Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Experimental Study of Learning Styles Inventory: Implications for Human Resource Development.

This study is an inquiry into the use of the Kolb Learning Styles Inventory (KLSI) as a training tool rather than as strictly a diagnostic tool. The idea is to assess whether it is possible to alter the perception of learners on the divergence of learning styles through an appropriate conditioning process. Using an experimental design this study examines the implications of KLSI in Training & Development settings and presents findings related to research questions.
Modeling and control of two stage twin spool servo-valve for energy-saving

A control strategy of two stage twin spool servovalves in the load-sensing mobile applications is presented. The twin spool valve differs from the conventional valve in that it provides the ability to control flow into and out of valves independently. In this paper, the nonlinear valve model and a control scheme for a two stage twin spool servo-valve are developed featuring energy saving. The multiple sliding surface mode control method is then utilized to accomplish the motion control while regulating back pressure. The simulation verifies that the proposed control scheme for the twin spool valve, can offer the more significant energy-saving even with load-sensing pump application than the traditional proportional valves.
Cellular distribution of dopamine D1 and D2 receptors in rat medial prefrontal cortex

The relative distribution and cellular localization of the dopamine D1 and D2 receptor subtypes were assessed in frozen sections of rat medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). The D1 and D2 receptor binding sites were labeled with the selective high-affinity antagonists SCH 23390 and N-(p- aminophenethyl)-spiperone (NAPS), respectively, coupled to either Bodipy or Texas red fluorophores. Under the incubation conditions employed, kinetic, competition, and selectivity studies showed that these modified ligands retained pharmacological selectivity. Optimal binding fluorescence was at 100 nM of each ligand, and fluorescence increased linearly from 1 to 15 min of incubation at 2 degrees C. NAPS- Texas red binding fluorescence was inhibited with 10 nM quinpirole (D2 agonist), but not 10 nM SKF 38393 (D1 agonist), while SCH 23390-Texas red binding was inhibited with SKF 38393, but not quinpirole. The localization of dopamine receptor binding was assessed in montages constructed from low-magnification photomicrographs through the depth of the cortex, or in corresponding high-magnification photomicrographs. Cells showing D1- or D2-like receptor binding fluorescence were present in layers II-VI, with the highest density observed in layers V and VI. The addition of mianserin (100 nM, 5-HT2 antagonist) to incubated sections slightly reduced the numbers of labeled cells in each cortical layer, but retained the preferential localization to the deeper layers. Two separate observations supported the idea that the fluorescently coupled ligands were localized to neuronal cell bodies. First, receptor labeling with the fluorescently coupled ligands co-localized almost exclusively to cells in the cortical mantle showing neuron-specific enolase immunoreactivity. Second, a comparison of the cell size distribution taken from adjacent Nissl-stained sections with the size of cells showing D1- or D2-like receptor binding fluorescence revealed complete overlapping of fluorescence with neuronal cell bodies. In mPFC layer VI, the size of cells showing D1-like receptor binding fluorescence was 77.8 +/- 5.1 microns2, similar to non-pyramidal neurons, while that for D2-like receptor binding fluorescence was 108.2 +/- 4.5 microns2, consistent with both large interneurons and small pyramidal cells. Only a small percentage of cells showing D1- or D2- like receptor binding overlapped in size with glia, but this occurred almost exclusively within the white matter region below the cortical mantle. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that the D1 and D2 receptor subtypes are found on different populations of neurons, although some overlap probably occurs. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
The Nucleocapsid Protein of Rift Valley Fever Virus Is a Potent Human CD8+ T Cell Antigen and Elicits Memory Responses

There is no licensed human vaccine currently available for Rift Valley Fever Virus (RVFV), a Category A high priority pathogen and a serious zoonotic threat. While neutralizing antibodies targeting the viral glycoproteins are protective, they appear late in the course of infection, and may not be induced in time to prevent a natural or bioterrorism-induced outbreak. Here we examined the immunogenicity of RVFV nucleocapsid (N) protein as a CD8+ T cell antigen with the potential for inducing rapid protection after vaccination. HLA-A*0201 (A2)-restricted epitopic determinants were identified with N-specific CD8+ T cells from eight healthy donors that were primed with dendritic cells transduced to express N, and subsequently expanded in vitro by weekly re-stimulations with monocytes pulsed with 59 15mer overlapping peptides (OLPs) across N. Two immunodominant epitopes, VT9 (VLSEWLPVT, N121–129) and IL9 (ILDAHSLYL, N165–173), were defined. VT9- and IL9-specific CD8+ T cells identified by tetramer staining were cytotoxic and polyfunctional, characteristics deemed important for viral control in vivo. These peptides induced specific CD8+ T cell responses in A2-transgenic mice, and more importantly, potent N-specific CD8+ T cell reactivities, including VT9- and IL9-specific ones, were mounted by mice after a booster vaccination with the live attenuated RVF MP-12. Our data suggest that the RVFV N protein is a potent human T cell immunogen capable of eliciting broad, immunodominant CD8+ T cell responses that are potentially protective. Understanding the immune responses to the nucleocapsid is central to the design of an effective RVFV vaccine irrespective of whether this viral protein is effective as a stand-alone immunogen or only in combination with other RVFV antigens.
The role of verbal cues in task-goal maintenance

It is common to use verbal instructions when performing complex tasks. To evaluate how such instructions contribute to cognitive control, mixing costs (as a measure of sustained concentration on task) were evaluated in two task-switching experiments combining the list and alternating runs paradigms. Participants responded to bivalent stimuli according to a characteristic explicitly defined by a visually presented instructional cue. The processing of the cue was conducted under four conditions across the two experiments: Silent Reading, Reading Aloud, Articulatory Suppression, and dual mode (visual and audio) presentation. The type of cue processing produced a substantial impact on the mixing costs, where its magnitude was greatest with articulatory suppression and minimal with reading aloud and dual mode presentations. Interestingly, silently reading the cue only provided medium levels of mixing cost. The experiments demonstrate that relevant verbal instructions boost sustained concentration on task goals when maintaining multiple tasks.
Suicide attempts, plans, and ideation in culturally diverse sites: the WHO SUPRE-MISS community survey

Background. The objectives were to assess thoughts about suicide, plans to commit suicide and suicide attempts in the community, to investigate the use of health services following a suicide attempt, and to describe basic socio-cultural indices of the community. Method. The community survey was one component of the larger WHO multisite intervention study on suicidal behaviours (SUPRE-MISS). In each site, it aimed at randomly selecting and interviewing at least 500 subjects of the general population living in the catchment area of the emergency department where the intervention component of the study was conducted. Communities of eight SUPRE-MISS sites (in Brazil, China, Estonia, India, Iran, South Africa, Sri Lanka, and Viet Nam) participated plus two additional sites from Australia and Sweden conducting similar surveys. Results. Suicide attempts (0·4–4·2%), plans (1·1–15·6%), and ideation (2·6–25·4%) varied by a factor of 10–14 across sites, but remained mostly within the ranges of previously published data. Depending on the site, the ratios between attempts, plans, and thoughts of suicide differed substantially. Medical attention following a suicide attempt varied between 22% and 88% of the attempts. Conclusions. The idea of the suicidal process as a continuous and smooth evolution from thoughts to plans and attempts of suicide needs to be further investigated as it seems to be dependent on the cultural setting. There are indications, that the burden of undetected attempted suicide is high in different cultures; an improved response from the health sector on how to identify and support these individuals is needed.
Some General Properties of Phonological Rules

As the study of phonology has progressed, within the framework of generative grammar, certain principles have emerged governing the form and organization of phonological rules, and the manner in which these rules are to be interpreted. Several such principles are presented, with illustrative examples, from English, indicating the kind of evidence that supports them. Some possible alternatives are also discussed. Certain of these principles are quite abstract, and impose fairly heavy restrictions on the form and interpretation of grammars. If correct, they restrict the class of 'possible human languages' in non-trivial ways. The broader context in which these principles might have more general relevance is briefly touched on.
The optimal mechanism in differential privacy

Differential privacy is a framework to quantify to what extent individual privacy in a statistical database is preserved while releasing useful aggregate information about the database. In this work we study the fundamental tradeoff between privacy and utility in differential privacy. We derive the optimal ε-differentially private mechanism for single real-valued query function under a very general utility-maximization (or cost-minimization) framework. The class of noise probability distributions in the optimal mechanism has staircase-shaped probability density functions, which can be viewed as a geometric mixture of uniform probability distributions. In the context of ℓ1 and ℓ2 utility functions, we show that the standard Laplacian mechanism, which has been widely used in the literature, is asymptotically optimal in the high privacy regime, while in the low privacy regime, the staircase mechanism performs exponentially better than the Laplacian mechanism. We conclude that the gains of the staircase mechanism are more pronounced in the moderate-low privacy regime.
Accelerated Destructive Degradation Test Planning

Accelerated destructive degradation tests (ADDTs) provide reliability information quickly. An ADDT plan specifies factor-level combinations of an accelerating variable (e.g., temperature) and evaluation time and the allocations of test units to these combinations. This article describes methods for finding good ADDT plans for an important class of destructive degradation models. First, a collection of optimum plans is derived. These plans minimize the large sample approximate variance of the maximum likelihood (ML) estimator of a specified quantile of the failure-time distribution. The general equivalence theorem is used to verify the optimality of these plans. Because an optimum plan is not robust to the model specification and the planning information used in deriving the plan, a more robust and useful compromise plan is proposed. Sensitivity analyses show the effects that changes in sample size, time duration of the experiment, levels of the accelerating variable, and misspecification of the planning information have on the precision of the ML estimator of a failure-time quantile. Monte Carlo simulations are used to evaluate the statistical characteristics of the ADDT plans. The methods are illustrated with an application for an adhesive bond.
Our evolving understanding of legionellosis epidemiology: learning to count.

"A disease is also farther on the road to being cured when it breaks forth from concealment and manifests its power" (Seneca, ca. 4 bc-65 ad) [1]. Legionella pneumophila burst onto the medical scene ~3 decades ago as the causative pathogen in a respiratory disease outbreak among American Legion conventioneers at Philadelphia's grand Bellevue Stratford Hotel [2]. As a result of the outbreak, 182 people became sick, 29 died, the hotel went out of business, and, ultimately, clinicians were introduced to a novel, virulent pathogen. The initial identification of legionellosis in the context of a large and virulent outbreak and the subsequent recognition of case clusters associated with cooling towers, fountains, and grocery store mist machines [3] did much to cement the perception of L pneumophila as an agent of respiratory outbreaks associated with inhalation of contaminated droplets. In the nosocomial field, such outbreaks have been associated with case-fatality rates exceeding 40% [4]. However, many clinicians now recognize that legionellosis is an important cause of sporadic community-acquired pneumonia and a relatively common cause of community-acquired pneumonia requiring admission to the intensive care unit [5]. As sensitive and noninvasive diagnostic options have expanded, so has the perceived spectrum of illness associated with Legionella species. A recent article by von Baum and colleagues [6] suggested that, when individuals with ambulatory communityacquired pneumonia are tested for legionellosis by urine antigen testing, nearly 4% may receive a diagnosis of legionellosis. Understanding of the links between the physical environment and legionellosis risk has undergone a parallel evolution. Legionella species are present in surface waters and ground water [7], and pathogenic species of Legionella frequently can be isolated from home and hospital waterdistribution systems, even in the presence of chlorine (and in the absence of identified outbreaks). The finding that monochloramination of potable water supplies (which is far more effective at killing Legionella species than is chlorination) is associated with a reduction in nosocomial legionellosis outbreaks [8] suggests that exposure to this "uncommon" pathogen via drinking water may actually be common. The association among advanced age, deficient immune status, and severe legionellosis likely results from a high frequency of microaspiration and the inability to clear aspirated organisms in individuals with these characteristics. In this issue of Clinical Infectious Diseases, Neil and Berkelman [9] provide a succinct and thought-provoking summary of recent trends in legionellosis in the United States. They report that the incidence of legionellosis increased markedly in the United States from 2002 through 2005. Should we be concerned that the incidence of a virulent infectious disease
Several classes of bent, near-bent and 2-plateaued functions over finite fields of odd characteristic

Inspired by a recent work of Mesnager, we present several new infinite families of quadratic ternary bent, near-bent and 2-plateaued functions from some known quadratic ternary bent functions. Meanwhile, the distribution of the Walsh spectrum of two class of 2-plateaued functions obtained in this paper is completely determined. Additionally, we construct the first class of $p$-ary bent functions of algebraic degree $p$ over the fields of an arbitrary odd characteristic. The proposed class contains non-quadratic $p$-ary bent functions that are affinely inequivalent to known monomial and binomial ones.
Mitochondrial bioenergetics is defective in presymptomatic Tg2576 AD Mice

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is an age-related dementia, with the pathological hallmarks of neuritic plaques and neurofibrillary tangles, brain atrophy and loss of synaptic terminals. Dysfunctional mitochondrial bioenergetics is implicated as a contributing factor to the cognitive decline observed in AD. We hypothesized that, in the presence of the AD neurotoxic peptide beta-amyloid, mitochondrial respiration is impaired early in synaptic terminals, which are vital to cognitive performance, preferentially in cognitive centers of the brain. We compared oxygen consumption in synaptosomal and perikaryal mitochondria prepared from the cerebral cortex and cerebellum of wild type (WT) and AD transgenic Tg2576 mice. Compared to WT mice, Tg2576 mice showed decreased mitochondrial respiration in the cerebral cortex specifically in synaptosomal fraction, while the perikaryal mitochondria were unaffected. Neither mitochondrial fraction was affected in the cerebellum of Tg2576 mice as compared to WT. The occurrence of a bioenergetic defect in synaptic terminals of mice overexpressing mutant beta-amyloid, in particular in an area of the brain important to cognition, points to an early role of mitochondrial defects in the onset of cognitive deficits in AD.
The comparative effects of a computer-based interactive simulation during structured, guided, and student-directed inquiry on students' mental models of the day/night cycle

"This study compared middle school (i.e., fifth, sixth and seventh grade) students’ mental models of the day/night cycle before and after implementation of three inquiry- based treatments. The three treatments were classified as 1) structured inquiry, 2) guided inquiry, and 3) student-directed inquiry. All three treatments used Starry Night Middle School interactive simulation software to investigate the phenomenon of the day/night cycle. Additionally, all three treatments were based on two researcher-developed lessons using Starry Night Middle School. The participants were 145 fifth, sixth, and seventh grade students who were purposively selected from a public school in a U.S. state. For the purpose of this study, the students remained in their classrooms. There were three classrooms per grade level. Those classrooms were randomly assigned to one of the three treatments. Students’ scores on a pretest, immediate posttest, and delayed posttest were analyzed. Students from a purposive sample were interviewed after the pretest, immediate posttest, and delayed posttest to clarify student mental models of the day/night cycle. The students were chosen based upon their score on the multiple-choice test. Seven of the selected students were in the Structured Inquiry group. Eleven of the selected students were in the Guided Inquiry group. Five of the selected students were in the Student-directed Inquiry group. First, the comparative effects of Structured Inquiry, Guided Inquiry, and Student- directed Inquiry on middle school students’ mental models of the day/night cycle immediately and three months following the intervention revealed no statistical difference among the three treatments. Time, however, appeared to have a significant negative effect on students’ mental models of the day/night cycle. Second, inquiry groups did not differ significantly in their mental models. Third, there was no interaction between starting mental model and the type of inquiry. The major findings demonstrate that all three treatments promote learning, but that no one treatment is more effective than another. "
Receivers respond differently to chick-a-dee calls varying in note composition in Carolina chickadees, Poecile carolinensis


The chick-a-dee call of the avian genus Poecile is a structurally complex vocal system because it possesses a set of simple rules that governs how the notes of the call are ordered, and variable numbers of each of the note types strung together can generate an extraordinary number of unique calls. Whereas it has been hypothesized that chick-a-dee calls with different notes may convey different information, no experimental evidence has been offered in support of the hypothesis. Previously published studies suggested that flock members use chick-a-dee calls in the context of moving to or from a feeding site. Here, we tested Carolina chickadees’ responses to playbacks of chick-a-dee calls that differed in note composition. Playbacks were conducted in the field in the context of a novel food source. Our pilot data had indicated that chick-a-dee calls with relatively large numbers of ‘C’ notes were given by birds on their first contact with a novel seed stand. In the present study, we found that chickadees flew in close to the playback speaker and subsequently took seed from a seed stand more often during playbacks of chick-a-dee calls containing C notes than chick-a-dee calls not containing C notes or than control playbacks. Vocal responses of chickadees to the playbacks also differed in relation to the particular vocal signal being played back. These results indicate that receivers respond differently to chick-a-dee calls containing different compositions of note types and represent a first step to link variation in note composition and ordering in these calls to possible meanings.
Rarity among benign gastric tumors: Plexiform fibromyxoma - Report of two cases

Plexiform fibromyxoma is a very rare mesenchymal tumor of the stomach, found almost exclusively in the antrum/pylorus region. The most common presenting symptoms are anemia, hematemesis, nausea and unintentional weight loss, without sex or age predilection. We describe here two cases of plexiform fibromyxoma, involving a 16-year-old female and a 34-year-old male. Both patients underwent complete resection (R0) by distal gastrectomy and retrocolic gastrojejunostomy (according to Billroth 2); for both, the postoperative course was uneventful. Histology showed multiple intramural and subserosal nodules with characteristic plexiform growth, featuring bland spindle cells situated in an abundant myxoid stroma with low mitotic activity. Immunohistochemistry showed α-smooth muscle actin-positive spindle cells, focal positivity for CD10, and negative staining for KIT, DOG1, CD34, S100, β-catenin, STAT-6 and anaplastic lymphoma kinase. One of the cases showed focal positivity for h-caldesmon and desmin. Upon follow-up, no sign of disease was found. In the differential diagnosis of plexiform fibromyxoma, it is important to exclude the more common gastrointestinal stromal tumors as they have greater potential for aggressive behavior. Other lesions, like neuronal and vascular tumors, inflammatory fibroid polyps, abdominal desmoid-type fibromatosis, solitary fibrous tumors and smooth muscle tumors, must also be excluded.