Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Characterization of Obese Polycystic Ovary Syndrome Rat Model Suitable for Exercise Intervention

Objective To develop a new polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) rat model suitable for exercise intervention. Method Thirty six rats were randomly divided into three experimental groups: PCOS rats with high-fat diet (PF, n = 24), PCOS rats with ordinary diet (PO, n = 6), and control rats with ordinary diet (CO, n = 6). Two kinds of PCOS rat model were made by adjustment diet structure and testosterone injection for 28 days. After a successful animal model, PF model rats were randomly assigned to three groups: exercise with a continuation of high-fat diet (PF-EF, n = 6), sedentary with a continuation of high-fat diet (PF-SF, n = 6), exercise with an ordinary diet (PF-EO, n = 6). Fasting blood glucose (FBG) and insulin (FINS), estrogen (E2), progesterone (P), and testosterone (T) in serum were determined by RIA, and ovarian morphology was evaluated by Image-Pro plus 6.0. Results Body weight, Lee index, FINS increased significantly in PF rat model. Serum levels of E2 and T were significantly higher in PF and PO than in CO. Ovary organ index and ovarian areas were significant lower in PF than in CO. After intervention for 2 weeks, the levels of 1 h postprandial blood glucose (PBG1), 2 h postprandial blood glucose (PBG2), FINS and the serum levels of T decreased significantly in PF-EF rats and PF-EO rats. The ratio of FBG/FINS was significant higher in PF-EO rats than in PF-SF rats. Ovarian morphology showed that the numbers of preantral follicles and atretic follicles decreased significantly, and the numbers of antral follicles and corpora lutea increased significantly in the rats of PF-EF and PF-EO. Conclusion By combination of high-fat diet and testosterone injection, the obese PCOS rat model is conformable with the lifestyle habits of fatty foods and insufficient exercise, and has metabolic and reproductive characteristics of human PCOS. This model can be applied to study exercise intervention.
Hong Kong secondary school students’ attitudes towards science: a study of structural models and gender differences

ABSTRACT This study explored two under-researched areas on students’ attitudes towards science, that is, the structural models representing these attitudes and the role played by school bands in moderating the gender differences in such attitudes. The participants were 360 ninth graders in Hong Kong from 3 school bands. The structural equation modelling method was adopted to compare four hypothetical models for students’ attitudes towards science. Results reflect that (i) the data supported the three-factor structure of the behavioural domain of students’ attitudes towards science; (ii) the four lower level dimensions of the attitudes towards science (i.e. value of science to society, self-concept in science, anxiety towards science and enjoyment of science) could be further integrated into broader categories; (iii) male students demonstrated significantly more positive attitudes towards science in five dimensions (i.e. self-concept in science, enjoyment in science, learning science in and outside the classroom and future participation) and (iv) school bands played a prominent moderating role in gender differences in students’ attitudes towards science. Implications for studying and developing students’ attitudes towards science are discussed in the paper.
Computational depth

Introduces computational depth, a measure for the amount of "non-random" or "useful" information in a string, by considering the difference of various Kolmogorov complexity measures. We investigate three instantiations of computational depth: (1) basic computational depth, a clean notion capturing the spirit of C.H. Bennett's (1988) logical depth; (2) time-t computational depth and the resulting concept of shallow sets, a generalization of sparse and random sets based on low depth properties of their characteristic sequences (we show that every computable set that is reducible to a shallow set has polynomial-size circuits); and (3) distinguishing computational depth, measuring when strings are easier to recognize than to produce (we show that if a Boolean formula has a non-negligible fraction of its satisfying assignments with low depth, then we can find a satisfying assignment efficiently).
Activity of a Carboxyl-Terminal Truncated Form of Catechol 2,3-Dioxygenase from Planococcus sp. S5

Catechol 2,3-dioxygenases (C23Os, E.C.1.13.12.2) are two domain enzymes that catalyze degradation of monoaromatic hydrocarbons. The catalytically active C-domain of all known C23Os comprises ferrous ion ligands as well as residues forming active site pocket. The aim of this work was to examine and discuss the effect of nonsense mutation at position 289 on the activity of catechol 2,3-dioxygenase from Planococcus strain. Although the mutant C23O showed the same optimal temperature for activity as the wild-type protein (35°C), it exhibited activity slightly more tolerant to alkaline pH. Mutant enzyme exhibited also higher affinity to catechol as a substrate. Its K m (66.17 µM) was approximately 30% lower than that of wild-type enzyme. Interestingly, removal of the C-terminal residues resulted in 1.5- to 1.8-fold (P < 0.05) increase in the activity of C23OB61 against 4-methylcatechol and 4-chlorocatechol, respectively, while towards catechol the activity of the protein dropped to about 80% of that of the wild-type enzyme. The results obtained may facilitate the engineering of the C23O for application in the bioremediation of polluted areas.
Optical and Near-Infrared Imaging of Ultra-Steep-Spectrum Radio Sources: The K-z Diagram of Radio-selected and Optically Selected Galaxies

We present optical and/or near-IR images of 128 ultra–steep-spectrum radio sources. Roughly half of the objects are identified in the optical images (R ≲ 24), while in the near-IR images, more than 94% are detected at K ≲ 22. The mean K magnitude is = 19.26 within a 2″ diameter aperture. The distribution of R-K colors indicates that at least one-third of the objects observed have very red colors (R-K > 5). The major axes of the identifications in the K band are preferentially oriented along the radio axes, with half of them having compact morphologies. The 22 sources with spectroscopic redshifts and K-band magnitudes follow the K-z relation found from previous radio samples, but with a larger scatter. We argue that this may be due to a dependence of K magnitude on the radio power, with the most luminous radio sources inhabiting the most massive host galaxies. We present a composite K-z diagram of radio-loud and radio-quiet galaxies, selected from the Hubble Deep Field (North) and the Hawaii surveys. Out to z ≲ 1, the radio-loud galaxies trace the bright envelope of the radio quiet galaxies, while at z ≳ 1, the radio-loud galaxies are ≳2 mag brighter. We argue that this is not due to a contribution from the active galactic nucleus or emission lines. This difference strongly suggests that radio galaxies pinpoint the most massive systems out to the highest known redshifts, probably as a result of the mutual correlation of the mass of the galaxy and the radio power on the mass of the central black hole.
proteins SAM : A novel motif in yeast sterile and Drosophila polyhomeotic

Single copies of an 4 7 0 residue domain are shown to be present in thesequences of 14eukaryoric proteins, including yeast byr2, STEl 1, ste4, and STESO, which are essential participants in sexual differentiation. This domain, named SAM (sterile alpha motif), appears to participate in other developmental processes because it is also present in Drosophilapolyhomeotic gene product and related homologues, which are thought to regulate determination of segmental specification in early embryogenesis. Its appearance in byr2 and STEl I , which are MEK kinases, and in proteins containing pleckstrin homology, src homology 3, and discs-large homologous region domains, suggests possible participation i n signal transduction pathways.
Computer architecture education in multicore era: Is the time to change

Chip Multicore Processor (CMP) has become the mainstream microprocessor architecture in nowadays industry and academic literature. With the progress of CMP hardware developing and researching, software issues become more and more prominent. Coupled with these developments, many institutes and universities change their curriculums of computer architecture related courses. But the problem is do we really know what we should teach in this fast changing times and is the right time now to make these changing without actually knowing what future would be. In this paper, we argue four key problems that we thought we should think carefully before we make the final decision. And also some suggestions are given for the educators of this area.
The endowment effect in groups with and without strategic incentives

The realization of market transactions often depends on decisions in groups in which members are anonymous and cannot communicate, but have interrelated outcomes. In a comprehensive study, we investigated the interaction of group effects, strategic effects and endowment effects in different group situations. We show that groups display an endowment effects for uncertain goods which is reduced by about 50% compared to the endowment effect in individuals in corresponding situations. In group situations with additional strategic incentives to overprice the endowment effect completely diminished. The strategic effects and group effects on pricing in group situations cannot be found for participants’ personal valuations of the good, whereas the endowment effect for personal valuations prevailed in both group conditions. This indicates that the endowment effect might be more fundamental than group effects and strategic effects. A paramorphic model for pricing in strategic group situations is suggested and practical implications are discussed.
Myelin 2′,3′-Cyclic Nucleotide 3′-Phosphodiesterase: Active-Site Ligand Binding and Molecular Conformation

The 2′,3′-cyclic nucleotide 3′-phosphodiesterase (CNPase) is a highly abundant membrane-associated enzyme in the myelin sheath of the vertebrate nervous system. CNPase is a member of the 2H phosphoesterase family and catalyzes the formation of 2′-nucleotide products from 2′,3′-cyclic substrates; however, its physiological substrate and function remain unknown. It is likely that CNPase participates in RNA metabolism in the myelinating cell. We solved crystal structures of the phosphodiesterase domain of mouse CNPase, showing the binding mode of nucleotide ligands in the active site. The binding mode of the product 2′-AMP provides a detailed view of the reaction mechanism. Comparisons of CNPase crystal structures highlight flexible loops, which could play roles in substrate recognition; large differences in the active-site vicinity are observed when comparing more distant members of the 2H family. We also studied the full-length CNPase, showing its N-terminal domain is involved in RNA binding and dimerization. Our results provide a detailed picture of the CNPase active site during its catalytic cycle, and suggest a specific function for the previously uncharacterized N-terminal domain.
Wireless sensor networks for spectrum sensing to support opportunistic spectrum access networks: Protocol design and fundamental trade-offs

Supporting secondary users through a collateral network dedicated to spectrum sensing has been recently proposed as a mean to overcome spectrum sensing limitations of secondary devices. Building on this idea, we propose a protocol for a Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) to support secondary devices of an Opportunistic Spectrum Access (OSA) network. We examine the fundamental tradeoff between the statistics of the primary network traffic for which the WSN is able to support the OSA network and the interference range or, equivalently, the transmit power of secondary transmitters. We optimize the parameters of the proposed protocol to achieve the minimum delay for delivering channel availability information to secondary users, thus maximizing the portion of time they can effectively use idle primary channels to send their data. We further provide simulation results to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of our design, and point at possible research directions to improve the proposed system capabilities.
Childhood (Mis)fortune, Educational Attainment, and Adult Health: Contingent Benefits of a College Degree?

College-educated adults are healthier than other people in the United States, but selection bias complicates our understanding of how education influences health. This article focuses on the possibility that the health benefits of college may vary according to childhood (mis)fortune and people’s propensity to attain a college degree in the first place. Several perspectives from life course sociology offer competing hypotheses as to whether the most or the least advantaged see the greatest return of a college education. The authors use a national survey of middle-age American adults to assess risk of two cardiovascular health problems and mortality. Results from propensity score and hierarchical regression analysis indicate that the protective effect of college attainment is indeed heterogeneous. Further, the greatest returns are among those least likely to experience this life course transition (i.e., compensatory leveling). Explanations for this selection effect are offered, along with several directions for future research on the health benefits of completing college.
A Method to Improve Performance of Turbo Iterative Decoding in Low SNR Region

As far as a Turbo decoder is concerned, the lower Bit Err Rate (BER) at the expense of acceptable and feasible complexity, the better. In this paper, a method is proposed which employs additional redundant sequence added at the end of tail bits of an information sequence to improve performance of a Turbo decoder. Computer simulation results show that, when L=L'=1024, where L is the length of information sequence and L' the length of redundant sequence, the method obtained about $0.45$dB at BER=10-3 and about 0.35dB at BER=10-4 respectively compared to the case of L=1024 without redundancies, and also about 0.3dB at BER=10-3 and about 0.1dB at BER=10-4 compared to the case of L=2048 without redundancies. It is superior to these two cases until Sinal to Noise Ratio (SNR)=0.9dB with moderate extra expenses.
Non-monotonocity in OrBAC through default and exception policy rules

Context-awareness is an essential requirement of modern access control models. Organization-Based Access Control (OrBAC) model is a powerful context-aware access control model defined by first-order logic. However, due to the monotonicity nature of the first-order logic, OrBAC suffers from the incapability of making decision based on incomplete context information as well as the definition of default and exception policy rules. This paper proposes augmenting non-monotonicity features to OrBAC using MKNF+ logic, which is a combination of Description Logic (DL) and Answer Set Programming (ASP). Along with the use of DL to define ontology for main entities and context information in OrBAC; MKNF+ rules are used to define access control, default, and exception policy rules. The proposed model inherits the advantages of ontological representation of OrBAC entities and context information (such as interoperability among systems) as well as the ASP advantages in non-monotonic reasoning through closed-world principle and negation as failure. The expressive power of the model is also demonstrated through a case study.
INFORMATION EXTRACTION METHODS AND EXTRACTION TECHNIQUES IN THE CHEMICAL DOCUMENT'S CONTENTS: SURVEY

The volume of electronic documents has rapidly increased and the scientific literature has increased too. These huge documents contain considerable information, but it has to be retrieved and managed in a constructive and useful way. Information Extraction (IE) is the field of extracting useful information using different methods and approaches by means of Natural Language Processing (NLP). Researchers still continue to try to identify proper methods to extract information from texts, such as opinions on the internet, medical data, clinical reports, medical reports, notes, papers, patents, etc. Recently a new trend to expand working in IE is taking place by enriching the extraction process to include the extraction of information from images and videos. In this paper, the classification of IE tasks is discussed, as well as the proposed methods and techniques of IE from chemical documents. A more focused approach is then taken into consideration regarding biomedical language processing and ontology. Finally, the paper discusses some of the challenges that the IE field is facing.
Interpretive habit is strengthened by cognitive bias modification

We investigated the nature of the memory mechanisms underlying cognitive bias modification by applying Jacoby's (1991) process-dissociation procedure to responses during the transfer task. In the two training conditions (negative and benign), students imagined themselves in 100 ambiguous scenarios, most with potentially negative resolutions; the ambiguity was resolved in a consistently negative or benign direction by completing the fragment of a final word. Control participants completed non-ambiguous, non-emotional scenarios. Next all participants responded on a final training block, where half of the scenarios were completed negatively and half benignly. Transfer was assessed by examining choices in the completion of test scenarios when participants were instructed to respond in the same way as they had to a final-block training scenario that was situationally similar. Benign training facilitated correct responding to benign analogues and impaired correct responding to negative analogues. Performance in the negative-training and control conditions was similar. Process-dissociation procedures revealed that this newly established habit and not controlled recollection provided the basis for transfer.
Analyzing Ethnographic Research on Indigenous Knowledges in Development Studies: An Anti-colonial Inquiry

This thesis provides an anti-colonial analysis of how Indigenous knowledges have been studied and conceptualized through ethnographic research in the field of development studies. In this analysis I apply meta-ethnography within an anti-colonial discursive framework, a combination that I argue has great potential in the study of power relations in qualitative knowledge production. Firstly, this approach allows me to provide a synthesis of purposively selected ethnographies from the development studies literature; secondly, it requires that I refer to Indigenous scholars’ critical writings in the education literature to analyze development studies ethnographers’ approaches to Indigenous knowledges. The results of this analysis provide a starting point for questioning epistemological racism and colonial power relations at play in knowledge production on Indigenous knowledges in the field of development studies, with important implications for how we teach, study, and conduct research in development.
Measuring gait – how the choice of measure can affect the statistical results and the clinical interpretation

Abstract Aims: The aim of this study was to illustrate how the choice of gait measure could affect the statistical analysis of data and the resulting clinical conclusions. Methodology: A descriptive design in which the results from different tests from 10 patients with normal pressure hydrocephalus illustrates the potential to generate different clinical conclusions. Major findings and principal conclusion: The results illustrate how the choice of measure can affect the statistical results and the clinical interpretation of a study. It is possible to have the paradoxical situation in which one group has a better walking ability if the variable speed is used but the other group has a better walking ability if the variable time is used. An important message is that the choice of measurement and the transformation of data are not primarily statistical issues. If the statistical results are to be useful for clinical decisions, the variables used must be directly related to the utility for the subjects. An understanding of the clinical relevance of different outcomes is required. The distinction between when numbers are purely descriptive and when numbers represent a valuation is subtle and difficult to comprehend.
Towards a System of Cooperative Behavior-Based Stair Climbing Robots

This paper presents a summary of the current state of research in the field of cooperative mobile robots as it relates to robot stair climbing. The focus of this paper is to propose, based on current research, a system of cooperative robots that can work together to collectively traverse a staircase. The emphasis on this new system of robots will be placed on the behavior and communications which will reduce the demands on the physical complexity of the robot units. The behavioral architecture for the robots is presented and the current status of the project is summarized.
Tag ranking

Social media sharing web sites like Flickr allow users to annotate images with free tags, which significantly facilitate Web image search and organization. However, the tags associated with an image generally are in a random order without any importance or relevance information, which limits the effectiveness of these tags in search and other applications. In this paper, we propose a tag ranking scheme, aiming to automatically rank the tags associated with a given image according to their relevance to the image content. We first estimate initial relevance scores for the tags based on probability density estimation, and then perform a random walk over a tag similarity graph to refine the relevance scores. Experimental results on a 50, 000 Flickr photo collection show that the proposed tag ranking method is both effective and efficient. We also apply tag ranking into three applications: (1) tag-based image search, (2) tag recommendation, and (3) group recommendation, which demonstrates that the proposed tag ranking approach really boosts the performances of social-tagging related applications.
Leveraging Spousal Support to Improve Health Promotion in Serious Mental Illness

Although the majority of Veterans are overweight or obese, and many have comorbid mental health disorders, little is known about the most effective way to intervene in this complex population. This case describes a telephone-based cognitive-behavioral treatment for depression and weight management with an obese Veteran with bipolar disorder. His wife joined sessions to leverage spousal support. The Veteran evidenced variable levels of physical activity and mood fluctuations during treatment; although he reported some degree of positive behavior change and improved social support, he did not lose weight. He continued to endorse moderate levels of depressive symptomatology at the end of the nine-session intervention. This case illustrates the complexity of treating those with chronic serious mental illness and multimorbidities. Further research is needed to inform interventions that concurrently improve mental health symptomatology and weight-related outcomes in chronic, complex cases.