Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Syntactic parsing and working memory: The effects of syntactic complexity, reading span, and concurrent load

Event-related brain potentials (ERPs) and behavioural measures (reaction times and errors) were used to study the potential effects of individual differences in verbal working memory capacity (low vs. high reading span) and a concurrent verbal working memory load (low vs. high load) on the processing of sentences with a local syntactic ambiguity in German. The sentences were disambiguated at the clause-final auxiliary to either a subject relative (SR) clause or to an object relative (OR) clause. The processing difficulty for the OR as compared to the SR clauses was reflected in worse off-line comprehension performance, particularly for low span readers. Moreover, ERPs time-locked to the disambiguating auxiliary showed an early posterior positivity between 200–350 ms for OR clauses as compared to SR clauses for high span readers. Low span readers, in contrast, showed a late frontal positivity between 500 and 800 ms. While the early positivity for high span readers was independent of the concurrent load, the late positivity varied as a function of concurrent load, being delayed in the high load condition. These results indicate that syntactic processes in language comprehension are related to individual differences in parsing strategies.
Novel Interactions between Actin and the Proteasome Revealed by Complex Haploinsufficiency

Saccharomyces cerevisiae has been a powerful model for uncovering the landscape of binary gene interactions through whole-genome screening. Complex heterozygous interactions are potentially important to human genetic disease as loss-of-function alleles are common in human genomes. We have been using complex haploinsufficiency (CHI) screening with the actin gene to identify genes related to actin function and as a model to determine the prevalence of CHI interactions in eukaryotic genomes. Previous CHI screening between actin and null alleles for non-essential genes uncovered ∼240 deleterious CHI interactions. In this report, we have extended CHI screening to null alleles for essential genes by mating a query strain to sporulations of heterozygous knock-out strains. Using an act1Δ query, knock-outs of 60 essential genes were found to be CHI with actin. Enriched in this collection were functional categories found in the previous screen against non-essential genes, including genes involved in cytoskeleton function and chaperone complexes that fold actin and tubulin. Novel to this screen was the identification of genes for components of the TFIID transcription complex and for the proteasome. We investigated a potential role for the proteasome in regulating the actin cytoskeleton and found that the proteasome physically associates with actin filaments in vitro and that some conditional mutations in proteasome genes have gross defects in actin organization. Whole-genome screening with actin as a query has confirmed that CHI interactions are important phenotypic drivers. Furthermore, CHI screening is another genetic tool to uncover novel functional connections. Here we report a previously unappreciated role for the proteasome in affecting actin organization and function.
An analysis of the sponge Acanthostrongylophora igens' microbiome yields an actinomycete that produces the natural product manzamine A

Sponges have generated significant interest as a source of bioactive and elaborate secondary metabolites that hold promise for the development of novel therapeutics for the control of an array of human diseases. However, research and development of marine natural products can often be hampered by the difficulty associated with obtaining a stable and sustainable production source. Herein we report the first successful characterization and utilization of the microbiome of a marine invertebrate to identify a sustainable production source for an important natural product scaffold. Through molecular-microbial community analysis, optimization of fermentation conditions and MALDI-MS imaging, we provide the first report of a sponge-associated bacterium (Micromonospora sp.) that produces the manzamine class of antimalarials from the Indo-Pacific sponge Acanthostrongylophora ingens (Thiele, 1899) (Class Demospongiae, Order Haplosclerida, Family Petrosiidae). These findings suggest that a general strategy of analysis of the macroorganism's microbiome could significantly transform the field of natural products drug discovery by gaining access to not only novel drug leads, but the potential for sustainable production sources and biosynthetic genes at the same time.
Toward Time-Resolved Analysis of RNA Metabolism in Archaea Using 4-Thiouracil

Archaea are widespread organisms colonizing almost every habitat on Earth. However, the molecular biology of archaea still remains relatively uncharacterized. RNA metabolism is a central cellular process, which has been extensively analyzed in both bacteria and eukarya. In contrast, analysis of RNA metabolism dynamic in archaea has been limited to date. To facilitate analysis of the RNA metabolism dynamic at a system-wide scale in archaea, we have established non-radioactive pulse labeling of RNA, using the nucleotide analog 4-thiouracil (4TU) in two commonly used model archaea: the halophile Euryarchaeota Haloferax volcanii, and the thermo-acidophile Crenarchaeota Sulfolobus acidocaldarius. In this work, we show that 4TU pulse labeling can be efficiently performed in these two organisms in a dose- and time-dependent manner. In addition, our results suggest that uracil prototrophy had no critical impact on the overall 4TU incorporation in RNA molecules. Accordingly, our work suggests that 4TU incorporation can be widely performed in archaea, thereby expanding the molecular toolkit to analyze archaeal gene expression network dynamic in unprecedented detail.
Collaboration between Teachers and Parents in Assisting Children's Reading.

Summary. A collaboration between teachers and parents was organised so that every child in two randomly chosen top infant classes at two schools (one class at each school), randomly allocated from six multiracial inner-city schools, was regularly heard reading at home from books sent by the class teacher. The intervention was continued for two years, i.e., until the end of the first year in the junior school. Comparison was made with the parallel classes at the same schools, and with randomly chosen classes at two schools, again randomly allocated, where children were given extra reading tuition in school. This report presents cross-sectional analyses which show a highly significant improvement by children who received extra practice at home in comparison with control groups, but no comparable improvement by children who received extra help at school. The gains were made consistently by children of all ability levels.
Initial Results from the Study of the Open Source Sector in Belgium

The economy of FLOSS (Free and open source software) has been the subject of numerous studies and publications, particularly on the issue of business models. However, there are fewer studies on the local networks of FLOSS providers. This research focuses on the ecosystem of Belgian FLOSS providers and, more specifically, their geographical distribution, the activities, technologies and software they support, their business models, their economic performance and the relationships between companies. The research is based on a directory containing nearly 150 companies. This directory led to the creation of a specialized search engine that helped to improve annotation. The research also uses financial data provided by the Belgian Central Balance Sheet Office. The initial results of this study show a concentration in major economic areas. The businesses are more active in the services and are heavily involved activities such as infrastructure software and Web development, activities which were common in the early years of free software development. Services for the support of business software is also common. A first analysis of the graph of relationships between providers' websites highlights the role that is played by the multinational IT companies, by FLOSS editors, by commercial FLOSS associations and especially by the Walloon centers of competence that offer vast training catalogs that are dedicated to FLOSS. This research opens up many perspectives for improving the automation of the company directory updates, the analysis of the relationship between enterprises, and the automation of the financial analysis of companies.
Residential facilities for adults with intellectual disability in a developing country: A case study from South Africa

Abstract Background The provision of residential services for adults with intellectual disability in developing countries has not been widely researched. This study presents a survey of such facilities in a South African context. Method Managers of 37 nongovernmental facilities in the Western Cape Province of South Africa responded to a survey about their facilities and their residents. Results Facilities struggled with accessing adequate funding, and tended to focus more on their protective role than on the promotion of human rights. Residents were generally isolated from the community, and did not receive vocational and life skills development. Conclusion Residents in facilities are far from realising their human rights as delineated in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). Although the need remains for such facilities and the protective function that they offer, services in low- to middle-income countries should still be evaluated and developed in line with human rights principles.
Extended report: Gene–environment interaction between HLA-DRB1 shared epitope and heavy cigarette smoking in predicting incident rheumatoid arthritis

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA), an autoimmune disease of unknown aetiology, affects approximately 1% of the adult population.1 Genetic and environmental factors are thought to interact in RA development. Epidemiological research has demonstrated a strong association between cigarette smoking and RA risk.2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 In the Nurses’ Health Study (NHS), we have found that RA risk is significantly elevated among women with >10 pack-years of smoking, and a strong dose-response exists.12 14 The strongest genetic risk factor for RA is found within the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) complex (or major histocompatibility complex antigen (MHC)). Within the HLA class II region, multiple HLA-DRB1 alleles are associated with RA.15 16 17 In individuals of European ancestry, the associated HLA-DRB1 alleles share a region of sequence similarity or “shared epitope” (SE) at amino acid positions 70–74 in the third hypervariable region of the HLA-DRB1 molecule.18 Smoking and HLA shared epitope (HLA-SE) genotypes interact to increase risk of seropositive but not seronegative RA in several studies.13 19 20 21 However, the dose effect aspects of this interaction have not been studied. One study of three North American RA cohorts22 did not demonstrate a significant interaction between ever smoking and HLA-SE in predicting anti-cyclic citrullinated protein (CCP) antibodies or rheumatoid factor (RF) among RA cases.19 We studied the interaction between HLA-SE alleles and smoking dose among women in a case-control study nested within two large prospective cohort studies, the Nurses’ Health Studies. We aimed to determine whether heavier smoking was associated with a stronger gene–environment interaction than was ever smoking.
Can neural networks learn the Black-Scholes model? A simplified approach

Neural networks have been shown to learn complex relationships. It would be interesting to see if the networks can be trained to learn the nonlinear relationship underlying Black-Scholes type models. Interesting hypothetical questions that can be raised are: If option pricing model had not been developed, could a technique like neural networks have learnt the nonlinear form of the Black-Scholes type model to yield the fair value of an option? Could the networks have learnt to produce efficient implied volatility estimates? Our results from a simplified neural networks approach are rather encouraging, but more for volatility outputs than for call prices.
Concurrent Gonadotropin-Releasing Hormone Agonist Administration with Chemotherapy Improves Neoadjuvant Chemotherapy Responses in Young Premenopausal Breast Cancer Patients

Purpose This study aimed to determine the oncologic efficacy of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) agonist treatment concurrent with chemotherapy in a neoadjuvant setting. Methods A retrospective analysis was performed on 332 cases of invasive breast cancer in patients who were <40 years old at diagnosis and received GnRH agonists concurrent with neoadjuvant chemotherapy (GnRH agonist group) or neoadjuvant chemotherapy alone (neochemotherapy-alone group) from December 2010 to September 2014. Pathologic complete response rates (pCR) and Ki-67 changes were evaluated between the two groups. Results Median age was 32±3.9 and 36±3.0 years in the GnRH agonist group and neochemotherapy-alone group, respectively (p<0.001). After adjustment for tumor size, grade, lymph node metastasis, hormone receptor (HR) status, and chemotherapy regimen, the GnRH agonist group exhibited a higher pCR rate with an odds ratio (OR) of 2.98 (95% confidence interval [CI], 1.37-6.34) and a greater decrease in Ki-67 expression after treatment (p=0.05) than the neochemotherapy-alone group. For HR-negative tumors, the GnRH agonist group showed a higher pCR rate (multivariate OR, 3.50; 95% CI, 1.37-8.95) and a greater decrease in Ki-67 expression (p=0.047). For HR-positive breast cancer, the pCR rate, change in Ki-67 index, and clinical response were higher, and preoperative endocrine prognostic index scores were lower, in the GnRH agonist group, but these did not reach statistical significance. Conclusion Concurrent administration of GnRH agonists during neoadjuvant chemotherapy improved pCR rates and suppressed Ki-67 expression, especially in HR-negative tumors.
Decreased olfactory mucus secretion and nasal abnormality in mice lacking type 2 and type 3 IP3 receptors

Although nasal mucus is thought to play important roles in the mammalian olfactory system, the mechanisms of secretion of it and its physiological roles are poorly understood. Here we show that type 2 and type 3 IP3 receptors (IP3R2 and IP3R3) play critical roles in olfactory mucus secretion. Histological studies showed that IP3R2 and IP3R3 are predominantly expressed in two types of nasal glands, the anterior glands of the nasal septum and the lateral nasal glands (LNG), which contain mucosal proteins secreted to the main olfactory epithelium. We therefore examined LNG acinar cells, and found that acetylcholine‐mediated calcium responses and fluid‐ and protein‐ secretion in the acinar cells were markedly decreased in IP3R2–R3 double‐knockout (KO) mice. We also found nasal inflammation and a decrease in olfactory capacity in IP3R2–R3 KO mice. Despite intact signal transduction in the olfactory epithelium, IP3R2–R3 KO mice exhibited elevated threshold sensitivity to odorants on in vivo imaging of olfactory glomerular responses and behavioral tests. Our findings suggest that IP3R2 and IP3R3 mediate nasal mucus secretion, which is important for the maintenance of nasal tissue as well as the perception of odors.
Applying asymmetrical half-bridge LCC resonant inverter to EEFL lighting ballast

In this paper, an asymmetric half-bridge LCC resonant inverter is presented, which is the kernel of the proposed lighting ballast that is used to drive an external electronic fluorescent lamp (EEFL). This lighting ballast contains three power stages if dimming is necessary; otherwise it contains two power stages only. The first power stage is constructed by a traditional boost converter with power factor correction (PFC), and such a converter is operated in the transient mode (TM) with the DC output voltage 390V. The second power stage is built up by a buck converter is used to control the duty cycle such that the corresponding output voltage can be changed and hence dimming of the EEFL can be achieved. The third power stage is established by an asymmetric half-bridge LCC resonant inverter operating under a fixed switching frequency with a fixed duty cycle of about 50%. Via LCC resonance, the power switches of this inverter are operated in zero voltage switching (ZVS) so as to reduce the switching loss, and at the same time, the inherent high voltage conversion characteristics make the voltage conversion gain is larger than one such that the turns ratio of transformer can be reduced. Most importantly, as the EEFL is operated on the rated conditions, i.e., without dimming, the second power stage is to be bypassed, thereby causing the corresponding efficiency to be upgraded. The basic operating principles and corresponding mathematical deductions of the proposed inverter are described, and applied to the constructed EEFL lighting ballast that is verified by some simulated and experimental results.
Strategic Faculty Hiring in Two Public Research Universities: Pursuing interdisciplinary connections

This paper examines innovations in strategic faculty hiring emphasizing interdisciplinarity at two major public research universities in the USA. The research investigated how and why the Pennsylvania State University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison chose to pursue interdisciplinary faculty recruitment, how it was structured, and how it was intended to cause changes in academic work at each university. The paper analyzes how the interdisciplinary aims of those innovations intersected with competitive pressures, resource acquisition strategies, and organizational problems. Implications are discussed in the last section.
Policies for efficient memory utilization in a remote caching architecture

The high performance networks in modern distributed systems enable a site to obtain cached objects from the main memory of other sites more quickly than the time needed to access local disks. In this environment, efficient mechanisms can be devised to support rapid request/response exchanges for objects that reside on remote sites. As a result, it becomes possible to use remote memory as an additional layer in the memory hierarchy between local memory and disks. The paper studies the performance potential of remote memory caching. A key issue is managing the of object replicas maintained by different sites. Although exploiting remote memory improves performance over a wide range of cache sizes as compared to a distributed client/server caching architecture, efficient use of remote memory can be difficult to achieve. The effect of several system parameters, and several cache policies are examined; their effect on both overall and local system performance is described. <<ETX>>
Talking Past Each other about Sexual Harassment: An Exploration of Frames for Understanding

Sexual harassment, a form of violence against women, occasions considerable debate but little communication. Using newspaper reports as texts, the authors identify four common media frames that not only raise different expectations about defining behavior as harassing and people as harassers, but also suggest different courses of action in response to the behavior. The judicial frame compares behaviors to legal policies or statutes and suggests reactive strategies. The victim frame emphasizes harm or injury to the victim(s), suggesting social change. The initiator frame defines the (mis)behavior as acceptable and implies that no change in behavior is necessary. The social science frame, structured around reliable and valid operational definitions, integrates the other approaches.
PROFESSIONALISM, POSTMODERN ETHICS AND THE GLOBAL STANDARDS FOR SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION AND TRAINING

The Global Standards for Social Work Education and Training (hereafter referred to as “the document”) that was adopted by the General Assemblies of the International Association of Schools of Social Work (IASSW) and the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) in October 2004 was born out of several small and big compromises. As Chair of the Global Standards Committee, I remain ambivalent about some of the processes and the product. As pointed out previously (Williams & Sewpaul, 2004), despite the best attempts at consultation and ensuring representation of different voices, they remained flawed, especially when working on a document that is supposed to cover worldwide processes and representation. On being asked to Chair the Global Standards Committee my reaction was that it was a preposterous and over-ambitious goal, with my biggest fear being that it would reinforce a Western hegemony and reproduce Western professional imperialism in social work education and practice. I was informed that because I understood the sensitivities and complexities of such an endeavour, I would be suited to lead the process.
Sport and Child Development

Despite the relevance of cognitive and non-cognitive skills for professional success, their formation is not yet fully understood. This study fills part of this gap by analyzing the role of sports club participation, one of the most popular extra-curricular activities, on children’s skill development. Our results indicate positive effects: school performance improves by 0.20 standard deviations and overall non-cognitive skills by 0.09 standard deviations. The results are robust when using alternative datasets as well as alternative estimation and identification strategies. The effects can be partially explained by increased physical activities replacing passive leisure activities.
Qualitative Research in Distance Education: An Analysis of Journal Literature 2005–2012

This review study examines the current research literature in distance education for the years 2005 to 2012. The author found 382 research articles published during that time in four prominent peer-reviewed research journals. The articles were classified and coded as quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods. Further analysis found another category of articles in which qualitative data were obtained but results were reported as quantitative. The analysis shows that the publication of purely qualitative research occurs least often in The American Journal of Distance Education than in the other journals. The analysis also shows that, on average, prominent journals are publishing less qualitative research now than they were 2005. This study shows the need for further research and analysis of the methodologies currently utilized in distance education.