Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Self-Esteem and Empathy in Sighted and Visually Impaired

Self-esteem and empathy are important components of any child's development. As children develop a sense of self and interact with and gain experience in the world, their self-esteem is affected. Self-esteem has been defined as the value that an individual places on his or her own characteristics, qualities, abilities, and actions (Woolfolk, 2001). Baumrind (1991) suggested that the development of self-esteem (including self-regulation and competence) in children and adolescents requires an environment that provides both the freedom to explore and experiment and protection from danger. Individuals with high self-esteem tend to have confidence in their own abilities to make decisions, expectations for successful outcomes, a willingness to experience new things, and sensitivity to others' needs and to have relationships that are characterized by respect and dignity (Tuttle & Tuttle, 2004). Therefore, the manner in which a disability interacts with the processes and factors that are involved in the development of self-esteem is an important area of research.
Current Challenges in Development of a Database of Three-Dimensional Chemical Structures

We are developing a database named 3DMET, a three-dimensional structure database of natural metabolites. There are two major impediments to the creation of 3D chemical structures from a set of planar structure drawings: the limited accuracy of computer programs and insufficient human resources for manual curation. We have tested some 2D–3D converters to convert 2D structure files from external databases. These automatic conversion processes yielded an excessive number of improper conversions. To ascertain the quality of the conversions, we compared IUPAC Chemical Identifier and canonical SMILES notations before and after conversion. Structures whose notations correspond to each other were regarded as a correct conversion in our present work. We found that chiral inversion is the most serious factor during the improper conversion. In the current stage of our database construction, published books or articles have been resources for additions to our database. Chemicals are usually drawn as pictures on the paper. To save human resources, an optical structure reader was introduced. The program was quite useful but some particular errors were observed during our operation. We hope our trials for producing correct 3D structures will help other developers of chemical programs and curators of chemical databases.
Schistosome infection in deer mice (Peromyscus maniculatus): impacts on host physiology, behavior and energetics

SUMMARY Animals routinely encounter environmental stressors and may employ phenotypic plasticity to compensate for the costs of these perturbations. Parasites represent an ecologically important stressor for animals, which may induce host plasticity. The present study examined the effects of a trematode parasite, Schistosomatium douthitti, on deer mouse (Peromyscus maniculatus) physiology, behavior and energetics. Measures were taken to assess direct parasite pathology as well as potential host plasticity used to reduce the costs of these pathologies. Parasitized mice had increased liver and spleen masses, as well as decreased liver protein synthesis. Parasitism also led to increased gastrointestinal (GI) mass, either directly due to parasite presence or as host compensation for decreased GI function. No additional plasticity was recorded - infected animals did not consume more food, decrease in body mass or reduce their activity. Parasitism led to reduced thermoregulation during short-term cold exposure, indicating that there may be fitness costs of parasitism. There were no changes in the other measures of energetics taken here, namely basal metabolic rate (BMR) and cold-induced maximal metabolic rate (MRmax). Together, the results suggest that many costs of parasite infection are largely ameliorated through physiological or morphological compensatory mechanisms.
Synthesis filter bank optimization in two-dimensional separable subband coding systems

Subband coding is a popular and well established technique used in visual communications, such as image and video transmission. In the absence of quantization and transmission errors, the analysis and synthesis filters in a subband coding scheme can be designed to obtain perfect reconstruction of the input signal, but this is no longer the optimal solution in the presence of quantization of the subband coefficients. We presuppose the use of a two-dimensional (2-D) separable subband scheme and we address the problem of designing, for a given analysis filter bank and assuming uniform quantization of the subband coefficients, the set of row and column synthesis filters that minimize the mean squared reconstruction error at the output of the subband system. Since the corresponding optimization problem is inherently nonlinear, we propose a suboptimal solution that extends a one-dimensional (l-D) optimal filter design procedure, already presented in the literature, to a 2-D separable synthesis filter bank. The separable 2-D extension is not trivial, since the processing in one direction, e.g., the rows, alters the statistics of the signals for the design of the filters in the other direction, e.g., the columns. To further simplify the filter design, we propose to model the input image as a 2-D separable Markov process plus an additive white component. Several design examples using both synthetic signals and real world images are presented, showing that the filters designed using the proposed technique can give a significant gain with respect to the perfect reconstruction solution, especially when the dither technique is used for quantization. The simulation results also show that the proposed image model can be conveniently used in the synthesis filter design procedure.
BUSINESS FAILURE PREDICTION WITH SUPPORT VECTOR MACHINES AND NEURAL NETWORKS : A COMPARATIVE STUDY

Bankruptcy prediction has attracted a lot of research interests in previous literature, and recent studies have shown that artificial neural networks (ANN) method achieved better performance than traditional statistical ones. ANN approaches have, however, suffered from difficulties with generalization, producing models that can overfit the data. This paper employs a relatively new machine learning technique, support vector machines (SVM), to the bankruptcy prediction problem in an attempt to provide a model with better explanatory power. To evaluate the prediction accuracy of SVM, we compare its performance with three-layer fully connected backpropagation neural networks (BNN). The experiment results show that SVM outperforms the BNN.
PRO-SELF-ORIENTATION AND PREFERENCE FOR DECEITFUL STRATEGIES: SOCIAL VALUE ORIENTATION, DISPOSITIONAL AND BEHAVIOURAL CORRELATES OF ECONOMIC OPPORTUNISM

The purpose of this paper is to explore some dispositional and behavioral correlates of economic unfairness. In particular, this paper aims to explore: a) if opportunistic attitudes as measured by an economic opportunism scale are positively correlated to pro-self dispositions like narcissism, psychopathy and pro-self social value orientation, b) the degree to which opportunistic attitudes correlate with non-cooperative behavior towards unknown partners in a sequential game. Confirming our hypotheses, a first study (n = 125) showed that, opportunistic attitudes are negatively correlated with pro-social and positively correlated with pro-self social value orientation, as well as with narcissism and primary psychopathy. A second study (n = 77) showed that opportunistic attitudes are negatively correlated to cooperative economic behavior in a game situation. These findings highlight the affinities between preference for non-cooperative economic strategies and both pro-self social value orientation and self-focusing dispositional variables, as well as self-interest seeking behavior in a game situation.
Identifying Regional Dialects in On‐Line Social Media

Electronic social media offers new opportunities for informal communication in written language, while at the same time, providing new datasets that allow researchers to document dialect variation from records of natural communication among millions of individuals. The unprecedented scale of this data enables the application of quantitative methods to automatically discover the lexical variables that distinguish the language of geographical areas such as cities. This can be paired with the segmentation of geographical space into dialect regions, within the context of a single joint statistical model — thus simultaneously identifying coherent dialect regions and the words that distinguish them. Finally, a diachronic analysis reveals rapid changes in the geographical distribution of these lexical features, suggesting that statistical analysis of social media may offer new insights on the diffusion of lexical change.
Refugia-overlooked as perhaps the most potent factor concerning the development of anthelmintic resistance

VAN WYK J.A. 2001. Refugia-overlooked as perhaps the most potent factor concerning the development of anthelmintic resistance. Onderstepoort Journal of Veterinary Research, 68:55-67 Anthelmintic resistance involving particularly the gastro intestinal nematodes of small rum inants is escalating globally, to the extent that in certain countries, such as South Africa, it has already reached alarming proportions, and is affecting practically all the anthelm intics. In th is paper it is argued that the high levels of resistance in nematodes of veterinary importance indicate that the drugs have been used incorrectly. It is suggested that the phenomenon of refugia plays a much more important ro le in the selection of anthelmintic res istance than other phenomena that are more frequently investigated and recommended for counteracting it, such as reduced drenching frequency and avoiding under-dosing. While refugia is commonly mentioned in passing in most papers on anthelmintic res istance, it is, almost without exception , not incorporated in the final controll management proposals. On the strength of the conclusions arrived at in the present paper strategies such as the drench-andmove system in which all the animals in a flock are drenched before they are moved to pastures contain ing few or no worms in refugia, and the system of strategic drenching on safe pastures should be condemned and never recommended. If such strategies are indeed unavoidable, the farmer should be warned that the farming system would probably not be sustainable even in the short term, in view of the generally high levels of resistance already present in most of the important sheep-producing regions. Farmers should be educated to consider refugia above all else when designing worm man-
Circadian Consequence of Socio-Sexual Interactions in Fruit Flies Drosophila melanogaster

In fruit flies Drosophila melanogaster, courtship is an elaborate ritual comprising chasing, dancing and singing by males to lure females for mating. Courtship interactions peak in the night and heterosexual couples display enhanced nighttime activity. What we do not know is if such socio-sexual interactions (SSI) leave long-lasting after-effects on circadian clock(s). Here we report the results of our study aimed at examining the after-effects of SSI (as a result of co-habitation of males and females in groups) between males and females on their circadian locomotor activity rhythm. Males undergo reduction in the evening activity peak and lengthening of circadian period, while females show a decrease in overall activity. Such after-effects, at least in males, require functional circadian clocks during SSI as loss-of-function clock mutants and wild type flies interacting under continuous light (LL), do not display them. Interestingly, males with electrically silenced Pigment Dispersing Factor (PDF)-positive ventral lateral (LNv) clock neurons continue to show SSI mediated reduction in evening activity peak, suggesting that the LNv clock neurons are dispensable for SSI mediated after-effects on locomotor activity rhythm. Such after-effects in females may not be clock-dependent because clock manipulated females with prior exposure to males show decrease in overall activity, more or less similar to rhythmic wild type females. The expression of SSI mediated after-effects requires a functional olfactory system in males because males with compromised olfactory ability do not display them. These results suggest that SSI causes male-specific, long-lasting changes in the circadian clocks of Drosophila, which requires the presence of functional clocks and intact olfactory ability in males.
Magnetic Field Confinement in the Solar Corona. II. Field-Plasma Interaction

The numerical study of axisymmetric force-free magnetic fields in the unbounded space outside a unit sphere, presented in the first paper of this series, is extended to treat twisted fields in static equilibrium with plasma pressure and weight in a polytropic atmosphere. The study considers dipolar magnetic fields all sharing the same boundary flux distribution on the unit sphere and characterized with (1) a nonlinear distribution of its azimuthal field component expressed as a power of the poloidal flux function and (2) a plasma distribution varying linearly with the poloidal flux function. Nonlinear boundary value problems are solved numerically to generate a continuum of solutions with two parameters to control the total azimuthal flux and the strength of field-plasma interaction. The study includes the force-free fields of the first paper as a special case. Models with polytropic indices Γ = 7/6, 14/11 are treated to show the interplay between the degree of magnetic twist and hydrostatic stratification in determining atmospheric structures, with particular interests in magnetic flux ropes and their storage of magnetic energy and azimuthal flux at levels above those bounds applicable to force-free fields. The concluding discussion relates physical insights from the study to the solar corona and the energetics of coronal mass ejections and flares.
CXCR4, a key modulator of vascular progenitor cells.

A growing body of evidence suggests that circulating progenitors participate in vascular healing and remodeling under physiological and pathological conditions (Figure). 1–3 It is believed that the majority of vascular progenitor cells originate from the bone marrow. Stem cells within the bone marrow usually exist in a quiescent state. Specific signals stimulate the stem cells to differentiate and move to systemic circulation (Mobilization). Progenitors are recruited and stay at the site of vascular repair or neovascularization (Homing), where they differentiate into endothelial-like cells or smooth muscle–like cells (Differentiation) and proliferate (Proliferation). The molecular processes leading to their mobilization from the bone marrow and homing to the sites of vascular remodeling or neovascularization are not fully understood.4,5 In the current issue of Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology , two articles6,7 provide new insights into the essential role of CXCR4, the receptor for stromal cell–derived factor-1 (SDF-1) for the mobilization and the recruitment of bone marrow (BM)-derived cells. CXCR4 is notably expressed on hematopoietic stem cells and has previously been shown to play a key role in their homing and mobilization.8 Activation of this G protein–coupled 7-transmembrane receptor induces adhesion molecules on the hematopoietic progenitor/stem cell surface thereby enhancing their homing capacities9 and regulating their proliferation.10 Contribution of bone marrow–derived cells to neointima formation and angiogenesis. On severe vascular injury, bone marrow–derived cells are …
INFLAMMATION AND INFLAMMATORY BOWEL DISEASE Budesonide treatment of collagenous colitis: a randomised, double blind, placebo controlled trial with morphometric analysis

Background: Collagenous colitis is characterised by diarrhoea, lymphocytic inflammation, and a thickened subepithelial collagen layer in the colorectal mucosa. No standard treatment of the disease is established. Aims: To investigate the clinical and histological effect of oral budesonide (Entocort, AstraZeneca) in the treatment of collagenous colitis. Patients: Twenty patients with collagenous colitis (collagen layer >10 μm) and diarrhoea (>4 stools/ day and/or stool weight >200 g/day). Methods: A randomised, double blind, placebo controlled trial of budesonide treatment. Patients were randomised to placebo or budesonide for eight weeks. Stool frequency and stool weight were registered before and after treatment. Sigmoidoscopy was performed before and after treatment, and biopsies at fixed locations were obtained for morphometric analysis. Results: Ten patients were randomised to budesonide and 10 to placebo. All 10 patients receiving budesonide had a clinical response compared with two in the placebo group (p<0.001). In the budesonide group, stool weight was reduced from 574 g/day to 200 g/day and stool frequency was reduced from 6.2/day to 1.9/day (p<0.01). The histological inflammation grade in the sigmoid mucosa and the thickness of the collagen layer were significantly reduced. A correlation between the grade of inflammation as well as collagen layer thickness and stool weight was found. No side effects were reported. Eight of 10 patients had relapse of symptoms within eight weeks after stopping treatment. Conclusions: Budesonide is a highly effective and well tolerated treatment of collagenous colitis. There is a high risk of relapse after stopping eight weeks of treatment.
Process Discovery under Precedence Constraints

Process discovery has emerged as a powerful approach to support the analysis and the design of complex processes. It consists of analyzing a set of traces registering the sequence of tasks performed along several enactments of a transactional system, in order to build a process model that can explain all the episodes recorded over them. An approach to accomplish this task is presented that can benefit from the background knowledge that, in many cases, is available to the analysts taking care of the process (re-)design. The approach is based on encoding the information gathered from the log and the (possibly) given background knowledge in terms of precedence constraints, that is, of constraints over the topology of the resulting process models. Mining algorithms are eventually formulated in terms of reasoning problems over precedence constraints, and the computational complexity of such problems is thoroughly analyzed by tracing their tractability frontier. Solution algorithms are proposed and their properties analyzed. These algorithms have been implemented in a prototype system, and results of a thorough experimental activity are discussed.
Sources of individual variation in plasma testosterone levels

The steroid hormone testosterone (T) plays a central role in the regulation of breeding in males, because many physiological, morphological and behavioural traits related to reproduction are T dependent. Moreover, in many seasonally breeding vertebrates, male plasma T levels typically show a pronounced peak during the breeding season. While such population-level patterns are fairly well worked out, the sources and the implications of the large variability in individual T levels within the seasonal cycle remain surprisingly little understood. Understanding the potential sources of individual variation in T levels is important for behavioural and evolutionary ecologists, for at least two reasons. First, in ‘honest signalling’ theory, T is hypothesized to play a critical role as the assumed factor that enforces honesty of the expression of sexually selected quality indicators. Second, T is often considered a key mediator of central life-history trade-offs, such as investment in survival versus reproduction or in mating versus parental care. Here, we discuss the patterns of within- and between-individual variation in male plasma T levels in free-living populations of birds. We argue that it is unclear whether this variability mainly reflects differences in underlying individual quality (intrinsic factors such as genetic or maternal effects) or in the environment (extrinsic factors including time of day, individual territorial status and past experience). Research in avian behavioural endocrinology has mainly focused on the effects of extrinsic factors, while other sources of variance are often ignored. We suggest that studies that use an integrative approach and investigate the relative importance of all potential sources of variation are essential for the interpretation of data on individual plasma T levels.
Influence of “Glow Discharge Plasma” as an External Stimulus on the Self-Assembly, Morphology and Binding Affinity of Gold Nanoparticle-Streptavidin Conjugates

In this study, we investigate the influence of glow discharge plasma (GDP) on the self-assembly, morphology and binding affinity of streptavidin coated gold nanoparticles (Au-NP-SV) and biotinylated antibody (bAb) adsorbed on a highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) substrate. Atomic force microscope (AFM) was used to image the pre- and post-GDP treated samples. The analysis of the AFM images showed a considerable change in the aggregation and morphology of Au-NP-conjugates after treatment with GDP. To our knowledge, this is the first report on using GDP to enhance and speed-up the aggregation (sintering) of adsorbed NP biomolecular conjugates. These results show a promising route that could be generalized for other NPs and their conjugates. It can also be considered as an alternative and cheap aggregation method for controlling the binding affinity of biomolecular species on different surfaces with interesting applications.
The Neural Correlates of Optimistic and Depressive Tendencies of Self-Evaluations and Resting-State Default Mode Network

Unrealistic optimism is common among people making self-evaluations while reduced optimism has been linked to increased depressive symptoms. Given the importance of optimism for adaptive functioning, surprisingly little is known about resting brain states underlying optimistic and depressive tendencies. In the current study, two resting-state indices were used to examine neural correlates of the default mode network (DMN) associated with optimistic and depressive self-evaluation tendencies in a non-clinical young adult sample (N = 49). The analysis was constrained due to the self-referential nature of the DMN. Across different indices, bilateral superior frontal gyri of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and bilateral superior medial frontal gyri of the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC) played a key role in maintaining spontaneous optimistic self-evaluative tendencies. Conversely, decreased activity in the DLPFC and bilateral medial orbitofrontal cortices (OFC) were related to accentuated depressive symptoms. Together, results highlight the pivotal roles of the DLPFC and DMPFC in mediating valences of self-referential content.
State Of Art in Homomorphic Encryption Schemes

The demand for privacy of digital data and of algorithms for handling more complex structures have increased exponentially over the last decade. However, the critical problem arises when there is a requirement for publicly computing with private data or to modify functions or algorithms in such a way that they are still executable while their privacy is ensured. This is where homomorphic cryptosystems can be used since these systems enable computations with encrypted data. A fully homomorphic encryption scheme enables computation of arbitrary functions on encrypted data. This enables a customer to generate a program that can be executed by a third party, without revealing the underlying algorithm or the processed data. We will take the reader through a journey of these developments and provide a glimpse of the exciting research directions that lie ahead. In this paper, we propose a selection of the most important available solutions, discussing their properties and limitations.