Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Decoding Leaf Hydraulics with a Spatially Explicit Model: Principles of Venation Architecture and Implications for Its Evolution

Leaf venation architecture is tremendously diverse across plant species. Understanding the hydraulic functions of given venation traits can clarify the organization of the vascular system and its adaptation to environment. Using a spatially explicit model (the program K_leaf), we subjected realistic simulated leaves to modifications and calculated the impacts on xylem and leaf hydraulic conductance (Kx and Kleaf, respectively), important traits in determining photosynthesis and growth. We tested the sensitivity of leaves to altered vein order conductivities (1) in the absence or (2) presence of hierarchical vein architecture, (3) to major vein tapering, and (4) to modification of vein densities (length/leaf area). The Kx and Kleaf increased with individual vein order conductivities and densities; for hierarchical venation systems, the greatest impact was from increases in vein conductivity for lower vein orders and increases in density for higher vein orders. Individual vein order conductivities were colimiting of Kx and Kleaf, as were their densities, but the effects of vein conductivities and densities were orthogonal. Both vein hierarchy and vein tapering increased Kx relative to xylem construction cost. These results highlight the important consequences of venation traits for the economics, ecology, and evolution of plant transport capacity.
Discriminative dimensionality reduction in kernel space

Modern nonlinear dimensionality reduction (DR) techniques enable an eﬃcient visual data inspection in the form of scatter plots, but they suﬀer from the fact that DR is inherently ill-posed. Discriminative dimensionality reduction (DiDi) oﬀers one remedy, since it allows a practitioner to identify what is relevant and what should be regarded as noise by means of auxiliary information such as class labels. Powerful DiDi methods exist, but they are restricted to vectorial data only. In this contribution, we extend one particularly promising approach to non-vectorial data characterised by a kernel. This enables us to apply discriminative dimensionality reduction to complex, possibly discrete or structured data.
Incorporating Non-sequential Behavior into Click Models

Click-through information is considered as a valuable source of users' implicit relevance feedback. As user behavior is usually influenced by a number of factors such as position, presentation style and site reputation, researchers have proposed a variety of assumptions (i.e.~click models) to generate a reasonable estimation of result relevance. The construction of click models usually follow some hypotheses. For example, most existing click models follow the sequential examination hypothesis in which users examine results from top to bottom in a linear fashion. While these click models have been successful, many recent studies showed that there is a large proportion of non-sequential browsing (both examination and click) behaviors in Web search, which the previous models fail to cope with. In this paper, we investigate the problem of properly incorporating non-sequential behavior into click models. We firstly carry out a laboratory eye-tracking study to analyze user's non-sequential examination behavior and then propose a novel click model named Partially Sequential Click Model (PSCM) that captures the practical behavior of users. We compare PSCM with a number of existing click models using two real-world search engine logs. Experimental results show that PSCM outperforms other click models in terms of both predicting click behavior (perplexity) and estimating result relevance (NDCG and user preference test). We also publicize the implementations of PSCM and related datasets for possible future comparison studies.
Restricted Coloring Problems and Forbidden Induced Subgraphs

A wheelchair including a wheeled base assembly provided with an upright assembly thereon, the latter including a pair of telescopic vertical post arrangements which are provided adjacent the front corners of the wheelchair and are vertically extendable and retractable. The upright assembly includes a pair of arms which are secured and cantilevered rearwardly from the upper ends of the upright post arrangements. A seat arrangement is removably attached to and positioned between the arms to facilitate transferring of an occupant, along with the seat assembly, either to or from the wheelchair.
Reliability and Validatidity of Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) on Breast Cancer Survivors: Malaysia Case Study

Objective : Cancer survivors may experience psychiatric or psychological disturbances during or after medical treatment, but most of it was under-reported or unrecognized by the health care professionals. Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) is a common and widely used tool for determining psychological distress among cancer population. This study determined the reliability and validity of both Malay and Chinese translated English version of HADS. Method : Malay and Chinese versions of HADS were administered to 150 breast cancer survivors Cronbach’s alpha coeff icient and convergent validity was assessed to determine the internal consistency and the validity of the questionnaire. Result: The prevalence of anxiety was 7.3% whereas the prevalence of depression was 4.7%. The internal consistency for the full scale on Malay version was 0.87, for the anxiety subscale was 0.81 and for depression subscale was 0.73. For the scales on Chinese version, the Cronb ach’s alpha (α) was 0.81, for the anxiety subscale was 0.67 and for the depression subscale was 0.70. The internal consistency of this study was found to be satisfactory with the α coefficient values of above 0.70, as the recommended values. The correlation coefficient ranged from 0.40 to 0.78 for the anxiety and depression sub- scale for both Malay and Chinese version of HADS, which showed that the correlations between the items of each subscale with its subscale were moderate. Conclusion : The Malay and Chinese version of HADS were reliable and valid instrument in assessing anxiety and depres- sion among breast cancer survivors. Keywords: Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS), psychological distress, reliability and validity, breast cancer survivors
Prey Body Size and Ranking in Zooarchaeology: Theory, Empirical Evidence, and Applications from the Northern Great Basin

The use of body size as an index of prey rank in zooarchaeology has fostered a widely applied approach to understanding variability in foraging efficiency. This approach has, however, been critiqued—most recently by the suggestion that large prey have high probabilities of failed pursuits. Here, we clarify the logic and history of using body size as a measure of prey rank and summarize empirical data on the body size-return rate relationship. With few exceptions, these data document strong positive relationships between prey size and return rate. We then illustrate, with studies from the Great Basin, the utility of body size-based abundance indices (e.g., the Artiodactyl Index) when used as one component of multidimensional analyses of prehistoric diet breadth. We use foraging theory to derive predictions about Holocene variability in diet breadth and test those predictions using the Artiodactyl Index and over a dozen other archaeological indices. The results indicate close fits between the predictions and the data and thus support the use of body size-based abundance indices as measures of foraging efficiency. These conclusions have implications for reconstructions of Holocene trends in large game hunting in western North America and for zooarchaeological applications of foraging theory in general.
Job-related resources, leader–member exchange and well-being – a longitudinal study

ABSTRACT Studies show that high-quality reciprocal relationships between leaders and followers are positively associated with employee well-being. However, the pathways for promoting this health-enhancing leadership behaviour have not yet been well explored, and most studies have been cross-sectional. The primary objective of this study was to examine the effects of the interplay between job-related resources and leader–member exchange (LMX) on employee well-being, measured as the emotional exhaustion component of burnout. We applied a two-wave paper-and-pencil design, with an 11-month interval, in a sample of 343 employees working in the German healthcare sector. By means of structural equation modelling, we found that job-related resources (role clarity, meaningfulness and predictability) predicted higher quality LMX, which in turn related to lower levels of emotional exhaustion. The results support the important role of job resources in stimulating health-relevant aspects of leadership behaviour, and indicate ways in which leaders can promote employee health and well-being.
“Drive On”: The Relationship Between Psychological Variables and Effective Squad Leadership

The U.S. Reserve Officer Training Program (ROTC) conducts systematic assessments of cadets’ leadership abilities during field training exercises (FTX) to assess their leadership abilities. While cadets in ROTC programs learn specific tactical operation procedures to augment FTX performances, much less is known about the relationship between psychological variables and squad leadership performance. To this end, 220 cadets completed self-efficacy, psychological flexibility, and grit questionnaires, which were then compared to FTX performance scores. Results underscored that only self-efficacy was significantly related to cadets’ squad leadership ability. Furthermore, prior service in the U.S. Army had no effect on the performance score one attained, highlighting an interesting paradox. Therefore, while self-efficacy can be cultivated through prior experiences, it seems more prudent to educate ROTC cadets on how to apply psychological skills to bolster self-efficacy in preparation for upcoming challenging leadership experiences.
Technological Acceleration, Skill Tranferability, an the Rise in Residual Inequaility

The invention relates to a rotary piston type machine in which an externally toothed wheel and an internally toothed ring form displacement chambers, and one of the toothed elements is connected by way of a universal joint shaft to a rotary slide which, together with a valve part connected to the other toothed element, forms a diversion valve. In such machines the connection between the one toothed element and the associated rotary slide, by way of the universal joint shaft. results in a certain amount of play. This causes leading and lagging between cooperating valve parts with the result that the machine suffers a loss in capacity because of imprecise control of the rotary slide. The lead and lag angles are even greater if the universal joint shaft is coupled to the main shaft and undergoes additional torsion with increasing input and output capacity of the machine. Means are provided to slightly rotate one of the valve elements relative to the main shaft in the reversed direction to compensate for the leading or lagging tendencies referred to.
Analysis and Design of a Guaranteed Real Time Performance Enhanced Industrial Ethernet

Industrial Ethernet is a new trend in technology designed to replace the traditional industrial soluti ons such as point to point and field bus systems. The paper aims studying Industrial Ethernet performance under hard real time system conditions. Substation automation systemis chosen to be the environment in which Industrial Ethernet was assumed to be installed. OPNET packageis used to simulate the behavior of such a system. From running the simulation model , the different parameters affecting the system performance were determined.Three solutions are presented to enhance real time performance of Industrial Ethernet. First of all, the negative effect of FTP transfer to an industrial node is solved using a new method called FTP traffic shapingwhich is presented to enhance the performance of the system while keeping the same nodes performance. The second direction is to enhance nodes operation using multicasting/VLAN technique s. The third motivation is studying the effect on non real time traffic flowing between non industrial nodeson the system behaviour; different techniques were suggested toenhance the network performance and a modified Etherchannel switch architecture i s proposed.
The roles of humour and laughter in youth focus groups on school food

ABSTRACT The article examines young people's group interaction and the roles of humor and laughter in relation to school food and school lunch situations. The analysed focus group discussion data is drawn from a broader case study (2012−2013) with 9th grade students (15–16 years old; 62 pupils; 25 boys and 37 girls; 14 groups; 4−6 pupils per group) in a Finnish secondary school. The analysis is based on existing interpretations and classifications of humor in literature, which is complemented by notions drawn from the study's data set. It is argued that an analysis of humor and laughter can provide valuable notions of how collective attitudes towards school food are constructed, enforced and distributed among students, while also providing insight regarding what kinds of issues around school lunch practices are considered important and worthwhile in the context of students' informal peer cultures. The results illustrate how humor and laughter functioned for the students as a space for (1) Constructing ‘us’ versus ‘them’; (2) Negotiating social order; and (3) Engaging in fun and safe interaction. Results are discussed in the light of how humor and laughter uphold or divide social groups, as well mediate shifts between formal conventions and students' informal worlds.
Differential effects of laminin, intact type IV collagen, and specific domains of type IV collagen on endothelial cell adhesion and migration

Laminin and type IV collagen were compared for the ability to promote aortic endothelial cell adhesion and directed migration in vitro. Substratum-adsorbed IV promoted aortic endothelial cell adhesion in a concentration dependent fashion attaining a maximum level 141-fold greater than controls within 30 min. Aortic endothelial cell adhesion to type IV collagen was not inhibited by high levels (10(-3) M) of arginyl-glycyl-aspartyl-serine. In contrast, adhesion of aortic endothelial cells on laminin was slower, attaining only 53% of the adhesion observed on type IV collagen by 90 min. Type IV collagen when added to the lower well of a Boyden chamber stimulated the directional migration of aortic endothelial cells in a concentration dependent manner with a maximal response 6.9-fold over control levels, whereas aortic endothelial cells did not migrate in response to laminin at any concentration (.01-2.0 X 10(-7) M). Triple helix-rich fragments of type IV collagen were nearly as active as intact type IV collagen in stimulating both adhesion and migration whereas the carboxy terminal globular domain was less active at promoting adhesion (36% of the adhesion promoted by intact type IV collagen) or migration. Importantly, aortic endothelial cells also migrate to substratum adsorbed gradients of type IV collagen suggesting that the mechanism of migration is haptotactic in nature. These results demonstrate that the aortic endothelial cell adhesion and migration is preferentially promoted by type IV collagen compared with laminin, and has a complex molecular basis which may be important in angiogenesis and large vessel repair.
Transfer of MicroRNAs by Embryonic Stem Cell Microvesicles

Microvesicles are plasma membrane-derived vesicles released into the extracellular environment by a variety of cell types. Originally characterized from platelets, microvesicles are a normal constituent of human plasma, where they play an important role in maintaining hematostasis. Microvesicles have been shown to transfer proteins and RNA from cell to cell and they are also believed to play a role in intercellular communication. We characterized the RNA and protein content of embryonic stem cell microvesicles and show that they can be engineered to carry exogenously expressed mRNA and protein such as green fluorescent protein (GFP). We demonstrate that these engineered microvesicles dock and fuse with other embryonic stem cells, transferring their GFP. Additionally, we show that embryonic stem cells microvesicles contain abundant microRNA and that they can transfer a subset of microRNAs to mouse embryonic fibroblasts in vitro. Since microRNAs are short (21–24 nt), naturally occurring RNAs that regulate protein translation, our findings open up the intriguing possibility that stem cells can alter the expression of genes in neighboring cells by transferring microRNAs contained in microvesicles. Embryonic stem cell microvesicles may be useful therapeutic tools for transferring mRNA, microRNAs, protein, and siRNA to cells and may be important mediators of signaling within stem cell niches.
Atypical age‐dependent effects of autism on white matter microstructure in children of 2–7 years

Atypical age‐dependent changes of white matter (WM) microstructure play a central role in abnormal brain maturation of the children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), but their early manifestations have not been systematically characterized. The entire brain core WM voxels were surveyed to detect differences in WM microstructural development between 31 children with ASD of 2–7 years and 19 age‐matched children with typical development (TD), using measurements of fractional anisotropy (FA) and radial diffusivity (RD) from diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). The anatomical locations, distribution, and extent of the core WM voxels with atypical age‐dependent changes in a specific tract or tract group were delineated and evaluated by integrating the skeletonized WM with a digital atlas. Exclusively, unidirectional FA increases and RD decreases in widespread WM tracts were revealed in children with ASD before 4 years, with bi‐directional changes found for children with ASD of 2–7 years. Compared to progressive development that raised FA and lowered RD during 2–7 years in the TD group, flattened curves of WM maturation were found in multiple major WM tracts of all five tract groups, particularly associational and limbic tracts, in the ASD group with trend lines of ASD and TD crossed around 4 years. We found atypical age‐dependent changes of FA and RD widely and heterogeneously distributed in WM tracts of children with ASD. The early higher WM microstructural integrity before 4 years reflects abnormal neural patterning, connectivity, and pruning that may contribute to aberrant behavioral and cognitive development in ASD. Hum Brain Mapp 37:819–832, 2016. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
EcoICA: Skewness-based ICA via Eigenvectors of Cumulant Operator

Independent component analysis (ICA) is an important unsupervised learning method. Most popular ICA methods use kurtosis as a metric of non-Gaussianity to maximize, such as FastICA and JADE. However, their assumption of kurtosic sources may not always be satisfied in practice. For weak-kurtosic but skewed sources, kurtosis-based methods could fail while skewness-based methods seem more promising, where skewness is another non-Gaussianity metric measuring the nonsymmetry of signals. Partly due to the common assumption of signal symmetry, skewness-based ICA has not been systematically studied in spite of some existing works. In this paper, we take a systematic approach to develop EcoICA, a new skewness-based ICA method for weak-kurtosic but skewed sources. Specifically, we design a new cumulant operator, define its eigenvalues and eigenvectors, reveal their connections with the ICA model to formulate the EcoICA problem, and use Jacobi method to solve it. Experiments on both synthetic and real data show the superior performance of EcoICA over existing kurtosis-based and skewness-based methods for skewed sources. In particular, EcoICA is less sensitive to sample size, noise, and outlier than other methods. Studies on face recognition further confirm the usefulness of EcoICA in classification. Keywords: Independent Component Analysis, Cumulant Operator, Skewness, Eigenvectors
Reducing the Dietary Omega-6:Omega-3 Utilizing α-Linolenic Acid; Not a Sufficient Therapy for Attenuating High-Fat-Diet-Induced Obesity Development Nor Related Detrimental Metabolic and Adipose Tissue Inflammatory Outcomes

Aims To examine the effect of manipulating the omega-6:omega-3 (1∶1, 5∶1, 10∶1, and 20∶1) utilizing only α-linolenic and linoleic acid within a clinically-relevant high-fat diet (HFD) composed of up to seven sources of fat and designed to be similar to the standard American diet (MUFA∶PUFA of 2∶1, 12% and 40% of calories from saturated and total fat, respectively) on body composition, macrophage polarization, inflammation, and metabolic dysfunction in mice. Methods Diets were administered for 20 weeks. Body composition and metabolism (HOMA index and lipid profile) were examined monthly. GC-MS was utilized to determine the eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA):arachidonic acid (AA) and the docosahexaenoic acid (DHA):AA in AT phospholipids. Adipose tissue (AT) mRNA expression of chemokines (MCP-1, Fetuin-A, CXCL14), marker genes for M1 and M2 macrophages (CD11c and CD206, respectively) and inflammatory markers (TNF-α, IL-6, IL-1β, TLR-2, TLR-4, IL-10, GPR120) were measured along with activation of NFκB, JNK, and STAT-3. Macrophage infiltration into AT was examined using F4/80 immunohistochemistry. Results Any therapeutic benefit produced by reducing the omega-6:omega-3 was evident only when comparing the 1∶1 to 20∶1 HFD; the 1∶1 HFD resulted in a lower TC:HDL-C and decreased AT CXCL14 gene expression and AT macrophage infiltration, which was linked to a higher EPA:AA and DHA:AA in AT phospholipids. However, despite these effects, and independent of the omega-6:omega-3, all HFDs, in general, led to similar levels of adiposity, insulin resistance, and AT inflammation. Conclusion Reducing the omega-6:omega-3 using α-linolenic acid is not an effective therapy for attenuating obesity and type II diabetes mellitus development.
Assessing the immediate impact of a movement tracking-based intervention for unilateral spatial neglect experienced by stroke survivors

ii 1. CHAPTER 1 – INTRODUCTION . 1 1.1 IMPACT OF NEGLECT . 1 1.2 FOUNDATION OF TREATMENT FOR NEGLECT . 2 1.3 CONTEMPORARY AND FUTURE TREATMENTS FOR NEGLECT . 5 1.4 VIRTUAL REALITY . 6 1.5 AUGMENTED REALITY . 7 1.6 THE NEED FOR OUR INTERVENTION . 9 2. CHAPTER 2 – METHODS . 12 2.1 PARTICIPANTS . 12 2.2 ASSESSMENT (PREAND POSTINTERVENTION) . 13 2.3 INTERVENTION . 16 2.4 STATISTICAL ANALYSIS . 23 3. CHAPTER 3 – RESULTS . 26 3.1 CATHERINE BERGEGO SCALE . 26 3.2 BELLS TEST . 27 3.3 CLOCK DRAWING TEST . 30 3.4 FIGURE-COPYING TEST . 31 3.5 LINE BISECTION TEST . 32 3.6 ASSOCIATIONS . 34 4. CHAPTER 4 – DISCUSSION . 35 5. REFERENCES . 40 6. APPENDIX A – CATHERINE BERGEGO SCALE . 48 7. APPENDIX B – BELLS TEST . 51 8. APPENDIX C – CLOCK DRAWING TEST . 53 9. APPENDIX D – LINE BISECTION TEST . 55 10. APPENDIX E – FIGURE-COPYING TEST . 57 11. APPENDIX F – PHONE CALL SCREENING . 59 12. APPENDIX G – AUGMENTED REALITY TECHNOLOGY STUDY PROTOCOL . 61