Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Sociolinguistic Profile of the Jamaican Deaf Community

This report describes a rapid appraisal sociolinguistic survey done in the Jamaican deaf community in Spring 2009. After six weeks of background research, three researchers collected data in six different Jamaican cities during three weeks in Spring 2009. Survey methods used to report the information given in this report include library research, sociolinguistic questionnaires, and participant observation. Results show that the Jamaican deaf community is functioning in a complex, multilingual situation. Because deaf schools were found to be the primary site of sign language acquisition in the Jamaican deaf community, the Jamaican deaf school system’s movement toward bilingual and bicultural education, the increased use of Jamaican Sign Language (JSL) in the classroom, and the development of JSL resources, points to high vitality of JSL in Jamaica. Although Deaf Jamaicans take pride in JSL as their national language, American Sign Language (ASL) and Signed English are also used as lingua francas throughout the island. Jamaican Country Sign Language, which is used by a decreasing number of deaf Jamaicans in the St. Elizabeth Parish, is nearing extinction and will soon disappear from memory, unless steps are taken to document it. Although social access and deaf rights are increasing in Jamaica, deaf Jamaicans are eager to work toward community and language development, especially in the areas of interpreter training, education, and employment.
Loss of Health but Gain of Support - Transition in Resources of HIV+ Men Who Have Sex with Men

People living with HIV are mostly men who have sex with men (MSM). As such, MSM represent a disadvantaged group confronted with a double stigma due to their HIV status and their sexual orientation (Buchwald & Perez, 2006). HIV stigmatization is strongly related to social isolation, and psychological symptoms. Against this background numerous resources are required to ensure a stability of physical and psychological well-being. Based on the conservation of resources theory (COR; Hobfoll, 1998) which frames stress as a function of resource loss and gain, 24 HIV+ MSM were interviewed in order to obtain the most realistic picture of their resource constellations. The in-depth interviews revealed that HIV+ MSM experienced multiple losses but gained social support. In particular, different kinds of resources were interrelated and changes in one or more types of resources affected the availability of others. The specific role of social support and its reported gain will be discussed in the framework of COR theory.
DNA topology in chromatin is defined by nucleosome spacing

Nucleosome spacing variations cause topological polymorphism of chromatin that can affect DNA supercoiling and transcription. In eukaryotic nucleosomes, DNA makes ~1.7 superhelical turns around histone octamer. However, there is a long-standing discrepancy between the nucleosome core structure determined by x-ray crystallography and measurements of DNA topology in circular minichromosomes, indicating that there is only ~1.0 superhelical turn per nucleosome. Although several theoretical assumptions were put forward to explain this paradox by conformational variability of the nucleosome linker, none was tested experimentally. We analyzed topological properties of DNA in circular nucleosome arrays with precisely positioned nucleosomes. Using topological electrophoretic assays and electron microscopy, we demonstrate that the DNA linking number per nucleosome strongly depends on the nucleosome spacing and varies from −1.4 to −0.9. For the predominant {10n + 5} class of nucleosome repeats found in native chromatin, our results are consistent with the DNA topology observed earlier. Thus, we reconcile the topological properties of nucleosome arrays with nucleosome core structure and provide a simple explanation for the DNA topology in native chromatin with variable DNA linker length. Topological polymorphism of the chromatin fibers described here may reflect a more general tendency of chromosomal domains containing active or repressed genes to acquire different nucleosome spacing to retain topologically distinct higher-order structures.
Ancestral Consciousness in the Zulu Culture: A Wilberian View

The aim of this research was to complement and advance Wilber's integral approach through an investigation into ancestral consciousness by the Zulu. Five isiZulu home language speakers (age range 33 to 56 years) and a sixth English speaking person were participant-researchers. Experiences of ancestral consciousness from individual, collective, subjective, objective, cultural and social perspectives were explored. Findings suggested that ancestral consciousness increased perceived spirituality as assessed on a standardized spirituality scale. It was also associated with immediate apprehensions of senior kinsmen, living and dead, of God and/or more generally of Spirit. Wilber's integral approach appears to hold explanatory value in non-Western culture.
Self-management in heart failure: where have we been and where should we go?

Chronic conditions such as heart failure (HF) place a tremendous strain on patients, their families, the community, and the health care system because there are no real “cures”. Adding to the burden are longer life expectancies and increased numbers of people living with multiple chronic conditions. Today, whether engaging in a health-promoting activity, such as exercise, or living with a chronic disease such as HF, the individual is responsible for actively managing day-to-day activities, a concept referred to as self-management. Self-management emerged as the cornerstone for chronic care models and multidisciplinary disease-management strategies in chronic illness care. Moreover, self-management has been prioritized as a central pathway for improving the quality and effectiveness of most chronic HF care. Adherence to self-management is vital to optimize the treatment outcomes in HF patients, but implementing chronic disease self-management (CDSM) strategies and identifying the difficulties in self-management has proved to be a challenge. Understanding both where we have been and the future direction of self-management in HF care is not only timely, but a crucial aspect of improving long-term outcomes for people with HF and other chronic diseases.
Identification of Novel Autoantibodies for Detection of Malignant Mesothelioma

Background The malignant mesothelioma (MM) survival rate has been hampered by the lack of efficient and accurate early detection methods. The immune system may detect the early changes of tumor progression by responding with tumor-associated autoantibody production. Hence, in this study, we translated the humoral immune response to cancer proteins into a potential blood test for MM. Methodology/Principal Findings A T7 phage MM cDNA library was constructed using MM tumor tissues and biopanned for tumor-associated antigens (TAAs) using pooled MM patient and normal serum samples. About 1008 individual phage TAA clones from the biopanned library were subjected to protein microarray construction and tested with 53 MM and 52 control serum samples as a training group. Nine candidate autoantibody markers were selected from the training group using Tclass system and logistic regression statistical analysis, which achieved 94.3% sensitivity and 90.4% specificity with an AUC value of 0.89 in receiver operating characteristic analysis. The classifier was further evaluated with 50 patient and 50 normal serum samples as an independent blind validation, and the sensitivity of 86.0% and the specificity of 86.0% were obtained with an AUC of 0.82. Sequencing and BLASTN analysis of the classifier revealed that five of these nine candidate markers were found to have strong homology to cancer related proteins (PDIA6, MEG3, SDCCAG3, IGHG3, IGHG1). Conclusions/Significance Our results indicated that using a panel of 9 autoantibody markers presented a promising accuracy for MM detection. Although the results need further validation in high-risk groups, they provided the potentials in developing a serum-based assay for MM diagnosis.
Sorafenib, a multikinase inhibitor, induces formation of stress granules in hepatocarcinoma cells

Stress granules (SGs) are cytoplasmic RNA multimeric bodies that form under stress conditions known to inhibit translation initiation. In most reported stress cases, the formation of SGs was associated with the cell recovery from stress and survival. In cells derived from cancer, SGs formation was shown to promote resistance to either proteasome inhibitors or 5-Fluorouracil used as chemotherapeutic agents. Despite these studies, the induction of SGs by chemotherapeutic drugs contributing to cancer cells resistance is still understudied. Here we identified sorafenib, a tyrosine kinase inhibitor used to treat hepatocarcinoma, as a potent chemotherapeutic inducer of SGs. The formation of SGs in sorafenib-treated hepatocarcionoma cells correlates with inhibition of translation initiation; both events requiring the phosphorylation of the translation initiation factor eIF2α. Further characterisation of the mechanism of sorafenib-induced SGs revealed PERK as the main eIF2α kinase responsible for SGs formation. Depletion experiments support the implication of PERK-eIF2α-SGs pathway in hepatocarcinoma cells resistance to sorafenib. This study also suggests the existence of an unexpected complex regulatory balance between SGs and phospho-eIF2α where SGs dampen the activation of the phospho-eIF2α-downstream ATF4 cell death pathway.
Strategies to improve electrode positioning and safety in cochlear implants

An injection-molded internal supporting rib has been produced to control the flexibility of silicone rubber encapsulated electrodes designed to electrically stimulate the auditory nerve in human subjects with severe to profound hearing loss. The rib molding dies, and molds for silicone rubber encapsulation of the electrode, were designed and machined using AutoCad and MasterCam software packages in a PC environment. After molding, the prototype plastic ribs were iteratively modified based on observations of the performance of the rib/silicone composite insert in a clear plastic model of the human scala tympani cavity. The rib-based electrodes were reliably inserted farther into these models, required less insertion force and were positioned closer to the target auditory neural elements than currently available cochlear implant electrodes. With further design improvements the injection-molded rib may also function to accurately support metal stimulating contacts and wire leads during assembly to significantly increase the manufacturing efficiency of these devices. This method to reliably control the mechanical properties of miniature implantable devices with multiple electrical leads may be valuable in other areas of biomedical device design.
Fast Interactive Integration of Cross-Sectional Image Datasets and Surface Data for Morphometric Analysis

To investigate external facial morphology and cell proliferation patterns and their relationship with cleft lip malformation in mice, we need to compare samples of mice tissue photographs and surface reconstructions from micro-CT scans obtained from mouse embryos. Tissue samples obtained through digital photography are typically misaligned with respect to each other, which prevents further analysis. We have developed a system for fast interactive alignment of these image stacks for volume reconstruction and data visualization and analysis in 3D. The system is designed to work in multiprocessor environments and can utilize an arbitrary number of processors, cutting down significantly the turnaround time and allowing users to quickly process sets of hundreds of high resolution images using a combination of automated and interactive tools. Additional modules are used to reconstruct the shape of the original subject. Our system is interactive, fully scalable and can be applied to any photographic sliced dataset, regardless of subject and reduces significantly the processing time for stack alignment.
Emerging literacy during ‘Day in the Life’ in the transition to school

ABSTRACT The transition to school, marked by significant moves towards print literacy, is a crucial school-life milestone that can be both exhilarating and daunting. This case study, extracted from an international, quasi-ecological examination of thriving kindergarten children in transition to school films participants, their families, schools and communities during one ‘day in their lives’. We monitored one Canadian child's transaction with her interlocutors as she negotiated a day in her life from arising to bedtime. All literacy-related interchanges were identified, and three exemplary exchanges were selected, analysed and contextualised, applying Cameron and Pinto's [(2009). Day in the life: Secure interludes with joint book reading. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 23(4), 437–449. doi:10.1080/02568540909594672] taxonomy to: one child/school-teacher, one child/music instructor and one child/parent joint text-reading transaction. Capturing her engagement in meaning-making as she experienced different expectations and interaction styles we examined the continuities/discontinuities supporting her negotiation of those experiences.
Gaussian Bare-Bones Differential Evolution

Differential evolution (DE) is a well-known algorithm for global optimization over continuous search spaces. However, choosing the optimal control parameters is a challenging task because they are problem oriented. In order to minimize the effects of the control parameters, a Gaussian bare-bones DE (GBDE) and its modified version (MGBDE) are proposed which are almost parameter free. To verify the performance of our approaches, 30 benchmark functions and two real-world problems are utilized. Conducted experiments indicate that the MGBDE performs significantly better than, or at least comparable to, several state-of-the-art DE variants and some existing bare-bones algorithms.
Imatinib inhibits vascular smooth muscle proteoglycan synthesis and reduces LDL binding in vitro and aortic lipid deposition in vivo

The ‘response to retention’ hypothesis of atherogenesis proposes that proteoglycans bind and retain low‐density lipoproteins (LDL) in the vessel wall. Platelet‐derived growth factor (PDGF) is strongly implicated in atherosclerosis and stimulates proteoglycan synthesis. Here we investigated the action of the PDGF receptor inhibitor imatinib on PDGF‐mediated proteoglycan biosynthesis in vitro, lipid deposition in the aortic wall in vivo and the carotid artery ex vivo. In human vSMCs, imatinib inhibited PDGF mediated 35S‐SO4 incorporation into proteoglycans by 31% (P < 0.01) and inhibited PDGF‐mediated size increases in both chemically cleaved and xyloside associated glycosaminoglycan (GAG) chains by 19%, P < 0.05 and 27%, P < 0.05, respectively. Imatinib decreased PDGF stimulation of the 6:4 position sulphation ratio of disaccharides. The half maximal saturation value for LDL binding for proteoglycans from PDGF stimulated cells in the presence of imatinib was approximately 2.5‐fold higher than for PDGF treatment alone. In high fat fed ApoE−/– mice, imatinib reduced total lipid staining area by ∼31% (P < 0.05). Carotid artery lipid accumulation in imatinib treated mice was also reduced. Furthermore, we demonstrate that imatinib inhibits phosphorylation of tyrosine 857, the autophosphorylation site of the PDGF receptor, in vSMCs. Thus imatinib inhibits GAG synthesis on vascular proteoglycans and reduces LDL binding in vitro and in vivo and this effect is mediated via the PDGF receptor. These findings validate a novel mechanism to prevent cardiac disease.
Do Thesauri enhance rule-based categorization for OCR text?

A rule-based automatic text categorizer was tested to see if two types of thesaurus expansion, called query expansion and Junker expansion respectively, would improve categorization. Thesauri used were domain-specific to an OCR test collection focussed on a single topic. Results show that neither type of expansion significantly improved categorization.
Strategies to Characterize Functional Regions of the Varicella-Zoster Virus Encapsidation Proteins

x INTRODUCTION . 1 CHAPTER 1. STRATEGY 1: CELL LINE COMPLEMENTATION AS A TOOL TO STUDY ENCAPSIDATION GENE MUTANTS . 9 Introduction . 9 Methods.11 Results . 18 Discussion . 34 CHAPTER 2. STRATEGY 2: PREPARATION OF AN ORF54 TRANSPOSON LIBRARY TO USE WITH A Δ54 BACTERIAL ARTIFICIAL CHROMOSOME MUTANT AS A TOOL TO STUDY PORTAL FUNCTION . 37 Introduction . 37 Methods.38 Results . 42 Discussion . 54 CONCLUSIONS . 56 LIST OF REFERENCES . 57
CULTURE, SELF, AND SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING: CULTURAL PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIAL CHANGE PERSPECTIVES

Culture serves as a major force shaping the way people conceptualize the self, think about happiness, and cope with difficulties and upheavals in life. The present paper starts with a conceptual analysis of traditional Chinese and modern Western views of the self, to contrast the social-oriented versus individual-oriented nature of the self embedded in the two cultural traditions. These culture-specific modes of self construction can then shed light on the diverse meanings people hold for happiness and well-being in different societies. Building on the social-oriented view of the self, which emphasizes relatedness, fluidity, morality, self-constraint, harmony, and sensitivity to others, subjective well-being for the Chinese is construed around fulfilling one's obligations and maintaining homeostasis (dialectical balance). In contrast, emanating from an individual-oriented view of the self, which emphasizes independence, self-determination, consistency, and personal striving, happiness is a prize to be fought over, and entirely one's responsibility to accomplish this ultimate goal of life. Similarly, culture-specific preferences in individual-society and/or interpersonal alignment mirror the two contrasting views of the self, and link up with the collaborative project of pursuing happiness.
Enhancing the Performance of Stretchable Conductors for E‐Textiles by Controlled Ink Permeation

Delivery of electronic functionality to the human body using e‐textiles is important for realizing the future of wearable electronics. Printing is a promising process for large scale manufacturing of e‐textile since it enables arbitrary patterns using a simple and inexpensive process. However, conductive inks printed atop of textile are vulnerable to cracking because of the deformable and porous structure of textiles. The authors develop a mechanically and electrically robust wiring by controlling ink permeation in the structure of textile. This is done by adjusting the ink's solvent. The use of butyl carbitol acetate, with its low vapor pressure and boiling point, enables deep permeation into the textile. The sheet resistance is initially 0.06 Ω sq−1, and the resistance increasing only 70 times after stretching to 450% strain. Finally, a four‐channel electromyogram (EMG) monitoring garment is demonstrated to show the potential of a large‐scale e‐textile device for health care and sports.
Mutual information analysis for feature and sensor subset selection in surface electromyography based speech recognition

In this paper, we investigate the use of surface electromyographic (sEMG) signals collected from articulatory muscles on the face and neck for performing automatic speech recognition. While previous work has typically used full-scale recognition experiments to evaluate appropriate feature representation schemes for sEMG signals, we present a systematic information-theoretic analysis for feature selection and optimal sensor subset selection. Our results indicate that Mel-cepstral frequency features are best suited for sEMG-based discrimination. Further, the sensor subset ranking obtained through the mutual information experiments are consistent with the results obtained from hidden Markov model based recognition. The framework presented here can be used for determining the best feature and sensor subset for a given speaker a priori , instead of determining them a posteriori from recognition experiments. We achieve a mean recognition accuracy of 80.6% with the best 5 sensor subset chosen by the MI analysis in comparison with 79.6% obtained from using the complete set of 11 sensors.
An approach for classification of network traffic on semi-supervised data using clustering techniques

Classification of network traffic is extensively required mainly for many network management tasks such as flow prioritization, traffic shaping/policing, and diagnostic monitoring. Many approaches have been evolved for this purpose. The classical approaches such as port number or payload analyis methods has their own limitations. For example, some applications uses dynamic port number and encryption techniques, making these techniques ineffective. To overcome these limitations machine learning approaches were proposed. But these approaches also have problems of labeled instances in supervised learning and tedious manual work in unsupervised learning. Our aim was to implement an approach for classification of network traffic on semi-supervised data which overcomes the shortcomings of other two approaches. In this approach, flow (instance) statistics are used to classify the traffic. These flow statistics contains few labeled and many unlabeled instances constitutes a training data set which was used for the training(learning) of classifier. Then we used two processes: the clustering (using K-Medoids) which divides the training data into different groups and classification in which the labeling to the groups was done. To build the model we used the MATLAB tool. To test the build model we used KDD CUP 99 intrusion detection data set, which includes both attack data and normal data.
Evaluation of the persistence of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus in pig carcases

The presence of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) virus in pig meat was assessed in samples collected from experimentally infected pigs and from the carcases of pigs from infected herds at an abattoir. In the experimental study, pigs approximately six months old were inoculated with two isolates of PRRS virus and tissue samples were collected seven and 14 days after inoculation. At seven days, PRRS virus was recovered from lungs, tonsils, lymph nodes and muscle tissues, and viral antigens were detected by immunogold silver staining (IGSS) in formalin-fixed lungs, tonsils and scattered cells in muscle tissues. Neither PRRS virus nor antigens were detected in muscle tissue samples collected 14 days after inoculation. In the abattoir pigs, attempts were made to isolate PRRS virus from a total of 44 samples of muscle tissue, collected as pools, from the carcases of 44 pigs originating from seropositive herds. No PRRS virus could be isolated on porcine alveolar macrophages from these 44 muscle tissue samples and no PRRS virus antigens could be detected by IGSS in the formalin-fixed tissue samples. Although the results of experimental infections indicated that PRRS virus may be recovered from muscle tissues early after infection with the virus, the presence of PRRS virus in muscle tissues from carcases of slaughter pigs previously exposed to the PRRS virus could not be demonstrated.