Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Modelling penal transformation

Using a systems analytical framework, this article explains how and why the Scottish penal system has followed a different trajectory to a number of its European and US counterparts. It highlights the manner in which penal-welfare values have continued to dominate all aspects of policy and practice in the face of the social and cultural factors that have been identified as prompting significant shifts in the nature and function of penality in other jurisdictions. The article argues that pressures for change within Scotland have been mediated by a number of localized political and cultural processes (relating specifically to elite policy networks and the characteristics of Scottish civic culture). These processes have facilitated a degree of boundary closure and self-reflexive modes of communication within the Scottish system and it is these which, to date, have mitigated against the sense of structural and cultural strain driving transformation elsewhere. The Scottish case suggests: that the environments which penal systems inhabit are complex and turbulent phenomena, containing a range of competing pressures with differential rather than uniform effects; and that small-scale penal systems have particular features which make them better able to ride out such turbulence without fundamental damage to their central principles and purposes.
Low-Dose Endotoxin Induces Late Preconditioning, Increases Peroxynitrite Formation, and Activates STAT3 in the Rat Heart

Administration of low-dose endotoxin (lipopolysaccharide, LPS) 24 h before a lethal ischemia induces pharmacological late preconditioning. The exact mechanism of this phenomenon is not clear. Here we aimed to investigate whether low-dose LPS exerts late effects on peroxynitrite formation and activation of Akt, Erk, and STAT3 in the heart. Male Wistar rats were injected with LPS (S. typhimurium; 0.5 mg/kg i.p.) or saline. Twenty-four hours later, hearts were isolated, perfused for 10 min, and then used for biochemical analyses. LPS pretreatment enhanced cardiac formation of the peroxynitrite marker 3-nitrotyrosine. LPS pretreatment also increased cardiac levels of the peroxynitrite precursor nitric oxide (NO) and superoxide. The activities of Ca2+-independent NO synthase and xanthine oxidoreductase increased in LPS-pretreated hearts. LPS pretreatment resulted in significantly enhanced phosphorylation of STAT3 and non-significantly increased phosphorylation of Akt without affecting the activation of Erk. In separate experiments, isolated working hearts were subjected to 30 min global ischemia and 20 min reperfusion. LPS pretreatment significantly improved ischemia-reperfusion-induced deterioration of cardiac function. We conclude that LPS pretreatment enhances cardiac peroxynitrite formation and activates STAT3 24 h later, which may contribute to LPS-induced late preconditioning.
Molecular Mechanisms of Diabetic Retinopathy, General Preventive Strategies, and Novel Therapeutic Targets

The growing number of people with diabetes worldwide suggests that diabetic retinopathy (DR) and diabetic macular edema (DME) will continue to be sight threatening factors. The pathogenesis of diabetic retinopathy is a widespread cause of visual impairment in the world and a range of hyperglycemia-linked pathways have been implicated in the initiation and progression of this condition. Despite understanding the polyol pathway flux, activation of protein kinase C (KPC) isoforms, increased hexosamine pathway flux, and increased advanced glycation end-product (AGE) formation, pathogenic mechanisms underlying diabetes induced vision loss are not fully understood. The purpose of this paper is to review molecular mechanisms that regulate cell survival and apoptosis of retinal cells and discuss new and exciting therapeutic targets with comparison to the old and inefficient preventive strategies. This review highlights the recent advancements in understanding hyperglycemia-induced biochemical and molecular alterations, systemic metabolic factors, and aberrant activation of signaling cascades that ultimately lead to activation of a number of transcription factors causing functional and structural damage to retinal cells. It also reviews the established interventions and emerging molecular targets to avert diabetic retinopathy and its associated risk factors.
Extreme Oncoplasty: Breast Conservation for Patients Who Need Mastectomy

Extreme oncoplasty is a breast conserving operation, using oncoplastic techniques, in a patient who, in most physicians' opinions, requires a mastectomy. These are generally large, greater than 5 cm multifocal or multicentric tumors. Many will have positive lymph nodes. Most will require radiation therapy, even if treated with mastectomy. Sixty‐six consecutive patients with multifocal, multicentric, or locally advanced tumors that spanned more than 50 mm were studied (extreme cases). All patients underwent excision and oncoplastic reconstruction using a standard or split wise pattern reduction and immediate contralateral surgery for symmetry. All received postexcisional standard whole breast radiation therapy with a boost to the tumor bed. The extreme cases were compared with 245 consecutive patients with unifocal or multifocal tumors that spanned 50 mm or less (standard cases). All extreme patients were advised to have a mastectomy; all sought a breast conserving second opinion. Diagnostic evaluation included digital mammography, ultrasound, MRI, and PET‐CT (if invasive). Standard cases did extremely well. No ink on tumor was achieved 96% of the time among 245 patients. The median tumor size was 21 mm (mean 23 mm). Margins equal or greater than 1 mm were achieved in 88.6% of patients. Seventeen (6.9%) standard patients underwent re‐excision to achieve wider margins and only one patient (0.4%) was converted to mastectomy. With 24 months of median follow‐up, three patients (1.2%) experienced local recurrence. For extreme cases, no ink on tumor was achieved 83.3% of the time, which is comparable to published positive margin rates after standard lumpectomy. The median tumor size was 62 mm (mean 77 mm). Margins equal or greater than 1 mm were achieved in 54.5% of patients. Six (9.1%) extreme patients underwent re‐excision to achieve wider margins and four patients (6.1%) were converted to mastectomy. With a follow‐up of 24 months, one patient (1.5%) experienced a local recurrence. Extreme oncoplasty is a promising new concept. It allows successful breast conservation in selected patients with greater than 5 cm multifocal/multicentric tumors. It may be useful in patients with locally advanced tumors following neo‐adjuvant chemotherapy. From a quality of life point of view, it is a better option than the combination of mastectomy, reconstruction, and radiation therapy. Long‐term data on recurrence and survival are not available, using this approach. Based on historical data, it is expected the local recurrence will be somewhat higher but that there will be little or no impact on survival.
Gratitude and PTSD symptoms among Israeli youth exposed to missile attacks: examining the mediation of positive and negative affect and life satisfaction

Based on a sample of Israeli adolescents living in a city which was under missile attack 2½ months prior to this study, we examined the possible affective and cognitive mechanisms through which gratitude may serve as a protective factor against PTSD symptoms. Specifically, we focused on how this process might be mediated by positive affect, negative affect, and life satisfaction. These are widely understood as the emotional and cognitive components of subjective well-being and have each been significantly associated with gratitude and with pathology in the literature. Using pathway analysis, our findings revealed that life satisfaction and negative affect, but not positive affect, mediated the relationship between gratitude and PTSD symptoms. Our study suggests that gratitude may serve as a protective factor primarily through cognitive appraisal processes tied to greater appreciation of life in a way that distinguishes it from other positive emotions.
International tourists' image of Zhangjiajie, China: content analysis of travel blogs

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to identify Western travelers' image of Zhangjiajie, China as a tourist destination, drawing on data from contents of web travel blogs.Design/methodology/approach – The study taps the rich content of travel blogs as an alternative research instrument to measure and understand negative and positive images of destinations formed by travelers. Analysis of content drawn from travel blog data followed qualitative methodology techniques and utilized NVivo software.Findings – The study shows that travel blogs can form a good basis for measuring Western travelers' image of destination. This was the case for Zhangjiajie, where analysis of travelers' blogs indicated that they were impressed overall by the destination's beautiful natural scenery and were highly satisfied with nature‐based tourism attractions. The study also expounds on certain aspects of the destination that can be improved to satisfy Western travelers.Originality/value – The majority of destination image studi.
A News Editorial Corpus for Mining Argumentation Strategies

Many argumentative texts, and news editorials in particular, follow a specific strategy to persuade their readers of some opinion or attitude. This includes decisions such as when to tell an anecdote or where to support an assumption with statistics, which is reflected by the composition of different types of argumentative discourse units in a text. While several argument mining corpora have recently been published, they do not allow the study of argumentation strategies due to incomplete or coarse-grained unit annotations. This paper presents a novel corpus with 300 editorials from three diverse news portals that provides the basis for mining argumentation strategies. Each unit in all editorials has been assigned one of six types by three annotators with a high Fleiss’ Kappa agreement of 0.56. We investigate various challenges of the annotation process and we conduct a first corpus analysis. Our results reveal different strategies across the news portals, exemplifying the benefit of studying editorials—a so far underresourced text genre in argument mining.
Party Polarization in the US Congress

Democrats and Republicans in the US Congress are as ideologically consistent and distinct as they have been at any point in the past three decades. Since 1973, the Senate has become 29 percent more polarized and House polarization has increased 47 percent. This investigation of party polarization finds that member adaptation accounts for one-third of the total party polarization in both the House and Senate. Member replacement accounts for the other two-thirds, the lion's share of which has been the replacement of moderate southern Democrats by conservative Republicans. Republicans in both chambers are polarizing more quickly than Democrats. If the Democratic senators have taken one step toward their ideological home, House Democrats have taken two steps, Senate Republicans three steps and House Republicans four steps.
Why Old Pragmatism Needs an Upgrade

The working hypothesis of this essay is: If we upgraded pragmatism from the old, classic version to the newer version, public administration would work better. I very much appreciated Patricia M. Shields’s wonderful article on “The Community of Inquiry” in the November 2003 edition of Administration & Society. She draws scholarly attention to the pragmatic frame of reference and thereby contributes mightily to public administration theory and epistemology. But I wish she would take a closer look at the work of Richard Rorty (1999). Rorty, a great admirer of John Dewey, is the leading pragmatist today and America’s most famous living philosopher. His work is amazingly accessible given its level of sophistication. Writing in the pragmatist vein, McSwite (1997) and Box (2002) have appreciated Rorty’s work. But Evans (2000), Snider (1998), Stever (2000), and now Shields have ignored it. The exclusion of Rorty’s new pragmatism is significant because he poses some formidable challenges to old pragmatism. Between the time
ZnO-Based Physically Transient and Bioresorbable Memory on Silk Protein

In this letter, physically transient and fully bioresorbable resistive switching devices based on ZnO are proposed, with excellent resistive switching memory performance shown in Mg/ZnO/W and Mg/ZnO/Mg devices. The devices utilize dissolvable metals including Mg and W with biodegradable silk fibroin substrates that can dissolve while immersed in deionized water after 15 minutes and as fast as 5 minutes in phosphate-buffered saline. The entire memory device consists of dissolvable and bioresorbable electronic materials, which have excellent promise for secure memory systems, implantable medical devices, environment-friendly sensors, disposable consumer devices, and bio-integrated electronics.
Adjoint Systems for Models of Cell Signaling Pathways and their Application to Parameter Fitting

The paper concerns the problem of fitting mathematical models of cell signaling pathways. Such models frequently take the form of sets of nonlinear ordinary differential equations. While the model is continuous in time, the performance index used in the fitting procedure involves measurements taken at discrete time moments. Adjoint sensitivity analysis is a tool which can be used for finding the gradient of a performance index in the space of parameters of the model. In the paper, a structural formulation of adjoint sensitivity analysis called the generalized backpropagation through time (GBPTT) is used. The method is especially suited for hybrid, continuous-discrete time systems. As an example, we use the mathematical model NF-kappaB of the regulatory module, which plays a major role in the innate immune response in animals.
Docosahexaenoic Acid Inhibits Helicobacter pylori Growth In Vitro and Mice Gastric Mucosa Colonization

H. pylori drug-resistant strains and non-compliance to therapy are the major causes of H. pylori eradication failure. For some bacterial species it has been demonstrated that fatty acids have a growth inhibitory effect. Our main aim was to assess the ability of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) to inhibit H. pylori growth both in vitro and in a mouse model. The effectiveness of standard therapy (ST) in combination with DHA on H. pylori eradication and recurrence prevention success was also investigated. The effects of DHA on H. pylori growth were analyzed in an in vitro dose-response study and n in vivo model. We analized the ability of H. pylori to colonize mice gastric mucosa following DHA, ST or a combination of both treatments. Our data demonstrate that DHA decreases H. pylori growth in vitro in a dose-dependent manner. Furthermore, DHA inhibits H. pylori gastric colonization in vivo as well as decreases mouse gastric mucosa inflammation. Addition of DHA to ST was also associated with lower H. pylori infection recurrence in the mouse model. In conclusion, DHA is an inhibitor of H. pylori growth and its ability to colonize mouse stomach. DHA treatment is also associated with a lower recurrence of H. pylori infection in combination with ST. These observations pave the way to consider DHA as an adjunct agent in H. pylori eradication treatment.
An Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis of Secular, Spiritual, and Religious Pathways of Long-Term Addiction Recovery

The emergence of recovery as an organizing construct has sparked interest in mapping the varieties of addiction recovery experience. This study uses interpretive (qualitative) phenomenological analysis (IPA) to examine six-diverse pathways of long-term addiction recovery. Semistructured interviews were conducted with six respondents representing natural recovery, Twelve-Step (Alcoholics Anonymous/Narcotics Anonymous) recovery (separate), secular recovery, faith-based recovery, and medication-assisted recovery. Common and distinct features of these pathways of addiction recovery are discussed with noted implications for the design of addiction treatment, recovery support services, and an understanding of recovery itself. Qualitative research can be a valuable tool in the elucidation of addiction recovery pathways.
Characterization and modeling of charge trapping: From single defects to devices

Using time-dependent defect spectroscopy measurements on nanoscale MOSFETs, individual defects have been characterized in much greater detail than ever before. These studies have revealed the existence of metastable defect states which have a significant impact on the capture and emission time constants. For example, these defect states explain the large emission time constants observed in bias temperature measurements as well as the switching behavior of defects sensitive to gate bias changes towards accumulation. By carefully analyzing the properties of the defects contributing to random telegraph noise and the recoverable component of the bias temperature instability, it could be confirmed that both phenomena are due to the same type of defect. The most fundamental property of these defects is that their time constants are widely distributed, leading to the ubiquitous time and frequency dependence. By transferring this knowledge to large area devices, noise as well as the response to bias temperature stress and recovery can be understood in great detail.
Blind separation of synchronous co-channel digital signals using an antenna array. I. Algorithms

We propose a maximum-likelihood (ML) approach for separating and estimating multiple synchronous digital signals arriving at an antenna array at a cell site. The spatial response of the array is assumed to be known imprecisely or unknown. We exploit the finite alphabet property of digital signals to simultaneously estimate the array response and the symbol sequence for each signal. Uniqueness of the estimates is established for BPSK signals. We introduce a signal detection technique based on the finite alphabet property that is different from a standard linear combiner. Computationally efficient algorithms for both block and recursive estimation of the signals are presented. This new approach is applicable to an unknown array geometry and propagation environment, which is particularly useful In wireless communication systems. Simulation results demonstrate its promising performance.
The Abl SH2‐kinase linker naturally adopts a conformation competent for SH3 domain binding

The core of the Abelson tyrosine kinase (c‐Abl) is structurally similar to Src‐family kinases where SH3 and SH2 domains pack against the backside of the kinase domain in the down‐regulated conformation. Both kinase families depend upon intramolecular association of SH3 with the linker joining the SH2 and kinase domains for suppression of kinase activity. Hydrogen deuterium exchange (HX) and mass spectrometry (MS) were used to probe intramolecular interaction of the c‐Abl SH3 domain with the linker in recombinant constructs lacking the kinase domain. Under physiological conditions, the c‐Abl SH3 domain undergoes partial unfolding, which is stabilized by ligand binding, providing a unique assay for SH3:linker interaction in solution. Using this approach, we observed dynamic association of the SH3 domain with the linker in the absence of the kinase domain. Truncation of the linker before W254 completely prevented cis‐interaction with SH3, while constructs containing amino acids past this point showed SH3:linker interactions. The observation that the Abl linker sequence exhibits SH3‐binding activity in the absence of the kinase domain is unique to Abl and was not observed with Src‐family kinases. These results suggest that SH3:linker interactions may have a more prominent role in Abl regulation than in Src kinases, where the down‐regulated conformation is further stabilized by a second intramolecular interaction between the C‐terminal tail and the SH2 domain.
Effects of Locus Control on African American High School Seniors' Educational Aspirations: Implications for Preservice and Inservice High School Teachers and Counselors

The major purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of locus of control on African American high school seniors' educational aspirations. Controlling for family, student, and school characteristics, the results of the study suggest that African American high school seniors who reported higher levels of locus of control were more likely to have higher educational aspirations than African American high school seniors who reported lower levels of locus of control. Implications for preservice and inservice high school teachers and counselors are discussed.
On the Convergence of a Shock Capturing Discontinuous Galerkin Method for Nonlinear Hyperbolic Systems of Conservation Laws

In this paper, we present a shock capturing discontinuous Galerkin method for nonlinear systems of conservation laws in several space dimensions and analyze its stability and convergence. The scheme is realized as a space-time formulation in terms of entropy variables using an entropy stable numerical flux. While being similar to the method proposed in [A. Hiltebrand and S. Mishra, Numer. Math., 126 (2014), pp. 103--151], our approach is new in that we do not use streamline diffusion stabilization. It is proved that an artificial viscosity-based nonlinear shock capturing mechanism is sufficient to ensure both entropy stability and entropy consistency, and consequently we establish convergence to an entropy measure-valued solution. The result is valid for general systems and for the arbitrary order discontinuous Galerkin method.
Dyadic Relationships and Exchanges in Performance Appraisals

Background: Previous research indicates that quality of dyad exchanges related to performance appraisal (PA) vary across organizations and across occupational groups. Leader-member exchange theory (LMX) is often used to explain such dyad relationships. The aim: This article focuses on manager-employees dyad relationships related to performance appraisals, and explores the different effects of high and low quality on dyadic exchange through PA in municipal health service. Method: Questionnaires were distributed to a representative sample of 600 health personnel, both from nursing homes and home care, with a response rate of 62 %. The LMX-7 scale was used to measure dyad quality. Findings: Employees in nursing homes are more participating and report higher exchange quality with the manager in PA than employees in home care. All subordinates report more constructive discussion with higher exchanges in PA than managers do. Auxiliary nurses are more satisfied with feedback and exchange in PA than nurses. Managers experience more thorough feedback with higher quality exchanges in PA than nurses. Conclusion: Health personnel in municipal health services experience LMX in PA differently. That is, employees in home care and nursing homes are experiencing different LMX in PA. They experience therefore different effects of PA. PA = Performance appraisal LMX = leader-member exchange
When is Fantasy Proneness Associated with Distress? An Examination of Two Models

Fantasy prone individuals frequently turn their attention inward, focusing on a rich internal world of imaginary people or stories, vivid memories or dreams, and emotions or sensations cued by internal stimuli. While engaging in fantasy or daydreaming can often be an enjoyable pastime, some research has linked fantasy proneness to heightened psychological distress. The present study of 83 undergraduates utilized 2 models to examine the relationship between fantasy proneness and symptoms of depression, 1 mediated by an avoidant coping style and the other moderated by an external locus of control orientation. Analyses revealed that locus of control did moderate this relationship, with fantasy proneness being more strongly linked to symptoms of depression in those subjects with an external locus of control orientation. Fantasy proneness was not significantly correlated with an avoidant coping style.