Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
School and Community Impacts of Hydraulic Fracturing Within Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale Region, and the Dilemmas of Educational Leadership in Gasfield Boomtowns

Innovations associated with gas and oil drilling technology, including new hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling techniques, have recently led to dramatic boomtown development in many rural areas that have endured extended periods of economic decline. The Marcellus Shale play, one of the world's largest gas-bearing shale formations, lies beneath approximately two-thirds of Pennsylvania, including some of the state's most economically lagging rural areas. Spurred by a state-level policy environment favorable to unconventional gas extraction, drilling activity in the last five years has rapidly increased, often with profound social, economic, and environmental implications for communities. In this paper we use schooling as a particular analytic lens for understanding the dynamics of natural resource boomtown development, community change, and how these changes may affect educational and instructional decision making. Using data from interviews and focus groups with educators and administrators in Pennsylvania communities experiencing intensive natural gas development, we discuss the multiple organizational, curricular, and educational dilemmas school leaders face in the context of both rapid, unpredictable community change, and an educational policy environment unfavorable to place-sensitive educational responses to local change.
Rapid Prototyping of the Learning-based Functionality for Wearable Devices

The variety of wearable devices and the number of their functions have grown significantly over the last 3 years. At the same time the demands of the consumer electronics market require rapid design and production of new devices. In order to speed up the implementation of comprehensive machine learning-based features for such devices and make the software development synchronous with the design of the hardware, we propose a fast prototyping approach for gathering labelled sensor data and implementing a device's functionality. We report a new development platform for wearable devices equipped with inertial MEMS sensors such as accelerometers and gyros. The platform's hardware uses the STEVAL-MKI062V2 board. The software comprises: (1) a Matlab library for interaction with the hardware, (2) software for sensors' data gathering and performing machine learning procedures, (3) software for implementing the functionality of the target device. The benefits of using the prototyping system were demonstrated on the task of recognition of static hand gestures (also called hand postures). In the example, we consider several lightweight classifiers, which can be used for the implementation with hardware that is strongly restricted by computational resources and power requirements.
The Future of HIV Treatment

Abstract:Antiretroviral therapy has transformed the management of HIV-infected individuals over the past quarter century. However, important challenges remain. These include attempts to eradicate HIV from reservoirs within the body, thereby eliminating the need for lifetime therapy. In addition, improvements in drug development, clinical trial, and regulatory pathways are necessary to expeditiously evaluate novel therapeutic regimens and strategies. Antiretroviral drug scarcity remains a major problem in underserved populations worldwide, and partnerships among pharmaceutical companies, academic investigators, and both governmental and nongovernmental agencies are necessary to improve access to these life-saving regimens.
Posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms, salivary cortisol, medication adherence, and CD4 levels in HIV-positive individuals

Previous research has reported rates of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following diagnosis with a life-threatening disease ranging from 5 to 42%. However, few studies have examined the impact of PTSD symptoms on disease markers or adherence to medical regimens. The present study represents an initial examination of the relationships among self-reported PTSD symptoms stemming from diagnosis with HIV, CD4 cell counts, salivary cortisol levels and adherence to highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) in 110 African-American and Caucasian individuals with HIV. Results revealed that the relationship between PTSD and disease progression is multifaceted: PTSD symptoms were related to worse adherence to HAART therapy, but were also associated with lower morning salivary cortisol levels and higher CD4 cell counts.
Integrating Two Models for the Treatment of Addictions: Souldrama and 12-Step Recovery in Action

Building off previous theoretical research studies conducted on addictions, relapse cycles, and theories regarding group action methods and psychodrama in general, this article proposes to introduce a new action method technique into the 12-step program guidelines that were originally set up for recovery from alcoholism. This new technique will help individuals to reestablish their creative nature, connect them with others on a spiritual level, and through their higher awareness, help them to heal on a much deeper level, as well as to help them discover their greater purpose in life. The new method of Souldrama combines elements of the rational, emotional, and the spiritual mind, and also uses creativity, spontaneity, and imagination, so that the ego and the soul become aligned. Souldrama assists in helping relapses from occurring by putting spirituality into action and then linking together its seven doors of transformation with the guidelines of the 12 steps, which individuals will need to walk through to grow both personally and spiritually. By doing this, individuals will hopefully be able to prevent the relapse cycle from continuing, and thereby, remaining in their recovery.
STIFF-FLOP surgical manipulator: Mechanical design and experimental characterization of the single module

This paper presents the concept design, the fabrication and the experimental characterization of a unit of a modular manipulator for minimal access surgery. Traditional surgical manipulators are usually based on metallic steerable needles, tendon driven mechanisms or articulated motorized links. In this work the main idea is to combine flexible fluidic actuators enabling omnidirectional bending and elongation capability and the granular jamming phenomenon to implement a selective stiffness changing. The proposed manipulator is based on a series of identical modules, each one consisting of a silicone tube with pneumatic chambers for allowing 3D motion and one central channel for the implementation of the granular jamming phenomenon for stiffening. The silicone is covered by a novel bellows-shaped braided structure maximizing the bending still limiting lateral expansion. In this paper one single module is tested in terms of bending range, elongation capability, generated forces and stiffness changing.
Multilingual adaptations of ANNIE, a reusable information extraction tool

In this demo we will present GATE, an architecture and framework for language engineering, and ANNIE, an information extraction system developed within it. We will demonstrate how ANNIE has been adapted to perform NE recognition in different languages, including Indic and Slavonic languages as well as Western European ones, and how the resources can be reused for new applications and languages.
Sequence variability in two mitochondrial DNA regions and internal transcribed spacer among three cestodes infecting animals and humans from China

Abstract Sequence variability in two mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) regions, namely cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (cox1) and NADH dehydrogenase subunit 4 (nad4), and internal transcribed spacer (ITS) of rDNA among and within three cestodes, Spirometra erinaceieuropaei, Taenia multiceps and Taenia hydatigena, from different geographical origins in China was examined. A portion of the cox1 (pcox1), nad4 genes (pnad4) and the ITS (ITS1+5.8S rDNA+ITS2) were amplified separately from individual cestodes by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Representative amplicons were subjected to sequencing in order to estimate sequence variability. While the intra-specific sequence variations within each of the tapeworm species were 0–0.7% for pcox1, 0–1.7% for pnad4 and 0.1–3.6% for ITS, the inter-specific sequence differences were significantly higher, being 12.1–17.6%, 18.7–26.2% and 31–75.5% for pcox1, pnad4 and ITS, respectively. Phylogenetic analyses based on the pcox1 sequence data revealed that T. multiceps and T. hydatigena were more closely related to the other members of the Taenia genus, and S. erinaceieuropaei was more closely related to the other members of the Spirometra genus. These findings demonstrated clearly the usefulness of mtDNA and rDNA sequences for population genetic studies of these cestodes of socio-economic importance.
Fault Diagnosis in Wireless Sensor Networks: A Survey

The sensor nodes in wireless sensor networks may be deployed in unattended and possibly hostile environments. The ill-disposed environment affects the monitoring infrastructure that includes the sensor nodes and the network. In addition, node failures and environmental hazards cause frequent topology changes, communication failures, and network partitioning. This in turn adds a new dimension to the fragility of the network topology. Such perturbations are far more common than those found in conventional wireless networks thus, demand efficient techniques for discovering disruptive behavior in such networks. Traditional fault diagnosis techniques devised for multiprocessor systems are not directly applicable to wireless sensor networks due to their specific requirements and limitations. This survey integrates research efforts that have been produced in fault diagnosis specifically for wireless sensor networks. The survey aims at clarifying and uncovering the potential of this technology by providing the technique-based taxonomy. The fault diagnosis techniques are classified based on the nature of the tests, correlation between sensor readings and characteristics of sensor nodes and the network.
Use of Item Models in a Large-Scale Admissions Test: A Case Study

Item models (LaDuca, Staples, Templeton, & Holzman, 1986) are classes from which it is possible to generate items that are equivalent/isomorphic to other items from the same model (e.g., Bejar, 1996, 2002). They have the potential to produce large numbers of high-quality items at reduced cost. This article introduces data from an application of item models for the generation of items for a large-scale assessment and investigates several research questions associated with the data. We begin by reviewing calibration techniques for the analysis of data involving item models; one method assumes that the items are isomorphic, while the other treats items generated from the same item model as distinct but related. A major question for these types of data is whether these items are isomorphic; that is, if they behave the same psychometrically. This article describes a number of rough diagnostic measures and a statistical diagnostic to assess the extent of isomorphicity in the items generated from an item model. Finally, this article discusses the issue of scoring—an area that needs more research—with data involving item models.
Space-only hyperbolic approximation of the Vlasov equation

We construct an hyperbolic approximation of the Vlasov equation in which the dependency on the velocity variable is removed. The resulting model enjoys interesting conservation and entropy properties. It can be numerically solved by standard schemes for hyperbolic systems. We present numerical results for one-dimensional classical test cases in plasma physics: Landau damping, two-stream instability
Flexible and Scalable Query Planning in Distributed and Heterogeneous Environments

We present the application of the Planning by Rewriting (PbR) framework to query planning in distributed and heterogeneous environments. PbR is a new paradigm for efficient high-quality planning that exploits plan rewriting rules and efficient local search techniques to transform an easy-to-generate, but possibly suboptimal. initial plan into a high-quality plan. The resulting planner is scalable, flexible, has anytime behavior, and. applied to query planning, yields a novel combination of traditional query optimization with heterogeneous information source selection. Query planners are the core component of mediator systems, which are becoming increasingly important in a world of interconnected information, and constitute excellent test beds for planning technology.
13C NMR Reveals No Evidence of n−π* Interactions in Proteins

An interaction between neighboring carbonyl groups has been postulated to stabilize protein structures. Such an interaction would affect the C chemical shielding of the carbonyl groups, whose paramagnetic component is dominated by and excitations. Model compound calculations indicate that both the interaction energetics and the chemical shielding of the carbonyl group are instead dominated by a classical dipole-dipole interaction. A set of high-resolution protein structures with associated carbonyl C chemical shift assignments verifies this correlation and provides no evidence for an inter-carbonyl interaction.
NaCl Effects on In Vitro Germination and Growth of Some Senegalese Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp.) Cultivars

Cowpea (Vigna unguiculata (L.) Walp. ) is one of the most important grain legumes in sub-Saharian regions. It contributes to man food security by providing a protein-rich diet. However, its production is limited by abiotic stresses such as salinity. This study aims to evaluate the salt tolerance of 15 cowpea cultivars, at germination stage. The seed germination process consisted of sowing them in agarified water (8 g·L−1) supplemented with 6 different concentrations of NaCl (0, 10, 50, 100, 150, and 200 mM). Results highlighted that high salt concentrations drastically reduced germination and significantly delayed the process for all varieties. A cowpea varietal effect towards the salt tolerance was noticed. Genotypes Diongoma, 58-78, and 58-191 were more salt-tolerant cultivars while Mougne and Yacine were more salt-sensitive ones as confirmed in the three groups of the dendrogram. NaCl effects on the early vegetative growth of seedlings were assessed with a tolerant (58-191) and a susceptible (Yacine) cultivar. Morphological (length and dry biomass) and physiological (chlorophyll and proline contents) parameter measurements revealed a negative effect of high (NaCl). However, 58-191 was much more salt tolerant, and the chlorophyll and proline contents were higher than those of Yacine genotype at increasing salt concentrations.
Motor module activation sequence and topography in the spinal cord during air‐stepping in human: Insights into the traveling wave in spinal locomotor circuits

Coordinated locomotor muscle activity is generated by the spinal central pattern generators (CPGs), which are modulated by peripheral and supraspinal inputs. The CPGs would consist of multiple motor modules generating basic muscle activity, which are distributed rostrocaudally along the spinal cord. To activate the motor modules in proper sequence, rostrocaudally traveling waves of activation in the spinal cord are important mechanisms in the CPGs. The traveling waves of activation have been observed in nonhuman vertebrates. However, they have not yet been confirmed during human locomotion. Although, rostrocaudal wave‐like activations in the spinal cord were observed during walking in humans in a previous study, the propagation shifted rostrally toward the upper lumbar segments at foot contact. Here, using an air stepping task to remove the foot‐contact interactions, we examined whether the traveling wave mechanism exists in the human spinal circuits based on the activation sequence of motor modules and their topography. We measured electromyographic activity of lower leg muscles during the air‐stepping task. Then, we extracted motor modules (i.e., basic patterns of sets of muscle activations: muscle synergies) from the measured muscle activities using nonnegative matrix factorization method. Next, we reconstructed motoneuron (MN) activity from each module activity based on myotomal charts. We identified four types of motor modules from muscle activities during the air‐stepping task. Each motor module represented different sets of synergistic muscle activations. MN clusters innervating each motor module were sequentially activated from the rostral to caudal region in the spinal cord, from the initial flexion to the last extension phase during air‐stepping. The rostrocaudally sequential activation of MN clusters suggests the possibility that rostrocaudally traveling waves exist in human locomotor spinal circuits. The present results advance the understanding of human locomotor control mechanisms, and provide important insights into the evolution of locomotor networks in vertebrates.
Evaluation of the Erosive Potential of Selected Isotonic Drinks: In Vitro Studies.

BACKGROUND Isotonic drinks are an important component of the diet of athletes. Sports drinks cause the body to maintain proper hydration and supplement minerals which are lost in sweat during excessive exercising. Aside from the benefits of isotonic drinks, it is important to be aware of the harmful effects of citric acid within the products, which could cause enamel erosion. OBJECTIVES The aim of the study was to evaluate the erosive potential of sports drinks using confocal scanning laser microscopy (CLSM). MATERIAL AND METHODS The studies measured the change of surface roughness of the dental enamel after etching using Isostar, Powerade and Gatorade drinks, and Fortuna orange juice. Measurements were repeated after 1, 2 and 3 h of exposure to the selected liquid. The evaluation of calcium compound contents was carried out using the complexonometric method. RESULTS The surface roughness measurements of dental enamel showed that the lowest values of the parameters Ra and Rz were obtained for Isostar and orange juice. The research of the calcium content in the selected beverages showed the highest value in Isostar (320.0 mg/L) and the lowest in Powerade (40.0 mg/L) and Gatorade (21.0 mg/L). CONCLUSIONS Our study confirms that Isostar is the safest sports drink, among the analyzed beverages, for athletes, because it causes the least erosive changes in dental enamel. It is recommended to supplement beverages to reduce their potential for erosion using calcium compounds.
Brief Report: Some Remarks About the Response Relatedness of the Error Negativity

The error negativity (Ne) is a prominent response-related potential reflecting error processing or response monitoring processes. Despite the huge amount of literature dealing with the Ne, only few studies investigated how close the Ne is related to the kind of response collected by the experimental setup. The present study investigated whether the Ne differs between force locked and force level related (aka button press) data. Indeed, the Ne was more pronounced for force onset compared to level trigger and appeared to be related to the steepness of the raise of force. These results implicate that the parameterization of the Ne has to be treated with caution under certain circumstances and it appears to be advisable to use force onset or the electromyogram to detect response onset if timing or latency is relevant.
Finding Answerers on Yahoo ! Answers

People use online forums extensively to seek information which cannot be easily found using search engines or which are subjective. Some of the categories of questions are very specialized and some of them suffer with the Free-rider problem where users ask questions but do not actively look for questions to answer. Finding the appropriate users to answer a question is one of the main challenges of QuestionAnswer communities and propagate the questions to a group of answerers is very important. In this work, we analyze the Yahoo! Answers media and study some interesting properties that exist in an apparently non-network structure. Further, we use K-means clustering algorithm to find out the most probable group of users who might be able to answer a question posed by a questioner using textual, structural and auxiliary information.
ElasTraS: An Elastic Transactional Data Store in the Cloud

Over the last couple of years, "Cloud Computing" or "Elastic Computing" has emerged as a compelling and successful paradigm for internet scale computing. One of the major contributing factors to this success is the elasticity of resources. In spite of the elasticity provided by the infrastructure and the scalable design of the applications, the elephant (or the underlying database), which drives most of these web-based applications, is not very elastic and scalable, and hence limits scalability. In this paper, we propose ElasTraS which addresses this issue of scalability and elasticity of the data store in a cloud computing environment to leverage from the elastic nature of the underlying infrastructure, while providing scalable transactional data access. This paper aims at providing the design of a system in progress, highlighting the major design choices, analyzing the different guarantees provided by the system, and identifying several important challenges for the research community striving for computing in the cloud.
Phosphodiesterase-5 inhibition augments endogenous antitumor immunity by reducing myeloid-derived suppressor cell function

Phosphodiesterase-5 (PDE5) inhibitors (sildenafil, tadalafil, and vardenafil) are agents currently in clinical use for nonmalignant conditions. We report the use of PDE5 inhibitors as modulators of the antitumor immune response. In several mouse tumor models, PDE5 inhibition reverses tumor-induced immunosuppressive mechanisms and enables a measurable antitumor immune response to be generated that substantially delays tumor progression. In particular, sildenafil, down-regulates arginase 1 and nitric oxide synthase–2 expression, thereby reducing the suppressive machinery of CD11b+/Gr-1+ myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSCs) recruited by growing tumors. By removing these tumor escape mechanisms, sildenafil enhances intratumoral T cell infiltration and activation, reduces tumor outgrowth, and improves the antitumor efficacy of adoptive T cell therapy. Sildenafil also restores in vitro T cell proliferation of peripheral blood mononuclear cells from multiple myeloma and head and neck cancer patients. In light of the recent data that enzymes mediating MDSC-dependent immunosuppression in mice are active also in humans, these findings demonstrate a potentially novel use of PDE5 inhibitors as adjuncts to tumor-specific immune therapy.