Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Potential of Web-based Interventions for Heart Disease Self-Management: A Mixed Methods Investigation

Background Existing initiatives to support patient self-management of heart disease do not appear to be reaching patients most in need. Providing self-management programs over the Internet (web-based interventions) might help reduce health disparities by reaching a greater number of patients. However, it is unclear whether they can achieve this goal and whether their effectiveness might be limited by the digital divide. Objective To explore the effectiveness of a web-based intervention in decreasing inequalities in access to self-management support in patients with coronary heart disease (CHD). Methods Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to explore use made of a web-based intervention over a period of 9 months. Patients with CHD, with or without home Internet access or previous experience using the Internet, were recruited from primary care centers in diverse socioeconomic and ethnic areas of North London, UK. Patients without home Internet were supported in using the intervention at public Internet services. Results Only 10.6% of eligible patients chose to participate (N=168). Participants were predominantly Caucasian well-educated men, with greater proportions of male and younger CHD patients among participants than were registered at participating primary care practices. Most had been diagnosed with CHD a number of years prior to the study. Relatively few had been newly diagnosed or had experienced a cardiac event in the previous 5 years. Most had home Internet access and prior experience using the Internet. A greater use of the intervention was observed in older participants (for each 5-year age increase, OR 1.25 for no, low or high intervention use, 95% CI, 1.06-1.47) and in those that had home Internet access and prior Internet experience (OR 3.74, 95% CI, 1.52-9.22). Less use was observed in participants that had not recently experienced a cardiac event or diagnosis (≥ 5 years since cardiac event or diagnosis; OR 0.69, 95% CI, 0.50-0.95). Gender and level of education were not statistically related to level of use of the intervention. Data suggest that a recent cardiac event or diagnosis increased the need for information and advice in participants. However, participants that had been diagnosed several years ago showed little need for information and support. The inconvenience of public Internet access was a barrier for participants without home Internet access. The use of the intervention by participants with little or no Internet experience was limited by a lack of confidence with computers and discomfort with asking for assistance. It was also influenced by the level of participant need for information and by their perception of the intervention. Conclusions The availability of a web-based intervention, with support for use at home or through public Internet services, did not result in a large number or all types of patients with CHD using the intervention for self-management support. The effectiveness of web-based interventions for patients with chronic diseases remains a significant challenge.
Modelling Delay on IEEE 802.11 MAC Protocol for Unicast and Broadcast Nonsaturated Traffic

The existing models for IEEE 802.11 DCF networks only consider unicast frames, ignoring the existence of broadcast traffic. In a real scenario, the stations are most of the times non-saturated and unicast and broadcast frames exist. These specific characteristics influence the service time which consequently affects the queue behaviour. In this paper, the authors model the total frame's delay for IEEE 802.11 DCF networks in presence of both unicast and broadcast traffic. Our theoretical analysis proposes a model able to compute the time between the instant when a new frame is inserted on the transmission queue and the instant when its transmission finishes. The time needed to serve a frame (service time) is formally deduced from the IEEE 802.11 transmission procedure, conceptually using the view of one network's node. The authors use an M/M/1/K queue model in order to model each frame's queueing delay. The authors validate the total frame's delay using several simulations and present some results. These are analysed for different scenarios of broadcast/unicast network loads and different number of nodes.
An Investigation into the Validity of Asynchronous Web-Based Video Employment-Interview Ratings

Drawing from Huffcutt, Conway, Roth, and Stone’s (2001) taxonomy of employment-interview constructs, we hypothesized that asynchronous web-based video employment interviews would be associated with job performance and organizational tenure using a crowd-sourced sample of 75 employed professionals. We found that composite interview ratings and construct ratings of mental capability, knowledge and skills, applied social skills, and conscientiousness were significantly related to self-rated job performance. We also found that construct ratings of knowledge and skills and applied social skills were significantly associated with self-reported organizational tenure. Implications for web-based video employment-interview research and practice are discussed.
Synchrony of Fast-Spiking Interneurons Interconnected by GABAergic and Electrical Synapses

Fast-spiking (FS) interneurons have specific types (Kv3.1/3.2 type) of the delayed potassium channel, which differ from the conventional Hodgkin-Huxley (HH) type potassium channel (Kv1.3 type) in several aspects. In this study, we show dramatic effects of the Kv3.1/3.2 potassium channel on the synchronization of the FS interneurons. We show analytically that two identical electrically coupled FS interneurons modeled with Kv3.1/3.2 channel fire synchronously at arbitrary firing frequencies, unlike similarly coupled FS neurons modeled with Kv1.3 channel that show frequency-dependent synchronous and antisynchronous firing states. Introducing GABA A receptor-mediated synaptic connections into an FS neuron pair tends to induce an antisynchronous firing state, even if the chemical synapses are bidirectional. Accordingly, an FS neuron pair connected simultaneously by electrical and chemical synapses achieves both synchronous firing state and antisynchronous firing state in a physiologically plausible range of the conductance ratio between electrical and chemical synapses. Moreover, we find that a large-scale network of FS interneurons connected by gap junctions and bidirectional GABAergic synapses shows similar bistability in the range of gamma frequencies (3070 Hz).
Blogging Together: An Examination of Group Blogs

This paper presents the first examination of the growing phenomenon of multi-author, or group blogs. Using a large collection of blog posts gathered over an eight month period, we conducted some quantitative assessments. Multi-author blogs were found to differ significantly from single-and-two author blogs on several quality metrics, including having longer posts on average and being ranked higher according to an in-link metric. Visualization of patterns of posting revealed that individual authors often dominate the posts in multi-author blogs, and that in some cases tags are shared, but usually not extensively.
Secondary Structure Analyses of the Nuclear rRNA Internal Transcribed Spacers and Assessment of Its Phylogenetic Utility across the Brassicaceae (Mustards)

The internal transcribed spacers of the nuclear ribosomal RNA gene cluster, termed ITS1 and ITS2, are the most frequently used nuclear markers for phylogenetic analyses across many eukaryotic groups including most plant families. The reasons for the popularity of these markers include: 1. ) Ease of amplification due to high copy number of the gene clusters, 2. ) Available cost-effective methods and highly conserved primers, 3. ) Rapidly evolving markers (i.e. variable between closely related species), and 4. ) The assumption (and/or treatment) that these sequences are non-functional, neutrally evolving phylogenetic markers. Here, our analyses of ITS1 and ITS2 for 50 species suggest that both sequences are instead under selective constraints to preserve proper secondary structure, likely to maintain complete self-splicing functions, and thus are not neutrally-evolving phylogenetic markers. Our results indicate the majority of sequence sites are co-evolving with other positions to form proper secondary structure, which has implications for phylogenetic inference. We also found that the lowest energy state and total number of possible alternate secondary structures are highly significantly different between ITS regions and random sequences with an identical overall length and Guanine-Cytosine (GC) content. Lastly, we review recent evidence highlighting some additional problematic issues with using these regions as the sole markers for phylogenetic studies, and thus strongly recommend additional markers and cost-effective approaches for future studies to estimate phylogenetic relationships.
WOMEN PREFER RECIPROCITY: GENDER-RELATED DIFFERENCES IN ACADEMIC NETWORKING ON TWITTER

Within scholarly communication, social media such as social networking sites or microblogging services like Twitter facilitates more divers and flexible forms of academic communication, community development, and networking. In light of ongoing discussions on the gender gap in science, the question arises if and how gender influences the academic use of social media. So far little is known about gender-related differences in the academic use of social media. In this paper we focus on the special use case of Twitter and investigated gender-related differences in the academic networking of computer scientists. This study analyzed a sample of 850 Twitter accounts of professors and PhD students. Independent factors were the gender and the academic status of the account owner. The activity of the account was considered as control variable. Dependent variables were the number of researcher followers and the number of reciprocal researcher followers (i.e., number of followers that follow back in the sense of mutual following). Thereby, reciprocal (mutual) following was conceptualized as an indicator for a stronger community development motive. Furthermore, different subgroups of followers with respect to gender, academic status and reciprocity of the following behavior (e.g., reciprocal female professor followers) were considered for explorative analyses to gain deeper insights. Overall, the two-way MANCOVA revealed no significant gender difference for the total number of researcher followers. However, for the number of reciprocal followers, we found that the accounts of females had significantly more reciprocal followers. Also, the explorative analyses of the different subgroups of followers strengthen the finding that females establish more reciprocal following relations. In addition, the pattern of the findings for the subgroups of followers suggests a preference of females for following other females and a gender-related networking behavior across the academic hierarchy. The presented findings provide evidence that female researchers establish more reciprocal relationships on Twitter than male researchers do. This implies a stronger community development motive among female academic Twitter users. It should be noted that our findings relate to computer science which is a male-dominated field and it would be interesting for future research to investigate differences in female-dominated or gender-balanced academic domains. Our findings provide first insights in the impact of gender on academic networking behavior in social media. Further research is needed to strengthen these findings and to clarify the underlying processes.
Moving beyond the direct impact of using CRM systems on frontline employees' service performance: The mediating role of adaptive behaviour

Despite substantial investments in customer‐relationship‐management (CRM) systems, companies continue to experience pain rather than profit. Meanwhile, the concept of “adaptive behaviour” of frontline employees has received little attention in the literature related to CRM systems in which the frontline employees are the primary users. In this study, we propose that with the aid of CRM systems, individual employees are able to immediately access information about customers and service offerings, thus enabling their adaptive behaviours to provide personalized service to individual customers. Based on coping theory, we develop a CRM system‐driven adaptive behaviour model that explains how CRM systems facilitate individual employees' service performance by enabling adaptive behaviour during their service encounters. Multisourced data from a financial company in China largely support our proposed model, showing that employees' postadoption of CRM systems (routinization and infusion of use) enables interpersonal and offering adaptive behaviours, which in turn enhance employees' service performance. In addition, forming a postadoption behaviour of CRM systems relies on the frequent use. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of adaptive behaviour in service encounters with the aid of CRM systems.
Intergenerational Mobility in Britain: New Evidence from the BHPS

This paper provides the first full account of intergenerational mobility in Britain using the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) for the period 1991-1999. The estimates obtained from a sample of all adults who provide information on their parents’ occupation when they were aged 14 point to an intergenerational elasticity – measured in terms of Hope-Goldthorpe scores of occupational prestige – of the order of 0.15 to 0.30. After adjusting for possible measurement error, the estimated intergenerational correlations range from 0.45 to 0.75 for father-child pairs and from 0.30 to 0.50 for mother-child pairs. In addition, we find strong nonlinear effects (typically, the intergenerational elasticity increases with parental status), and a substantial decline in cross-generation correlations in occupational prestige over time. We also analyse a special sample in which young adults (aged 16 or above) are matched to one or both of their biological or adoptive parents interviewed in at least one of the nine years of the panel survey. This analysis is primarily suggestive of what can be done with BHPS data, but its estimates are far from conclusive. With monthly earnings and annual income as measures of economic status, OLS estimates of the intergenerational correlation are at most around 0.05, while IV estimates are at most around 0.20. The implied high economic mobility for this sample is arguably due to life cycle considerations. This is an area that deserves additional research attention as more data become available. JEL Classification: J62, I2, D31
Short-term plasticity and modulation of synaptic transmission at mammalian inhibitory cholinergic olivocochlear synapses

The organ of Corti, the mammalian sensory epithelium of the inner ear, has two types of mechanoreceptor cells, inner hair cells (IHCs) and outer hair cells (OHCs). In this sensory epithelium, vibrations produced by sound waves are transformed into electrical signals. When depolarized by incoming sounds, IHCs release glutamate and activate auditory nerve fibers innervating them and OHCs, by virtue of their electromotile property, increase the amplification and fine tuning of sound signals. The medial olivocochlear (MOC) system, an efferent feedback system, inhibits OHC activity and thereby reduces the sensitivity and sharp tuning of cochlear afferent fibers. During neonatal development, IHCs fire Ca2+ action potentials which evoke glutamate release promoting activity in the immature auditory system in the absence of sensory stimuli. During this period, MOC fibers also innervate IHCs and are thought to modulate their firing rate. Both the MOC-OHC and the MOC-IHC synapses are cholinergic, fast and inhibitory and mediated by the α9α10 nicotinic cholinergic receptor (nAChR) coupled to the activation of calcium-activated potassium channels that hyperpolarize the hair cells. In this review we discuss the biophysical, functional and molecular data which demonstrate that at the synapses between MOC efferent fibers and cochlear hair cells, modulation of transmitter release as well as short term synaptic plasticity mechanisms, operating both at the presynaptic terminal and at the postsynaptic hair-cell, determine the efficacy of these synapses and shape the hair cell response pattern.
Simulating and compensating changes in appearance between day and night vision

The same physical scene seen in bright sunlight and in dusky conditions does not appear identical to the human eye. Similarly, images shown on an 8000 cd/m2 high-dynamic-range (HDR) display and in a 50 cd/m2 peak luminance cinema screen also differ significantly in their appearance. We propose a luminance retargeting method that alters the perceived contrast and colors of an image to match the appearance under different luminance levels. The method relies on psychophysical models of matching contrast, models of rod-contribution to vision, and our own measurements. The retargeting involves finding an optimal tone-curve, spatial contrast processing, and modeling of hue and saturation shifts. This lets us reliably simulate night vision in bright conditions, or compensate for a bright image shown on a darker display so that it reveals details and colors that would otherwise be invisible.
The social mobility challenges faced by young muslims

Young Muslims face the 'broken promise of social mobility': compared to other groups, their improved success in education at all levels does not translate into good labour market outcomes. Despite their educational gains, Muslims experience the greatest economic disadvantages of any group in UK society. They are more likely than non-Muslims to experience neighbourhood deprivation, housing, educational and health disadvantage, and unemployment. This qualitative report explores the attitudes and reasons behind this situation. It offers an account of young Muslims’ perceptions of growing up and seeking work in the UK. The report is designed to contribute to a better understanding of the causes of low social mobility for young Muslims. Drawing on the perceptions of young Muslims (through focus groups and interviews) and of key stakeholders (through a three-stage Delphi survey) the research sought evidence on: • The barriers young Muslims see to social mobility in the UK – in particular, why educational gains are not translating into employment gains for young Muslims. • How these perceptions differ depending on gender, ethnicity, socio-economic background and different forms of educational participation.
TOWARDS BETTER OUTCOMES FOR FAMILIES WITH TRANSITION-AGE YOUTH OR YOUNG ADULTS WITH ASD: A MIXED METHODS STUDY FROM A PARENT’S PERSPECTIVE

OF DISSERTATION TOWARDS BETTER OUTCOMES FOR FAMILIES WITH TRANSITION-AGE YOUTH OR YOUNG ADULTS WITH ASD: A MIXED METHODS STUDY FROM A PARENT’S PERSPECTIVE The after-high-school outcomes for individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and their families are less than desirable. The current study employed an exploratory sequential mixed methods design in order to enhance understanding of the family adaptation process during transition. First, a qualitative study was conducted in order to understand the stressors, external and internal support, coping strategies, and family adaptation outcomes during transition, from a parent’s perspective, using the ABCX model. Thirteen parents of adolescents and young adults with ASD were interviewed. These parents reported a continually high level of stress due to normative strains and ASD-related demands. They clearly described the tangible, emotional, informational, and internal resources both received and needed. Parents, as active agents in their children’s lives, have their own views towards transition, philosophy, and ways of coping. Even though many of them reported negative experiences, these parents also found new meanings and happiness in their lives. Based on the literature review and the qualitative results, a quantitative study was then developed, which applied the ABCX model to understand the predictors of good parent transition outcomes and investigate the mediating mechanism between stressors and parent transition outcomes. At the indicator level, autism severity, mental health crisis/challenging behaviors, filial obligation, general social support, transition planning quality, parent-teacher alliance, parenting efficacy, problem-focused coping, avoidancefocused coping, and optimism were important predictors of the four benchmarks of parents’ outcomes (i.e., parents’ burden, parents’ transition experience, parents’ subjective health, and family quality of life). At the structural level, optimism, emotioncoping strategies, and resources mediated the relationships between stressors and parents’ outcomes. Research and practical applications are discussed. Findings across the two studies led to identification of key factors that influence the outcomes of parents of adolescents and young adults with ASD, as well as an understanding of the complex relationships among the predictors. The results build upon existing empirical and theoretical work related to the transition of families of adolescents and young adults with ASD. Recommendations for future research and clinical practices are discussed.
Recognition of Multi-Fontstyle Characters Based on Convolutional Neural Network

Convolutional Neural Networks are popularly used in OCR and document recognition. This paper applies stochastic diagonal Levenberg-Marquardt method into a convolutional network, which is presented by Simard. The relations between the sample class number, global learning rate and the network's convergence speed are discussed, Experiments on different train sets showed that class number is an essantial factor to the neural network's convergence. We have successfully expeanded Simard network into recognition of multi-font style little character set like Baidu CAPTCHA and got a recognition rate as 98.4% in single Baidu CAPTCHA character, and 93.5% as the overall rate. Experiments in this paper has confirmed that Convolutional Neural Network can be successfully used in recognition of multi-fontstyle little character set.