Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Value Consensus and Partner Satisfaction among Dating Couples

This paper focuses on a theory of mate selection which suggests that interpersonal attraction is facilitated when persons share or perceive themselves as sharing similar value orientations. A library review found consistent evidence for this theory and indicated that reciprocal rewards of communication ease and self-validation relate to value consensus. An empirical study of dating couples found support for the following hypotheses: 1) satisfaction with partner increases with an increase in objective value consensus, perceived partner's valuing of self, and ease of communication; 2) ease of communication increases with an increase in objective value consensus and perceived partner's valuing of self.
A new frontier in spaced retrieval memory training for persons with Alzheimer's disease

The objective of this pilot study was to investigate how a memory training technique called “Spaced Retrieval” (SR) might be effectively applied in helping persons with Alzheimer's disease improve their recall of recent events. Capitalising on the interdependence among spared and impaired memory systems, it was hypothesised that SR training with support at encoding and retrieval would facilitate the retention and recall of meaningful recent events. Eight participants with a diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease or related disorder were recruited for this study. The study employed a quasi-experimental multiple baseline treatment design across participants, items, and behaviours. SR training was provided in three domains: Semantic, Prospective, and Episodic recent memory. The results show important training gains made by all participants across conditions at post-training follow-up. In the Episodic condition, participants were able to recall specific details about recent events following training. This study provides preliminary evidence that individuals with mild to severe cognitive impairment can learn and recall new episodic information through Spaced Retrieval training. If replicated, these findings would support the use of Spaced Retrieval as an intervention tool to help individuals maintain their functioning in the area of episodic recent memory.
On Checking Kripke Models for Modal Logic K

This article presents our work toward a rigorous experimental comparison of state-of-the-art solvers for the resolution of the satisfiability of formulae in modal logic K. Our aim is to provide a pragmatic way to verify the answers provided by those solvers. For this purpose, we propose a certificate format and a checker to validate Kripke models for modal logic K. We present some experimental results using efficient solvers modified to incorporate this verification step. We have been able to validate at least one certificate for 67 percent of the satisfi-able problems, which provides a set of benchmark with independently checked solution which can be used to validate new solvers. We discuss the limits of our approach in the last part of this article.
Methods to analyse sensory profiling data - a comparison

The analysis of sensory profiling demands skillful statistical methods to account for different variations that are unknown in other statistical appliances. Besides others, these are the different use of the descriptors by the assessors and the different use of the scales. The two most important approaches to cope with such data are given by Generalized Procrustes Analysis (GPA) and STATIS. Recently, for the latter one several variants have been proposed in order to either simplify the calculation or to improve the results. The aim of this paper is to compare these methods with respect to their performance. For this purpose, a model will be stated to describe the outcomes of a sensory profiling study. On the basis of this model, we give a short insight into the ideas of the methods under consideration, and simulations to compare these methods are realised. From those, systematical differences between the methods occur. Finally, a comparison between the methods with respect to the interpretation of the estimated consensuses is given by means of graphically displaying the outcomes. It will be found that the choice of the method is accidental and can be made according to the simplicity of use for each operator.
Seizure outcome after functional hemispherectomy for malformations of cortical development

MRI features were correlated with postsurgical seizure outcome in patients with hemispheric malformations of cortical development (MCD). After functional hemispherectomy, 5 of 6 patients (83%) with hemimegalencephaly had persistent, although markedly improved, seizures; 5 of 6 patients (83%) with relative preservation of part of one lobe or atrophy were seizure free. Hemimegalencephaly and other types of hemispheric MCD appear to differ in prognosis for freedom from seizures after functional hemispherectomy.
Durability of online teamworking: patterns of trust

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of an in‐depth case study into virtual teamworking practices in a large petro‐chemical company.Design/methodology/approach – By drawing on the case study the paper offers a theoretical conceptualization of the development of commitment and personal trust relationships in a virtual teamworking context.Findings – The paper argues that the durability of virtual teamworking depends largely on commitment and personal trust relationships, which may gradually dissipate over time without collocated, face‐to‐face social interactions. The virtual teamworking technologies alone may have limited scope in contributing to reproduction and reinforcement of commitment and personal trust relationships.Research limitations/implications – This research is based on an investigation in one organization that used a set of virtual teamworking technologies, which have been constantly improving in terms of capabilities and usability. In a business context investigated .
Nicotine therapy for ulcerative colitis: a review of rationale, mechanisms, pharmacology, and clinical results

ABSTRACTSmoking is protective against developing ulcerative colitis. Nicotine may be the cause of this protective effect. Controlled trials have demonstrated efficacy of transdermal nicotine for active ulcerative colitis. Side effects observed with transdermal nicotine include contact dermatitis, nausea, and lightheadedness. Topical administration of nicotine to the colon reduces nicotine blood concentrations and side effects, and may be of clinical benefit.
Does Subjective Well-Being Increase with Age?

Individuals vary in their levels of Subjective Well-Being (SWB). SWB is a measure of how good an individual feels about his/her life at a moment in time. Early research predicted that SWB was influenced by a host of sociodemographic variables that explained individual differences in SWB (Diener, Suh, Lucas & Smith, 1999). SWB is now considered to consist of three primary components: people’s emotional responses (both positive and negative affect), domain satisfactions, and global judgments of life satisfaction (Diener, Suh, Lucas & Smith, 1999). Presently it is thought that older individuals have higher levels of SWB up to a certain age (Isaacowitz & Smith, 1999). The current study will use emotional responses and life satisfaction as the lens for investigating the differences in levels of SWB across age groups.
Generative Models for Item Adoptions Using Social Correlation

Users face many choices on the web when it comes to choosing which product to buy, which video to watch, and so on. In making adoption decisions, users rely not only on their own preferences, but also on friends. We call the latter social correlation, which may be caused by the homophily and social influence effects. In this paper, we focus on modeling social correlation on users item adoptions. Given a user-user social graph and an item-user adoption graph, our research seeks to answer the following questions: Whether the items adopted by a user correlate with items adopted by her friends, and how to model item adoptions using social correlation. We propose a social correlation framework that considers a social correlation matrix representing the degrees of correlation from every user to the users friends, in addition to a set of latent factors representing topics of interests of individual users. Based on the framework, we develop two generative models, namely sequential and unified, and the corresponding parameter estimation approaches. From each model, we devise the social correlation only and hybrid methods for predicting missing adoption links. Experiments on LiveJournal and Epinions data sets show that our proposed models outperform the approach based on latent factors only (LDA).
Effect of subzero-balanced ultrafiltration on postoperative outcome of patients after cardiopulmonary bypass

Objective: To evaluate the effect of a new ultrafiltration technique — subzero-balanced ultrafiltration technique — on early postoperative outcomes of adult patients undergoing cardiac operations with cardiopulmonary bypass. Methods: A total of 120 patients who required cardiopulmonary bypass for cardiac surgery were randomized into two groups, 60 in each group. Patients in the treatment group received subzero-balanced ultrafiltration during cardiopulmonary bypass, while patients in the control group received routine cardiopulmonary bypass. Postoperative outcomes, including hospital mortality and morbidity of the two groups, were analyzed. Results: Hospital mortality was 0% (0 of 60) in the treatment group versus 1.8% (1 of 60) in the control group (P=1.000). Total hospital complications was lower in the treated patients (11 of 60 [18.3%] versus 22 of 60 [36.7%], P=0.025). Duration of intubation time was shorter and transfusion volume within 24 hours postoperatively was less in patients having received subzero-balanced ultrafiltration during cardiopulmonary bypass (14.35 ± 1.66 versus 18.64 ± 1.57 h, P=0.036 and 1.54 ± 1.56 versus 3.64 ± 2.67 U/patient, P=0.032). Length of stay on the intensive care unit, duration of hospital stay, need for infusion of inotropic agent and drainage volumes within 24 h postoperatively between the two groups were comparable. Conclusions: Subzero-balanced ultrafiltration during cardiopulmonary bypass can effectively decrease the patients’ hospital morbidity and the volume of blood transfusion: it also may promote early postoperative recovery of patients. Routine application of subzero-balanced ultrafiltration during adult cardiac operations should not be necessary, but the technique should be compared to other techniques, e.g. MUF, in further studies.
The less-racist-than-myself effect: Examining the effects of social comparison information on perceptions of racism

It is well established that people evaluate themselves more favorably than they evaluate the average person. For example, people report they have higher IQs, are better drivers, and are more qualified for jobs relative to the average person. This biased social comparison is known as the Better-Than-Average effect. Even more interesting, this positivity bias even works when the comparison other has responses that are identical to the individual’s own response, an effect known as the Better-Than-Myself effect. The present research extends the BTME to the area of prejudice, to investigate the judgment process that occurs when people are asked to estimate their own prejudices and see if people tend to deny their own racist behaviors. In Study 1, participants indicated they were less racist than a comparison other, even when that comparison other engaged in identical behaviors as that of the participant, thereby demonstrating a “less-racist-than myself” effect. The present research of Study 2 extended the findings of Study 1, and sought to investigate the role of consensus comparison feedback, that was hypothesized to significantly weaken the Less-Racist-Than-Myself effect when social consensus was low. Contrary to the hypotheses, neither the consensus manipulation nor other moderating variables were found to impact the self enhancement bias. These results provide insight into situations where people engage in seemingly racist behavior but deny that they are racist. According to the present work, this denial does not seem to stem from the fact that such perpetrators define racism differently than their audience, or are affected by whether or not their peers are in agreement with their behaviors. Instead, such perpetrators appear to suffer from a positivity blind spot that allows them to see racism in others, but not in themselves, regardless of consensus. Results and implications are discussed in terms of how the present research was the first to incorporate the study of prejudice in these self-enhancement effects, and the difficulty of debiasing such effects.
Common Polynomial Lyapunov Functions for Linear Switched Systems

In this paper, we consider linear switched systems $\dot x(t)=A_{u(t)} x(t)$, $x\in\R^n$, $u\in U$, {$\{A_u: u\in U \}$ compact,} and the problem of asymptotic stability for arbitrary switching functions, uniform with respect to switching (UAS). {Given a UAS system, it is always possible to build a common polynomial Lyapunov function. Our main result is that} the degree of that common polynomial Lyapunov function is not uniformly bounded over all the UAS systems. This result answers a question raised by Dayawansa and Martin. A generalization to a class of piecewise-polynomial Lyapunov functions is given.
Intramammary treatment with gentamicin in lactating cows with clinical and subclinical mastitis

The study evaluated the microbiological profile of milk samples collected before and after mastitis treatment with gentamicin and investigated biofilms production and antimicrobial susceptibility of Staphylococcus spp. isolated. The presence of gentamicin residues in milk after the recommended withdrawal period was also evaluated. Antimicrobial residues were analyzed by Delvotest® SP NT over a period of 12 days beginning after 24 hours the last gentamicin application. Some of Staphylococcus spp. isolates were biofilm producers (19.05%). Staphylococcus spp. showed high levels of resistance to neomycin (16.95%), penicillin G (10.17%), and ampicillin (10.17%). Multidrug resistance to all antibiotics tested was observed in 1.69% of the Staphylococcus spp. isolates. Among 1440 mammary quarter milk samples 24.95% presented gentamicin residues after the withdrawal period. Gentamicin residues were also detected in 3.8% of samples from calibrated glass recorder jar (n=383) 4.1 days after treatment. The indiscriminate use of antibiotics may lead to the emergence of multidrug-resistant strains as well as increasing the risk of presence of residues of these drugs in milk. These problems affect the milk quality and may become a public health problem.
An Analysis of EMG Electrode Configuration for Targeted Muscle Reinnervation Based Neural Machine Interface

Targeted muscle reinnervation (TMR) is a novel neural machine interface for improved myoelectric prosthesis control. Previous high-density (HD) surface electromyography (EMG) studies have indicated that tremendous neural control information can be extracted from the reinnervated muscles by EMG pattern recognition (PR). However, using a large number of EMG electrodes hinders clinical application of the TMR technique. This study investigated a reduced number of electrodes and the placement required to extract sufficient neural control information for accurate identification of user movement intents. An electrode selection algorithm was applied to the HD EMG recordings from each of four TMR amputee subjects. The results show that when using only 12 selected bipolar electrodes the average accuracy over subjects for classifying 16 movement intents was 93.0 (plusmn3.3)%, just 1.2% lower than when using the entire HD electrode complement. The locations of selected electrodes were consistent with the anatomical reinnervation sites. Additionally, a practical protocol for clinical electrode placement was developed, which does not rely on complex HD EMG experiment and analysis while maintaining a classification accuracy of 88.7plusmn4. 5%. These outcomes provide important guidelines for practical electrode placement that can promote future clinical application of TMR and EMG PR in the control of multifunctional prostheses.
Validity of Hospital Discharge Diagnosis Codes for Stroke: The Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study

Background and Purpose— Characterizing International Classification of Disease 9th Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) code validity is essential given widespread use of hospital discharge databases in research. Using the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) Study, we estimated the accuracy of ICD-9-CM stroke codes. Methods— Hospitalizations with ICD-9-CM codes 430 to 438 or stroke keywords in the discharge summary were abstracted for ARIC cohort members (1987–2010). A computer algorithm and physician reviewer classified definite and probable ischemic stroke, intracerebral hemorrhage, and subarachnoid hemorrhage. Using ARIC classification as a gold standard, we calculated the positive predictive value (PPV) and sensitivity of ICD-9-CM codes grouped according to the American Heart Association/American Stroke Association (AHA/ASA) 2013 categories and an alternative code grouping for comparison. Results— Thirty-three percent of 4260 hospitalizations were validated as strokes (1251 ischemic, 120 intracerebral hemorrhage, 46 subarachnoid hemorrhage). The AHA/ASA code groups had PPV 76% and 68% sensitivity compared with PPV 72% and 83% sensitivity for the alternative code groups. The PPV of the AHA/ASA code group for ischemic stroke was slightly higher among blacks, individuals <65 years, and at teaching hospitals. Sensitivity was higher among older individuals and increased over time. The PPV of the AHA/ASA code group for intracerebral hemorrhage was higher among blacks, women, and younger individuals. PPV and sensitivity varied across study sites. Conclusions— A new AHA/ASA discharge code grouping to identify stroke had similar PPV and lower sensitivity compared with an alternative code grouping. Accuracy varied by patient characteristics and study sites.
Hardiness and transformational coping in asylum seekers: the Afghan experience

Understanding trauma and the individual’s responses to it requires a complex approach. Hardiness refers to the characteristic response some people make to adversity and involves the concept of transformative response. In this context adversity is something that can be viewed as a learning experience, a challenge rather than a catastrophe. Response to adversity becomes a commitment rather than simply being reactive, and the individual’s sense of control over outcomes remains positive, rather than emphasising that person’s vulnerability. In the current paper hardiness, and the concept of transformational coping derived from it, are utilised to explore the response to trauma and dislocation experienced by various refugees from Afghanistan to Australia. Our interviews show that cultural dimensions broaden the notion of transformative coping. The traditional approach to categorising coping has been to contrast transformative coping, that emphasises commitment, challenge and control, with regressive coping, denial, associated with avoidance and withdrawal, and stoical coping, which includes the use of humour and religious beliefs. Our informants reveal that stoical coping is a springboard from which a transformative approach to trauma can be generated. It is proposed that highlighting the transformative properties implied in hardiness reverses the current policy response to pathologise coping. In so doing, it highlights opportunities for enhancing the behaviour of refugees within a multicultural Australian community.
Construction, expression, and localization of a CycA::PhoA fusion protein in Rhodobacter sphaeroides and Escherichia coli

We demonstrated the utility of Escherichia coli alkaline phosphatase, encoded by phoA, as a reporter molecule for genetic fusions in Rhodobacter sphaeroides. A portion of the R. sphaeroides cycA gene was fused to phoA, yielding a fusion protein comprising the putative signal sequence and first 10 amino acids of the cytochrome c2 apoprotein joined to the sixth amino acid of alkaline phosphatase. The fusion protein was efficiently transported to the periplasm of R. sphaeroides as determined by enzyme activity, Western immunoblot analysis, and immunogold electron microscopy. We also documented the ability of an R. sphaeroides mutant, RS104, with gross defects in photosynthetic membrane morphology to efficiently recognize and translocate the fusion protein to the periplasmic compartment. The inclusion of 500 base pairs of R. sphaeroides DNA in cis to the cycA structural gene resulted in a 2.5-fold increase in alkaline phosphatase activity in photosynthetically grown cells compared with the activity in aerobically grown cells, demonstrating that the fusion protein is regulated in a manner similar to that of cytochrome c2 regulation. We also constructed two pUC19-based plasmids suitable for the construction of translational fusions to phoA. In these plasmids, translational fusions of phoA to the gene under consideration can be made in all three reading frames, thus facilitating construction and expression of fusion protein systems utilizing phoA.
The ∼16 kDa C-Terminal Sequence of Clathrin Assembly Protein AP180 Is Essential for Efficient Clathrin Binding

Brain-specific AP180 is present in clathrin coats at equal concentration to the adapter complex, AP2, and assembles clathrin faster than any other protein in vitro. Both AP180 and its ubiquitously expressed homolog clathrin assembly lymphoid myeloid leukemia protein (CALM) control vesicle size and shape in clathrin mediated endocytosis. The clathrin assembly role of AP180 is mediated by a long disordered C-terminal assembly domain. Within this assembly domain, a central acidic clathrin and adapter binding (CLAP) sub-domain contains all of the known short binding motifs for clathrin and AP2. The role of the remaining ∼16 kDa C-terminal sequence has not been clear. We show that this sequence has a separate function in ensuring efficient binding of clathrin, based on in vitro binding and ex vivo transferrin uptake assays. Sequence alignment suggests the C-terminal sub-domain is conserved in CALM.