Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Contested Identities: African Diaspora and Identity Making in a Hair Braiding Salon

Most scholars of intersectionality argue that categories of inequality transform one another. In their empirical analysis, they routinely situate specific categories as master statuses, for example, “black woman” or “immigrant woman. ” A growing group of scholars has begun to question the stability of these categories, arguing that context complicates even seemingly stable categories. Drawing on two years of ethnographic fieldwork in a hair-braiding salon located in the Las Vegas valley, where black West African immigrant women professionally braid black American women’s hair, I provide an empirical case that underlines how identity categories usually constructed as stable by sociocultural theorists are often internally contested within the communities that occupy them. My observations demonstrate that both West African and black American women contest competing explanations of what it means to be black women through boundaries. They rely on pejorative stories about the other group at a time when both antiblack racism and antiimmigrant sentiments are on the rise in the contemporary United States. In engaging in the politics of defining black womanhood within white patriarchy, the women reproduce gendered racial hierarchies.
The Importance of Dry and Wet Merging on the Formation and Evolution of Elliptical Galaxies

With the aid of a simple yet robust approach, we investigate the influence of dissipationless and dissipative merging on galaxy structure and the consequent effects on the scaling laws followed by elliptical galaxies. Our results suggest that elliptical galaxies cannot be originated by parabolic merging of low-mass spheroids only, even in the presence of substantial gas dissipation. However, we also found that scaling laws such as the Faber-Jackson, Kormendy, fundamental plane, and MBH-σ relations, when considered over the whole mass range spanned by elliptical galaxies in the local universe, are robust against merging. We conclude that galaxy scaling laws, possibly established at high redshift by the fast collapse in preexisting dark matter halos of gas-rich and clumpy stellar distributions, are compatible with a (small) number of galaxy mergers at lower redshift.
Using EUREQA for End-User UML Model Development through Design Patterns

This work presents the EUREQA approach for end-user development. The purpose of the tool is to narrow the cognitive gap between the end-user developer's mental model and the software model. The tool uses design patterns as building blocks allowing end-users to create UML class diagram models that capture their domain knowledge. The EUREQA tool hides from view the complexity of code thereby reducing the cognitive load on end-user developers. EUREQA makes non-functional quality issues a first-class concern allowing end-user developers to consider both functional and non-functional aspects of design alternatives. The tool uses visualization techniques to aid in non-functional quality assesment. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate and assess the opportunities and challenges of EUREQA. A qualitative, pilot evaluation of EUREQA shows that the visualization techniques work well, whereas there are issues with the abstraction gap between the visualization and class diagram.
Decreased delivery and acute toxicity of cranial irradiation and chemotherapy given with osmotic blood-brain barrier disruption in a rodent model: the issue of sequence.

The sequence of chemotherapy administered prior to cranial irradiation rather than the more traditional order of radiation followed by chemotherapy is currently being evaluated. This rodent study was designed to assess the sequencing of radiation therapy and chemotherapy administered with osmotic blood-brain barrier disruption (BBBD). Drug delivery and acute toxicity were evaluated. Two clinically relevant chemotherapy regimens were given with BBBD: intraarterial methotrexate (MTX, 1 g/m2), or a combination of intraarterial carboplatin (200 mg/m2) and i.v. etoposide (200 mg/m2). In a randomized protocol, the standard rodent model of 2000 cGy as a single fraction using parallel opposed portals was administered 30 days prior to, concurrent with (24 h prior), or 30 days after these two chemotherapeutic regimens. A total of 72 animals was evaluated in this study. The administration of external beam radiation therapy either prior to or concurrent with the administration of a high molecular weight marker 14C-labeled dextran 70 (Mr 70,000), or a low molecular weight marker 3H-labeled MTX (Mr 456) resulted in a statistically significant (P < 0.01) decrease in drug delivery when compared to animals not receiving cranial irradiation. Seizures were observed in 26% of the animals that received radiation prior to the administration of intraarterial MTX after BBBD. It did not matter whether the radiotherapy was administered 30 days prior to or concurrent with MTX. Seizures were not seen in any other group. The mortality in animals receiving radiotherapy 30 days prior to chemotherapy was significantly (P = 0.03) higher than the mortality in control animals receiving chemotherapy after osmotic BBBD, but no radiation. Drug delivery was significantly decreased when the animals received prior radiotherapy; the administration of radiation prior to MTX with BBBD resulted in an increased incidence of seizures, and there was a significant increase in mortality when cranial irradiation was given 30 days prior to chemotherapy administered with BBBD. With regard to delivery and toxicity, chemotherapy with BBBD administered prior to radiotherapy may have advantages over the other sequences utilizing chemotherapy and cranial irradiation.
From Glance Patterns in Naturalistic Driving How Dangerous Is Looking Away From the Road ? Algorithms Predict Crash Risk

http://hfs.sagepub. com/content/54/6/1104 The online version of this article can be found at: DOI: 10.1177/0018720812446965 published online 15 June 2012 2012 54: 1104 originally Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society Yulan Liang, John D. Lee and Lora Yekhshatyan From Glance Patterns in Naturalistic Driving How Dangerous Is Looking Away From the Road? Algorithms Predict Crash Risk
Attenuation of Acute Lung Inflammation and Injury by Whole Body Cooling in a Rat Heatstroke Model

Whole body cooling is the current therapy of choice for heatstroke because the therapeutic agents are not available. In this study, we assessed the effects of whole body cooling on several indices of acute lung inflammation and injury which might occur during heatstroke. Anesthetized rats were randomized into the following groups and given (a) no treatment or (b) whole body cooling immediately after onset of heatstroke. As compared with the normothermic controls, the untreated heatstroke rats had higher levels of pleural exudates volume and polymorphonuclear cell numbers, lung myloperoxidase activity and inducible nitric oxide synthase expression, histologic lung injury score, and bronchoalveolar proinflammatory cytokines and glutamate, and PaCO2. In contrast, the values of mean arterial pressure, heart rate, PaO2, pH, and blood HCO3− were all significantly lower during heatstroke. The acute lung inflammation and injury and electrolyte imbalance that occurred during heatstroke were significantly reduced by whole body cooling. In conclusion, we identified heat-induced acute lung inflammation and injury and electrolyte imbalance could be ameliorated by whole body cooling.
Determinants of Common Bean Productivity and Efficiency: A Case of Smallholder Farmers in Eastern Uganda

Agriculture sustains the livelihoods of about 70.8% of Ugandans, while common bean has emerged to be an important cash crop as well as a staple food for the majority of farmers and consumers. Although Uganda’s bean output has more than doubled, average bean yields in the country have been between 0.6 and 0.8 Mt Ha-1, even though yields higher than 1.5 Mt Ha-1 can be realized with improved varieties. Thusthe objective of this study was to determine the factors influencing common beanproductivityand efficiency among smallholder farmers in Eastern Uganda.The study was conducted in Busia, Mbale, Budaka and Tororo districts in Eastern Uganda based on a sample of 280 householdsselected using a multi-stage sampling technique. For the data collection, a personally administered structured questionnaire was used to conduct interviews, with a focus on household heads. In the analyses, descriptive statistics, a stochastic frontier modeland a two-limit Tobit regression model were employed. It was established that bean productivity was positively influenced by plot size, ordinary seeds, certified seeds and planting fertilizers. The mean technical efficiency among bean farms was 48.2%, mean economic efficiency was 59.94% and mean allocative efficiency was 29.37%. Finally, Tobit model estimation revealed that technical efficiency was positively influenced by value of assets at 1% level and extension service and group membership at 5% level; while age and distance to the factor market negatively influenced technical efficiency at 10% and 5% levels respectively. Economic efficiency was positively influenced by value of assets at 1% level and off-farm income and credit at 5% level. However, farmers’ primary occupation negativelyinfluenced economic efficiency at 5% level. Allocative efficiency was positively influenced by value of assets at 1% level and farm size and off-farm income at 10% level; while distance to the factor market negatively influenced allocative efficiency at 5% level.Hence the study recommended on the need for increased provision of extension service and training on correct input application and improved farming technologies to increase bean productivity. It also suggested on the need for policy to discourage land fragmentation, develop road and market infrastructure in rural areas and provide affordable and easily available credit facilities to improve production efficiency of bean farms.
Testing the beneficial acclimation hypothesis: temperature effects on mating success in a butterfly

Traditionally, it has been assumed that all acclimation changes to the phenotype enhance the performance of an individual organism in the environment in which those changes were induced (beneficial acclimation hypothesis [BAH]), a theory that has been repeatedly challenged in recent years. We here use a full-factorial design with 2 developmental and 2 acclimation temperatures to test their effects on reproductive performance in the tropical butterfly, Bicyclus anynana. Competition experiments among virgin males from different thermal groups revealed that, at 20 °C, both groups acclimated to 20 °C achieved more than twice as many matings as those acclimated to 27 °C, whereas at 27 °C, only one group (acclimated to 27 °C) outperformed all others. Chill-coma recovery times were also longer for butterflies that developed at higher temperatures, indicating that butterflies responded physiologically to the temperatures at which they were reared. Our results support the BAH at least in part, and do not support any alternative hypotheses. Copyright 2007, Oxford University Press.
Selecting the Best Solvers: Toward Community Based Crowdsourcing for Disaster Management

Crowd sourcing is a new paradigm of service provision. Current commercial crowd sourcing platforms rarely consider the interaction between task takers, which is extremely required in the disaster management scenario. In this paper, we designed a framework for community based crowd sourcing, i.e., task takers are from an existing community or will easily form a new community. A size-specified community creation method using multiple social contexts is also proposed.
Drone sound detection by correlation

Small size UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) are more and more popular nowadays. These devices are used by many professions for taking picture or recording footages making their work significantly easier, such as recording footages on football matches, forecasting the weather or protecting a country's borders. Beyond these examples this technology can also be used for unethical purposes, the risk is increasing with the growing popularity. Numerous articles have data about spying, smuggling or taking compromising pictures about people. We must pay attention to safety preventions these days, thus we would like to introduce a solution for this.
Solving sensor network coverage problems by distributed asynchronous actor-critic methods

Multi-robots systems exploiting sensor network capabilities can be successfully employed to cope with several tasks, including coverage, surveillance, target tracking, and foraging, in partially known environments subject to dynamical changes. In this paper we define a reward collection problem, where both the positions and the values of the rewards change with time. We propose a distributed actor-critic method to solve the problem, establish its convergence, and demonstrate its adaptation capabilities. Our analysis leverages ideas from actor-critic methods and consensus algorithms.
Moment and Memory Properties of Linear Conditional Heteroscedasticity Models, and a New Model

This article analyses the statistical properties of that general class of conditional heteroscedasticity models in which the conditional variance is a linear function of squared lags of the process. GARCH, IGARCH, FIGARCH, and a newly proposed generalization, the HYGARCH model, belong to this class. Conditions are derived for the existence of second and fourth moments, and for the limited memory condition of near-epoch dependence. The HYGARCH model is applied to 10 daily dollar exchange rates, and also to data for Asian exchange rates over the 1997 crisis period. In the latter case, the model exhibits notable stability across the pre-crisis and post-crisis periods.
Energy-aware multiband communications in heterogeneous networks

This paper investigates the energy-efficiency of well-known spectrum sensing algorithms that exploit the sensed signal's energy, autocorrelation or cyclostationarity features to estimate the presence or absence of that signal in a given spectrum. We investigate the trade-off between energy-efficiency, complexity, and sensing accuracy of those detectors and, their suitability for energy-efficient WiFi spectrum sensing that enables interoperability of Long Term Evolution Advanced (LTE-A) and WiFi systems. Results obtained show significant improvement in correct detection probability and reduced sensing time using the low complexity autocorrelation detectors when compared to other detectors under low signal to noise ratio channel conditions.
Kolakoski-(2m,2n) are limit-periodic model sets

We consider (generalized) Kolakoski sequences on an alphabet with two even numbers. They can be related to a primitive substitution rule of constant length l. Using this connection, we prove that they have pure point dynamical and pure point diffractive spectrum, where we make use of the strong interplay between these two concepts. Since these sequences can then be described as model sets with l-adic internal space, we add an approach to “visualize” such internal spaces.
VEGFR1 and VEGFR2 Involvement in Extracellular Galectin-1- and Galectin-3-Induced Angiogenesis

Aim Accumulating evidence suggests that extracellular galectin-1 and galectin-3 promote angiogenesis. Increased expression of galectin-1 and/or galectin-3 has been reported to be associated with tumour progression. Thus, it is critical to identify their influence on angiogenesis. Methods We examined the individual and combined effects of galectin-1 and galectin-3 on endothelial cell (EC) growth and tube formation using two EC lines, EA.hy926 and HUVEC. The activation of vascular endothelial growth factor receptors (VEGFR1 and VEGFR2) was determined by ELISA and Western blots. We evaluated the VEGFR1 and VEGFR2 levels in endosomes by proximity ligation assay. Results We observed different responses to exogenous galectins depending on the EC line. An enhanced effect on EA.hy926 cell growth and tube formation was observed when both galectins were added together. Focusing on this enhanced effect, we observed that together galectins induced the phosphorylation of both VEGFR1 and VEGFR2, whereas galectin-1 and −3 alone induced VEGFR2 phosphorylation only. In the same way, the addition of a blocking VEGFR1 antibody completely abolished the increase in tube formation induced by the combined addition of both galectins. In contrast, the addition of a blocking VEGFR2 antibody only partially inhibited this effect. Finally, the addition of both galectins induced a decrease in the VEGFR1 and VEGFR2 endocytic pools, with a significantly enhanced effect on the VEGFR1 endocytic pool. These results suggest that the combined action of galectin-1 and galectin-3 has an enhanced effect on angiogenesis via VEGFR1 activation, which could be related to a decrease in receptor endocytosis.
Maternal and Cord Blood Adiponectin Multimeric Forms in Gestational Diabetes Mellitus

OBJECTIVE To analyze the relationship between maternal adiponectin (mAdiponectin) and cord blood adiponectin (cbAdiponectin) multimeric forms (high molecular weight [HMW], medium molecular weight [MMW], and low molecular weight [LMW]) in a cohort of gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) and normal glucose–tolerant (NGT) pregnant women. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS A total of 212 women with a singleton pregnancy, 132 with NGT and 80 with GDM, and their offspring were studied. Maternal blood was obtained in the early third trimester and cord blood was obtained at delivery. Total adiponectin and the multimeric forms of adiponectin were determined in cord blood and maternal serum. Spearman rank correlation and stepwise linear correlation analysis were used to assess the relationship between cbAdiponectin levels and clinical and analytical parameters. RESULTS No differences in cbAdiponectin concentration or its multimeric forms were observed in the offspring of diabetic mothers compared with NGT mothers. The HMW-to-total adiponectin ratio was higher in cord blood than in maternal serum, whereas the MMW- and LMW-to-total adiponectin ratio was lower. Cord blood total and HMW adiponectin levels were positively correlated with birth weight and the ponderal index (PI), whereas cord blood MMW adiponectin was negatively correlated with the PI. In addition, cbAdiponectin and its multimeric forms were correlated with mAdiponectin concentrations. In the multivariate analysis, maternal multimeric forms of adiponectin emerged as independent predictors of cbAdiponectin, its multimers, and their distribution. CONCLUSIONS cbAdiponectin concentrations are independently related to mAdiponectin levels and unrelated to the diagnosis of GDM. Maternal multimeric forms of adiponectin are independent predictors of the concentrations of cbAdiponectin and its multimeric forms at delivery.
Cyclosporin A tubular effects contribute to nephrotoxicity: role for Ca2+ and Mg2+ ions.

BACKGROUND Cyclosporin A (CsA) nephrotoxicity has been attributed primarily to renal haemodynamic alterations caused by afferent arteriolar vasoconstriction. However, CsA nephropathy is also characterized by CsA-induced pre-glomerular disturbances and interstitial injury that may occur independently of haemodynamic changes. Given the high lipophilic activity of CsA, we hypothesized that direct tubular injury is likely to contribute to nephrotoxicity. METHODS To investigate tubular toxicity of CsA, increasing concentrations of CsA (1, 2.5, 10, 25, 50 and 100 micro g/ml) and its vehicle (cremophor) were added to isolated rat proximal tubules (PT). Cell injury was assessed by lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) release. The role of Ca(2+) ions in tubular toxicity and the effect of calcium channel blockers on CsA toxicity were evaluated by measuring intracellular calcium using the fluorescent dye Fura-2 AM. The role of Mg(2+) ions was assessed using high extracellular Mg(2+) medium (2 mM). RESULTS Whereas cremophor alone was not toxic to PT, CsA caused PT injury but only at the highest concentration (100 micro g/ml). After 90 min incubation, LDH was 22.5% in control PT and 41.9% in PT treated with 100 micro g/ml CsA (P < 0.001, n = 11). There was a transient increase in intracellular calcium ([Ca(2+)](i)) after CsA administration. A low calcium medium (100 nM) prevented CsA injury to renal tubules. However, verapamil, but not nifedipine, enhanced cell damage. Only nifedipine completely prevented [Ca(2+)](i) increases following CsA. Finally, a high Mg(2+) medium attenuated CsA-induced injury. CONCLUSION We found that high CsA concentrations caused Ca(2+)- and Mg(2+)-dependent PT injury. Thus, low extracellular Ca(2+) and high Mg(2+) media attenuated CsA-induced tubular injury. Verapamil, but not nifedipine, enhanced CsA tubular toxicity. Therefore, CsA-induced tubular injury may contribute to CsA nephrotoxicity independently of haemodynamic disturbances.
A membrane-cytoskeletal complex containing Na+,K+-ATPase, ankyrin, and fodrin in Madin-Darby canine kidney (MDCK) cells: implications for the biogenesis of epithelial cell polarity

In polarized Madin-Darby canine kidney (MDCK) epithelial cells, ankyrin, and the alpha- and beta-subunits of fodrin are components of the basolateral membrane-cytoskeleton and are colocalized with the Na+,K+-ATPase, a marker protein of the basolateral plasma membrane. Recently, we showed with purified proteins that the Na+,K+-ATPase is competent to bind ankyrin with high affinity and specificity (Nelson, W. J., and P. J. Veshnock. 1987. Nature (Lond.). 328:533-536). In the present study we have sought biochemical evidence for interactions between these proteins in MDCK cells. Proteins were solubilized from MDCK cells with an isotonic buffer containing Triton X-100 and fractionated rapidly in sucrose density gradients. Complexes of cosedimenting proteins were detected by analysis of sucrose gradient fractions in nondenaturing polyacrylamide gels. The results showed that ankyrin and fodrin cosedimented in sucrose gradient. Analysis of the proteins from the sucrose gradient in nondenaturing polyacrylamide gels revealed two distinct ankyrin:fodrin complexes that differed in their relative electrophoretic mobilities; both complexes had electrophoretic mobilities slower than that of purified spectrin heterotetramers. Parallel analysis of the distribution of solubilized Na+,K+-ATPase in sucrose gradients showed that there was a significant overlap with the distribution of ankyrin and fodrin. Analysis by nondenaturing polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis showed that the alpha- and beta- subunits of the Na+,K+-ATPase colocalized with the slower migrating of the two ankyrin:fodrin complexes. The faster migrating ankyrin:fodrin complex did not contain Na+,K+-ATPase. These results indicate strongly that the Na+,K+-ATPase, ankyrin, and fodrin are coextracted from whole MDCK cells as a protein complex. We suggest that the solubilized complex containing these proteins reflects the interaction of the Na+,K+-ATPase, ankyrin, and fodrin in the cell. This interaction may play an important role in the spatial organization of the Na+,K+-ATPase to the basolateral plasma membrane in polarized epithelial cells.