Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
ASSOCIATION BETWEEN EMOTIONAL VARIABLES AND SCHOOL ACHIEVEMENT

Recent psychological studies highlight emotional aspects, and they show an important role within individual learning processes. Hereby, positive emotions were supposed to positively influence learning and achievement processes and negative ones do the contrary. In this study, an educational unit “ecosystem lake” was used during which achievement (three tests) and emotional variables (interest, well-being, anxiety and boredom; measured at the end of three preselected lessons) were monitored. The research question was to explore correlations between emotional variables and the learning outcome of the teaching unit. Prior knowledge was regressed against the subsequent tests to account for its confounding effect. Regressions showed a highly significant influence of prior knowledge on the subsequent measurements of achievement. However, after accounting for prior knowledge, a positive correlation between interest/well-being and achievement and a negative correlation between anxiety/boredom and achievement was found. Further research and interventions should try to enhance positive emotions in biology lessons to positively influence achievement.
THE CO TULLY-FISHER RELATION FOR THE VIRGO CLUSTER

A comparison between the CO and HI Tully-Fisher relation for a sample of 30 Virgo galaxies shows no significant difference concerning the intrinsic scatter. The distance moduli from both relations after correcting for the sample incomplete- ness bias agree within the errors and also show no significant difference with previous studies of the Virgo cluster using a complete sample. The CO total linewidth and the CO flux were found to be not well correlated. However, if the distances to the individual galaxies were calculated by the CO Tully-Fisher relation, the CO luminosities calculated using these distances are correlated with the CO linewidths. This correlation does not show up when the distances were calculated by the conven- tional HI Tully-Fisher relation. Finally we give the structure of the cluster as derived from this small subsample using the dis- tances to the individual galaxies. The large depth of the cluster is confirmed both by the HI and the CO Tully-Fisher relation.
A question of false self‐esteem: Organization‐based self‐esteem and narcissism in organizational contexts

Purpose – This paper seeks to explore the relationships between organization‐based self‐esteem and narcissism, and their correlates. It aims to distinguish the two constructs, as well as to examine the degree to which organization‐based self‐esteem is contaminated by “false self‐esteem” (namely, narcissism). Design/methodology/approach – Participants completed questionnaires containing measures of organization‐based self‐esteem, narcissism, and a variety of motivational, attitudinal, and behavioral consequences. Co‐workers rated the participants' extra‐role and in‐role performance behaviors.Findings – Organization‐based self‐esteem and narcissism appear to be quite distinct constructs. The organization‐based self‐esteem scale is unbiased by variance associated with narcissism. Organization‐based self‐esteem is associated with a variety of positive outcomes. In particular, organization‐based self‐esteem correlates negatively with hostility, while narcissism correlates positively with hostility.Practical imp.
Necessary conditions for quasi-cyclic LDPC codes to have a given girth

Short cycles in the Tanner graph of a low-density parity-check (LDPC) code may cause a severe performance degradation. In this paper, we investigate the cycle properties of quasi-cyclic LDPC (QC-LDPC) codes. We first analyze a necessary and sufficient condition for a cycle of a given length to exist, by using the sequence representation of a parity-check matrix for a QC-LDPC code. We then derive bounds which are necessary conditions for a QC-LDPC code to have a given girth in terms of its parameters. Our necessary conditions are applicable to any regular or irregular QC-LDPC codes as well as they improve the existing bounds for many classes of regular QC-LDPC codes.
Rats undernourished in utero have altered Ca2+ signaling and reduced fertility in adulthood

Epidemiological and animal studies have shown that placental undernutrition impairs reproduction in adult offspring, but the underlying molecular mechanisms within the male genital tract remain unknown. Due to its special physiological characteristics in transport and the modulation of the environment to which its luminal content is exposed, we hypothesized that the vas deferens would be a highly sensitive target. The goals were to investigate whether intrauterine malnutrition affects molecular mechanisms related to Ca2+‐ and oxidative stress‐modulated processes and causes structural alterations in the adult rat vas deferens that could attenuate fecundity and fertility. Male adult rats malnourished in utero had increased vas deferens weight associated with thickening of the muscular coat, a decrease in the total and haploid germ cells, a marked increase in the immature cells, and a decline in the numbers of pregnant females and total offspring per male rat. The ex vivo response of vas deferens from malnourished rats demonstrated an accentuated decrease in the contractile response to phenylephrine. The vas deferens had a marked decrease in Ca2+ transport due to the uncoupling of Ca2+‐stimulated ATP hydrolysis and ATP‐driven Ca2+ flux, and the downregulation of both sarco‐endoplasmic reticulum Ca2+‐ATPase 2 and the coupling factor 12‐kDa FK506‐binding protein. An increase in protein carbonylation (a marker of oxidative damage) and an imbalance between protein kinases C and A were observed as a legacy of undernutrition in early life. These results provide the structural and molecular basis to explain at least in part how maternal undernutrition affects fecundity and fertility in adult male rats.
Sensor-Arm — robotic manipulator for preventive maintenance and inspection of high-voltage transmission lines

There have been several works proposing mobile robots for inspection of high-voltage transmission lines. Those studies addressed mostly locomotion issues, with little attention paid to the sensing task. However, the deployment of sensors around the cables is not an elementary operation. This work indicates which sensors may be most suitable for the inspection of transmission lines, and describes their assembly in a simple and compact structure (Sensor-Unit). In addition, it proposes several manipulator mechanisms (Sensor-Arm) to deploy sensors around the cables and to remove them when necessary. The mechanisms are compared taking into account practical aspects such as assembly, reliability, functionality and results of field experiments. Finally, the design of a high-quality camera for detailed inspection is also described.
Museums taking steps forward: pedagogical apparatus requiring strategic preparation for controversial art

Since the twentieth century, museums have faced stages of reinvention as pedagogical venues. Because beliefs among groups in terms of race, sexuality, and religiosity are contentious with political interests towards power for dominance, the complex museum world, representing various cultural ideologies, has become an important implication for public education. In this paper, I examine how museums handle different perspectives and controversial issues by resisting safe and “making-nice” exhibitions that only appeal to the “mainstream” audience. It is critical for museum leaders to analyze controversial art exhibitions and create strategies for approaching them while protecting the reputation of the museum. While examining some of the challenges museums have faced in hosting controversial exhibitions, this paper puts forth three reconceptualized roles of reinvented museums in association with the notion of pedagogical controversy: museums breaking down manipulative “museumification,” museum’s progressive positioning for freedom of expression, and the cross-generational curatorial voice of the museum. I also emphasize thorough preparation of controversial exhibitions and programs to generate creative dialogues and to protect museum reputation as public venues by discussing successful precedents.
PlatPal: Detecting Malicious Documents with Platform Diversity

Due to the continued exploitation of Adobe Reader, malicious document (maldoc) detection has become a pressing problem. Although many solutions have been proposed, recent works have highlighted some common drawbacks, such as parser-confusion and classifier-evasion attacks. In response to this, we propose a new perspective for maldoc detection: platform diversity. In particular, we identify eight factors in OS design and implementation that could cause behavioral divergences under attack, ranging from syscall semantics (more obvious) to heap object metadata structure (more subtle) and further show how they can thwart attackers from finding bugs, exploiting bugs, or performing malicious activities. We further prototype PLATPAL to systematically harvest platform diversity. PLATPAL hooks into Adobe Reader to trace internal PDF processing and also uses sandboxed execution to capture a maldoc’s impact on the host system. Execution traces on different platforms are compared, and maldoc detection is based on the observation that a benign document behaves the same across platforms, while a maldoc behaves differently during exploitation. Evaluations show that PLATPAL raises no false alarms in benign samples, detects a variety of behavioral discrepancies in malicious samples, and is a scalable and practical solution.
Autobiographical memory: Amnesia, autobiographical memory, and confabulation

One approach to the understanding of normal cognitive function is to investigate its breakdown following brain damage. In the area of memory this has proved a very profitable strategy; typically, concepts and techniques developed in the psychological laboratory have been used to analyze memory deficits in the clinic, and this in turn has frequently led to further development and modification of the initial model of normal memory. This chapter is concerned with the early stages of an attempt to approach autobiographical memory within this tradition. Because the study of autobiographical memory in normal subjects is still at a very early stage of development, conclusions are likely to be tentative. We shall be concentrating, however, on a phenomenon that we believe to be sufficiently striking and unequivocal to allow some conclusions, even though our data on normal control subjects are still sparse. We believe that our results, although preliminary, raise interesting questions both for the understanding of normal autobiographical memory and for its breakdown in amnesic patients. We shall begin by describing our current technique for investigating autobiographical memory, together with its application to a range of patients, most of whom were suffering from long-term memory problems. After a general overview of the autobiographical memory performance of these patients, we shall concentrate on four patients with frontal lobe damage, two of whom show clear evidence of confabulation. These latter patients will be described in more detail, an explanation of their autobiographical memory defect will be proposed, and its implications for autobiographical memory in normal subjects will be discussed.
Recognition of noisy speech using cumulant-based linear prediction analysis

The use of cumulant-based LP (linear prediction) analysis for speech recognition in the presence of noise is proposed. This method assumes the speech signal to be non-Gaussian. It is shown that cepstral coefficients derived by this method are quite insensitive to additive Gaussian noise which can be white or colored. The performance of a recognizer based on these estimates is compared to the performance of one that uses LP estimates derived from the autocorrelation function. It is found that at low SNR (below about 20 dB) the cumulant-based estimates outperform the autocorrelation-based estimates. At higher SNRs the reverse is true. The reasons for this behavior are not yet understood. However, it is shown that, by combining the two estimates, one can achieve recognition accuracy that is better than that of the conventional recognizer at all SNRs. <<ETX>>
Aberrant methylation of the HIC1 promoter is a frequent event in specific pediatric neoplasms.

PURPOSE To determine the role of methylation of HIC1, a candidate tumor suppressor gene on 17p13.3, in various types of pediatric tumors. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN We examined the methylation status of the HIC1 promoter by methylation specific PCR in 157 pediatric tumors and 27 nonmalignant tissues. We correlated methylation with mRNA expression by reverse transcription-PCR in eight tumor-derived cell lines. RESULTS HIC1 methylation was frequent in medulloblastomas (80%, 12 of 15), retinoblastomas (67%, 6 of 9), rhabdomyosarcomas (59%, 13 of 22), germ cell tumors (55%, 6 of 11), and neurouroblastic tumors (36%, 14 of 39); neuroblastomas (43%, 12 of 28); ganglioneuromas (17%, 1 of 6); and ganglioneuroblastomas (20%, 1 of 5). In contrast, a low incidence of methylation was observed in osteosarcomas (17%, 2 of 12), Ewing's tumors (9%, 1 of 11), Wilms' tumors (3%, 1 of 31), and hepatoblastomas (0%, 0 of 7). HIC1 methylation was more frequent in the aggressive alveolar subtype of rhabdomyosarcomas (100%, 8 of 8) than the embryonal subtype (33%, 4 of 12; P < 0.005) and was rare in the nonmalignant tissues examined. Methylation was also demonstrated by sequencing in nine randomly selected tumor samples. Seven of eight pediatric tumor cell lines examined were methylated and showed loss or reduced HIC1 mRNA. Expression was strongly induced in all cell lines by treatment with the demethylating agent 5-aza 2'deoxycytidine. CONCLUSIONS Our data suggest that aberrant methylation of HIC1 may play a role in the pathogenesis of specific pediatric tumors.
Robust Engineered Circuit Design Principles for Stochastic Biochemical Networks With Parameter Uncertainties and Disturbances

Biochemical regulatory networks including genes, proteins and other regulatory molecules suffer from internal parametrical fluctuations (thermal, transcriptional, and splicing) as well as external noises (environmental and intercellular). Robustness is an essential property of intracellular biochemical regulatory networks to attenuate the effects of internal fluctuation and external noise. In this study, several system control schemes are proposed for the robust circuit control design of stochastic linear and nonlinear biochemical regulatory networks. First, the robust stability of genetic and proteomic regulatory networks is discussed under internal fluctuations. Then, the filtering ability of external noises is analyzed for stochastic biochemical regulatory networks. For the case where a biochemical regulatory network is not sufficiently robust to tolerate internal fluctuation and does not have enough filtering ability to filter the external noise, how to improve the robustness and noise filtering ability of stochastic biochemical regulatory networks by engineered control mechanisms is also proposed via biochemical circuit design. The proposed robust gene circuit design principles have potential applications for robust biosynthetic network design. Finally, two design examples are given in-silico to illustrate the design procedure and to confirm the performance of the proposed robust circuit design method.
The Human Milk Protein-Lipid Complex HAMLET Sensitizes Bacterial Pathogens to Traditional Antimicrobial Agents

The fight against antibiotic resistance is one of the most significant challenges to public health of our time. The inevitable development of resistance following the introduction of novel antibiotics has led to an urgent need for the development of new antibacterial drugs with new mechanisms of action that are not susceptible to existing resistance mechanisms. One such compound is HAMLET, a natural complex from human milk that kills Streptococcus pneumoniae (the pneumococcus) using a mechanism different from common antibiotics and is immune to resistance-development. In this study we show that sublethal concentrations of HAMLET potentiate the effect of common antibiotics (penicillins, macrolides, and aminoglycosides) against pneumococci. Using MIC assays and short-time killing assays we dramatically reduced the concentrations of antibiotics needed to kill pneumococci, especially for antibiotic-resistant strains that in the presence of HAMLET fell into the clinically sensitive range. Using a biofilm model in vitro and nasopharyngeal colonization in vivo, a combination of HAMLET and antibiotics completely eradicated both biofilms and colonization in mice of both antibiotic-sensitive and resistant strains, something each agent alone was unable to do. HAMLET-potentiation of antibiotics was partially due to increased accessibility of antibiotics to the bacteria, but relied more on calcium import and kinase activation, the same activation pathway HAMLET uses when killing pneumococci by itself. Finally, the sensitizing effect was not confined to species sensitive to HAMLET. The HAMLET-resistant respiratory species Acinetobacter baumanii and Moraxella catarrhalis were all sensitized to various classes of antibiotics in the presence of HAMLET, activating the same mechanism as in pneumococci. Combined these results suggest the presence of a conserved HAMLET-activated pathway that circumvents antibiotic resistance in bacteria. The ability to activate this pathway may extend the lifetime of the current treatment arsenal.
Cross-Talk between TLR4 and FcγReceptorIII (CD16) Pathways

Pathogen-pattern-recognition by Toll-like receptors (TLRs) and pathogen clearance after immune complex formation via engagement with Fc receptors (FcRs) represent central mechanisms that trigger the immune and inflammatory responses. In the present study, a linkage between TLR4 and FcγR was evaluated in vitro and in vivo. Most strikingly, in vitro activation of phagocytes by IgG immune complexes (IgGIC) resulted in an association of TLR4 with FcγRIII (CD16) based on co-immunoprecipitation analyses. Neutrophils and macrophages from TLR4 mutant (mut) mice were unresponsive to either lipopolysaccharide (LPS) or IgGIC in vitro, as determined by cytokine production. This phenomenon was accompanied by the inability to phosphorylate tyrosine residues within immunoreceptor tyrosine-based activation motifs (ITAMs) of the FcRγ-subunit. To transfer these findings in vivo, two different models of acute lung injury (ALI) induced by intratracheal administration of either LPS or IgGIC were employed. As expected, LPS-induced ALI was abolished in TLR4 mut and TLR4−/− mice. Unexpectedly, TLR4 mut and TLR4−/− mice were also resistant to development of ALI following IgGIC deposition in the lungs. In conclusion, our findings suggest that TLR4 and FcγRIII pathways are structurally and functionally connected at the receptor level and that TLR4 is indispensable for FcγRIII signaling via FcRγ-subunit activation.
Tao, a 3D dynamic document description language

Tao Presentations uses a dialect of the XL programming language to describe interactive multimedia 3D documents. This approach makes it easy to create 3D contents that can be used to present information, to visualize scientific data or to explore stereoscopic or auto-stereoscopic effects rapidly. The demands of an interactive, real-time environment have created a number of interesting challenges for us to solve, ranging from language expressiveness and document semantics to graphics performance and rendering quality.
A Model-Driven BPM Approach for SOA Mediation Information System Design in a Collaborative Context

In a collaborative situation, involving several partners, a BPM approach may be useful to support the design of a Mediation Information System (MIS), in charge of ensuring interoperability between partners' IS. For such an objective, there are two main barriers, which are: (i) building collaborative business process cartography, and (ii) once the collaborative business process cartography defined, fill the deep semantic gap between business activities and technical web-services. This articles aims at presenting state of the art, results and current works concerning both these critical issues.
Motivation and Intelligence Drive Auditory Perceptual Learning

Background Although feedback on performance is generally thought to promote perceptual learning, the role and necessity of feedback remain unclear. We investigated the effect of providing varying amounts of positive feedback while listeners attempted to discriminate between three identical tones on learning frequency discrimination. Methodology/Principal Findings Using this novel procedure, the feedback was meaningless and random in relation to the listeners' responses, but the amount of feedback provided (or lack thereof) affected learning. We found that a group of listeners who received positive feedback on 10% of the trials improved their performance on the task (learned), while other groups provided either with excess (90%) or with no feedback did not learn. Superimposed on these group data, however, individual listeners showed other systematic changes of performance. In particular, those with lower non-verbal IQ who trained in the no feedback condition performed more poorly after training. Conclusions/Significance This pattern of results cannot be accounted for by learning models that ascribe an external teacher role to feedback. We suggest, instead, that feedback is used to monitor performance on the task in relation to its perceived difficulty, and that listeners who learn without the benefit of feedback are adept at self-monitoring of performance, a trait that also supports better performance on non-verbal IQ tests. These results show that ‘perceptual’ learning is strongly influenced by top-down processes of motivation and intelligence.
Erythropoietin and the hypoxic brain

SUMMARY Normal tissue function in mammals depends on adequate supply of oxygen through blood vessels. A discrepancy between oxygen supply and consumption (hypoxia) induces a variety of specific adaptation mechanisms at the cellular, local and systemic level. These mechanisms are in part governed by the activation of hypoxia-inducible transcription factors (HIF-1, HIF-2), which in turn modulate expression of hypoxically regulated genes such as those encoding vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and erythropoietin (EPO). EPO is a glycoprotein that is produced mainly by interstitial fibroblasts in the kidneys of the adult and in hepatocytes in the foetus. Released into the circulation, EPO makes its way to the bone marrow, where it regulates red cell production by preventing apoptosis of erythroid progenitor cells. Recently, EPO has emerged as a multifunctional growth factor that plays a significant role in the nervous system. Both EPO and its receptor are expressed throughout the brain in glial cells, neurones and endothelial cells. Hypoxia and ischaemia have been recognised as important driving forces of EPO expression in the brain. EPO has potent neuroprotective properties in vivo and in vitro and appears to act in a dual way by directly protecting neurones from ischaemic damage and by stimulating endothelial cells and thus supporting the angiogenic effect of VEGF in the nervous system. Thus, hypoxia-induced gene products such as VEGF and EPO might be part of a self-regulated physiological protection mechanism to prevent neuronal injury, especially under conditions of chronically reduced blood flow (chronic ischaemia). In this review, I will briefly summarize the recent findings on the molecular mechanisms of hypoxia-regulated EPO expression in general and give an overview of its expression in the central nervous system, its action as a growth factor with non-haematopoietic functions and its potential clinical relevance in various brain pathologies.