Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Melatonin: a possible link between the presence of artificial light at night and reductions in biological fitness

The mechanisms underpinning the ecological impacts of the presence of artificial night lighting remain elusive. One suspected underlying cause is that the presence of light at night (LAN) supresses nocturnal production of melatonin, a key driver of biological rhythm and a potent antioxidant with a proposed role in immune function. Here, we briefly review the evidence for melatonin as the link between LAN and changes in behaviour and physiology. We then present preliminary data supporting the potential for melatonin to act as a recovery agent mitigating the negative effects of LAN in an invertebrate. Adult crickets (Teleogryllus commodus), exposed to constant illumination, were provided with dietary melatonin (concentrations: 0, 10 or 100 µg ml−1) in their drinking water. We then compared survival, lifetime fecundity and, over a 4-week period, immune function (haemocyte concentration, lysozyme-like and phenoloxidase (PO) activity). Melatonin supplementation was able only partially to mitigate the detrimental effects of LAN: it did not improve survival or fecundity or PO activity, but it had a largely dose-dependent positive effect on haemocyte concentration and lysozyme-like activity. We discuss the implications of these relationships, as well as the usefulness of invertebrates as model species for future studies that explore the effects of LAN.
Wor(l)ds in translation – Mother tongue and foreign language in psychodynamic practice

In this paper I explore some of the processes involved in the act of communication for the multilingual individual. I describe a ‘continuous inner translation process’ open to defects of symbolization, and suggest that the psychodynamic counsellor attends to this inner translation process and contains its inherent difficulties. By doing so she will encourage the client's positive identification with the foreign language, and facilitate true symbolization. I illustrate this process by drawing parallels with the actual translation practice, and by relating it to certain linguistic and psychoanalytic concepts. The paper concludes with relevant case studies.
An on-demand key establishment protocol for MANETs

Securing ad hoc networks is a challenging task due to their specific characteristics. One of the major challenges is that ad hoc networks typically lack a fixed infrastructure both inform of physical nodes such as routers, servers, and stable communication links and in the form of an organizational or administrative infrastructure. New nodes can hence, join and leave the network at any time, which appeals to an efficient and flexible trust establishment mechanism. We propose in this paper an efficient protocol for key management in ad hoc networks relying on the routing mechanism itself.
Power control versus multiuser detection based cross-layer design in wireless ad hoc networks

In wireless ad hoc networks, multiple access interference is the limiting factor for the overall system performance. The lack of any central control unit necessitates a careful joint design of both, the physical and the MAC layer. Two promising technologies that address this problem are power control based cross-layer design and multiuser detection based cross-layer design. While approaches in the first category suppress the interference by power control at the transmitter side, approaches in the second cancel interference at the receiver with a technique called multiuser detection.
Modeling, Prediction, and Experimental Validations of Power Peaks of PV Arrays Under Partial Shading Conditions

Mismatch losses of photovoltaic (PV) arrays under partially shaded conditions are examined in this paper. Electrical models of PV arrays under different irradiance levels and temperatures are developed. These models form the basis for the development of the power peak prediction schemes for PV arrays with series-parallel, bridge-linked, and total-cross-tied configurations. The developed schemes have been validated using commercial PV modules under different irradiance levels and partial shading conditions. The experimental results have confirmed that the power peak prediction schemes can successfully identify the most efficient configuration under any given partial shading conditions. Furthermore, the predicted power peaks are within 5% of the true measured ones under almost all the cases.
Perceptual load in the reading of Arabic: Effects of orthographic visual complexity on detection

Previous research has suggested that reading Arabic is slower than reading Hebrew or English, even among native Arabic readers. We tested the hypothesis that at least part of the difficulty in reading Arabic is due to the visual complexity of Arabic orthography. Third- and sixth-grade native readers of Arabic who were studying Hebrew in school were asked to detect a vowel diacritic in the context of Hebrew words and nonwords, Arabic words and nonwords (including connected and unconnected Arabic letters), and nonletter stimuli that resembled Arabic or Hebrew letters. Participants were better at detecting target vowels in Hebrew than in any of the Arabic conditions. Moreover, target detection in Arabic was better for letter strings containing connected letters than for those containing unconnected letters. The findings extend previous results on Hebrew versus Arabic reading and support a perceptual load account of the source of processing difficulty in reading Arabic. Performance in the Arabic conditions did not reveal a word superiority effect, suggesting that even by sixth grade, reading is not automatized to the point where it can compensate for the the visual complexity of the orthography.
Virtual Machine Hosting for Networked Clusters: Building the Foundations for "Autonomic" Orchestration

Virtualization technology offers powerful resource management mechanisms, including performance-isolating resource schedulers, live migration, and suspend/resume. But how should networked virtual computing systems use these mechanisms? A grand challenge is to devise practical policies to drive these mechanisms in a self-managing or "autonomic" system, without relying on human operators. This paper explores architectural and algorithmic issues for resource management policy and orchestration in Shirako, a system for on-demand leasing of shared networked resources in federated clusters. Shirako enables a flexible factoring of resource management functions across the participants in a federated system, to accommodate a range of models of distributed virtual computing. We present extensions to Shirako to provision fine-grained virtual machine "slivers" and drive virtual machine migration. We illustrate the interactions of provisioning and placement/migration policies, and their impact.
Local Ablation for Hepatocellular Carcinoma in Taiwan

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the second commonest cancer in Taiwan. The national surveillance program can detect HCC in its early stages, and various curative modalities (including surgical resection, orthotopic liver transplantation, and local ablation) are employed for the treatment of small HCC. Local ablation therapies are currently advocated for early-stage HCC that is unresectable because of co-morbidities, the need to preserve liver function, or refusal of resection. Among the various local ablation therapies, the most commonly used modalities include percutaneous ethanol injection and radiofrequency ablation (RFA); percutaneous acetic acid injection and microwave ablation are used less often. RFA is more commonly employed than other local ablative modalities in Taiwan because the technique is highly effective, minimally invasive, and requires fewer sessions. RFA is therefore advocated in Taiwan as the first-line curative therapy for unresectable HCC or even for resectable HCC. However, current RFA procedures are less effective against tumors that are in high-risk or difficult-to-ablate locations, are poorly visualized on ultrasonography (US), or are large. Recent advancements in RFA in Taiwan can resolve these issues by the creation of artificial ascites or pleural effusion, application of real-time virtual US assistance, use of combination therapy before RFA, or use of switching RF controllers with multiple electrodes. This review article provides updates on the clinical outcomes and advances in local ablative modalities (mostly RFA) for HCC in Taiwan.
Student transition to upper secondary vocational and technical education (VTE) in Lebanon: from stigma to success

Vocational and technical education (VTE) has traditionally been stigmatised in Arab societies owing to the lowly image of manual work and the perception of VTE as a last resort for weak school students. This paper focuses on the transition to upper secondary VTE from the regular Lebanese school system and on students’ aspirations once they have done so. While regular school students’ career aspirations largely reflected the conventional academic orientation of the school system and few contemplated moving into the VTE realm even if they failed, students who had made the transition expressed well‐informed positive views regarding VTE, mostly concerning its direct linkages with career formation and the employment market. Despite the recognised ‘job ticket’ value of the Baccalauréat Technique, most envisaged pursuing a higher VTE qualification, and the aspirations of those intending to complete the Licence Technique were comparable to those of terminating Year 12 students in the regular academic system who were contemplating university. The paper ends by addressing specific problem areas in Lebanese upper secondary VTE.
Sex, gender, and the work-to-family interface:exploring negative and positive interdependencies

This study of full-time managers and professionals examined whether variables selected from theories of the psychology of gender as well as identity, boundary, and role theories explained effects of sex on work-to-family conflict and “positive spillover. ” Women experienced higher positive spillover than men, primarily because they were higher in femininity. Although women did not experience different levels of conflict than men, individuals who scored higher on measured family role salience, which was positively related to femininity, experienced lower levels of conflict. Role segmentation not only reduced conflict but also had the unintended consequence of reducing positive spillover.
Prevalence of atrial fibrillation in China and its risk factors.

OBJECTIVE To study the prevalence of atrial fibrillation (AF) and the relation with its risk factors in China. METHODS A total of 19 363 participants (8635 males and 10 728 females) aged ⋝35 years in geographically dispersed urban and rural regions of China were included in this cross-sectional survey. All participants received questionnaire, physical and blood examination. Echocardiography were performed for AF patients found in the survey. RESULTS Of the 19 363 participants, 199 were diagnosed with AF. The estimated age-standardized prevalence of AF was 0.78% in men and 0.76% in women. The prevalence of AF in participants aged <60 years was 0.41% in men and 0.43% in women, and was 1.83% in both men and women aged ⋝60 years. About 19.0% of males and 30.9% of females with AF were diagnosed with valve disease. Age- and sex-adjusted multivariable logistic regression analysis revealed that myocardial infarction, left ventricular hypertrophy (LVH), obesity, and alcohol consumption were associated with a increased risk of AF(P<0.05). CONCLUSION The age standardized prevalence of AF is 0.77% in the participants enrolled in the present study. The number of AF cases aged ⋝35 years is 5.26 million according to 2010 Chinese Census. Most risk factors for AF, identified mainly in Western countries, are also detected in China.
Emotional Intelligence: A Core Competency for Health Care Administrators

The contemporary concept of emotional intelligence (EI) as a critical set of management skills is traced through time to its current application for health care administration. EI is defined as proficiencies in intrapersonal and interpersonal skills in the areas of self-awareness, self-regulation, self-motivation, social awareness, and social skills. The contributions of EI to effective management are supported by empirical research in the field. The importance of developing these skills in health care organizations is further clarified with examples familiar to health care administrators. Training suggestions and assessment resources are provided.
Young Men Who Kill

Prior research has revealed important insights about some factors which increase the probability that individuals will commit murder; however, existing studies rely on retrospective data from institutional samples and have not examined homicide offending using data collected before the murder was committed. We use prospective longitudinal data from the Pittsburgh Youth Study to examine homicide using factors from multiple informants and developmental periods. Early risk scores showed whether homicide offenders could be predicted at an early age. The study reveals early-life factors that increase risk for perpetrating lethal violence and yields information on the dose-response relationships between predictors and homicide.
Intranasal fentanyl and high-concentration inhaled nitrous oxide for procedural sedation: a prospective observational pilot study of adverse events and depth of sedation.

OBJECTIVES Nitrous oxide (N(2)O) is an attractive agent for pediatric procedural sedation and analgesia (PSA) with rapid onset and offset of sedation. However, it has limited analgesic efficacy. Intranasal fentanyl (INF) provides nonparenteral analgesia. There are currently no data on the combined use of N(2)O and INF for PSA in children. The authors set out to prospectively assess the depth of sedation and incidence of adverse events when N(2)O and INF are used in combination in pediatric patients. METHODS This was a prospective observational pilot study of combined N(2)O and INF for PSA at a tertiary children's hospital emergency department (ED). INF was administered at a precalculated dose of 1.5 μg/kg for preascertained weight ranges. N(2)O concentration, dose, timing of INF, adverse events, and sedation depth were recorded. Sedation depth was recorded using the University of Michigan Sedation Scale (UMSS). RESULTS A total of 41 patients, aged 1 to 14 years, received INF within 2 hours prior to N(2)O. N(2)O was administered at a maximal concentration of 70% in 40 patients, and at 50% in one patient. Most patients (80%) were minimally to moderately sedated (sedation score 1 or 2). Deep sedation (sedation score 3) was recorded in 14.6% of patients (95% confidence interval [CI] = 3.4% to 24.6%). No patients had serious adverse events; vomiting was recorded in 19.5% (95% CI = 7.4% to 31.6%). There were two patients (4.9%) who were deeply sedated and vomited during the procedure. CONCLUSIONS There were no serious adverse events identified in this pilot study of combined N(2)O and INF. However, there was an increased incidence of vomiting and deeper levels of sedation when compared to published data of single-agent use of N(2)O, which could lead to more serious adverse events. Further investigation is needed to establish the analgesic efficacy of combining N(2)O and INF and to clarify the safety profile before this combination can be recommended for PSA in children.
Planning for the Female Offender

Author’s Note: This paper was drawn in part from the workshops of the Third Alabama Symposium on Justice and the Behavioral Sciences. The moderators who contributed to this summary: Robert Seals, Ruth Ann Lyman, William Chambers, Marianne Rosenzweig, and Gerry Pollard. ’-here are various points of contact with the criminal justice system in which female offenders need to be considered as female as well as offenders. While some of the issues discussed here might also apply to men, their impact on women is potentially greater because of the circumstances of women in
Traffic Sign Recognition using SURF: Speeded up robust feature descriptor and artificial neural network classifier

Traffic Sign Recognition (TSR) system is a vital component of intelligent transport system. It plays an important role by enhancing the safety of the drivers, pedestrians and vehicles as traffic signs provide important information of the traffic environment of the road and assist the drivers to drive more safely and easily by guiding and warning. This paper represents road sign detection and recognition system based on speeded up robust feature (SURF) descriptor that is invariant to rotation, skew and occlusion of the sign and artificial neural network (ANN) classifier. The proposed system consists of three steps. In the first step the road scene image is segmented using color based thresholding algorithm followed by some post processing like morphological analysis and filtering using region properties to extract the road sign as a blob of region. Next, shape verification is carried out by using translation, scaling and rotation invariant features vector named Distance to Borders (DtBs) of the segmented blob. Finally the recognition of the traffic sign is implemented using ANN classifier with the training of SURF descriptor. The proposed system simulated on offline road scene images shows a high success rate in the recognition stage. The performance of the classifier is illustrated in terms of cross entropy, confusion matrix and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve.
Biomass-Bioenergy Crops in the United States: A Changing Paradigm

The world energy paradigm is changing from one based on petroleum to one based on a mixture of energy platforms. This change is precipitated by a finite petroleum supply, an expanding global demand, and political instability in areas with major petroleum reserves. The mixed energy platform will include an array of renewable energy sources. The agricultural and forestry sectors have the potential to provide several plant-based products. Corn (Zea mays L.) grain for ethanol has long been utilized at least in some locations. Soydiesel is an expanding market. Technology is rapidly advancing to utilizing crop biomass, perennial grasses, woody perennials and forest products for the production of ethanol via a cellulosic platform and/or utilizing pyrolysis to generate syngas and other products/co-products. Emerging specialty crops have potential to supply feedstock as well. Altering fundamental aspects of plant growth, development, and responses to biotic and abiotic stresses and the opportunities to increase productivity and conversion-process efficiencies are strategies to expand biomass availability and usage. As this new platform emerges, cellulosic ethanol production brings new concerns: competing uses for crop or crop products, co-products, competition for land base, and management strategies to protect soil, water, and climate resources. As the energy paradigm shifts, the balance among competing needs will be critical to achieve sustainable food, fiber, and energy while protecting the soil resource and the environment. This emphasizes avoiding potential negative environment consequences of new bioenergy technologies and presents strategies on how this may be achieved.
The relationship between session frequency and psychotherapy outcome in a naturalistic setting.

OBJECTIVE The dose-response relationship in psychotherapy has been examined extensively, but few studies have included session frequency as a component of psychotherapy "dose. " Studies that have examined session frequency have indicated that it may affect both the speed and the amount of recovery. No studies were found examining the clinical significance of this construct in a naturalistic setting, which is the aim of the current study. METHOD Using an archival database of session-by-session Outcome Questionnaire 45 (OQ-45) measures over 17 years, change trajectories of 21,488 university counseling center clients (54.9% female, 85.0% White, mean age = 22.5) were examined using multilevel modeling, including session frequency at the occasion level. Of these clients, subgroups that attended therapy approximately weekly or fortnightly were compared to each other for differences in speed of recovery (using multilevel Cox regression) and clinically significant change (using multilevel logistic regression). RESULTS Results indicated that more frequent therapy was associated with steeper recovery curves (Cohen's f2 = 0.07; an effect size between small and medium). When comparing weekly and fortnightly groups, clinically significant gains were achieved faster for those attending weekly sessions; however, few significant differences were found between groups in total amount of change in therapy. CONCLUSIONS Findings replicated previous session frequency literature and supported a clinically significant effect, where higher session frequency resulted in faster recovery. Session frequency appears to be an impactful component in delivering more efficient psychotherapy, and it is important to consider in individual treatment planning, institutional policy, and future research.
The Effects of Remedial Mathematics on the Learning of Economics: Evidence from a Natural Experiment

The authors examined the effects of remedial mathematics on performance in university-level economics courses using a natural experiment. They studied exam results prior and subsequent to the implementation of a remedial mathematics course that was compulsory for a subset of students and unavailable for the others, controlling for background variables. They found that, consistent with previous studies, the level of and performance in secondary school mathematics have strong predictive power on students' performances at university-level economics. However, they found relatively little evidence for a positive effect of remedial mathematics on student performance.
Egg white-mediated green synthesis of silver nanoparticles with excellent biocompatibility and enhanced radiation effects on cancer cells

A simple, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly approach to the aqueous-phase synthesis of silver (Ag) nanoparticles was demonstrated using silver nitrate (AgNO3) and freshly extracted egg white. The bio-conjugates were characterized by UV-visible spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectrometry, and dynamic light scattering. These results indicated that biomolecule-coated Ag nanoparticles are predominantly spherical in shape with an average size of 20 nm. The proteins of egg white, which have different functional groups, played important roles in reducing Ag+ and maintaining product attributes such as stability and dispersity. In vitro cytotoxicity assays showed that these Ag-protein bio-conjugates showed good biocompatibility with mouse fibroblast cell lines 3T3. Furthermore, X-ray irradiation tests on 231 tumor cells suggested that the biocompatible Ag-protein bio-conjugates enhanced the efficacy of irradiation, and thus may be promising candidates for use during cancer radiation therapy.
Trends in education excellence gaps: a 12-year international perspective via the multilevel model for change

A recent study in the USA documented the existence and growth of “excellence gaps” among students. These gaps are similar to the minimum competency achievement gaps that proliferate in policy discussions in many Western countries, but excellence gaps focus on the highest level of achievement rather than minimum competency. We extend this research using an international approach, data from the most recent Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, and a multilevel model for change to examine excellence gap trends with specific emphasis on sex and immigrant status of the student. At an international level, sex-based findings are encouraging. Specifically, we found evidence of shrinking sex-based excellence gaps in both science and mathematics. With respect to immigrant status and excellence gaps, small gaps in the proportion of advanced achievers persist over time. In the context of large demographic changes worldwide, we argue that these findings are generally encouraging.