Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Justifying the judgment process affects neither judgment accuracy, nor strategy use

Decision quality is often evaluated based on whether decision makers can adequately explain the decision process. Accountability often improves judgment quality because decision makers weigh and integrate information more thoroughly, but it could also hurt judgment processes by disrupting retrieval of previously encountered cases. We investigated to what degree process accountability motivates decision makers to shift from retrieval of past exemplars to rule-based integration processes. This shift may hinder accurate judgments in retrieval-based configural judgment tasks (Experiment 1) but may improve accuracy in elemental judgment tasks requiring weighing and integrating information (Experiment 2). In randomly selected trials, participants had to justify their judgments. Process accountability neither changed how accurately people made a judgment, nor the judgment strategies. Justifying the judgment process only decreased confidence in trials involving a justification. Overall, these results imply that process accountability may affect judgment quality less than expected.
Invasion Biology Meets Parasitology: A Case Study of Parasite Spill-Back with Egyptian Fasciola gigantica in the Invasive Snail Pseudosuccinea columella

The liver fluke Fasciola gigantica is a trematode parasite of ruminants and humans that occurs naturally in Africa and Asia. Cases of human fascioliasis, attributable at least in part to F. gigantica, are significantly increasing in the last decades. The introduced snail species Galba truncatula was already identified to be an important intermediate host for this parasite and the efficient invader Pseudosuccinea columella is another suspect in this case. Therefore, we investigated snails collected in irrigation canals in Fayoum governorate in Egypt for prevalence of trematodes with focus on P. columella and its role for the transmission of F. gigantica. Species were identified morphologically and by partial sequencing of the cytochrome oxidase subunit I gene (COI). Among all 689 snails found at the 21 sampling sites, P. columella was the most abundant snail with 296 individuals (42.96%) and it was also the most dominant species at 10 sites. It was not found at 8 sites. Molecular detection by PCR and sequencing of the ITS1-5.8S-ITS2 region of the ribosomal DNA (rDNA) revealed infections with F. gigantica (3.38%), Echinostoma caproni (2.36%) and another echinostome (7.09%) that could not be identified further according to its sequence. No dependency of snail size and trematode infection was found. Both high abundance of P. columella in the Fayoum irrigation system and common infection with F. gigantica might be a case of parasite spill-back (increased prevalence in local final hosts due to highly susceptible introduced intermediate host species) from the introduced P. columella to the human population, explaining at least partly the observed increase of reported fascioliasis-cases in Egypt. Eichhornia crassipes, the invasive water hyacinth, which covers huge areas of the irrigation canals, offers safe refuges for the amphibious P. columella during molluscicide application. As a consequence, this snail dominates snail communities and efficiently transmits F. gigantica.
Methodology and Design of an Adaptive Overcurrent Protection for Distribution Systems with DG

1214304-8585-IJET-IJENS © August 2012 IJENS I J E N S Abstract— In this paper we present the design of an Adaptive overcurrent protection for Distribution Power Systems with penetration of Distributed Generation, based in a proposed methodology. The methodology takes into account typical protection schemes, normative, general protection requirements, protections coordination and distributed generation impact to protection system, and its applicable to planning systems or for existing systems initially without DG. This work apply a part of IEEE 13 nodes Radial Distribution test Feeder, to study the impact of Distributed Generation to the protection system, apply and prove the proposed design methodology.
Detection and Localization of Multiple Objects

Being able to identify and localize objects is an important requirement for various humanoid robot applications. In this paper we present a method which uses PCA-SIFT in combination with a clustered voting scheme to achieve detection and localization of multiple objects in real-time video data. Our approach provides robustness against constraints that are common for humanoid vision systems such as perspective changes, partial occlusion, and motion blurring. We analyze and evaluate the performance of our method in two concrete humanoid test-scenarios
An Interactional Account of Online Collective Action

The diffusion of networked information and communication technologies has facilitated the rise of novel modes of online collective action, collaboration, and public goods production. In this dissertation, I elaborate an interactional account of online collective action, emphasizing the role of micro-level social interactions in shaping organizational dynamics and collective behavior. This approach provides a clearer explanation of both the means by which individuals and groups within online collectives establish stable patterns of activity as well as the mechanisms through which those patterns change over time. The argument proceeds through a series of interconnected empirical studies of several different domains of online collective action including crowdsourcing labor markets, Wikipedia, and the U.S. political blogosphere. Across these studies, I find that interactions and interactional dimensions of behavior play a central role in mobilizing, retaining, and organizing participants engaged in online collective action. Interactional motives and incentives not only mobilize participation in online collectives, they also contribute to the emergence and persistence of participation patterns and organizational forms. The character of these inequalities and organizational forms vary widely, likely contributing to the uneven impact of online collectives.
Thermal characterization of thermally-shunted heterojunction bipolar transistors

Heterojunction Bipolar Transistors (HBTs) are potentially useful in a number of microwave applications, but they are severely limited by a current distribution instability caused by electrothermal interaction and the use of a low thermal conductivity substrate. A novel thermal management technique called "thermal shunting" has been developed to reduce thermal resistance and junction temperature non-uniformity. Thermal resistance measurements for thermally-shunted devices are presented. Specific thermal resistance measurements as low as 2.6/spl times/10/sup -4//spl deg/C-cm/sup 2//W (147/spl deg/C/W at 0.1 W for a device with a 177 /spl mu/m/sup 2/ emitter area) have been obtained. Thermal resistance values obtained for thermally-shunted HBTs are substantially lower than those reported for conventional HBTs.
Provoked and spontaneous confabulations in Alzheimer's disease: An examination of their prevalence and relation with general cognitive and executive functioning

A dissociation can be made between confabulations that are produced when the subject is directly questioned (i.e., provoked confabulations) and context‐free, unprovoked confabulations (i.e., spontaneous confabulations). Unlike provoked confabulations, there is a paucity of research on spontaneous confabulations in Alzheimer's disease (AD). Our paper assessed this issue by assessing both types of confabulation in participants with mild to moderate AD and controls.
Using clustering comparison measures for speaker recognition

Recent results seem to cast some doubt over the assumption that improvements in fused recognition accuracy for speaker recognition systems based on different acoustic features are due mainly to the different origins of the features (e.g. magnitude, phase, modulation information). In this study, we utilize clustering comparison measures to investigate acoustic and speaker modelling aspects of the speaker recognition task separately and demonstrate that front-end diversity can be achieved purely through different ‘partitioning’ of the acoustic space. Further, features that exhibit good ‘stability’ with respect to repeated clustering are shown to also give good EER performance in speaker recognition. This has implications for feature choice, fusion of systems employing different features, and for UBM data selection. A method for the latter problem is presented that gives up to an 11% relative reduction in EER using only 20–30% of the usual UBM training data set.
Ribosomal Protein L17, RpL17, is an Inhibitor of Vascular Smooth Muscle Growth and Carotid Intima Formation

Background— Carotid intima-media thickening is associated with increased cardiovascular risk in humans. We discovered that intima formation and cell proliferation in response to carotid injury is greater in SJL/J (SJL) in comparison with C3HeB/FeJ (C3H/F) mice. The purpose of this study was to identify candidate genes contributing to intima formation. Methods and Results— We performed microarray and bioinformatic analyses of carotid arteries from C3H/F and SJL mice. Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes analysis showed that the ribosome pathway was significantly up-regulated in C3H/F in comparison with SJL mice. Expression of a ribosomal protein, RpL17, was >40-fold higher in C3H/F carotids in comparison with SJL. Aortic vascular smooth muscle cells from C3H/F grew slower in comparison to SJL. To determine the role of RpL17 in vascular smooth muscle cell growth regulation, we analyzed the relationship between RpL17 expression and cell cycle progression. Cultured vascular smooth muscle cells from mice, rats, and humans showed that RpL17 expression inversely correlated with growth as shown by decreased cells in S phase and increased cells in G0/G1. To prove that RpL17 acted as a growth inhibitor in vivo, we used pluronic gel delivery of RpL17 small interfering RNA to C3H/F carotid arteries. This resulted in an 8-fold increase in the number of proliferating cells. Furthermore, following partial carotid ligation in SJL mice, RpL17 expression in the intima and media decreased, but the number of proliferating cells increased. Conclusions— RpL17 acts as a vascular smooth muscle cell growth inhibitor (akin to a tumor suppressor) and represents a potential therapeutic target to limit carotid intima-media thickening.
Modeling and Decentralized Control for the Multiple UAVs Formation based on Lyapunov design and redesign

This paper concerns the leader-follower multiple agent formation with nonlinear and coupled individual dynamics. We address the problem of multi-agent formation control by proposing a decentralized control strategy. The agents in the formation are quad-rotors UAVs. By attributing the high-order nonlinear and unmodelled dynamics as uncertainties, we propose a switching singular system model to represent the formation of the multiple UAVs system with switching topology. For stabilizing the system with uncertainties, the decentralized controllers are designed by using Lyapunov design and redesign. The simulation results illustrate the stated problems and verify the proposed theorem.
Hybrid Fuzzy Convolution Model Based Predictor Corrector Controller

This paper presents a new fuzzy model based predictive control algorithm. The proposed predictor corrector controller is based on a hybrid fuzzy model, which consists of a fuzzy steady state model and a gain independent impulse response model. The real-time control of a laboratory-sized heating system is chosen as a nonlinear case study for the demonstration of the proposed control algorithm. The results show that the proposed algorithm is capable of controlling the nonlinear process that operates over wide range.
Morphogenic Effects of Ezrin Require a Phosphorylation-Induced Transition from Oligomers to Monomers at the Plasma Membrane

ERM (ezrin, radixin, moesin) proteins act as linkers between the plasma membrane and the actin cytoskeleton. An interaction between their NH2- and COOH-terminal domains occurs intramolecularly in closed monomers and intermolecularly in head-to-tail oligomers. In vitro, phosphorylation of a conserved threonine residue (T567 in ezrin) in the COOH-terminal domain of ERM proteins disrupts this interaction. Here, we have analyzed the role of this phosphorylation event in vivo, by deriving stable clones producing wild-type, T567A, and T567D ezrin from LLC-PK1 epithelial cells. We found that T567A ezrin was poorly associated with the cytoskeleton, but was able to form oligomers. In contrast, T567D ezrin was associated with the cytoskeleton, but its distribution was shifted from oligomers to monomers at the membrane. Moreover, production of T567D ezrin induced the formation of lamellipodia, membrane ruffles, and tufts of microvilli. Both T567A and T567D ezrin affected the development of multicellular epithelial structures. Collectively, these results suggest that phosphorylation of ERM proteins on this conserved threonine regulates the transition from membrane-bound oligomers to active monomers, which induce and are part of actin-rich membrane projections.
Accurate frequency-based lexicon generation for opinion mining

Sentiment analysis deals with classifying the opinions in text. Twitter is the most popular microblogging platform in social media, with hundreds of millions of tweets posted every day. A considerable number of tweets contain opinions. The goal of this paper is to classify the polarity of the tweets into positive and negative classes using dynamic sentiment lexicons based on frequencies of words in positive and negative classes. We extract five meta-level features incorporating the generated sentiment lexicons and classify the text based on them. We also incorporate some previously known lexicon-based and corpus-based features. The proposed method is assessed on six datasets, and outperforms previous papers on accuracy on four datasets, and on f-measure on three datasets. This method generates sentiment lexicons dynamically. The changes of meanings of words can be captured by the generated lexicons. Our research produces very promising results in sentiment analysis in terms of accuracy and f-measure. The accuracy of our method on four datasets and the f-measure of our method on three datasets are higher than 85%.
The epidemiology of primary amoebic meningoencephalitis in the USA, 1962–2008

SUMMARY Naegleria fowleri, a free-living, thermophilic amoeba ubiquitous in the environment, causes primary amoebic meningoencephalitis (PAM), a rare but nearly always fatal disease of the central nervous system. While case reports of PAM have been documented worldwide, very few individuals have been diagnosed with PAM despite the vast number of people who have contact with fresh water where N. fowleri may be present. In the USA, 111 PAM case-patients have been prospectively diagnosed, reported, and verified by state health officials since 1962. Consistent with the literature, case reports reveal that N. fowleri infections occur primarily in previously healthy young males exposed to warm recreational waters, especially lakes and ponds, in warm-weather locations during summer months. The annual number of PAM case reports varied, but does not appear to be increasing over time. Because PAM is a rare disease, it is challenging to understand the environmental and host-specific factors associated with infection in order to develop science-based, risk reduction messages for swimmers.
Practicing awkward space in the city

In earlier research, I defined the concept of ‘awkward space’ in cities as ‘ambivalent or unresolved spaces that are the remnants of a previous pattern of flow’ (Jones, 2007). The concept of awkward space is important because it offers designers and planners an insight into the latent affordances and informal practices that exist within the urban environment. These lie outside the realm of rational planning and design strategies. My aim in this thesis is to explore how and why we experience awkward space in the city in order to better understand how the concept could be used productively in co-design projects. My practice-based research builds upon a series of three case studies, which chart my own journey from conducting an individual and observational inquiry, to engaging in participatory design inquiries into everyday places. I stage two focused and selective literature reviews, which act as interventions to critically inform my understanding of awkward space and to help me situate and reflect upon my use of the concept in practice. I utilise a range of qualitative methods, practical mapping and design tools, and evaluative techniques. My overall conclusions are that awkward space can be used a generative concept for co-designing change agency at a local level, through framing ‘otherly spaces’ that support the emergence of a connected inhabitant knowledge. The thesis findings are primarily directed at designers and the design research community, although they are also relevant for architects, planners and community-based organisations.
Teaching language arts creatively in the elementary grades

Motivating Children to Love Reading. Not Nobodies But Somebodies. Listen, My Children. Bringing Children to Their Senses. In the Beginning Is the Word. Keep Them Talking. Spelling and Handwriting. Everybody Reading. Developing Critical and Creative Thinking. Poetry Is When the Words Marry. More to Grow On: An Olio of Ideas for Speaking. References. Author Index. Subject Index.
The Paradigm dialog

Foreword - Egon G Guba PART ONE: SETTING THE STAGE The Alternative Paradigm Dialog PART TWO: POINTS OF VIEW Postpositivistic Science - Denis C Phillips Myths and Realities Whose Future? Whose Past? Notes on Critical Theory and Methodology - Thomas S Popkewitz The Making of a Constructivist - Yvonna S Lincoln A Remembrance of Transformations Past The Meaning of Alternative Paradigms for Practice - Elliot W Eisner PART THREE: THE NEED FOR DIALOG: ISSUES AND INTERPRETATIONS Introduction - Egon G Guba Accomodation Accommodation - William A Firestone Toward a Paradigm-Praxis Dialectic Social Accomodation - Thomas M Skrtic Toward a Dialogical Discourse in Educational Inquiry Discussion on Accommodation - Ann Austin Ethics Ethics, Field Studies and the Paradigm Crisis - Louis M Smith An Ethics of Qualitative Field Studies - Ernest R House Discussion on Ethics - Thomas Gregory Goodness Criteria Alternative Research Paradigms and the Problem of Criteria - John K Smith Goodness Criteria - Catherine Marshall Are They Objective Realities or Judgment Calls? Discussion on Criteria - Lois Heshusius Implementation Toward a Dialog about Implementation Within a Conceptual Cycle of Inquiry - Judith L Green and Susanne Chandler Peering at Paradigms Through the Prism of Practice Improvement - David P Crandall Discussion on Implementation - Corinne Glesne Knowledge Accumulation Three Views on the Nature and Role of Knowledge in Social Science - Jennifer C Greene Emergent Paradigms. How New? How Necessary? - Margaret D LeCompte Discussion on Knowledge Accumulation - Judith Preissle Goetz Methodology Paths to Inquiry in the Social Disciplines - Thomas R Schwandt Scientific, Constructivist and Critical Theory Methodologies Ruminations on Methodology - Gail McCutcheon Of Truth and Significance Discussion on Methodology - Marion Lundy Dobbert Training So-Called Training in the So-Called Alternative Paradigm - Shulamit Reinharz A Response to So-Called Training in the So-Called Alternative Paradigm - Jeri R Nowakowski Reactions to the Dark Half Discussion on Training - Judy Barford Values Reinscribing Otherwise - Patti A Lather The Play of Values in the Practices of the Human Sciences Show and Tell - Madeleine Grumet A Response to the Value Issue in Alternative Paradigms for Inquiry Discussion on Values - John P Beck PART FOUR: SUMMATION AND PROJECTION Introduction - Egon G Guba A Postnote - Alan Peshkin Tales from the Rear Next Steps - Harbans S Bhola The Auditors' Report Carrying on the Dialog - Egon G Guba
Dissociable Forms of Repetition Priming: A Computational Model

Nondeclarative memory and novelty processing in the brain is an actively studied field of neuroscience, and reducing neural activity with repetition of a stimulus (repetition suppression) is a commonly observed phenomenon. Recent findings of an opposite trend—specifically, rising activity for unfamiliar stimuli—question the generality of repetition suppression and stir debate over the underlying neural mechanisms. This letter introduces a theory and computational model that extend existing theories and suggests that both trends are, in principle, the rising and falling parts of an inverted U-shaped dependence of activity with respect to stimulus novelty that may naturally emerge in a neural network with Hebbian learning and lateral inhibition. We further demonstrate that the proposed model is sufficient for the simulation of dissociable forms of repetition priming using real-world stimuli. The results of our simulation also suggest that the novelty of stimuli used in neuroscientific research must be assessed in a particularly cautious way. The potential importance of the inverted-U in stimulus processing and its relationship to the acquisition of knowledge and competencies in humans is also discussed.
MEGA-V: detection of variant gene sets in patient cohorts

Summary : Detecting significant associations between genetic variants and disease may prove particularly challenging when the variants are rare in the population and/or act together with other variants to cause the disease. We have developed a statistical framework named Mutation Enrichment Gene set Analysis of Variants (MEGA‐V) that specifically detects the enrichments of genetic alterations within a process in a cohort of interest. By focusing on the mutations of several genes contributing to the same function rather than on those affecting a single gene, MEGA‐V increases the power to detect statistically significant associations. Availability and Implementation: MEGA‐V is available at https://github.com/ciccalab/MEGA Contact: francesca.ciccarelli@kcl.ac. uk Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
The Nordic diet and cognition – The DR's EXTRA Study

The rapid increase in the prevalence of dementia associated with ageing populations has stimulated interest in identifying modifiable lifestyle factors that could prevent cognitive impairment. One such potential preventive lifestyle factor is the Nordic diet that has been shown to reduce the risk of CVD; however, its effect on cognition has not been studied. The aim of the present study was to estimate the cross-sectional and longitudinal associations of the baseline Nordic diet with cognitive function at baseline and after a 4-year follow-up in a population-based random sample (n 1140 women and men, age 57–78 years) as secondary analyses of the Finnish Dose-Responses to Exercise Training study. The Nordic diet score was created based on reported dietary components in 4-d food records. Cognition was assessed by the Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer's Disease (CERAD) neuropsychological battery and the Mini-mental State Examination (MMSE). The baseline Nordic diet score had been positively associated with Verbal Fluency (β 0·08 (95 % CI 0·00, 0·16), P= 0·039) and Word List Learning (β 0·06 (95 % CI 0·01, 0·10), P= 0·022) at 4 years but not with the Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer's Disease total score (CERAD-TS) or MMSE at 4 years, after adjustment for baseline cognitive scores, demographic factors and health-related factors. After excluding individuals with impaired cognition at baseline, the baseline Nordic diet score had also been positively associated with the CERAD-TS (β 0·10 (95 % CI 0·00, 0·20), P= 0·042) and MMSE (β 0·03 (95 % CI 0·00, 0·06), P= 0·039) at 4 years. These associations disappeared after further adjustment for energy intake. In conclusion, the Nordic diet might have a positive association with cognition in individuals with normal cognition.