Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Distractor Inhibition Predicts Individual Differences in the Attentional Blink

Background The attentional blink (AB) refers to humans' impaired ability to detect the second of two targets (T2) in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) stream of distractors if it appears within 200–600 ms of the first target (T1). Here we examined whether humans' ability to inhibit distractors in the RSVP stream is a key determinant of individual differences in T1 performance and AB magnitude. Methodology/Principal Findings We presented subjects with RSVP streams (93.3 ms/item) of letters containing white distractors, a red T1 and a green T2. Subjects' ability to suppress distractors was assessed by determining the extent to which their second target performance was primed by a preceding distractor that shared the same identity as T2. Individual subjects' magnitude of T2 priming from this distractor was found to be negatively correlated with their T1 accuracy and positively related to their AB magnitude. In particular, subjects with attenuated ABs showed negative priming (i.e., worse T2 performance when the priming distractor appeared in the RSVP stream compared to when it was absent), whereas those with large ABs displayed positive priming (i.e., better T2 performance when the priming distractor appeared in the RSVP stream compared to when it was absent). Thus, a subject's ability to suppress distractors, as assessed by T2 priming magnitude, predicted both their T1 performance and AB magnitude. Conclusions/Significance These results confirm that distractor suppression plays a key role in RSVP target selection and support the hypothesis that the AB results, at least in part, from a failure of distractor inhibition.
Developing a National Framework for a Middle School Agricultural Education Curriculum.

In 1985 over 22 percent of all secondary agricultural education instructors taught one or more junior high/middle school courses in agriculture (Phipps & Osborne, 1988). This effort has occurred and will continue in middle grade agricultural education programs in an effort to provide early exposure to the world of agriculture and to increase self understanding in the preparation for careers. It is predicted that students enrolled in middle grade education in the United States will grow from 17.3 million in 1990 to 20 million by the year 2000 (Exter. 1992). Middle grade schools will increase to 20,000 by the year 2000 (George, 1988). Concurrent growth in middle school agricultural education can be expected.
Predictors of Survival in Never-Smokers with Non–Small Cell Lung Cancer: A Large-Scale, Two-Phase Genetic Study

Purpose: Lung cancer in never-smokers (LCINS) is increasingly recognized as a distinct disease from that in ever-smokers owing to substantial differences in etiology, clinical characteristics, and prognosis. Therefore, we aimed to identify prognostic markers specific for LCINS. Experimental Design: First, 11,930 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) in 904 inflammation-related genes were genotyped, and their associations with overall survival in 411 patients with LCINS at MD Anderson Cancer Center were analyzed. Next, validation of the top 27 SNPs in 311 patients with LCINS at Mayo Clinic was conducted. Results: Three SNPs (IL17RA:rs879576, BMP8A:rs698141, and STY:rs290229) were validated (P < 0.05), and two SNPs (CD74:rs1056400 and CD38:rs10805347) reached borderline significance (P = 0.08) in the Mayo Clinic population. We validated a survival-tree created in the MD Anderson population exploring gene–gene interactions in the Mayo Clinic population. This survival-tree stratified patients into subsets with significantly different risks of death: patients with the rs1056400_GG/rs698141_GA + AA genotype had significantly higher risk of death in both MD Anderson (HR:2.32, 95%CI: 1.58–3.41) and Mayo (HR:1.97, 95%CI: 1.11–3.50) populations compared with those with the rs1056400_GG/rs698141_GG or rs1056400_GA + AA genotype. We evaluated these five SNPs in 996 ever-smokers from MD Anderson and found no significant associations. Conclusions: Our study provides strong evidence that inflammation-related genetic variations can affect clinical outcomes in LCINS, which may lead to significant biologic insight into these outcomes. Clin Cancer Res; 18(21); 5983–91. ©2012 AACR.
Using Ant Colony System and Local Search Methods to Solve VRPTW

The vehicle routing problem with Time windows (VRPTW) issue has attracted significant attention in the operations research community in recent years. The primary objective of VRPTW is defined as the minimization of the number of routes or vehicles. Minimization of the total travel cost is secondary objective. In this paper, VRPTW is examined and a hybrid ant colony system coupled with randomized algorithm (RA) and Pareto local search (PLS) algorithm (RPACS-VRPTW), is proposed. The RPACS-VRPTW can efficiently reduce costs of the constructive procedure of the solution in the ant colony system (ACS). Computational results for partial benchmark problems show that the approach proposed outperforms some other previously known heuristic methods.
Feasibility of Adopting English-Medium Instruction at Iranian Universities

This study was an attempt to explore the potential possibilities of implementing English as the medium of instruction (EMI) at Iranian universities. The sequential exploratory mixed methods design was used to collect the perspectives of both students and content-area lecturers at the state University of Bojnord through e-mail interviews and survey questionnaires developed by the researcher. The reliability of the survey questionnaire was 0.76 using Cronbach’s alpha. Six undergraduate students and six lecturers were purposively selected for the interviews. As for the survey questionnaire, stratified random sampling was used to proportionately select 344 students (320 undergraduate students and 24 postgraduate students) and 36 lecturers from the accessible population. The qualitative data from the interviews were content-analyzed based on the suggestions and guidelines by Creswell (2005), Krueger (2002), and Morgan and Krueger (1998). The quantitative data from the survey questionnaires were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). The results revealed that most of the students and lecturers approved and supported the potential implementation of EMI at Iranian universities. The findings of this study will assist higher education authorities in policy making.
Developments in the area of bioadhesive drug delivery systems

This paper aims to review the current progress in bioadhesion for drug delivery applications as well as new techniques related to this field. Research started with mucoadhesive polymers that had already been in use as excipients and were rapidly used in new formulations. Their major drawback was found in their unspecific binding, as they adhere to almost any mucosal surface. As some of the polymers showed additional properties such as enzyme inhibition and permeation enhancement, however, they remain interesting as multifunctional excipients. In contrast to mucoadhesion, the concept of specific bioadhesion by use of lectins and other adhesion molecules is now gaining increasing attention as these substances bind directly to receptors on the cell surface rather than to the mucus gel layer. Since specific binding to the cell surface is often followed by uptake and intracellular transport, new chances for drug delivery evolved. Bioadhesion may, thus, enable researchers to deliver macromolecular drugs directly to specific target cells and has implications also relevant to other fields of science, such as tissue engineering, gene delivery and nanotechnology.
Enrichissement d’un lexique de termes subjectifs à partir de tests sémantiques [Enhancement of a subjective word lexicon by semantic tests]

Recent considerations in opinion mining, oriented by real applicative tasks, require creating lexical and semantic resources quantitatively and qualitatively rich. In this context, we present a method to automatically enhance a lexicon of subjective terms. The method relies on the indexing of Web documents by a search engine and large number of requests automatically sent. The construction of these requests, linguistically motivated, can infer the value of semantics and axiological aspect of a large number of adjectives, nouns and noun phrases, verbs and verbal phrases of French. We then evaluate the lexicon enhancement by testing the detection of local evaluation in a corpus of 5 000 blogs notes and comments.
A Study of Social Innovation Concepts: A Japanese Perspective

This article reviews concepts of social innovation and some Japanese cases. Social innovation seeks to provide a broad perspective on innovation that is not only premised on technology, and offers much potential for tackling complex emerging social issues. Evidenced-based discourse on social innovations and a more detailed policy framework are urgently needed to enable positive changes in the society we live in.
Empirical Bayes Analysis of a Microarray Experiment

Microarrays are a novel technology that facilitates the simultaneous measurement of thousands of gene expression levels. A typical microarray experiment can produce millions of data points, raising serious problems of data reduction, and simultaneous inference. We consider one such experiment in which oligonucleotide arrays were employed to assess the genetic effects of ionizing radiation on seven thousand human genes. A simple nonparametric empirical Bayes model is introduced, which is used to guide the efficient reduction of the data to a single summary statistic per gene, and also to make simultaneous inferences concerning which genes were affected by the radiation. Although our focus is on one specific experiment, the proposed methods can be applied quite generally. The empirical Bayes inferences are closely related to the frequentist false discovery rate (FDR) criterion.
Accountable clouds

An increasing number of organizations are migrating their critical information technology services, from healthcare to business intelligence, into public cloud computing environments. However, even if cloud technologies are continuously evolving, they still have not reached a maturity level that allows them to provide users with high assurance about the security of their data beyond existent service level agreements (SLAs). To address this limitation, we propose a suite of mechanisms that enhances cloud computing technologies with more assurance capabilities. Assurance becomes a measurable property, quantified by the volume of evidence to audit and retain in a privacy-preserving and nonrepudiable fashion. By proactively collecting potential forensic evidence, the cloud becomes more accountable, while providing its regular services. In the case of a security breach, the cloud provides the appropriate reactive security framework for validating or repudiating claims. Moreover, different levels of assurance relate to different levels of storage and privacy protection requested by users, leading to an assurance-based price model for cloud services.
Study protocol for a framework analysis using video review to identify latent safety threats: trauma resuscitation using in situ simulation team training (TRUST)

Introduction Errors in trauma resuscitation are common and have been attributed to breakdowns in the coordination of system elements (eg, tools/technology, physical environment and layout, individual skills/knowledge, team interaction). These breakdowns are triggered by unique circumstances and may go unrecognised by trauma team members or hospital administrators; they can be described as latent safety threats (LSTs). Retrospective approaches to identifying LSTs (ie, after they occur) are likely to be incomplete and prone to bias. To date, prospective studies have not used video review as the primary mechanism to identify any and all LSTs in trauma resuscitation. Methods and analysis A series of 12 unannounced in situ simulations (ISS) will be conducted to prospectively identify LSTs at a level 1 Canadian trauma centre (over 800 dedicated trauma team activations annually). 4 scenarios have already been designed as part of this protocol based on 5 recurring themes found in the hospital's mortality and morbidity process. The actual trauma team will be activated to participate in the study. Each simulation will be audio/video recorded from 4 different camera angles and transcribed to conduct a framework analysis. Video reviewers will code the videos deductively based on a priori themes of LSTs identified from the literature, and/or inductively based on the events occurring in the simulation. LSTs will be prioritised to target interventions in future work. Ethics and dissemination Institutional research ethics approval has been acquired (SMH REB #15-046). Results will be published in peer-reviewed journals and presented at relevant conferences. Findings will also be presented to key institutional stakeholders to inform mitigation strategies for improved patient safety.
Lattice-reduction-aided conditional decoding

We introduce a low-complexity decoder with near-optimal performance for transmission over multi-antenna systems. By using lattice basis reduction for generating almost orthogonal channel matrix, we enhance the conditional decoding technique to implement a fast yet efficient decoder. The lattice-reduction-aided conditional decoder is presented as a general detection technique over fading channels to yield significant savings in complexity while achieving close to Maximum Likelihood (ML) performance. We specifically apply the decoder for two practical schemes, uncoded multi-input multi-output (MIMO) systems and the Golden code. By employing the orthogonality defect factor as a universal measure to select a near-orthogonal channel submatrix for conditional decoding, we implement an almost optimal decoder with linear complexity over quasi-static channels for the Golden code and the four-by-four uncoded MIMO system.
Extracting Syntax Statistics from Large Corpora of Written English

The field of linguistics has seen a growing interest in the statistics of everyday language. In studying how we acquire language and why some of its aspects are more difficult for us than others, it is critical to understand the lin guistic environment to which we are exposed. However, gathering statistics over syntactic structures, even with a syntactically tagged corpus, can be difficult and time consuming. This report describes a partially automated method that alleviates many of the problems associated with gathering syntax statistics from parsed corpora. The method is then used to analyze a variety of structures in the Wall Street Journal and Brown corpora of written English. These structures include verb phrases, relative clauses, senten tial noun phrases, prepositional phrases, and coordinate and subordinate clauses.
Representations of Conditional Means

Abstract A unified treatment of integral representations of conditional expectations, in terms of Bochner integrals, with specializations to Gaussian conditioning, is given. The integrals in the latter have deterministic kernels. Difficulties in actual calculations of (even regular) conditional probabilities, and the inadequacy of methods related to L'Hospital's procedures, are exemplified. Limitations of the methods used and some new problems for investigation are indicated.
The chronology and frequency of a stress marker (linear enamel hypoplasia) in recent and archaeological populations of Sus scrofa in north‐west Europe, and the effects of early domestication

Linear enamel hypoplasia (LEH), a deficiency in enamel formation visible on mammal tooth crowns, can be used as a retrospective indicator of physiological stress and developmental health in humans and animals. In this first study, for north-western Europe, the condition has been recorded from prehistoric (mesolithic) and recent populations of wild boar, and from domestic pigs belonging to early farming (neolithic) communities. It was possible to show that LEH occurs in recent and ancient populations of wild boar from north-west Europe, and that the occurrence of the condition can be explained by the same events within the animal's life (birth, weaning, winter starvation) as has been previously suggested for archaeological domestic pig samples. The frequency of LEH is consistently low within all ancient and recent populations of wild boar studied, a remarkable observation given the pronounced differences in the living conditions of these two diachronically well-separated groups, mainly linked with the increasing human pressure on recent populations of wild animals. Early domestic samples generally show high LEH frequencies, although considerable variation exists between the samples. It is suggested that these high frequencies are, in general, the result of domestication, while the variation could be related to differences in early husbandry. The observation of LEH, therefore, provides a valuable tool for studying the history of animal domestication.
Size of diffusion pore of Alcaligenes faecalis

The diffusion pore of the outer membrane of Alcaligenes faecalis was shown to be substantially smaller than the Escherichia coli porin pore. In experiments with intact cells, pentoses and hexoses penetrated into the NaCl-expanded periplasm, whereas saccharides of Mr greater than 342 did not. Cells treated with 0.5 M saccharides of Mr greater than 342 weighed 33 to 38% less than cells treated with isotonic solution, suggesting that these saccharides do not permeate through the outer membrane. The diffusion rates of various solutes through the liposome membranes reconstituted from the Mr-43,000 outer membrane protein showed the following characteristics. (i) The relative diffusion rates of pentoses, hexoses, and methylhexoses appeared to be about 1.0, 0.6, and negligibly small, respectively. (ii) The diffusion rate of glucose appeared to be about 1/10th that with the E. coli B porin. (iii) The diffusion rate of gluconic acid was five to seven times higher than that of glucose. (iv) The diffusion rates of beta-lactam antibiotics appeared to be 40 to less than 10% of those with the E. coli B porin.
An analog front end based on chopped signals highly immune to RFI

Amplifiers used in analog signal conditioning circuits are usually protected against electromagnetic interference (EMI) by means of filters placed at the PCB level. The literature is plenty of solutions aimed at keeping filters' attenuation as high as possible in the widest possible frequency range, but actually such filters are less effective than expected because of the parasitic elements introduced by interconnects, therefore EMI can be propagated into ICs causing temporary or definitive operation failures. This can be avoided inserting EMI filters at the IC level and/or using circuit topologies intrinsically immune to EMI. This paper shows that the immunity to RFI of analog circuits based on feedback opamps is significantly improved if input signals are chopped before being amplified.
A PRELIMINARY STUDY ON THE METHOD FOR EXTRACTING BAMBOO GROVES IN CHIBA PREFECTURE, JAPAN USING ALOS/AVNIR-2 DATA

Well-tended bamboo groves, once an integral element in the satoyama, Japan’s traditional countryside mosaic, have over the past half century been abandoned. These abandoned groves are vigorous and are now expanding, causing various problems, including loss of diversity and damage to cropland. To control and manage these groves, an effective yet efficient system for documenting and monitoring their distribution over a wide region is required. Previous researches, using either aerial photograph or satellite images, have been implemented, but these studies suffer from problems with statistical overlearning, or require too much labor and are thus not practical for wide area application. In this study, Google Earth image and field research were used for setting training data and ALOS/AVNIR-2 satellite images were used to classify land cover in a typical countryside area that includes bamboo groves. Both maximum likelihood and decision tree classification methods were employed, with the accuracy test area completely separated from the area used for acquiring training data, thus preventing the classifiers from overlearning and improving their practicability. The accuracy was assessed by comparing the classification results with existing land cover maps. Both classification methods produced almost the same Kappa coefficient (decision tree: 0.41, maximum likelihood: 0.48). Future research can be expected to improve accuracy with higher quality training data and images. The results of this study show that ALOS/AVNIR-2 images can be a useful tool for effective yet cost-efficient mapping and monitoring of bamboo groves at the region or prefecture level. * Corresponding author. This is useful to know for communication with the appropriate person in cases with more than one author.
The Increased Prosecution of Adolescents in the Adult Criminal Justice System

ABSTRACT This paper explores the implications of the increased prosecution of adolescents in the adult criminal justice system. Public misperceptions about juvenile crime have contributed to the use of harsh criminal sanctions toward youth offenders, most of whom are convicted of nonviolent crimes. Consequences of these policies, and the resultant over-reliance on incarceration, include harms to youth housed in adult facilities, stress and marginalization of family members, and weakened communities. A life history approach highlights the dangers of incarceration for youth and the difficulties a child's imprisonment poses for families. Recommendations for reform are presented as well as an example of a new initiative to protect minority youth in the justice system and promote effective juvenile justice policies.
The Contribution of Memory and Anxiety to the Math Performance of College Students with Learning Disabilities

The impact of memory and anxiety on math performance was analyzed in a sample of 115 college undergraduates, all of whom had a diagnosed learning disability. The direct effects of memory and anxiety on math performance were first examined, followed by an examination of whether anxiety moderates the relationship between memory and math. Both memory and anxiety were found to directly affect math performance. Additionally, anxiety served as a moderator of the relationship between memory and math for most, but not all, measures of math achievement. The moderating effect of anxiety was stronger for long–term retrieval than for short–term memory. The relationships between memory, anxiety, and math were not significantly different for males and females. These findings suggest that, when working with individuals who have low anxiety but poor memory, enhancing memory strategies may be effective for remediating problems in math. However, for those with high levels of anxiety, it may be more efficacious to first ameliorate the anxiety, as working on memory may have a negligible effect on math performance for these individuals.