Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Catador de material reciclvel: uma profisso para alm da sobrevivncia?

Luiza Ferreira Rezende de MedeirosKatia Barbosa MacedoUniversidade Catolica de GoiasRESUMO: O ar tig o a pr esenta r esultados de uma pesquisa que objeti vou in vestigar as r elacoes de tr abalho entr e ca tador esde materiais reciclaveis e organizacoes de reciclagem dos materiais coletados. Os catadores atuam no municipio deGoiânia. A reciclagem de lixo urbano figura como atividade emergente apos movimentos ambientalistas e de preser-vacao ambiental. Embor a gere vantagens ambientais indiscutiv eis, sobressaem os aspectos economicos. A catacao demateriais reciclaveis constitui, para muitos trabalhadores, unica forma de garantir sobrevivencia e possibilidade deinclusao num mercado de trabalho excludente. Essa pesquisa investigou como os catadores percebem suas relacoes detrabalho, as condicoes em que desempenham suas funcoes e as praticas do trabalho em cooperativas de reciclagem.Utilizou-se entrevistas com 10 catadores, que foram tratadas pela analise de conteudo. Os dados revelaram relacoesde trabalho precarias e informais entre catadores e organizacoes de reciclagem. Os trabalhadores sao expostos apericulosidade, vitimas de preconceitos e estigmas e excluidos de alguns ambientes sociais.PALAVRAS-CHAVE: catador de material reciclavel; precarizacao das relacoes de trabalho; inclusao social.RECYCLED GARBAGE PICKERS – A PROFESSION BEYOND SURVIVAL? ABSTRACT: The article presents results of a research that investigated the work relations between recycled garbagepickers working in Goiânia and organizations that recycle such materials. The recycling of urban garbage figure asan emergent activity after environmentalist mo vements and environment preservation. Although it generates unques-tionable environmental advantages, the economic benefits excel. Collecting garbage, to many workers, is the onlyway of guaranteing survival and inclusion in the excluding market. This research investigated the way garbage pickersunderstand their work relations, under what conditions perform their functions, and the work practices in garbagepicking cooperatives. Ten garbage pickers were interviewed and data analyzed by content analysis. Data showedprecarious and informal work relations between garbage pickers and garbage picking cooperatives. The workers areexposed to danger, victims of prejudice and stigma, and excluded from some social places.KEYWORDS: recycled garbage picker; precarious work relations; social inclusion.
Multi-Stage Bunch Compressors for the International Linear Collider

We present bunch compressor designs for the International Linear Collider (ILC) which achieve a reduction in RMS bunch length from 6 mm to 0.3 mm via multiple stages of compression, with stages of acceleration inserted between the stages of compression. The key advantage of multi-stage compression is that the maximum RMS energy spread is reduced to approximately 1%, compared to over 3% for a single-stage design. Analytic and simulation studies of the multi-stage bunch compressors are presented, along with performance comparisons to a single-stage system. Parameters for extending the systems to a larger total compression factor are discussed.
Social Support and Health Behavior in Hostile Black and White Men and Women in CARDIA

Objective These cross-sectional analyses of the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) data were stimulated by previous CARDIA analyses that showed an adverse association between hostility and several health behaviors: physical activity, cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, and caloric intake, in both black and white men and women, such that the higher the hostility, the worse the health behavior profile. The current study investigated whether high social support was associated with better health behavior than low social support in individuals with high hostility scores. Methods The subjects were 5115 healthy black and white men and women ranging in age from 18 to 30 years. The hypothesis was that the association between hostility and certain adverse health behaviors would be diminished in the presence of high social support. Race-gender specific median cutpoints of the Cook-Medley Hostility scale and an index of social support defined levels of high and low hostility and social support. Results After controlling for age and body mass index (BMI), support was positively associated with more exercise in all groups except black women, but when coupled with high hostility, this positive association between support and exercise remained only in men. White women with high support were less often smokers but this association did not hold when examined only in the high-hostile group. Black men and white women with high support in the presence of high hostility consumed more alcohol, but the amount was moderate. Conclusions We conclude that social support in the presence of high hostility only sometimes reduces the association of hostility to adverse health behaviors and that these effects are complex. Additional research investigating types of social support on health behavior in different race-gender groups is advocated.
Bandpass Directional Couplers with Electromagnetically-Coupled Resonators

Compact 90- and 180-degree directional couplers incorporating bandpass characteristics are presented. They can integrate a bandpass filter and a power-divider/combiner in an RF transceiver, resulting in its miniaturization. The bandpass directional coupler can be represented as a coupled-resonator network, and its coupling coefficients and external-Q can be determined from a desired coupling ratio and operational bandwidth of the bandpass coupler. Measured results are also presented on a Ku-band bandpass 180-degree directional coupler with TE 01delta-mode dielectric resonators
An exploration of mothers' relationships with their young, non-verbal children with an autism spectrum disorder : a case study approach

There is currently considerable knowledge relating to the relationship between a mother and her child. This relationship is based upon the proposition that both mother and child are innately programmed to be sociable and the child is pre-programmed to respond to social situations and therefore elicit caregiving. Equally, adults are programmed to respond to their children. However, many parents of young children with autism have suggested that little prepares them for the limited responsiveness that many of their children exhibit. This qualitative study, using six case studies, focused upon the reciprocal nature of the mother-child relationship in young children with autism who were also non-verbal, and sought to explore any factors which influenced the relationship experienced by the mother with her child. To date no published study has explored this relationship. This study is based upon a naturalistic paradigm and comprised six in-depth case studies using mixed methods of data collection. Each case study includes a mother and her young child diagnosed with autism who is non-verbal. Data collection methods included a semi-structured interview, observation of mother-child interaction and the Parenting Stress Index (PSI) questionnaire which is commonly used in clinical practice. The qualitative data were coded and themes were generated. The numerical data were analysed resulting in descriptive statistics. Each case study was initially analysed separately, which was followed by cross-case analysis. The qualitative and quantitative data were integrated using a conceptually clustered matrix, which was followed by the development of an association network which displays relationships amongst the variables and has an associated narrative text describing the meaning of the connections between the variables. Findings suggest that these mothers experienced difficulties in forming and maintaining a connection or an attachment with their children and deemed the interactions within the relationship to be very one-sided. This resulted in the mothers feeling rejected and unloved by their children and therefore they often did not reciprocate love for their children. Five of the mothers and children included in this study received autism-specific interventions and support. This resulted in an improvement in their children’s communication and interaction, together with an increase in the mothers’ understanding of autism and of their children. Conversely this resulted in an increase in the mothers’ ability to be responsive and synchronise their behaviours with their children’s, and in an increase in maternal confidence which culminated in a possible strengthening of the mother-child relationship. Changes to the strategic and operational practice of professionals working with these dyads are proposed which include specific objectives for professionals comprising workshops, further research and undergraduate training to raise awareness and alter practice.
Sarcomere length dependence of the rate of tension redevelopment and submaximal tension in rat and rabbit skinned skeletal muscle fibres

1 We examined the hypothesis that in skeletal muscle the steep relationship between twitch tension and sarcomere length (SL) within the range 2.30 to 1.85 μm involves SL‐dependent alterations in the rate of tension development. 2 In skinned preparations of both rat slow‐twitch and rabbit fast‐twitch skeletal muscle fibres the rate of tension redevelopment (ktr) at 15°C was reduced at short SL (∼2.00/μm) compared with a longer SL (∼2.30 μm). In submaximally activated fibres, the decrease in ktr over this range of lengths was greater in fast‐twitch fibres (38% reduction) than in slow‐twitch fibres (14% reduction). 3 Ca2+ sensitivity of tension, as assessed as the pCa (−log[Ca2+]) for half‐maximal activation, or pCa50, decreased to a greater extent in rabbit fast‐twitch skeletal muscle fibres than in slow‐twitch fibres from both rabbit and rat when SL was reduced from ∼2.30 to ∼1.85 μm. The ΔpCa50 over this SL range was 0.24 ± 0.07 pCa units in fast‐twitch fibres from rabbit psoas muscle. The ΔpCa50 for slow‐twitch fibres from rabbit and rat soleus muscle was 0.08 ± 0.02 and 0.10 ± 0.04 pCa units, respectively. 4 Osmotic compression of both slow‐twitch and fast‐twitch fibres at a SL of 2.00 μm increased ktr to values similar to those obtained at a SL of 2.30 μm in the absence of dextran. This result indicates that the slower rate of tension redevelopment at short SL is due in large part to the increase in interfilament lattice spacing associated with shorter SL. 5 Taken together, these results suggest that length dependence of twitch tension is, in part, due to length dependence of isometric cross‐bridge interaction kinetics, an effect that is mediated by length‐dependent changes in interfilament lattice spacing.
The disposition of failed Japanese bank assets : lessons from the U.S. savings and loan crisis

This paper reviews the Japanese experience with "put guarantees" recently offered in the sale of several failed banks. These guarantees, meant to address information asymmetry problems, are shown to create moral hazard problems of their own. In particular, the guarantees make acquiring banks reluctant to accept first-best renegotiations with problem borrowers. These issues also arose in the U.S. savings and loan crisis. Regulators in that crisis turned to an alternative guarantee mechanism known as "loss-sharing arrangements" with apparently positive results. I introduce a formal debt model to examine the conditions determining the relative merits of these guarantees. The results show that both forms of guarantees reduce expected regulator revenues and that the impact of economic downturns on the relative desirability of the two guarantees is ambiguous.
HSfM: Hybrid Structure-from-Motion

Structure-from-Motion (SfM) methods can be broadly categorized as incremental or global according to their ways to estimate initial camera poses. While incremental system has advanced in robustness and accuracy, the efficiency remains its key challenge. To solve this problem, global reconstruction system simultaneously estimates all camera poses from the epipolar geometry graph, but it is usually sensitive to outliers. In this work, we propose a new hybrid SfM method to tackle the issues of efficiency, accuracy and robustness in a unified framework. More specifically, we propose an adaptive community-based rotation averaging method first to estimate camera rotations in a global manner. Then, based on these estimated camera rotations, camera centers are computed in an incremental way. Extensive experiments show that our hybrid method performs similarly or better than many of the state-of-the-art global SfM approaches, in terms of computational efficiency, while achieves similar reconstruction accuracy and robustness with two other state-of-the-art incremental SfM approaches.
Spatial and temporal independent component analysis of functional MRI data containing a pair of task‐related waveforms

Independent component analysis (ICA) is a technique that attempts to separate data into maximally independent groups. Achieving maximal independence in space or time yields two varieties of ICA meaningful for functional MRI (fMRI) applications: spatial ICA (SICA) and temporal ICA (TICA). SICA has so far dominated the application of ICA to fMRI. The objective of these experiments was to study ICA with two predictable components present and evaluate the importance of the underlying independence assumption in the application of ICA. Four novel visual activation paradigms were designed, each consisting of two spatiotemporal components that were either spatially dependent, temporally dependent, both spatially and temporally dependent, or spatially and temporally uncorrelated, respectively. Simulated data were generated and fMRI data from six subjects were acquired using these paradigms. Data from each paradigm were analyzed with regression analysis in order to determine if the signal was occurring as expected. Spatial and temporal ICA were then applied to these data, with the general result that ICA found components only where expected, e.g., S(T)ICA “failed” (i.e., yielded independent components unrelated to the “self‐evident” components) for paradigms that were spatially (temporally) dependent, and “worked” otherwise. Regression analysis proved a useful “check” for these data, however strong hypotheses will not always be available, and a strength of ICA is that it can characterize data without making specific modeling assumptions. We report a careful examination of some of the assumptions behind ICA methodologies, provide examples of when applying ICA would provide difficult‐to‐interpret results, and offer suggestions for applying ICA to fMRI data especially when more than one task‐related component is present in the data.Hum. Brain Mapping 13:43–53, 2001. © 2001 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
An Investigation of the Characteristics and School Readiness of Children with Disabilities who Attend Head Start Programs

Title of Document: AN INVESTIGATION OF THE CHARACTERISTICS AND SCHOOL READINESS OF CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES WHO ATTEND HEAD START PROGRAMS Amy Falk Smith Doctor of Philosophy, 2010 Directed By: Professor Margaret McLaughlin Department of Special Education The purpose of this study was to examine the characteristics and school readiness of children with disabilities who attend Head Start programs, as well as the characteristics of the programs they attend and the school districts in which they receive special education. In addition, a second purpose was to determine whether there are differences in these characteristics of children who attend Head Start programs and those who attend other early childhood education programs. I used data from the Pre-Elementary Education Longitudinal Study, a study of a nationally representative sample of preschool children with disabilities. I used a subsample of the data to compare the characteristics and school readiness of children with disabilities who attended Head Start to those who attended other early childhood education programs using chi-squares, analysis of variance, and ordinary least squares regression analyses. The results suggest that there is no difference in the school readiness of children with disabilities who attended Head Start and those who attend programs in elementary schools. However, in comparison to children who attended other programs, children with developmental delays who attended Head Start had more advanced receptive language skills and those with other disabilities had less advanced pre-reading skills. Additionally, the results of this study show that there is some variation in the characteristics of children with disabilities who attend Head Start and those who attend other programs. Children who attended Head Start were more likely to be Black or Hispanic and from low socioeconomic families. They were also less likely to have disabilities other than speech impairments or developmental delays and, on average, received fewer special education services. Finally, children who attended Head Start were more likely to be from rural school districts and districts with higher rates of poverty. These findings indicate that children with disabilities who attend Head Start programs face additional risk factors that are associated with poor school readiness and emphasize the need to ensure that the programs provide services that are adequate to meet the needs of the diverse population they serve and to prepare those children for the onset of formal schooling. AN INVESTIGATION OF THE CHARACTERISTICS AND SCHOOL READINESS OF CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES WHO ATTEND HEAD START PROGRAMS
Electrical stimulation of the pontine omnipause area inhibits eye blink.

BACKGROUND Single-unit recordings of pontine omnipause neurons (OPN) in the monkey have shown that these neurons cease firing for saccades in all directions. OPNs are located in pontine nucleus raphe' interpositus and are known to inhibit a variety of target neurons, including saccadic burst neurons. Recently, a single-unit investigation of these same OPNs revealed that they pause for blinks as well as saccades. Electrical microstimulation of the OPN area has been shown to inhibit saccadic eye movements in all directions. The present study is designed to determine if OPN area microstimulation inhibits blinks as well as saccades. METHODS Two rhesus monkeys were trained to track visual targets for a reward. Eye and lid position were measured using the electromagnetic search coil technique. The pontine OPN area was located using single-unit recording and microstimulation techniques. OPN stimulation was delivered just before and during the presentation of air puffs to elicit blinks. RESULTS OPN are microstimulation inhibited air puff-induced blinks as well as saccades. The threshold current for inhibiting blinks was generally slightly higher than for inhibiting saccades. CONCLUSIONS Although OPN area stimulation inhibits blinks as well as saccades, the mechanisms for inhibiting these behaviors appears to be different. OPNs are known to inhibit saccadic burst neurons, but there is no evidence that these neurons inhibit orbicularis oculi motoneurons which burst for blinks. Moreover, the temporal pattern of OPN activity makes it unlikely that they directly suppress blinks. The OPN region appears to be important for eye retraction during blinks and may be associated with other pontine areas which control blinks.
A Phase I Study of EKB-569 in Combination with Capecitabine in Patients with Advanced Colorectal Cancer

Purpose: To determine the maximum tolerated dose (MTD), characterize the principal toxicities, and assess the pharmacokinetics of EKB-569, an oral selective irreversible inhibitor of the epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase, in combination with capecitabine in patients with advanced colorectal cancer. Experimental Design: Patients were treated with EKB-569 daily for 21 days and capecitabine twice daily for 14 days of a 21-day cycle. The dose levels of EKB-569 (mg/day) and capecitabine (mg/m2 twice daily) assessed were 25/750, 50/750, 50/1,000 and 75/1,000. An expanded cohort was enrolled at the MTD to better study toxicity and efficacy. Samples of plasma were collected to characterize the pharmacokinetics of the agents. Treatment efficacy was assessed every other cycle. Results: A total of 37 patients, the majority of whom had prior chemotherapy, received a total of 163 cycles of treatment. Twenty patients were treated at the MTD, 50 mg EKB-569, daily and 1,000 mg/m2 capecitabine twice daily. Dose-limiting toxicities were diarrhea and rash. No patients had complete or partial responses but 48% had stable disease. The conversion of capecitabine to 5-fluorouracil was higher for the combination of EKB-569 and capecitabine (321 ± 151 ng*h/mL) than for capecitabine alone (176 ± 62 ng*hours/mL; P = 0.0037). Conclusion: In advanced colorectal cancer, 50 mg EKB-569 daily can be safely combined with 1,000 mg/m2 capecitabine twice a day. A statistically significant increase in plasma levels of 5-fluorouracil for the combination of EKB-569 and capecitabine may be due to the single-dose versus multiple-dose exposure difference, variability in exposure or a potential drug interaction.
Distinct and complementary functions of MDA5 and TLR3 in poly(I:C)-mediated activation of mouse NK cells

The double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) analogue poly(I:C) is a promising adjuvant for cancer vaccines because it activates both dendritic cells (DCs) and natural killer (NK) cells, concurrently promoting adaptive and innate anticancer responses. Poly(I:C) acts through two dsRNA sensors, Toll-like receptor 3 (TLR3) and melanoma differentiation-associated protein-5 (MDA5). Here, we investigated the relative contributions of MDA5 and TLR3 to poly(I:C)-mediated NK cell activation using MDA5−/−, TLR3−/−, and MDA5−/−TLR3−/− mice. MDA5 was crucial for NK cell activation, whereas TLR3 had a minor impact most evident in the absence of MDA5. MDA5 and TLR3 activated NK cells indirectly through accessory cells and induced the distinct stimulatory cytokines interferon-α and interleukin-12, respectively. To identify the relevant accessory cells in vivo, we generated bone marrow chimeras between either wild-type (WT) and MDA5−/− or WT and TLR3−/− mice. Interestingly, multiple accessory cells were implicated, with MDA5 acting primarily in stromal cells and TLR3 predominantly in hematopoietic cells. Furthermore, poly(I:C)-mediated NK cell activation was not notably impaired in mice lacking CD8α DCs, providing further evidence that poly(I:C) acts through diverse accessory cells rather than solely through DCs. These results demonstrate distinct yet complementary roles for MDA5 and TLR3 in poly(I:C)-mediated NK cell activation.