Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Short Introduction to Boosting

Boosting is a general method for improving the accuracy of any given learning algorithm. This short overview paper introduces the boosting algorithm AdaBoost, and explains the underlying theory of boosting, including an explanation of why boosting often does not suffer from overfitting as well as boosting’s relationship to support-vector machines. Some examples of recent applications of boosting are also described.
Clinical characteristics of pyomyositis in children: 20-year experience in a medical center in Taiwan.

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Pyomyositis is an acute pyogenic infection of skeletal muscle. Because of its rarity, pyomyositis can be a diagnostic challenge. The clinical characteristics of pyomyositis were delineated in this study. METHODS The medical records of patients younger than 18 years who were admitted to hospital from 1986 to 2005 and had a discharge diagnosis of pyomyositis were reviewed. The clinical presentations, laboratory data, and diagnostic tools were analyzed. RESULTS Twenty four patients were enrolled. The mean +/- standard deviation age was 5.3 +/- 4.5 years. There were 13 boys and 11 girls. Eight patients (33.3%) had a preceding history of muscle trauma or local injection of the involved area. Five patients (20.8%), had underlying diseases identified. The most common presentations were fever (83.3%) and local swelling (33.3%). Ultrasound was done for 21 patients (87.5%) and provided a definite diagnosis for 20. Twenty patients (83.3%) had positive pus and/or blood culture results. The most common causative organism was Staphylococcus aureus (n = 14; 58.3%). Gram-negative organisms were isolated from 3 patients, all of whom had underlying diseases. Three patients (12.5%) received antibiotic therapy alone and 21 (87.5%) required aspiration or surgical incision and drainage. All patients recovered without sequelae. CONCLUSIONS Suspicion of pyomyositis is needed for children with previous trauma or injection when they have fever and local swelling of the muscles. Although S. aureus is the most common pathogen of childhood pyomyositis, Gram-negative organisms should be considered as possible pathogens in patients with underlying diseases.
International Perspectives on the Residential Mobility of America's Children.

The author examines residential mobility trends among U.S. children and compares them with trends in other developed countries. "The paper develops alternative explanations of the excess mobility of U.S. children and concludes that the most likely explanation is greater family disruption and childhood poverty in the United States. The paper identifies what is an average number of moves for children at successive ages and models the association of selected socioeconomic and other variables with different measures of mobility. " (EXCERPT)
Seizures Induced by Pentylenetetrazole in the Adult Zebrafish: A Detailed Behavioral Characterization

Pentylenetetrazole (PTZ) is a common convulsant agent used in animal models to investigate the mechanisms of seizures. Although adult zebrafish have been recently used to study epileptic seizures, a thorough characterization of the PTZ-induced seizures in this animal model is missing. The goal of this study was to perform a detailed temporal behavior profile characterization of PTZ-induced seizure in adult zebrafish. The behavioral profile during 20 min of PTZ immersion (5, 7.5, 10, and 15 mM) was characterized by stages defined as scores: (0) short swim, (1) increased swimming activity and high frequency of opercular movement, (2) erratic movements, (3) circular movements, (4) clonic seizure-like behavior, (5) fall to the bottom of the tank and tonic seizure-like behavior, (6) death. Animals exposed to distinct PTZ concentrations presented different seizure profiles, intensities and latencies to reach all scores. Only animals immersed into 15 mM PTZ showed an increased time to return to the normal behavior (score 0), after exposure. Total mortality rate at 10 and 15 mM were 33% and 50%, respectively. Considering all behavioral parameters, 5, 7.5, 10, and 15 mM PTZ, induced seizures with low, intermediate, and high severity, respectively. Pretreatment with diazepam (DZP) significantly attenuated seizure severity. Finally, the brain PTZ levels in adult zebrafish immersed into the chemoconvulsant solution at 5 and 10 mM were comparable to those described for the rodent model, with a peak after a 20-min of exposure. The PTZ brain levels observed after 2.5-min PTZ exposure and after 60-min removal from exposure were similar. Altogether, our results showed a detailed temporal behavioral characterization of a PTZ epileptic seizure model in adult zebrafish. These behavioral analyses and the simple method for PTZ quantification could be considered as important tools for future investigations and translational research.
The impact of high‐stakes accountability policies on Native American learners: evidence from research

This article examines research on the impacts of high‐stakes accountability policies in the USA – in particular, the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 – on Native American learners. NCLB's goals are laudable: close the achievement gap by making schools accountable for learning among all student groups, and by ensuring that all students are taught by highly qualified teachers. In practice, the policy has proven to be one of the most problematic education reforms in US history, prompting schools labeled “underperforming” to teach to the test, remove low‐performing students from the testing pool, curtail “low‐stakes” subjects, and artificially manipulate test scores and drop‐out rates. This article begins with a demographic, cultural, linguistic, and educational profile of Native American communities and an explanation of tribal sovereignty. The next sections provide an orientation to NCLB and an examination of empirical research on its impacts on Native American and other minoritized students. The final sections offer examples of promising practices from which to model alternate policies, and recommendations for “authentic accountability” and education policy reform.
An existential problem: The sociolinguistic monitor and variation in existential constructions on Bequia (St. Vincent and the Grenadines)

Abstract Existential constructions in a corpus of spontaneous English from Bequia (St. Vincent and the Grenadines) are used to explore a linguistic problem (Is variation in verb form in existential constructions best viewed as grammatical or lexical? ) and a sociolinguistic problem (What aspects of variation change over a lifetime? ). We compare “urban sojourners” (Bequians who have been away) with their home village norms. We observe differences in the frequency of the type of existential preferred in different villages and by the urban sojourners. We also observe differences in whether or not the main verb agrees in number with a postposed plural subject. Building on William Labov's early discussions of constraints on variation imposed by the “sociolinguistic monitor,” we suggest that variation in individual speakers supports the notion that variables that are fundamentally grammatical are less likely to mark social factors than lexical variables are. (Bequia, Caribbean English, existentials, subject-verb agreement)*
Differential sensitivity of antinociceptive tests to opioid agonists and partial agonists

1 The antinociceptive activity of a range of opioid agonists and agonist‐antagonist analgesics was determined in mice by use of the 55°C hot plate and abdominal constriction assays. 2 Opioid agonists were approximately 10 times more effective in the abdominal constriction assay. 3 The agonist‐antagonists produced analgesia only in the abdominal constriction assay, and antagonized the antinociceptive action of opioid agonists in the 55°C hot plate test. 4 These differences were shown to be attributable to the different levels of stimulus employed in the two tests. 5 By comparing the antagonist potencies of the agonist‐antagonists in the 55°C hot plate test with their antinociceptive ED50 values in the abdominal constriction assay, an index of intrinsic activity was calculated.
Metacognitive Control Processes and Memory Deficits in Poor Comprehenders

This article presents theoretical reflections and empirical data on metacognitive aspects of memory and reading problems in children with reading-comprehension disabilities. A distinction is made between metacognitive awareness and metacognitive control processes. It is hypothesized that metacognitive awareness will bring about differences between good and poor comprehenders. Differences in control processes are more complex and must be carefully articulated. The ability to discriminate the relative difficulty of different sections of material to be read and/or studied is particularly important. This strategy is considered together with the “time allocation” strategy, in which the student discriminates between items requiring a greater or lesser expenditure of cognitive resources. Discrimination difficulty and differential allocation of cognitive resources are involved in cognitive tasks such as reading and memory. Experimental results suggest that, depending on the nature of a task, control processes can be employed differentially. Poor comprehenders present less adequate control processes while reading a passage, but not while memorizing isolated lists of items.
Retroposed Elements as Archives for the Evolutionary History of Placental Mammals

Reconstruction of the placental mammalian (eutherian) evolutionary tree has undergone diverse revisions, and numerous aspects remain hotly debated. Initial hierarchical divisions based on morphology contained many misgroupings due to features that evolved independently by similar selection processes. Molecular analyses corrected many of these misgroupings and the superordinal hierarchy of placental mammals was recently assembled into four clades. However, long or rapid evolutionary periods, as well as directional mutation pressure, can produce molecular homoplasies, similar characteristics lacking common ancestors. Retroposed elements, by contrast, integrate randomly into genomes with negligible probabilities of the same element integrating independently into orthologous positions in different species. Thus, presence/absence analyses of these elements are a superior strategy for molecular systematics. By computationally scanning more than 160,000 chromosomal loci and judiciously selecting from only phylogenetically informative retroposons for experimental high-throughput PCR applications, we recovered 28 clear, independent monophyly markers that conclusively verify the earliest divergences in placental mammalian evolution. Using tests that take into account ancestral polymorphisms, multiple long interspersed elements and long terminal repeat element insertions provide highly significant evidence for the monophyletic clades Boreotheria (synonymous with Boreoeutheria), Supraprimates (synonymous with Euarchontoglires), and Laurasiatheria. More importantly, two retropositions provide new support for a prior scenario of early mammalian evolution that places the basal placental divergence between Xenarthra and Epitheria, the latter comprising all remaining placentals. Due to its virtually homoplasy-free nature, the analysis of retroposon presence/absence patterns avoids the pitfalls of other molecular methodologies and provides a rapid, unequivocal means for revealing the evolutionary history of organisms.
Title: Endothelial Senescence after High Cholesterol High Fat Diet Challenge in Baboons Short title: Shi et al Diet Induced Endothelial Senescence in Baboons

Abstract Increasing evidence indicates that replicative senescence and premature endothelial senescence could contribute to endothelial dysfunction. This study aims at testing thehypothesis that a high-fat diet may lead to premature vascular endothelial senescence in a nonhuman primate model. We isolated endothelial cells from left and right femoral arteries in 10 baboons before and after a 7-week high-fat dietary treatment. We compared the morphological alterations, replicative capacities, and senescence-associated s-galactosidase activities (SA-s-gal) at these two time points. We found that high-fat diet increased the prevalence of endothelial senescence. Endothelial replicative capacities declined dramatically and SA-s-gal activities increasedsignificantly in post-dietary challenge. There was no change in telomeric length usingquantitative flow fluorescence in situ hybridization analysis, suggesting that some stressors lead to cell senescence independent of telomere dysfunction. Our findings that high-fat diet causesendothelial damage through the premature senescence sugges a novel mechanism for the diet-induced endothelial dysfunction.
The immediate effects of pictographic representation on children’s narratives

The pictographic representation of narratives is a useful strategy for both developing language and compensating for weak writing in individual and inclusive language intervention settings. To determine the immediate effects of this strategy, 61 children, aged 7;10-9;1, were taught pictography. They then drafted and told imaginative narratives using one of three notations: writing, art drawing and pictography; and wrote ‘good copies’ of their drafts. The results showed that pictography was faster than the other two representational forms and resulted in longer oral narratives with increased temporal organization. Written good copy narratives showed no differential benefit across representational forms. Lower and higher achieving children showed similar patterns of benefits.
Examining the psychopathology of incarcerated male firesetters using the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-III

Research to date has been equivocal on the relationship between firesetting and psychopathology and has been impeded by studies lacking adequate control samples. The present study examined psychopathology in a sample of incarcerated adult male firesetters (n = 112) and prison controls (n = 113) using the Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory-III. Firesetters demonstrated multiple elevated scores on personality and clinical syndrome scales. Logistic regression showed that the borderline personality scale was the strongest personality scale discriminator between firesetters and controls. Major depression and drug dependence were the strongest clinical syndrome scale predictors. However, both clinical syndrome scale predictors appeared to be mediated by borderline personality scores indicating that firesetters are best characterized by responding indicative of borderline personality traits rather than other psychopathological deficits. The results suggest that, relative to other offenders, firesetters face challenges with impulse control, affect regulation, stability of interpersonal relationships, and self-image.
Ecdysone-induced expression of the caspase DRONC during hormone-dependent programmed cell death in Drosophila is regulated by Broad-Complex

The steroid hormone ecdysone regulates both cell differentiation and cell death during insect metamorphosis, by hierarchical transcriptional regulation of a number of genes, including the Broad-Complex (BR-C), the zinc finger family of transcription factors. These genes in turn regulate the transcription of a number of downstream genes. DRONC, a key apical caspase in Drosophila, is the only known caspase that is transcriptionally regulated by ecdysone during development. We demonstrate that dronc gene expression is ablated or reduced in BR-C mutant flies. Using RNA interference in an ecdysone-responsive Drosophila cell line, we show that DRONC is essential for ecdysone-mediated cell death, and that dronc upregulation in these cells is controlled by BR-C. Finally, we show that the dronc promoter has BR-C interaction sites, and that it can be transactivated by a specific isoform of BR-C. These results indicate that BR-C plays a key role in ecdysone-mediated caspase regulation.
Relationships between Fluoride Intake, Urinary Fluoride Excretion and Fluoride Retention in Children and Adults: An Analysis of Available Data

The aim of this study was to examine the relationship between total daily fluoride intake (TDFI), daily urinary fluoride excretion (DUFE) and fractional fluoride retention (FFR) using available data, in order to clarify the ability of DUFE to predict TDFI and, therefore, the risk of fluorosis development. Examination of published reports of simultaneous measurement of TDFI and DUFE, together with data from two unpublished Chilean studies, yielded data for 212 children aged less than 7 years and for 283 adults aged 18–75 years, providing a total of 212 and 269 data points, respectively. The relationship between DUFE and TDFI was studied for children and adults, separately. Daily fluoride retention (DFR) was estimated as a function of TDFI in children and adults assuming an average 90% fluoride absorption, and the numerical relationships between the estimated FFR and the TDFI were explored. Limiting FFR values of 0.55 and 0.36 were found for children and adults, respectively, above a threshold of TDFI of 0.5 and 2 mg, respectively. Neutral fluoride balances were predicted when the TDFI was equal to approximately 0.07 mg F/day for children and 0.8 mg F/day for adults. For children and adults, it is possible to obtain reasonably good estimations of community-based TDFI and DFR, using DUFE data. The advantages and limitations of these relationships, together with the need for future studies, are discussed.
Resting-State fMRI Associated with Stop-Signal Task Performance in Healthy Middle-Aged and Elderly People

Several brain regions and connectivity networks may be altered as aging occurs. We are interested in investigating if resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (RS-fMRI) can also be valid as an indicator of individual differences in association with inhibition performance among aged (including middle-aged) people. Seventy-two healthy adults (40–77 years of age) were recruited. Their RS-fMRI images were acquired and analyzed via two cluster-analysis methods: local synchronization of spontaneous brain activity measured by regional homogeneity (ReHo) and fractional amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations (fALFF) of blood oxygenation level-dependent signals. After the RS-fMRI acquisition, participants were instructed to perform a stop-signal task, in which the stop signal reaction time (SSRT) was calculated based on the horse-race model. Among participants, the ReHo/fALFF and SSRT were correlated with and without partialling-out the effect of age. The results of this study showed that, although aging may alter brain networks, the spontaneous activity of the age-related brain networks can still serve as an effective indicator of individual differences in association with inhibitory performance in healthy middle-aged and elderly people. This is the first study to use both ReHo and fALFF on the same dataset for conjunction analyses showing the relationship between stopping performance and RS-fMRI in the elderly population. The relationship may have practical clinical applications. Based on the overall results, the current study demonstrated that the bilateral inferior frontal gyrus and parts of the default mode network activation were negatively correlated with SSRT, suggesting that they have crucial roles in inhibitory function. However, the pre-supplementary motor area (pre-SMA) and SMA played only a small role during the resting state in association with stopping performance.
Human spiritual qualities: Integrating psychology and religion

Positive psychology is largely concerned with human qualities that have long been the subject of religious discussion and been encouraged through spiritual practices. We suggest that, rather than seeing positive psychology as replacing this earlier religious approach, it should be pursued in dialogue with it. We illustrate this with reference to work on forgiveness, gratitude, and hope in the Psychology and Religion Research Programme in the University of Cambridge. Though the recent upsurge of interest in therapeutic forgiveness has brought a welcome rigour to its investigation, there are still aspects of forgiveness that are better handled in the religious literature, such as the importance or receiving forgiveness. Building on recent psychological work on gratitude, we have been particularly interested in the hypothesized relationship between gratitude and subjective well-being, and have initiated research to investigate more rigorously whether there is indeed a causal connection between the two. Concerning hope, we suggest that the distinction between hope and optimism, often made by religious thinkers, could usefully be imported into the psychological literature, as much of what is called hope may really only be optimism. We have also considered, using Snyder's theory of hope, how religious faith can contribute to human hope.
A new, mesophotic Coryphopterus goby (Teleostei, Gobiidae) from the southern Caribbean, with comments on relationships and depth distributions within the genus

Abstract A new species of western Atlantic Coryphopterus is described from mesophotic depths off Curaçao, southern Caribbean. Coryphopterus curasub sp. n. , is similar to Coryphopterus dicrus in, among other features, having two prominent pigment spots of roughly equal intensity on the pectoral-fin base, the pelvic fins fused to form a disk, and no pelvic frenum. The two species can be differentiated by body depth (shallower in Coryphopterus curasub at origin of dorsal fin and caudal peduncle); differences in the pigmentation on the head, trunk, and basicaudal region; and usually by total number of rays (spinous plus soft) in the second dorsal fin (10–11, usually 11, in Coryphopterus curasub, 10 in Coryphopterus dicrus). Coryphopterus curasub differs from other Coryphopterus species that have a prominent pigment spot on the lower portion of the pectoral-fin base (Coryphopterus punctipectophorus and Coryphopterus venezuelae) in, among other features, lacking a pelvic frenum. Coryphopterus curasub was collected between 70 and 80 m, the deepest depth range known for the genus. Collections of Coryphopterus venezuelae at depths of 65–69 m extend the depth range of that species by approximately 50 m. Mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) data corroborate the recognition of Coryphopterus curasub as a distinct species but do not rigorously resolve its relationships within the genus. A revised key to the western Atlantic species of Coryphopterus is presented.
The Generalization of Treatment Effects in Parent Training with Multidistressed Parents

This paper presents two studies which attempt to clarify the processes by which families who have multiple problems respond to behavioural parent training procedures. Study 1 assessed a range of parent and child behaviours in diverse home and community childcare settings during baseline, child management training and 3-month follow-up. Results show that while treatment gains occurred in the home training setting with the therapist present, little generalization of therapeutic effects to other settings was found. At follow-up, the gains made in the training setting had largely reverted to baseline levels. Study 2 assessed the same parent and child behaviours across settings for another group of multidistressed families during baseline, child management training, generalization training (consisting of planned activities and a social-marital support intervention) and at follow-up. Results indicated that the generalization training was associated with further improvements in non-training settings for parent and child behaviour, and that these results had maintained or further improved at follow-up. The results are interpreted and discussed with reference to future research and clinical work with conduct disordered children and their families.