Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Inked Lives: Tattoos, Identity, and Power

Tattoos are culturally rich forms of self-expressio n and fulfillment, and hold power for their owners, both internally and externally. The p urpose of this study is to examine the ways, and the reasons, tattoos are important Body Documents of identity, as well as their perceived role in making their wearer distinct within specific cul tural environments. I examined this dynamic through a summer of participant observation and a s erie of interviews with participants within the Phoenix, Arizona area during the summer of 2012 . This thesis finds that tattoos are powerful identity markers because of their social projection s a d meanings in the greater social formation. The power of tattoos lays in their oppositional nat ure to the status quo, and the ability of people with tattoos to use them as tools for contesting ex isting power structures and accepted body ideologies.
A note on spontaneously broken Lorentz invariance

We consider a relativistic effective field theory of vector boson whose vacuum exhibits spontaneous breaking of Lorentz invariance. We argue that a simple model of this type, considered recently by Kraus and Tomboulis, is obstructed from having a ultraviolet completion which is unitary, analytic, and local, according to the diagnostic recently suggested by Adams, Arkani-Hamed, Dubovsky, Nicolis, and Rattazzi.
UC Davis UC Davis Previously Published Works Title The regulatory function of social referencing in preschoolers with Down syndrome or

Background: An important developmental task is to learn to recognize another person as a source of information and to utilize this information as a method of learning about the surrounding world. This socially guided form of learning, referred to as social referencing, is critical for the development of children’s understanding of other people, themselves and their surrounding world. In the present project, the regulatory function of social referencing was examined in two genetic disorders that are characterized by differing patterns of socio-cognitive development: Down syndrome (DS) and Williams syndrome (WS). Methods: Participants were 20 children with DS and 20 children with WS aged 42 to 71 months, matched on chronological age and gender. Each child participated in four studies: one study in which we examined performance in a social referencing paradigm and three studies in which we considered performance on tasks designed to tap each of three component abilities (initiating eye contact, gaze following and emotional responsivity) important for success in social referencing. Results: The majority of children in both groups demonstrated positive behavioral responses regarding the stimulus in the Social Referencing task when the adult communicated a joyful message but did not regulate their own behavior in accordance with the adult’s expression of fear. Between-group differences were observed in both conditions, with most differences indicating more advanced socio-communicative competence for children with DS than for children with WS even though the overall intellectual abilities and receptive language abilities of the children with WS were significantly higher than were those of the children with DS. The results of follow-up studies indicated that children with DS were more likely to initiate eye contact (unsolicited) and to follow another person’s gaze in triadic situations than were children with WS. Neither group regulated their behavior in response to expressions of fear. Conclusions: These findings provide new insight into the development of the social cognitive phenotypes associated with DS and WS. These social cognitive differences found during the preschool years likely contribute to the differing phenotypes observed later in life between individuals with DS and individuals with WS.
Discussion Paper No . 327 Incentives , Reputation and theAllocation of Authority

We address the question how much authority a principal should delegate to a manager with conflicting interests and uncertain ability in a context in which the manager has both compensationbased and reputational incentives. The optimal level of authority balances the value of the manager’s decision-making expertise against the cost of ensuring that the manager uses his discretion productively. Reputational incentives reduce the necessary monetary incentives to discourage purely opportunistic behavior, but may cause the manager to pursue conservative courses of action to preserve his reputation. This undermines the benefits of delegating control, leading to decreased managerial authority and stronger monetary incentives. When the principal can commit to long-term contracts, she eliminates this conservative bias by rewarding a successful manager with greater future compensation and authority than would be optimal in a static setting. Early in the relationship the principal may delegate additional authority in order to screen for managers of high ability. JEL Classifications: D86, L14, L23, M52, M54
JavaSketchIt: Issues in Sketching the Look of User Interfaces

We present a visual approach to layout static components of user interfaces as hand-drawn compositions of simple geometric shapes, based on sketch recognition. We have defined a visual grammar using drawing data from target users, where we tried to figure out how people sketch interfaces and what combinations of shapes are more commonly used to define widgets. From these we built our grammar and implemented a prototype, JavaSketchIt, that allows creating user interfaces through hand-drawn geometric shapes, identified by a gesture recognizer. This prototype generates a Java interface, whose layout can be beautified using an a posteriori set of grammar rules (e.g. to align and group objects). To validate our approach, we conducted usability studies to compare our approach with a commercial system (JBuilder). Besides a measurable speed advantage in drawing interfaces, users found our system more comfortable, natural and intuitive to use, than the competing product, as demonstrated by post‐experiment inquiries.
Domain names abuse and TLDs: From monetization towards mitigation

Hidden behind domain names, there are lucrative (and ingenious) business models that misuse/abuse the DNS namespace and employ a diversified form of monetization. To curb some of those abuses, many research works have been proposed. However, while having a clear contribution and advancing the state-of-the-art, these works are constrained by their limited datasets and none of them present a survey on the forms of DNS abuse. In this paper, we address these limitations by presenting a case study in one top-level domain (TLD) operator (.nl) with diverse longitudinal datasets.We then cover eight business models that DNS abusers employ and their respective monetization form, and discuss how TLD operators can employ these datasets to detect these forms of abuse.
Compile-time concurrent marking write barrier removal

Garbage collectors incorporating concurrent marking to cope with large live data sets and stringent pause time constraints have become common in recent years. The snapshot-at-the-beginning style of concurrent marking has several advantages over the incremental update alternative, but one main disadvantage: it requires the mutator to execute a significantly more expensive write barrier. This paper demonstrates that a large fraction of these write barriers are unnecessary, and may be eliminated by static analysis.
Nanolithography by non-contact AFM-induced local oxidation: fabrication of tunnelling barriers suitable for single-electron devices

We study local oxidation induced by dynamic atomic force microscopy (AFM), commonly called tapping mode AFM. This minimizes the field-induced forces, which cause the tip to blunt, and enables us to use very fine tips. We are able to fabricate Ti- line grids with 18 nm period and well-defined isolating barriers as small as 15 nm. These junctions show a non-linear current-voltage characteristic and an exponential dependence of the conductance on the oxide width, indicating tunnelling as the dominant conduction mechanism. From the conductance-barrier width dependence we derive a barrier height of . Numerical calculations of the lateral field distribution for different tip geometries allow us to design the optimum tip for the most localized electric field. The electron beam deposition technique makes it possible to produce tips of the desired geometry.
Antinociceptive effect of aqueous extracts from the bark of Croton guatemalensis Lotsy in mice

Croton guatemalensis Lotsy (CGL), known as “copalchi” in Chiapas, Mexico, is used for the treatment of fever, abdominal pain and malaria and also as a remedy for chills and for treating rheumatism. The aim of this study was to evaluate whether aqueous extracts from the bark of this plant possesses indeed antinociceptive properties by using two different animal models of nociception, the acetic acid-induced writhing test and the hot plate model. The results showed that i.p. administration of this extract (0, 100, 200 and 400 mg/kg) 30 min prior testing had significant dose-dependent antinociceptive effects in the acetic acid-induced writhing test and that the reduction of writhings (85.5 % as compared to the control) at the highest dose tested is similar to that exhibited by dipyrone (250 mg/kg). This effect was not reversed by naloxone, a non-selective opioid receptor antagonist, suggesting that the endogenous opioid system does not underlie the antinociceptive effects of CGL in the acetic acid-induced writhing test. No effects were however observed in the hot-plate model. Our results indicate that aqueous extracts from Croton guatemalensis bark contain pharmacologically active constituents endowed with antinociceptive activity. It is suggested that cyclooxygenase inhibition might be at least partially involved in the antinociceptive effects of this extract.
Inconsistent Heuristics

In the field of heuristic search it is well-known that improving the quality of an admissible heuristic can significantly decrease the search effort required to find an optimal solution. Existing literature often assumes that admissible heuristics are consistent, implying that consistency is a desirable attribute. To the contrary, this paper shows that an inconsistent heuristic can be preferable to a consistent heuristic. Theoretical and empirical results show that, in many cases, inconsistency can be used to achieve large performance improvements.
Serum cytochrome c indicates in vivo apoptosis and can serve as a prognostic marker during cancer therapy

Despite significant progress in cancer therapy, the outcome of the treatment is often unfavorable. Better treatment monitoring would not only allow an individual more effective, patient‐adjusted therapy, but also it would eliminate some of the side effects. Using a cytochrome c ELISA that was modified to increase sensitivity, we demonstrate that serum cytochrome c is a sensitive apoptotic marker in vivo reflecting therapy‐induced cell death burden. Furthermore, increased serum cytochrome c level is a negative prognostic marker. Cancer patients whose serum cytochrome c level was normal 3 years ago have a twice as high probability to be still alive, as judged from sera samples collected for 3 years, analyzed recently and matched with survival data. Moreover, we show that serum cytochrome c and serum LDH‐activity reflect different stages and different forms of cell death. Cellular cytochrome c release is specific for apoptosis, whereas increased LDH activity is an indicator of (secondary) necrosis. Whereas serum LDH activity reflects the “global” degree of cell death over a period of time, the sensitive cytochrome c‐based method allows confirmation of the individual cancer therapy‐induced and spontaneous cell death events. The combination of cytochrome c with tissue‐specific markers may provide the foundation for precise monitoring of apoptosis in vivo, by “lab‐on‐the‐chip” technology. © 2005 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Why the PFP Model Reproduces the Internet?

The Internet topology at the autonomous systems (AS) level exhibits a complex structure. The positive-feedback preference (PFP) model was designed to capture two properties of the Internet, namely the degree distribution and the rich-club connectivity. It has been a pleasant surprise that the model also reproduces a large number of other properties of the Internet, including the degree correlation, the triangle coefficient, the shortest path length etc. Here we explain that the success of the PFP model is due to the inherent structural constraints present in the Internet topology. This work advances our understanding of the Internet structure. It also highlights the importance for a network model to choose carefully its target properties. For example, as we show, an Internet model based on the degree distribution only could produce network structures completely different from the real Internet.
Efficacy of Some Botanicals for the Control of Wet Rot Disease on Mechanically Injured Sweet Potato Caused by Rhizopus Stolonifer in Bauchi State

Laboratory experiment was conducted in the Microbiology Laboratory of School of Science and Science Technology, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University, Bauchi, Nigeria in May, 2012 to determine the antifungal effect of different concentrations of neem and moringa seed extracts on wet rot disease of sweet potato. Moringa and neem seed extracts each with four varying concentrations (30,60,90,and 120g/L) were evaluated along with carbendazim and untreated sweet potato serving as a control constittuted the treatments. The treatment were laid out in Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with three replications. The result showed that neem seed extact was significantly (P < 0.01) better than th moringa seed extract in controlling the disease. Treatment of the sweet potato with varying concentrations of neem and moringa seed extracts significantly (P < 0.01) inhibited radial mycilial growth of R. stolonifer and also reduce the weight loss of sweet potatoes caused by R. stolonifer compared with the control, except the application of 25g/1 of moringa seed extract. Preventive method of control significantly reduce the disease than the curative method. The effectiveness of the two plants seed extracts compared favourably with carbendzim. The study revealed that there exist a potential in natural plant products for the control of crop diseases, and if fully exploited, they can replace chemical pesticide in the control of crop diseses. It is therefore recommended that farmers should used 90g/1 or120g/1 as postharvest treatment for sweet potatoes before storage as control measure for R. stolonifer.
Selenium inhibition of survivin expression by preventing Sp1 binding to its promoter

Survivin, an antiapoptotic protein highly expressed in cancer, regulates multiple cellular network associated with cancer cell viability and drug resistance. Inhibition of survivin expression has been pursued as a valid cancer therapeutic target. In this study, we showed that selenium, an effective chemopreventive agent for many types of cancers, down-regulated survivin expression. Selenium inhibited survivin expression in both mRNA and protein levels in a dose- and time-dependent manner. Using a series of survivin promoter–luciferase constructs, a 37-bp DNA element in the survivin core promoter region that mediates the ability of selenium to inhibit survivin transcription was identified. Gel mobility shift assays and chromatin immunoprecipitation analyses revealed that selenium prevents the binding of Sp1 or Sp1-like proteins to the 37-bp cis-acting DNA element in the survivin promoter. Furthermore, inhibition of survivin expression by small interfering RNA enhanced selenium's inhibitory effects on cell growth, whereas overexpression of survivin in LNCaP human prostate cancer cells desensitized cancer cells to selenium effect, suggesting that the expression of survivin plays an important role in determining the response of cancer cells to selenium. Taken together, these results suggest that selenium down-regulated survivin expression by preventing the binding of Sp1 or Sp1-like proteins to the promoter of survivin, which contributes at least in part to the inhibitory effect of selenium on survivin gene transcription. In addition, down-regulation of survivin expression may account for one of the molecular mechanisms of the anticancer effects of selenium. [Mol Cancer Ther 2007;6(9):2572–80]
MPSCTP: A Simple and Efficient Multipath Algorithm for SCTP

A simple multipath algorithm is proposed to augment Stream Control Transmission Protocol (SCTP) so that multiple available paths may be used concurrently. This requires an additional sequence number in the SCTP header for packets of each path and additional algorithms to handle the reordering that may naturally arise due to flow division over multiple paths. Performance of the proposed protocol has been studied using ns2 based simulation. The results indicate that our algorithm reduces the transmission delay and improves the throughput of the network.
Protractor3D: a closed-form solution to rotation-invariant 3D gestures

Protractor 3D is a gesture recognizer that extends the 2D touch screen gesture recognizer Protractor to 3D gestures. It inherits many of Protractor's desirable properties, such as high recognition rate, low computational and low memory requirements, ease of implementation, ease of customization, and low number of required training samples. Protractor 3D is based on a closed-form solution to finding the optimal rotation angle between two gesture traces involving quaternions. It uses a nearest neighbor approach to classify input gestures. It is thus well-suited for application in resource-constrained mobile devices. We present the design of the algorithm and a study that evaluated its performance.
Energy Constraint Scarce Wavelet Packet Libraries for Image Compression 1

In this paper we introduce a generalization of the best basis wavelet packet method which selects a suboptimal best basis out of a restricted library of wavelet packet bases. For a given image this restricted library is generated by a 2D separable multiresolution analysis which discriminates branches of the resulting quadtree structured representation of the image according to a measure of energy-compaction. Thus we get a family of scarce libraries (w.r.t. the full wavelet packet library) parameterized by a so-called energy-threshold. This energythreshold parameter allows a truncation of energetically irrelevant branches and hence a control of the complexity of the best-basis algorithm ranging from the low complexity standard DWT to the high complexity full best-basis algorithm. Our experimental results for image coding applications show that the rate-distortion (RD) performance increases in distinguished (image dependent) jumps as the energy-threshold decreases. As a consequence, the instrument of energy-thresholding can be used to nd optima with relatively high RD performance and relatively low complexity.
Modeling Operational Risk Based on Multiple Experts’ Opinion

While the Basel II accord has now gone live in most parts of the world, many discrepancies still remain on advanced modeling techniques for operational risk among large international banks. The two major families of models include the loss distribution approaches (LDAs) that focus on observed past internal and external loss events and the scenario-based techniques that use subjective opinions from experts as the starting point to determine the regulatory capital charge to cover operational risk. A major methodological challenge is the combination of both techniques so as to fulfill Basel II requirements. In this chapter we discuss and investigate the use of various alternatives to model expert opinion in a sound statistical way so as to allow for subsequent integration with loss distributions fitted on internal and/or external data. A numerical example supports the analysis and shows that solutions exist to merge information arising from both sources.
RGloVe: An Improved Approach of Global Vectors for Distributional Entity Relation Representation

Most of the previous works on relation extraction between named entities are often limited to extracting the pre-defined types; which are inefficient for massive unlabeled text data. Recently; with the appearance of various distributional word representations; unsupervised methods for many natural language processing (NLP) tasks have been widely researched. In this paper; we focus on a new finding of unsupervised relation extraction; which is called distributional relation representation. Without requiring the pre-defined types; distributional relation representation aims to automatically learn entity vectors and further estimate semantic similarity between these entities. We choose global vectors (GloVe) as our original model to train entity vectors because of its excellent balance between local context and global statistics in the whole corpus. In order to train model more efficiently; we improve the traditional GloVe model by using cosine similarity between entity vectors to approximate the entity occurrences instead of dot product. Because cosine similarity can convert vector to unit vector; it is intuitively more reasonable and more easily converge to a local optimum. We call the improved model RGloVe. Experimental results on a massive corpus of Sina News show that our proposed model outperforms the traditional global vectors. Finally; a graph database of Neo4j is introduced to store these relationships between named entities. The most competitive advantage of Neo4j is that it provides a highly accessible way to query the direct and indirect relationships between entities.
Der Einfluss von Motor Imagery und vorbereitenden Hoppings auf die Leistungsfähigkeit und die neuro-muskuläre Aktivität in maximalen Drop Jumps

in general . III Allgemeine Zusammenfassung . IV Abkürzungsverzeichnis. VI 1 Allgemeine Einleitung . 1 1.1 Motor Imagery. 2 1.2 Vorbereitende Hoppings . 3 1.3 Fragestellungen & Hypothesen . 6 1.4 Methoden . 7 1.4.1 Leistungsfähigkeit . 7 1.4.2 Neuro-muskuläre Aktivität . 8 2 STUDIE 1: Acute effects of Motor Imagery on Performance and Neuromuscular Control in Maximal Drop Jumps . 12 2.1 Abstract . 12 2.2 Introduction . 13 2.3 Methods . 14 2.4 Results . 19 2.5 Discussion . 23 3 STUDIE 2: Repetitive hops induce postactivation potentiation in triceps surae as well as an increase in the jump height of subsequent maximal drop jumps . 27 3.1 Abstract . 27 3.2 Introduction . 28 3.3 Methods . 30 3.4 Results . 36 3.5 Discussion . 42 4 STUDIE 3: Reaktive Hoppings als direkte Vorbereitung für maximale Niederhochsprünge – Einfluss der Pausenlänge . 49 4.1 Zusammenfassung . 49 4.2 Einleitung . 50 4.3 Methoden . 51 4.4 Ergebnisse. 54 4.5 Diskussion . 56