Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Altered large-scale brain network interactions associated with HIV infection and error processing

Abstract Altered activity within and between large-scale brain networks has been implicated across various neuropsychiatric conditions. However, patterns of network dysregulation associated with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and further impacted by cannabis (CB) use, remain to be delineated. We examined the impact of HIV and CB on resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) between brain networks and associations with error awareness and error-related network responsivity. Participants (N = 106), stratified into four groups (HIV+/CB+, HIV+/CB−, HIV−/CB+, HIV−/CB−), underwent fMRI scanning while completing a resting-state scan and a modified Go/NoGo paradigm assessing brain responsivity to errors and explicit error awareness. We examined separate and interactive effects of HIV and CB on resource allocation indexes (RAIs), a measure quantifying rsFC strength between the default mode network (DMN), central executive network (CEN), and salience network (SN). We observed reduced RAIs among HIV+ (vs. HIV−) participants, which was driven by increased SN-DMN rsFC. No group differences were detected for SN-CEN rsFC. Increased SN-DMN rsFC correlated with diminished error awareness, but not with error-related network responsivity. These outcomes highlight altered network interactions among participants with HIV and suggest such rsFC dysregulation may persist during task performance, reflecting an inability to disengage irrelevant mental operations, ultimately hindering error processing.
Journal of Reproduction and Development

Spermatozoa acquire fertilization ability through post-translational modifications. These membrane surface alterations occur in various segments of the epididymis. Quiescin sulfhydryl oxidases, which catalyze thioloxidation reactions, are involved in disulfide bond formation, which is essential for sperm maturation, upon transition and migration in the epididymis. Using castration and azoospermia transgenic mouse models, in the present study, we showed that quiescin sulfhydryl oxidase 1 (QSOX1) protein expression and secretion are positively correlated with the presence of testosterone and sperm cells. A two-dimensional in vitro epithelium-sperm co-culture system provided further evidence in support of the notion that both testosterone and its dominant metabolite, 5α-dihydrotestosterone, promote epididymal QSOX1 secretion. We also demonstrated that immature caput spermatozoa, but not mature cauda sperm cells, exhibited great potential to stimulate QSOX1 secretion in vitro, suggesting that sperm maturation is a key regulatory factor for mouse epididymal QSOX1 secretion. Proteomic analysis identified 582 secretory proteins from the co-culture supernatant, of which 258 were sperm-specific and 154 were of epididymal epitheliumorigin. Gene Ontology analysis indicated that these secreted proteins exhibit functions known to facilitate sperm membrane organization, cellular activity, and sperm-egg recognition. Taken together, our data demonstrated that testosterone and sperm maturation status are key regulators of mouse epididymal QSOX1 protein expression and secretion.
Prominent seasonality of 25(OH)D vitamin deficiency in Latvia: Age and gender-related variations and testing regimen

Seasonality of 25(OH)D deficiency rate is a factor of major clinical and social impact and should be considered when planning for appropriate testing and tailored correction. We present retrospective cross-sectional analysis of over a million 25(OH)D tests performed in two leading Latvian laboratories – Central Laboratory and E.Gulbja Laboratory. Both series of tests demonstrated prominent seasonal variability of 25(OH)D deficiency rate (<20 ng/ml) and critical deficiency rate (<12 ng/ml): the lowest percentage of deficient tests was in August, while a significant peak was found in March-April. This trend was present at all ages and in both genders, variations were pronounced even for a high-latitude country and more prominent for critical deficiency, in younger age groups and in males. Analysis of testing regimens of both laboratories revealed that schedule was not optimal, period of higher testing intensity being far removed from the 25(OH)D deficiency peak.
PRBM_A_340326 471..490

Purpose: Based on the componential theory of creativity, this study examined the link between high-involvement work practices and employees’ innovative behavior by further investigating the moderating and mediating role of leadership humility and employees’ personal initiative. Methodology: To test the hypothesized model, the data were gathered from 255-line staff and 119 supervisors working in the textile industry in Pakistan via the time lag technique. The proposed hypotheses were analyzed through partial least squares structural equation modeling using Smart-PLS software. Findings: The results indicated that high-involvement work practices were significantly related to employees’ innovative work behaviors. Additionally, the moderation findings revealed that a higher level of leadership humility strengthens the relationship between high-involvement work practices and employees’ personal initiative. Furthermore, employees’ personal initiative mediates the relationship between high-involvement work practices and their innovative work behavior. The findings of the moderated mediation model indicated that a higher level of leadership humility leads to higher innovative behavior of employees in the presence of highinvolvement work practices via employees’ personal initiative. Practical Implications: This study’s findings are helpful for the management of organizations to understand the factors that enhance innovative work behaviors in high-involvement work practices. Moreover, managers should establish humble behaviors in their leadership style to influence employees’ personal initiative, which indirectly influences their innovative work behavior. Originality/Value: The present study highlights the importance of leadership humility and employees’ personal initiative in the relationship between high-involvement work practices and innovative work behaviors of employees in the textile industry of Pakistan.
The Fertilizer Oligopoly: The Case for Global Antitrust Enforcement

Fertilizers are a critical input in the agricultural sector where industrial farming is heavily dependent on external inputs of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium or potash. A history of supra-competitive pricing by the few, large global producers of fertilizer inputs – coupled with characteristics that make the market conducive to anticompetitive coordination (i.e., collusion) – raise significant competitive concerns. This working paper qualitatively and quantitatively analyzes the exercise of market power by members of the U.S. and Canadian government sanctioned export associations, PhosChem and Canpotex, from 1998-2012. The first part of the paper provides relevant background on the role of fertilizer in industrial food production systems, examines the structure of the global fertilizer industry, and reviews limited antitrust immunity for export associations under the U.S. Web-Pomerene Act. The latter half of the paper examines indicators that large global fertilizer producers have acted collusively to exercise market power. One part of this analysis focuses on anecdotal evidence of collusion and the disruption in pricing recently induced by the exercise of countervailing market power by powerful fertilizer buyers. A second part of the analysis relies on economic modeling and estimation of dynamic Lerner indices – a well-known measure of market power. The overall analysis supports the notion that fertilizer producers have likely acted in a coordinated fashion to raise prices, to the detriment of competitors and consumers. The paper concludes with a number of major observations that emphasize the need for concerted, organized competition enforcement action. Appendices are available from the authors upon request.
Perception of material appearance: A comparison between painted and rendered images

Painters are masters in replicating the visual appearance of materials. While the perception of material appearance is not yet fully understood, painters seem to have acquired an implicit understanding of the key visual cues that we need to accurately perceive material properties. In this study, we directly compare the perception of material properties in paintings and in renderings by collecting professional realistic paintings of rendered materials. From both type of images, we collect human judgments of material properties and compute a variety of image features that are known to reﬂect material properties. Our study reveals that, despite important visual diﬀerences between the two types of depiction, material properties in paintings and renderings are perceived very similarly and are linked to the same image features. This suggests that we use similar visual cues independently of the medium and that the presence of such cues is suﬃcient to provide a good appearance perception of the materials. of these intricate parts, whether they do it with an economy of means (see, e.g., the golden material in the inset in Figure 1a), and how the result of the more complex interaction between material and shape is conveyed.
Socio-economic, Communication and Psychological Characteristics of the Farmers using Mobile based Agro-advisory Services

The present study were carried out in Etah and Firozabad district of Uttar Pradesh state to know the socio-economic, communication and psychological characteristics of farmers using mobile based Agro-advisory Services. Descriptive as well as Analytical research design was adopted for the present study to make a critical evaluation. A total of 40 percent of respondents from the sampling frame were chosen for the study. Thus, the final sample size comprised of 180 (40% of 450) respondents. The method of proportional allocation in stratified random sampling procedure was adopted for the selection of respondents. The results revealed that most of the registered farmers were middle aged (54.44%) and all of them were male, had educational qualification up to higher secondary level (25%). Majority of the households mainly relied on farming as their main source of income (86.11%) and belonged to medium level of annual income (65.50%). They had land up to 4 hectares (50.60%), fellow farmers were most popular, and vast majority (98.90%) of farmers contacted them to get agricultural information, most of respondents (67.78%) owned two to three communication media. It was also found that 62.22 percent had medium level of mass media exposure and about 43.90 percent of the respondents had low level of extension agency contact, less than half (42.80%) of respondents had high economic motivation and decision making ability (40.60%). Only 38.90 per cent of respondents had medium level of achievement motivation. Original Research Article Verma and Sharma; AJAEES, 40(3): 9-15, 2022; Article no.AJAEE. 83599 10
PRBM_A_348467 441..457

1School of Business, Hunan University of Humanities, Science and Technology, Loudi, Hunan, 417000, People’s Republic of China; 2School of Economics and Management North China Electric Power University, Beijing, 102206, People’s Republic of China; 3School of Economics and Management, Shijiazhuang Tiedao University, Shijiazhuang, Hebei, 050043, People’s Republic of China; 4Department of Commerce & Business, Government College University Faisalabad, Layyah Campus, Layyah, 31200, Pakistan; 5Faculty of Management in Production and Transportation, Politehnica University of Timisoara, Timisoara, Romania; 6College of International Students, Wuxi University, 214105, Wuxi, Jiangsu, People’s Republic of China
Humanitatis :Journal of Language and Literature

English pronunciation is a crucial part of communication however, it can be overwhelmingly challenging for non-native speaker students. Phonologically, it is because of its inconsistent orthography and idiosyncratic phonetics; it is also idiosyncratic or distinctive and not universal. To overcome such problems, Jenkins proposes a Lingua Franca Core (LFC). Despite its potential benefits, the LFC is practically and administratively challenging to be implemented in pronunciation learning practice in Indonesia. Thus, aiming to find issues regarding LFC in pronunciation teaching practices in Indonesia, data generated from ten Indonesian educational practitioners with diverse language backgrounds are qualitatively analyzed in this study. This study indicates that, practically, the replacement of dental fricatives /θ/ and /ð/ and its replacements with labiodental fricatives /f/ and /v/ is a failed suggestion and might lead to the fossilization of these sounds. Also, the LFC in the sentence level of utterance might not be as significant as in the word level. Administratively, LFC is challenging because of teachers' limited knowledge, training, and sources regarding assessing students‟ English pronunciation skills, teachers' and students‟ attitudes toward certain English accents, and the fact that pronunciation is not explicitly being taught in English class in Indonesia.
CMAR_A_339549 761..773

Purpose: A clinical-genomic prognostic multigene panel (RI-DR assay, RecurIndex), predicting the risk level of distant recurrence (DR) in early-stage breast cancer (EBC) patients with an Asian background, has been validated as a valuable tool for identifying highrisk patients to develop distant recurrence (metastasis). Although the clinical benefit of adjuvant chemotherapy from the assay’s prediction is already proved, its affordability remains uncertain. This study is the first time in which the long-term cost-effectiveness of the RI-DR assay is evaluated. Patients and Methods: A lifetime Markov decision-analytic model was developed from a societal perspective to estimate the lifeyears gained (LYGs), quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs), medical costs, and incremental cost-effectiveness ratios (ICERs), comparing EBC women with and without RI-DR genomic testing. A decision tree was used to classify patients in one of the fifteen end nodes (by order, each arm was stratified by a patient being tested or not with the RI-DR assay, being treated or not with adjuvant chemotherapy and had no, minor, major, or fatal toxicity after adjuvant chemotherapy). Health utilities, costs, transition probabilities, and survival data were extracted from the scientific literature. Deterministic sensitivity analysis (DSA) and probabilistic sensitivity analysis (PSA) were performed on variables to assess the robustness of the model. A willingness-to-pay (WTP) threshold of 790,000 NT$ per QALY gained was considered as a cost-effectiveness criterion. Results: The incremental cost per QALY gained under base-case assumptions of the model was 173,842 NT$. Findings on the variation in model input parameters were robust and confirmed that every key variable was cost-effective for the benefit of RI-DR testing. Conclusion: The clinical-genomic RI-DR assay is cost-effective in guiding adjuvant chemotherapy decisions compared to current clinical practice guidelines.
SUPPLEMENT TO “FOUNDATIONS OF STRUCTURAL CAUSAL MODELS WITH CYCLES AND LATENT VARIABLES”

This Supplementary Material contains a summary of the basic terminology and results for causal graphical models (Appendix A), additional (unique) solvability properties (Appendix B), some results for linear SCMs (Appendix C), other examples (Appendix D), the proofs of all the theoretical results (Appendix E) and the measurable selection theorems (Appendix F) that are used in several proofs.
SHAKE TABLE TESTS OF USING SINGLE-PARTICLE IMPACT DAMPER TO REDUCE SEISMIC RESPONSE

Whilst the use of impact damper for single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) systems has received a significant amount of attention, investigations into their interaction with SDOF systems is rare. In this paper, results of a series of experimental analysis of a horizontal particle impact damper under earthquake and sinusoidally excited primary system are investigated. Specific impact damping is determined for a SDOF. The influence of some system parameters such as clearance, stiffness and specific intensity of excitation are investigated experimentally. Driven by the experimental observation, it has been shown that a value of damping capacity was reached with a particle impact damper. The obtained results proved the efficiency of this process for achieving high structural damping; the results in some instances did not correspond with those found for control of SDOF systems in particular. One of the main contributions of this investigation involves studying the sensitivity to stiffness. Increased stiffness of the vibration system did not necessarily lead to an increase in damping for all modes. Also, the effect of clearance is unpredictable. In short, the achievements gained in the paper have revealed dynamic characteristics, bringing important engineering application. The paper raises these and other issues which require consideration if impact dampers are to be used to control the dynamic response of SDOF systems.
Village Fund and Entrepreneurial Public Finance Governance: Exploring the Antecedents

This study aims to explore the influencing factors of village fund effectiveness to accelerate local economic development. It examined 24 adopted-public finance determinants of village fund governance to determine the influencing variables. The research analyzed 400 respondents located at four districts in North Sumatera province, Indonesia (i.e., Langkat, Deli Serdang, Asahan, and Mandailing Natal districts), the most active regions in absorbing the fund. It employed factor analysis to extract the constructs. It found four extracted factors, indicating the antecedents of reliable entrepreneurial public finance administration to govern village funds: management, planning, rural people participation, and local development resources. The results revealed that village fund management was the most influencing factor, implying the core challenge of entrepreneurial public finance governance. The villagers perceived that village administrators were not capable enough to review the village's needs and yet equipped with the necessary skills to manage the village funds.
Study of the accessibility diagnosis on the public higher institutions website in Malaysia

University web pages play a central role in the activities of all students.In order to assess the current state of university web site accessibility, we performed an automated evaluation of the home pages of 20 Public Higher Educational Institutions of Malaysia. Two experiments were made in 2012 and 2013 to see if there is a significant change in the results.Three Online Automated tools were used along the two experiments to see the differences between numbers of accessibility issues discovered by each tool.The results showed significant issues and no big improvements have been made to the websites from 2012 to 2013.
Molecular detection of SARS‐CoV‐2 and differentiation of Omicron and Delta variant strains

Abstract The SARS‐CoV‐2 virus is the causative agent of COVID‐19 and has undergone continuous mutations throughout the pandemic. The more transmissible Omicron variant has quickly spread and is replacing the Delta variant as the most prevalent strain globally, including in the United States. A new molecular assay that can detect and differentiate both the Delta and Omicron variants was developed. A collection of 660,035 SARS‐CoV‐2 full‐ or near‐full genomes, including 169,454 Delta variant and 24,202 Omicron variant strains, were used for primer and probe designs. In silico data analysis predicted an assay coverage of >99% of all strains, including >99% of the Delta and >99% of Omicron strains. The Omicron variant differential test was designed based on the Δ31‐33 aa deletion in the N‐gene, which is present in the original B.1. 1.529 main genotype, BA.1, as well as in BA.2 and BA.3 subtypes. Therefore, the assay should detect the majority of all Omicron variant strains. Standard curves generated with human clinical samples indicated that the PCR amplification efficiencies were 104%, 90.7% and 90.4% for the Omicron, Delta, and non‐Delta/non‐Omicron wild‐type genotypes, respectively. Correlation coefficients of the standard curves were all >0.99. The detection limit of the assay was 14.3, 32.0, and 21.5 copies per PCR reaction for Omicron, Delta, and wild‐type genotypes, respectively. The assay was designed to specifically detect SAR‐CoV‐2 strains. Selected samples with Omicron, Delta and wild‐type genotypes identified by the RT‐qPCR assay were also confirmed by sequencing. The assay did not detect any animal coronavirus‐positive samples that were tested. Human nasal swab samples that previously tested positive (n = 182) or negative (n = 42) for SARS‐CoV‐2 by the ThermoFisher TaqPath COVID‐19 Combo Kit, produced the same result with the new assay. Among positive samples, 55.5% (101/182), 23.1% (42/182), and 21.4% (39/182) were identified as Omicron, Delta, and non‐Omicron/non‐Delta wild‐type genotypes, respectively.
Change in health, wellbeing and physical activity levels during the COVID-19 pandemic: a longitudinal cohort of parkrun participants in the United Kingdom

Summary Lockdown restrictions imposed across the UK in response to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic had a profound impact on many people’s health and wellbeing. People were encouraged to be active, but population surveys suggest some groups found this easier than others. We explored the changes in health, wellbeing and physical activity levels among a sample in the UK who experienced the sudden loss of a weekly community-based physical activity opportunity, parkrun. A sample of UK parkrun participants responded to two surveys: pre-COVID-19 in January/February 2019 and during the COVID-19 pandemic in September 2020. Outcomes were happiness, life satisfaction, connections with others, physical health, mental health and physical activity. The sample was stratified by gender, age, deprivation status, physical activity and number of parkruns completed. Demographics were reported using descriptive statistics; distributions between sub-groups were compared using Chi-square tests while differences in outcomes were determined using the Mann–Whitney U test. Open text responses were also analysed. Happiness, life satisfaction, connections with others, physical health and mental health of 450 parkrun participants were negatively impacted for all sub-groups, although the impact was not experienced equally. Physical activity fell by 6% while happiness and life satisfaction fell by 12%. People experienced the worst negative impact on their connections with others. The COVID-19 pandemic negatively impacted the wellbeing of a greater proportion of females, younger adults, inactive people, those from higher deprivation areas, and those who had completed fewer parkruns. There is evidence that the wellbeing of those who were more active, and those more involved in a community-based physical activity initiative pre-pandemic, was less negatively affected during the COVID-19 lockdown.
Computer Algebra Systems: Permitted but Are They Used?.

Since the 1990s, computer algebra systems (CAS) have been available in Australia as hand-held devices designed for students with the expectation that they will be used in the mathematics classroom. Prior to the development of hand-held CAS (first the TI-92 in 1995), these programs (for example: Derive, Mathematica, Maple) were available for computers but had limited penetration in schools. In Victoria, CAS use at school and at home was permitted for senior secondary mathematics students completing externally set extended tasks known as 'Common Assessment Tasks' (Leigh-Lancaster & Rowe, 1999). However, in 2002 further institutional value was accorded to the use of CAS through the trial of a new senior secondary mathematics subject: Mathematics Methods (CAS). For this subject CAS use was also permitted in the final, high stakes, externally set examinations. After more than a decade with CAS readily available and its use encouraged for teaching, learning and assessment.