Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Predictors of Recidivism Over 3 Years Among Substance-Using Women Released From Jail

This study examines predictors of recidivism over 3 years for 624 women released from a county jail using a comprehensive range of standardized measures derived from gender-responsive and gender-neutral criminogenic recidivism models. Although more than a dozen factors were related to recidivism in the univariate analysis, the multivariate analysis shows that recidivism can be reliably predicted (area under the curve = 0.90) with just four factors: age, no custody of children, substance use frequency, and number of substance problems. Exploratory analysis of women who recidivated in post-release months 1 to 3, 4 to 12, and 13 to 36 revealed that the effects of several variables (age, super optimism, and number of weeks in the jail treatment program) were dependent on the time elapsed since release from jail, whereas others (substance use and custody) had persistent effects over time. These findings support the development of re-entry services tailored for female offenders who address both gender-responsive and gender-neutral criminogenic risk factors.
Blue-Collar Public Servants

This study examines whether the norms and values of labor unions contradict public service motivation (PSM). Using Perry and Wise’s conceptualization of (PSM) this article tests four hypotheses by analyzing both quantitative data drawn from the employees of a large metropolitan city and qualitative data drawn from semistructured interviews conducted in two large Midwestern cities. I expect that as employees become socialized into union membership, they will increasingly identify with rational, affective, and normative union motives. The quantitative findings suggest that union socialization is associated with lower compassion, higher self-sacrifice, and greater commitment to the public interest. Union socialization is unrelated to attraction to policy making. This study supports the hypotheses that unions shape members’ motives through the socialization process. I rebut the argument that public sector union members are solely self-interested, but the findings suggest that union socialization can undermine one’s feelings of compassion.
Beware of gurus: structure and action In International relations

The agent-structure problem is not settled by deciding what proportions to put in the blender. Agents and structures do not blend easily in any proportions, and solutions to the problem tend to be unstable. Alexander Wendt's thoughtful review article makes this clear, identifies some of the difficulties, and boldly sketches a possible resolution of them. Since his relections are addressed in part to our recent book Explaining and Understanding International Relations, we welcome the chance to pursue them further. Greatly encouraged by his many friendly comments, we shall concentrate on those suggestive or critical points which have prompted us to think afresh.
Democracy in Talk: Dominance in “User-Centred” Team Meetings

Abstract The aim is to examine the discursive organization of “user-centred” team meetings in the Swedish rehabilitation sector. The “users” are aged between 4 and 30 and have been ascribed different kinds of impairments. The teams consist of one user and/or her/his relatives and different professionals. The analysis is primarily based on transcriptions of 18 audiotaped team meetings held by 10 different teams and focuses on two dimensions of dominance in interaction: the amount of talk and topic control. The findings point to professional dominance, but parents also have a great influence on the topic control. The degree of participation and the control of topics of the users who participate in the meetings vary, but most of the users become involved primarily by responding to the questions and suggestions of professionals and parents. In order to increase the users’ control of the interactions the participants need to continuously discuss the organization of the conversations. The findings are related t.
From On-Air to Online World: Examining the Content and Structures of Broadcast TV Stations' Web Sites

This article examined the TV stations' application of the Web features that presumably would contribute to the effectiveness of their Web sites from both the organizational and consumer's perspectives. It also explored whether certain market factors are associated with the availability of these features. The content analysis found that news-related content played an important role on these Web sites and interactivity and personalization were not readily observed on these sites. Broadcast TV stations seem to be following a safer route of expansion into this new medium by re-assembling and re-proposing their distinctive existing products for online delivery.
The Use of Next-Generation Sequencing in the Identification of a Fastidious Pathogen: A Lesson From a Clinical Setup

Clostridium haemolyticum is the causal agent of bacillary hemoglobinuria in cattle, goat, sheep, and ruminants. In this study, we report the first recorded human-infecting C. haemolyticum strain collected from an 18-year-old woman diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. After failure of traditional techniques, only next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology in combination with bioinformatics, phylogenetic, and pathogenomics analyses revealed that our King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Center (KFSHRC) bacterial isolate belongs to C. haemolyticum species. KFSHRC isolate is composed of 1 chromosome and 4 plasmids. The total genome size is estimated to be 2.7 Mbp with a low GC content of 28.02%. Comparative pathogenomics analysis showed that C. haemolyticum KFSHRC isolate is a potential virulent pathogenic bacterium as it possesses the virulence factors necessary to establish an infection, acquire essential nutrients, resist antimicrobial agents, and tolerate hostile conditions both in the human host and in its surrounding environment. These factors are included in the main chromosome in addition to novel recombination of the plasmids, and they could be the reason for the incidence of that human infection. This work demonstrated the importance of using NGS in medical microbiology for pathogen identification. It also demonstrates the importance of sequencing more microbial samples and sharing this information in public databases to facilitate the identification of pathogenic microbes with better accuracy.
A Remote Sensing and GIS Approach to Study the Long-Term Vegetation Recovery of a Fire-Affected Pine Forest in Southern Greece

Abstract: Management strategies and silvicultural treatments of fire-prone ecosystems often rely on knowledge of the regeneration potential and long-term recovery ability of vegetation types. Remote sensing and GIS applications are valuable tools providing cost-efficient information on vegetation recovery patterns and their associated environmental factors. In this study we used an ordinal classification scheme to describe the land cover changes induced by a wildfire that occurred in 1983 in Pinus brutia woodlands on Karpathos Aegean Island, south-eastern Greece. As a proxy variable that indicates ecosystem recovery, we also estimated the difference between the NDVI and NBR indices a few months (1984) and almost 30 years after the fire (2012). Environmental explanatory variables were selected using a digital elevation model and various thematic maps. To identify the most influential environmental factors contributing to woodland recovery, binary logistic regression and linear regression techniques were applied. The analyses showed that although a large proportion of the
Disease etiology and diagnosis by TCR repertoire analysis goes viral

The importance of T‐cell receptor (TCR) repertoire diversity is highlighted in murine models of immunodeficiency and in many human pathologies. However, the true extent of TCR diversity and how this diversity varies in health and disease is poorly understood. In a previous issue of the European Journal of Immunology, Lossius et al. [Eur. J. Immunol. 2014. 44: 3439–3452] dissected the composition of the TCR repertoire in the context of multiple sclerosis (MS) using high‐throughput sequencing of TCR‐β chains in cerebrospinal fluid samples and blood. The authors demonstrated that the TCR repertoire of the CSF was largely distinct from the blood and enriched in EBV‐reactive CD8+ T cells in MS patients. Studies of this kind have long been hindered by technical limitations and remain scarce in the literature. However, TCR sequencing methodologies are progressing apace and will undoubtedly shed light on the genetic basis of T‐cell responses and the ontogeny of T‐cell‐mediated diseases, such as MS.
Folk Conceptions of Humanness

The present research explores cultural understandings of what it means to be human. We used open-ended responses to examine whether the most culturally salient aspects of humanness are captured by two theoretical dimensions: human uniqueness (HU) and human nature (HN). Australians, Italians, and Chinese (N = 315) showed differences in the characteristics considered human and in the emphasis placed on HU and HN. These findings contribute to developing cross-cultural folk psychological models of humanness.
Revisiting automated physical synthesis of high-performance clock networks

High-performance clock distribution has been a challenge for nearly three decades. During this time, clock synthesis tools and algorithms have strove to address a myriad of important issues helping designers to create faster, more reliable, and more power efficient chips. This work provides a complete discussion of the high-performance ASIC clock distribution using information gathered from both leading industrial clock designers and previous research publications. While many techniques are only briefly explained, the references summarize the most influential papers on a variety of topics for more in-depth investigation. This article also provides a thorough discussion of current issues in clock synthesis and concludes with insight into future research and design challenges for the community at large.
Bipolar spintronics: Fundamentals and applications

By incorporating spin-dependent properties and magnetism in semiconductor structures, new applications can be considered which go beyond magnetoresistive effects in metallic systems. Notwithstanding the prospects for spin/magnetism-enhanced logic in semiconductors, many important theoretical, experimental, and materials challenges remain. Here we discuss the challenges for realizing a particular class of associated applications and our proposal for bipolar spintronic devices in which carriers of both polarities (electrons and holes) would contribute to spin-charge coupling. We formulate the theoretical framework for bipolar spin-polarized transport and describe several novel effects in two-and three-terminal structures which arise from the interplay between nonequilibrium spin and equilibrium magnetization.
Forging the Future Between Two Different Worlds Recent Chinese Immigrant Adolescents Tell Their Cross-Cultural Experiences

In order to understand the interplay of culture and mind in immigrant adolescent learning and psychological adjustment, this multiple-case qualitative study examined salient home and school experiences told by recent Chinese immigrant youth in semistructured interviews and narrative essays. Forging the future between two different worlds defined, respectively, by Chinese tradition and Canadian culture, these adolescents struggled with high parental expectations and intergenerational conflicts at home and suffered acculturative stresses and ethnic peer divides at school. Situating the voices of the immigrant adolescents in the personal, relational, and larger sociocultural contexts, the study suggests that their ongoing psychological adjustment and transformation at the crossroad of two different cultures must be understood in light of the emerging, interdependent individual and social processes.
The efficacy of group psychotherapy for older adult clients: a meta-analysis

CRD summary This review concluded that group interventions for older adults appeared to be effective. Unclear inclusion criteria, search limitations, absence of quality assessment, potential flaws in the review process, unclear reporting and variation amongst studies raised concerns about the reliability of the results. The authors' conclusions were unlikely to be reliable and should be interpreted with caution.
Facilitating the Automatic Characterisation, Classification and Description of Biological Images with the VisionBioShape Package for R

Here, we present the VisioBioshapeR package for R [R Core, 2014]. This new library is a comprehensive, multifunctional toolbox designed to automatically analyse biological images. The package extends other common libraries (Momocs, ShapeR) used for biological shape analysis by allowing the user to extract closed contour outlines automatically from reading binary images. Current functionalities of VisioBioshapeR include: random extraction of image coordinates, analysis of the shape of a biological image by the elliptic Fourier descriptor (EFD) method, extraction of an image characteristic vector using multivariate principal component analysis (PCA) and geometrical analysis. The image vector of characteristics can be directly exported to a wide range of statistical packages in R and can be used to perform classification or other types of analysis in order to sort new images into classes. The package could prove useful in studies of any two-dimensional images and is presented with three examples of its application in ecology. The library is useful when multiple images are processed at a time and we wish to automate their analysis for example for recognition of images from patterns.
Semiotics of visual iconicity in Leninist `monumental' propaganda

Leninist propaganda conveyed through artistic monuments (referred to in this article as `monumental' propaganda) — painting, sculpture, urban architecture — was intended as a way of communicating key political ideas to a largely illiterate population. The politically motivated character of the visual icon made it a helpful tool of communication and instruction, and gradually the visual icon became confused with reality itself. In the 1920s, the Association of Artists of Revolutionary Russia (AKhRR) pioneered the use of artistic images as a documental attestation of reality. Under Stalin, monumental visual signs offered an idealized vision of the Communist future as an already achieved reality. Sculptures and paintings secured the state leader's symbolic presence in every corner of the country. Therefore, the subsequent change of political leadership resulted in damnatio memoriae — the destruction of visual images of statesmen from the previous regime. Leninist monumental propaganda perpetuated the neoplatonic artistic tradition of the Russian Orthodox Church, which meant there was no clear distinction between the iconic sign and its referent.
USTC95-a Putonghua corpus

For the standard spoken Chinese dialect commonly known as Putonghua or Mandarin, a large corpus called USTC95 (University of Science and Technology of China, '95) is introduced, which is primarily designed to support research in Chinese speech recognition and analysis and in recognition system evaluation. This corpus consists of four major sub-corpora, corresponding to isolated syllables, multi-syllable words, sentences and telephone speech. With an elaborate design, the corpus encompasses all the phones and mono-syllables, as well as the co-articulation effects in Putonghua; also, it keeps as little redundancy as possible. This parsimonious corpus makes it possible to acquire acoustic-phonetic knowledge for isolated word recognition and continuous Chinese recognition, to provide speech data for training a telephone speech recognizer, and also to provide a common test base for the performance assessment of the recognizer.
Donor‐specific individuality of red blood cell performance during storage is partly a function of serum uric acid levels

Previous investigations in leukoreduced units of red blood cells (RBCs) in mannitol additive solution revealed the close association of uric acid (UA) levels in vivo with the susceptibility of RBCs to storage lesion markers. In this study, we examined whether UA has a similar correlation with the capability of RBCs to cope with the oxidative provocations of storage under different conditions, namely, in CPDA‐1 and in the absence of leukoreduction.
Localized Photoresponse of YBCO Films Patterned by Heavy-Ion Lithography

Heavy Ion Lithography was used for local tuning the superconducting properties (critical temperature and critical current) of high temperature superconducting films through the introduction of ion induced nanostructures confined in micrometric areas. These modified areas were patterned on a device layout that was designed for the wide-band bolometric detection of electromagnetic radiation. The device was biased with constant current at a specific temperature in order to obtain the localization of the electromagnetic excitation only into the modified areas. The device was tested with coherent light stimuli in the visible spectrum and the photoresponse was measured with high frequency real-time sampling. The localization of the photoexcitation was demonstrated by scanning the laser beam across the modified and as-grown areas of the device.
Implementing a Laboratory Automation System

Laboratories today face increasing pressure to automate their operations as they are challenged by a continuing increase in workload, need to reduce expenditure, and difficulties in recruitment of experienced technical staff. Was the implementation of a laboratory automation system (LAS) in the Clinical Biochemistry Laboratory at Singapore General Hospital successful? There is no simple answer, so the following topics comparing and contrasting pre- and post-LAS have been explored: turnaround time (TAT), laboratory errors, and staff satisfaction. The benefits and limitations of LAS from the laboratory experience were also reviewed. The mean TAT for both stat and routine samples decreased post-LAS (30% and 13.4%, respectively). In the 90th percentile TAT chart, a 29% reduction was seen in the processing of stat samples on the LAS. However, no significant difference in the 90th percentile TAT was observed with routine samples. It was surprising to note that laboratory errors increased post-LAS. Considerable effort was needed to overcome the initial difficulties associated with adjusting to a new system, new software, and new working procedures. Although some of the known advantages and limitations of LAS have been validated, the claimed benefits such as improvements in TAT, laboratory errors, and staff morale were not evident in the initial months.
Low-Involvement Learning: Memory without Evaluation

In three learning experiments we examined how subjects' level of involvement during initial exposure to consumer trivia influences what they learn and what they subsequently come to believe. Subjects rated consumer trivia statements as more true when they had been exposed to those statements earlier in the experiment. Simple repetition increased subsequent truth ratings. Moreover, when subjects processed the information during initial exposure in a less involving fashion, the effect of repetition on truth became more pronounced. Familiarity emerged as a key mediator of the truth effect. When subjects experienced an "it rings a bell" reaction, they judged the information to be more true. Finally, under low-involvement processing, the truth effect increased when subjects engaged in a processing task (rote rehearsal) that increased familiarity without increasing evaluative processing of the information. Copyright 1992 by the University of Chicago.
Inheritance of suppressors of the drug sensitivity of a NSR1 deleted yeast strain

The NSR1 gene product is involved in ribosomal RNA production and ribosome assembly in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Yeast strains carrying a deletion of the NSR1 gene have a defect in rRNA processing, an aberrant ribosome profile and are sensitive to the drug paromomycin. This paper reports the isolation and characterization of spontaneous suppressors of the paromomycin sensitivity. Such suppressors could be isolated at very high frequency and do not exhibit straightforward single‐gene inheritance patterns. The suppressors are not influenced by non‐Mendelian factors such as Ψ or ρ. Through a replacement of chromosomal rDNA with a plasmid rDNA system, I show that suppression of paromomycin sensitivity is mediated by rDNA. Swapping wild‐type plasmid rDNA for chromosomal rDNA can reverse the suppression, but the effect does not appear to be due to amplification of rDNA or amplification of a pre‐existing mutant rDNA copy. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
RDMA-Based Cooperative Caching for a Distributed File System

Efficient caching of file data is critical in order to achieve high performance in data-intensive applications. However, only a limited amount of memory is usually available to cache files in client nodes even on high-performance computing platforms. Cooperative caching is an approach that enables client nodes to share memory for file caching and thereby provide a large amount of memory for the file cache in the aggregate. Many studies have confirmed the efficacy of applying cooperative caching to distributed file systems. However, to the best of our knowledge, no study has evaluated an implementation of cooperative caching integrated into a modern distributed file system running on a high-speed network. In this paper, we propose a method that improves the performance of a distributed file system oriented to high-performance computing by integrating cooperative caching into it. In the proposed method, the metadata server of the distributed file system maintains information about the cache in all client nodes, and provides clients with the predicted cache location of any requested file. Further, InfiniBand RDMA is utilized to achieve fast cache transfer between the page caches of client nodes. Implementation of the proposed method in the Gfarm distributed file system and measurement of the performance of three real-world data-intensive applications indicate that the proposed method achieves a maximum speedup of 5.8%.
Generating a Performance Test-bed for Cloud Computing Systems

Cloud computing delivers IT solutions as a utility to users. A common economic objective for both cloud consumers and providers is to minimise their total deployment and operational costs while achieving satisfactory system performance to meet Service Level Agreements (SLAs). Therefore, the trade-off between cost and system performance is needed to be managed to achieve the best cost effectiveness. The PhD project presented in this paper provides an efficient and accurate method to evaluate the trade-off between cost and system performance by proposing a performance testing tool for Cloud systems. This tool can accommodate different Cloud system architectures and adopt different workload and cost models of Cloud systems during the trade-off evaluation