Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Motor, visual-spatial, and somatosensory skills after closed head injury in children and adolescents: A study of change.

Correlational studies of recovery of function following traumatic brain injury have revealed weak, nonspecific relationships between outcome and injury variables. In order to better identify factors affecting recovery, 49 children (aged 6-15 years) were followed prospectively with repeated neuropsychological assessment of motor, visual-spatial, and somatosensory skills up to 5 years postinjury. Analyses of individual growth curves revealed systematic nonlinear changes after injury. Variability among growth patterns related robustly to injury variables. Younger children with severe injuries showed slower growth on visual-spatia l and motor tasks than did older children of similar severity or similarly aged children with less severe injuries. These findings support a hypothesis of increased vulnerability of rapidly emerging skills in young children and argue against an explanation of lowered recovery rates due to concomitant maturational influences on development. Results of studies of cognitive functioning in children after closed head injury (CHI) have consistently demonstrated the presence of deficits in motor skills and nonverbal processing during the subacute phase of recovery (Klonoff, Low, & Clark, 1977; Levin & Eisenberg, 1979a, 1979b). These motor and nonverbal deficits persist one or more years postinjury (Chadwick, Rutter, Brown, Shaffer, & Traub, 1981; Knights et al., 1991; Winogron, Knights, & Bawden, 1984). Additional studies have demonstrated deficits in memory (Levin et al., 1988), language (Levin & Eisenberg, 1979a, 1979b), and behavioral adjustment (Fletcher, Ewing-Cobbs, Miner, Levin, & Eisenberg, 1990). Yet, few studies of neurobehavior al function in children after CHI have addressed changes in performance patterns over time or the actual process of change. To study the recovery process, researchers must use longitudinal measurement of specific abilities and behaviors. For instance, Chadwick, Rutter, Brown, Shaffer, and Traub (1981) prospectively studied the recovery of IQ scores in children up to 27 months after CHI. By testing the children
Efficacy of phenobarbital monotherapy in treatment of neonatal seizures—relationship to blood levels

Seventy-one neonates were observed for the relationship between phenobarbital plasma concentrations and elimination of seizures. Sixty neonates (85%) had seizures controlled by phenobarbital alone. Effective plasma concentrations were 10.1 to 46.4 mg per liter. Although 36 neonates had seizures controlled by phenobarbital concentrations below 20 mg per liter, 7 neonates required levels above 30 mg per liter. We recommend that plasma phenobarbital concentrations should equal or surpass 40 mg per liter before additional anticonvulsants are used for neonates with seizures.
Chapter 6 Transferring Advice into a Connectionist Reinforcement-learning Agent

Once the teacher speciies advice for the reinforcement-learning agent, ratle transfers the advice into the agent. To do this, ratle must translate the teacher's instructions into a form that the agent can use. In standard reinforcement learning (RL), the agent senses the current world state, chooses an action to execute, and occasionally receives rewards and punishments. Based on these reinforcements from the environment, the agent's task is to improve its action-choosing module so that the total amount of reinforcement it receives is increased. Since my RL agent uses connectionist Q, the agent's action-choosing module is a neural network. Therefore, to translate the advice of the teacher, ratle must make changes to the agent's neural network that capture the meaning of the advice. This is done by translating statements in the ratle language into new network units and links that correspond to the concepts represented by the statements. Table 23 shows the main loop of an agent employing connectionist Q-learning, augmented (in italics) by my process for incorporating advice. The main diierence between my approach and standard connectionist Q-learning is that the agent continually checks if the teacher has any recommendations to ooer, and if so, incorporates those recommendations into its utility function. In order to understand how statements from the ratle language are transformed, this chapter deenes the steps of the subroutine IncorporateAdvice from Table 23. But rst, I will discuss the steps that must be taken before the agent can begin the process shown in Table 23. Recall that a connectionist Q-learner uses a neural network, where the input to the network is a vector of features describing the current state, and the outputs of the network are the predicted utilities for each of the agent's possible actions. In ratle, I assume that the initial neural network is set up by a user (who need not be the teacher), referred to as
Mycoplasmal Infections Prevent Apoptosis and Induce Malignant Transformation of Interleukin-3-Dependent 32D Hematopoietic Cells

ABSTRACT 32D cells, a murine myeloid cell line, rapidly undergo apoptosis upon withdrawal of interleukin-3 (IL-3) supplement in culture. We found that 32D cells, if infected by several species of human mycoplasmas that rapidly activated NF-κB, would live and continue to grow in IL-3-depleted culture. Mycoplasma-infected cells showed no evidence of autocrine production of IL-3. Pyrrolidine dithiocarbamate (PDTC) blocked activation of NF-κB and led to prominent cell death. Heat-killed mycoplasmas or mycoplasmal membrane preparations alone could support continued growth of 32D cells in culture without IL-3 supplement for a substantial period of time. However, upon removal of heat-inactivated mycoplasmas, 32D cells quickly became apoptotic. In comparison, live Mycoplasma fermentans or M. penetrans infection for 4 to 5 weeks induced malignant transformation of 32D cells. Transformed 32D cells grew autonomously and no longer required support of growth-stimulating factors including IL-3 and mycoplasmas. The transformed 32D cells quickly formed tumors when injected into nude mice. Karyotyping showed that development of chromosomal changes and trisomy 19 was often associated with malignant transformation and tumorigenicity of 32D cells. Mycoplasmal infections apparently affected the fidelity of genomic transmission in cell division as well as checkpoints coordinating the progression of cell cycle events.
Microbial diversity of soils on the banks of the Solimões and Negro rivers, state of Amazonas, Brazil

Analysis of bacterial diversity in soils along the banks of the Solimões and Negro rivers, state of Amazonas, Brazil, was by partial sequencing of the genes codifying the rDNA16S region. Diversity of operational taxonomic units (OTU) and of the divergent sequences obtained were applied in comparative analysis of microbiological diversity in the two environments, based on richness estimators and OTU diversity indices. The higher OTU diversity in the Solimões was based on the higher number of parameters that evoke this. The interaction between the nucleotide sequences of bacteria inhabiting the two riverine environments indicated that the two microrganism communities are similar in composition.
Leading for Innovation

Despite growing interest in developing and producing creative products, much remains unknown about how to best facilitate the innovative process. Through a review and integration of creativity, innovation, and leadership literatures, we propose that leaders are one of the primary driving forces in increasing innovative output. To help clarify how leaders achieve this influence, we offer a model of leading for innovation where creativity and innovation are depicted as series of interrelated processes that span multiple levels of analysis (individual, team, and organization). The proposed framework illustrates the direct and indirect ways direct leaders enhance innovation with the resulting discussion helping to highlight the range of behaviors and activities that leaders might engage in to help encourage creative productivity. The implications of our model for HRD scholars, professionals, and other stakeholders—such as executive level leaders, retailers, investors, and consumers—are also discussed.
[The piano].

Piano at Westminster Choir College has multiple dimensions at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. It fosters the development of students who perform on a high level as soloists, as artist-teachers and as collaborators with other performing artists. A strong foundation of technique and knowledge of piano literature and style are essential to all of these aspects of pianism. The department also provides instruction for undergraduate students who need keyboard skills in order to function effectively throughout their professional careers.
Antithetic Conjuncts in Written English

The particular relationship of variance that antithetic conjuncts express is one of opposition; in Greenbaum’s words, ’These indicate that what is being said is in complete opposition to what has been said before’ (1969:37). However, Greenbaum’s definition must be interpreted differently for different conjuncts, the kind of opposition expressed by in contrast, for example, is strikingly different from that typically expressed by on the contrary and subtly different from that expressed by conversely. And although, in an earlier issue in this journal, Yee (1975) is correct in pointing out a similarity between on the other hand and conversely it would be misleading to teach students that these two conjuncts are interchangeable in all contexts. The purpose of this paper is to describe the conditions for the appropriateness of several of the most common antithetic conjuncts in written expository English, in the expectation that such a description will be useful to teachers of English to non-native speakers.
A Novel Feature-Map Based ICA Model for Identifying the Individual, Intra/Inter-Group Brain Networks across Multiple fMRI Datasets

Independent component analysis (ICA) has been widely used in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data analysis to evaluate functional connectivity of the brain; however, there are still some limitations on ICA simultaneously handling neuroimaging datasets with diverse acquisition parameters, e.g., different repetition time, different scanner, etc. Therefore, it is difficult for the traditional ICA framework to effectively handle ever-increasingly big neuroimaging datasets. In this research, a novel feature-map based ICA framework (FMICA) was proposed to address the aforementioned deficiencies, which aimed at exploring brain functional networks (BFNs) at different scales, e.g., the first level (individual subject level), second level (intragroup level of subjects within a certain dataset) and third level (intergroup level of subjects across different datasets), based only on the feature maps extracted from the fMRI datasets. The FMICA was presented as a hierarchical framework, which effectively made ICA and constrained ICA as a whole to identify the BFNs from the feature maps. The simulated and real experimental results demonstrated that FMICA had the excellent ability to identify the intergroup BFNs and to characterize subject-specific and group-specific difference of BFNs from the independent component feature maps, which sharply reduced the size of fMRI datasets. Compared with traditional ICAs, FMICA as a more generalized framework could efficiently and simultaneously identify the variant BFNs at the subject-specific, intragroup, intragroup-specific and intergroup levels, implying that FMICA was able to handle big neuroimaging datasets in neuroscience research.
Importance of the seryl and threonyl residues of the fifth transmembrane domain to the substrate specificity of yeast plasma membrane Na+/H+ antiporters

The Zygosaccharomyces rouxii Na+/H+ antiporter Sod2-22p is a member of the subfamily of yeast plasma membrane Nha/ Sod antiporters that do not recognize potassium as their substrate. A functional study of two ZrSod2-22p mutated versions that improved the tolerance of a S. cerevisiae alkali-metal-cation sensitive strain to high extracellular concentration of KCl identified two polar non-charged amino-acid residues in the fifth transmembrane domain, Thr141 and Ser150, as being involved in substrate recognition and transport in yeast Nha/Sod antiporters. A reciprocal substitution of amino-acid residues with a hydroxyl group at these positions, T141S or S150T, produced a broadened cation selectivity of the antiporter for K+, in addition to Na+ and Li+. Site-directed mutagenesis of Ser150 showed that while the replacement of Ser150 with a small hydrophobic (valine) or negatively charged (aspartate) amino acid did not produce a significant change in ZrSod2-22p substrate specificity, the introduction of a positive charge at this position stopped the activity of the antiporter. This data demonstrates that the amino-acid composition of the fifth transmembrane domain, mainly the presence of amino acids containing hydroxyl groups in this part of the protein, is critical for the recognition and transport of substrates and could participate in conformational movements during the binding and/or cation transport cycle in yeast plasma membrane Na+/H+ antiporters.
Real World Applications of Machine Learning Techniques over Large Mobile Subscriber Datasets

Abstract Communication Service Providers (CSPs) are in a unique position to utilize theirvast transactional data assets generated from interactions of subscribers with net-work elements as well as with other subscribers. CSPs could leverage its dataassets for a gamut of applications such as service personalization, predictive offermanagement, loyalty management, revenue forecasting, network capacity plan-ning, product bundle optimization and churn management to gain signiﬁcant com-petitive advantage. However, due to the sheer data volume, variety, velocity andveracity of mobile subscriber datasets, sophisticated data analytics techniques andframeworks are necessary to derive actionable insights in a useable timeframe. Inthis paper, we describe our journey from a relational database management system(RDBMS) based campaign management solution which allowed data scientistsand marketers to use hand-written rules for service personalization and targetedpromotions to a distributed Big Data Analytics platform, capable of performinglarge scale machine learning and data mining to deliver real time service person-alization, predictive modelling and product optimization. Our work involves acareful blend of technology, processes and best practices, which facilitate man-machine collaboration and continuous experimentation to derive measurable eco-nomic value from data. Our platform has a reach of more than 500 million mobilesubscribers worldwide, delivering over 1 billion personalized recommendationsannually, processing a total data volume of 64 Petabytes, corresponding to 8.5trillion events.
Marital Quality: A Review of the Seventies.

The quality of marital relationships continues to be the most widely studied topic in the field. Trends during the 1970s in research on marital quality and related concepts (happiness, satisfaction, adjustment, etc.) are summarized. The decade saw more husbands in samples, more attention to couples and joint assessment of husbands and wives, use of observational data collection techniques, greater attention to methodological and measurement issues, more use of multivariate statistics, greater awareness of issues pertaining to cross-sectional designs, fewer biases in the portrayal of male/female roles, attempts to build theory and synthesize the literature, growing interest in "dyads" as a more general form of marital relationships, and more research which is international in scope. Research, methodological, and theoretical contributions are evaluated, and some recommendations are made for the decade ahead.
HMM-based gesture recognition system using kinect sensor for improvised human-computer interaction

Currently, gesture recognition from continuous video sequences is one of the most exciting research areas. This paper proposes a novel HMM-based gesture recognition scheme that can be implemented for developing an improved HCI system capable of providing enhanced performance. This framework explores the high potential of Microsoft's Kinect sensor in gesture recognition by utilizing it in the data acquisition phase. The primary novelty of the work lies in the choice of an active difference signature-based feature descriptor that contains time-warped information in a single sequence over the classically used geometric features. The discussed framework has been tested for 12 distinct gestures embodied by 60 different subjects and it is important to note that for all the gestures the proposed scheme has attained a fairly high recognition rate of nearly 90% which proves the worth of the present work in real time applications. Further, to check the efficacy of the newly formulated framework the performance of the same has been validated against the existing standard technologies.
More comprehensive model of quartz crystal microbalance response to viscoelastic loading

Using a one-dimensional approach the electric admittance |Y| of a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) is calculated as a function of frequency depending on material properties as well as the acoustic impedance of an arbitrary loading. Several solutions for the shift of specific frequencies are derived and methods presented to either suppress or compute the influence of parasitic effects. Measurements of high and complex viscosities are possible. The model has been confirmed experimentally.
Effects of a Staff Training Program on Community Instructors’ Ability to Teach Swimming Skills to Children With Autism

Several recent studies have shown that children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) are less physically active than their typically developing peers and are thus at risk of health problems associated with inactivity (e.g., obesity or diabetes). There is a need to examine the effectiveness of interventions such as swimming that are aimed at increasing physical activity, using approaches that are ecologically valid—that is, that are designed to address real-world problems in natural settings with typical intervention agents. This community-based study used a modified non-concurrent multiple baseline design to assess the impact of behavioral skills training to train recreation center staff in the use of discrete trials and visual activity schedules to teach swimming skills to children with ASD in public pools. Following completion of the training, five of six instructors showed evidence of instructional skill acquisition; the sixth instructor showed improvement during baseline, so the effect of the intervention could not be assessed. In addition, an experimental effect for increased compliance was evident for seven of the eight children, and all eight acquired new swimming skills. Social/ecological validity ratings by instructors and parents were uniformly high. The results and limitations are discussed, along with suggestions for future research.
Emotional Distraction and Bodily Reaction: Modulation of Autonomous Responses by Anodal tDCS to the Prefrontal Cortex

Prefrontal electric stimulation has been demonstrated to effectively modulate cognitive processing. Specifically, the amelioration of cognitive control (CC) over emotional distraction by transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) points toward targeted therapeutic applications in various psychiatric disorders. In addition to behavioral measures, autonomous nervous system (ANS) responses are fundamental bodily signatures of emotional information processing. However, interactions between the modulation of CC by tDCS and ANS responses have received limited attention. We here report on ANS data gathered in healthy subjects that performed an emotional CC task parallel to the modulation of left prefrontal cortical activity by 1 mA anodal or sham tDCS. Skin conductance responses (SCRs) to negative and neutral pictures of human scenes were reduced by anodal as compared to sham tDCS. Individual SCR amplitude variations were associated with the amount of distraction. Moreover, the stimulation-driven performance- and SCR-modulations were related in form of a quadratic, inverse-U function. Thus, our results indicate that non-invasive brain stimulation (i.e., anodal tDCS) can modulate autonomous responses synchronous to behavioral improvements, but the range of possible concurrent improvements from prefrontal stimulation is limited. Interactions between cognitive, affective, neurophysiological, and vegetative responses to emotional content can shape brain stimulation effectiveness and require theory-driven integration in potential treatment protocols.
Critical Ethnography and Ecological Psychology: Conceptual and Empirical Explorations of a Synthesis

The authors present a conceptual analysis and a demonstration of the synthesis of two methodologies, set in two very different academic traditions, in a single research design used to investigate an academic department: Carspecken’s five-stage critical qualitative research (CQR) and Barker’s Behavior Setting Survey (BSS). They show that (a) conceptually, constructs associated with the BSS can be relocated within CQR as contributions to its theory of social systems, and (b) methodologically, procedures associated with the BSS contribute to the field studies of social systems. By employing features of both methodologies together, a broader, sharper methodological framework for research on human activities in relation to physical, social, and cultural contexts can be achieved.
An improved fluorometric assay of rat serum and plasma converting enzyme.

The most sensitive nonradiometric routine assay for angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) activity uses fluorometry to detect His-Leu released from Hip-His-Leu. Our results indicate that, in contrast to human serum, rat serum and plasma contain large and variable amounts of dipeptidase activity that lead to a subestimation of the ACE activity measured in 0.1 M potassium phosphate buffer, pH 8.3, containing 0.3 M NaCl, the most commonly used assay for human serum and tissue ACE. We describe and validate an assay for 1 to 10 microL rat and human serum or plasma using 5 mM Hip-His-Leu in 500 microL of 0.4 M sodium borate buffer, pH 8.3, containing 0.9 M NaC1 at 37 degrees C that reduced the subestimation error to less than or equal to 3% (rat serum) and less than or equal to 0.1% (human serum) and increased the ACE activity twofold to threefold. The Km and Vmax are reported for rat serum ACE (Hip-His-Leu) and dipeptidase (His-Leu) in borate buffer and phosphate buffer. Rat serum ACE hydrolysis of Hip-His-Leu measured by fluorometry correlated (r = 0.99, p less than 0.05) with the hydrolysis of angiotensin I measured by high-performance liquid chromatography. A direct method based on amino acid analysis is described for evaluating the dipeptidase error of complex mixtures such as tissue extracts and other physiological fluids. We have found that the assay can be used to measure ACE activity in 25 samples (in duplicate) in 2 hours with small intraassay (2.2%) and interassay (3.9%) coefficients of variation. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)