Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Religion, Race and Psychological Well-Being

Previous research has neglected an important area of inquiry, the relationship of religiosity and psychological well-being. The present study attempts to rectify this deficiency. It examines this relationship using data from the 1972-1982 NORC General Social Survey (Davis, 1972). Focusing on the issue of race, the sample was broken down into blacks and whites. Religiosity was found to be a better predictor of well-being than previous research had indicated. Religiosity did especially well in predicting the well-being of black men and women.
Dynamic capacity rationing for a make-to-order manufacturer in a multi-channel supply chain

This paper considers the capacity rationing problem for a make-to-order manufacturer facing random demand from both a brick-and-mortar retailer and his own online store. As the marginal profit from the online store is higher than that from the retailer, the manufacturer is willing to set higher priority to the orders from the online store in case of capacity shortage. Assuming a compound demand process at each channel, we formulate the manufacturer's problem and identify the optimal rationing level of capacity below which the orders from the retailer will be rejected. The effectiveness of capacity rationing is investigated with numeric simulations under a wide array of conditions characterized by variations in factors including demand substitution rate between channels, prices in the system, and demand rates at the channels. The results show that the rationing policy outperforms the first-come-firstserve policy in most cases, especially when the available capacity is very tight. Thus capacity rationing could serve as an efficient management tool for capacitated manufacturers in multi-channel supply chains.
Native Women's Studies: Dialoguing with Community, with Academia and with Feminism

At Malaspina University College, a collaborative effort between members of the First Nations Studies and Women's Studies Departments produced a number of courses in the Women's Studies Department related specifically to and taught by Native women. These courses have been very successful in attracting and retaining a significant number of Native women students. Thirty current and former Native women students worked in collaboration with the researcher (a Native women's studies instructor) to explore, through dialogue, questions emerging from the students' experiences in academic women's studies. Analysis of interviews (individual and focus group) reveals three general areas of focus related to the women's experiences: community, academia and feminism. The women talk of their commitment to the re-creation and maintenance of their respective communities, and to their dreams of a larger, inclusive community where they can be present as Native women. This position is both supported and antagonized by their lives in academia, where they struggle continually with the threat of failure to measure up to standards set by the institution, and with non Native people's general ignorance of the histories and cultures of Native peoples. The Native women's studies courses offer a much-appreciated place for the women to congregate in significant numbers to dialogue on issues particular to them. Paradoxically, they engage in intense and often hostile dialogue with the feminisms they encounter in mainstream Women's Studies. They struggle to reconcile feminism with their positionings as Native women, a conundrum that brings into question the purpose and role of Native women's courses in a mainstream Women's Studies department.
Mission-oriented design: A fully autonomous mobile urban robot

This paper describes a fully autonomous mobile urban robot-X1, which can perform multiple tasks autonomously in an unknown urban environment without human guidance, including mobile reconnaissance, target searching, and object manipulation. The mission-oriented design, which allows reliability and extensibility of the robotic system, includes a high degree of modularity for both hardware and software architecture, and coordination between tasks. Our strategy specifically addresses fundamental issues such as autonomous navigation in unknown urban environments and vision-based object manipulation. All the functionalities have been proved effective in the real urban environments. The robot platform is being built to provide valuable experiences on autonomous robotics research.
Are trees able to grow in periods of stem shrinkage?

Separating continuously measured stem radius (SR) fluctuations into growth-induced irreversible stem expansion (GRO) and tree water deficit-induced reversible stem shrinkage (TWD) requires a conceptualization of potential growth processes that may occur during periods of shrinking and expanding SR below a precedent maximum. Here, we investigated two physiological concepts: the linear growth (LG) concept, assuming linear growth, versus the zero growth (ZG) concept, assuming no growth during periods of stem shrinkage. We evaluated the physiological mechanisms underlying these two concepts and assessed their respective plausibilities using SR data obtained from 15 deciduous and evergreen trees. The application of the LG concept produced steady growth rates, whereas growth rates varied strongly under the ZG concept, more in accordance with mechanistic expectations. Further, growth increased for a maximum of 120 min after periods of stem shrinkage, indicating limited growth activity during those periods. However, this extra growth was found to be a small fraction of total growth only. Furthermore, TWD under the ZG concept was better explained by a hydraulic plant model than TWD under the LG concept. We conclude that periods of stem shrinkage allow for very little growth in the four tree species investigated. However, further studies should focus on obtaining independent growth data to ultimately validate these findings.
Protective role of ferulic acid on carbon tetrachloride-induced hyperlipidemia and histological alterations in experimental rats

Abstract Background: The present study aimed to evaluate the antihyperlipidemic effect of ferulic acid (FA) on carbon tetrachloride (CCl4)-treated rats. Methods: Female albino rats of the Wistar strain were used in the present study. The rats were divided into four groups: groups 1 and 4 received physiological saline (3 mL/kg body weight/week) by subcutaneous injection, whereas groups 2 and 3 received a subcutaneous injection of CCl4 (3 mL/kg body weight/week) for a total period of 12 weeks. In addition, groups 3 and 4 were administered FA (20 mL/kg body weight) every day for the last 90 days. Results: The results showed significantly (p≤0.05) elevated levels of cholesterol, triglycerides (TG), and free fatty acids (FFA) in the liver and kidney of CCl4-treated rats as compared with those of the controls. In addition, the levels of cholesterol, FFA, phospholipids (PL), and TG were elevated significantly in the circulation. Administration of FA effectively reduced these levels of lipids in the plasma, liver, and kidney of CCl4-treated rats. The PL level was significantly decreased in the liver and kidney of CCl4-treated rats and was positively modulated by FA treatment. Our histopathological observations were also in correlation with the biochemical parameters. Conclusions: From the results obtained, we could conclude that FA effectively protects the system against hyperlipidemia and may be an effective therapeutic agent for the treatment of this disorder.
The Results of the 2009 Elderhostel Program in Taiwan

Since 2008, Taiwan's Ministry of Education has sponsored a number of short-term residential educational programs aimed at senior citizens and administered by local colleges and universities. In 2009, the Ministry of Education named a project the Elderhostel Program (notwithstanding the lack of involvement by the United States organization, which owns the English name as a trademark), and commissioned 28 colleges and universities to provide five-day residential educational programs to senior citizens age 55 or over. The present study analyzes the results of the 2009 Elderhostel Program. A total of 560 questionnaires were sent to the 28 schools, each of which randomly selected 20 participants to be respondents. A total of 380 of the questionnaires were returned, and 365 (or 65%) were selected. Three conclusions were drawn from the present study: (a) in general, participants were satisfied with the programs they had attended; (b) most were willing to participate in similar programs in the future; and (c) most report being happier after the programs. Based on these findings, suggestions for the Ministry of Education, colleges and universities, educators, organizers, and policy-makers who work with senior citizens are proposed.
7 Conclusion

12 With the specifications by rules, the length of the description corresponding to any particular backend is very short (up to 10-15 lines of code). Eventually, during the second step of the result page scanning, the group wrapper loads into the main memory an article specification corresponding to a given backend, and uses it for extracting and putting article data into corresponding output attributes. The main benefits of the two-step approach lies in its simplicity and the ease of maintaining a large set of wrappers. Controlled access to structured Web-based information across heterogeneous information repositories is a challenge for any broker (mediator/trading/facilitator) system. In this paper we described the approach for sophisticated wrapper design as followed in the Knowledge Broker project. After a short problem description, we classified the target environment (html-pages) the wrappers work with, discussed some html-quality levels, and explained the reliability problem for the result page analysis. The wrapper design itself was described for three different approaches: the manual coding approach , the parsing by tag-marks, and, finally, the specification by rules. Throughout the paper, we addressed the lessons learned during the course of the project. Acknowledgments We wish to thank Natalie Glance for the careful reading of the manuscript. We also wish to thank Jean-Marc Andreoli, Laurent Julliard, Remo Pareschi and Jutta Wil-lamowski for helpful discussions and comments. We thank Michael Ley from University of Trier, Germany, for the help in working with the Databases and Logic Programming server.
Kinetics of hemoglobin and albumin adducts in rabbits subchronically exposed to benzo[a]pyrene.

Benzo[a]pyrene (BaP) can form adducts with proteins after activation to a diolepoxide. Benzo[a]pyrene-hemoglobin and BaP-albumin adducts were measured in rabbits exposed to 0.5 or 5 mumol.kg-1.week-1 for a total of 11 weeks (last injection on Day 75). Each dose group of nine rabbits was divided into three equal subgroups. For each dose, one subgroup received a single weekly injection (Mondays), the second had two equal weekly injections (Mondays and Thursdays), and the third had five weekly injections (Mondays through Fridays). Blood was collected prior to injection on Days 0, 7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49, 56, 77, 78, 80, 84, 92, 108, and 140 for adducts determinations, with Day 0 being a Monday. The measured concentration of hemoglobin adducts was independent of the frequency of administration for a given total weekly dose giving support to its value as a "biointegrator. " In addition, animals injected with 0.5 and 5 mumol BaP.kg-1.week-1 had respective mean adduct concentrations of 0.3 and 3 pmol/g hemoglobin. The blood concentration of albumin adducts was related to the frequency of injection with the animals receiving one, two and five injections/week having the lowest, intermediate, and highest adduct concentrations, respectively. Animals injected with 0.5 and 5 mumol BaP.kg-1.week-1 had respective mean adduct concentrations of 5 and 20 pmol/g which are 17 and 7 times higher than their corresponding hemoglobin adducts' values. The corresponding albumin adducts' half-lives calculated from the day of cessation of exposure were 5.8 and 9.6 days, compared with a reported 5.7 days for the half-life of the intact protein. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Object Oriented Hybrid Software Engineering Process ( SEP ) model for Small Scale Software Development Firms

Software Engineering Process (SEP) is a time sequenced set of activities to transform users’ requirements into a software. There are many SEP and methodologies, namely Rational Unified Process (RUP), Object-Oriented Process, Environment, and Notation (OPEN), Extreme Programming (XP), etc, having support for different scales of development. All these methodologies are mostly Object Oriented and tailored for mid to large scale of development. In most of the cases these process models are very elaborative that leads to the necessity of having mentors to configure a specific process. This paper actually distinguishes some characteristics of software development activities of Small Scale Software Development Firm (SSSDF) and hence, proposes a preconfigured hybrid model of SEP in the light of few third generation methodologies. Firstly, this paper provides a brief comparison of the existing third generation methodologies. Then it depicts some development characteristics of SSSDF which are actually revealed from survey of 15 BSDF. And finally a hybrid model of SEP is realized.
An Eigendecomposition-Based Algorithm for Frequencies Estimation of Two Sinusoids

This letter presents a new algorithm for frequencies estimation of two sinusoids observed in additive white Gaussian noise. By uniformly sampling the received signal, a received vector and its auto-correlation matrix are obtained. It is interesting to observe that the elements in the eigenvectors corresponding to the two largest eigenvalues of this auto-correlation matrix contain the information of frequencies. We then decode the information contained in the eigenvectors to obtain the frequencies by taking advantages of a set of special matrices formed from the elements in the eigenvectors. The proposed method can also be used to find the frequency of a single sinusoid observed in noise. Numerical results of the proposed method are obtained by simulations, and are used to compare with some existing methods.
Improving Face Detection with TOF Cameras

A face detection method based on a boosted classifier using images from a time-of-flight sensor is presented. We show that the performance of face detection can be improved when using both depth and gray scale images and that the common use of integration of hypotheses for verification can be relaxed. Based on the detected face we employ an active contour method on depth images for full head segmentation.
Dissemination of pCT-Like IncK Plasmids Harboring CTX-M-14 Extended-Spectrum β-Lactamase among Clinical Escherichia coli Isolates in the United Kingdom

ABSTRACT IncK plasmids encoding CTX-M-14 extended-spectrum β-lactamase (ESBL) and highly related to plasmid pCT were detected in 13 of 67 (19%) human clinical isolates of Escherichia coli with a group 9 CTX-M-type ESBL from the United Kingdom and in 2 quality assurance isolates. None of these E. coli strains was related to the cattle strain from which pCT was originally characterized.
Sequence, Structure, and Binding Analysis of Cyclodextrinase (TK1770) from T. kodakarensis (KOD1) Using an In Silico Approach

Thermostable cyclodextrinase (Tk1770 CDase) from hyperthermophilic archaeon Thermococcus kodakarensis (KOD1) hydrolyzes cyclodextrins into linear dextrins. The sequence of Tk1770 CDase retrieved from UniProt was aligned with sequences of sixteen CD hydrolyzing enzymes and a phylogenetic tree was constructed using Bayesian inference. The homology model of Tk1770 CDase was constructed and optimized with Modeller v9.14 program. The model was validated with ProSA server and PROCHECK analysis. Four conserved regions and the catalytic triad consisting of Asp411, Glu437, and Asp502 of GH13 family were identified in catalytic site. Also an additional fifth conserved region downstream to the fourth region was also identified. The structure of Tk1770 CDase consists of an additional N′-domain and a helix-loop-helix motif that is conserved in all archaeal CD hydrolyzing enzymes. The N′-domain contains an extended loop region that forms a part of catalytic domain and plays an important role in stability and substrate binding. The docking of substrate into catalytic site revealed the interactions with different conserved residues involved in substrate binding and formation of enzyme-substrate complex.
Correlating habenular subnuclei in rat and mouse by using topographic, morphological, and cytochemical criteria

The mammalian habenulae consist of medial (MHb) and lateral (LHb) nuclear complexes. Especially the LHb has received much interest because it has been recognized as the potential center of an “anti‐reward system. ” Subnuclear organization and connectivity of the LHb are well known. In contrast, criteria to classify habenular neurons into distinct groups with potentially different biological functions are missing, most likely as a result of the lack of appropriate marker proteins. Actually, a huge amount of data concerning the localization of more than 20,000 mouse protein genes is provided in the Allen Brain Atlas. Unfortunately, the immediate use of this information is prohibited by the fact that the subnuclear organization of the habenular complexes in mouse is not known so far. The present report, therefore, uses topographic, structural, and cytochemical information from the rat to recognize corresponding areas within the mouse habenulae. Taking advantage of the fact that the Klüver‐Barrera technique allows simultaneous observation of neuronal cell bodies and myelinated fibers, we were able to correlate subnuclear areas in the mouse habenula to subnuclei, which had been rigorously identified by several criteria in the rat. Our data suggest that the topographic localization of habenular subnuclei is rather similar between mouse and rat and that they may be homologous in these two species. Consequently, our data may allow using the Allen Brain Atlas as a source of basal information, which should be helpful to select candidate molecular markers for functionally different neurons in the mouse and potentially in higher mammalian species. J. Comp. Neurol. 522:2650–2662, 2014. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Online Identification of Permanent Magnet Flux Based on Extended Kalman Filter for IPMSM Drive With Position Sensorless Control

In order to realize precise rotor position/speed control of ac motor drives under sensorless operation, motor parameters should be online estimated. In this paper, the identification on permanent magnet flux of interior permanent magnet synchronous motor (IPMSM) under position sensorless control is investigated. A rotor-flux-oriented vector control with model reference adaptive system (MRAS)-based rotor position/speed estimation is employed as the basic control strategy for IPMSM drive. An identification scheme based on extended Kalman filter for the permanent magnet flux of IPMSM is proposed. By using this scheme, the identification problems due to low-order state equations of IPMSM can be avoided. Based on these works, the online permanent magnet flux identification of IPMSM with rotor position/speed senseless control is realized. Simulation and experimental results demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed control methods, which shows that the estimation error of rotor position based on the identified permanent magnet flux is limited within a very low level.
Change in intracellular pH of Escherichia coli mediates the chemotactic response to certain attractants and repellents

Changes in the membrane potential, pH gradient, proton motive force, and intracellular pH of Escherichia coli were followed during the chemotactic responses to a variety of potentially membrane-active compounds. Lipophilic weak acids, decreases in extracellular pH, and nigericin each caused a repellent response. Lipophilic weak bases, increases in extracellular pH, and valinomycin in the presence of K+ each caused an attractant response. Changes in membrane potential, pH gradient, and proton motive force did not correlate with the behavioral responses to these treatments, but changes in intracellular pH did correlate. Furthermore, the strength of the response to a weak acid was correlated with the magnitude of the change of the intracellular pH, and many compounds which could alter the intracellular pH were found to be chemotactically active. Apparently these attractants and repellents are not detected by specific chemoreceptors but rather are detected via the ability of cells to sense and respond to changes in intracellular pH. The pathway of sensory transduction which proceeds through methyl-accepting chemotaxis protein I was found to be involved in the response to a change in intracellular pH.
Highly stretchable optical sensors for pressure, strain, and curvature measurement

Recent advances in soft sensors using microfluidic liquid conductors enabled sensing of large deformation of soft structures. However, the use of liquids as conductive media carries a risk of leakage in many cases. Furthermore, it could be harmful when exposed to the human body in certain applications. To address these issues, a different sensing mechanism was proposed: highly stretchable optical sensors that could detect multiple modes of deformation. The method of operation involves a simple waveguide and its housing which are both made of silicone elastomer. The soft waveguide is coated with a thin gold reflective layer to encapsulate light propagating internally, with an light-emitting diode (LED) and a photodiode embedded at each end. When the sensor is stretched, compressed, or bent, micro-cracks within the reflective layer form and allow part of the light to escape, resulting in optical power losses in the light transmission. In this paper, we describe the design and fabrication of the proposed soft sensors. A prototype was created and characterized for pressure, strain, and curvature up to 350 kPa, 90%, and 0.12 mm-1, respectively, showing promising results of reasonable repeatability and linearity in certain ranges.
Ultrahigh Dimensional Feature Screening via RKHS Embeddings

Feature screening is a key step in handling ultrahigh dimensional data sets that are ubiquitous in modern statistical problems. Over the last decade, convex relaxation based approaches (e.g., Lasso/sparse additive model) have been extensively developed and analyzed for feature selection in high dimensional regime. But in the ultrahigh dimensional regime, these approaches suer from several problems, both computationally and statistically. To overcome these issues, in this paper, we propose a novel Hilbert space embedding based approach to independence screening for ultrahigh dimensional data sets. The proposed approach is model-free (i.e., no model assumption is made between response and predictors) and could handle non-standard (e.g., graphs) and multivariate outputs directly. We establish the sure screening property of the proposed approach in the ultrahigh dimensional regime, and experimentally demonstrate its advantages and superiority over other approaches on several synthetic and real data sets.