Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Role of Glia in the Peripheral and Central Auditory System Following Noise Overexposure: Contribution of TNF-α and IL-1β to the Pathogenesis of Hearing Loss

Repeated noise exposure induces inflammation and cellular adaptations in the peripheral and central auditory system resulting in pathophysiology of hearing loss. In this study, we analyzed the mechanisms by which noise-induced inflammatory-related events in the cochlea activate glial-mediated cellular responses in the cochlear nucleus (CN), the first relay station of the auditory pathway. The auditory function, glial activation, modifications in gene expression and protein levels of inflammatory mediators and ultrastructural changes in glial-neuronal interactions were assessed in rats exposed to broadband noise (0.5–32 kHz, 118 dB SPL) for 4 h/day during 4 consecutive days to induce long-lasting hearing damage. Noise-exposed rats developed a permanent threshold shift which was associated with hair cell loss and reactive glia. Noise-induced microglial activation peaked in the cochlea between 1 and 10D post-lesion; their activation in the CN was more prolonged reaching maximum levels at 30D post-exposure. RT-PCR analyses of inflammatory-related genes expression in the cochlea demonstrated significant increases in the mRNA expression levels of pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines, inducible nitric oxide synthase, intercellular adhesion molecule and tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase-1 at 1 and 10D post-exposure. In noise-exposed cochleae, interleukin-1β (IL-1β), and tumor necrosis factor α (TNF-α) were upregulated by reactive microglia, fibrocytes, and neurons at all time points examined. In the CN, however, neurons were the sole source of these cytokines. These observations suggest that noise exposure causes peripheral and central inflammatory reactions in which TNF-α and IL-1β are implicated in regulating the initiation and progression of noise-induced hearing loss.
BKCa-Cav Channel Complexes Mediate Rapid and Localized Ca2+-Activated K+ Signaling

Large-conductance calcium- and voltage-activated potassium channels (BKCa) are dually activated by membrane depolarization and elevation of cytosolic calcium ions (Ca2+). Under normal cellular conditions, BKCa channel activation requires Ca2+ concentrations that typically occur in close proximity to Ca2+ sources. We show that BKCa channels affinity-purified from rat brain are assembled into macromolecular complexes with the voltage-gated calcium channels Cav1.2 (L-type), Cav2.1 (P/Q-type), and Cav2.2 (N-type). Heterologously expressed BKCa-Cav complexes reconstitute a functional “Ca2+ nanodomain” where Ca2+ influx through the Cav channel activates BKCa in the physiological voltage range with submillisecond kinetics. Complex formation with distinct Cav channels enables BKCa-mediated membrane hyperpolarization that controls neuronal firing pattern and release of hormones and transmitters in the central nervous system.
What Is Public Engagement, and What Is It for? A Study of Scientists’ and Science Communicators’ Views

The “Open Air Laboratories” (OPAL) is a large, England-wide environmental public engagement (PE) project based on the “citizen science” model. It is designed to involve people of all backgrounds and abilities in the production of environmental science and in the process to educate and raise awareness and enthusiasm about nature and its importance. This article draws on a series of interviews with scientists and science communicators involved in the project to explore their motivations and aims for the project and what they see as the goals of public engagement generally. We find a varied and nuanced array of motivations and aims that interviewees cite for taking part in the project, pointing toward a reevaluation of traditional ways of understanding the value of public engagement, policy relevance, and dialogue within public engagement. Especially relevant in relation to thinking about the policy relevance of PE is our conclusion that there are many different ways of thinking about the value of PE, characterized in this article as “the neglected middle. ”
Comb-Push Ultrasound Shear Elastography (CUSE) for Evaluation of Thyroid Nodules: Preliminary In Vivo Results

In clinical practice, an overwhelming majority of biopsied thyroid nodules are benign. Therefore, there is a need for a complementary and noninvasive imaging tool to provide clinically relevant diagnostic information about thyroid nodules to reduce the rate of unnecessary biopsies. The goal of this study was to evaluate the feasibility of utilizing comb-push ultrasound shear elastography (CUSE) to measure the mechanical properties (i.e., stiffness) of thyroid nodules and use this information to help classify nodules as benign or malignant. CUSE is a fast and robust 2-D shear elastography technique in which multiple laterally distributed acoustic radiation force beams are utilized simultaneously to produce shear waves. Unlike other shear elasticity imaging modalities, CUSE does not suffer from limited field of view (FOV) due to shear wave attenuation and can provide a large FOV at high frame rates. To evaluate the utility of CUSE in thyroid imaging, a preliminary study was performed on a group of five healthy volunteers and 10 patients with ultrasound-detected thyroid nodules prior to fine needle aspiration biopsy. The measured shear wave speeds in normal thyroid tissue and thyroid nodules were converted to Young's modulus (E), indicating a measure of tissue stiffness. Our results indicate an increase in E for thyroid nodules compared to normal thyroid tissue. This increase was significantly higher in malignant nodules compared to benign. The Young's modulus in normal thyroid tissue, benign and malignant nodules were found to be 23.2 ±8.29 kPa, 91.2±34.8 kPa, and 173.0±17.1 kPa, respectively. Results of this study suggest the utility of CUSE in differentiating between benign and malignant thyroid nodules.
A preliminary investigation on the scaling behaviour of rainfall observed in two different climates

Abstract The problem of transformation of rainfall data from one scale to another has been gaining considerable importance in recent years. Though the application of the concept of fractal theory, in the studies conducted thus far, nearly unanimously points at the possibility of such a transformation, the suitability of the theory to the highly variable rainfall in time and space has very often been questioned. A preliminary attempt is made herein to address this issue by investigating the existence of temporal scaling behaviour in rainfall data observed in two different climatic regions: (a) a subtropical climatic region (Leaf River basin, Mississippi, USA) and (b) an equatorial climatic region (Singapore). Rainfall data of three different resolutions, six-hourly, daily, and weekly, observed over a period of 25 years, are investigated. A mono- or simple-scaling method (box dimension method) is employed. The results achieved for the different data sets clearly indicate the existence of temporal scaling in rainfall observed in the two regions, an encouraging news on the suitability of fractal theory in understanding and modelling the rainfall process. However, the insufficiency of a single dimension to characterize the rainfall behaviour is realized, as the dimension depends on the rainfall intensity level, which, in turn, may be related to the rainfall generating mechanisms. A comparison of the box-dimension results obtained for data of different resolutions, from each of the regions, seems to indicate a possible connection between them, a prospect of tremendous practical importance. Another interesting observation is the similarity between the box dimension results obtained for rainfall data from Leaf River basin and Singapore, but this is also clearly related to the intensity level. The dependence of the dimension on the intensity threshold suggests the use of a multi-dimensional fractal approach, where the process is characterized by more than one dimension (or a dimension function) instead of one single dimension. On the basis of the present results, some potential areas for further study are identified.
Fair treatment, job involvement, and turnover intention of professional employees in government: The importance of organizational identification as a mediator

Although fairness is critical to effective human resource management, little effort has been made to assess the role fairness plays in facilitating positive and preventing negative employee outcomes in government agencies. Using data collected through a survey of 764 professional employees from a large state agency, this study examined the relationship between perceived organizational justice and employees’ organizational identification, job involvement and turnover intention. The findings indicated that perceptions of procedural and distributive justice have positive effects on employees’ job involvement and negative effects on their turnover intention, though these relationships are mediated by identification with the agency. Implications of these findings for theory and practice are discussed.
Adaptation of feedback in e-learning systems at individual and group level

This paper discusses the issue of feedback personalization and adaptation in e-learning systems, and distinguishes between adaptation to the individual user and to groups of users. We briefly review the scope of feedback use in e-learning systems and outline the necessity of feedback adaptation in an e-learning system. We are trying to answer the following question: what is the difference between personalization of feedback at the individual and the group level. Particularly, we are focusing on the analysis of the differences in user modeling for feedback personalization/adaptation in e-learning systems. We discuss what kind of characteristics could be included in the learner model for individual and group personalization. The main purpose of this paper is to attract the attention of the research community to the problem of the feedback personalization and to be helpful in further studies and implementation of individual and group personalization of feedback in e-learning systems. We present some recent feedback adaptation experiments that try to determine the usefulness of certain types of adaptation.
The influence of top–down, bottom–up and abiotic factors on the moose (Alces alces) population of Isle Royale

Long–term, concurrent measurement of population dynamics and associated top–down and bottom–up processes are rare for unmanipulated, terrestrial systems. Here, we analyse populations of moose, their predators (wolves, Canis lupus), their primary winter forage (balsam fir, Abies balsamea) and several climatic variables that were monitored for 40 consecutive years in Isle Royale National Park (544 km2), Lake Superior, USA. We judged the relative importance of top–down, bottom–up and abiotic factors on moose population growth rate by constructing multiple linear regression models, and calculating the proportion of interannual variation in moose population growth rate explained by each factor. Our analysis indicates that more variation in population growth rate is explained by bottom–up than top–down processes, and abiotic factors explain more variation than do bottom–up processes. Surprisingly, winter precipitation did not explain any significant variation in population growth rate. Like that detected for two Norwegian ungulate populations, the relationship between population growth rate and the North Atlantic Oscillation was nonlinear. Although this analysis provides significant insight, much remains unknown: of the models examined, the most parsimonious explain little more than half the variation in moose population growth rate.
Looking back at leisure: an abridged version of ‘the growth of many leisures? Three decades of leisure studies 1982–2011’

Abstract In the summer of 2014, Professor Mike Collins – one of the four founding members of the Leisure Studies (LS) Association – submitted a paper to LS that offered a retrospective review of the first 30 years of the journal (1982–2012). Sadly, whilst the paper was under review, Professor Collins passed away. Mike’s commentaries have always been significant; we include this piece in this particular issue of the journal because it underpins the range of articles we have selected that we feel address some of the central tenets of ‘leisure’. Held alongside the Editors introduction, this article speaks as much as anything else to the state of the field, its futures and its potentialities. Serving as a companion piece that looks to the multiple pasts, genealogies and histories of leisure (and indeed LS), we, the Editors, offer below a necessarily abridged and posthumous version of Professor Collins’ original submission to the journal. Any omissions, errors, mis-representations and mis-understandings are the result of our own editorial hand for which we unreservedly apologise. We hope we have been able to keep the spirit, critique and engaging style that, no doubt, Mike would have presented in a final version of this manuscript.
A Paraphrase and Semantic Similarity Detection System for User Generated Short-Text Content on Microblogs

Existing systems deliver high accuracy and F1-scores for detecting paraphrase and semantic similarity on traditional clean-text corpus. For instance, on the clean-text Microsoft Paraphrase benchmark database, the existing systems attain an accuracy as high as 0:8596. However, existing systems for detecting paraphrases and semantic similarity on user-generated short-text content on microblogs such as Twitter, comprising of noisy and ad hoc short-text, needs significant research attention. In this paper, we propose a machine learning based approach towards this. We propose a set of features that, although well-known in the NLP literature for solving other problems, have not been explored for detecting paraphrase or semantic similarity, on noisy user-generated short-text data such as Twitter. We apply support vector machine (SVM) based learning. We use the benchmark Twitter paraphrase data, released as a part of SemEval 2015, for experiments. Our system delivers a paraphrase detection F1-score of 0.717 and semantic similarity detection F1-score of 0.741, thereby significantly outperforming the existing systems, that deliver F1-scores of 0.696 and 0.724 for the two problems respectively. Our features also allow us to obtain a rank among the top-10, when trained on the Microsoft Paraphrase corpus and tested on the corresponding test data, thereby empirically establishing our approach as ubiquitous across the different paraphrase detection databases.
Motivation and Self-regulation in Community College Transfer Students at a Four-year Online University

ABSTRACT Motivation and self-regulation were examined in a sample of community college transfer students enrolled in a 4-year, online university. The relation between motivation and self-regulation and students’ performance was examined, as was the association between these learner characteristics (i.e., motivation and self-regulation) and sociodemographic factors (e.g., marital status, employment status). Motivation was found to be significantly correlated with both semester and cumulative grade point average (GPA), while associations between self-regulation and performance were more limited. Further, motivation was found to be a significant predictor of semester GPA in a model controlling for sociodemographic factors and prior achievement. Motivation and self-regulation were also found to differ according to students’ sociodemographic status. For instance, transfer students with children under 18 were found to have significantly higher levels of motivation than nonparents. Those employed full-time had lower levels of self-regulation than did their nonemployed peers. Implications for further research on community college transfer students and online learning are discussed.
Industry Affects Do Not Explain Momentum in Canadian Stock Returns

Similar to previous Canadian, US, and international studies, we find evidence of momentum in stock returns, using a Canadian sample over the 1981 to 1999 period. However, unlike recent US evidence provided by Moscowitz and Grinblatt (1999), we cannot attribute the majority of the excess returns produced by a stock momentum strategy to industry momentum. While we do find evidence that industry momentum strategies offer some potential for excess returns, these returns are well below those produced by a stock momentum strategy. In addition, the composition of our stock momentum portfolios with respect to industry momentum groups is not nearly as concentrated in “hot” (or “cold”) industries as one would expect if industry factors were driving individual stock momentum. Finally, stock momentum portfolios continue to offer excess returns on a risk-adjusted basis, even after making adjustments for industry returns. In short, industry factors do not explain momentum in Canadian stock returns.
Log-Normal Matrix Completion for Large Scale Link Prediction

The ubiquitous proliferation of online social networks has led to the widescale emergence of relational graphs expressing unique patterns in link formation and descriptive user node features. Matrix Factorization and Completion have become popular methods for Link Prediction due to the low rank nature of mutual node friendship information, and the availability of parallel computer architectures for rapid matrix processing. Current Link Prediction literature has demonstrated vast performance improvement through the utilization of sparsity in addition to the low rank matrix assumption. However, the majority of research has introduced sparsity through the limited L1 or Frobenius norms, instead of considering the more detailed distributions which led to the graph formation and relationship evolution. In particular, social networks have been found to express either Pareto, or more recently discovered, Log Normal distributions. Employing the convexity-inducing Lovasz Extension, we demonstrate how incorporating specific degree distribution information can lead to large scale improvements in Matrix Completion based Link prediction. We introduce Log-Normal Matrix Completion (LNMC), and solve the complex optimization problem by employing Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers. Using data from three popular social networks, our experiments yield up to 5% AUC increase over top-performing non-structured sparsity based methods.
Professionalism of Healthcare Jobs in the War

Background: Professionalism is an important characteristic of professional jobs including nursing and medicine. Many professional values during the crisis are glaring. Objectives: This study was conducted to explain the role of the Iran-Iraq war in the professionalism of healthcare disciplines based on the documented experiences of medical staff. Methods: This is part of a qualitative study which used the conventional content analysis in 2014 - 2016. The researcher collected and analyzed 119 memories of the healthcare providers about the Iran-Iraq war, simultaneously. Results: Professionalism was one of the main categories emerged from the analysis of data. This theme included six sub-themes, “promotion of personal and professional empowerment”, “compliance with laws and regulations”, “holistic care”, “expression of good traits”, “interpersonal relationships”, and “sublimation of spirit”. Conclusions: Experiences of healthcare providers in the war can be applied in peacetime and future crisis through broadening their perception of nursing and medicine professions and improving their sense of professionalism.
Feedback from quasars in star-forming galaxies and the triggering of massive galactic winds

The shining of quasars is a likely trigger of massive galactic winds, able to remove most interstellar medium (ISM) from a star-forming spheroid. However, the mechanism responsible for the deposition of energy into the ISM is still unclear. Starting from a model for feedback in galaxy formation with a two-phase medium (Monaco), we propose that the perturbation induced by radiative heating from a quasar on the ISM triggers a critical change of feedback regime. In the feedback model, supernova remnants (SNRs) expanding in the hot and pressurized phase of a star-forming spheroid typically become pressure confined before the hot interior gas is able to cool. In the presence of runaway radiative heating by a quasar, a mass flow from the cold to the hot phase develops; whenever this evaporation flow is significant with respect to the star formation rate, owing to the increased density of the hot phase the SNRs reach the point where their interior gas cools before being confined, forming a thick cold shell. We show that in this case the consequent drop in pressure leads quickly to the percolation of all the shells and to the formation of a super shell of cold gas that sweeps the whole galaxy. Radiation pressure is then very effective in removing such a shell from the galaxy. This self-limiting mechanism leads to a correlation between black hole and bulge masses for more massive bulges than 10 10 M� . The insertion of a motivated wind trigger criterion in a hierarchical galaxy formation model shows, however, that winds are not necessary to obtain a good black hole‐bulge correlation. In the absence of winds, good results are obtained if the mechanism responsible for the creation of a reservoir of low-angular momentum gas (able to accrete on to the black hole) deposits mass at a rate proportional to the star formation rate. Using a novel galaxy formation model, we show under which conditions black hole masses are self-limited by the wind mechanism described above, and outline the possible observational consequences of this self limitation. Ke yw ords: galaxies: active ‐ galaxies: bulges ‐ intergalactic medium ‐ quasars: general.
DISBOND DETECTION IN BONDED ALUMINUM JOINTS USING LAMB WAVE AMPLITUDE AND TIME-OF-FLIGHT

Ultrasonically, Lamb wave is considered to be a candidate for large area inspections based on its capability of propagating a relatively long distance in thin plates and its mediathickness-dependent propagation properties [1-2]. Moreover, the occurrence of disbonds, corrosion, and even cracks often results in reduction of effective thickness of a laminate. The idea is to assess the condition of a structure by sensing the response of propagating Lamb waves to these flaws over long path length [3-4]. A series of tests in the sequence of disbond, corrosion, and crack have been done on various types of specimen to investigate the feasibility of this approach. This paper will present some of the test results for disbond detection on aluminum lap splice joints.
Carbon dioxide-methanol intermolecular complexes in interstellar grain mantles

We present new laboratory data to interpret the In- frared Space Observatory (ISO) spectra of protostellar ob- jects, and particularly RAFGL7009S. Our experimental results show that solid methanol and carbon dioxide exhibit specific intermolecular interactions. We propose the formation of a Lewis acid-base complex between carbon dioxide and methanol molecules to explain specific substructure of the 15.2 mC O2 bending mode observed in different objects. The various CO2 bending mode patterns observed in many lines of sight can be interpreted as a combination of both this complex formation and the temperature evolution of the ices. The temperature induced segregation of ice mantles containing CO2 can be monitored by the 13 CO2 stretching mode shift to- ward the pure CO2 ice position. The large width observed for this mode towards interstellar sources partly results from the different temperatures sampled along the line of sight. Given the amount of methanol involved in RAFGL7009S, on the basis of ground based observations, we derive that about half of the so called "6.85 m" band and a quarter of the 4.9 m bands can be accounted for by the deformation modes and 28 transitions of CH3OH.