Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Tobacco Policymaking in Illinois, 1965-2014: Gaining Ground in a Short Time

Tobacco Policymaking in Illinois, 1965-2014: Gaining Ground in a Short Time Randy Uang, Ph.D. Richard L. Barnes, J.D. Stanton A. Glantz, Ph.D. Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education Philip R. Lee Institute for Health Policy Studies School of Medicine University of California, San Francisco San Francisco, CA 94143-1390 May 2014
Triggered codeswitching: Lexical processing and conversational dynamics

Abstract This study investigates the psycholinguistic process underlying triggered codeswitching – codeswitching facilitated by the occurrence of cognates – within the context of conversational dynamics. It confirms that, in natural bilingual speech, lexical selection of cognates can facilitate codeswitching by enhancing the activation of the non-selected language. Analyses of a large-scale corpus of Welsh–English conversational speech showed that 1) producing cognates facilitated codeswitching, 2) speakers who generally produced more cognates generally codeswitched more, even in clauses that did not contain cognates, 3) larger numbers of cognates in a clause increased the likelihood of codeswitching, 4) codeswitching temporarily remained facilitated after the production of cognates, and 5) hearing rather than producing cognates did not facilitate codeswitching. The findings confirm the validity of the proposed cognitive account of triggered codeswitching, and clarify the relation between the lexical activation of cognates and consecutive language choice, in accord with current insights in lexical processing.
Interference with the Autophagic Process as a Viral Strategy to Escape from the Immune Control: Lesson from Gamma Herpesviruses

We summarized the most recent findings on the role of autophagy in antiviral immune response. We described how viruses have developed strategies to subvert the autophagic process. A particular attention has been given to Epstein-Barr and Kaposi's sarcoma associated Herpesvirus, viruses studied for many years in our laboratory. These two viruses belong to γ-Herpesvirus subfamily and are associated with several human cancers. Besides the effects on the immune response, we have described how autophagy subversion by viruses may also concur to the enhancement of their replication and to viral tumorigenesis.
Labour migration management as multidimensional border-drawing : a comparative interpretive policy analysis in the EU

This thesis examines and compares current labour migration management of non-EU workers in Germany, France and the United Kingdom. It aims to explain cross-national similarities and differences from an interpretive policy analysis perspective. The research entails analyses of 33 legal documents and in-depth interviews with 25 high-ranking policy-makers and is anchored in case contexts. In order to gain comparative explanations the analysis maps legal classifications and rights regimes governing incoming migrant workers, explores meanings policy-makers vest in these, and thereby reconstructs the economic, social and political normative references these meanings entail in comparative perspective. By conceptualising migration policy as border-drawing I challenge the main stream migration policy literature, offering an alternative approach which changes the parameters of policy analysis more generally. While most migration policy research concentrates on explaining the control gap between restrictive admission policies and de facto migratory flows, I shift the analytical focus towards states’ power to define legal and illegal positions through policy and allocate rights in a differential way. Empirically, I overcome partial policy accounts by contributing a multidimensional analysis of labour migration policy across its economic, social, and politico-formal dimension, and develop an innovative methodology to explain crossnational variation in the interaction of these aspects. By associating each dimension with a specific borderdrawing site – capitalist coordination system, welfare state regime, and citizenship model – the thesis utilises regime theories to develop benchmarks for the empirical analysis while at the same time testing the explanatory scope of these theories in the field of labour migration. Migrant workers are selected by skill level and labour scarcity in all three cases in line with widely shared economic values surrounding labour migration agendas. Yet, the analysis also pinpoints considerable divergences when selecting migrants by origin, social cohesion concerns or with annual caps. The variable labour geographies into which migrant workers are admitted – mainly relating to post-colonial relationships, distinct uses of EU free movement, and demographic context – are seized by policy actors to selectively contextualise economic border-drawing. It is this distinct socio-political contextualisation of a shared cultural political economy of labour migration which explains similarities and differences in European labour migration management. The thesis hence contributes an empirically detailed understanding of an integrating EU common market which coexists with persistently diverging labour geographies and societies. Findings bear considerable policy implications in terms of European integration and the unequal distribution of labour mobility rights for migrants in Europe.
Experimental Study of Wettability Alteration to Preferential Gas-Wetting in Porous Media and Its Effects

In a recent theoretical study, Li and Firoozabadi @Li, K. and Firoozabadi, A. : ‘‘Phenomenological Modeling of CriticalCondensate Saturation and Relative Permeabilities in GasCondensate Systems,’’ paper SPE 56014 available from SPE, Richardson, Texas ~2000! # showed that if the wettability of porous media can be altered from preferential liquid-wetting to preferential gas-wetting, then gas-well deliverability in gas-condensate reservoirs can be increased. In this article, we present the results that the wettability of porous media may indeed be altered from preferential liquid-wetting to preferential gas-wetting. In the petroleum literature, it is often assumed that the contact angle through liquid-phase u is equal to 0° for gas-liquid systems in rocks. As this work will show, while u is always small, it may not always be zero. In laboratory experiments, we altered the wettability of porous media to preferential gas-wetting by using two chemicals, FC754 and FC722. Results show that in the glass capillary tube u can be altered from about 50 to 90° and from 0 to 60° by FC754 for water-air and normal decane-air systems, respectively. While untreated Berea saturated with air has a 60% imbibition of water, its imbibition of water after chemical treatment is almost zero and its imbibition of normal decane is substantially reduced. FC722 has a more pronounced effect on the wettability alteration to preferential gas-wetting. In a glass capillary tube u is altered from 50 to 120° and from 0 to 60° for water-air and normal decane-air systems, respectively. Similarly, because of wettability alteration with FC722, there is no imbibition of either oil or water in both Berea and chalk samples with or without initial brine saturation. Entry capillary pressure measurements in Berea and chalk give a clear demonstration that the wettability of porous media can be permanently altered to preferential gas-wetting.
Professional Competence And Higher Education: The ASSET Programme

Introduction - vocational competence and university education The ASSET programme - an outline the functional analysis of competence - an empirically-based curriculum? the "other dimension" of assessment - a general model of professional learning practice and knowledge or practice as knowledge? assessment - the development of an expert community examples of candidates' work the organizational/employment context - towards an educative workplace? evaluation 1995 - the social work ASSET programme after five years current and future developments.
Are they half as strong as they used to be? An experiment testing whether age-related social comparisons impair older people's hand grip strength and persistence

Objective To assess how age-related social comparisons, which are likely to arise inadvertently or deliberately during assessments, may affect older people's performance on tests that are used to assess their needs and capability. Design The study randomly assigned participants to a comparison with younger people or a no comparison condition and assessed hand grip strength and persistence. Gender, education, type of residence, arthritis and age were also recorded. Setting Age UK centres and senior's lunches in the South of England. Participants An opportunity sample of 56 adults, with a mean age of 82.25 years. Main outcomes measures Hand grip strength measured using a manual hand dynamometer and persistence of grip measured using a stopwatch. Results Comparison caused significantly worse performance measured by both strength (comparison =6.85 kg, 95% CI 4.19 kg to 9.5 kg, control group =11.07 kg, 95% CI 8.47 kg to 13.68 kg, OR =0.51, p=0.027) and persistence (comparison =8.36 s, 95% CI 5.44 s to 11.29 s; control group =12.57 s, 95% CI 9.7 s to 15.45 s, OR =0.49, p=0.045). These effects remained significant after accounting for differences in arthritis, gender, education and adjusting for population age norms. Conclusions Due to the potential for age comparisons and negative stereotype activation during assessment of older people, such assessments may underestimate physical capability by up to 50%. Because age comparisons are endemic, this means that assessment tests may sometimes seriously underestimate older people's capacity and prognosis, which has implications for the way healthcare professionals treat them in terms of autonomy and dependency.
The Role of Family in Children with PTSD after Natural Disasters

Parents are the most important and reliable resource for their children to seeking for helps and support. Particularly in the aftermath of natural disasters, the role of family is considered to play an important and significant role in children with PTSD, either are risk factors or protective ones. In this paper, the literature in relation to the effects of family factors in children with PTSD are reviewed, with the aim of exploring both the risk and protective family factors associated with the PTSD symptoms in children. It is concluded that separation from families, parental psychopathology, and parent maladaptive coping strategies have been suggested o constitute risk factors, whereas positive parental emotionality, warm and open family environment have been found to be protective. Some critiques of PTSD concept, its cross-cultural validity, and assessment of children with PTSD are also revealed in this review.
Cancer Immunotherapy Using γδT Cells: Dealing with Diversity

The broad and potent tumor-reactivity of innate-like γδT cells makes them valuable additions to current cancer immunotherapeutic concepts based on adaptive immunity, such as monoclonal antibodies and αβT cells. However, clinical success using γδT cells to treat cancer has so far fallen short. Efforts of recent years have revealed a striking diversity in γδT cell functions and immunobiology, putting these cells forward as true “swiss army knives” of immunity. At the same time, however, this heterogeneity poses new challenges to the design of γδT cell-based therapeutic concepts and could explain their rather limited clinical efficacy in cancer patients. This review outlines the recent new insights into the different levels of γδT cell diversity, including the myriad of γδT cell-mediated immune functions, the diversity of specificities and affinities within the γδT cell repertoire, and the multitude of complex molecular requirements for γδT cell activation. A careful consideration of the diversity of antibodies and αβT cells has delivered great progress to their clinical success; addressing also the extraordinary diversity in γδT cells will therefore hold the key to more effective immunotherapeutic strategies with γδT cells as additional and valuable tools to battle cancer.
Training as a Means for Improving Staff Nurses’ Documentation Skills

Background: principals of communicating information among healthcare providers are through patient care documentation. Accurate, timely, thorough and concise documentation can be the deciding factor for whether a patient lives or dies. Aim: The present study was aiming at utilizing training as a means for improving staff nurses’ documentation skills. Subjects: 63 nurses were included in the study. Setting: The study was conducted at inpatient units at Al Helal hospital. This hospital is affiliated to Ministry of Health Specialized Medical Centers. Methods: three tools were used to collect data for this study. Knowledge assessment questionnaire, an observational checklist, Pre and post-test simple questions according to the title of each session. Results: slightly more than two fifth of staff nurses had high level of knowledge regarding total documentation dimensions in preprogram phase, while all staff nurses had highly knowledge in post phase and slightly decline at follow up phase with highly statistically significant improvement with all the phases of intervention. majority of staff nurses had low total performance level at preprogram phase while four fifth of them had high performance level at post phase and three quarter of them had high performance level after three months of training intervention with highly statistically significant improvement in total documentation performance level with all the phases of intervention. Conclusion: There was highly statistically significant improvement in total staff nurses’ documentation knowledge and performance level during post and follow up phase as compared with preprogram phase. This supported the study hypothesis which stated, staff nurses documentation skills will be improved after implementing the training intervention. Recommendation: dissemination of manual for new staff nurses contains documentation skills. Dissemination of information and research finding should be done online to improve its utilization.
TR-2007-003 Decay bounds and linear scaling algorithms for approximating functions of band matrices

We establish decay bounds for the entries of f(A) where A is a banded (more generally, sparse) n × n diagonalizable matrix and f is smooth on a subset of the complex plane containing the spectrum of A. Combined with techniques from approximation theory, the bounds are used to compute banded approximations to f(A), resulting in algorithms that under appropriate conditions have linear complexity in the matrix size n. Applications to various types of problems are discussed and illustrated by numerical examples.
Robust Hypothesis Testing via Lq-Likelihood

In this article, we introduce a robust testing procedure --- the Lq-likelihood ratio test (LqLR). We derive the asymptotic distribution of our test statistic and demonstrate its robustness properties both analytically and numerically. We further investigate the properties of its influence function and breakdown point. We also propose a method for selecting the tuning parameter q, and demonstrate that, with the q selected using our approach, the LqLR attains an excellent efficiency/robustness trade-off compared to the traditional likelihood ratio test (LR) and other robust tests. For the special case of testing the location parameter in the presence of gross error contamination, we show that LqLR dominates the Wilcoxon-Mann-Whitney test and the sign test at different levels of contamination.
Think Tank Directory: A Guide to Nonprofit Public Policy Research Organizations

A machine for producing a rotary orbital motion between a cutting master having an abrasive mirror image surface of a form to be abraded into a friable material and a workpiece of friable material while moving the surface of the cutting master and workpiece into contact including adjustable eccentric means for varying the rotary orbital motion between the workpiece and the cutting master, a hydraulic piston and cylinder for moving the cutting master and workpiece into engagement with each other during imparting of the rotary orbital motion between the cutting master and workpiece, hydraulic means for applying predetermined variable pressure between the cutting master and workpiece, a control circuit for controlling the operation of the total form abrading machine including means for controlled pulsing of the cutting master away from the workpiece, and means for flushing between the electrode and workpiece during an abrading operation, and the method of using the total form abrading machine.
A LASSO Chart for Monitoring the Covariance Matrix

Abstract Multivariate control charts are essential tools in multivariate statistical process control. In real applications, when a multivariate process shifts, it occurs in either location or scale. Several methods have been proposed recently to monitor the covariance matrix. Most of these methods use rational subgroups and are used to detect large shifts. In this paper, we propose a new accumulative method, based on penalized likelihood estimators, that uses individual observations and is useful to detect small and persistent shifts in a process when sparsity is present.
Energy management for demand responsive users with shared energy storage system

This paper investigates the energy management problem for multiple self-interested users, each with renewable energy generation as well as both the fixed and controllable loads, that all share a common energy storage system (ESS). The self-interested users are willing to sell/buy energy to/from the shared ESS if they can achieve lower energy costs compared to the case of no energy trading while preserving their privacy e.g. sharing only limited information with a central controller. Under this setup, we propose an iterative algorithm by which the central controller coordinates the charging/discharging values to/from the shared ESS by all users such that their individual energy costs reduce at the same time. For performance benchmark, the case of cooperative users that all belong to the same entity is considered, where they share all the required information with the central controller so as to minimize their total energy cost. Finally, the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm in simultaneously reducing users' energy costs is shown via simulations based on realistic system data of California, US.
Capture of viable circulating tumor cells in the liver of colorectal cancer patients.

BACKGROUND The incidence and number of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in the peripheral blood of colorectal cancer patients are lower than in other cancer types, which may point to a particular biology of colorectal cancer affecting CTC detection. METHODS We detected CTCs in the peripheral and mesenteric blood of colorectal cancer patients by use of 2 independent technologies on the basis of different biological properties of colon cancer cells. Seventy-five patients diagnosed with localized (M0, n = 60) and metastatic (M1, n = 15) colorectal cancer were included. Peripheral and mesenteric blood samples were collected before tumor resection. We performed CTC enumeration with an EpCAM-independent enrichment method followed by the Epispot assay that detected only viable CK19-releasing CTCs. In parallel, we used the FDA-cleared EpCAM-dependent CellSearch® as the reference method. RESULTS The enumeration of CK19-releasing cells by the CK19-Epispot assay revealed viable CTCs in 27 of 41 (65.9%) and 41 of 74 (55.4%) (P = 0.04) patients in mesenteric and peripheral blood, respectively, whereas CellSearch detected CTCs in 19 of 34 (55.9%) and 20 of 69 (29.0%) (P = 0.0046) patients. In mesenteric blood, medians of 4 (range 0-247) and 2.7 CTCs (range 0-286) were found with Epispot and CellSearch (P = 0.2), respectively, whereas in peripheral blood, Epispot and CellSearch detected a median of 1.2 (range 0-92) and 0 CTCs (range 0-147) (P = 0.002). CONCLUSIONS A considerable portion of viable CTCs detectable by the Epispot assay are trapped in the liver as the first filter organ in CRC patients.
Forecasting online game addictiveness

Online gaming has now become an extremely competitive business. As there are so many game titles released every month, gamers have become more difficult to please and fickle in their allegiances. Therefore, it would be beneficial if we could forecast how addictive a game is before publishing it on the market. With the capability of game addictiveness forecasting, developers will be able to continuously adjust the game design and publishers will be able to assess the potential market value of a game in its early development stages. In this paper, we propose to forecast a game's addictiveness based on players' emotional responses when they are first exploring the game. Based on the account activity traces of 11 commercial games, we develop a forecasting model that predicts a game's addictiveness index according to electromyographic measures of players' two facial muscles. We hope that with our methodology, the game industry could optimize the odds of successful investments and target more accurately the provision of a better entertaining experience.
Energy Efficient VM Scheduling for Cloud Data Centers: Exact Allocation and Migration Algorithms

This paper presents two exact algorithms for energy efficient scheduling of virtual machines (VMs) in cloud data centers. Modeling of energy aware allocation and consolidation to minimize overall energy consumption leads us to the combination of an optimal allocation algorithm with a consolidation algorithm relying on migration of VMs at service departures. The optimal allocation algorithm is solved as a bin packing problem with a minimum power consumption objective. It is compared with an energy aware best fit algorithm. The exact migration algorithm results from a linear and integer formulation of VM migration to adapt placement when resources are released. The proposed migration is general and goes beyond the current state of the art by minimizing both the number of migrations needed for consolidation and energy consumption in a single algorithm with a set of valid inequalities and conditions. Experimental results show the benefits of combining the allocation and migration algorithms and demonstrate their ability to achieve significant energy savings while maintaining feasible convergence times when compared with the best fit heuristic.