Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dietary rhubarb (Rheum rhaponticum) stalk fibre does not lower plasma cholesterol levels in diabetic rats

Rhubarb (Rheum rhapontiam) stalk fibre was previously shown to be hypolipidaemic under clinical and experimental conditions. The present study was undertaken to investigate whether rhubarb stalk fibre has a hypolipidaemic effect under diabetic conditions. Two models of diabetic rats were used: streptozotocin-induced diabetic rats, and diabetes-prone BB (BBdp) rats. The plasma cholesterol and triacylglycerol concentrations were elevated after the onset of diabetes in BBdp rats, but not in sterptozotocin-induced diabetic rats. The rhubarb-fibre diet had no effect on the plasma cholesterol or triacylglycerol concentrations of diabetic rats. The hypolipidaemic effect of rhubarb stalk fibre has been suggested to be due to the bile-acid-binding capacity of rhubarb fibre, which in turn up regulates cholesterol 7α-hydroxylase (cyp7a) activity. cyp7a is the first and the rate-limiting enzyme in the breakdown of cholesterol to bile acids. We measured the cyp7a activity and mRNA levels in control and diabetic rats fed rhubarb- and cellulose-fibre diets. The cyp7a activity and mRNA abundance were increased in both diabetic rat models, indicating that bile acid synthesis is enhanced in diabetes. Feeding a diet enriched with rhubarb fibre caused a slight but significant increase (P<0·05) in cyp7a enzyme activity in BBdp rats, but no change in cyp7a mRNA abundance was detected. These results suggest that although a rhubarb-fibre-enriched diet increased cyp7a activity in BBdp rats, there was no apparent therapeutic benefit in terms of lowering plasma cholesterol concentrations.
Beyond the 12/23 Rule of VDJ Recombination Independent of the Rag Proteins 1

The combinatorial repertoire of AgRs is established through somatic recombination of V, D, and J gene segments during lymphocyte development. Incorporation of D segments into IgH, TCRβ, and TCRδ chains also contributes to junctional diversification by substantially extending the length of the third CDR. The V, D, and J gene segments are flanked by recombination signals (RS) of 12- or 23-mer spacer length that direct recombination according to the 12/23 rule. D genes in the TCRβ and TCRδ loci are flanked by a 12RS and 23RS, and their incorporation is controlled by mechanisms “beyond the 12/23 rule. ” In the TCRβ locus, selective interactions between Rag proteins and the RS flanking the V-D and D-J genes, respectively, are sufficient to enforce D gene usage. In this article, we report that in the TCRδ locus, the Rag proteins are not the major determinant of D gene incorporation. In developing mouse and human thymocytes, the two Dδ genes rearrange predominantly to form D-D coding joints. In contrast, when tested in ex vivo transfection assays in a nonlymphoid cell line, the flanking RS mediate deletion, rather than incorporation, of the two D genes on both exogenous recombination substrates and the endogenous locus. These results suggest that selective Rag-RS interactions are not the sole regulators of D gene segment incorporation, and additional, perhaps lymphocyte-specific, mechanisms exist that allow proper shaping of the primary AgR repertoire.
Religion and Nationalism

This article offers a first attempt to understand the relationship between religion and nationalism. It first addresses the absence of a discussion of religion in the literature on nationalism. Some of the most prominent authors, including Ernest Gellner, Benedict Anderson and Eric Hobsbawm, have all largely neglected the role of religion in their discussions of the rise of nationalism by focussing on economic factors. A proper understanding of the development of nationalism should incorporate the direct and indirect influences of religion. Second, this article lays out an initial classification of the different ways in which religion and nationalism interact. I identify a number of degrees of influence which religion has on nationalism. In the first case, religious nationalism, religion and nationalism are inseparable. In other national movements, religion plays a less dominant role, merely assisting the more prominent nationalist movement as a cohesive element. This article concludes with an explanation of the importance of this relationship. Ultimately, the type of religious nationalism affects what type of nation state develops. The stronger the religious influence on the national movement, the greater the likelihood that discrimination and human rights violations will occur.
Psychology of Physical Activity: What Should Students Know?

The assignment for the 76th Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Kinesiology and Physical Education was to define the psychology subdiscipline of kinesiology. Ten undergraduate sport and exercise psychology textbooks, 27 undergraduate course syllabi, and three articles which examined the most popular contents of prominent journals were analyzed. Similar topics were found across all avenues of research, and are deemed important. Throughout our investigation we noted a lack of cross-disciplinary integration. We review the issue of separatism across subdisciplines of kinesiology, and suggest a cross-disciplinary focus in the texts, research, and the classroom. Finally, we discuss the issue of choosing appropriate names to represent our field, and propose that the name physical activity should be adopted.
Cytokines in the Pathogenesis of Fatty Liver and Disease Progression to Steatohepatitis: Implications for Treatment

Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) has emerged as a growing public health problem worldwide. NAFLD represents a wide spectrum of conditions ranging from fatty liver, that in general follows a benign nonprogressive clinical course, to nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH), a serious form of NAFLD, that may progress to cirrhosis and end-stage liver disease. The mechanisms responsible for NAFLD development and disease progression remain incompletely understood, but are of great clinical interest as current therapies are limited. Future therapies will be predicted based upon the understanding of its pathogenesis. This review focuses on the growing evidence from both experimental and human studies suggesting a central role of cytokines in the pathogenesis of NAFLD. We review the role of cytokines as key regulators of insulin sensitivity and hepatic lipid overloading, liver injury and inflammation, and fibrosis and cirrhosis, with an emphasis on potential therapeutic implications.
Nursing Clinical Decision-Making : A Literature Review

Clinical judgment and decision-making is a required component of professional nursing. Expert nurses are known for their efficient and intuitive decision-making processes, while novice nurses are known for more effortful and deliberate decision-making processes. Despite taking longer to make decisions, novices still have trouble with effective decision-making. The aim of this paper is to review the factors that contribute to clinical judgment and decision-making of novice nurses. This was achieved by reviewing over two hundred articles produced by searches through PsycINFO. These articles used various methods of data collection, ranging from observation to well-controlled experimentation, although the majority of the studies were exploratory in nature. Factors that influenced decision-making were categorized as either individual or environmental factors. Individual factors captured elements unique to the decision-maker and included factors such as experience, cue recognition, and hypothesis updating. By contrast, environmental factors captured elements surrounding the decision-task. Among these factors were task complexity, time pressure, and interruptions. The reliability and robustness of these factors are discussed.
Recording the Personal: The Benefits in Maintaining Research Diaries for Documenting the Emotional and Practical Challenges of Fieldwork in Unfamiliar Settings

Through an analysis of personal research diaries maintained during a prolonged period spent working in Palestine, this article analyses the importance of maintaining research diaries when on fieldwork. The evidence produced stems from a content analysis of fieldwork diaries kept while researching commemorative events in the West Bank, Palestine, during a period of global uncertainty and at a time of much change in the region. In espousing the benefits of the fieldwork diary it is shown that diaries assume a more important role than acting as a mere logging device; they have the capacity to allow for personal reflection and to help with the development of strategic responses to the inevitable challenges one would expect to face when working far from the relative comfort of home. The research diary as a cathartic tool for researchers to record fears and shortcomings in their work is discussed and personal insights into some of the challenges this researcher faced when engaged in ethnographic work in Ramallah, Palestine are provided. In summarising the benefits of maintaining research diaries, the author, lamenting the lack of transparency in the literature to date on the practicalities of fieldwork, calls for more open and honest reflection on the challenges associated with conducting fieldwork, particularly that which takes place in volatile or unstable regions.
Multi Sensor Fusion Framework for Indoor-Outdoor Localization of Limited Resource Mobile Robots

This paper presents a sensor fusion framework that improves the localization of mobile robots with limited computational resources. It employs an event based Kalman Filter to combine the measurements of a global sensor and an inertial measurement unit (IMU) on an event based schedule, using fewer resources (execution time and bandwidth) but with similar performance when compared to the traditional methods. The event is defined to reflect the necessity of the global information, when the estimation error covariance exceeds a predefined limit. The proposed experimental platforms are based on the LEGO Mindstorm NXT, and consist of a differential wheel mobile robot navigating indoors with a zenithal camera as global sensor, and an Ackermann steering mobile robot navigating outdoors with a SBG Systems GPS accessed through an IGEP board that also serves as datalogger. The IMU in both robots is built using the NXT motor encoders along with one gyroscope, one compass and two accelerometers from Hitecnic, placed according to a particle based dynamic model of the robots. The tests performed reflect the correct performance and low execution time of the proposed framework. The robustness and stability is observed during a long walk test in both indoors and outdoors environments.
Cognitive Abilities: the State of the Art

~ An important paradigm in psychological science concerns the sources, measurements, and dimensions of individual differences in cognitive abilities, as well as issues pertaining to their development, consistency, and malleability The paradigm’s history can be traced back for more than a century, at least to Francis Galton and James McKeen Cattell Problems of measurement have been identified with such names as Alfred Binet, Lewis Terman, and David Wechsler Dimensional analysis has been the concern of Charles Spearman, Cyril Burt, L L Thurstone, J P Guilford, R B Cattell, and many others Issues of the sources, consistency, and malleability of individual differences have been addressed by such figures as E L Thorndike, Barbara Burks, Mane Skodak. and Harold Skeels The paradigm has for vanous reasons never been considered to be central to the science, and until recently it has seldom been pursued with any vigor by expenmentalists (Hunt, 1987) There have been difficulties in relating it to learning, memory, perception, motivation, and other topics of interest in theoretical psychology (Estes, 1982) A recent report on the achievements of behavioral science (National Research Council. 1988) gave it scant attention as a field that needed support and further development Many of the problems with which differential psychologists have concerned themselve-for example, the measurement of aptitudes and achievements, the methodology of factor analysis, and the assessment of genetic and environmental influences-have led to seemingly intractable controversies What is more, some of these controversies have had parallels in important social issues Plomin, DeFnes, and
Model for fusion of software components

Current applications, especially those that cannot stop their execution, such as banking systems, airport management, and critical mission environments, among others, require of suitable mechanisms to respond immediately and automatically to constant changes of the execution environment and user requirements. In response to such issues, self-adaptation and dynamic evolution of the software allow to perform the necessary adjustments dynamically, minimizing human intervention. However, although these approaches resolve much of the problem, most of the solutions applied consist of adding functionality causing that the resulting applications to be large and/or with unnecessary or irrelevant elements. In order to strengthen the adaptation and evolution of software, the establishment of mechanisms supported in the principles of knowledge areas with greater maturity such as biology, chemistry, among others, results in an attractive alternative. In this sense, current paper proposes a new approach for adapting and creating software components at run-time based on a simplified chemical model for creating molecules. The main idea behind this approach is that every atom corresponds to a software component and every molecule correspond to a new adaptation or creation of a software component whose structure, functionality and behavior could be formed both of its own characteristics or execution environment.
Beliefs about language learning and their relationship to proficiency

This paper reports on a study that investigated the beliefs about language learning of 202 EFL students and 45 EFL teachers in the Department of English at the City University of Hong Kong. The primary aim of the study was to determine if the differences between student and teacher beliefs about language learning affect proficiency. Secondary aims were to develop hypotheses about the origins of Chinese learner beliefs about language learning, and to check the correlation between learner self-rated proficiency and tested proficiency. Data were collected using a 34-item self-report questionnaire (Horwitz's BALLI – Beliefs About Language Learning Inventory), a comprehensive proficiency test, an interview, and a self-rated proficiency sheet. Results indicated that four of the mismatched learner beliefs negatively affected EFL proficiency: additionally, learner answers on seven other BALLI items were considered to have implications for the learning and teaching of EFL. It was concluded that a number of different learner beliefs were detrimental to language learning, and also that they resulted in many dissatisfied and frustrated students who could not understand the rationale behind the tasks they carried out in class.
Architecture and Experimental Validation of a Low-Latency Phasor Data Concentrator

This paper presents the design principles of a Phasor Data Concentrator (PDC) that implements both the absolute and relative time data pushing logics together with a third one that aims at minimizing the latency introduced by the PDC without increasing the data incompleteness, as suggested in the IEEE Guide C37.244–2013. The performance of the aforementioned logics are assessed and compared in terms of reliability, determinism, and reduction of the overall latency in two real Phasor Measurement Unit (PMU) installations adopting different telecom infrastructures. The first one is based on optical fiber links that transmit synchrophasor data measured by 15 PMUs installed in the sub-transmission network of the city of Lausanne, Switzerland. The second one adopts a 4G LTE wireless infrastructure to support the data streaming of 10 PMUs installed in a distribution network supplying the city of Huissen, The Netherlands. The experimental results show that the proposed logic is characterized by the lowest latency, whereas the absolute time logic better mitigates the synchrophasor data latency variations.
Preventing Childhood Bullying: Findings and Lessons From the Denver Public Schools Trial

Twelve-month follow-up outcomes from a group-randomized trial (GRT) of a classroom curriculum aimed at preventing bullying and victimization among elementary students in the Denver, Colorado, public school system are presented. Twenty-eight elementary schools were randomly assigned to receive selected modules of Youth Matters (YM), a skills-training curriculum that targets bullying and victimization, or to a no-treatment control group. Linear growth models were fitted to five waves of data collected over 3 years to test the effect of the intervention on the rate of change in self-reported bullying and victimization. Participation in YM was associated with a 7% decline in bully victimization 1 year after the intervention ended. Practice and methodological challenges encountered in the investigation are discussed in the larger context of intervention research in school settings. Strategies to increase school-based intervention research by social work investigators are outlined.
Redefining the American quilt: definitions and experiences of community among ethnically diverse lesbian and bisexual women.

Lesbian and bisexual women from diverse backgrounds possess unique viewpoints regarding the meanings and functions of “community. ” Despite this, few studies have explored sexual minority women's understanding of and relationship to their communities. The present study employed qualitative research methods to investigate the meanings and functions of community among a sample of ethnically diverse lesbian and bisexual women (N=49). From the participants' responses in semistructured focus groups and key informant interviews, three core constructs emerged: community concepts (relevance, meaning), community-based strain (racism, homophobia, biphobia, classism), and community-based action (fluidity, exclusivity). Implications of these findings for future research and practice with this population of women will be discussed. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Evolution of an adaptive unsupervised speech controlled system

In this paper we present a self-learning speech controlled system comprising speech recognition, speaker identification and speaker adaptation. Our goal is the automatic personalization of speech controlled devices for some five recurring speakers without the requirement of a speaker specific training. We present a novel approach to detect unknown speakers based on a unified speech and speaker model. New users are detected in an unsupervised manner based on only a few utterances. New speaker profiles are initialized without any additional intervention of the user. Each profile is continuously adapted by tracking the speaker identity on successive utterances to enhance future speech recognition and speaker identification. Experiments on the evolution of such a system were carried out on a subset of the SPEECON database. The results show that in the long run the system produces adaptation profiles which give improvements in speech recognition rate only slightly lower than supervised or closed-set systems.
Focus in Double Object Constructions

Abstract Studies of the English dative alternation during the last three decades have not yet reached an agreement on the proper syntactic analysis of this alternation. The main goal of this article is to show that a study of the information structural properties of certain constructions can provide independent evidence for the adequacy of a particular syntactic analysis. Relying on the empirical adequateness of the argument structural approach to focus structure (Gussenhoven 1984; Selkirk 1995), we use accentual patterns as a test for syntactic representations. We argue that approaches in which any of the semantic arguments in triadic constructions is represented as a syntactic adjunct is not supported from a focus-theoretical perspective. Since double object constructions raise some problems for the overall applicability of the focus rules, a constraint on focus domain formation will be formulated which is not construction specific, but independently motivated.
Lung Transplantation in Patients with Cystic Fibrosis

Cystic fibrosis is one of the most common indications for lung transplantation worldwide and certainly the most common indication for all pediatric lung transplants and for bilateral lung transplantation irrespective of age. Outcomes are outstanding when compared with other indications for lung transplantation, and an increasing number of centers now report mean survival of greater than 10 years posttransplant. Hence it is important to concentrate on the broad panoply of potential systemic complications of cystic fibrosis and address proactively issues that may be associated with adverse outcomes. Optimum management of infectious, nutritional, diabetic, renal, bone, and gut complications is critical to long-term success so that recipients may realize their full potential. Timing of referral for consideration of active listing should allow sufficient time for the patient and lung transplant team to develop a productive working relationship based on best available evidence and mutual trust, which will culminate in a long-term successful outcome.
DAG Sequent Proofs with a Substitution Rule

In this paper we study an extension to classical sequent calculus with a substitution rule, which is normally admissible in classical logic. The structure of proofs is also extended to permit DAG shaped proofs. We analyse several properties of this system, such as the complexity of cut-elimination, and propose an extended tableau proof system, called s-tableau, that corresponds to the DAGsequent calculus. We show how the pigeon hole principle can be solved linearly solved in s-tableaux.
Seasonality extraction by function fitting to time-series of satellite sensor data

A new method for extracting seasonality information from time-series of satellite sensor data is presented. The method is based on nonlinear least squares fits of asymmetric Gaussian model functions to the time-series. The smooth model functions are then used for defining key seasonality parameters, such as the number of growing seasons, the beginning and end of the seasons, and the rates of growth and decline. The method is implemented in a computer program TIMESAT and tested on Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer (AVHRR) normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data over Africa. Ancillary cloud data [clouds from AVHRR (CLAVR)] are used as estimates of the uncertainty levels of the data values. Being general in nature, the proposed method can be applied also to new types of satellite-derived time-series data.