Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Role of Ideas in Social Action

T HE subject of this paper has given rise to much controversy which has on the whole, turned out to be strikingly inconclusive. It may be suggested that, in part at least, this is a result of two features of the discussion. On the one hand, sides have tended to be taken on the problem in too general terms. Ideas in general have been held either to have or not to have an important role in the determination of action. As opposed to this tendency, I shall attempt here to break the problem down into different parts, each of which fits differently into the analytical theory of action. On the other hand, the discussion has, for the taste of the present writer, been altogether too closely linked to philosophical problems and has seldom been brought fairly into the forum of factual observation and theoretical analysis on the empirical level. This paper is to be regarded as a theoretical introduction to attempts of the latter sort. I am far from believing that social or any other science can live in a kind of philosophical vacuum, completely ignoring all philosophical problems, but even though, as I have stated elsewhere,' scientific and philosophical problems are closely interdependent, they are nevertheless at the same time independent and can be treated in relative abstraction from each other. Above all, from the fact that this paper will maintain that ideas do play an important part in the determination of action, it is not to be inferred that its author is committed to some kind of idealistic metaphysics of the sort from which it has so often been inferred that ideas must arise through some process of "immaculate conception" unsullied by social and economic forces or that they influence action by some automatic and mysterious process of self-realization or "emanation" without relation to the other elements of the social system. The paper, then, will be devoted to the statement of a theoretical framework for the analysis of the role of ideas on an empirical, scientific basis. Without apologies, I shall start with an explicit definition of my subject matter. Ideas, for the purposes of this discussion, are "concepts and propositions, capable of intelligible interpretation in relation to human interests, values and experience. " So far as qua ideas, they constitute systems, the relations between these concepts and propositions are capable of being tested in terms of a certain type of norm, that of logic. The definition just given is so stated that it can serve as the definition of a variable in a system of interdependent variables. That is, it is a combi-
Overweight, Obesity, and Perception of Body Image Among Slum Residents in Nairobi, Kenya, 2008–2009

Introduction The increase in cardiovascular diseases in sub-Saharan Africa has been attributed in part to the changes in lifestyle, and the prevalence of risk factors for cardiovascular disease is higher among urban populations than among nonurban populations. The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of overweight and obesity and examine perceptions of body size differentiated by sex and other determinants among slum dwellers in Nairobi, Kenya. Methods Analysis included 4,934 adults randomly selected from the Korogocho and Viwandani slums of Nairobi. Height and weight were measured during interviews; body mass index (BMI) was calculated. Perceptions of current and ideal body image were determined by using 18 silhouette drawings of body sizes ranging from very thin to very obese. We used multivariate logistic regression analysis to determine predictors of underestimation of body weight among overweight and obese respondents. Results Overall, 43.4% of women and 17.3% of men in the study population were overweight or obese. More than half (53%) of those who were overweight or obese underestimated their weight; 34.6% of women and 16.9% of men did so. In all BMI categories, more than one-third of women and men preferred body sizes classified as overweight or obese. Conclusion This study highlights the prevalence of overweight and obesity and the strong preference for larger body size among adults in the slums of Nairobi. Interventions to educate residents on the health risks associated with excess body weight are necessary as a part of strategies to reduce the prevalence of risk factors for cardiovascular disease in these settlements.
Real world navigation independence in the early blind correlates with differential brain activity associated with virtual navigation

Navigating is a complex cognitive task that places high demands on spatial abilities, particularly in the absence of sight. Significant advances have been made in identifying the neural correlates associated with various aspects of this skill; however, how the brain is able to navigate in the absence of visual experience remains poorly understood. Furthermore, how neural network activity relates to the wide variability in navigational independence and skill in the blind population is also unknown. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we investigated the neural correlates of audio‐based navigation within a large scale, indoor virtual environment in early profoundly blind participants with differing levels of spatial navigation independence (assessed by the Santa Barbara Sense of Direction scale). Performing path integration tasks in the virtual environment was associated with activation within areas of a core network implicated in navigation. Furthermore, we found a positive relationship between Santa Barbara Sense of Direction scores and activation within right temporal parietal junction during the planning and execution phases of the task. These findings suggest that differential navigational ability in the blind may be related to the utilization of different brain network structures. Further characterization of the factors that influence network activity may have important implications regarding how this skill is taught in the blind community. Hum Brain Mapp 35:2768–2778, 2014. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
SrmB, a DEAD-box helicase involved in Escherichia coli ribosome assembly, is specifically targeted to 23S rRNA in vivo

DEAD-box proteins play specific roles in remodeling RNA or ribonucleoprotein complexes. Yet, in vitro, they generally behave as nonspecific RNA-dependent ATPases, raising the question of what determines their specificity in vivo. SrmB, one of the five Escherichia coli DEAD-box proteins, participates in the assembly of the large ribosomal subunit. Moreover, when overexpressed, it compensates for a mutation in L24, the ribosomal protein (r-protein) thought to initiate assembly. Here, using the tandem affinity purification (TAP) procedure, we show that SrmB forms a complex with r-proteins L4, L24 and a region near the 5′-end of 23S rRNA that binds these proteins. In vitro reconstitution experiments show that the stability of this complex reflects cooperative interactions of SrmB with L4, L24 and rRNA. These observations are consistent with an early role of SrmB in assembly and explain the genetic link between SrmB and L24. Besides its catalytic core, SrmB possesses a nonconserved C-terminal extension that, we show, is not essential for SrmB function and specificity. In this regard, SrmB differs from DbpA, another DEAD-box protein involved in ribosome assembly.
Draft Genome Sequences of Bordetella hinzii and Bordetella trematum

ABSTRACT Bordetella hinzii colonizes the respiratory tracts of poultry but can also infect immunocompromised humans. Bordetella trematum, however, only infects humans, causing ear and wound infections. Here, we present the first draft genome sequences of strains B. hinzii ATCC 51730 and B. trematum CCUG 13902.
Computational and Experimental Analysis of the Secretome of Methylococcus capsulatus (Bath)

The Gram-negative methanotroph Methylococcus capsulatus (Bath) was recently demonstrated to abrogate inflammation in a murine model of inflammatory bowel disease, suggesting interactions with cells involved in maintaining mucosal homeostasis and emphasizing the importance of understanding the many properties of M. capsulatus. Secreted proteins determine how bacteria may interact with their environment, and a comprehensive knowledge of such proteins is therefore vital to understand bacterial physiology and behavior. The aim of this study was to systematically analyze protein secretion in M. capsulatus (Bath) by identifying the secretion systems present and the respective secreted substrates. Computational analysis revealed that in addition to previously recognized type II secretion systems and a type VII secretion system, a type Vb (two-partner) secretion system and putative type I secretion systems are present in M. capsulatus (Bath). In silico analysis suggests that the diverse secretion systems in M.capsulatus transport proteins likely to be involved in adhesion, colonization, nutrient acquisition and homeostasis maintenance. Results of the computational analysis was verified and extended by an experimental approach showing that in addition an uncharacterized protein and putative moonlighting proteins are released to the medium during exponential growth of M. capsulatus (Bath).
Our New “Social” Communication Age in Health

In 1962, the noted Communications scholar Marshall McLuhan proclaimed: ‘‘We are today as far into the electric age as the Elizabethans had advanced into the typographical and mechanical age. And we are experiencing the same confusions and indecisions which they had felt when living simultaneously in two contrasted forms of society and experience’’ (quoted in Gleick, 2011). Were he still alive, Marshall McLuhan would have turned 100 earlier this year. It would have been interesting to hear how he viewed the past decade with the explosion of the Internet and the use of telephones. This past decade was witness to unparalleled change as less than half of the people in the world had ever made a phone call at the turn of the century; today over half have access to a mobile phone device. New communication forms have emerged. Broadband with camera phones, new terms, and multibillion dollar industries in what is referred to as the social media space—blogs, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, to name a few. These all have different reach and connectivity, adding diversity, opinions, partisanship, opinions, ‘‘facts,’’ and transitions to our modern day media. Furthermore, search engines on the Internet have developed since the formation of Google in 1998. Google applied some of their acumen to health communication a decade later as they created an early warning system for flu that apparently discovered an outbreak a week before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention identified it through traditional epidemiological and reporting networks. Bing, a rival search engine supported by Microsoft, also is looking for applications in health to apply specialized technology of consumers looking for information on chronic disease such as diabetes linking articles, Twitter feeds, and expert advice into a single search response. There is a great opportunity to leverage these new communication technologies and tools in this era of convergence with social media. Interactive voice and video, linkage of Twitter with voice (speak to tweet), texting with SMS (short message service), linking location-based service applications (e.g., Loopt and Foursquare), and developing smartphone applications for linking health with mobile communication in disease prevention, wellness, and alerts all enhance our abilities for effective health communication.
Poisson-Poisson Cluster SINR Coverage Process

In [1], a new coverage process was defined. It was motivated by the various SINR(Signal to Interference Noise Ratio) models in wireless communications. The underlying point process was assumed to be a Poisson process. In this report, we extend the theory to the case when the underlying point process is a Poisson-Poisson cluster process. Firstly, we define the stochastic geometric model. We give sufficient conditions similar to [1] for the model to be well-defined. Finally, certain results analogous to the cited paper are derived. The reader can also refer to [2] for some more results on such a model and [3] for percolation in such a model. The necessity of this extension arises mainly because in certain models of wireless communications the antennae are clustered or bunched together. And cluster processes model such cases better than Poisson process. Our main goal in this direction is comparison of the two models. In SINR models one would expect the clustering to have a negative impact on the connectivity of the network. The report is organized as follows: Section 2 describes the model in generality and various assumptions for the model to be well-defined. The concluding remark describes the specific model we shall analyse in lot more detail. The sufficient conditions for the assumptions on the model to be satisfied are given in Section 3. Finally, in Section 4 we derive formulae for the coverage probability.
Overview of phase IV clinical trials for postmarket drug safety surveillance: a status report from the ClinicalTrials.gov registry

Objective Phase IV trials are often used to investigate drug safety after approval. However, little is known about the characteristics of contemporary phase IV clinical trials and whether these studies are of sufficient quality to advance medical knowledge in pharmacovigilance. We aimed to determine the fundamental characteristics of phase IV clinical trials that evaluated drug safety using the ClinicalTrials.gov registry data. Methods A data set of 19 359 phase IV clinical studies registered in ClinicalTrials.gov was downloaded. The characteristics of the phase IV trials focusing on safety only were compared with those evaluating both safety and efficacy. We also compared the characteristics of the phase IV trials in three major therapeutic areas (cardiovascular diseases, mental health and oncology). Multivariable logistic regression was used to evaluate factors associated with the use of blinding and randomisation. Results A total of 4772 phase IV trials were identified, including 330 focusing on drug safety alone and 4392 evaluating both safety and efficacy. Most of the phase IV trials evaluating drug safety (75.9%) had enrolment <300 with 96.5% <3000. Among these trials, 8.2% were terminated or withdrawn. Factors associated with the use of blinding and randomisation included the intervention model, clinical specialty and lead sponsor. Conclusions Phase IV trials evaluating drug safety in the ClinicalTrials.gov registry were dominated by small trials that might not have sufficient power to detect less common adverse events. An adequate sample size should be emphasised for phase IV trials with safety surveillance as main task.
Outage capacity based link adaptation for BICM-OFDM with imperfect CSI

Adapting the modulation, power and channel code to the current channel state for OFDM systems is an important topic for future wireless data transmission to fully utilize the given channel conditions. The consideration of practical channel codes in Link Adaptation schemes is still under investigation, especially if imperfect knowledge of the channel conditions is assumed. In this paper, the ramifications of imperfect channel knowledge on capacity based Link Adaptation will be discussed and a solution will be proposed. In particular, robustly adapting the LTE turbo code employed in this paper was found to be extremely important for the overall performance of the system.
Optimal Bit Allocation in Subband Loop Coding for Multimedia Processing

Subband signal decomposition has been successfully applied to multimedia applications. Closed-loop coding, where quantization noise feedback at the encoder is included, and open-loop coding are investigated. Closed-loop coding has several advantages. The Gaussian rate-distortion models are presented, and analytical solutions of the optimal bit allocation problem are derived. Key-Words: Subband coding, signal decomposition, loop coding, multimedia, bit allocation, compression, rate-distortion
Qualitative Description of the Prevalence and Use of Anabolic Androgenic Steroids by United States Powerlifters

Powerlifters have been suspected to be a population wherein use of anabolic androgenic steroids is prevalent (Yesalis, Herrick, & Buckley, 1988) To access commentary from these athletes on issues related to these drugs and the effectiveness of doping controls, a survey was developed. From 28 U.S. Powerlifting Team members who competed internationally since 1988, 26 were contacted by mail, and 15 questionnaires were returned. The questionnaire solicited yes/no responses and qualitative descriptions about current and previous use of anabolic androgenic steroids in powerlifting. Analysis indicated that ten U.S. Powerlifting Team members admitted to using these drugs, and five athletes admitted to beating the International Olympic Committee's doping control procedures. Reported use of anabolic androgenic steroids by these athletes was consistent with data presented by Yesalis, et al. and illustrated continued discrepancy between admitted use of these drugs prior to or during national and international events and the lack of reported positive test data. Discussion focused on the value of this study to elicit in an athlete's own words commentary specific to the use of anabolic androgenic steroids and the need for more effective doping controls.
Formal transformation of a KPN specification to a GALS implementation

Kahn process networks (KPNs) provide a model of computation for streaming audio, video and various multimedia applications. However, the KPN model consists of unbounded FIFOs between these communicating processes which need to be realized by other means. Application of a design transformation process to a KPN style specification towards a Globally asynchronous locally synchronous (GALS) implementation is one way of achieving this. Furthermore, this transformation process needs to preserve the Kahn principle. In this paper, our main contribution is the presentation of one such refinement based design transformation that preserves the Kahn principle. We present correctness preserving transformation towards a lookup-based architecture where the communication between processes is facilitated by a shared on-chip lookup storage structure. This refinement methodology is generic, and various alternate schemes of GALS implementation can be derived.
Introduction: The effectiveness of impact assessment instruments

The global application of impact assessment instruments to achieve a variety of policy integration goals (e.g. the mainstreaming of environmental, gender or economic efficiency concerns) continues to proliferate. These instruments represent important components of contemporary political governance and hence are an important locus for applied research. This special issue of Impact Assessment and Project Appraisal critically examines ‘state-of-the-art’ knowledge and understanding of the effectiveness of impact assessment instruments. Six articles explore this subject from a variety of orientations (in terms of theoretical versus empirical emphasis, policy integration concerns, contributors' beliefs and framing etc.). Individually and cumulatively, these articles make a powerful contribution to learning about the ‘thorny’ issue of effectiveness and its implications for the theory and practice of impact assessment.
Modulation-Specific and Laminar-Dependent Effects of Acetylcholine on Visual Responses in the Rat Primary Visual Cortex

Acetylcholine (ACh) is secreted from cholinergic neurons in the basal forebrain to regions throughout the cerebral cortex, including the primary visual cortex (V1), and influences neuronal activities across all six layers via a form of diffuse extrasynaptic modulation termed volume transmission. To understand this effect in V1, we performed extracellular multi-point recordings of neuronal responses to drifting sinusoidal grating stimuli from the cortical layers of V1 in anesthetized rats and examined the modulatory effects of topically administered ACh. ACh facilitated or suppressed the visual responses of individual cells with a laminar bias: response suppression prevailed in layers 2/3, whereas response facilitation prevailed in layer 5. ACh effects on the stimulus contrast-response function showed that ACh changes the response gain upward or downward in facilitated or suppressed cells, respectively. Next, ACh effects on the signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio and the grating-phase information were tested. The grating-phase information was calculated as the F1/F0 ratio, which represents the amount of temporal response modulation at the fundamental frequency (F1) of a drifting grating relative to the mean evoked response (F0). In facilitated cells, ACh improved the S/N ratio, while in suppressed cells it enhanced the F1/F0 ratio without any concurrent reduction in the S/N ratio. These effects were predominantly observed in regular-spiking cells, but not in fast-spiking cells. Electrophysiological and histological findings suggest that ACh promotes the signaling of grating-phase information to higher-order areas by a suppressive effect on supragranular layers and enhances feedback signals with a high S/N ratio to subcortical areas by a facilitatory effect on infragranular layers. Thus, ACh distinctly and finely controls visual information processing in a manner that is specific for the modulation and cell type and is also laminar dependent.
Improved quality of life after lung volume reduction surgery

Lung volume reduction surgery (LVRS) improves dyspnoea, pulmonary function, and physical performance in patients with severe pulmonary emphysema. This study investigated the impact of LVRS on health-related quality of life (HRQL) over a 2-yr period following surgery. Thirty-nine consecutive patients were prospectively assessed before LVRS, and followed over 24 months postoperatively. The assessments included pulmonary function, dyspnoea (Medical Research Council (MRC) dyspnoea score), 6-min walking distance (6MWD) and HRQL using the Short Form 36-item questionnaire (SF-36) . Several domains of SF-36 improved considerably over 2 yrs after surgery: Physical Functioning: 39±4 (mean±sem) versus 16±2 (p<0.01); Vitality: 51±3 versus 32±3 (p<0.01); Social Functioning: 72±4 versus 51±5 (p<0.01). Also, improvements in pulmonary function (forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV1): 27±1% predicted, residual volume (RV)/total lung capacity (TLC): 0.65±0.01), 6 MWD (274±16 m) and dyspnoea (MRC: 3.9±01) were sustained for up to 2 yrs after LVRS (FEV1 36±2% pred, RV/TLC: 0.58±0.02; 6 MWD: 342±19 m; MRC: 2.0±0.2; p<0.05). In patients with severe emphysema, lung volume reduction surgery had positive effects on health-related quality of life and pulmonary function over 2 yrs.