Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Forging friendships: the experience of a peer-based physical activity program for students with disabilities and volunteers at a Canadian University

ABSTRACT Historically, the ‘ivory tower’ has been guarded in its approach to educating students with disabilities. Further, these students’ physical activity experiences have been greatly neglected in the existing scholarship. Drawing on the phenomenological research tradition and affective theories – which offer unique opportunities to foreground the body and emotions in knowledge – in this study, I explored the experience and phenomena of physical activity and peer relationships in the context of a physical activity program for students with disabilities and volunteers at a Canadian university. Students with disabilities forged new friendships with their peers throughout the program and experienced the body in more pleasurable ways. Volunteers became more aware of their problematic assumptions toward disability over the course of the program and began to question the accuracy of previous disability knowledge. Peer-based physical activity appears to play a beneficial role in the lives of students with and without disabilities on campus. It is hoped that the findings advance scholarship and programs to facilitate inclusive physical activity for university students with disabilities, prompting the ivory tower to widen its doors.
Capacity Planning for Virtualized Servers

Today's data centres offer many different IT services mostly hosted on dedicated physical servers. Virtualization provides a technical means for server consolidation leading to increased server utilization. The term refers to the abstraction of computing resources across many aspects of computing and has been used to describe different techniques. Virtualization engines allow hosting multiple virtual servers (including operating system plus applications) on a single physical server, and sometimes to migrate and dynamically allocate these virtual servers to physical servers on demand. This allows for much flexibility in capacity management. This article presents a number of capacity planning problems in the presence of virtualized IT infrastructures and decision models to allocate these virtual servers optimally. Based on a data set of CPU traces from a data centre provider, we present the results of experiments using different problem formulations.
Learning Stable Group Invariant Representations with Convolutional Networks

Transformation groups, such as translations or rotations, effectively express part of the variability observed in many recognition problems. The group structure enables the construction of invariant signal representations with appealing mathematical properties, where convolutions, together with pooling operators, bring stability to additive and geometric perturbations of the input. Whereas physical transformation groups are ubiquitous in image and audio applications, they do not account for all the variability of complex signal classes. We show that the invariance properties built by deep convolutional networks can be cast as a form of stable group invariance. The network wiring architecture determines the invariance group, while the trainable filter coefficients characterize the group action. We give explanatory examples which illustrate how the network architecture controls the resulting invariance group. We also explore the principle by which additional convolutional layers induce a group factorization enabling more abstract, powerful invariant representations.
Behavioural effects of mobile telephone use during simulated driving.

The effects on driving performance of using a hands-free, mobile telephone were investigated in a pursuit-tracking task that simulated driving. Twenty subjects in two age groups, 19-26 years (median = 21 years) and 40-51 years (median 45·5 years), participated, with five males and five females in each group. The primary task was driving safely. The subjects drove for 20 min in each of three secondary task blocks with (i) a simple telephone conversation about a familiar topic, (ii) a difficult telephone conversation, incorporating a test of working memory, and (iii) car radio tuning and listening. Half of the driving was done on a simulated firm road surface and half on a slippery road surface. The subjects behaviour was subsequently observed and classified in four activity categories, two without and two with a secondary task, with driving (i) on a clear road, and (ii) with obstacles, and with driving involving the secondary task components of (iii) communication, and (iv) instrument manipulation. The res.
Selection of the Proper Revenue and Pricing Model for SaaS

Recent research on software revenue and pricing models has revealed important ways in which firms can benefit from software renting. However, it is still unclear how SaaS providers select a proper revenue and pricing model to make their services attractive for customers. Based on 32 interviews with software professionals from four case firms, this study reveals how different factors impacted on the selection of a revenue and pricing model. It can be concluded that customers' needs were the main driving force to the selection of the most appropriate pricing and revenue model in the market.
The Effects of Oral Ibuprofen on Medicinal Closure of Patent Ductus Arteriosus in Full-Term Neonates in the Second Postnatal Week

Background The arterial ductus is a major communicative pathway which is naturally patent in the fetus, connecting the body of the major pulmonary artery to the descending aorta. Although usually closing on its own, the patent ductus arteriosus (PDA) may remain open in the second postnatal week due to a lack of prompt diagnosis in the initial days of life or an absence of prompt treatment. Objectives To prevent the untoward sequelae of patency of the ductus arteriosus, and to avoid invasive surgery at higher ages, the researchers in the present study embarked on determining the effects of oral ibuprofen during the second postnatal week on newborns with patent ductus arteriosus. Patients and Methods In this study, 70 neonates aged eight to 14 days, presenting at Khatam-al-Anbia clinic and the NICU ward of Shahid Sadoughi hospital in Yazd, Iran, who were diagnosed with PDA through auscultation of heart murmurs and echocardiography, were randomly assigned to two groups. The experimental group received oral ibuprofen of 10 mg/kg in day 1, 5 mg/kg in day 2, and 5 mg/kg in day 3 administered by their parents. The control group did not receive any drug. Parents were informed of the potential drug complications and side effects and asked to report them to the researchers if any occurred. Results After intervention, the patent ductus arteriosus was closed in 62.9% of the neonates in the experimental group (35 newborns) who received oral ibuprofen, while it was closed in 54.3% of the control neonates (35 newborns) who did not receive any drug (P = 0.628). No complications were observed in either of the neonatal groups. Conclusions Our findings showed that administration of oral ibuprofen had no significant effect on the medicinal closure of PDA in full-term neonates during the second postnatal week.
Expansion in CD39+ CD4+ Immunoregulatory T Cells and Rarity of Th17 Cells in HTLV-1 Infected Patients Is Associated with Neurological Complications

HTLV-1 infection is associated with several inflammatory disorders, including the neurodegenerative condition HTLV-1-associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis (HAM/TSP). It is unclear why a minority of infected subjects develops HAM/TSP. CD4+ T cells are the main target of infection and play a pivotal role in regulating immunity to HTLV and are hypothesized to participate in the pathogenesis of HAM/TSP. The CD39 ectonucleotidase receptor is expressed on CD4+ T cells and based on co-expression with CD25, marks T cells with distinct regulatory (CD39+CD25+) and effector (CD39+CD25−) function. Here, we investigated the expression of CD39 on CD4+ T cells from a cohort of HAM/TSP patients, HTLV-1 asymptomatic carriers (AC), and matched uninfected controls. The frequency of CD39+ CD4+ T cells was increased in HTLV-1 infected patients, regardless of clinical status. More importantly, the proportion of the immunostimulatory CD39+CD25− CD4+ T-cell subset was significantly elevated in HAM/TSP patients as compared to AC and phenotypically had lower levels of the immunoinhibitory receptor, PD-1. We saw no difference in the frequency of CD39+CD25+ regulatory (Treg) cells between AC and HAM/TSP patients. However, these cells transition from being anergic to displaying a polyfunctional cytokine response following HTLV-1 infection. CD39−CD25+ T cell subsets predominantly secreted the inflammatory cytokine IL-17. We found that HAM/TSP patients had significantly fewer numbers of IL-17 secreting CD4+ T cells compared to uninfected controls. Taken together, we show that the expression of CD39 is upregulated on CD4+ T cells HAM/TSP patients. This upregulation may play a role in the development of the proinflammatory milieu through pathways both distinct and separate among the different CD39 T cell subsets. CD39 upregulation may therefore serve as a surrogate diagnostic marker of progression and could potentially be a target for interventions to reduce the development of HAM/TSP.
A fast CU partitioning algorithm in HEVC inter prediction for HD/UHD video

The emerging high efficient video coding (HEVC) standard adopts quad-tree structure to partition the coding unit (CU) which is flexible and efficient. However, it causes enormous computational complexity. In this paper, a fast CU partitioning algorithm in the inter prediction of HEVC is proposed. Firstly, based on the visual saliency map detection, a fast CU partitioning depth prediction algorithm is proposed to alleviate inter prediction complexity. Furthermore, an early termination algorithm based on the coding bits of CU is presented to reduce the unnecessary partitioning modes. Experimental results show that our proposed fast CU partitioning method reduces the computational complexity of the current HM to about 56.27% in encoding time with 2.568% increase in BD rate for HD/UHD Video.
Exploitation of a Very Small Peptide Nucleic Acid as a New Inhibitor of miR-509-3p Involved in the Regulation of Cystic Fibrosis Disease-Gene Expression

Computational techniques, and in particular molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, have been successfully used as a complementary technique to predict and analyse the structural behaviour of nucleic acids, including peptide nucleic acid- (PNA-) RNA hybrids. This study shows that a 7-base long PNA complementary to the seed region of miR-509-3p, one of the miRNAs involved in the posttranscriptional regulation of the CFTR disease-gene of Cystic Fibrosis, and bearing suitable functionalization at its N- and C-ends aimed at improving its resistance to nucleases and cellular uptake, is able to revert the expression of the luciferase gene containing the 3′UTR of the gene in A549 human lung cancer cells, in agreement with the MD results that pointed at the formation of a stable RNA/PNA heteroduplex notwithstanding the short sequence of the latter. The here reported results widen the interest towards the use of small PNAs as effective anti-miRNA agents.
Satellite microwave remote sensing of North Eurasian inundation dynamics: development of coarse-resolution products and comparison with high-resolution synthetic aperture radar data

Wetlands are not only primary producers of atmospheric greenhouse gases but also possess unique features that are favourable for application of satellite microwave remote sensing to monitoring their status and trend. In this study we apply combined passive and active microwave remote sensing data sets from the NASA sensors AMSR-E and QuikSCAT to map surface water dynamics over Northern Eurasia. We demonstrate our method on the evolution of large wetland complexes for two consecutive years from January 2006 to December 2007. We apply river discharge measurements from the Ob River along with land surface runoff simulations derived from the Pan-Arctic Water Balance Model during and after snowmelt in 2006 and 2007 to interpret the abundance of widespread flooding along the River Ob in early summer of 2007 observed in the remote sensing products. The coarse-resolution, 25 km, surface water product is compared to a high-resolution, 30 m, inundation map derived from ALOS PALSAR (Advanced Land Observation Satellite phased array L-band synthetic aperture radar) imagery acquired for 11 July 2006, and extending along a transect in the central Western Siberian Plain. We found that the surface water fraction derived from the combined AMSR-E/QuikSCAT data sets closely tracks the inundation mapped using higher-resolution ALOS PALSAR data.
Constitutive Activation of Signal Transducer and Activator of Transcription 5 Contributes to Tumor Growth, Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition, and Resistance to Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor Targeting

Purpose: Signal transducer and activator of transcription 5 (STAT5) is activated in squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck (SCCHN), where targeting of STAT5 inhibits tumor growth in vitro and in vivo. The role of STAT5 activation in carcinogenesis, tumor progression, and response to therapy remains incompletely understood. In this study, we investigated the effects of STAT5 activation on squamous epithelial carcinogenesis and response to therapy. Experimental Design: The functional consequences of STAT5 activation in squamous epithelial carcinogenesis were examined using cells derived from normal (Het-1A) and transformed mucosal epithelial cells engineered to express constitutive-active mutants of STAT5. Results: The growth rate of stable clones derived from both normal and transformed squamous epithelial cells expressing the constitutive-active STAT5 was increased. In SCCHN xenografts, tumor volumes were increased in constitutive-active STAT5 mutant cells compared with vector-transfected controls. Constitutive activation of STAT5 significantly increased cell migration and invasion through Matrigel, as well as the transforming efficiency of SCCHN cells in vitro, as assessed by soft agar assays. The constitutive-active STAT5 clones derived from SCCHN cells showed changes consistent with an epithelial-mesenchymal transition including decreased expression of E-cadherin and increased vimentin in comparison with control transfectants. In these cells, STAT5 activation was associated with resistance to cisplatin-mediated apoptosis and growth inhibition induced by the epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor, erlotinib. Conclusions: These results suggest that constitutive STAT5 signaling enhances tumor growth, invasion, and epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition in squamous epithelial carcinogenesis and may contribute to resistance to epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor and chemotherapy.
String Interactions in PP-Waves

We argue that string interactions in a PP-wave spacetime are governed by an eﬀective coupling g eff = g s ( µp + α ′ ) f ( µp + α ′ ) where f ( µp + α ′ ) is proportional to the light cone energy of the string states involved in the interaction. This simply follows from generalities of a Matrix String description of this background. g eff nicely interpolates between the expected result ( g s ) for ﬂat space (small µp + α ′ ) and a recently conjectured expression from the perturbative gauge theory side (large µp + α ′ ).
FPGA based nonlinear Support Vector Machine training using an ensemble learning

Support Vector Machines (SVMs) are powerful supervised learning methods in machine learning. However, their applicability to large problems has been limited due to the time consuming training stage whose computational cost scales quadratically with the number of examples. In this work, a complete FPGA-based system for nonlinear SVM training using ensemble learning is presented. The proposed framework builds on the FPGA architecture and utilizes a cascaded multi-precision training flow, exploits the heterogeneity within the training problem by tuning the number representation used, and supports ensemble training tuned to each internal memory structure so to address very large datasets. Its performance evaluation shows that the proposed system achieves more than an order of magnitude better results compared to state-of-the-art CPU and GPU-based implementations.
Sports Manager Training and Leadership Behaviors

The aim of this study is to examine the leadership behaviors levels of university students studying in the Sports Management Department. The sample of the research consists of 148 students (male n=112, female n=36) aged between 18 and 28 years. In this study, the Personal Information Form was created in order to learn the characteristics of the participants such as gender, age groups, the status of doing sports as an athlete and the status of volunteering in sports events. The Leader Behavior Description Questionnaire (LBDQ), which was translated into the Turkish Language by Atar and Özbek (2009), was used as a data collection tool. The mean score of the students was 4.142 in the dimension of initiating structure and was 3.760 in the dimension of consideration. According to the results of the analysis, the initiating structure dimension scores differed according to variables of gender, the status of doing sports as an athlete and the status of volunteering in sports events. The consideration dimension scores differed age groups and the status of volunteering in sports events. In addition, it was found that there was a linear and significant relationship between scores of initiating structure and consideration.
HI observations of low surface brightness galaxies: Probing low-density galaxies

We present Very Large Array (VLA) and Westerbork Synthesis Radio Telescope (WSRT) 21-cm HI observations of 19 late-type low surface brightness (LSB) galaxies. Our main findings are that these galaxies, as well as having low surface brightnesses, have low HI surface densities, about a factor of similar to 3 lower than in normal late-type galaxies. We show that LSB galaxies in some respects resemble the outer parts of late-type normal galaxies, but may be less evolved. LSB galaxies are more gas-rich than their high surface brightness counterparts, The rotation curves of LSB galaxies rise more slowly than those of HSB galaxies of the same luminosity, with amplitudes between 50 and 120 km s(-1), and are often still increasing at the outermost measured point. The shape of the rotation curves suggests that LSB galaxies have low matter surface densities, We use the average total mass surface density of a galaxy as a measure for the evolutionary state, and show that LSB galaxies are among the least compact, least evolved galaxies. We show that both M(HI)/L(B) and M(dyn)/L(B) depend strongly on central surface brightness, consistent with the surface brightness-mass-to-light ratio relation required by the Tully-Fisher relation. LSB galaxies are therefore slowly evolving galaxies, and may well be low surface density systems in all respects.
Actuality for Counterpart Theorists

The counterpart theorist has a problem: there is no obvious way to understand talk about actuality in terms of counterparts. Fara and Williamson have charged that this obstacle cannot be overcome. Here I defend the counterpart theorist by offering systematic interpretations of a quantified modal language that includes an actuality operator. Centrally, I disentangle the counterpart relation from a related notion, a 'representation relation'. The relation of possible things to the actual things they represent is variable, and an adequate account of modal language must keep track of the way it is systematically shifted by modal operators. I apply my account to resolve several puzzles about counterparts and actuality. In technical appendices, I prove some important logical results about this 'representational' counterpart system and its relationship to other modal systems. © 2013 Russell.
Does affective disposition moderate the relationship between job satisfaction and voluntary turnover

J. Weitz (1952) argued that job dissatisfaction would be more predictive of turnover if it was considered in light of an individual's predisposition to be satisfied with everyday life events. In the present study it was hypothesized that affective disposition moderates the relationship between job satisfaction and voluntary turnover. With data collected from a sample of nurses, support was indicated for the hypothesis. The more positive the disposition of the individual, the stronger the relationship that was observed between job dissatisfaction and turnover. Furthermore, individuals dissatisfied with their jobs but positively disposed to life in general were the individuals most likely to quit. Implications of the results for future research and practice are discussed. Empirical work over the years has clearly established the significant role of job satisfaction in predicting turnover. Carsten and Spector (1987), in a meta-analysis of 47 studies, estimated a corrected correlation between job satisfaction and turnover of-. 26 (the 95% confidence interval did not include 0). Because sampling error accounted for only 21 % of the variance in correlations across studies, the authors concluded that room for significant moderator effects existed. In fact, Carsten and Spector found that alternative employment opportunities moderated the relationship between job satisfaction and turnover. On the basis of Carsten and Specter's findings, the potential exists that other variables interact with job satisfaction in predicting turnover. Given the importance of turnover decisions to individuals and organizations (Dalton & Todor, 1979; Mobley, 1982; Staw, 1980), it is surprising that more research concerning potential moderators of the job satisfaction-turnover relationship has not been conducted.
Obstetric complications, parenting, and risk of criminal behavior.

BACKGROUND The results of studies that have examined the relationship between prenatal and perinatal complications and adult criminality and violence are contradictory. Supporting evidence for this relationship comes from studies of samples drawn from a single cohort. The present study was designed to examine the associations between prenatal and perinatal complications and criminality, defining more precisely than past investigations subject characteristics and the types of offenses. METHODS The cohort includes the 15 117 persons born in Stockholm, Sweden, in 1953 and followed up to age 30 years. Information was extracted from obstetric files, health, social, work, and criminal records. Obstetric complications were defined as deviations from normal development occurring at any point from conception through the neonatal period. Inadequate parenting was indexed by social intervention. RESULTS Inadequate parenting was experienced by 19.1% of the men and 18.1% of the women, and was shown to increase the risk of offending (men, 1.39 times [95% confidence interval [CI], 1.28-1.50]; women, 2.09 [95% CI, 1.70-2.56]) and of violent offending (men, 2.02 times [95% CI, 1.67-2.44]; women, 2.09 [95% CI, 1.70-2.56]). Obstetric complications in the absence of family problems did not increase the risk of offending. A combination of pregnancy complications and inadequate parenting affected 3.1% of the men and 4.0% of the women, and increased the risk of offending (1.64 times [95% CI, 1.43-1.89]; 1.79 times [95% CI, 1.16-2.75], respectively) and violent offending (2.86 times [95% CI, 2.09-3.91]; 1.81 times [95% CI, 0.57-5.79]). CONCLUSIONS A combination of pregnancy complications and inadequate parenting increased the risk of violent and nonviolent offending only slightly more than inadequate parenting alone. However, inadequate parenting was experienced by 5 times more cohort members than was the combination of inadequate parenting and pregnancy complications.