Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Structural validity and reliability of the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS): evidence from a large Brazilian community sample.

OBJECTIVE Positive and negative affect are the two psychobiological-dispositional dimensions reflecting proneness to positive and negative activation that influence the extent to which individuals experience life events as joyful or as distressful. The Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) is a structured questionnaire that provides independent indexes of positive and negative affect. This study aimed to validate a Brazilian interview-version of the PANAS by means of factor and internal consistency analysis. METHODS A representative community sample of 3,728 individuals residing in the cities of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, voluntarily completed the PANAS. Exploratory structural equation model analysis was based on maximum likelihood estimation and reliability was calculated via Cronbach's alpha coefficient. RESULTS Our results provide support for the hypothesis that the PANAS reliably measures two distinct dimensions of positive and negative affect. CONCLUSION The structure and reliability of the Brazilian version of the PANAS are consistent with those of its original version. Taken together, these results attest the validity of the Brazilian adaptation of the instrument.
Towards Precision Agriculture : Building a Soil Wetness Multi-Hop WSN from First Principles

This work presents the design and implementation of a wireless sensor network (WSN) from first principles, i.e. without the use of commercial WSN platforms. Specifically, a modular multi-hop WSN was built for humidity, temperature and soil wetness measurements, towards precision agriculture applications. We describe the modules developed for radio communication, low-cost sensing, relaying and storing, and compare the developed hardware with state-of-the-art WSN transceivers and sensors. Furthermore, we briefly describe an outdoor demonstration of the developed, multi-hop, soil wetness WSN. This work provides a concrete demonstration example towards precision agriculture and could potentially assist students, researchers and practitioners to develop their own customized platforms, without dependence on commercial WSN platforms.
KSHV-Mediated Angiogenesis in Tumor Progression

Human herpesvirus 8 (HHV-8), also known as Kaposi’s sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV), is a malignant human oncovirus belonging to the gamma herpesvirus family. HHV-8 is closely linked to the pathogenesis of Kaposi’s sarcoma (KS) and two other B-cell lymphoproliferative diseases: primary effusion lymphoma (PEL) and a plasmablastic variant of multicentric Castleman’s disease (MCD). KS is an invasive tumor of endothelial cells most commonly found in untreated HIV-AIDS or immuno-compromised individuals. KS tumors are highly vascularized and have abnormal, excessive neo-angiogenesis, inflammation, and proliferation of infected endothelial cells. KSHV directly induces angiogenesis in an autocrine and paracrine fashion through a complex interplay of various viral and cellular pro-angiogenic and inflammatory factors. KS is believed to originate due to a combination of KSHV’s efficient strategies for evading host immune systems and several pro-angiogenic and pro-inflammatory stimuli. In addition, KSHV infection of endothelial cells produces a wide array of viral oncoproteins with transforming capabilities that regulate multiple host-signaling pathways involved in the activation of angiogenesis. It is likely that the cellular-signaling pathways of angiogenesis and lymph-angiogenesis modulate the rate of tumorigenesis induction by KSHV. This review summarizes the current knowledge on regulating KSHV-mediated angiogenesis by integrating the findings reported thus far on the roles of host and viral genes in oncogenesis, recent developments in cell-culture/animal-model systems, and various anti-angiogenic therapies for treating KSHV-related lymphoproliferative disorders.
The Safety of Hospital Beds

To explore the safety of the standard and the low hospital bed, we report on a microanalysis of 15 patients’ ability to ingress, move about the bed, and egress. The 15 participants were purposefully selected with various disabilities. Bed conditions were randomized with side rails up or down and one low bed with side rails down. We explored the patients’ use of the side rails, bed height, ability to lift their legs onto the mattress, and ability to turn, egress, and walk back to the chair. The standard bed was too high for some participants, both for ingress and egress. Side rails were used by most participants when entering, turning in bed, and exiting. We recommend that side rails be reconsidered as a means to facilitate in-bed movement, ingress, and egress. Furthermore, single deck height settings for all patients are not optimal. Low beds as a safety measure must be re-evaluated.
Anomalous Surplus Energy Transfer Observed with Multiple FRET Acceptors

Background Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) is a mechanism where energy is transferred from an excited donor fluorophore to adjacent chromophores via non-radiative dipole-dipole interactions. FRET theory primarily considers the interactions of a single donor-acceptor pair. Unfortunately, it is rarely known if only a single acceptor is present in a molecular complex. Thus, the use of FRET as a tool for measuring protein-protein interactions inside living cells requires an understanding of how FRET changes with multiple acceptors. When multiple FRET acceptors are present it is assumed that a quantum of energy is either released from the donor, or transferred in toto to only one of the acceptors present. The rate of energy transfer between the donor and a specific acceptor (kD→A) can be measured in the absence of other acceptors, and these individual FRET transfer rates can be used to predict the ensemble FRET efficiency using a simple kinetic model where the sum of all FRET transfer rates is divided by the sum of all radiative and non-radiative transfer rates. Methodology/Principal Findings The generality of this approach was tested by measuring the ensemble FRET efficiency in two constructs, each containing a single fluorescent-protein donor (Cerulean) and either two or three FRET acceptors (Venus). FRET transfer rates between individual donor-acceptor pairs within these constructs were calculated from FRET efficiencies measured after systematically introducing point mutations to eliminate all other acceptors. We find that the amount of energy transfer observed in constructs having multiple acceptors is significantly greater than the FRET efficiency predicted from the sum of the individual donor to acceptor transfer rates. Conclusions/Significance We conclude that either an additional energy transfer pathway exists when multiple acceptors are present, or that a theoretical assumption on which the kinetic model prediction is based is incorrect.
Virulence Genes and Molecular Typing of Different Groups of Escherichia coli O157 Strains in Cattle

ABSTRACT Characterization of an Escherichia coli O157 strain collection (n = 42) derived from healthy Hungarian cattle revealed the existence of diverse pathotypes. Enteropathogenic E. coli (EPEC; eae positive) appeared to be the most frequent pathotype (n = 22 strains), 11 O157 strains were typical enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC; stx and eae positive), and 9 O157 strains were atypical, with none of the key stx and eae virulence genes detected. EHEC and EPEC O157 strains all carried eae-gamma, tir-gamma, tccP, and paa. Other virulence genes located on the pO157 virulence plasmid and different O islands (O island 43 [OI-43] and OI-122), as well as espJ and espM, also characterized the EPEC and EHEC O157 strains with similar frequencies. However, none of these virulence genes were detected by PCR in atypical O157 strains. Interestingly, five of nine atypical O157 strains produced cytolethal distending toxin V (CDT-V) and carried genes encoding long polar fimbriae. Macro-restriction fragment enzyme analysis (pulsed-field gel electrophoresis) revealed that these E. coli O157 strains belong to four main clusters. Multilocus sequence typing analysis revealed that five housekeeping genes were identical in EHEC and EPEC O157 strains but were different in the atypical O157 strains. These results suggest that the Hungarian bovine E. coli O157 strains represent at least two main clones: EHEC/EPEC O157:H7/NM (nonmotile) and atypical CDT-V-producing O157 strains with H antigens different from H7. The CDT-V-producing O157 strains represent a novel genogroup. The pathogenic potential of these strains remains to be elucidated.
Gender issues in management education: a new teaching resource

Discusses the gendered culture of management education and its role in perpetuating a gendered culture of management, which in turn inhibits the equitable progression of women through the ranks of management. Reports findings from a recent Australian survey which revealed a masculine bias in management education, which disadvantages both female and male learners. Perceived gender paradigms of male educators may result in women learners being more disadvantaged than men, and issues of concern to male students can cause much greater concern to their female counterparts. The research led to the production of an award‐winning video, Gender Issues in Management: Capitalising on Awareness of Diversity. This constitutes an additional teaching resource for management educators, trainers, consultants and others working on diversity issues.
On sampling theorem with sparse decimated samples: exploring branching spectrum degeneracy

The paper investigates possibility of recovery of sequences from their decimated subsequences. It is shown that this recoverability is associated with certain spectrum degeneracy of a new kind, and that a sequences of a general kind can be approximated by sequences featuring this degeneracy. This is applied to sparse sampling of continuous time band-limited functions. The paper shows that these functions allow an arbitrarily close approximation by functions that can be recovered from sparse equidistant samples with sampling distance larger than the distance defined by the critical Nyquist rate for the underlying function. This allows to bypass, in a certain sense, the restriction on the sampling rate defined by the Nyquist rate.
accept()able Strategies for Improving Web Server Performance

This paper evaluates techniques for improving the performance of three architecturally different web servers. We study strategies for effectively accepting incoming connections under conditions of high load. Our experimental evaluation shows that the method used to accept new connection requests can significantly impact server performance. By modifying each server's accept strategy, we improve the performance of the kernel-mode TUX server, the multithreaded Knot server and the event-driven µserver. Under two different workloads, we improve the throughput of these servers by as much as 19%-36% for TUX, 0%-32% for Knot, and 39%-71% for the µserver. Interestingly, the performance improvements realized by the user-mode µserver allow it to obtain performance that rivals an unmodified TUX server.
Prediction of MicroRNA-Disease Associations Based on Social Network Analysis Methods

MicroRNAs constitute an important class of noncoding, single-stranded, ~22 nucleotide long RNA molecules encoded by endogenous genes. They play an important role in regulating gene transcription and the regulation of normal development. MicroRNAs can be associated with disease; however, only a few microRNA-disease associations have been confirmed by traditional experimental approaches. We introduce two methods to predict microRNA-disease association. The first method, KATZ, focuses on integrating the social network analysis method with machine learning and is based on networks derived from known microRNA-disease associations, disease-disease associations, and microRNA-microRNA associations. The other method, CATAPULT, is a supervised machine learning method. We applied the two methods to 242 known microRNA-disease associations and evaluated their performance using leave-one-out cross-validation and 3-fold cross-validation. Experiments proved that our methods outperformed the state-of-the-art methods.
Credibility proof for speech content and speaker verification by fragile watermarking with consecutive frame-based processing

In this paper, we proposed an easy scheme to protect the integrity of a period of speech content. We first break the speech signal into a series of consecutive frame and do DCT transform on them, then we sequentially encode the watermark into those frames separately. Every watermark is modulated by the statistical characteristic of previous frame of speech content; therefore we can detect any signal discontinuity caused by telltale signal distortion on the watermarked speech. Experiment shows that even after cropping most of the signal and leaves only 0.1 second of watermarked signal, we can still detect the watermark.
THE ROLE OF IMAGERY IN INCIDENTAL LEARNING

Incidental (INC) and intentional (INT) subjects were given one of two orientating tasks requiring response to 18 high-imagery (I) and 18 low-imagery (N-I) noun stimuli equated for m and frequency of usage. The subjects either responded with a set to image stimuli at inspection (IMG set) or responded to stimuli in terms of their familiarity (FAM set). Independent groups of 18 subjects were allocated to each of the four experimental conditions and groups were equated for sex of the subject; the subjects were tested for free recall and recognition of I and N-I stimuli. It was predicted that if imagery plays a special role in INC learning, the difference in recall of I and N-I words would be greater for INC as compared to INT learning. The hypothesis was supported for FAM set in recognition where I and N-I stimuli were most differentiated. Type of orientating task was related to the presence or absence of the predicted effect.
TUG Test Instrumentation for Parkinson’s disease patients using Inertial Sensors and Dynamic Time Warping

The Timed Up and Go (TUG) test is a clinical tool widely used to evaluate balance and mobility, e.g. in Parkinson’s disease (PD). This test includes a sequence of functional activities, namely: sit-to-stand, 3-meters walk, 180° turning, walk back, and turn-to-sit. The work introduces a new method to instrument the TUG test using a wearable inertial sen-sor unit (DynaPort Hybrid, McRoberts B.V., NL) attached on the lower back of the person. It builds on Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) for detection and duration assessment of associated state transitions. An automatic assessment to sub-stitute a manual evaluation with visual observation and a stopwatch is aimed at to gain objective information about the patients. The algorithm was tested on data of 10 healthy individuals and 20 patients with Parkinson's disease (10 pa-tients for early and late disease phases respectively). The algorithm successfully extracted the time information of the sit-to-stand, turn and turn-to-sit transitions.
Autoantibodies to desmoplakin I and II in patients with erythema multiforme

Erythema multiforme (EM) represents a syndrome of chronic recurrent inflammatory skin disease. Depending on the severity and extent of skin and mucosal involvement, it is defined either as EM minor or EM major. In this study we demonstrate the presence of autoantibodies (aAbs) against desmoplakin I and II, two major proteins of the desmosomal plaque, in six of six patients with the severe variant of EM, EM major. Light microscopic studies of lesional skin and mucous membranes localized in vivo bound immunoglobulin G (IgG) in a dotted desmosomal pattern along the cytoplasmic membranes of keratinocytes. By immunoelectronmicroscopy, in vivo bound IgG was confined to the desmosomal plaques. These findings were confirmed by indirect immunolocalization studies that demonstrated the presence of IgG aAbs in the serum of patients during active disease. These aAbs did not only bind to desmosomal plaques of epithelial cells where they colocalized with defined murine monoclonal antibodies directed against desmoplakin I and II, but also labeled the intercalated discs of myocardial cells. Biochemical characterization of circulating IgG aAbs revealed desmoplakin I and II as actual target autoantigens. By passive transfer of serum into newborn mice, in vivo binding of serum aAbs to keratinocytes was shown. The findings presented in this study imply a humoral immune response in certain patients with EM major and indicate a potential pathogenetic role of aAbs against desmoplakin I and II in this disease.
Quality of Sibling Relationships in Maltreated Youth Residing in Out-of-Home-Care

When children are removed from their parents’s custody because of substantiated maltreatment and placed in out-of-home placements, they may be placed separately from siblings, potentially leading to even higher levels of stress in children. This possibility emerges insofar as siblings serve as a source of support during the uncertain times that accompany maltreatment and subsequent removal. We explored these issues in the present study, focusing on whether sibling relationship quality was related to post-removal behavioral functioning in maltreated children and adolescents. A total of 102 six- to seventeen-year-olds residing in a residential facility completed questionnaires about their sibling relationship quality and behavioral functioning. With age, sibling relationships became more hostile; although in girls, sibling affection also increased with age, at least when their sibling was a girl. Sibling hostility was related to increases in aggression and behavioral problems. Surprisingly, greater sibling affection was associated with increased problems, particularly when children had little contact with their sibling. Results provide insight into perceptions of sibling relationships in maltreated children and have implications for placement decisions.
Relationship between participation in communities of practice and organizational socialization in the early careers of South Korean IT employees

This paper focuses on the relationship between participation in communities of practice (CoP) and organizational socialization of informational technology employees in their early careers. In this paper, the authors limited their research to CoP, which were recognized and supported by the organization. Results showed that participation in CoP was more strongly related to adjustment (job satisfaction, organizational commitment and intention to remain) than to learning (sense of belonging to the organization and role comprehension) when the characteristics of CoP and the degree of participation were controlled. The intensity of participation in CoP was significantly related to the socialization outcomes while there were no relationships between the length of participation and the socialization outcomes. Recommendations for future research include the use of objective rather than self-reported data, longitudinal research, the identification of other variables related to learning in CoP, and consideration of variations in national and organizational culture.
Assessing Lebanese Children's Reactions to War-Related Stress

This exploratory study investigates the psychological effect of the 2006 war on Lebanese children. A sample of 110 exposed and 105 nonexposed children (9–12 years) balanced for age and gender were assessed using Spielberger's State-Trait Anxiety Inventory. The analysis aimed at investigating the effect of proximity, exposure to combat, and family loss on children's anxiety levels. Results revealed no gender differences in anxiety level. Combat-exposed children were more anxious than nonexposed children. Children with primary family loss were significantly more anxious and stressed than controls. The association between traumatic war situations in Lebanon and anxiety could have implications for benchmarking, early detection, and preventive efforts.
Force-Based Label Number Maximization

We present a force-based simulated annealing algorithm to heuristically solve the NP-hard label number maximization problem lnm: Given a set of rectangular labels, each of which belongs to a point-feature in the plane, the task is to find a labeling for a largest subset of the labels. A labeling is a placement such that none of the labels overlap and each is placed at its point-feature. The abstraction of the problem to the virtual force system allows us to implement additional aesthetic criteria and to compute placements with good label distribution in a short amount of time. Furthermore, our algorithm can be applied as a postprocessing step to improve existing labelings. We find that the results often look similar to those of a human cartographer. Extensive computational experiments on widely used benchmark data demonstrate that our new algorithm produces solutions where the number of placed labels is close to optimality and where the distribution of the labels is better than in labelings computed by algorithms that only maximize the number of placed labels. The experiments also show that the algorithm is able to solve large problems fast. This demonstrates its applicability in dynamic real-time environments, e.g., in navigation systems.
Intra-Arterial Thrombolysis in 100 Patients With Acute Stroke Due to Middle Cerebral Artery Occlusion

Background and Purpose— The purpose of this study was to evaluate the safety and efficacy of local intra-arterial thrombolysis (LIT) using urokinase in patients with acute stroke due to middle cerebral artery (MCA) occlusion. Methods— We analyzed clinical and radiological findings and functional outcome 3 months after LIT with urokinase of 100 consecutive patients. To measure outcome, the modified Rankin scale (mRs) score was used. Results— Angiography showed occlusion of the M1 segment of the MCA in 57 patients, of the M2 segment in 21, and of the M3 or M4 segment in 22. The median National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) score at admission was 14, and, on average, 236 minutes elapsed from symptom onset to LIT. Forty-seven patients (47%) had an excellent outcome (mRs score 0 to 1), 21 (21%) a good outcome (mRs score 2), and 22 (22%) a poor outcome (mRs score 3 to 5). Ten patients (10%) died. Excellent or good outcome (mRs score ≤2) was seen in 59% of patients with M1 or M2 and 95% of those with M3 or M4 MCA occlusions. Recanalization as seen on angiography was complete (thrombolysis in myocardial infarction [TIMI] grade 3) in 20% of patients and partial (TIMI grade 2) in 56% of patients. Age <60 years (P <0.05), low NIHSS score at admission (P <0.00001), and vessel recanalization (P =0.0004) were independently associated with excellent or good outcome and diabetes with poor outcome (P =0.002). Symptomatic cerebral hemorrhage occurred in 7 patients (7%). Conclusions— LIT with urokinase that is administered by a single organized stroke team is safe and can be as efficacious as thrombolysis has been in large multicenter clinical trials.