Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Linalool‐rich Rosewood Oil Induces Vago‐vagal Bradycardic and Depressor Reflex in Rats

Cardiovascular effects of the linalool‐rich essential oil of Aniba rosaeodora (here named as EOAR) in normotensive rats were investigated. In anesthetized rats, intravenous (i.v.) injection of EOAR induced dose‐dependent biphasic hypotension and bradycardia. Emphasis was given to the first phase (phase 1) of the cardiovascular effects, which is rapid (onset time of 1–3 s) and not observed in animals submitted to bilateral vagotomy or selective blockade of neural conduction of vagal C‐fibre afferents by perineural treatment with capsaicin. Phase 1 was also absent when EOAR was directly injected into the left ventricle injection, but it was unaltered by i.v. pretreatment with capsazepine, ondansetron or HC030031. In conscious rats, EOAR induced rapid and monophasic hypotensive and bradycardiac (phase 1) effects that were abolished by i.v. methylatropine. In endothelium‐intact aortic rings, EOAR fully relaxed phenylephrine‐induced contractions in a concentration‐dependent manner. The present findings reveal that phase 1 of the bradycardiac and depressor responses induced by EOAR has a vago‐vagal reflex origin resulting from the vagal pulmonary afferents stimulation. Such phenomenon appears not to involve the recruitment of C‐fibre afferents expressing 5HT3 receptors or the two chemosensory ion channels TRPV1 and TRPA1. Phase 2 hypotensive response appears resulting from a direct vasodilatory action. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Validity Evidence of a Model and Measure of Life Balance

This study examined the construct validity of a model and measure of life balance conceptualized as congruence among both desired and actual time spent in activities, and equivalence in the degree of discrepancy between desired and actual time spent across activities that meet health, relationship, challenge/interest, and identity needs. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesized relationships between life balance, perceived stress, personal well-being, and need satisfaction. A total of 458 participants representing mixed demographic groups participated in the study by completing four instruments. Structural equation modeling results indicated that congruence moderated by equivalence predicted lower stress, higher personal well-being, and higher need satisfaction, but equivalence alone did not. Working, having children at home, and being non-white negatively moderated congruence and larger family size positively moderated congruence. This study provides initial construct validity evidence for the model and measure of life balance.
Policy and research: Lessons from the Clackmannanshire Synthetic Phonics Initiative

This article explores why policy makers in England and Scotland responded so differently to the Clackmannanshire study on synthetic phonics. It suggests that a deeper understanding of the national and local policy contexts can explain Scotland's response. Analysis of the wider context of the Clackmannanshire initiative supports Moss and Huxford's (2007) argument that literacy problems cannot be couched within a single paradigm's field of reference, and that policy makers need to consider evidence from different paradigms if they are to make robust decisions.
From Policy to Prisoners to People: A “Soft Mixed Methods” Approach to Studying Transgender Prisoners

This article describes the official protocol and unexpected contingencies that motored data collection for a large scale study of transgender inmates in California prisons for men. The focus is on gender and sexuality as methodological confounds that, surprisingly and productively, ultimately served to shed insight into basic sociological questions as well address the policy questions that originally motivated the research. Drawing on serendipitously collected ethnographic data from a plethora of exchanges with experts, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) officials, researchers, and transgender inmates, this article reveals the categorization commitments and processes that permeate the lives of “the girls among men” in prisons for men. In light of these findings, the author argues for the value of adopting what she calls a “soft mixed methods” approach when doing non-ethnographic work designed to inform policy. To do so stimulates sociological imagination and ultimately provides more nuanced, layered, and complicated answers to policy questions while also providing insights into more basic research questions.
Competencies for retail leadership: accurate, acceptable, affordable

Describes the development of a competency model for middle‐senior managers in a large fashion retailing company, to encourage them to act more strategically. Discusses the relative benefits of researching a custom‐made model against using or adapting a generic model. Describes how the model has been used in the company for training and development. Evaluates the model against a critical view of management competencies.
Treatment of Alzheimer’s disease across the spectrum of severity

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia affecting nearly 18 million people around the world and 4.5 million in the US. It is a progressive neurodegenerative condition that is estimated to dramatically increase in prevalence as the elderly population continues to grow. As the cognitive and neuropsychiatric signs and symptoms of AD progresses in severity over time, affected individuals become increasingly dependent on others for assistance in performing all activities of daily living. The burden of caring for someone affected by the disorder is great and has substantial impact on a family’s emotional, social and financial well-being. In the US, the currently approved medications for the treatment of mild to moderate stages of AD are the cholinesterase inhibitors (ChEIs). Cholinesterase inhibitors have shown modest efficacy in terms of symptomatic improvement and stabilization for periods generally ranging from 6 to 12 months. There are additional data that have emerged, which suggest longer-term benefits. For the moderate to severe stages of AD, memantine, an N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor antagonist is in widespread use and has shown modest benefit as monotherapy and in combination with ChEIs. The cost effectiveness of the currently available therapeutic agents for AD has undergone great scrutiny and remains controversial, especially outside the US. Neuropsychiatric symptoms such as agitation and psychosis are common in AD. Unfortunately, in the US there are no Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-approved agents for the treatment of these symptoms, although atypical antipsychotics have shown some efficacy and have been widely used. However, the use of these agents has recently warranted special caution due to reports of associated adverse effects such as weight gain, hyperlipidemia, glucose intolerance, cerebrovascular events, and an increased risk for death. Alternative agents used to treat neuropsychiatric symptoms include serotonergic antidepressants, benzodiazepines, and anticonvulsant medications.
Another Look at the Dimensionality of the School Participant Empowerment Scale

Teacher empowerment is a cornerstone of most educational (restructuring) reform movements. This investigation explored the stability, reliability, and validity of scores on the subscales of Short and Rinehart's School Participant Empowerment Scale with data from a large sample of classroom teachers working in Ohio. The sample of 4,091 teachers was representative of state and national populations of classroom teachers. Confirmatory factor analysis failed to confirm the subscales identified by Short and Rinehart. Exploratory factor analysis was used to identify six revised subscales. Use and validity for scores on the new subscales are discussed.
Need support and wellbeing during morning care activities: an observational study on resident–staff interaction in nursing homes

ABSTRACT Quality of life and wellbeing in nursing homes are becoming more important in research and practice. One of the main influences on residents' wellbeing is the interaction with their professional care-givers. The purpose of this study was to explore to what extent care-givers support the residents' needs of relatedness, autonomy and competence, and how this need support is related to wellbeing. Residents and their professional care-givers of four nursing homes in the Netherlands participated in an observational and questionnaire study. Three video-observations of each resident (with different care-givers) were made during morning care. Additional data were collected by means of questionnaires. The results show that the needs of residents were, on average, moderately fulfilled during care interactions. More need support by care-givers was related to higher resident wellbeing. Care-givers provided more need support to residents with stronger functional impairments. More need support was provided by higher-educated care-givers and care-givers in higher job functions. The results show the importance of need support for situational wellbeing, but the contribution to the general subjective wellbeing of residents remains unclear. Further (longitudinal) research is needed to investigate changes in wellbeing over time. Possible differences between subjective ratings and observations of need support and wellbeing should be taken into account.
TATE PAIRING OVER BINARY FIELD

Elliptic curve cryptography (ECC) is an alternative to traditional techniques for public key cryptography. It offers smaller key size without sacrificing security level. Tate pairing is a bilinear map used in identity based cryptography schemes. In a typical elliptic curve cryptosystem, elliptic curve point multiplication is the most computationally expensive component. Similarly, Tate pairing is also quite computationally expensive. Therefore, it is more attractive to implement the ECC and Tate pairing using hardware than using software. The bases of both ECC and Tate pairing are Galois field arithmetic units. In this thesis, I propose the FPGA implementations of the elliptic curve point multiplication in GF (2 283) as well as Tate pairing computation on supersingular elliptic curve in GF (2 283). I have designed and synthesized the elliptic curve point multiplication and Tate pairing module using Xilinx's FPGA, as well as synthesized all the Galois arithmetic units used in the designs. Experimental results demonstrate that the FPGA implementation can speedup the elliptic curve point multiplication by 31.6 times compared to software based implementation. The results also demonstrate that the FPGA implementation can speedup the Tate pairing computation by 152 times compared to software based implementation. iii DEDICATION To my parents. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express sincere gratitude to my major professor, Dr. Hao Li, for his guidance on my research and my course work. He has provided me with a lot of valuable advice and constructive criticism. I would also like to thank my other committee members, Dr. Kavi and Dr. Sweany for giving me helpful suggestions on my thesis. I owe special thanks to Dr. Tate for his kindly help on cryptography theories. I am thankful to my CSRL colleagues Cameron, Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) and Tate pairing are two new types of public key cryptography. Using cryptography is an efficient way to protect confidential information to be sent over an insecure media, such as the Internet. Galois field arithmetic operations are the bases of both elliptic curve cryptography and Tate pairing. Elliptic curve cryptography and Tate pairing are both computationally expensive. FPGA implementation can improve the performance of ECC and Tate pairing compared with software implementation. Meanwhile FPGA have the advantage of flexibility compared to traditional ASIC implementation. We used resource sharing and parallel processing in our FPGA implementations of elliptic curve cryptography and Tate pairing. Binary field Galois field arithmetics are easier to be implemented …
eCushion: An eTextile Device for Sitting Posture Monitoring

Sitting posture analysis is critical for daily applications in biomedical, education and healthcare fields. However, it remains unclear how to monitor sitting posture economically and comfortably. To this end, we presented an eTextile device, called eCushion, in this paper, which can analyze the sitting posture of human being accurately and non-invasively. First, we discussed the implementation of eCushion and design challenges of sensing data, such as scale, offset, rotation and crosstalk. Then, several effective techniques have been proposed to improve the recognition rate of sitting posture. Our experimental results show that the recognition rate of our eCushion system could achieve 92% for object-oriented cases and 79% for general cases.
Improving Identity-based Random Key Establishment Scheme for Large-Scale Hierarchical Wireless Sensor Networks

In this paper, we propose a novel identity-based random key pre-distribution scheme called the identity based key pre-distribution using a pseudo random function (IBPRF), which has better trade-off between communication overhead, network connectivity and resilience against node capture compared to the other existing key predistribution schemes. IBPRF always guarantees that no matter how many sensor nodes are captured, the secret communication between non-compromised sensor nodes are still secure. We then propose an improved version of our scheme in a large-scale hierarchical wireless sensor network. This improved approach has better trade off among network connectivity, security, communication, computational and storage overheads, and scalability than the existing random key pre-distribution schemes. The strength of the proposed IBPRF scheme and its improved approach is establishing pairwise secret keys between neighboring nodes with scantling communication and computational overheads. The improved IBPRF approach further supports a large-scale sensor network for the network connectivity. Through the analysis we show that the improved IBPRF scheme provides better security and lower overheads than other existing schemes.
Isochron-Based Phase Sensitivity Analysis of Oscillatory Biological Systems

Circadian rhythms possess the ability to entrain their internal phase to that of the environment. This ability relies on the phase response of circadian gene regulation to different environmental cues, of which light is the most obvious and important. Analyzing phase response of oscillatory systems requires the development of methods specific for these systems’ attributes, such as the period and phase. This article presents two phase analyses of oscillatory systems for infinitesimal and finite perturbations, based on the isochron as a phase measure. In addition, phase response curves can be computed from the results of the analyses. Finally, the application to investigate the phase behavior of Drosophila circadian rhythm gives experimentally testable predictions for the control mechanisms of circadian phase and period responses.
The Acquisition and Development of Cognitive Skills and Strategies: I. Making the Butterflies Fly in Formation

This study presents the first in a series of two articles extending previous findings that elite performers, compared to nonelite performers, interpret their preperformance cognitive and somatic anxiety symptoms as more facilitative than debilitating to performance (Jones, Hanton, & Swain, 1994; Jones & Swain, 1995). In-depth interview techniques were employed to investigate the cognitive skills and strategies underlying elite swimmers’ interpretations of their prerace thoughts and feelings. Participants were 10 male elite swimmers who consistently maintained facilitative interpretations. Data were drawn from verbatim transcripts and were inductively content analyzed. Four general dimensions traced the acquisition and development of the cognitive skills and strategies underlying facilitation from early competitive experiences to the present day. It was concluded that participants’ skills and strategies were acquired via natural learning experiences and various educational methods. These results extend the.
A synergistic interaction between magnesium sulphate and ketamine on the inhibition of acute nociception in rats.

OBJECTIVE Magnesium is an endogenous voltage-dependent NMDA receptor-channel blocker and ketamine is a non-competitive NMDA receptor antagonist. Magnesium may potentiate the effect of ketamine in analgesia and anaesthesia, but may also interact in an opposing manner. This study aimed at evaluating type of the interaction between magnesium sulphate and ketamine administered systemically in rats with an acute nociceptive pain (tail-immersion test). MATERIALS AND METHODS Analgesic activity was assessed by tail-immersion test in male Wistar rats (200-250 g). The distal 5 cm of the tail was immersed in a warm water bath (55 ± 0.5°C) and the time for tail-withdrawal was measured as response latency. RESULTS Magnesium sulphate (2.5-30 mg/kg, s.c.) and ketamine (2.5-30 mg/kg, i.p.) administered alone did not produce any effect. However, significant antinociception (synergistic interaction) was revealed at the following doses of ketamine: magnesium sulphate of 5:5 mg/kg, 2.5:5 mg/kg and 10:5 mg/kg. The effect was not dose-dependent, and a greater response was obtained when ketamine was administered before magnesium sulphate. CONCLUSIONS This study revealed that (1) magnesium sulphate and ketamine given alone were not effective against acute nociceptive pain in rats, but (2) a combination of both drugs resulted in synergistically inhibited nociception, (3) which occurred only at selected low doses and proportions of the medications in a combination and (4) suggested the importance of the order of drug administration.
EXPLORING BLACK‐WHITE SUBGROUP DIFFERENCES OF MANAGERIAL COMPETENCIES

This study investigates whether different job-relevant competencies vary in terms of Black-White subgroup differences exhibited. There were 633 participants (545 Whites, 88 Blacks) who completed a managerial assessment center that evaluated 13 competency dimensions across 8 assessment exercises. Participants also completed a cognitive ability test. The results suggest that subgroup differences vary by the content domain of the competency. As predicted, significant subgroup differences emerged for a majority of the more cognitively loaded competencies (e.g., judgment) while nonsignificant differences were associated with a majority of the less cognitively loaded competencies (e.g., human relations). Furthermore, when cognitive ability was controlled, 12 of 13 competency scores demonstrated incremental validity in predicting supervisory job performance ratings. In addition, competencies with greater cognitive load tended to more strongly predict cognitive aspects of job performance as compared to noncognitive aspects. However, competencies with less cognitive load did not differentially predict cognitive and noncognitive aspects of job performance.
Contingent cross-selling and up-selling relationships with performance and job satisfaction: an MOA-theoretic examination

Cross-selling and up-selling are common sales strategies firms use to increase the revenue their salespeople garner from customers. However, these sales approaches are difficult to implement and a large percentage of these programmes fail. Examinations of cross-selling and up-selling traditionally rely on transactional databases which do not assess the salesperson's orientations and attitudes. To overcome this limitation, the authors capture the behavioural tendencies towards cross-selling and up-selling by salespeople and embed them within a motivation-opportunity-ability (MOA) theoretical framework. Variables which fit an MOA categorization moderate the efficacy of cross-selling and up-selling on performance and job satisfaction. Using a multi-industry sample of 224 business-to-business salespeople, findings indicate a unique subset of factors differentially interact with cross-selling and up-selling in predicting performance and job satisfaction.
Asset Pricing with Heterogeneous Preferences, Beliefs, and Portfolio Constraints

Portfolio constraints are widespread and have significant effects on asset prices. This paper studies the effects of constraints in a dynamic economy populated by investors with different risk aversions and beliefs about the rate of economic growth. The paper provides a comparison of various constraints and conditions under which these constraints help match certain empirical facts about asset prices. Under these conditions, borrowing and short-sale constraints decrease stock return volatilities, whereas limited stock market participation constraints amplify them. Moreover, borrowing constraints generate spikes in interest rates and volatilities and have stronger effects on asset prices than short-sale constraints.
A test of a cultural model of patients' motivation for verbal communication in patient‐doctor interactions

In theory, two‐way communication between patient and physician is desirable. However, there is a dearth of research that has explored the effects of patients’ culture and cultural orientations on patients’ ability to actively participate in the medical encounter. The purpose of this paper was to test the effects of patients’ culture and cultural orientations on assertiveness and communication apprehension during medical interviews. According to the proposed model, culture and self‐construals are causal antecedents to patients’ beliefs about verbal communicativeness. Our model suggests that cultural values (self‐construals) are determined in part by culture. In regards to the mediation process, the model proposes that the greater the patient's construal‐of‐self as independent, the more positive her/his beliefs regarding patient participation, which, in turn, leads to a higher degree of motivations to communicate verbally with a physician. Our model also suggests that the greater the patient's construal‐of‐self as interdependent, the more negative her/his beliefs regarding patient participation, which, in turn, leads to a higher degree of communication avoidance and apprehension during medical interview. The data were partially consistent with the theoretical predictions made. The implications of the model for theory and practice are discussed.
Atrial natriuretic peptide and arginine vasopressin secretion in schizophrenic patients

Plasma levels of arginine vasopressin (AVP) and atrial natriuretic peptide (ANP) were measured in 15 patients with schizophrenic or schizoaffective disorders and 15 healthy volunteers during oral water loading at 20 ml/kg. In the patient group, plasma AVP was secreted even when plasma osmolality was below 270 mosmol kg, although the sensitivity of AVP secretion response to osmolality was lower than in the controls. The ANP level was higher in the group of patients than in the controls. There was a negative correlation between plasma ANP and osmolality in the patients. We speculate that the volume expansion caused by inappropriate AVP secretion stimulated plasma ANP release and that the natriuresis resulting from the elevated plasma ANP level might contribute to hyponatremia.