated, thus validating the impact estimation.
Epidemiological features of gastro-esophageal reflux disease in Iran based on general population

Aim The aim of this study was to evaluate the epidemiology of GERD base on population study in Tehran providence. Background Gastro-esophageal reflux disease (GERD) is a common and chronic problem. Recent reports from developing countries indicate increment in the incidence and prevalence of the disease over the past. Patients and methods This study was a cross-sectional household survey conducted from May 2006 to December 2007 in Tehran province, Iran. Participants completed a valid gastro-esophageal reflux Questionnaire. The questionnaire included personal and family characteristics such as age, gender, and educational status. In addition, interviewers asked them regarding 10 GI symptoms. Results Altogether 18180 individuals participated in this cross-sectional study. The mean ± SD age of participant was 38.7±17.1 and 9072 (49.9%) were women. The prevalence of GERD was 8.85 (8.43-9.26). There was significant relationship between age, sex, marital and educational status with GERD. GERD symptoms were more common in women, older people, individuals with low education and married people. There was overlap between GERD, irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and uninvestigated dyspepsia (UD). Conclusion According to our finding although the prevalence of GERD in our population is less than other studies, this prevalence is increasing in recent years.
Nominal and Structural Subtyping in Component-Based Programming

In nominal type systems, the subtype relation is between names of types, and subtype links are explicitly declared. In structural type systems, names are irrelevant; in determining type compatibility, only the structure of types is considered, and a type name is just an abbreviation for the full type. We analyze structural and dierent avors of nominal subtyping from the perspective of component-based programming, where issues such as blame assignment and modular extensibility are important. Our analysis puts various existing subtyping mechanisms into a common frame of reference and delineates the frontiers of the subtyping design space. In addition, we propose a new subtyping denition in one particularly interesting corner of the design space which combines the safety of nominal subtyping with the exibility of structural subtyping.
Teaching Parents to Implement Functional Communication Training for Young Children With Developmental Delays

The purpose of this study was to assess the impact of parent training on parent implementation of functional communication training (FCT) in the trained routine and in a novel routine. Three young children with developmental delays and their parents participated. A multiple-probe across parent-child dyads was used to evaluate the impact of parent training on parent fidelity of FCT. The data indicated that verbal and written instructions with performance feedback resulted in accurate implementation of FCT during the trained routine. The generalization assessment suggested that instructions and performance feedback promoted generalization for one parent and an additional training component was needed for another parent. The third parent did not complete the generalization assessment. The results suggest verbal and written instructions and performance feedback can lead to accurate implementation of FCT during the trained routine, but additional training components may be necessary to facilitate generalization to a novel routine.
The Distribution of Water Emission in M17SW

We present a 17-point map of the M17SW cloud core in the 110 → 101 transition of ortho-H2O at 557 GHz obtained with Submillimeter Wave Astronomy Satellite. Water emission was detected in 11 of the 17 observed positions. The line widths of the H2O emission vary between 4 and 9 km s-1 and are similar to other emission lines that arise in the M17SW core. A direct comparison is made between the spatial extent of the H2O emission and the 13CO J = 5 → 4 emission; the good agreement suggests that the H2O emission arises in the same warm, dense gas as the 13CO emission. A spectrum of the H218O line was also obtained at the center position of the cloud core, but no emission was detected. We estimate that the average abundance of ortho-H2O relative to H2 within the M17 dense core is approximately 1 × 10-9, 30 times smaller than the average for the Orion core. Toward the H II region/molecular cloud interface in M17SW the ortho-H2O abundance may be about 5 times larger than in the dense core.