Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Engaging with community engagement: public libraries and citizen involvement

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the concept of community engagement within a public library contextDesign/methodology/approach – The paper analyses selected literature discussing the concept of community engagement, focusing particularly on that considering community engagement activities in public libraries. Key issues are illustrated using examples from the literature and data from an interview‐based study of public library practitioners and policy makers.Findings – The evidence suggests that the public library is being positioned as a key community resource. Community engagement in public libraries includes: making the library space available for community activities; working in partnership with the voluntary and community sector as well as with other public services; involving volunteers in the delivery of library services; activities to support community involvement in various levels of decision making. The paper concludes that library services have been quite effective at involving.
Kinetics of Anesthetic Onset Measured with a Direct Index of Neural Activity

BACKGROUND: Previous modeling of the kinetics of uptake and elimination of anesthetic drugs from the site of action has used measures derived from the electroencephalogram. Such measures lag the current brain activity because of the time needed to acquire a signal sample and derive the measure. With a direct measure of anesthetic activity, we could model brain uptake more exactly. METHODS: In volunteers, using a double-blind single-session design, we made repeated measurements using a well-known psychomotor test, the 2 target tapping test, during the washin and washout of 30% nitrous oxide. We also assessed maximal drug effect with a test of cognitive function, the digit symbol substitution test. Concentration at the site of action was modeled from end-tidal measurements, using a simple exponential washin and washout function, with half-times between 0.5 and 3 minutes. Comparisons were made within subjects, using 0 and 5% nitrous oxide. RESULTS: We studied 20 subjects. Nitrous oxide, at 30%, consistently reduced performance of the digit symbol substitution test. Tapping frequency was also reduced, but the effect was less consistent, and only 9 of 20 subjects showed a significant individual reduction in tapping frequency. In these subjects, the relationship between the modeled brain concentration and drug effect was better with a half-time set at 2 minutes, compared with 1.5 or 3 minutes. CONCLUSIONS: Given in subanesthetic concentrations, nitrous oxide has rapid onset and offset, consistent with a half-time of 2 minutes. This value is less than the values expected from studies during anesthesia using processed electroencephalogram, but consistent with measures of blood flow to active cerebral tissue in conscious subjects. Studies of performance in conscious subjects may aid further studies of anesthetic kinetics.
Mining the Blogosphere: Age, gender and the varieties of self-expression

The growth of the blogosphere offers an unprecedented opportunity to study language and how people use it on a large scale. We present an analysis of over 140 million words of English text drawn from the blogosphere, exploring if and how age and gender affect writing style and topic. Our primary result is that a number of stylistic and content-based indicators are significantly affected by both age and gender, and that the main difference between older and younger bloggers, and between male and female bloggers, lies in the extent to which their discourse is outer- or inner-directed. In fact, the linguistic factors that increase in use with age are just those used more by males of any age, and conversely, those that decrease in use with age are those used more by females of any age.
Associations between students' perceptions of classroom environment and academic efficacy in Australian and British secondary schools

Research was conducted on associations between classroom psychosocial environment and academic efficacy. A sample of 2651 mathematics students from Australian and British secondary schools responded to an instrument that assessed ten dimensions of mathematics classroom environment (student cohesiveness, teacher support, investigation, task orientation, cooperation, equity, involvement, personal relevance, shared control, student negotiation). These scales were from two recently developed instruments: What Is Happening In This Classroom? (WIHIC) and the Constructivist Learning Environment Survey (CLES). A seven‐item scale assessed students’ academic efficacy at mathematics‐related tasks. Simple and multiple correlation analyses revealed statistically significant correlations between these classroom environment dimensions and academic efficacy. Enhanced classroom environments were associated with higher levels of student academic efficacy. A commonality analysis showed that the three CLES scales did not contribute greatly to explaining variance in academic efficacy beyond that attributed to the seven WIHIC scales.
A Critical Function for β-Amyloid Precursor Protein in Neuronal Migration Revealed by In Utero RNA Interference

Physiological processing of the β-amyloid precursor protein (APP) generates amyloid β-protein, which can assemble into oligomers that mediate synaptic failure in Alzheimer's disease. Two decades of research have led to human trials of compounds that chronically target this processing, and yet the normal function of APP in vivo remains unclear. We used the method of in utero electroporation of shRNA constructs into the developing cortex to acutely knock down APP in rodents. This approach revealed that neuronal precursor cells in embryonic cortex require APP to migrate correctly into the nascent cortical plate. cDNAs encoding human APP or its homologues, amyloid precursor-like protein 1 (APLP1) or APLP2, fully rescued the shRNA-mediated migration defect. Analysis of an array of mutations and deletions in APP revealed that both the extracellular and cytoplasmic domains of APP are required for efficient rescue. Whereas knock-down of APP inhibited cortical plate entry, overexpression of APP caused accelerated migration of cells past the cortical plate boundary, confirming that normal APP levels are required for correct neuronal migration. In addition, we found that Disabled-1 (Dab1), an adaptor protein with a well established role in cortical cell migration, acts downstream of APP for this function in cortical plate entry. We conclude that full-length APP functions as an important factor for proper migration of neuronal precursors into the cortical plate during the development of the mammalian brain.
Avoiders vs. Amenders: Implications for the investigation of guilt and shame during Toddlerhood?

Abstract Recent research and theory highlights the distinctive features of shame vs. guilt, as well as the important implications of that distinction for typical and atypical behaviour regulation. Briefly, shame is characterised by withdrawal and hiding from judgemental others, and guilt by making amends–repairing and confessing. The present study was aimed at determining whether a shame-relevant and a guilt-relevant pattern of responses to a standard violation could be distinguished in toddlers. Two-year-old children participated in a play session, during which a mishap occurred that the children appeared to have caused. Based upon whether or not children avoided the experimenter (E) after the mishap, they were dichotomised into a shame-relevant group of subjects (Avoiders) who avoid E after the mishap, are slow to make reparation, and are slow to tell E about the mishap; and a guilt-relevant group (Amenders) showing the opposite pattern. All guilt-relevant behaviours were greater for Amenders than Avoid.
No population bias to left-hemisphere language in 4-year-olds with language impairment

Background. An apparent paradox in the field of neuropsychology is that people with atypical cerebral lateralization do not appear to suffer any cognitive disadvantage, yet atypical cerebral lateralization is more common in children and adults with developmental language disorders. This study was designed to explore possible reasons for this puzzling pattern of results. Methods. We used functional transcranial Doppler ultrasound (fTCD) to assess cerebral blood flow during language production in 57 four-year-olds, including 15 children who had been late-talkers when first seen at 20 months of age. We categorized cerebral lateralization as left, right or bilateral, and compared proportions with each type of laterality with those seen in a previously tested sample of children aged 6–16 years. We also compared language scores at 4 years for those with typical and atypical lateralization, and then looked at the association the opposite way: comparing those with typical or impaired language in terms of their cerebral lateralization. Results. The distribution of types of cerebral lateralization was similar for 4-year-olds to that seen in older children. Overall, cerebral lateralization was not predictive of language level. However, for children who had language difficulties at 20 months and/or 4 years (N = 21), there was no population bias to left-hemisphere language activation, whereas children without language problems at either age showed a pronounced bias to left-sided language lateralization. Nevertheless, many children with right hemisphere language had no indications of language difficulties, confirming that atypical cerebral asymmetry is not a direct cause of problems. Conclusions. We suggest that atypical lateralization at the individual level is not associated with language impairment. However, lack of lateralization at the population level is a marker of risk for language impairment, which could be due to genetic or non-genetic causes.
Critical Input and Response of Elastic–Plastic Structures Under Long-Duration Earthquake Ground Motions

The multiple impulse input is introduced as a substitute of the long-duration earthquake ground motion, mostly expressed in terms of harmonic waves, and a closed-form solution is derived of the elastic-plastic response of a single-degree-of-freedom structure under the ‘critical multiple impulse input’. Since only the free-vibration appears under such multiple impulse input, the energy approach plays an important role in the derivation of the closed-form solution of a complicated elastic-plastic response. It is shown that the critical inelastic deformation and the corresponding critical input frequency can be captured depending on the input level by the substituted multiple impulse input in the form of original and modified input sequence. The validity and accuracy of the proposed theory are investigated through the comparison with the response analysis to the corresponding sinusoidal input as a representative of the long-duration earthquake ground motion.
Young Children's Sibling Relationship Interactional Types: Associations with Family Characteristics, Parenting, and Child Characteristics

Research Findings: This study examines patterns of sibling relationship qualities or interactional types and their association with family characteristics, parenting, and the characteristics of 1 of those children. Participants were 65 children (34 boys; Time 1 mean age = 51 months), their mothers, fathers, and Head Start teachers. Approximately 95% of the mothers and 92% of the fathers were of Mexican descent. Measures of parenting and children's problem behavior were completed during the spring (Time 1) of the 1st year of the study. Sibling relationships were assessed twice the next year (Times 2 and 3). Family emotional expressivity and cultural values were obtained at Time 2. Three clusters emerged from analyses: warm, average, and affect-intense. Results revealed that the sibling relationship type characterized by high warmth and low agonism was associated with supportive and democratic parenting and positive family expressivity as reported by mothers. Mothers' simpatía and fathers' familism were associated with sibling warmth. Reports of externalizing behaviors achieved the highest mean values for the affect-intense group. Practice or Policy: Results demonstrate the feasibility of a multidimensional approach to the study of young children's sibling relations as well as add to researchers' understanding of sibling relations in families of Mexican descent.
8 9 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 10 0 20 0 30 0 40 0 50 0 60 0 70 0 80 0 90 0 10 00 # States Explosion Limit on L 64

Model-checking enables the automated formal verification of software systems through the explicit enumeration of all the reachable states. While this technique has been successfully applied to industrial systems, it suffers from the state-space explosion problem due to the exponential growth in the number of states with respect to the number of interacting components. In this paper, we present a new reachability analysis algorithm, named Past-Free[ze], that reduces the statespace explosion problem by freeing parts of the state-space from memory. This algorithm relies on the explicit isolation of the acyclic parts of the system before analysis. The parallel composition of these parts drives the reachability analysis, the core of all model-checkers. During the execution, the past states of the system are freed from memory making room for more future states. To enable counter-example construction the past states can be stored on external storage. To show the effectiveness of the approach the algorithm was implemented in the OBP Observation Engine and was evaluated both on a synthetic benchmark and on realistic case studies from automotive and aerospace domains. The benchmark, composed of 50 test cases, shows that in average 75% of the state-space can be dropped from memory thus enabling the exploration of up to 14 times more states than traditional approaches. Moreover, in some cases the reachability analysis time can be reduced by up to 25%. In realistic settings, the use of Past-Free[ze] enabled the exploration of a state-space 4.5 times larger on the automotive case study, where almost 50% of the states are freed from memory. Moreover, this approach offers the possibility of analyzing an arbitrary number of interactions between the environment and the system-underverification; for instance, in the case of the aerospace example 1000 pilot/system interactions could be analyzed unraveling an 80GB state-space using only 10GB of memory. Copyright © 0000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Aortic valve replacement for severe aortic regurgitation in asymptomatic patients with normal ejection fraction and severe left ventricular dilatation.

OBJECTIVES According to current guidelines, aortic valve surgery is a Class II indication for asymptomatic patients with severe aortic regurgitation (AR) accompanied by left ventricular (LV) ejection fraction (LVEF) ≥ 50% and left ventricular end-diastolic dimension (LVEDD) >70 mm. This study aims to assess the postoperative outcomes of asymptomatic patients with severe AR accompanied by LVEF ≥ 50% and LVEDD >70 mm after aortic valve replacement (AVR) and to identify prognostic indicators of the surgery, especially in terms of LV ejection fraction and degree of LV dilatation. METHODS We retrospectively identified 192 consecutive asymptomatic patients with severe AR accompanied by LVEF ≥ 50% and LVEDD > 70 mm who underwent isolated AVR from January 2003 to December 2013. Postoperative outcomes and prognostic indicators were evaluated and analysed. RESULTS Patients had a mean age of 52.4 ± 16.1 years, and 69.3% were male. The mean LVEF and the mean LVEDD were 58.6 ± 6.6% and 76.0 ± 6.9 mm, respectively. The in-hospital mortality rate was 2.1% and survival rates at 5 and 10 years were 94.5 and 86.6%, respectively. Multivariable analysis indicated that postoperative mortality was associated with age [hazard ratio (HR) 1.059, 95% confidence interval (CI): 1.010-1.125, P = 0.049], preoperative LVEF (HR 0.860 95% CI: 0.748-0.989, P = 0.035) and LVEDD (HR 1.094 95% CI: 1.008-1.188, P = 0.032). Receiver-operating characteristic analysis showed that preoperative LVEF < 55% and LVEDD ≥ 81 mm were the best cut-off values for predicting postoperative mortality. By subgroup analysis, patients with 50 ≤ LVEF < 55% had poorer 5- and 10-year survival rates of 87.4 and 74.8% compared with 97.3% and 91.7% for patients with LVEF ≥ 55% (P = 0.023). Patients with LVEDD ≥ 81 mm had poorer 5- and 10-year survival rates of 85.6 and 72.6% compared with 98.2% and 85.6% for those with LVEDD < 81 mm (P = 0.027). CONCLUSIONS AVR can be performed with satisfactory outcomes for severe aortic regurgitation in asymptomatic patients with severe AR accompanied by LVEF ≥ 50% and LVEDD > 70 mm. It is observed that 50% ≤ LVEF < 55% or LVEDD ≥ 81 mm are associated with poorer prognosis in patients undergoing AVR.
A study of epistemological beliefs of EFL learners across gender and educational level

The present study sought to investigate the impact of EFL learners’ educational level and gender on the five dimensions of their epistemological beliefs regarding structure of knowledge, stability of knowledge, source of knowledge, ability to learn and speed of learning. The participants who took part in the study were 101 EFL students studying English literature and English translation in the Islamic Azad University, Rasht Branch, Iran during the spring semester of 2013. They completed the Persian version of Epistemological Questionnaire (Schommer, 1990). The findings showed that there were no statistically significant differences between male and female EFL learners in terms of their epistemological beliefs. In addition, It was found that sophomore student’s mean score was significantly higher than that of the freshman students on ‘certain knowledge’ and ‘quick learning’ sub-scales indicating that sophomore students had more naive beliefs about ‘certain knowledge’ and ‘quick learning’ than freshman students.
Isolation by Time During an Arctic Phytoplankton Spring Bloom

The arctic phytoplankton spring bloom, which is often diatom‐dominated, is a key event that provides the high latitude communities with a fundamental flux of organic carbon. During a bloom, phytoplankton may increase its biomass by orders of magnitude within days. Yet, very little is known about phytoplankton bloom dynamics, including for example how blooming affects genetic composition and diversity of a population. Here, we quantified the genetic composition and temporal changes of the diatom Fragilariopsis cylindrus, which is one of the most important primary producers in the Arctic, during the spring bloom in western Greenland, using 13 novel microsatellite markers developed for this study. We found that genetic differentiation (quantified using sample‐specific FST) decreased between time points as the bloom progressed, with the most drastic changes in FST occurring at the start of the bloom; thus the genetic structure of the bloom is characterized by isolation by time. There was little temporal variation in genetic diversity throughout the bloom (mean HE = 0.57), despite marked fluctuations in F. cylindrus cell concentrations and the temporal change in sample‐specific FST. On the basis of this novel pattern of genetic differentiation, we suggest that blooming behavior may promote genetic diversity of a phytoplankton population.
View-based recognition under illumination changes using local features

We present a view-based face recognition system which combines elements from both feature-based and appearance-based approaches to increase recognition performance under illumination changes. It uses corners and their local neighborhood at several scales to construct local features which form the representation of each face image. Matching feature sets takes into account both configurational and appearance-based similarity. We present recognition results on a highly realistic synthetic face-database demonstrating the system’s ability to tolerate illumination changes. In addition, the proposed framework agrees well with current findings from psychophysics.
Intrinsic asthma: not so different from allergic asthma but driven by superantigens?

The mechanisms of intrinsic or non‐allergic asthma remain uncertain as allergens have no obvious role in driving the inflammatory process in the airways. However, IgE synthesis occurs in the airways, despite negative skin prick tests and serum‐specific IgE. Furthermore, the inflammatory process in the airways is very similar between allergic and non‐allergic asthma, with increased T‐helper type 2 (Th2) cells, mast cell activation and infiltration of eosinophils. This pattern of inflammation is associated with a similar expression of inflammatory mediators, including Th2 cytokines and eosinophilotactic chemokines. There is increasing evidence that microbial superantigens, particularly Staphylococcal enterotoxins are important in amplifying inflammation in atopic dermatitis and chronic rhinosinusitis, in atopic and non‐atopic patients. Superantigens may also be important in intrinsic asthma as airway epithelial cells may be colonized by Staphylococci and other superantigen‐producing microbes. Superantigens produced locally in the airways may lead to class switching of local B cells, resulting in polyclonal IgE production in the airways and also specific IgE against the superantigen (which functions as a ‘superallergen’). This leads to sensitization of mast cells, which can be activated by the usual asthma triggers, such as exercise. Superantigens also cause clonal expansion of T cells, resulting in increased Th2 cells and CD8+ cells, while suppressing regulatory T cells. Superantigens may also reduce responsiveness to corticosteroids, resulting in more severe asthma. Finally, cytotoxic autoantibodies may also be implicated as IgG antibodies directed against epithelial proteins, such as cytokeratin‐18, have been detected in intrinsic asthma, possibly as a result of epithelial damage and this may make epithelial cells more susceptible to microbial colonization. The therapeutic implications are that antibodies against local IgE and microbial superantigens or antibiotic therapy to eradicate the relevant superantigen‐producing microorganisms may improve the efficacy of conventional therapy with corticosteroids.
Seasons as Rhythms on the Kemi River in Finnish Lapland

This article argues for an approach to the seasons as rhythms that emerge in the articulation of human and non-human processes. First, it contrasts two anthropological conceptions of the seasons, as temporal blocks and as rhythmic dynamics, and subsequently indicates how life on the Kemi River conforms more to the latter approach. It goes on to show that the seasons exist in the context of many other rhythms, for instance those of discharge and water level in the river. Finally, it explains how river dwellers not only adapt to the rhythms of river and landscape, but in practising their activities they also shape these rhythms. Therefore, the seasons and the plethora of longer and shorter rhythms of which they form part are simultaneously ‘social’ and ‘natural’.