Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Drinking in Undergraduate and Graduate Students

There has been considerable research on the drinking rates of undergraduate college students. This research has consistently found high drinking rates among undergraduate samples. However, little of this research has been extended to also include samples of graduate students. It is, therefore, unknown whether the high drinking rates that characterize the undergraduate population are also found in the graduate population. The present paper addresses this gap in the literature, by reporting on a comparison of drinking rates between both an undergraduate and a graduate sample at New School University. The study measured both samples on five indices of drinking rates and frequency of negative consequences resulting from alcohol use. It was hypothesized that the undergraduate sample would report higher drinking rates, as well as greater frequency of negative consequences. However, where significant results were attained, it was the graduate sample that reported higher drinking rates. The implications of this finding are speculated upon. Secondarily, the current study attempted to replicate research demonstrating a relationship between gender and drinking rates, as well as grade point average (GPA) and drinking rates. In both cases, little or no relationship was found in the current sample between these variables and drinking rates. The implications of this finding are speculated upon, as well.
Young Children Expressing their Communicative Intents: A preliminary study of the interactions between Japanese children and their caregivers

This paper reports the pilot part of a study investigating the development of the expression of communicative intents of Japanese children interacting with their caregivers. The main purpose of this pilot was to identify and describe developmentally different features of children’s communicative acts in relation to mothers’ communicative acts. Ten children, of ages ranging from 11 months to 28 months and their mothers, participated in this pilot. Each mother / child dyad was observed in the two semi-structured contexts of joint book reading and toy play. The joint book reading refers to the activities where the dyads interacted with picture books and toy play refers to the activities where they interacted with given toys. Analyses were made of both mothers’ and children’s communicative acts including both gestural and speech activity, using an existing coding system called the Inventory of Communicative Acts-Abridged (INCA-A) with an additional supplemental coding system. The results indicate that the adopted coding system seemed to capture developmentally different features of communicative acts in terms of quantity and quality. Examinations of the mothers’ communicative acts also suggested possibilities of identifying different interaction styles across dyads as well as changes within a dyad in which mothers deploy a variety of communicative acts in relation to their child’s developmental course.
Experiences of adults with high-care needs and their family members with housing and support pathways in Australia

Abstract Purpose: Many adults aged less than 65 years with high-care needs resulting from acquired disabilities are unable to access age-appropriate housing and support, and reside in residential aged care or live with family members who may struggle to navigate the disability support system. This qualitative study aimed to investigate the experiences of adults with high-care needs and their family members regarding pathways related to housing and support. Method: Two in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted six months apart with 21 people aged 18 to 65 with high-care needs of varying etiology and living in different housing settings. Nineteen family members involved in decision-making about housing and supports were also interviewed. Results: Thematic data analysis yielded five themes: (1) Traveling in different directions; (2) “the fight, the battle and the war”; (3) willing but wanting; (4) uncertainty and vulnerability; and (5) redefining social roles and relationships. Conclusions: Current disability policy is not satisfying the housing and support requirements of adults with high-care needs and their families. The findings provide rigorous, empirical evidence which indicate the urgent need to improve access to affordable, individualized housing and support packages, including financial, practical and informational support for family members involved in caring roles. Implications for Rehabilitation Individual preferences are an important consideration in housing and support arrangements for younger people with high-care needs alongside needs-based solutions. Individualized funding approaches may provide flexibility of care and choice in housing and support for people with disability. Family members willingly provide substantial informal care, support and advocacy for younger people with high needs but perceive their role as a constant “battle”. Payment of family members in recognition of caring work was perceived as a solution to relieve family hardship and ensure optimal care.
Social amplification factor for mobile crowd sensing: The ParticipAct experience

Mobile Crowd Sensing (MCS) aims to coordinate and activate the participation of volunteers willing to use their smartphones to harvest large quantities of data as they move in urban areas. One of the most important requirements in MCS is maximizing the effectiveness of the data gathering campaign. In fact, also due to the initial low penetration rate of MCS apps and to avoid making the MCS process cumbersome to users, only a small portion of the whole citizenship can be involved in such campaign, while most citizens are not part of the process. This paper proposes a novel approach that combines participatory and opportunistic techniques to amplify the amount of data harvested from the crowd. The core idea is that people with similar interests, such as employees of the same company, students or friends tend to meet more frequently with respect to people with different interests. Accordingly, it is possible to opportunistically involve in the crowd sensing loop people in the volunteers' neighborhood. Following that main design guideline, our work assesses the SOcial amplification FActor (SOFA) that allows to increase the number of samples retrievable during a crowd sensing campaign. We show the benefits of SOFA by using the ParticipAct MCS platform and we analyze three different application scenarios. Highly realistic simulation results, based on ParticipAct mobility traces, show the advantages of SOFA, with an amplification factor increasing up to 4.45.
A Branch-and-Price Graph-Theoretical Algorithm for Orthogonal-Packing Feasibility

We consider the feasibility problem OPP in higher-dimensional orthogonal packing: given a set of d -dimensional ( d ≥ 2) rectangular items, decide whether all of them can be orthogonally packed in the given rectangular container without rotation. The well-known 1D ‘bar’ LP relaxation of OPP reduces the latter to a 1D cutting-stock problem where the packing of each stock bar represents a possible 1D stitch through an OPP layout. The dual multipliers of the LP provide us with another kind of powerful bounding information (conservative scales). We investigate how the set of possible 1D packings can be tightened using the overlapping information of item projections on the axes, with the goal to tighten the relaxation. We integrate the bar relaxation into the interval-graph algorithm for OPP, which operates on such overlapping relations. Numerical results on 2D and 3D instances demonstrate the eﬃciency of tightening leading to a signiﬁcant speedup and stabilization of the algorithm.
Confidence Intervals and ConstantMaturity Series for Probability Measures Extracted from Options Prices

Market participants and researchers have always used information contained in financial prices to analyze economic and financial developments. Over the past three decades, larger and deeper financial markets have increased the amount and variety of information available, while declining computing costs have allowed more sophisticated techniques and models to be considered. As well, the rapid rise in derivatives trading has widened the set of information that can be extracted from the markets. For example, several techniques have recently been developed to extract probability density functions (PDFs) for the underlying asset from options prices—see Melick and Thomas (1997) and references therein.
Identification of alternative transcripts of rat CD9 expressed by tumorigenic neural cell lines and in normal tissues

CD9 is the best-studied member of the tetraspanin family of transmembrane proteins. It is involved in various fundamental cellular processes and its altered expression is a characteristic of malignant cells of different origins. Despite numerous investigations confirming its fundamental role, the heterogeneity of CD9 or other tetraspanin proteins was considered only to be caused by posttranslational modification, rather than alternative splicing. Here we describe the first identification of CD9 transcript variants expressed by cell lines derived from fetal rat brain cells. Variant mRNA-B lacks a potential translation initiation codon in the alternative exon 1 and seems to be characteristic of the tumorigenic BT cell lines. In contrast, variant mRNA-C can be translated from a functional initiation codon located in its extended exon 2, and substantial amounts of this form detected in various tissues suggest a contribution to CD9 functions. From the alternative sequence of variant C, a different membrane topology (5 transmembrane domains) and a deviating spectrum of functions can be expected.
Sex Work during the 2010 FIFA World Cup: Results from a Three-Wave Cross-Sectional Survey

Background In the months leading up to the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, international media postulated that at least 40,000 foreign sex workers would enter South Africa, and that an increased HIV incidence would follow. To strengthen the evidence base of future HIV prevention and sexual health programmes during international sporting events, we monitored the supply and demand of female sex work in the weeks before, during and after the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Methodology/Principal Findings We conducted three telephonic surveys of female sex workers advertising online and in local newspapers, in the last week of May, June and July 2010. The overall response rate was 73.4% (718/978). The number of sex workers advertising online was 5.9% higher during the World Cup than before. The client turnover rate did not change significantly during (adjusted rate ratio [aRR] = 1.05; 95%CI: 0.90–1.23) or after (aRR = 1.06; 95%CI: 0.91–1.24) the World Cup. The fraction of non-South African sex workers declined during (adjusted odds ratio [aOR] = 0.50; 95%CI: 0.32–0.79) and after (aOR = 0.56; 95%CI: 0.37–0.86) the World Cup. Relatively more clients were foreign during the World Cup among sex workers advertising in the newspapers (aOR = 2.74; 95%CI: 1.37–5.48) but not among those advertising online (aOR = 1.06; 95%CI: 0.60–1.90). Self-reported condom use was high (99.0%) at baseline, and did not change during (aOR = 1.07; 95% CI: 0.16–7.30) or after (aOR = 1.13; 95% CI: 0.16–8.10) the Word Cup. Conclusions/Significance Our findings do not provide evidence for mass-immigration of foreign sex workers advertising online and in local newspapers, nor a spike in sex work or risk of HIV transmission in this subpopulation of sex workers during the World Cup. Public health programmes focusing on sex work and HIV prevention during international sporting events should be based on evidence, not media-driven sensationalism that further heightens discrimination against sex workers and increases their vulnerability.
Backpropagation generalized delta rule for the selective attention Sigma-if artificial neural network

Backpropagation generalized delta rule for the selective attention Sigma-if artificial neural network In this paper the Sigma-if artificial neural network model is considered, which is a generalization of an MLP network with sigmoidal neurons. It was found to be a potentially universal tool for automatic creation of distributed classification and selective attention systems. To overcome the high nonlinearity of the aggregation function of Sigma-if neurons, the training process of the Sigma-if network combines an error backpropagation algorithm with the self-consistency paradigm widely used in physics. But for the same reason, the classical backpropagation delta rule for the MLP network cannot be used. The general equation for the backpropagation generalized delta rule for the Sigma-if neural network is derived and a selection of experimental results that confirm its usefulness are presented.
Geobacter sulfurreducens sp. nov., a hydrogen- and acetate-oxidizing dissimilatory metal-reducing microorganism

A dissimilatory metal- and sulfur-reducing microorganism was isolated from surface sediments of a hydrocarbon-contaminated ditch in Norman, Okla. The isolate, which was designated strain PCA, was an obligately anaerobic, nonfermentative nonmotile, gram-negative rod. PCA grew in a defined medium with acetate as an electron donor and ferric PPi, ferric oxyhydroxide, ferric citrate, elemental sulfur, Co(III)-EDTA, fumarate, or malate as the sole electron acceptor. PCA also coupled the oxidation of hydrogen to the reduction of Fe(III) but did not reduce Fe(III) with sulfur, glucose, lactate, fumarate, propionate, butyrate, isobutyrate, isovalerate, succinate, yeast extract, phenol, benzoate, ethanol, propanol, or butanol as an electron donor. PCA did not reduce oxygen, Mn(IV), U(VI), nitrate, sulfate, sulfite, or thiosulfate with acetate as the electron donor. Cell suspensions of PCA exhibited dithionite-reduced minus air-oxidized difference spectra which were characteristic of c-type cytochromes. Phylogenetic analysis of the 16S rRNA sequence placed PCA in the delta subgroup of the proteobacteria. Its closest known relative is Geobacter metallireducens. The ability to utilize either hydrogen or acetate as the sole electron donor for Fe(III) reduction makes strain PCA a unique addition to the relatively small group of respiratory metal-reducing microorganisms available in pure culture. A new species name, Geobacter sulfurreducens, is proposed.
Herpes Simplex Virus Type 1 Cytoplasmic Envelopment Requires Functional Vps4

ABSTRACT The assembly and egress of herpesviruses are complex processes that require the budding of viral nucleocapsids into the lumen of cytoplasmic compartments to form mature infectious virus. This envelopment stage shares many characteristics with the formation of luminal vesicles in multivesicular endosomes. Through expression of dominant-negative Vps4, an enzyme that is essential for the formation of luminal vesicles in multivesicular endosomes, we now show that Vps4 function is required for the cytoplasmic envelopment of herpes simplex virus type 1. This is the first example of a large enveloped DNA virus engaging the multivesicular endosome sorting machinery to enable infectious virus production.
Detecting Common Modules in Java Packages Based on Static Object Trace Birthmark

A software birthmark means inherent characteristics that can be used to identify a program. In this paper, we propose a birthmark technique based on object traces of Java programs. Java is an object-oriented programming language that provides various predefined class libraries that help programmers to produce software easily. In order to utilize Java class libraries, we have to use Java object instructions. The Java object instructions are hard to replace or remove, and so a set of sequences of object instructions is a proper candidate to represent inherent characteristics of a program. We propose a new birthmark using the sequences of object instructions. We evaluate the proposed birthmark with open source programs and compare it with previous static birthmarks. Experiments show that the detection capability of our birthmark is much higher than that of other static birthmarks despite obfuscations by Smokescreen and ZKM.
Effect of commercial starter cultures on volatile compound profile and sensory characteristics of dry-cured foal sausage.

BACKGROUND The present work deals with the evaluation of the effect of three different commercial starter cultures (Chr. Hansen, Hørsholm, Denmark) on the volatile compound profile and sensory properties, as well as some important physicochemical parameters, of dry-fermented foal sausages at the end of ripening in order to select the most suitable starter culture for this elaboration. The sausage batches were named as follows: CO (non-inoculated control), FS (Lactobacillus sakei + Staphylococcus carnosus), SM (L. sakei + S. carnosus + Staphylococcus xylosus + Pediococcus pentosaceus + Debaryomyces hansenii) and TR (L. sakei + S. carnosus +S. xylosus). RESULTS The pH values differed significantly among batches, with the highest values corresponding to CO followed by TR, SM and FS. The highest amounts of volatile compounds were found in FS batch. Hexanal was the most abundant compound, especially in FS and SM batches. These batches also showed higher levels of compounds derived from carbohydrate fermentation and amino acid catabolism. Sensory results showed that acid taste was significantly lower in CO batch than in inoculated batches. CONCLUSION According to most parameters, batches inoculated with FS and SM starters showed marked acidity compared with TR and CO batches, as expected from the manufacturer's indications. Therefore the most suitable starter culture for use in the manufacture of foal sausages in Mediterranean countries such as Spain with a preference for low-acidity products was found to be TR culture.
Functional connectivity for face processing in individuals with body dysmorphic disorder and anorexia nervosa

Background. Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) and anorexia nervosa (AN) are both characterized by distorted perception of appearance. Previous studies in BDD suggest abnormalities in visual processing of own and others’ faces, but no study has examined visual processing of faces in AN, nor directly compared the two disorders in this respect. Method. We collected functional magnetic resonance imaging data on 60 individuals of equivalent age and gender in each of three groups – 20 BDD, 20 weight-restored AN, and 20 healthy controls (HC) – while they viewed images of others’ faces that contained only high or low spatial frequency information (HSF or LSF). We tested hypotheses about functional connectivity within specialized sub-networks for HSF and LSF visual processing, using psychophysiological interaction analyses. Results. The BDD group demonstrated increased functional connectivity compared to HC between left anterior occipital face area and right fusiform face area (FFA) for LSF faces, which was associated with symptom severity. Both BDD and AN groups had increased connectivity compared to HC between FFA and precuneous/posterior cingulate gyrus for LSF faces, and decreased connectivity between FFA and insula. In addition, we found that LSF connectivity between FFA and posterior cingulate gyrus was significantly associated with thoughts about own appearance in AN. Conclusions. Results suggest similar abnormal functional connectivity within higher-order systems for face processing in BDD and AN, but distinct abnormal connectivity patterns within occipito-temporal visual networks. Findings may have implications for understanding relationships between these disorders, and the pathophysiology underlying perceptual distortions.
Combinatorial optimization for hierarchical contact-level grasping

We address the problem of generating force-closed point contact grasps on complex surfaces and model it as a combinatorial optimization problem. Using a multilevel refinement metaheuristic, we maximize the quality of a grasp subject to a reachability constraint by recursively forming a hierarchy of increasingly coarser optimization problems. A grasp is initialized at the top of the hierarchy and then locally refined until convergence at each level. Our approach efficiently addresses the high dimensional problem of synthesizing stable point contact grasps while resulting in stable grasps from arbitrary initial configurations. Compared to a sampling-based approach, our method yields grasps with higher grasp quality. Empirical results are presented for a set of different objects. We investigate the number of levels in the hierarchy, the computational complexity, and the performance relative to a random sampling baseline approach.
Even more principal typings for Java-like languages

We propose a new type system for Java-like languages which allows compilation of a class in isolation, that is, in a context where no information is available on other classes. Indeed, by this type system it is possible to infer the assumptions guaranteeing type correctness of a class c, and generate (abstract) bytecode for c, by just inspecting the source code of c. Then, a collection of classes can be safely linked together without further inspection of the classes’ code, provided that each class has been typechecked in isolation (intra-checking), and that the mutual class assumptions are satisfied (inter-checking). In other words, the type systems supports compositional analysis, as formally guaranteed by the fact that it has principal typings. We also develop an algorithm for inter-checking, and prove it correct.
Lysosomal accumulation of drugs in drug‐sensitive MES‐SA but not multidrug‐resistant MES‐SA/Dx5 uterine sarcoma cells

Sequestration of drugs in intracellular vesicles has been associated with multidrug‐resistance (MDR), but it is not clear why vesicular drug accumulation, which depends upon intracellular pH gradients, should be associated with MDR. Using a human uterine sarcoma cell line (MES‐SA) and a doxorubicin (DOX)‐resistant variant cell line (Dx‐5), which expresses p‐glycoprotein (PGP), we have addressed the relationship between multidrug resistance, vesicular acidification, and vesicular drug accumulation. Consistent with a pH‐dependent mechanism of vesicular drug accumulation, studies of living cells vitally labeled with multiple probes indicate that DOX and daunorubicin (DNR) predominately accumulate in lysosomes, whose lumenal pH was measured at < 4.5, but are not detected in endosomes, whose pH was measured at 5.9. However, vesicular DOX accumulation is more pronounced in the drug‐sensitive MES‐SA cells and minimal in Dx5 cells even when cellular levels of DOX are increased by verapamil treatment. While lysosomal accumulation of DOX correlated well with pharmacologically induced differences in lysosome pH in MES‐SA cells, lysosomal accumulation was minimal in Dx5 cells regardless of lysosomal pH. We found no differences in the pH of either endosomes or lysosomes between MES‐SA and Dx5 cells, suggesting that, in contrast to other MDR cell systems, the drug‐resistant Dx5 cells are refractory to pH‐dependent vesicular drug accumulation. These studies demonstrate that altered endomembrane pH regulation is not a necessary consequence of cell transformation, and that vesicular sequestration of drugs is not a necessary characteristic of MDR. J. Cell. Physiol. 184:263–274, 2000. © 2000 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.