Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Physiological and Musico-Acoustic Correlates of the Chill Response

LISTENING TO MUSIC OFTEN EVOKES affective states that are accompanied by distinctive subjective experiences and specific physiological changes. In this study, we examined the phenomenon of chills and its concomitant physiological reactions. In a preliminary study, experimenter-selected music excerpts were played to 27 participants, and musical passages especially apt toelicit chill experiences were identified on the basis of subjective ratings. In a subsequent study with 27 new participants, subjective chill experiences and physiological responses were recorded in real time. The highest numbers of chills were experienced during musical passages characterized by similar dynamic, harmonic, and structural characteristics, which coincided with distinct patterns of heart rate and skin conductance increases. For participants experiencing a chill during these passages, increases in skin conductance were significantly larger than for participants without chills. The heart rate response did not differ between groups.
A brief motivational interviewing intervention with prisoners: when you lead a horse to water, can it drink for itself?

Offenders’ readiness to engage in changes that will reduce their risk of reoffending is now recognized to be as important as the design and delivery of programmes that support such change. Interest is growing in both how to increase engagement in change processes, and how to measure any improvements in engagement. This study evaluated the effects of a brief offending-focused motivational interviewing (MI) intervention on reconviction in male prisoners serving sentences for diverse crimes. Men who undertook MI were significantly less likely to be reconvicted than those who did not. The results also served to validate a stage-based measure of readiness to change derived from Prochaska and DiClemente's Transtheoretical Model. Prisoners who were offered MI increased their readiness to change by an average of one stage, while the scores of men who were not remained unchanged. Furthermore – whether men undertook MI or not – change in stage of change predicted reconviction. This was a high-risk sample, making the results intriguing for at least two reasons. First, reductions in recidivism are usually achieved only with much more intensive programmes for high-risk men. Second, according to ‘traditional’ cognitive–behavioural rehabilitation theory, programmes need to target change in dynamic risk factors directly to reduce reconviction risk. That these results were obtained with men whose initial motivation was low, and in the absence of any ‘traditional’ criminogenic rehabilitation, raises questions about whether there is more than one mechanism involved in desistance.
Low Vision: A Preliminary Exploration of Its Impact on the Daily Lives of Older Women and Perceived Constraints to Service Use

Although low vision in later life has the potential to negatively impact on all areas of occupational performance and quality of life, estimates suggest that less than one-tenth of older adults with low vision currently use low-vision rehabilitation services (LVRS) designed to increase occupational performance. This phenomenological study examines the lived experience of 4 older adults with low vision who are not using LVRS. Themes relate to maintaining daily life and independence, coping with vision loss, and avoiding LVRS. Gaps in current low-vision service provision and suggestions for future service delivery are identified.
Making judgements about students making work: Lecturers’ assessment practices in art and design

This research study explores the assessment practices in two higher education art and design departments. The key aim of this research was to explore art and design studio assessment practices as lived and experienced by art and design lecturers. This work draws on two bodies of pre-existing research. Firstly this study adopted methodological approaches that have been employed to good effect to explore assessment in text based subjects (think aloud) and moderation mark agreement (observation). Secondly the study builds on existing research into the assessment of creative practice. By applying thinking aloud methodologies in a creative practice assessment context the authors seek to illuminate the ‘in practice’, rather than espoused, assessment approaches adopted. The analysis suggests that lecturers in the study employed three macro conceptions of quality to support the judgement process, namely the demonstration of significant learning over time, the demonstration of effective studentship and the presentation of meaningful art/design work.
The effect of word length on f0 intervals: Evidence from North Kyungsang children

The present experiment investigated the effect of word length on the length of f0 intervals for North Kyungsang children. In order to find out the lengths of the f0 intervals, the f0 values at the midpoints of vowels in words were measured. F0 estimates were computed as intervals consistent with the logarithmic scale corresponding to the number of syllables in the words. The results indicated that the mean f0 intervals in words of different lengths showed a significant difference for the HH in HH vs. HHL and the LH in LH vs. LLH for North Kyungsang children. Adult speakers from the North Kyungsang region significantly differed only within the HH in HH vs. HHL. Adult speakers made a noticeable contribution in this characteristic from the children. The result of the adult study was presented to confirm whether the children used a North Kyungsang dialect. With respect to individual speaker differences, the North Kyungsang children showed more or less consistent patterns in quantile-quantile plots for the HH vs. HHL, but for the HL vs. LHL and LH vs. LLH, there were more variations than for the HH vs. HHL. The individual speakers` variation was the largest for the HL vs. LHL and the smallest for HH vs. HHL. Considering these results, the effect of word length on f0 intervals tended to show pitch accent-type-specific characteristics in the process of prosodic acquisition.
A Rigidifying Salt-Bridge Favors the Activity of Thermophilic Enzyme at High Temperatures at the Expense of Low-Temperature Activity

Background Thermophilic enzymes are often less active than their mesophilic homologues at low temperatures. One hypothesis to explain this observation is that the extra stabilizing interactions increase the rigidity of thermophilic enzymes and hence reduce their activity. Here we employed a thermophilic acylphosphatase from Pyrococcus horikoshii and its homologous mesophilic acylphosphatase from human as a model to study how local rigidity of an active-site residue affects the enzymatic activity. Methods and Findings Acylphosphatases have a unique structural feature that its conserved active-site arginine residue forms a salt-bridge with the C-terminal carboxyl group only in thermophilic acylphosphatases, but not in mesophilic acylphosphatases. We perturbed the local rigidity of this active-site residue by removing the salt-bridge in the thermophilic acylphosphatase and by introducing the salt-bridge in the mesophilic homologue. The mutagenesis design was confirmed by x-ray crystallography. Removing the salt-bridge in the thermophilic enzyme lowered the activation energy that decreased the activation enthalpy and entropy. Conversely, the introduction of the salt-bridge to the mesophilic homologue increased the activation energy and resulted in increases in both activation enthalpy and entropy. Revealed by molecular dynamics simulations, the unrestrained arginine residue can populate more rotamer conformations, and the loss of this conformational freedom upon the formation of transition state justified the observed reduction in activation entropy. Conclusions Our results support the conclusion that restricting the active-site flexibility entropically favors the enzymatic activity at high temperatures. However, the accompanying enthalpy-entropy compensation leads to a stronger temperature-dependency of the enzymatic activity, which explains the less active nature of the thermophilic enzymes at low temperatures.
Neural activations at the junction of the inferior frontal sulcus and the inferior precentral sulcus: Interindividual variability, reliability, and association with sulcal morphology

The sulcal morphology of the human frontal lobe is highly variable. Although the structural images usually acquired in functional magnetic resonance imaging studies provide information about this interindividual variability, this information is only rarely used to relate structure and function. Here, we investigated the spatial relationship between posterior frontolateral activations in a task‐switching paradigm and the junction of the inferior frontal sulcus and the inferior precentral sulcus (inferior frontal junction, IFJ) on an individual‐subject basis. Results show that, although variable in terms of stereotaxic coordinates, the posterior frontolateral activations observed in task‐switching are consistently and reliably located at the IFJ in the brains of individual participants. The IFJ shares such consistent localization with other nonprimary areas as motion‐sensitive area V5/MT and the frontal eye field. Building on tension‐based models of morphogenesis, this structure–function correspondence might indicate that the cytoarchitectonic area underlying activations of the IFJ develops at early stages of cortical folding. Hum Brain Mapp, 2009. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Acute Immune Response to Mycobacterium massiliense in C57BL/6 and BALB/c Mice

ABSTRACT Mycobacterium massiliense is an environmental opportunistic pathogen that has been associated with soft tissue infection after minor surgery. We studied the acute immune response of C57BL/6 and BALB/c mice infected intravenously with 106 CFU of an M. massiliense strain isolated from a nosocomial infection in Brazil. The results presented here show that M. massiliense is virulent and pathogenic to both C57BL/6 and BALB/c mice, inducing a granulomatous inflammatory reaction that involves the activation of macrophages, dendritic cells, and natural killer cells induced by gamma interferon and interleukin-17 (IL-17) in C57BL/6 mice and by IL-12 in BALB/c mice.
Interests, Activities and Hobbies of High and Low Creative Women Musicians During Childhood, Adolescent and College Years

The foregoing, an excerpt from a letter written by a high creative (HIC) subject a few days after participating in the writer’s research project, drew particular attention to assumptions that were to be tested. Initial results (1979) indicated that in spite of richer opportunities for music experiences in their schools, HIC women musicians participated significantly less throughout school years as compared to their LOC (lesser creative) counterparts and continued to avoid music groups during their undergraduate years. Such a lack of many and varied experiences, it was posed, may narrow the musical horizons of HIC
Can a new design of pneumatic compression device reduce variations in delivered therapy for the mechanical prophylaxis of thromboembolic disease after total hip arthroplasty?

BACKGROUND Compression devices have been shown to prevent thromboembolic disease. However, the pressures generated may not be the same as the ones recommended by the manufacturer. The purpose of this study is to investigate a new sequential compression device with feedback to maintain optimal therapy, and to determine whether therapy is improved with this new device. PATIENTS AND METHOD A series of 50 patients undergoing elective total hip arthroplasty at a major tertiary-care hospital with a special interest in joint replacement were enrolled prospectively. In addition to pharmacological prophylaxis for thromboembolic disease, all patients received compression from a modified device. Maximum pressures generated and the rate of pressure rise in each of the 3 compartments within the device sleeves were measured and the results compared with data from historical controls. RESULTS We considered therapy to be ideal when in a particular compression cycle all chambers of both right and left sleeves reach within 10% of their target pressures at within 10% of their target pressure rise rates. The average patient received this ideal therapy 88% of the time that the new trial sequential compression device was operating. This represents a dramatic improvement over previous devices. CONCLUSIONS The new device allows dramatically improved pressures within the device because of a feedback loop that allows dynamic control of each chamber's pressure. Improved consistency of delivery should make it easier to accurately assess the true benefits of mechanical prophylaxis with a sequential compression device.
CALCIUM ENHANCES ANTI - INFLAMMATORY ACTIVITY OF AS PIRIN

The objective of present study is to evaluate the e ffects of calcium carbonate and calcium gluconate on acute and subacute inflammation and to study their possible interactions with Aspirin. Calcium carbonate (10 mg/kg) and calcium gluconate (5 mg/kg) were administ ered individually and also co - administered along with sub therapeutic dose Aspirin (50mg/kg) to study their interaction. The inflammation was induced by carrageenan or a foreign body. Both calcium carbonate and calcium gluconate could not show significant anti - inflammatory activity on their own in acute as well as subacute inflammation models. Aspirin at sub - anti - inflammatory dose (50mg/Kg) when co administered along with calcium salts produced the significant anti - inflammatory response which was comparable to anti - inflammatory response of aspirin at therapeutic dose (200mg/Kg). Also co - adminostration minimized the gastro - toxicity of aspirin.
Ghost pruning for people localization in overlapping multicamera systems

In this paper, we propose a novel ghost pruning technique for multicamera people localization in overlapping scenarios. First, synergy map is obtained from multiplanar projections across multiple overlapping cameras. Second, occupancy map is generated by back projection from the synergy map across various image layers. This back projected occupancy map is combined with constraints to remove ghosts. The novelty of this paper is the introduction of an intuitive ghost pruning technique, which does not require any temporal information. Experiments on a sequence of the PETS 2009 dataset show significant reduction in the number of ghosts. The purpose and novelty of this paper is focused to the ghost pruning module but detection metrics show results comparable to those of the complete, state-of-the-art multicamera object detection systems.
Mechanistic Understanding of an Altered Fidelity Simian Immunodeficiency Virus Reverse Transcriptase Mutation, V148I, Identified in a Pig-tailed Macaque*

We have recently reported that the reverse transcriptase (RT) of SIVMNE 170 (170), which is a representative viral clone of the late symptomatic phase of infection with the parental strain, SIVMNE CL8 (CL8), has a largely increased fidelity, compared with the CL8 RT. In the present study, we analyzed the mechanistic alterations of the high fidelity 170 RT variant. First, we found that among several 170 RT mutations, only one, V148I, is solely responsible for the fidelity increase over the CL8 RT. This V148I mutation lies near the Gln-151 residue that we recently found is important to the low fidelity of RT and the binding of incoming dNTPs. Second, we compared dNTP binding affinity (Kd) and catalysis (kpol) of the CL8 RT and the CL8-V148I RT using pre-steady state kinetic analysis. In this experiment, the high fidelity CL8-V148I RT has largely decreased binding to both correct and incorrect dNTP without altering kpol. The fidelity increase imparted by the V148I mutation is likely because of the major reduction seen in RT binding to dNTPs. This parallels our findings with the Q151N mutant. Third, site-directed mutagenesis targeting amino acid residue 148 has revealed that a valine amino acid at this position is essential to RT infidelity. Based on these findings, we discuss possible structural impacts of residue 148 (and mutations at this site) on the interaction of RT with incoming dNTPs and infer how alterations in these properties may relate to viral replication and fitness.
Tractable Hypergraph Properties for Constraint Satisfaction and Conjunctive Queries

An important question in the study of constraint satisfaction problems (CSP) is understanding how the graph or hypergraph describing the incidence structure of the constraints influences the complexity of the problem. For binary CSP instances (that is, where each constraint involves only two variables), the situation is well understood: the complexity of the problem essentially depends on the treewidth of the graph of the constraints [Grohe 2007; Marx 2010b]. However, this is not the correct answer if constraints with unbounded number of variables are allowed, and in particular, for CSP instances arising from query evaluation problems in database theory. Formally, if H is a class of hypergraphs, then let CSP(H) be CSP restricted to instances whose hypergraph is in H. Our goal is to characterize those classes of hypergraphs for which CSP(H) is polynomial-time solvable or fixed-parameter tractable, parameterized by the number of variables. Note that in the applications related to database query evaluation, we usually assume that the number of variables is much smaller than the size of the instance, thus parameterization by the number of variables is a meaningful question. The most general known property of H that makes CSP(H) polynomial-time solvable is bounded fractional hypertree width. Here we introduce a new hypergraph measure called submodular width, and show that bounded submodular width of H (which is a strictly more general property than bounded fractional hypertree width) implies that CSP(H) is fixed-parameter tractable. In a matching hardness result, we show that if H has unbounded submodular width, then CSP(H) is not fixed-parameter tractable (and hence not polynomial-time solvable), unless the Exponential Time Hypothesis (ETH) fails. The algorithmic result uses tree decompositions in a novel way: instead of using a single decomposition depending on the hypergraph, the instance is split into a set of instances (all on the same set of variables as the original instance), and then the new instances are solved by choosing a different tree decomposition for each of them. The reason why this strategy works is that the splitting can be done in such a way that the new instances are “uniform” with respect to the number extensions of partial solutions, and therefore the number of partial solutions can be described by a submodular function. For the hardness result, we prove via a series of combinatorial results that if a hypergraph H has large submodular width, then a 3SAT instance can be efficiently simulated by a CSP instance whose hypergraph is H. To prove these combinatorial results, we need to develop a theory of (multicommodity) flows on hypergraphs and vertex separators in the case when the function b(S) defining the cost of separator S is submodular, which can be of independent interest.
Security in Wireless Sensor Networks using Cryptographic Techniques

Wireless sensor networks consist of autonomous sensor nodes attached to one or more base stations.As Wireless sensor networks continues to grow,they become vulnerable to attacks and hence the need for effective security mechanisms.Identification of suitable cryptography for wireless sensor networks is an important challenge due to limitation of energy,computation capability and storage resources of the sensor nodes.Symmetric based cryptographic schemes donot scale well when the number of sensor nodes increases.Hence public key based schemes are widely used.We present here two public - key based algorithms, RSA and Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) and found out that ECC have a significant advantage over RSA as it reduces the computation time and also the amount of data transmitted and stored.
Image processing on compressed data for large video databases

This paper presents a novel approach to processing encoded video sequences prior to decoding. Scene changes may be easily detected using DCT coefficients in JPEG and MPEG encoded video sequences. In addition, by analyzing the DCT coefficients, regions of interest may be isolated prior to decompression, increasing efficiency of any subsequent image processing steps, such as edge detection. The results are currently used in a video browser, and are part of an ongoing research project in creating large video databases. The procedure is presented in detail and several examples are exhibited.
A cohort-sequential multivariate latent growth curve analysis of normative CBCL aggressive and delinquent problem behavior: Associations with harsh discipline and gender

The aim of this study was to examine the normative developmental trajectories of aggressive and delinquent behavior in young children. Cohort-sequential univariate latent growth modeling (LGM) analyses were employed to conceptualize and analyze intraindividual changes in children's aggressive and delinquent behavior and interindividual differences in these changes. A multivariate model was tested that related the two developmental trajectories to each other and to harsh discipline. The longitudinal data included mother and father ratings on the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) (Achenbach, 1991), the “Leuvens Instrument voor Coërcief Opvoedingsgedrag” (Leuvens Instrument of Coercive Parenting Behavior, LICO) (Hellinckx et al., 2000) and the Parenting Scale (Arnold, O'Leary, Wolff, & Acker, 1993) of 674 school-aged boys and girls of a proportional stratified general population sample, assessed annually for three years. A significant nonlinear decline in aggressive and a significant linear decline in delinquent problem behavior were found both in the mother and in the father ratings. A multivariate latent growth analysis indicated that trajectories in aggressive and delinquent problem behavior were positively associated. The association was stronger for boys than for girls. Parenting behaviors were differentially related to children's aggressive and delinquent problem behavior. Coercion was significantly related to aggressive behavior but not to delinquent behavior. Higher scores on coercion were related to higher initial levels and a slower decrease of aggressive behavior. High scores on overreactivity were associated with higher initial levels of aggressive and delinquent problem behavior but not with the growth rates. Boys were higher than girls in initial status. Conversely, the rate of change was not related to gender. The results were replicated in the father reports.