Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Serum apolipoprotein A-I and large high-density lipoprotein particles are positively correlated with FEV1 in atopic asthma.

RATIONALE Although lipids, apolipoproteins, and lipoprotein particles are important modulators of inflammation, varying relationships exist between these parameters and asthma. OBJECTIVES To determine whether serum lipids and apolipoproteins correlate with the severity of airflow obstruction in subjects with atopy and asthma. METHODS Serum samples were obtained from 154 atopic and nonatopic subjects without asthma, and 159 subjects with atopy and asthma. Serum lipid and lipoprotein levels were quantified using standard diagnostic assays and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Airflow obstruction was assessed by FEV1% predicted. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS Serum lipid levels correlated with FEV1 only in the subjects with atopy and asthma. Serum levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol and apolipoprotein A-I (apoA-I) were positively correlated with FEV1 in subjects with atopy and asthma, whereas a negative correlation existed between FEV1 and serum levels of triglycerides, low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, apolipoprotein B (apoB), and the apoB/apoA-I ratio. NMR spectroscopy identified a positive correlation between FEV1 and HDLNMR particle size, as well as the concentrations of large HDLNMR particles and total IDLNMR (intermediate-density lipoprotein) particles in subjects with atopy and asthma. In contrast, LDLNMR particle size and concentrations of LDLNMR and VLDLNMR (very-low-density lipoprotein) particles were negatively correlated with FEV1 in subjects with atopy and asthma. CONCLUSIONS In subjects with atopy and asthma, serum levels of apoA-I and large HDLNMR particles are positively correlated with FEV1, whereas serum triglycerides, LDL cholesterol, and apoB are associated with more severe airflow obstruction. These results may facilitate future studies to assess whether apoA-I and large HDLNMR particles can reduce airflow obstruction and disease severity in asthma.
Examination of the internal structure of the behavioural regulation in sport questionnaire among dancers

Within sport, physical education and dance literature there is inconsistency in how individuals' motivation regulations for engagement are statistically modelled. This has implications for the interpretation of results and the testing and advancement of theory. Furthermore, despite the popularity of dance, there is a paucity of research examining the correlates of dancers' motivation due to there being no dance-specific measure of motivation. Hence, the purpose of this study was twofold: first to examine the utility of the Behavioral Regulation in Sport Questionnaire (BRSQ [Lonsdale, C., Hodge, K., & Rose, E. A. (2008). The behavioural regulation in sport questionnaire (BRSQ): Instrument development and initial validity evidence. Journal of Sport & Exercise Psychology, 30, 323–355. Retrieved from http://journals.humankinetics. com/jsep]) for measuring motivation in dance contexts and, second, to explore the tenability of using different scoring protocols to model the motivation regulations. To address these aims, a comprehensive examination of the hypothesised factor structure of the BRSQ when completed by recreational (n = 344) and vocational (n = 868) dancers was conducted. The data demonstrated good fit to the BRSQ, and invariance across dance level (recreational and vocational), age (<18 and ≥18 years of age) and gender was supported. Findings support the use of the six-factor BRSQ in dance contexts. The tenability of employing alternative scoring protocols for modelling the motivation regulations is discussed.
Metropolitan Universities: Serving the Needs of Adult Students?

I n the United States today, adult students over the age of 24 have numerous options for postsecondary study, with over 4,100 degree-granting institutions operating within a variety of profit structures (U.S. Department of Education, 2006). With this range of choices for students, the inability to meet the needs of today's adult students could create difficulties for some institutions and opportunities for others. The results from the 2000 U.S. Census showed that 79% of the population resided in urban areas, with this number expected to increase (U.S. Census Bureau, 2000). Grobman (1988) reported that metropolitan state universi­ ties were serving, among other diverse populations, greater percentages of older students than non-metropolitan universities. Today, universities are increasingly attracting students through online delivery of courses, eliminating the need for geographic proximity to campus. In order to survive, metropolitan universities must examine and re-invent themselves to attract this increasingly important undergraduate population. There is a perception that adult undergraduates do not need, or would not use, many of the same non-aca­ demic programs as traditional-age undergraduate students (Aslanian & Brickell, 1988). The current study explored whether adult undergraduate students over the age of 24 know about, need, and are interested in student services and whether these services enhanced the quality of the students' educational experience. Background and Rationale
Restoring right relations among privileged and poor people: A case study of the Center for New Creation

Privileged people can work for restorative justice in their relations with poor and oppressed people. They do this by circumventing their class insulation through mutually respectful new relations with those struggling for their liberation. The author of this article argues for public spaces where oppressed and privileged people come together in conscious ways, to rebalance power relations, learn to bridge differences and work together for social justice. Faith‐based organisations, rather than an impediment to democracy, can be a significant site for building such political solidarity. The case study presented here examines an upper middle‐class faith community in the 1980s, the Center for New Creation, as it developed a culture based on democratic relations between the powerful and the poor. Its success was rooted in a conscious ‘caring for difference’ and a sense of personal and collective empowerment and responsibility among its privileged members. Out of this process evolved a new and radical approach to solidarity, called the ‘theology of accompaniment’.
Flat intraepithelial lesions of the urinary bladder

In the 1998 World Health Organization and International Society of Urologic Pathology (WHO/ISUP) classification system for bladder neoplasms, flat intraepithelial lesions of the urinary bladder were categorized as reactive atypia, atypia of unknown significance, dysplasia, and carcinoma in situ. The clinical outcomes of patients diagnosed with these atypical urothelial proliferations are uncertain.
Time Preferences and Criminal Behavior

One main motive behind lengthy prison terms for serious crime is to deter potential offenders from engaging in crime. Yet, economic theory predicts that the scope for punishment as acting as a deterrent depends on how much individuals discount future events when balancing the immediate utility of the crime and the costs of a potential future punishment. If criminals have short time horizons, then it is hard to imagine punishment acting as a key deterrent. This paper provides the first empirical investigation of the link between time preferences and criminal behavior. Our study is made possible by access to a unique Swedish longitudinal dataset that links individual measures of time preferences collected at age 13 to various crime indicators from administrative registers spanning over 18 years. Our results show that high discount rates significantly predict criminal involvement. The magnitude of the relationship is substantial and corresponds to roughly one third of the association between intelligence and crime. Although high discount rates significantly predict the onset of criminal involvement, it is less strongly correlated with crime at the intensive margin. The link is more pronounced for property crime and among males with low intelligence. We also find that part of the association can be explained by high discount rates being associated with lower human capital accumulation.
Inelastic x-ray scattering study of the collective dynamics in liquid sodium.

Inelastic x-ray scattering data have been collected for liquid sodium at T=390 K, i.e., slightly above the melting point. Owing to the very high instrumental resolution, pushed up to 1.5 meV, it has been possible to determine accurately the dynamic structure factor S(Q,omega) in a wide wave-vector range, 1.5-15 nm(-1), and to investigate on the dynamical processes underlying the collective dynamics. A detailed analysis of the line shape of S(Q,omega), similarly to other liquid metals, reveals the coexistence of two different relaxation processes with slow and fast characteristic time scales. The present data lead to the conclusion that (i) the picture of the relaxation mechanism based on a simple viscoelastic model fails and (ii) although the comparison with other liquid metals reveals similar behavior, the data do not exhibit an exact scaling law as the principle of the corresponding state would predict.
Genetics of Intrinsic Postzygotic Isolation in a Circumpolar Plant Species, Draba Nivalis (Brassicaceae)

Abstract Sterility barriers, ranging from incomplete to fully developed, were recently demonstrated within taxonomic species of the genus Draba, suggesting the existence of numerous, cryptic biological species. Because these taxa are predominately selfers and of Pleistocene origin, it was concluded that hybrid sterility evolved quickly and possibly by genetic drift. Here we used genetic mapping and QTL analyses to determine the genetic basis of hybrid sterility between geographically distant populations of one of these taxonomic species, Draba nivalis. Fifty microsatellite loci were mapped, and QTL analyses identified five loci underlying seed fertility and two underlying pollen fertility. Four of five seed fertility QTLs reduced fertility in heterozygotes, an observation most consistent with drift-based fixation of underdominant sterility loci. However, several nuclear–nuclear interactions were also found, including two that acted like reciprocal translocations with lowest fitness in double heterozygotes, and two that had a pattern of fitness consistent with Bateson–Dobzhansky–Muller incompatibilities. In contrast, pollen fertility QTLs exhibited additive inheritance, with lowest fertility associated with the paternal allele, a pattern of inheritance suggestive of cytonuclear incompatibilities. The results imply that multiple genetic mechanisms underlie the rapid evolution of reproductive barriers in Draba.
FHDO Biomedical Computer Science Group at Medical Classification Task of ImageCLEF 2015

This paper presents the modelling approaches performed by the FHDO Biomedical Computer Science Group for the compound figure detection and subfigure classification tasks at ImageCLEF 2015 medical classification. This is the first participation of the group at an accepted lab of the Cross Language Evaluation Forum. For image visual representation, various state-of-the-art visual features such as Bag-of-Keypoints computed with dense SIFT descriptors and the new Border Profile presented in this work, were adopted. Textual representation was obtained by vector quantisation on Bag-of-Words codebook generated using attribute importance derived from χ-test and the Characteristic Delimiters feature presented in this paper. To reduce feature dimension and noise, the principal component analysis was computed separately for all features. Various multiple feature fusion were adopted to supplement visual image information with their corresponding textual information. Random forest models with 100 to 500 deep trees grown by resampling, a multi class linear kernel SVM with C = 0.05 and a late fusion of the two classifiers were used for classification prediction. Six and Eight runs of submission categories: Visual, Textual and Mixed were submitted for the compound figure detection task and subfigure classification task, respectively.
Time Variation in Expected Returns and Aggregate Asset Growth

Aggregate asset growth rst di¤erences of the logarithm of household net worth can capture time variation in changes in expected returns in quarterly and annual horizons in which stock returns have virtually zero autocorrelations. Regressions of changes in stock returns on aggregate asset growth provide stable estimates of slope coe¢ cients over time, which improve out-of-sample predictability. In particular, aggregate asset growth performs better out of sample in terms of a mean squared predictive error suggested by Clark and West (2007) than other predictors, such as the dividend-to-price ratio, cayand labor income growth.
No, You Cannot Predict Elections with Twitter

Predicting X from Twitter is a popular fad within the Twitter research subculture. It seems both appealing and relatively easy. Among such studies, electoral prediction is maybe the most attractive, and a growing body of literature exists on this topic. This research problem isn't only interesting, but is also extremely difficult. However, most authors seem to be more interested in claiming positive results than in providing sound and reproducible methods. It's also especially worrisome that recent papers seem to only acknowledge those studies supporting the idea that Twitter can predict elections. This is all problematic because while simple approaches are purported to be good enough, the predictive power of Twitter regarding elections has been greatly exaggerated, and difficult research problems still lie ahead.
Examining the Factors Influencing Participants' Knowledge Sharing Behavior in Virtual Learning Communities

Increasing organizations and educational institutions have implemented virtual learning communities to encourage knowledge sharing. However, this task can not be accomplished simply by grouping people together and telling them “sharing your knowledge will make you learn better”. This research attempts to examine the factors influencing knowledge sharing from the perspective of human behavior. Theory of Planned Behavior is integrated with social network ties and empirical findings from virtual learning community literature to develop the research model. The current research model comprises eight hypotheses to explore questions of whether social network ties, learners’ attitude toward knowledge sharing, learners’ beliefs of their capabilities in performing online knowledge sharing, and subjective norms relate to knowledge sharing intention, which leads to actual behavior in a virtual learning environment. This study empirically validates the hypothesized relationships using a field survey of college students and MBA students enrolling courses conducted in a virtual learning community. Attitude, subjective norm, Web-specific self-efficacy and social network ties are shown to be good predictors of knowledge sharing intention which, in turn, is significantly associated with knowledge sharing behavior. Knowledge creation self-efficacy does not significantly impact knowledge sharing intention.
Bullying of Mexican Immigrant Students by Mexican American Students

This article reports on a study using qualitative methods to investigate intracultural bullying, specifically, bullying between Mexican American (MA) and Mexican immigrant (MI) high school students. Previous research has reported specific cultural conflicts and discrimination within ethnic groups due to differences in acculturation. The purpose of this study is to determine whether this phenomenon is reflected in bullying within a high school context. In-depth interviews are conducted with 6 students from each group (MA and MI) in Grades 9 through 12 at a predominantly Hispanic public school in the state of Washington. The data reveal that bullying does occur between the two groups, with Mexican American students consistently bullying Mexican immigrant students. Two major themes emerge from the data: language barrier and superiority. There are also four themes that arise from the Mexican American student participants that were not found among the Mexican immigrant student responses. These themes are bullying cycle, isolation, alienation, and school factors. Recommendations for practice are discussed.
Privilege, compromise, or social justice: teachers’ conceptualizations of inclusive education

This qualitative study explored the beliefs of teachers in the USA about the education of students with disabilities, focusing on their conceptualizations of inclusive education. Data were obtained through in-depth interviews with 30 teachers. The findings highlight multiple interpretations of inclusive education and suggest that teachers’ support for inclusive education may be linked with the ways in which they conceptualize this practice. Most teachers’ beliefs about the education of students with disabilities were embedded in dominant educational discourses that centered on the otherness of some students, and an unquestioned acceptance of implicit assumptions in special education. Findings support the need for a paradigm shift in teacher education, moving away from deficit models towards an understanding of inclusive education as linked with issues of social justice.
Revealing delay in collaborative environments

Delay is an unavoidable reality in collaborative environments. We propose an approach to dealing with delay in which 'decorators' are introduced into the interface. Decorators show the presence, magnitude and effects of delay so that participants can better understand its consequences and adopt their own natural coping strategies. Two experiments with different decorators show that this approach can significantly reduce errors in specific collaborative activities. We conclude that revealing delays is one way in which groupware can benefit from accepting and working with the reality of distributed systems, rather than trying to maintain the illusion of copresent interaction.
French versus American consumers’ attachment of value to a product in a common consumption context: A cross-national comparison

This article investigates the influence of French and American national culture on consumer perceptions of productrelated value. Employing means-end theory, hypotheses are developed to predict how French versus American national culture influences the content and structure of consumer value hierachies. Hypotheses are tested using data from in-depth laddering interviews with a matched sample of French and American consumers. The findings support the contention that differences exist in the meaning and relative importance of consumer value hierarchy dimensions across the two national cultures. Furthermore, the analysis suggests that consumption consequences are especially culturally sensitive.
Reciprocity and Need in Posthumous Organ Donation

The effects of need and reciprocity on prosocial behavior have been primarily studied in separate research domains. A distinction between helping those in need and reciprocity is also made in current discussions on how to motivate posthumous organ donation, contrasting the help of needing patients with an equal contribution to a common pool of organs and effective measures against free riding. The authors examined the interactive effects of need and reciprocity on moral emotions relevant for helping (e.g., sympathy, guilt, moral anger) in an experiment in which participants imagined donating or not donating their organs to patients who were or were not willing to donate themselves and who differed in the need for an organ. They found that lack of reciprocity reduced the intensity of certain moral emotions (e.g., sympathy, guilt) but only under low need. High need appeared to arouse forgiveness for free riding. Implications for attempts to increase the number of registered organ donors are discussed.
Reterritorialised Space and Ethnic Political Participation: Indigenous Municipalities in Ecuador

Municipalities with an indigenous mayor or council majority represent the reterritorialising of political units and the remaking of political subjects in Ecuadorian formal politics. These indigenous municipalities represent the successful construction of an indigenous political party, involving active citizen participation. Framed by neo-liberal decentralisation legislation in the 1990s reconfiguring Ecuador's political spaces, the reterritorialisation of politics is bound up with transnational connections that shape the national law on municipalities and the practices of local government. Indigenous municipalities are thereby contextualised in a complex politics of scale, as well as the emergence of new subjects of politics. Our focus is on the processes giving rise to indigenous-led municipalities and the implications of indigenous control of local government. Despite important political gains, we argue that the inclusionary impulse of decentralisation legislation and social movement politics is limited by persistent racial and gendered political cultures.
The Development of Negation in English by a Second Language Learner.

The speech of a seven year old Japanese boy recently arrived in Hawaii was examined in light of the hypothesis that non-native speakers, if they are well below the age of puberty, will acquire the grammatical structures of negation in English in the same developmental sequence which has been described for the acquisition of those structures by native speakers. Video tape recordings were made over a period of more than six months at regular intervals. It was found that there was a striking similarity between the developmental substages of negation in the acquisition of English as a first language as described by Klima and Bellugi (1966) and the development of negation in the speech of the subject.
Auditory stream segregation using bandpass noises: evidence from event-related potentials

The current study measured neural responses to investigate auditory stream segregation of noise stimuli with or without clear spectral contrast. Sequences of alternating A and B noise bursts were presented to elicit stream segregation in normal-hearing listeners. The successive B bursts in each sequence maintained an equal amount of temporal separation with manipulations introduced on the last stimulus. The last B burst was either delayed for 50% of the sequences or not delayed for the other 50%. The A bursts were jittered in between every two adjacent B bursts. To study the effects of spectral separation on streaming, the A and B bursts were further manipulated by using either bandpass-filtered noises widely spaced in center frequency or broadband noises. Event-related potentials (ERPs) to the last B bursts were analyzed to compare the neural responses to the delay vs. no-delay trials in both passive and attentive listening conditions. In the passive listening condition, a trend for a possible late mismatch negativity (MMN) or late discriminative negativity (LDN) response was observed only when the A and B bursts were spectrally separate, suggesting that spectral separation in the A and B burst sequences could be conducive to stream segregation at the pre-attentive level. In the attentive condition, a P300 response was consistently elicited regardless of whether there was spectral separation between the A and B bursts, indicating the facilitative role of voluntary attention in stream segregation. The results suggest that reliable ERP measures can be used as indirect indicators for auditory stream segregation in conditions of weak spectral contrast. These findings have important implications for cochlear implant (CI) studies—as spectral information available through a CI device or simulation is substantially degraded, it may require more attention to achieve stream segregation.