Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Effect of Bilingualism on the Auditory Cortex

Two studies (Golestani et al., 2007; Wong et al., 2008) have reported a positive correlation between the ability to perceive foreign speech sounds and the volume of Heschl's gyrus (HG), the structure that houses the auditory cortex. More precisely, participants with larger left Heschl's gyri learned consonantal or tonal contrasts faster than those with smaller HG. These studies leave open the question of the impact of experience on HG volumes. In the current research, we investigated the effect of early language exposure on Heschl's gyrus by comparing Spanish–Catalan bilinguals who have been exposed to two languages since childhood, to a group of Spanish monolinguals matched in education, socio-economic status, and musical experience. Manual volumetric measurements of HG revealed that bilinguals have, on average, larger Heschl's gyri than monolinguals. This was corroborated, for the left Heschl's gyrus, by a voxel-based morphometry analysis showing larger gray matter volumes in bilinguals than in monolinguals. Since the bilinguals in this study were not a self-selected group, this observation provides a clear demonstration that learning a second language is a causal factor in the increased size of the auditory cortex.
Developing Intention and Entrepreneurial Behavior Through the Mediating Role of Entrepreneurial Self Efficacy Maturity (An Empirical Study on University Students in Semarang, Indonesia)

The objectives of this research are to investigate the effect risk propensity, entrepreneurial knowledge, entrepreneurial experience, instrumental readiness on entrepreneurial self-efficacy maturity: (1) the effect of internal locus of control on entrepreneurial intention; (2) the effect of risk propensity and instrumental readiness on entrepreneurial intention; (3) the effect of entrepreneurial self-efficacy maturity on entrepreneurial intention; (4) the effect of entrepreneurial intention on entrepreneurial behavior. The sample size was 230 entrepreneurial students from various universities in Semarang. The analysis employed a Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) using AMOS v 6. The result demonstrated that: (1) risk propensity, entrepreneurial knowledge, entrepreneurial experience, instrumental readiness significantly and positively influenced on entrepreneurial self-efficacy maturity; (2) risk propensity, locus of control, entrepreneurial knowledge, entrepreneurial experience significantly and positively influenced on entrepreneurial intention; (3) entrepreneurial self-efficacy maturity significantly and positively influenced on entrepreneurial intention; (4) entrepreneurial intention significantly and positively influenced on entrepreneurial behavior; (5) instrumental readiness didn’t significantly influence on entrepreneurial intention. Based on research findings we can conclude that the arise of risk propensity, environmental accessibility, and entrepreneurial learning will arise entrepreneurial self-efficacy maturity and finally will arise intention and entrepreneurial behavior. The significant mediating role of entrepreneurial self-efficacy maturity shows the significant contribution of Social Cognitive Theory and Entrepreneurship Career Development Theory to realize entrepreneurship graduated career development. The findings conclude that the entrepreneurial courses in universities may enlighten university students to realize entrepreneur career.
Synthesis and Cytotoxic Activity of Novel 5-Substituted-1-(β-L-Arabinofuranosyl) Pyrimidine Nucleosides

A series of new 5-halogeno-1-(ß-L-arabinofuranosyl)uracils and their cytosine analogues were synthesized by halogenation of ara-L-uridine and ara-L-cytidine, respectively. The 5-(2-thienyl) and 5-halogenothienyl derivatives of both series were also prepared in excellent yields by Stille coupling followed by halogenation. All of these syntheses were based on benzoyl-protected derivatives. In vitro cytotoxicity experiments carried out using L1210 mouse leukemia cells showed that 5-(2-thienyl)-ara-L-uridine was the most potent compound of the new compounds; the majority of the analogues were not effective up to 200 μM concentrations.
Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics Multi-scale analysis of teleconnection indices : climate noise and nonlinear trend analysis

The multi-scale nature and climate noise properties of teleconnection indices are examined by using the Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) procedure. The EMD procedure allows for the analysis of non-stationary time series to extract physically meaningful intrinsic mode functions (IMF) and nonlinear trends. The climatologically relevant monthly mean teleconnection indices of the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO), the North Pacific index (NP) and the Southern Annular Mode (SAM) are analyzed. The significance of IMFs and trends are tested against the null hypothesis of climate noise. The analysis of surrogate monthly mean time series from a red noise process shows that the EMD procedure is effectively a dyadic filter bank and the IMFs (except the first IMF) are nearly Gaussian distributed. The distribution of the variance contained in IMFs of an ensemble of AR(1) simulations is nearly χ2 distributed. To test the statistical significance of the IMFs of the teleconnection indices and their nonlinear trends we utilize an ensemble of corresponding monthly averaged AR(1) processes, which we refer to as climate noise. Our results indicate that most of the interannual and decadal variability of the analysed teleconnection indices cannot be distinguished from climate noise. The NP and SAM indices have significant nonlinear trends, while the NAO has no significant trend when tested against a climate noise hypothesis.
The eating disorder examination: A semi‐structured interview for the assessment of the specific psychopathology of eating disorders

The specific psychopathology of anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa is complex in form. Although for many purposes self-report questionnaires are a satisfactory measure of this psychopathology, for detailed psychopathological studies and for investigations into the effects of treatment, more sensitive and flexible assessment measures are required. For this reason a semi-structured interview was developed. This interview, the Eating Disorder Examination, is designed to assess the full range of the specific psychopathology of eating disorders, including these patients' extreme concerns about their shape and weight.
CICLe: Conformal In-Context Learning for Largescale Multi-Class Food Risk Classification

Contaminated or adulterated food poses a substantial risk to human health. Given sets of labeled web texts for training, Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing can be applied to automatically detect such risks. We publish a dataset of 7,546 short texts describing public food recall announcements. Each text is manually labeled, on two granularity levels (coarse and fine), for food products and hazards that the recall corresponds to. We describe the dataset and benchmark naive, traditional, and Transformer models. Based on our analysis, Logistic Regression based on a tf-idf representation outperforms RoBERTa and XLM-R on classes with low support. Finally, we discuss different prompting strategies and present an LLM-in-the-loop framework, based on Conformal Prediction, which boosts the performance of the base classifier while reducing energy consumption compared to normal prompting.
Pride Against Prejudice: Transforming Attitudes to Disability

Disabled people throughout the world are increasingly naming and confronting the prejudice which we daily experience, expressing our anger at the discrimination we face, and insisting that our lives have value. This book has grown out of the struggles through which, over the last decade or so, disabled people, and particularly disabled women, have asserted our reality. It is an attempt to analyse the nature of the prejudice we experience and to articulate the growing strength of our pride in ourselves. It has also been within the last decade that I myself developed an identity as a disabled woman, an identity which has been a source of much anger at the prejudice and discrimination that I and other disabled people face. But it is also an identity which has been an increasing source of strength and liberation.
Late-acting self-incompatibility in Capparis retusa (Capparaceae), a species of Chaco woodland in NE Argentina

The reproductive biology of Capparis retusa was studied by means of controlled pollination experiments and fluorescence microscopy observations of post-pollination events. Self-pollinated flowers mostly failed to form fruits despite the fact that self-pollen tubes grew to the ovary and penetrated ovules within 24 h. Since embryo development to globular stage was observed in some self-fertilized ovules it was concluded that control of self-fertilization in this species occurs by some kind of post-zygotic mechanism.
Reducing reoffending: Lessons from psychotherapy and counselling

Focuses on processes and interventions aimed at reducing offending and assisting offenders to reintegrate and desist from crime. A recent strand of inquiry is concerned with research on very early preventative interventions and research on risk factors. Summarises some findings on the effectiveness of psychotherapy and counselling in reducing problematic behaviour and supporting the change process.
Loopy Belief Propagation for Bipartite Maximum Weight b-Matching

We formulate the weighted b-matching objective function as a probability distribution function and prove that belief propagation (BP) on its graphical model converges to the optimum. Standard BP on our graphical model cannot be computed in polynomial time, but we introduce an algebraic method to circumvent the combinatorial message updates. Empirically, the resulting algorithm is on average faster than popular combinatorial implementations, while still scaling at the same asymptotic rate of O(bn). Furthermore, the algorithm shows promising performance in machine learning applications.
Internet Multimedia Search and Mining

Abstract: In this chapter we will present an overview of data fusion , and how it can beapplied to the task of internet multimedia search, speciﬁcally content-based multimediasearch. This chapter will primairly be focused on the weighted combination of rankedresults from diﬀerent retrieval experts, to formulate a ﬁnal ranking for some given content-based information need. The types of data under examination in this chapter are low-level multimedia features, such as colour histograms, edge detection etc. This chapterwill examine the key attributes which impact upon data fusion, and through an empiricalinvestigation present the best formulations that should be used when implementing datafusion. Furthermore this chapter conducts a review of current approaches to handlingthe generation of weights for data fusion, including query-class approaches, discriminativeclassiﬁcation and relevance feedback. Introduction The availability of information resources on the internet has ushered in the ‘Web 2.0’phenomenon, spearheaded by websites which are ‘mashups’. These are websites whichcombine forms of data from multiple external sources in order to fulﬁll some form ofinformation need. Often these forms of data will be multimedia, and allow for the creationof rich, informative sources of information. In many ways, the ‘mashup’ can be seen as anextension of an earlier web phenomenon, the meta-search engine which still exists today,as seen in a search service such as ‘dogpile.com’. The meta-search engine takes in a singleinformation query and combines the outputs of multiple other external search services toformulate a single response to that query. Both of these tasks are executing an operationknown as
Dual drain-line distributed cell design for multi-Gbit/s transversal filter implementations

A transversal filter, based on a novel cell design that enables positive and negative tap gain weight control, is presented. The design process is described and it involves the selection of variables to set the filter bandwidth and propagation characteristics of its artificial transmission lines. Such method allows filter implementations where pulse shape integrity needs to be preserved. Time domain analysis shows that the filter can handle picosecond pulses satisfying the first Nyquist criterion. Results describe a monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) design for 40 Gbit/s systems applications and suitable for both sequence generation and detection in 40 GChip/s CDMA systems.
Electoral Goals and Center-State Transfers: A Theoretical Model and Empirical Evidence from India

We construct a model of redistributive politics where the central government is opportunistic and uses its discretion to make transfers to state governments on the basis of political considerations. These considerations are the alignment between the incumbent parties at the central and state levels and whether a state is a swing state or not. A testable prediction from the model is that a state that is both swing and aligned with the central government is especially likely to receive higher transfers. We test this prediction using Indian data for 14 states from 1974-75 to 1996-97. We find that a state which is both aligned and swing in the last state election is estimated to receive 16% higher transfers than a state which is unaligned and non-swing.
Characterizing the N-Terminal Processing Motif of MHC Class I Ligands1

Most peptide ligands presented by MHC class I molecules are the product of an intracellular pathway comprising protein breakdown in the cytosol, transport into the endoplasmic reticulum, and successive N-terminal trimming events. The efficiency of each of these processes depends on the amino acid sequence of the presented ligand and its precursors. Thus, relating the amino acid composition N-terminal of presented ligands to the sequence specificity of processes in the pathway gives insight into the usage of ligand precursors in vivo. Examining the amino acid composition upstream the true N terminus of MHC class I ligands, we demonstrate the existence of a distinct N-terminal processing motif comprising approximately seven residues and matching the known preferences of proteasome and TAP, two key players in ligand processing. Furthermore, we find that some residues, which are preferred by both TAP and the proteasome, are underrepresented at positions immediately preceding the N terminus of MHC class I ligands. Based on experimentally determined aminopeptidase activities, this pattern suggests trimming next to the final N terminus to take place predominantly in the endoplasmic reticulum.
p38 MAPK Inhibitors Ameliorate Target Organ Damage in Hypertension: Part 1. p38 MAPK-Dependent Endothelial Dysfunction and Hypertension

Numerous mediators, believed to play a role in endothelial dysfunction (e.g., neurohormones, cytokines, hypoxia, and stretch), have been shown to activate p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) in a variety of cell types. The purpose of the present study was to examine the regulation of p38 MAPK in endothelium and its role in endothelial dysfunction and salt sensitivity. In cultured human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs), tumor necrosis factor-α and lipopolysaccharide increased phosphorylation of p38 MAPK (P-p38 MAPK) and increased ICAM-1 expression. Preincubation with highly selective p38 MAPK inhibitors, 1-(1,3-dihydroxyprop-2-yl)-4-(4-fluorophenyl)-5-[2-phenoxypyrimidin-4-yl] imidazole (SB-239063AN) or SB-239063, dose dependently reduced intercellular adhesion molecule-1 expression in HUVECs. In spontaneously hypertensive-stroke prone rats (SHR-SP), P-p38 MAPK was localized by immunohistochemistry to the aortic endothelium and adventitia but was undetectable in aortae from normotensive rats. Introduction of a salt/fat diet (SFD) to the SHR-SP strain induced endothelial dysfunction (ex vivo vascular reactivity analysis), albuminuria, and an increase in blood pressure within 4 weeks. Chronic dietary dosing (approx. 100 mg/kg/day) with SB-239063AN inhibited the SFD diet-induced hypertension. In addition, delayed treatment also significantly improved survival and restored nitric oxide-mediated endothelium-dependent relaxation in SFD-SHR-SPs with established endothelial dysfunction. These results suggest an important role for p38 MAPK in endothelial inflammation and dysfunction as well as providing the first evidence for p38 MAPK-dependent hypertension.
CLSM analysis of the phalloidin‐stained muscle system in Nerilla antennata, Nerillidium sp. and Trochonerilla mobilis (Polychaeta; Nerillidae)

The entire muscle system of Nerilla antennata, Nerillidium sp. and Trochonerilla mobilis was three‐dimensionally reconstructed from whole mounts. In juvenile and adult specimens the F‐actin musculature subset was stained with FITC‐conjugated phalloidin and visualized with a confocal laser scanning microscope (cLSM). The muscle system shows the following major organization: 1) circular muscles are totally absent in the body wall; 2) the longitudinal muscles are confined in two ventral and two dorsal thick bundles; 3) additional longitudinal muscles are located in the ventro‐ and dorsomedian axis; 4) three segmental pairs of ventral oblique muscles elongate into the periphery: the main dorsoventral muscles that run along the body side posterior and dorsally and the anterior and posterior oblique parapodial muscles, which contribute to the ventral chaetal sacs; 5) one segmental pair of dorsal oblique parapodial muscles, contributing to the dorsal chaetal sacs; 6) five to seven small dorsoventral muscles per segment; and 7) complex head and pharyngeal musculature. These results support the belief that absence of circular muscles in the polychaete body wall is much more widely distributed than is currently presumed. © 2004 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The Effects of Resistance Training on Lower and Upper Body Strength Gains in Young Women

It has been reported that hypertrophy gains is greater in upper body compared to lower body, however, there is no consensus that muscular strength gains are greater in upper body than in lower body. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to compare the strength gains between knee extensors and elbow flexors in response to similar resistance training regimens. Fifty five untrained young women (age: 21.6 ± 2.9 years, weight: 58.3 ± 9.0 kg and height: 163.6 ± 7.5 cm (Mean±SD)) participated in the study as volunteers. Resistance training was performed twice a week for 10 weeks. All subjects performed three sets of 8-12 maximum repetitions for leg press, knee flexion, lat pull down and bench press exercises. Unilateral knee extensors and elbow flexors peak torque (PT) were measured before and after the training period by performing two sets of four repetitions at 60°s -1 , on an isokinetic dynamometer. There were significant increases in PT for both elbow flexors (11.74% [8.0, 17.7], p 0.05). However, there was no correlation between gains in knee extensors and elbow flexors PT. The analysis of knee extensors PT lead to the formation of two clusters groups: 1) High responders (n=10): 28.29 ± 8.74% and 2) Low-responders (n=37): 7.94 ± 5.95%. Both groups had significant increases in knee extensors PT, however, increases in the high responders were higher than in low responders (p< 0.05). These results suggest that upper- and lower body muscles present similar strength gains after similar resistance training regimens in untrained young women, although individual muscle response may vary in upper and lower body muscles. Keywords: Knee extensors, Elbow flexors, Peak torque
Design of provably good low-density parity check codes

We design sequences of low-density parity check codes that provably perform at rates extremely close to the Shannon capacity. These codes are built from highly irregular bipartite graphs with carefully chosen degree patterns on both sides. We further show that under suitable conditions the message densities fulfil a certain symmetry condition which we call the consistency condition and we present a stability condition which is the most powerful tool to date to bound/determine the threshold of a given family of low-density parity check codes.
DRAWING BY EAR: INTERPRETING SONIFIED LINE GRAPHS

The research presented here describes a pilot study into the interpretation of sonified line graphs containing two data series. The experiment aimed to discover the level of accuracy with which sighted people were able to draw sketches of the graphs after listening to them. In addition, it aimed to identify any differences in performance when the graphs were presented using different combinations of instruments—either with piano representing both data series (same-instruments condition), or with piano representing one data series and trumpet representing the other (different-instruments condition). The drawings were evaluated by calculating the percentage of key features present. The results showed that accuracy was high (over 80% on average) in both conditions, but found no significant differences between the two. There were indications of some differences between the two conditions, but a larger study is necessary to discover whether these are significant. The results indicate that graph sonification systems should allow users to choose between these two presentation modes, depending on their preference and current task. The study showed that sonified graphs containing two data series can be interpreted, and drawn, by sighted people, and that evaluation with blind users (our target users) would be worthwhile.
Timing of HAART defines the integrity of memory B cells and the longevity of humoral responses in HIV-1 vertically-infected children

HIV-1 infection induces a progressive disruption of the B cell compartment impairing long-term immune responses to routine immunizations. Depletion of specific memory B cell pools occurs during the 1st stages of the infection and cannot be reestablished by antiretroviral treatment. We reasoned that an early control of viral replication through treatment could preserve the normal development of the memory B cell compartment and responses to routine childhood vaccines. Accordingly, we evaluated the effects of different highly-active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) schedules in 70 HIV-1 vertically-infected pediatric subjects by B cell phenotypic analyses, antigen-specific B cell enzyme-linked immunosorbent spot (ELISpot) and ELISA for common vaccination and HIV-1 antigens. Initiation of HAART within the 1st year of life permits the normal development and maintenance of the memory B cell compartment. On the contrary, memory B cells from patients treated later in time are remarkably reduced and their function is compromised regardless of viral control. A cause for concern is that both late-treated HIV-1 controllers and noncontrollers loose protective antibody titers against common vaccination antigens. Timing of HAART initiation is the major factor predicting the longevity of B cell responses in vaccinated HIV-1-infected children.