Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A nonword repetition task for speakers with misarticulations: the Syllable Repetition Task (SRT).

PURPOSE Conceptual and methodological confounds occur when non(sense) word repetition tasks are administered to speakers who do not have the target speech sounds in their phonetic inventories or who habitually misarticulate targeted speech sounds. In this article, the authors (a) describe a nonword repetition task, the Syllable Repetiton Task (SRT), that eliminates this confound and (b) report findings from 3 validity studies. METHOD Ninety-five preschool children with speech delay and 63 with typical speech completed an assessment battery that included the Nonword Repetition Task (NRT; C. Dollaghan & T. F. Campbell, 1998) and the SRT. SRT stimuli include only 4 of the earliest occurring consonants and 1 early occurring vowel. RESULTS Study 1 findings indicated that the SRT eliminated the speech confound in nonword testing with speakers who misarticulate. Study 2 findings indicated that the accuracy of the SRT to identify expressive language impairment was comparable to findings for the NRT. Study 3 findings illustrated the SRT's potential to interrogate speech processing constraints underlying poor nonword repetition accuracy. Results supported both memorial and auditory-perceptual encoding constraints underlying nonword repetition errors in children with speech-language impairment. CONCLUSION The SRT appears to be a psychometrically stable and substantively informative nonword repetition task for emerging genetic research and other research with speakers who misarticulate.
Population-genomic inference of the strength and timing of selection against gene flow

Significance Selection against maladaptive gene flow drives local adaptation and speciation. We present an approach to quantify the genome-wide aggregate signal of such selection. We show that the product of the density of loci under selection times their selection coefficient forms a compound parameter that can be estimated from genome-wide polymorphism and recombination data. In addition, we can infer the timing of selection and the neutral baseline migration rate. Applications to Mimulus guttatus on the population and species level show evidence for selection maintaining locally adapted populations and a species barrier despite recent introgression. Our approach takes background selection into account and is applicable to the growing number of genomic datasets that include samples from multiple populations experiencing divergent selection. The interplay of divergent selection and gene flow is key to understanding how populations adapt to local environments and how new species form. Here, we use DNA polymorphism data and genome-wide variation in recombination rate to jointly infer the strength and timing of selection, as well as the baseline level of gene flow under various demographic scenarios. We model how divergent selection leads to a genome-wide negative correlation between recombination rate and genetic differentiation among populations. Our theory shows that the selection density (i.e., the selection coefficient per base pair) is a key parameter underlying this relationship. We then develop a procedure for parameter estimation that accounts for the confounding effect of background selection. Applying this method to two datasets from Mimulus guttatus, we infer a strong signal of adaptive divergence in the face of gene flow between populations growing on and off phytotoxic serpentine soils. However, the genome-wide intensity of this selection is not exceptional compared with what M. guttatus populations may typically experience when adapting to local conditions. We also find that selection against genome-wide introgression from the selfing sister species M. nasutus has acted to maintain a barrier between these two species over at least the last 250 ky. Our study provides a theoretical framework for linking genome-wide patterns of divergence and recombination with the underlying evolutionary mechanisms that drive this differentiation.
A transgenic mouse model for tumour immunotherapy: induction of an anti-idiotype response to human MUC1

MUC1 is a membrane bound, polymorphic epithelial mucin expressed at the luminal surface of glandular epithelium. It is highly expressed in an underglycosylated form on carcinomas and metastatic lesions and is, therefore, a potential target for immunotherapy of cancer. The monoclonal antibody HMFG1 binds the linear core protein sequence, PDTR, contained within the immunodominant domain of the tandem repeat of MUC1. The efficacy of murine and humanized HMFG1 (Ab1) used as an anti-idiotypic vaccine was examined in mice transgenic for human MUC1 (MUC1.Tg) challenged with murine epithelial tumour cells transfected with human MUC1. Humoral idiotypic cascade through Ab2 and Ab3 antibodies was observed in MUC1.Tg mice following multiple antibody inoculations in the presence of adjuvant. Impaired tumour growth at day 35 and highest Ab3 levels were found in mice that had received mHMFG1 with RAS adjuvant. However, comparison of Ab3 levels in individual mice with tumour size in all treatment groups did not show a correlation between smaller tumours and increased levels of anti-idiotype antibody. This suggests that the anti-tumour effects of anti-idiotype vaccination are not solely related to the induction of idiotypic antibody cascades and probably involve other mechanisms. © 2000 Cancer Research Campaign
Analytics-based safety monitoring and verification

Safety-critical systems in domains such as aviation, railway, and automotive are often subject to a formal process of safety certification. The goal of this process is to ensure that these systems will operate safely without posing risks to the user, the public, or the environment [1]. It is typically expensive and time consuming for companies to certify their software. Therefore, any attempt to automate any part of the required process is very appreciated. In this research project, we report on our on-going project with an industry partner in the avionics domain, where we propose a framework to combine specification mining, model-based testing, and analytics to help with monitoring and verification of safety critical systems.
Lymphatic lipid transport : sewer or subway ?

The lymphatics began receiving attention in the scientific community as early as 1622, when Gasparo Aselli noted the appearance of milky-white vessels in the mesentery of a well-fed dog. Since this time, the lymphatic system has been historically regarded as the sewer of the vasculature, passively draining fluid and proteins from the interstitial spaces (along with lipid from the gut) into the blood. Recent reports, however, suggest that the lymphatic role in lipid transport is an active and intricate process, and that when lymphatic function is compromised, there are systemic consequences to lipid metabolism and transport. This review highlights these recent findings, and suggests future directions for understanding the interplay between lymphatic and lipid biology in health and disease.
Novel tumor markers provide improved prediction of survival after diagnosis of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-related diffuse large B-cell lymphoma

Abstract Existing prognostic tools for HIV + diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) fail to accurately predict patient outcomes. To develop a novel prognostic algorithm incorporating molecular tumor characteristics and HIV disease factors, we included 80 patients with HIV-related DLBCL diagnosed between 1996 and 2007. Immunohistochemistry staining was used to analyze the expression of 26 tumor markers. Clinical data were collected from medical records. Logistic regression and bootstrapping were used to select and assess stability of the prognostic model, respectively. Of the tumor markers examined, expression of cMYC, Ki 67, CD44, EBV, SKP2, BCL6, p53, CD20 and IgM were associated with two-year mortality. The final prognostic model, confirmed in bootstrapped samples, included IPI, circulating CD4 cell count, history of clinical AIDS, and expression of CD44, p53, IgM and EBV. This model incorporating HIV disease history and tumor markers, achieved better prediction for two-year mortality [AUC = 0.87, 95% CI: 0.78–0.96] compared with IPI alone [AUC = 0.63 (0.51–0.75)].
Issues in High-Stakes Testing Programs

The debate over high-stakes testing programs plays out daily in newspapers, on TV, and in the business, education, legal, political, and research communities. This article examines some of the issues at the heart of this debate. Four main areas are covered: the types of tests used, the effects on student motivation and morale, the degree of alignment between the test and the curriculum, and the distinction between assessment of learning and assessment for learning. The article concludes by highlighting the need for teacher input in crafting testing programs that maximize benefits in each of these areas.
Chronic AT1 Receptor Blockade Alters Autonomic Balance and Sympathetic Responses in Hypertension

In the coarctation hypertension model, we have shown that chronic treatment with losartan causes both normalization of impaired reflex control of heart rate and partial correction of the depressed aortic nerve activity/pressure relationship, even with the persistence of hypertension. In the present study, we analyzed the effects of angiotensin II blockade on the efferent pathways of coarcted and sham-operated groups treated chronically with vehicle or losartan (10 mg/kg per day PO). Hypertension was induced by subdiaphragmatic aortic coarctation, and the treatments lasted 9 days (4 control and 5 experimental days). On day 5, autoregressive power spectral analysis was performed on heart rate recordings made in conscious rats. Other groups were used for sympathetic splanchnic nerve activity recordings made simultaneously with pressure (anesthetized rats) at basal condition and during loading/unloading of baroreceptors. Losartan treatment induced a significant reduction in basal pressure but did not interfere with the development of hypertension (similar pressure increases of 24% and 28% over control values in losartan and vehicle groups, respectively). In vehicle-treated rats, establishment of hypertension was accompanied by a marked change in power spectral density from high- (1.19±0.06 Hz, 33±6%) to low-frequency components (0,42±0.03 Hz, 54±6%), with increased low-frequency–to–high-frequency ratio. When compared with sham-operated vehicle-treated rats, there was also increase in the gain of sympathetic activity/pressure relationship, with displacement of lower plateau toward high levels of sympathetic activity. No changes in the power spectral density and sympathetic activity/pressure relationship were observed when hypertension developed in the presence of chronic angiotensin type 1 (AT1) receptor blockade. The data suggest that angiotensin II, activated during the establishment of coarctation hypertension, acts via AT1 receptors to alter sympathovagal balance, facilitating the sympathetic outflow to heart and peripheral circulation during baroreceptors unloading. Data also indicate that the observed effects are not conditioned by preexisting pressure levels.
Teamwork during education: the whole is not always greater than the sum of the parts

This quote, commonly attributed to Henry Ford, nicely illustrates the emphasis that has been placed on teamwork within many areas of society, including business, politics, and education. The health sciences are not an exception to this rule, as evidenced by both the inclusion of a collaborator role within the CanMEDs 2000 report published by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada, and a pair of articles included in this issue that describe attempts to develop intraand interprofessional teambuilding opportunities for students. Ford’s quote, however, also illustrates one of the problems that this emphasis on teamwork has created – the tendency to treat teamwork as a goal in and of itself. Working together is not success. It is simply a potential means to an end that may be effective in some situations.
Exploiting Network Coding for Data Availability in Vehicular Networks: Issues and Opportunities

Retrieving data from mobile source vehicles is a crucial routine operation for a wide spectrum of applications of vehicular networks, such as road surface monitoring and sharing. The key to improving the data retrieval performance is to increase the data availability such that a retrieving node can easily acquire its desired data from the vehicles that it contacts. Network coding has widely been exploited as an effective technique for defusing information over a network. In this paper we explore the exploitation of network coding for improving data availability in vehicular networks. By random linear codes, simple replication is avoided, and instead a node forwards a coded block which is a random combination of all data received by the node. We implement a network coding based approach for improving data availability in vehicular networks. To understand the performance of this approach, we have conducted empirical study with extensive simulations based on real vehicular GPS traces from around 2,000 taxis in Shanghai, China. We make the important observation that in spite of significant improvement up to 300% in data availability, there is a serious issue with linear correlation among the received codes, which degrades the performance of data retrieval success rate. By analyzing the real vehicular traces, we reveal that there is strong community structure with a real vehicular network and then explain that such community structure may contribute to the issue of linear dependence. Then, we point out the opportunities for improving the network coding based approach by developing community aware codes distribution techniques.
Convergence rate of the powers of an operator. Applications to stochastic systems

We extend the traditional operator theoretic approach for the study of dynamical systems in order to handle the problem of non-geometric convergence. We show that the probabilistic treatment developed and popularized under Richard Tweedie's impulsion, can be placed into an operator framework in the spirit of Yosida-Kakutani's approach. General Theorems as well as specific results for Markov chains are given. Application examples to general classes of Markov chains and dynamical systems are presented.
Low Latency Clock Domain Transfer for Simultaneously Mesochronous, Plesiochronous and Heterochronous Interfaces

Microprocessors are employing higher levels of system integration for both higher performance and lower system cost. In doing so, problems that used to be apparent inter-device are now found intra- processor. The integration of the processor core with other units such as the north bridge often increase the number of clock domains within the device. In addition, the frequency of the external interfaces has increased at a much higher rate than the processor frequency. This trend will continue with the advent of multi-core processors which have increasing bandwidth demands. However, as the characteristics of the clock domains become more complex, the problem compounds the burden on the clock domain transfer mechanism to achieve low latency. Presented here is an easily implementable, low latency solution for clock domain transfer in the presence of high frequency mesochronous, plesiochronous, and heterochronous clock signaling.
Newsmagazine Coverage of the Supreme Court

Newspapers and general periodicals, especially national newsmagazines, provide major channels of information to the public concerning decisions of the United States Supreme Court. Past studies of the press and the Court typically examined coverage of "major," controversial decisions. ' More recent studies have emphasized broader coverage of Court decisions. A recent paper analyzed the coverage of an entire Court Term by three daily newspapers. * This study is an analogous effort to examine the coverage of the Court by weekly newsmagazines.
Is the Self-Concept a Habitual Referent in Judgments of Similarity?

People typically provide higher similarity ratings in response to the question “How similar is the typical preppie to you? ” than to the question “How similar are you to the typical preppie? ” Observed asymmetries in comparisons of the self and person prototypes have been offered as evidence that the self-concept acts as a habitual reference point in social judgment However, such a task does not test the habitual placement of a concept in the referent position of a comparison In this study, participants judged the similarity between the self and person prototypes in response to linguistic (forced directional) queries or to spatial (nonforced) queries in which the self was positioned above or below the person concept Participants also rated pairs of familiar and unfamiliar countries in a similar manner, to replicate and extend the work of Tversky (1977) Expected asymmetries were observed in forced comparisons The self and the familiar country were seen as more similar to other people and less familiar countries, respectively, when the former concepts served as the referent of a comparison than when they served as the subject Asymmetries were not observed in the nonforced conditions, and mean similarity in these conditions was of the same magnitude as in the forced condition in which the more familiar stimulus was the referent of the comparison This result provides the first direct evidence that the self serves as a habitual referent in similarity judgments
Classifying Cable Tendency with Semantic Segmentation by Utilizing Real and Simulated RGB Data

Cable tendency is the potential shape or characteristic that a cable may possess while being manipulated, of which some are considered erroneous and should be identified as a part of anomaly detection during an automatic manipulation. This research explores the ability of deep-learning models in learning the cable tendencies that, contrary to typical classification tasks of multi-object scenarios, is to differentiate the multiple states displayable by the same object – in this case, cables. By training multiple models with different combinations of self-collected real-world data and self-generated simulation data, a comparative study is carried out to compare the performance of each approach. In conclusion, the effectiveness of detecting three abnormal states and shapes of cables, and using simulation data is certificated in experiments.
Cognitive Curriculum Practices in Preschool Programs: Implications for Teacher Preparation

Abstract This study provides a profile of preschool teachers' concepts of young children's cognitive development, educational objectives related to cognitive development, and curriculum practices in this area. A related goal of the study is to relate teachers' conceptualization and practices with regard to cognitive development to current thinking in the field as exemplified in NAEYC's Developmentally Appropriate Practice (DAP) guidelines. Preschool teachers were surveyed regarding concepts, goals, and practices related to cognitive development. Inconsistencies were found in early childhood teachers' conceptualization of young children's cognitive functioning. However, chi-square analyses indicated that teachers' definition of cognitive development, their educational goals in that area, and the types of activities provided were significantly related. This consistency was based on an environmental-learning theory perspective, an approach which is not congruent with that advocated in NAEYC's DAP guidelines.
Genome-wide comparison of DNA hydroxymethylation in mouse embryonic stem cells and neural progenitor cells by a new comparative hMeDIP-seq method

The genome-wide distribution patterns of the ‘6th base’ 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC) in many tissues and cells have recently been revealed by hydroxymethylated DNA immunoprecipitation (hMeDIP) followed by high throughput sequencing or tiling arrays. However, it has been challenging to directly compare different data sets and samples using data generated by this method. Here, we report a new comparative hMeDIP-seq method, which involves barcoding different input DNA samples at the start and then performing hMeDIP-seq for multiple samples in one hMeDIP reaction. This approach extends the barcode technology from simply multiplexing the DNA deep sequencing outcome and provides significant advantages for quantitative control of all experimental steps, from unbiased hMeDIP to deep sequencing data analysis. Using this improved method, we profiled and compared the DNA hydroxymethylomes of mouse ES cells (ESCs) and mouse ESC-derived neural progenitor cells (NPCs). We identified differentially hydroxymethylated regions (DHMRs) between ESCs and NPCs and uncovered an intricate relationship between the alteration of DNA hydroxymethylation and changes in gene expression during neural lineage commitment of ESCs. Presumably, the DHMRs between ESCs and NPCs uncovered by this approach may provide new insight into the function of 5hmC in gene regulation and neural differentiation. Thus, this newly developed comparative hMeDIP-seq method provides a cost-effective and user-friendly strategy for direct genome-wide comparison of DNA hydroxymethylation across multiple samples, lending significant biological, physiological and clinical implications.
Semantic Memory : Theories , Models and Tests 1 Running head : SEMANTIC MEMORY : THEORIES , MODELS , AND TESTS Neuropsychology of Semantic Memory : Theories , Models , and Tests

Semantic memory is part of the long-term memory system, and there are several theories concerning this type of memory. Some of these will be described in this essay. There are also several types of neuropsychological semantic memory deficits. For example, test results have shown that patients tend to have more difficulties naming living than nonliving things, and one probable explanation is that living things are more dependent on sensory than on functional features. Description of concrete concepts is a new test of semantic memory, in which cueing is used, both to capture the maximum performance of patients, and to give insight into the access versus storage problem. The theoretical ideas and empirical results relating to this new test will be described in detail. Furthermore, other tests of semantic memory that have been commonly used will also be briefly described. In conclusion semantic memory is a complex cognitive system that needs to be studied further.
‘Why are you applying there?’: ‘race’, class and the construction of higher education ‘choice’ in the United Kingdom

Despite entering higher education in good numbers, candidates from some black and minority ethnic groups are concentrated in less prestigious institutions. A similar pattern is evident in candidates’ applications, raising important questions about the role of ‘self-exclusion’. Statistical analysis confirms that candidates from some minority ethnic groups tend to target lower-ranking institutions, but these differences are almost entirely explained by other variables, particularly academic attainment, type of school attended, number of A-levels taken and subject mix. It follows that some minority ethnic groups appear to be indirectly disadvantaged by patterns of schooling that do not prepare candidates for elite higher education. Similar processes are evident in relation to social class, although candidates from less privileged family backgrounds remain less likely to target high-status institutions even when other variables are taken into account.