Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Glucocorticoid Signaling Enhances Expression of Glucose-Sensing Molecules in Immature Pancreatic Beta-Like Cells Derived from Murine Embryonic Stem Cells In Vitro.

Pluripotent stem cells may serve as an alternative source of beta-like cells for replacement therapy of type 1 diabetes; however, the beta-like cells generated in many differentiation protocols are immature. The maturation of endogenous beta cells involves an increase in insulin expression starting in late gestation and a gradual acquisition of the abilities to sense glucose and secrete insulin by week 2 after birth in mice; however, what molecules regulate these maturation processes are incompletely known. In this study, we aim to identify small molecules that affect immature beta cells. A cell-based assay, using pancreatic beta-like cells derived from murine embryonic stem (ES) cells harboring a transgene containing an insulin 1-promoter driven enhanced green fluorescent protein reporter, was used to screen a compound library (NIH Clinical Collection-003). Cortisone, a glucocorticoid, was among five positive hit compounds. Quantitative reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction analysis revealed that glucocorticoids enhance the gene expression of not only insulin 1 but also glucose transporter-2 (Glut2; Slc2a2) and glucokinase (Gck), two molecules important for glucose sensing. Mifepristone, a pharmacological inhibitor of glucocorticoid receptor (GR) signaling, reduced the effects of glucocorticoids on Glut2 and Gck expression. The effects of glucocorticoids on ES-derived cells were further validated in immature primary islets. Isolated islets from 1-week-old mice had an increased Glut2 and Gck expression in response to a 4-day treatment of exogenous hydrocortisone in vitro. Gene deletion of GR in beta cells using rat insulin 2 promoter-driven Cre crossed with GRflox/flox mice resulted in a reduced gene expression of Glut2, but not Gck, and an abrogation of insulin secretion when islets were incubated in 0.5 mM d-glucose and stimulated by 17 mM d-glucose in vitro. These results demonstrate that glucocorticoids positively regulate glucose sensors in immature murine beta-like cells.
Audio Description Described: Current Standards, Future Innovations, Larger Implications

Audio description seeks to make visual media—film, television, theater, art exhibits—accessible to blind people. In this essay I use the audio-described version of the Oscar-nominated film The Sessions as an example of the current standards. I then speculate on future innovations that could democratize the medium and make it more inclusive.
Made in China : A Norwegian Perspective on How Cultural Differences Affect Technology Transfer

In this thesis, an attempt to incorporate cross-cultural research to an innovationoriented approach to technology transfer is made. As cultural aspects of international technology transfer long have been neglected, an accepted framework to analyse the phenomenon still is non-existent. In this thesis, a framework for analysing technology transfer from both perspectives is made is made, where many aspects of technology transfer are covered. To try this framework out in action, two newly established Norwegian manufacturing firms in Ningbo, China, are used in a multiple-case study, where I analyse how cultural differences affect technology transfer.
Structured Deep Neural Network Pruning by Varying Regularization Parameters

Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN's) are restricted by their massive computation and high storage. Parameter pruning is a promising approach for CNN compression and acceleration, which aims at eliminating redundant model parameters with tolerable performance loss. Despite its effectiveness, existing regularization-based parameter pruning methods usually assign a fixed regularization parameter to all weights, which neglects the fact that different weights may have different importance to CNN. To solve this problem, we propose a theoretically sound regularization-based pruning method to incrementally assign different regularization parameters to different weights based on their importance to the network. On AlexNet and VGG-16, our method can achieve 4x theoretical speedup with similar accuracies compared with the baselines. For ResNet-50, the proposed method also achieves 2x acceleration and only suffers 0.1% top-5 accuracy loss.
Assessing Protective Factors for Adolescent Offending: A Conceptually Informed Examination of the SAVRY and YLS/CMI

Although the Structured Assessment of Violence Risk in Youth (SAVRY) and the Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory (YLS/CMI) are among the most widely used adolescent risk assessment tools, they conceptualize and measure strengths differently. As such, in this study, we compared the predictive validity of SAVRY Protective Total and YLS/CMI Strength Total, and tested conceptual models of how these measures operate (i.e., risk vs. protective effects, direct vs. buffering effects, causal models). Research assistants conducted 624 risk assessments with 156 youth on probation. They rated protective factors at baseline, and again at 3-, 6-, 9-, and 12-month follow-up periods. The SAVRY Protective Total and YLS/CMI Strength Total inversely predicted any charges in the subsequent 2 years (area under the curve scores = 0.61 and 0.60, respectively, p < .05). Furthermore, when adolescents’ protective total scores increased, their self-reported violence decreased, thus providing evidence that these factors might play a causally relevant role in reducing violence. However, protective factors did not provide incremental validity over risk factors. In addition, because these measures are brief and use a dichotomous rating system, they primarily captured deficits in protective factors (i.e., low scores). This suggests a need for more comprehensive measures.
The romance and the reality between pre-service teachers’ beliefs about the potential benefits of a short-term study abroad programme and their practices

Abstract This qualitative study aimed to explore Hong Kong pre-service teachers’ beliefs about the potential benefits of a short-term study abroad programme and their practices. Pre- and post-programme semi-structured interviews and reflective journals were employed to collect data. The findings suggest that the transformation of beliefs into practices plays a critical role in the actualization of possible learning outcomes, such as increasing the use of the target language, fostering pedagogical development, broadening cultural understanding and nurturing personal growth. The programme per se, however, does not guarantee target language enhancement in a short time. Implications for programme coordinators and future research are discussed.
Detection- Tracking for Efficient Person Analysis: The DetTA Pipeline

In the past decade many robots were deployed in the wild, and people detection and tracking is an important component of such deployments. On top of that, one often needs to run modules which analyze persons and extract higher level attributes such as age and gender, or dynamic information like gaze and pose. The latter ones are especially necessary for building a reactive, social robot-person interaction. In this paper, we combine those components in a fully modular detection-tracking-analysis pipeline, called DetTA. We investigate the benefits of such an integration on the example of head and skeleton pose, by using the consistent track ID for a temporal filtering of the analysis modules' observations, showing a slight improvement in a challenging real-world scenario. We also study the potential of a so-called “free-flight” mode, where the analysis of a person attribute only relies on the filter's predictions for certain frames. Here, our study shows that this boosts the runtime dramatically, while the prediction quality remains stable. This insight is especially important for reducing power consumption and sharing precious (GPU-)memory when running many analysis components on a mobile platform, especially so in the era of expensive deep learning methods.
Low Rank Approximation in the Presence of Outliers

We consider the problem of principal component analysis (PCA) in the presence of outliers. Given a matrix $A$ ($d \times n$) and parameters $k, m$, the goal is to remove a set of at most $m$ columns of $A$ (known as outliers), so as to minimize the rank-$k$ approximation error of the remaining matrix. While much of the work on this problem has focused on recovery of the rank-$k$ subspace under assumptions on the inliers and outliers, we focus on the approximation problem above. Our main result shows that sampling-based methods developed in the outlier-free case give non-trivial guarantees even in the presence of outliers. Using this insight, we develop a simple algorithm that has bi-criteria guarantees. Further, unlike similar formulations for clustering, we show that bi-criteria guarantees are unavoidable for the problem, under appropriate complexity assumptions.
Self-Efficacy as a Mediator or Moderator in the Relationship between Weight Bias and Health Outcomes in a Weight Loss Program

Robert Carels, Advisor A majority (68%) of adults in the U.S. are overweight or obese (Flegal, Carroll, Ogden, & Curtin, 2010), with an estimated 24-38% of these individuals currently attempting to lose weight (Kruger, Galuska, Serdula, & Jones, 2004). A variety of psychosocial variables impact weight loss outcomes, with self-efficacy emerging as one of the strongest predictors of weight loss (Teixeira, Going, Sardinha, & Lohman, 2005). Likewise, weight bias (i.e., stereotyped and negative beliefs, feelings, and attitudes about obese persons) has been implicated in poor psychological and physical health (Puhl & Heuer, 2009). The present study examined if the relationship between weight bias and weight loss is moderated or mediated by general and eating-related self-efficacy, as well as how levels of self-efficacy and weight bias change through participation in a weight loss intervention. Thirty-seven overweight and obese adults who completed an 18 week weight loss program were included in analyses. Results showed that general self-efficacy moderated the relationship for both explicit weight bias and internalized weight bias and weight loss. Self-efficacy did not mediate the relationship between weight bias and weight loss. Increases in general self-efficacy over the course of the intervention were associated with greater weight loss, while changes in weight bias did not affect weight loss. Results provide preliminary evidence for important interactions between self-efficacy and weight bias and their impact on attempts to lose weight. Additionally, self-efficacy may be an important construct to target to facilitate weight loss.
On the Feasibility of High Speed Railway mmWave Channels in Tunnel Scenario

Rail traffic is widely acknowledged as an efficient and green transportation pattern and its evolution attracts a lot of attention. However, the key point of the evolution is how to develop the railway services from traditional handling of the critical signaling applications only to high data rate applications, such as real-time videos for surveillance and entertainments. The promising method is trying to use millimeter wave which includes dozens of GHz bandwidths to bridge the high rate demand and frequency shortage. In this paper, the channel characteristics in an arched railway tunnel are investigated owing to their significance of designing reliable communication systems. Meantime, as millimeter wave suffers from higher propagation loss, directional antenna is widely accepted for designing the communication system. The specific changes that directional antenna brings to the radio channel are studied and compared to the performances of omnidirectional antenna. Note that the study is based on enhanced wide-band ray tracing tool where the electromagnetic and scattering parameters of the main materials of the tunnel are measured and fitted with predicting models.
Synthetic C-Methoxyphenyl Calix [4] Resorcinarene and Its Antioxidant Activity

C-methoxy calix[4]resorcinarene macromolecule is one of calysarene group compounds.The calysarene compounds have been reported to have any beneficial functions in various applications in medical field, such as an adsorbent for sunscreen and heavy metal, anti-HIV and HCV, and anti tumour. The C-methoxyphenyl calix[4]resorcinarene (CMPCR) is one of the C-methoxy calix [4] resorcinarene derivatives, in which researches in application of C-methoxy calix[4]resorcinarene itself in the medical field is rarely conducted. In present study, the researcher attempted to synthesize the CMPCR compound and followed by charaterizations of the synthetic compound resulted using infrared spectrophotometer instrument, proton nuclear magnetic resonance (H-NMR), and carbon-nuclear magnetic resonance (C-NMR) methods to ensure that the product is CMPCR compound. The yielded compound was further tested to recognize its antioxidant activity. The antioxidant testing required is in line with the increases of diseases caused by over concentration of the free radicals existing in biocellular system. The CMPCR synthesis was performed by condensation and antioxidant activity was tested using 1,1-diphenyl-2picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) methods. Results showed that the reaction product was white precipitate with 390 C melting point and the reaction yield was 97.05%. The antioxidant activity showed that its IC50 value equal to 79 ppm. Comparing to the vitamin C which has IC50 equal to 20.96 ppm, the CMPCR compound-the synthetic product, has level qualification of antioxidant activity equal to strong (IC50 <100).
Data level approach for imbalanced class handling on educational data mining multiclass classification

In Educational Data Mining (EDM), researchers usually overlook the balance of the distribution on a dataset. It can seriously affect the result of the classification process. Theoretically, the majority of classifier assumed that the distribution of the data is relatively balanced. Hence, the performance of the classification algorithm just become less effective and need to be handled so the problem can be solved. This study will explain about imbalanced class on multiclass EDM dataset handling mechanism using the combination of SMOTE and OSS. SMOTE and OSS method provides balancing mechanism for the dataset's distribution, so that the classification results will be enhanced in terms of classification performance. The result shows that the combination of SMOTE and OSS can enhance the performance of SVM as the classification method that used in this study. Those combination of methods produce the accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, and g-mean score as high as 88.637%, 92.292%, 95.554%, 93.796% respectively. Hence, the SMOTE and OSS combination can be a viable solution for imbalanced class on EDM's multiclass dataset.
Phase-Shift Cyclic-Delay Diversity for MIMO OFDM Systems

Phase-shift cyclic-delay diversity (PS CDD) scheme and space-frequency-block-code (SFBC) PS CDD are developed for multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. The proposed PS CDD scheme preserves the diversity advantage of traditional CDD in uncorrelated multiantenna channels, and furthermore removes frequency-selective nulling problem of the traditional CDD in correlated multiantenna channels.
Development and validation of RP-HPLC method for simultaneous determination of diclofenac sodium and tizanidine hydrochloride in bulk and tablet formulation

A reverse phase high performance liquid chromatographic method (RP-HPLC) hasbeen developed for the simultaneous estimation of Diclofenac sodium (DICS), and Tizanidine Hydrochloride (TIZH) in the pharmaceutical formulation. The chromatographic column used was a reverse phase 4.6250 mm Hypersil C18 HPLC column with 5m (particles) packing. The mobile phase was ACN: Phosphate buffer pH 7.0 (50:50 v/v) delivered at a flow rate of 1.0 mL/min. The injection volume was 25 L. Elute was analyzed by a UV detector set at 220 nm . Linearity was obtained inthe concentration range of 2-10 μg/ml for DICS, 2.512. 5 μg/ml Tizanidine hydrochloride. The method was statistically validated and RSD was found to be less than 2% indicating high degree of accuracy and precision of the proposed HPLC method. Due to its simplicity, rapidness, high precision and accuracy, the proposed RP-HPLC method may be used for determining Diclofenac Sodium and Tizanidine Hydrochloride in bulk drug samples.
Does cause-related marketing work for negative image sponsor?

Cause related marketing has been widely used by many companies with an expectation that it would improve its sales and public image. However, previous literature has not investigated the effect of cause related marketing when a sponsoring company has built negative image in the society. Thus, this study was designed to see if a company with a negative image can be benefitted from such a marketing effort. The magnitude and direction of changes in consumers’ attitudes toward two sponsoring companies with conflicting (positive vs. negative) brand images and toward a sport team were tested using paired t-tests. The results indicated that the subjects’ initial attitude toward the sport team was significantly changed in a positive direction when it was sponsored by a company with positive brand image (i.e., Nike). However, a change of attitude toward the company was not statistically significant. On the other hand, an initial attitude toward a company with negative image (i.e., Kangwon Land Hotel & Casino) improved significantly when it implemented cause-related marketing with a college sport team. However, their initial attitudes toward the sport team aggravated significantly when it was connected to a company with negative image in cause-related marketing.
Authentic Leadership and Altruism: The Mediating Role of Meaningfulness.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the mediating effects of meaningfulness on the relationship between authentic leadership and altruistic behavior. The participants consisted of 356 teachers randomly selected from 14 primary and secondary schools in Nigde. Three different instruments were used in this study. The scales were translated using the translation and back translation method. All scales were adapted to the educational context. The validity and reliability of the scales were examined. Pearson correlation coefficient and the structural equation modeling were used for the data analysis. It was found that authentic leadership was positively related to teachers' altruistic behavior and meaningfulness in work. A significant positive relationship was found between altruistic behavior and meaningfulness. It has been determined that meaningfulness fully mediated the relationship between authentic leadership and altruistic behavior.
Cross-Cultural Research Methods in Psychology: Cross-Cultural Meta-Analysis

Introduction The impact of culture on psychological functioning has received increasing attention over the past decades. Scrutiny of the PsycInfo database (May 2006) shows that the percentage of studies addressing culture, ethnicity, or race has been steadily increasing from 4.6% of all published psychological studies between 1960 and 1970 to 9.3% between 1990 and 2000. There is a clear need for accumulating and systematizing knowledge from this vast amount of cross-cultural studies and for developing models that deal with cross-cultural differences in psychology. Approaches to explaining cross-cultural differences and similarities seem to be dependent on research domain; for example, studies involving cross-cultural cognitive research generally regard cultural differences as evidence for a cultural bias in their measurement (Faucheux, 1976). Cross-cultural psychology would benefit from a valid representation of magnitude and sources of cross-cultural variation across all research domains. Meta-analysis can provide such representation by summarizing a great range of results from many single-culture and cross-cultural studies and estimating the actual size of cross-cultural differences using effect sizes that are corrected for artifacts. A meta-analysis reanalyzes results from studies that report on a specific relationship to reach an overall conclusion on this research question, thereby accumulating research and fostering theory building (Hunter & Schmidt, 1990). In addition, meta-analysis can address questions not originally considered in the primary studies by taking into account characteristics of studies that can explain variance in the effect size. Meta-analytic techniques help reviewers avoid problems common to traditional reviews such as subjectivity of study selection, inability to quantify the effect size, and difficulties in accounting for methodological differences between studies. Further, meta-analysis can examine models of explanatory factors in cross-cultural differences using moderator variables. This asset of meta-analysis is particularly useful in view of the peculiarities of different research domains in psychology with respect to the preferred type of explanation for cross-cultural differences and similarities. Therefore, meta-analysis is a powerful tool for advancing cross-cultural theorizing and an exceptionally valuable contribution to cross-cultural research methods.
An exhaustive evaluation of row-major, column-major and Morton layouts for large two-dimensional arrays

Morton layout is a compromise storage layout between the programming language mandated layouts row-major and column-major, providing substantial locality of reference when traversed in either direction. This paper explores the performance of Morton, row-major and column-major layouts in detail on some representative architectures. Using a small suite of dense kernels working on two-dimensional arrays, we have carried out an extensive study of the impact of poor array layout and of whether Morton layout can offer an attractive compromise. Whether Morton layout is better than traversing a column-major array in row-major order (or vice versa) depends on problem size and architecture. Morton layout generally leads to much more consistent performance and only a small improvement in its performance could make it an attractive alternative.
Experimental manipulation of tail length in female barn swallows (Hirundo rustica) affects their future reproductive success

Previous studies have shown no significant effect of experimental tail length manipulation in female barn swallows (Hirundo rustica) at the beginning of a breeding season on reproductive success or behavior during that breeding season. In the present study, we investigate if tail length manipulation had any effect on reproductive performance the following year, the so-called long-term effect, in contrast to the short-term effects already studied. We found that females with experimentally elongated external tail feathers at the beginning of a breeding season produced less offspring during the breeding season the following year than did females with shortened or unmanipulated tails. These results suggest that tail elongation caused flight deficiencies that deteriorated the condition of females and eventually reduced reproductive success. The finding of long-term effects but no significant short-term effects for female tail elongation suggests that female barn swallows have the ability to adjust immediate parental investment. Detrimental effects of long tails in females in terms of decreased reproductive success might explain why female tails are not as long as those of males. Finally, females mated to long-tailed (sexually attractive) males decreased their reproductive success the following year more than did females mated to short-tailed males, possibly owing to differential parental effort causing a deterioration of their condition. Copyright 2003.