Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Linking Maternal Perceptions to Behavior: Nurturing Attitudes and Facial Expressions of Affect

Objective. A longitudinal study examined maternal attitudes relevant to nurturing within a latent variable structure including other maternal attitudes (confidence, insouciance, salience of difficulty of caregiving, and worry) and compared these attitudes to mothers' affective behavior with their infants. (Insouciance refers to the perception of the infant as self-reliant.) Design. One hundred and seventy-seven mothers were assessed for attitudes toward their infants from the third trimester of pregnancy to the second month postbirth. Attitudes were then compared to maternal expression of emotion during interaction with 4-week-old infants as the dyads were videotaped in the home (n = 60). The Facial Action Coding System (FACS) was used to identify mothers' social smiling, Duchenne smiling, overall negative facial expressions, and left-sided facial asymmetry during engagement with the newborn. Results. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) verified 5 hypothesized latent attitude variables which, in turn, produced 2 second-order factors, a Positive Perception factor and a Negative Perception factor. Maternal attitudes were significantly different from prebirth to postbirth, indicating both elevated negative perceptions and increased nurturing after birth. Levels of maternal facial expression of negative affect during interaction were associated with mothers' negative attitudes, and fewer negative displays to the infant were posed during en face interaction by mothers with higher nurturing factor scores both before and after birth. Post hoc analyses showed that nurturing moderates relations between negative attitudes and negative facial actions. Conclusion. Feelings of nurturing may act as a buffer against negative affect because mothers with elevated negative perceptions and high levels of nurturing display less negativity than do mothers with highly negative attitudes and low nurturing. Nurturing may be an important protective factor during a time of net increase in negative emotion.
CEP Discussion Paper No 699 July 2005 Products and Productivity

Firms' decisions about which goods to produce are often made at a more disaggregate level than the data observed by empirical researchers. When products differ according to production technique or the way in which they enter demand, this data aggregation problem introduces a bias into standard measures of firm productivity. We develop a theoretical model of heterogeneous firms endogenously self-selecting into heterogeneous products. We characterize the bias introduced by unobserved variation in product mix across firms, and the implications of this bias for identifying firm and industry responses to exogenous policy shocks such as deregulation. More generally, we demonstrate that product switching gives rise to a richer set of industry-level dynamics than models where firm product mix remains fixed.
Plasma citrulline is a biomarker of enterocyte mass and an indicator of parenteral nutrition in HIV-infected patients.

BACKGROUND Plasma citrulline is a biomarker of enterocyte mass and function in humans. OBJECTIVE We evaluated citrulline in the reemerging context of diarrhea in HIV-infected patients receiving highly active antiretroviral therapy. DESIGN This study prospectively measured citrulline in 6 groups of HIV-1 patients (n = 115): 1) undetectable viral load without chronic diarrhea (a; n = 40) and with protease inhibitor-associated toxic chronic diarrhea (b; n = 26), 2) detectable viral load and CD4 > 200/mm(3) without (a; n = 6) and with (b; n = 11) chronic diarrhea, and 3) detectable viral load and CD4 <200/mm(3) without chronic diarrhea (a; n = 7) and with opportunistic intestinal infections or HIV enteropathy (b; n = 25). The influence of diarrhea on citrulline was assessed by comparing the a and b subgroups with healthy control subjects (n = 100). RESULTS Citrulline was slightly decreased (22-30 micromol/L) in groups 1b and 2b and was <22 micromol/L in 19 of 25 patients in group 3b. In group 3b, a citrulline concentration <10 micromol/L was associated with a clinical indication for parenteral nutrition (n = 6 of 8 compared with 2 of 17 if the citrulline concentration was >10 micromol/L; P < 0.05). Citrulline correlated positively with albumin (P < 0.01) and BMI (P < 0.05) and negatively with C-reactive protein (P < 0.01). When antiinfectious and nutritional therapies were successful (n = 18 of 25), citrulline normalized in 2-12 wk. Neither chronic hepatic or pancreatic disease nor lipodystrophy and the metabolic syndrome affected citrulline. Compared with control subjects (38 +/- 8 micromol/L), patients without chronic diarrhea (groups 1a, 2a, and 3a) had normal citrulline concentrations (36 +/- 6 micromol/L). CONCLUSIONS Plasma citrulline is a reliable biomarker of enterocyte functional mass in HIV patients. Citrulline does not allow the etiologic diagnosis of enteropathy, but it can discriminate between protease inhibitor toxic diarrhea and infectious enteropathy and quantify the functional consequences, which makes it an objective tool for indicating the need for parenteral nutrition.
Exploring peptide binding to the disease associated HLA-DQ2.5 molecule by the use of peptide libraries

We here describe that soluble HLA-DQ2 (sDQ2) molecules, when expressed in Drosophila melanogaster S2 insect cells without a covalently tethered peptide, associate tightly with the D. melanogaster calcium binding protein DCB-45. The interaction between the proteins is stable in S2 cell culture and during affinity purification, which is done at high salt concentrations and pH 11.5. After affinity purifica- tion, the sDQ2/DCB-45 complex exists in substantial quantities next to a small amount of free heterodimeric sDQ2 and large amounts of aggregated sDQ2 free of DCB- 45. Motivated by the stable complex formation and our interest in the development of reagents which inhibit HLA- DQ2 peptide binding, we have further characterized the sDQ2/DCB-45 interaction. Several lines of evidence indicate that an N-terminal fragment of DCB-45 is involved in the interaction with the peptide binding groove of sDQ2. Further mapping of this fragment of 54 residues identified a pentadecapeptide with high affinity for sDQ2 which may serve as a lead compound for the design of HLA-DQ2 blockers.
Oxidative Damage in Lymphocytes of Copper Smelter Workers Correlated to Higher Levels of Excreted Arsenic

Arsenic has been associated with multiple harmful effects at the cellular level. Indirectly these defects could be related to impairment of the integrity of the immune system, in particular in lymphoid population. To characterize the effect of Arsenic on redox status on this population, copper smelter workers and arsenic unexposed donors were recruited for this study. We analyzed urine samples and lymphocyte enriched fractions from donors to determinate arsenic levels and lymphocyte proliferation. Moreover, we studied the presence of oxidative markers MDA, vitamin E and SOD activity in donor plasma. Here we demonstrated that in human beings exposed to high arsenic concentrations, lymphocyte MDA and arsenic urinary levels showed a positive correlation with SOD activity, and a negative correlation with vitamin E serum levels. Strikingly, lymphocytes from the arsenic exposed population respond to a polyclonal stimulator, phytohemaglutinin, with higher rates of thymidine incorporation than lymphocytes of a control population. As well, similar in vitro responses to arsenic were observed using a T cell line. Our results suggest that chronic human exposure to arsenic induces oxidative damage in lymphocytes and could be considered more relevant than evaluation of T cell surveillance.
Children as agents of secondary socialisation for their parents

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the body of knowledge associated with consumer socialisation. The authors investigate how children function as socialisation agents for their parents in influencing their purchase intentions of computer and high‐tech products – essentially the idea of the young educating the old.Design/methodology/approach – A review of the extant literature relating to consumer socialisation, social power and knowledge about computer related and small high‐tech products yielded meaningful hypotheses. A structured survey which was required to be completed by dyads (i.e. children and parents) was mailed to Australian families in the state of Victoria. Data obtained from 180 usable responses from the dyads were analysed to test the hypotheses.Findings – Children are seen to possess expert power over their parents with regards to computer related and small high‐tech products; which make them an important agent of secondary socialisation for their parents. Men are percei.
Going beyond: Users’ experiences of helping professionals

Background: Establishing a working alliance has been found to be of great importance for the outcome of professional interventions for people diagnosed with severe mental illnesses. Aim: The aim of the present study was to analyse the concrete actions of helpful professionals in establishing a working alliance. Method: Interviews with 58 persons diagnosed with severe mental illness who were in a recovery process or had recovered were analysed using Grounded Theory. Results: The core category that emerged from the analysis was termed ‘going beyond’. It was constituted on three subcategories: challenging the rationality of the institutions, restoring the professional as a person and restoring the user as a person. Conclusion: Users’ experience-based knowledge about helpful professionals calls into question the traditional view of professional roles.
An example of a seven joint manipulator optimized for kinematic fault tolerance

It is common practice to design a robot's kinematics from the desired properties that are locally specified by a manipulator Jacobian. For the case of local optimality with respect to fault tolerance, one common definition is that the post-failure Jacobian possesses the largest possible minimum singular value over all possible locked-joint failures. This work considers the global analysis of seven-joint manipulators that have been designed to be locally optimal in terms of fault tolerance when used for six-dimensional tasks. An algorithm for calculating a six-dimensional volume that is composed of a three-dimensional positioning component and a three-dimensional orientation component is presented. Two example manipulators are then analyzed and compared, illustrating a wide degree of variability between their global fault tolerant properties. It is further shown that there are 7! = 5040 different such manipulator designs due to the number of permutations of the Jacobian matrix.
Benchmarking Smart Meter Data Analytics

Smart electricity meters have been replacing conventional meters worldwide, enabling automated collection of fine-grained (every 15 minutes or hourly) consumption data. A variety of smart meter analytics algorithms and applications have been proposed, mainly in the smart grid literature, but the focus thus far has been on what can be done with the data rather than how to do it efficiently. In this paper, we examine smart meter analytics from a software performance perspective. First, we propose a performance benchmark that includes common data analysis tasks on smart meter data. Second, since obtaining large amounts of smart meter data is difficult due to privacy issues, we present an algorithm for generating large realistic data sets from a small seed of real data. Third, we implement the proposed benchmark using five representative platforms: a traditional numeric computing platform (Matlab), a relational DBMS with a built-in machine learning toolkit (PostgreSQL/MADLib), a main-memory column store (“System C”), and two distributed data processing platforms (Hive and Spark). We compare the five platforms in terms of application development effort and performance on a multi-core machine as well as a cluster of 16 commodity servers. We have made the proposed benchmark and data generator freely available online.
The Biogeography of Invasive Plants - Projecting Range Shifts with Climate Change

Correlative models between species occurrences and climate (here referred to as ‘habitat suitability models’) have become increasingly popular for forecasting risk from invasive plants under current and future climate scenarios. Th ese models have the potential to inform management and monitoring eff orts by prioritizing landscapes considered at highest risk under a changing climate. However, a wide range of choices regarding climatic predictor variables, model ling approaches and even dis tributional data sets infl uences the resulting projections. Th e eff ects of these choices are seldom defi ned explicitly, which reduces their utility for scientists and managers alike. Th is chapter reviews common practices of habitat suitability modelling as they apply to invasive plants. Th e chapter also reviews major fi ndings of recent projections of range shifts in invasive plants. In both cases, the aim is to explore how diff erent choices of predictors, models and input data can infl uence conclusions in a habitat suitability modelling framework and develop recommendations for best practices.
Graded and Word-Sense-Disambiguation Decisions in Corpus Pattern Analysis: a Pilot Study

We present a pilot analysis of a new linguistic resource, VPS-GradeUp (available at http://hdl.handle.net/11234/1-1585). The resource contains 11,400 graded human decisions on usage patterns of 29 English lexical verbs, randomly selected from the Pattern Dictionary of English Verbs (Hanks, 2000 2014) based on their frequency and the number of senses their lemmas have in PDEV. This data set has been created to observe the interannotator agreement on PDEV patterns produced using the Corpus Pattern Analysis (Hanks, 2013). Apart from the graded decisions, the data set also contains traditional Word-Sense-Disambiguation (WSD) labels. We analyze the associations between the graded annotation and WSD annotation. The results of the respective annotations do not correlate with the size of the usage pattern inventory for the respective verbs lemmas, which makes the data set worth further linguistic analysis.
Generalizing Partial Order and Dynamic Backtracking

Recently, two new backtracking algorithms, dynamic backtracking (DB) and partial order dynamic backtracking (PDB) have been presented. These algorithms have the property to be additive on disjoint subproblems and yet use only polynomial space. Unlike DB, PDB only imposes a partial search order and therefore appears to have more freedom than DB to explore the search space. However, both algorithms are not directly comparable in terms of flexibility. In this paper we present new backtracking algorithms that are obtained by relaxing the ordering conditions of PDB. This gives them additional flexibility while still being additive on disjoint subproblems. In particular, we show that our algorithms generalize both DB and PDB.
AN EMPIRICAL STUDY ON SOFTWARE TEST EFFORT ESTIMATION

It is well known that software development projects tend to be based on over-optimistic cost estimates. Better knowledge about software cost estimation is necessary to improve realism in software development project bids and budgets. In my master thesis, I did a literature review that indicates that many research papers address software cost and effort estimation, but none of the 150 papers I reviewed addressed the software test effort and/or cost estimation. We therefore prepared a set of five research questions to address software test effort estimation, and conducted a case study and collected empirical evidence from software development companies in Nepal. The minimum company size was 30 while the maximum company size was 200. I performed the case study by conducting interviews with a set of structured questionnaires. I compared the results obtained from the case study with the literature review and found that there exists practice for empirical evidence based verification, validation, and testing cost/effort estimations. I also noted that test effort estimation follow the same pattern as software development project estimates. My results show that 1) all the companies prepare separate estimates for test effort, 2) empirical data is commonly used to estimate test effort, and 3) test effort estimation error seems to be closely correlated with development effort estimation error. A company that had estimated total of 3500 man-months had actually spent 4200 man-months implying 700 man-months of effort/cost overruns to complete the project. Another company that projected testing effort of 100 man-hour actually ended up in 120 man-hour at the end of project causing 20 man-hour effort/cost overruns. Therefore, our study indicates that test effort closely follows the development patterns. However, more studies in this area are clearly needed.
Using user research in creativity: informing systems, service and product experience design

Within the context of everyday creativity, there is a growing demand for new systems, products and services that mediate such activity. Some of these tools are emerging from commercial design worlds (iPhone apps, sound and image production software, etc.) and some from creative communities/academia (interactive storytelling tools, new programming tools for interactive artworks, physical computing devices, etc.). Across the design disciplines, and from academia to industry, practicing user research is becoming an increasingly important activity informing the design and development of any product, system or service. Whilst our understanding of the methods and techniques available for generating user research is maturing, the understanding of how to leverage its insights effectively is less well developed. Does user research within the design process in itself incubate or quash creativity and innovation? Is there such a thing as 'too data-driven design'? Can researchers (or those practicing research) be educated for depth of insight, not just method? By the same token, how can we be sure that the user research is actionable? What is the best way to communicate user research? Or is co-development and integrated user research the way to go anyway? What role does user research play in the overall development process? Is user research something best gathered from users or generated with users? Do different communities (e.g. academia and industry) define 'valid user research' in the same ways?
Use of an audio-paced incremental swimming test in young national-level swimmers.

PURPOSE To evaluate the reliability and sensitivity to training of an audio-paced incremental swimming test. METHODS Eight young national-level male swimmers (age 15 +/- 1 year) performed a 7 x 200-m incremental swimming test (velocities 1.19, 1.24, 1.28, 1.33, 1.39, and 1.45 m/s and maximal sprint pace) using an audio-pacing device. The same test was performed 4 times by each participant, 1 wk apart to assess reliability (WK1, WK2) and after 9 and 20 wk of training (WK9, WK20). Blood lactate concentration ([La-]) and heart rate (HR) were recorded after each stage. Outcome measures were the velocity (v) and HR at lactate markers of 2 mM, 4 mM, and 1 mM. RESULTS Velocities at the lactate markers proved to be more reliable than HR, with typical errors ranging from 0.66% to 2.30% and 1.28% to 4.50%, respectively (shifts in mean ranged -0.91% to 0.73% and -0.84% to 1.79%, respectively). Across WK1, WK9, and WK20 there were significant improvements in peak velocity (P < .001) and each of the velocities associated with the lactate markers (P < .05), whereas only HR at 1mM improved (P < .05). CONCLUSIONS This article demonstrates that an audiopaced incremental swimming test is reliable for use with junior swimmers and is sensitive to changes observed after training. The postswimming measurement of HR in the pool was comparatively less reliable.
Unsupervised Band Selection Based on Evolutionary Multiobjective Optimization for Hyperspectral Images

Band selection is an important preprocessing step for hyperspectral image processing. Many valid criteria have been proposed for band selection, and these criteria model band selection as a single-objective optimization problem. In this paper, a novel multiobjective model is first built for band selection. In this model, two objective functions with a conflicting relationship are designed. One objective function is set as information entropy to represent the information contained in the selected band subsets, and the other one is set as the number of selected bands. Then, based on this model, a new unsupervised band selection method called multiobjective optimization band selection (MOBS) is proposed. In the MOBS method, these two objective functions are optimized simultaneously by a multiobjective evolutionary algorithm to find the best tradeoff solutions. The proposed method shows two unique characters. It can obtain a series of band subsets with different numbers of bands in a single run to offer more options for decision makers. Moreover, these band subsets with different numbers of bands can communicate with each other and have a coevolutionary relationship, which means that they can be optimized in a cooperative way. Since it is unsupervised, the proposed algorithm is compared with some related and recent unsupervised methods for hyperspectral image band selection to evaluate the quality of the obtained band subsets. Experimental results show that the proposed method can generate a set of band subsets with different numbers of bands in a single run and that these band subsets have a stable good performance on classification for different data sets.
FP-map-an approach to the functional pipelining of embedded programs

Practice shows that increasing the amount of instruction level parallelism offered by an architecture (like adding instruction slots to VLIW instructions) does not necessarily lead to significant performance gains. Instead, high hardware costs and inefficient use of this hardware may occur. Mapping embedded applications onto multiprocessor systems forms a very interesting extension to ILP. We propose a functional pipelining approach to the mapping of embedded programs written in ANSI C onto a pipeline of application specific processors. Our novel functional pipelining algorithm has low computational complexity and was especially developed to form the parallelization engine of a (semi) automatic system for multiprocessor embedded system design. The paper explains the proposed algorithm and demonstrates its applicability.
A personality-based model of humor development during adulthood

Thepresent article advances a model of humor development extending from late adolescence until about age 60. Previously advanced models of humor development during the preadolescent years are reviewed, and issues related to the proposal of models of adult humor development are discussed. The developmental model presented here drawsfrom a series of factor-analytic studies which document the importance of two principal humor-appreciation factors (nonsense and incongruity plus resolution), andfrom a broad range of data demonstrating age-related changes in personality measures closely associated with these two factors. Separate attention is given by the model to positive (funniness) and negative (aversiveness) aspects ofreactions to cartoons andjokes.
HMM-based prosodic structure model using rich linguistic context

This paper presents a study on the use of deep syntactical features to improve prosody modeling. A French linguistic processing chain based on linguistic preprocessing, morpho- syntactical labeling, and deep syntactical parsing is used in order to extract syntactical features from an input text. These features are used to define more or less high-level syntactical feature sets. Such feature sets are compared on the basis of a HMM-based prosodic structure model. High-level syntactical features are shown to significantly improve the performance of the model (up to 21% error reduction combined with 19% BIC reduction).