Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Using Multitouch Collaboration Technology to Enhance Social Interaction of Children with High-Functioning Autism

ABSTRACT Aims. Children with high-functioning Autism Spectrum Disorder (HFASD) have major difficulties in social communication skills, which may impact their performance and participation in everyday life. The goal of this study was to examine whether the StoryTable, an intervention paradigm based on a collaborative narrative, multitouch tabletop interface, enhanced social interaction for children with HFASD, and to determine whether the acquired abilities were transferred to behaviors during other tasks. Methods. Fourteen boys with HFASD, aged 7–12 years, participated in a 3-week, 11-session intervention. Social interactions during two nonintervention tasks were videotaped at three points in time, one prior to the intervention (pre), a second immediately following the intervention (post) and a third three weeks after the intervention (follow-up). The video-recorded files were coded using the Friendship Observation Scale to ascertain the frequencies of positive and negative social interactions and collaborative play. Differences in these behaviors were tested for significance using nonparametric statistical tests. Results. There were significantly higher rates of positive social interactions and collaborative play, and lower rates of negative social interactions following the intervention suggesting generalization of the social skills learned during the intervention. Improvement was maintained when tested three weeks later. Conclusion. These findings provide support for the use of collaborative technology-based interventions within educational settings to enhance social interaction of children with HFASD.
The association of age, illness severity, and glycemic status in a pediatric intensive care unit

Objective: Tight glycemic control in critically ill children is controversial. The benefits of controlling hyperglycemia may be offset by the risk of hypoglycemia on the immature brain. Both age and severity of illness may influence the risks and benefits of tight glycemic control. We hypothesize that rates of hypoglycemia (blood glucose <60 mg/dL) and hyperglycemia (blood glucose >150 mg/dL) in children will correlate with age and illness severity. Design: Retrospective chart review. Setting: Thirty-two-bed university-affiliated pediatric intensive care unit. Patients: Children <19 yrs old admitted between January and September 2006. Interventions: None. Measurements and Main Results: We recorded all blood glucose measurements for up to 10 days of each pediatric intensive care unit visit and assessed rates of hypoglycemia and hyperglycemia based on age, medical vs. surgical therapy, length of stay, therapeutic intervention (Therapeutic Intervention Scoring System), and illness severity (Pediatric Risk of Mortality III). A total of 8853 blood glucose values in 616 patients were recorded. Spontaneous hypoglycemia was noted in 18.8% of patients <1 yr compared with 5.1% to 11.3% of patients in older age groups. Hyperglycemia occurred in 47% of patients <1 yr, which increased to 58.9% in patients 13–18 yrs. Rates of hypoglycemia were not affected by medical/surgical status. Surgical patients had an increased risk of hyperglycemia. Rates of hypo- and hyperglycemia increased with higher Pediatric Risk of Mortality III, Therapeutic Intervention Scoring System, length of stay, and days of mechanical ventilation. Increased rates of hypo-/hyperglycemia were observed in patients who died. Conclusions: The youngest patients are at higher risk for spontaneous hypoglycemia, whereas hyperglycemia occurs more often in the older ages. Higher rates of hypo-/hyperglycemia were noted in sicker patients and in those requiring more therapeutic interventions. Our results suggest that special consideration should be given to the safety of the youngest patients given their higher risk of hypoglycemia if an investigation of tight glycemic control is performed.
Spatiotemporal distributions of intestinal helminths in female lesser scaup Aythya affinis during spring migration from the upper Midwest, USA

Abstract We examined the associations between intestinal helminth infracommunity structure and infection parameters and the age, size, and year and region of collection of 130 female lesser scaup (Aythya affinis) during their 2014–2015 spring migrations through the upper Midwest, USA. We identified a total of 647,174 individual helminths from 40 taxa, including 20 trematodes, 14 cestodes, 4 nematodes and 2 acanthocephalans parasitizing lesser scaup within the study area. Lesser scaup were each infected with 2–23 helminth taxa. One digenean, Plenosoma minimum, is reported for the first time in lesser scaup and in the Midwest. Mean trematode abundance and total helminth abundance was significantly less in 2015 than 2014, and we suspect that colder weather late in 2015 impacted the intermediate host fauna and caused the observed differences. Brillouin's species diversity of helminths was greatest in the northernmost region of the study area, which coincides with the range of a non-indigenous snail that indirectly causes annual mortality events of lesser scaup. While host age and size were not determined to be influential factors of helminth infracommunity structure, non-parametric ordination and permutational analysis of co-variance revealed that year and region of collection explained differences in helminth infracommunities. Our results suggest that spatiotemporal variations play an important role in the structure of intestinal helminth infracommunities found in migrating lesser scaup hosts, and may therefore impact host ability to build endogenous reserves at certain stopover locations in the Midwest.
Arterial steal: an unusual cause for hepatic hypoperfusion after liver transplantation

Case reports of two patients with an unusual cause for a rapid increase in transaminases following liver transplantation are described. In the postoperative course, angiography revealed an arterial, hypoperfusion of the liver due to a steal phenomenon with blood shunting from the hepatic to the splenic artery. In one case, the underlying pathophysiology was a pre-existing filiform stenosis of the celiac trunk with insufficient recruitment of arterial blood from the superior mesenteric artery via the pancreatic arcade. Adequate liver perfusion was restored by simple ligation of the common hepatic artery. In the other case, angiography showed an arteriovenous fistula formation of the splenic vessels and minimal blood flow through the hepatic vessels. This was successfully corrected by angiographic embolization of the splenic artery with metal coils. After therapeutic intervention, both patients rapidly recovered with excellent liver function.
Public Management on the Ground: Clustering Managers Based on Their Behavior

ABSTRACT Public management research has identified a dizzying array of management variables that affect organizational performance. While scholars have learned much by analyzing one or a few specific behavioral dimensions of public management at a time, we argue for the value of a more holistic and inductive approach that uses data on several aspects of public management for identifying manager types. Such an approach accounts for both the cognitive processes of people affected by management and the reality that managers’ individual behavioral decisions are interrelated. We examine the overlap of 21 aspects of public school management behavior using cluster analysis. We identify four different manager types (“firefighters,” “laissez-faire managers,” “administrators,” and “proactive floor managers”), each reflecting a distinct constellation of managerial behaviors. The manager types we call “administrators” and “proactive floor managers” are associated with relatively better outcomes, while “firefighters” are associated with relatively worse outcomes.
Flying High or Lying Low? The Moral Economy of Young Women in Higher Education in Punjab, India

This chapter explores young women’s participation in higher education as a reflection of changes and challenges to the moral economy currently taking place in the Indian state of Punjab. With its renowned capitalist agricultural development as well as skewed sex ratios against females, we highlight how the metaphorical liking of girls and young women as ‘paraya dhan’ (others’ property) outward bound from the natal ‘nest’ highlights the deepening and extending role of gendered patriarchal norms making women’s education a potential risk to the moral economy of society. Thus, the moral panic surrounding the sex ratio and ‘scarce women’ in Punjab exists within a paradoxically broader moral economy in which potentially threatening impacts of women’s higher education participation to the patriarchal social order are measured up against a deeply patriarchal social and economic base of Punjabi society.
Effects of Breast Cancer Risk Counseling for Sexual Minority Women

Sexual minority women (lesbian and bisexual) represent a vulnerable group regarding their breast health. The participants in this study were 150 women aged 18–74 recruited via public announcements in mainstream and sexual minority communities in the greater Seattle metropolitan area. Potential participants were recruited to participate in a randomized trial of a breast cancer risk counseling intervention for sexual minority women. The counseling intervention produced significant reductions in perceived risk of breast cancer, anxieties and fears about breast cancer at 6 and 24 months, and increases in breast screening rates at 24 months in the intervention arm, compared with the control arm participants. These data add to the growing body of knowledge on sexual minority women's health and point to areas of community action and future research.
Heart disease diagnosis using data mining technique

Data mining is an advanced technology, which is the process of discovering actionable information from large set of data, which is used to analyze large volumes of data and extracts patterns that can be converted to useful knowledge. Medical data mining has a great potential for exploring the hidden patterns in the data sets of medical domain. These patterns can be utilized to do clinical diagnosis. These data need to be collected in a standardized form. From the medical profiles fourteen attributes are extracted such as age, sex, blood pressure and blood sugar etc. can predict the likelihood of patient getting heart disease. These attributes are fed in to K-means algorithms, MAFIA algorithm and Decision tree classification in heart disease prediction, applying the data mining technique to heart disease treatment; it can provide as reliable performance as that achieved in diagnosing heart disease. By this medical industries could offer better diagnosis and treatment of the patient to attain a good quality of services. The main advantages of this paper are: early detection of heart disease and its diagnosis correctly on time and providing treatment with affordable cost.
The Stalking and Harassment Behaviour Scale: measuring the incidence, nature, and severity of stalking and relational harassment and their psychological effects.

OBJECTIVES Assessing the incidence, nature, severity, and psychological effects of stalking and relational harassment for victims is a difficult task and conceptual issues have hampered previous research, making it difficult for psychologists and clinicians to predict psychological sequelae for victims and develop appropriate treatments. DESIGN A new scale was developed that included a measure of participants' levels of subjective distress/disturbance to aid clinicians to better assess the incidence, nature, and level of stalking and/or relational harassment for victims. METHODS From a pool of 204 participants from Newcastle University and two business offices, it was possible to differentiate 159 persons who experienced harassment and/or stalking from the remainder who were not distressed or disturbed by such attention. RESULTS Stalked and/or harassed individuals were separated into five separate groups based on their levels of stalking and five score ranges with qualitative labels, devised to aid in the interpretation of victims' levels of stalking scores. Those with higher levels of stalking reported increased levels of helplessness, symptoms of anxiety, PTSD, and depression. CONCLUSION The results indicate the importance of accommodating a subjective component in the measurement and assessment of stalking and harassment. Future directions for the development and use of the new scale are discussed.
pH-Dependent Activation of Streptomyces hygroscopicus Transglutaminase Mediated by Intein

ABSTRACT Microbial transglutaminase (MTG) from Streptomyces is naturally secreted as a zymogen (pro-MTG), which is then activated by the removal of its N-terminal proregion by additional proteases. Inteins are protein-intervening sequences that catalyze protein splicing without cofactors. In this study, a pH-dependent Synechocystis sp. strain PCC6803 DnaB mini-intein (SDB) was introduced into pro-MTG to simplify its activation process by controlling pH. The recombinant protein (pro-SDB-MTG) was obtained, and the activation process was determined to take 24 h at pH 7 in vitro. To investigate the effect of the first residue in MTG on the activity and the cleavage time, two variants, pro-SDB-MTG(D1S) and pro-SDB-MTG(ΔD1), were expressed, and the activation time was found to be 6 h and 30 h, respectively. The enzymatic property and secondary structure of the recombinant MTG and two variants were similar to those of the wild type, indicating that the insertion of mini-intein did not affect the function of MTG. This insignificant effect was further illustrated by molecular dynamics simulations. This study revealed a controllable and effective strategy to regulate the activation process of pro-MTG mediated by a mini-intein, and it may have great potential for industrial MTG production.
Tourism development and regional production efficiency: Evidence from southwestern China

This study examines the relationship between the production efficiency of a region and tourism flows. We use stochastic frontier production models with spatial effects based on data from 46 regions in southwestern China, most of which are economically underdeveloped. The results show that tourist flows (TFs) into a region are significantly related to the region’s production efficiency. The TFs in the neighboring regions also correlate with the production efficiency of a region. This study validates the tourism-led efficiency enhancement proposition at the regional level and has rich implications for practice.
How User-Innovators Pave the Way for a Sustainable Energy Future: A Study among German Energy Enthusiasts

The existence of user-innovators in the household sector is undeniable. Prior research provided evidence on the vast scope of product developments by household sector users and documented a large set of individual user-innovator characteristics to explain their behavior. What has largely been neglected as a potential source of user innovation activities are product- and technology-specific factors. This study aims to fill this gap by identifying and analyzing user-innovators in Germany. On the basis of the results of a large-scale survey on German energy enthusiasts, we find dissatisfaction with existing products and time-consuming implementation as the main drivers of user innovation in our setting. The results show a negative correlation between data security concerns and the likelihood of becoming a user-innovator, pointing towards the maker culture among user-innovators. As an implication of our work, we provide a roadmap for all stakeholders aiming to harness the potential of user-innovators for future open innovation eco-systems.
OBOR and the Silk Road Ethos

Most analyses of China’s “One Belt, One Road” policy focus on the Chinese government or transnational elites. Rarely do the localities receive any attention. Three conceptual failures follow: (1) conventional analyses fail to appreciate any local agency in negotiating with external, globalizing forces; consequently, they (2) fail to perceive local changes taking place not just empirically but also normatively, politically, and culturally; and, they (3) fail to understand local constructions of a new political economy, if not world order. In brief, conventional analyses erase the OBOR Other. This article amends the record.
Personality traits are associated with acute major depression across the age spectrum

Objectives: Psychological predictors, such as personality traits, have aroused growing interest as possible predictors of late-life depression outcome in old age. It remains, however, unclear whether the cross-sectional relationship between personality traits and depression occurrence reported in younger samples is also present in the elderly. Methods: Comparisons amongst 79 outpatients with DSM-IV major depression and 102 healthy controls included assessment of the five-factor model of personality (NEO PI-R), socio-demographic variables, physical health status, as well as depression features. Two sub-groups were considered, defined as young (25–50 years) and old (60–85 years) patients. Results: Depressed patients showed significantly higher levels of Neuroticism and lower levels of Extraversion, Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness compared to controls. Sequential logistic regression models confirmed that the combination of increased physical burden, levels of dependency, and increased Neuroticism strongly predicts the occurrence of acute depressive symptoms. In contrast, the levels of Neuroticism did not allow for differentiating late-life from young age depression. Increased physical burden and decreased depression severity were the main predictors for this distinction. Conclusion: Our data indicate that personality factors and depression are related, independently of patients’ age. Differences in this relationship are mainly due to the intensity of depressive symptoms rather than the patients’ life period. They also stress the need to consider physical health, level of dependency and severity of symptoms when studying the relationship between personality traits and mood disorders.
Direct Single-Stranded DNA Binding by Teb1 Mediates the Recruitment of Tetrahymena thermophila Telomerase to Telomeres

ABSTRACT The eukaryotic reverse transcriptase telomerase copies its internal RNA template to synthesize telomeric DNA repeats at chromosome ends in balance with sequence loss during cell proliferation. Previous work has established several factors involved in telomerase recruitment to telomeres in yeast and mammalian cells; however, it remains unclear what determines the association of telomerase with telomeres in other organisms. Here we investigate the cell cycle dependence of telomere binding by each of the seven Tetrahymena thermophila telomerase holoenzyme proteins TERT, p65, Teb1, p50, p75, p45, and p19. We observed coordinate cell cycle-regulated recruitment and release of all of the subunits, including the telomeric-repeat DNA-binding subunit Teb1. Using domain truncation and mutagenesis approaches, we investigated which subunits govern the interaction of telomerase holoenzyme with telomeres. Our results show that Teb1 is critical for telomere interaction of other holoenzyme subunits and demonstrate that high-affinity Teb1 DNA-binding activity is necessary and sufficient for cell cycle-regulated telomere association. Overall, these and additional findings indicate that in the ciliate Tetrahymena, telomerase recruitment to telomeres requires direct binding to single-stranded DNA, unlike the indirect DNA recognition through telomere-bound proteins essential in yeast and mammalian cells.
Democracy as Perceived by Public Opinion Analysis

The political ideas of public opinion analysts–pollsters as well as theoreticians–have often been submitted to rather harsh criticisms from political philosophers and scientists. On occasion, however, the analysts have reciprocated by accusing the latter of being poorly acquainted not only with the techniques and purpose of polling but also with the basic political assumptions that underlie their work. Public opinion analysts in the United States present themselves as champions of democracy; as a consequence, it is only natural that they should above all resent criticisms asserting that they hold naive, false, or even subversive notions concerning democracy. In the present article, I intend to explore the ideological conceptions of American public opinion analysts concerning the position and function of polling in a democracy. Reference to their critics will be made only when one or another public opinion analyst is known to have explicitly answered a specific point. Since many contemporary analysts acknowledge their debt to Bryce's The American Commonwealth , I shall start by presenting the pertinent views of the British author concerning public opinion; second, I shall summarize the views which present polling as a new technique of democratic government; third, I shall consider what public opinion analysts have to say about the impact of polling on the democratic process as such. Finally, I shall conclude by indicating how public opinion analysts view their research in relation to political theory in general.
PERCEIVE deliverable 5.3 ‘Production of a report discussing (including visualizingtopographic maps of meanings) the emergent topics in identityrelevant discourse at the different levels’

In this report we describe the results of the analysis that we performed through topic modeling on the texts that we collected and described in the previous deliverable 5.2. In particular, our aim was to analyze the latent meaning structure, and the shared meanings of EU policies and EU identity, on four levels of communication: 1) Communications of the EU: here we analyzed the magazine Panorama; 2) Local implementation: here we analyzed financed projects’ abstracts; 3) Local press: at this level we focus on newspapers; 4) Social media: at this level we focus on Facebook. The analysis performed with Topic Modeling on the corpus of tweets collected from Twitter did not provide good results, due to the short length of each tweet. It is a result that is expected, but collected data are not useless. In order to provide a better coherence of this report, which focuses on the results of Topic Modeling, we are therefore not providing an analysis of tweets here. On the contrary, we will analyze tweet in the next deliverable 3.3, that is aimed at analyzing the use LMAs make of social media. With regards to the other level, we are presenting 16 models: one model for Panorama, one model for financed projects’ abstracts, 7 models for newspapers – one for each country – and 7 models for Facebook. Regarding Facebook, LMAs in our case study region in UK do not have a Facebook profile. The seventh model regards thus European Institutions’ Facebook profiles. Each model is composed of a list of 20 topics, which we analyze and characterize through descriptive statististics. We focus in particular on the emergent topics related to European Identity and Cohesion Policy. Moreover, in this report, we make use of formal methods and techniques to visually represent the meaning of topics elicited through topic modeling. The following paragraph provides a short introduction to the technique of topic modeling. Then four paragraph accounts for the several topic models elicited at different level of communication. Finally, conclusions make sense of the whole analysis.