Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
THE PHONETIC PATTERNING OF SPONTANEOUS AMERICAN ENGLISH DISCOURSE

Statistical analysis of a manually annotated, 45-minute subset of the SWITCHBOARD corpus indicates that pronunciation variation observed in spontaneous American English discourse is highly structured at the level of the syllable, particularly when prosodic stress accent (i.e., syllable prominence) is taken into account. The pattern of segmental substitutions and deletions observed are largely associated with different constituents within the syllable (nuclei and codas, respectively); their frequency of occurrence is inversely proportional to stress-accent magnitude. The phonetic identity of vocalic nuclei is also related to stress accent, as is the probability of segmental deletion in the coda. Such data imply that “information” governs much of the phonetic patterning of spoken language characteristic of the real world.
Social Identity Theory and New Portrayals of Citizens Involved in International Affairs

This study explores the utility of social identity theory (SIT) to our understanding of ethnocentrism, or in-group favoritism, as an enduring news value. It investigates the case of three national newspapers, La Prensa (Argentina), The New York Times (United States), and Berlingske Tidende (Denmark), for the degree to which news treatments serve to enhance or protect national identity in news of national citizens interacting with people and places around the world. The results of this study reveal that all three newspapers are significantly more likely to engage in news treatments that reflect favorably upon the national self and, to a much more limited degree, engage in news treatments that serve to protect national identity when the home actor actions are negative.
Entrepreneurial Studies: The Dynamic Research Front of a Developing Social Science

Entrepreneurship research has been built upon a historical foundation grounded in economic change. To understand the development of the field, it is useful to understand the motivations and interests of key scholars and to trace the linkages between these scholars and other authors, from the transient to the contributor. This has been done through a bibliometric analysis of research articles cited between 1982 and 2004. Entrepreneurship has developed from a subdiscipline of management studies reliant on alien terms and cognitive methods toward a separate field with increasing complexities of its own. While not fully mature, entrepreneurship shows all the signs of a maturing field from its increasingly internal orientation and the establishment of key areas of research through to an enhanced, discipline–specific, theoretical approach with a professional language of its own.
Can Christian Divorce Support Groups Influence Forgiveness and Health Outcomes in Black Divorcees? A Phenomenological Investigation

Christian divorce support groups offer a community-based approach to help divorcees heal from their divorce. Yet, their effectiveness in ethnically diverse populations has not been fully elucidated. The purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate if Christian divorce support groups influence the forgiveness process and lead to improved self-reported health outcomes in Black Christian divorcees. Surveys and focus groups were used to evaluate key variables in 43 participants. Findings demonstrate participation in Christian divorce support groups positively influences forgiveness levels and health outcomes in Black Christians. These findings have religious, mental health, and clinical implications.
A Decision Support System to Evaluate Maintenance Requirements of Recoverable Item Populations

A microcomputer-based decision support system that determines and evaluates maintenance requirements of repairable item populations is developed. The model combines a multi-indenture maintenance tree concept with a nested Markov chain multistream concept to generate maintenance requirements for the total life cycle under steady-state as well as nonsteady-state conditions. The model meets the maintenance planning needs by providing spare parts requirements in the form of inventory levels, manpower hours required, the associated costs of the logistics system, and the availability of units for the proposed logistics. A case study is also presented.
Not all one and the same: Sexual identity, activism, and collective self-esteem

This study examines important distinctions in sexual orientation identities by exploring the relationships among sexual identity, activism, and collective self-esteem. Past research has revealed that individuals who label themselves as belonging to certain minority sexual identities may experience different types of outcomes; for instance, bisexual individuals have been shown to experience more psychological hardships (Brewster & Moradi, 2010; Browne & Lim, 2010), whereas Queer individuals’ politicization may buffer against some of these negative experiences and increase their psychological well-being (Galinsky et al., 2013; Klar and Kasser, 2009; Riggs, 2010). We explored whether these important differences could be attributed to a person’s choice of a sexual identity description. An online survey was distributed to Facebook groups affiliated with 33 universities across Canada, which yielded responses from 265 participants. Four distinct sexual identity categories were created and compared in two multiple regression models that controlled for measures of personal and social identity. In the first model, we tested group differences in collective self-esteem and, in the second model, we assessed group differences in political activism. As predicted, collective self-esteem was significantly lower for those who identified as bisexual, and activism was most likely among those who identified as Queer. Our research highlights the need for caution when either measuring or studying aspects of sexual orientation, since these identity categories reflect different personal and political points of reference.
‘Fornicating on floats’? The cultural politics of the Sydney Mardi Gras Parade beyond the metropolis

Studies of the Sydney Mardi Gras Parade conventionally explore how sexualised subjectivities are debated, enacted, performed and transgressed within the festival time/space. Instead, this paper seeks to understand the cultural politics of emotion generated by this parade in the lives of individuals some 3000 kilometres away in Townsville, Queensland. Drawing on a performative framework, we rely upon the concepts of ‘progressive sense of place’, ‘situated subjectivities’ and ‘emotional Borderlands’. Narrative analysis reveals sexual subjectivities are actively produced and contested through the different ways bodies, emotions, sexuality and spatiality become entwined within the annual rhythms of this mega‐event. The Sydney Mardi Gras Parade beyond Oxford Street signals both a threat to certain situated gay male subjectivities and a productive test to everyday assumptions that naturalise space as heterosexual across a number of geographical scales.
Discovery of Drought-Responsive Transposable Element-Related Peach miRNAs

MicroRNAs (miRNA) are small non-coding regulatory RNAs that suppress their specific target transcripts either by cleavage or inhibition of translation. Transposable element related miRNAs (TE-miRNA) have been subjected to various studies so far, and some of them were found to be involved in stress response in plants. Here, small RNA (sRNA) sequencing libraries generated from drought stress treated peach tissues were utilized to identify TE-miRNAs. Our computational analysis led to the identification of 63 TE-miRNAs, which were either locating nearby of any TE (TE-related), or overlapping with a TE (TE-derived). Furthermore, 13 out of 63 TE-miRNAs were designated as drought-responsive. Expression pattern of the identified drought-responsive TE-miRNAs are observed as tissue-specific manner, and their specific target transcripts are mostly related to transcription factors and growth-associated genes. Our findings suggest that miRNAs in relation with transposable elements might be key molecular players in the regulation of drought response.
BOTTLENECK IDENTIFICATION AND CRITICAL FAILURE FACTORS IN DATA MINING PROJECTS OF CRM

Competition to acquire and maintain valuable customers is significantly increased among companies. Many studies have investigated the maintenance and growth of customers to improve the performance indicators such as retention rate, collection and organization of customers’ data, creating customers’ profiles and modeling the users. With the occurrence of changes in the business environment, markets have saturated and the volume and growth rate of data have increased as well as decisions must be made as quick as possible and with maximum knowledge. Use of data mining methods is increasing. At present, Customer relationship management (CRM) and data mining projects as well as the wrong choice of methods and tools are very costly and many of these projects fail. Aim of this article is investigate concepts of CRM, data mining and the relationship between them as well as the reasons for their success or failure so that we have identified bottlenecks and offered solutions to prevent them. KeywordsCRM; Data Mining; Bottleneck Identification; Data warehouse; Critical Failure Factors (CFF).
Title: " an Efficient Genome-wide Multilocus Epistasis Search "

High-throughput laboratory techniques are producing vast amount of genomic marker data – discrete predictors to association studies. Linear regression model is often considered to link study phenotypes and these marker measurements to each other. Number of predictors in multi-marker regression models can easily be much larger than number of observations. Therefore, one needs application of variable selection to find small subset of important predictors out of large number of candidates. Such models can occasionally include also all pairwise locus-by-locus (epistasis) interactions which increases dimensionality of the model very rapidly. We consider variable selection problem of linear model containing large amount of predictors and all of their pairwise interactions in the model jointly. Our suggested approach (Kärkkäinen et al. 2015) use sureindependence-screening to first drop dimension of the problem by considering marginal importance of each interaction term within the huge loop. Subsequent estimation step then consider Bayesian variable selection approach (Extended Bayesian LASSO – Mutshinda and Sillanpää 2010). We also show that it is important to separate search of main and interaction effects in the algorithm to control number of false positives. Examples illustrates superior performance of our method over PLINK in terms of computation time and empirical power. Our successful examples consider even problem of originally of order of 280,000,000 interactions within a reasonable time frame. REFERENCES Mutshinda CM, Sillanpää MJ (2010) Extended Bayesian LASSO for multiple quantitative trait loci mapping and unobserved phenotype prediction. Genetics 186: 1067-1075. Kärkkäinen HP, Li Z, Sillanpää MJ (2015) An efficient genome-wide multilocus epistasis search. Genetics (accepted).
Combinatorial Control of Prion Protein Biogenesis by the Signal Sequence and Transmembrane Domain*

The prion protein (PrP) is synthesized in three topologic forms at the endoplasmic reticulum. secPrP is fully translocated into the endoplasmic reticulum lumen, whereasNtmPrP and CtmPrP are single-spanning membrane proteins of opposite orientation. Increased generation of CtmPrP in either transgenic mice or humans is associated with the development of neurodegenerative disease. To study the mechanisms by which PrP can achieve three topologic outcomes, we analyzed the translocation of proteins containing mutations introduced into either the N-terminal signal sequence or potential transmembrane domain (TMD) of PrP. Although mutations in either domain were found to affect PrP topogenesis, they did so in qualitatively different ways. In addition to its traditional role in mediating protein targeting, the signal was found to play a surprising role in determining orientation of the PrP N terminus. By contrast, the TMD was found to influence membrane integration. Analysis of various signal and TMD double mutants demonstrated that the topologic consequence of TMD action was directly dependent on the previous, signal-mediated step. Together, these results reveal that PrP topogenesis is controlled at two discrete steps during its translocation and provide a framework for understanding how these steps act coordinately to determine the final topology achieved by PrP.
Silencing synaptic communication between random interneurons during Drosophila larval locomotion

Genetic manipulation of individual neurons provides a powerful approach toward understanding their contribution to stereotypic behaviors. We describe and evaluate a method for identifying candidate interneurons and associated neuropile compartments that mediate Drosophila larval locomotion. We created Drosophila larvae that express green fluorescent protein (GFP) and a shibirets1 (shits1) transgene (a temperature‐sensitive neuronal silencer) in small numbers of randomly selected cholinergic neurons. These larvae were screened for aberrant behavior at an elevated temperature (31–32°C). Among larvae with abnormal locomotion or sensory‐motor responses, some had very small numbers of GFP‐labeled temperature‐sensitive interneurons. Labeled ascending interneurons projecting from the abdominal ganglia to specific brain neuropile compartments emerged as candidates for mediation of larval locomotion. Random targeting of small sets of neurons for functional evaluation, together with anatomical mapping of their processes, provides a tool for identifying the regions of the central nervous system that are required for normal locomotion. We discuss the limitations and advantages of this approach to discovery of interneurons that regulate motor behavior.
Tales from the Dark Side: Privacy Dark Strategies and Privacy Dark Patterns

Abstract Privacy strategies and privacy patterns are fundamental concepts of the privacy-by-design engineering approach. While they support a privacy-aware development process for IT systems, the concepts used by malicious, privacy-threatening parties are generally less understood and known. We argue that understanding the “dark side”, namely how personal data is abused, is of equal importance. In this paper, we introduce the concept of privacy dark strategies and privacy dark patterns and present a framework that collects, documents, and analyzes such malicious concepts. In addition, we investigate from a psychological perspective why privacy dark strategies are effective. The resulting framework allows for a better understanding of these dark concepts, fosters awareness, and supports the development of countermeasures. We aim to contribute to an easier detection and successive removal of such approaches from the Internet to the benefit of its users.
Robotic manipulation of human red blood cells with optical tweezers for cell property characterization

Cell manipulation has received considerable attentions in recent years. Most of cell manipulations are performed manually without guarantee of high precision and high throughput. This paper reports our latest research on integrating robotics technologies into optical tweezers system for manipulation and biomechanical characterization of human red blood cells (RBCs). We first demonstrate the effectiveness of the robot-tweezers system in manipulation of micro-beads, which is followed by stretching RBCs to different levels of deformations. The whole manipulation process is conducted with visual guidance and position feedback control, where the cell stretching direction is determined automatically through image analysis. The relationship between the stretching force and the induced deformation is obtained through force calibration and image processing. To characterize the mechanical properties of RBCs from the obtained experimental results, a mechanical model based cell property characterization strategy is introduced. Comparing the modeling results to the experimental data, the mechanical properties of human RBCs are characterized. In conclusion, this study demonstrates that the robotic manipulation technology with optical tweezers can be used to manipulate biological cells, and further, to characterize the biomechanical properties based on the cell mechanical model.
Slaughterhouses and Increased Crime Rates

More than 100 years after Upton Sinclair denounced the massive slaughterhouse complex in Chicago as a “jungle,” qualitative case study research has documented numerous negative effects of slaughterhouses on workers and communities. Of the social problems observed in these communities, the increases in crime have been particularly dramatic. These increases have been theorized as being linked to the demographic characteristics of the workers, social disorganization in the communities, and increased unemployment rates. But these explanations have not been empirically tested, and no research has addressed the possibility of a link between the increased crime rates and the violent work that takes place in the meatpacking industry. This study uses panel analysis of 1994-2002 data on nonmetropolitan counties in states with “rightto-work” laws (a total of 581 counties) to analyze the effect of slaughterhouses on the surrounding communities using both ordinary least squares and negative binomial regression. The findings indicate that slaughterhouse employment increases total arrest rates, arrests for violent crimes, arrests for rape, and arrests for other sex offenses in comparison with other industries. This suggests the existence of a “Sinclair effect” unique to the violent workplace of the slaughterhouse, a factor that has not previously been examined in the sociology of violence.
Expectations and Performance: An Empirical Test of Bandura's Self-efficacy Theory

The present investigation was designed to test the predictions of Bandura's (1977) theory of self-efficacy in a competitive, motor-performance situation. Subjects (30 males and 30 females) were randomly assigned to either a high or low self-efficacy condition in a 2 × 2 × 2 (sex × self-efficacy × trials) factorial design. Self-efficacy was manipulated by having subjects compete against a confederate on a muscular leg-endurance task where the confederate was said to be either a varsity ;rack athlete who exhibited higher performance on a related task (low self-efficacy) or an individual who had a knee injury and exhibited poorer performance on a related task (high self-efficacy). Because self-efficacy theory predicts that expectation-performance differences are maximized in the face of obstacles and aversive consequences, the experiment was rigged so that subjects lost in competition to the confederate on both trials. The results supported self-efficacy predictions with the high self-efficacy subjects exten.
Real-Time True-Color Synthesis of Remote Sensing Image with CUDA

This paper presents a CUDA-based real-time solution for true-color synthesis of remote sensing image. The solution reduces total execution time in three aspects. 1. Apply Pinned Memory to reduce data transfer time between host memory and GPU global memory. 2. Use look-up table to reduce computing time. 3 Overlap kernel executions and data transfers, besides register pages and execute kernels in parallel. The experimental results showed that our solution cost 345.22ms in average to composite a true-color image of a single WRS-2 located region on the GPU gtx970m. The speedup ratio of 3.96 proved our solution was useful and efficient, which satisfied the need of real-time synthesis on both PC and laptop.
Multiuser MIMO Indoor Visible Light Communication System Using Spatial Multiplexing

Visible light communications is an energy efficient and cost-effective solution for indoor wireless access. In this paper, we propose a multiple input multiple output system using centralized or decentralized transmitted power allocation algorithms with multiple LEDs and photodetectors. The proposed system uses an optical code division multiple-access technique to support multiple users. Time-space minimum mean squared error filters at the receivers are designed to diminish the effect of multiple-access interference. In the centralized power allocation algorithm, all the LED lamps in the room are coordinated and controlled by a central controller; each LED lamp supports all the users within the indoor area. The decentralized power allocation algorithms we propose have similar bit error rate performance yet less computational burden compared to the centralized algorithm. In our decentralized algorithms, users are supported by a subset of the LEDs, and so the optimization problem size can be reduced by as much as $93\%$. For each receiver, multiple photodetectors with different orientations are employed to improve the signal to interference plus noise ratio. In addition, some practical considerations such as shadowing effects, illumination requirements, dimming control, and transmitted power quantization are taken into account.
Recombinant Protein Secretion in Pseudozyma flocculosa and Pseudozyma antarctica with a Novel Signal Peptide

Secretion of recombinant proteins aims to reproduce the correct posttranslational modifications of the expressed protein while simplifying its recovery. In this study, secretion signal sequences from an abundantly secreted 34-kDa protein (P34) from Pseudozyma flocculosa were cloned. The efficiency of these sequences in the secretion of recombinant green fluorescent protein (GFP) was investigated in two Pseudozyma species and compared with other secretion signal sequences, from S. cerevisiae and Pseudozyma spp. The results indicate that various secretion signal sequences were functional and that the P34 signal peptide was the most effective secretion signal sequence in both P. flocculosa and P. antarctica. The cells correctly processed the secretion signal sequences, including P34 signal peptide, and mature GFP was recovered from the culture medium. This is the first report of functional secretion signal sequences in P. flocculosa. These sequences can be used to test the secretion of other recombinant proteins and for studying the secretion pathway in P. flocculosa and P. antarctica.
Making work and learning more visible by reflective practice

Several characteristics are necessary to have a flourishing workplace: one is organisational learning. Modern workplaces call for individual responsibility, ability, and willingness to share expertise, as well as continuous learning. However, critical elements of the process of organisational learning – participating, knowing, cooperating and reflecting – are only partly ‘visible’. We propose that to cope with the pressure of renewal and to facilitate organisational learning, organisational structures and processes should be made more visible through reflective practice. The concept of reflective practice is analysed via its elements of reflective capacity, reflective dialogue, reflective experiment, and reflective management control systems. We investigate how reflection can be triggered and supported in real-life organisations, as a part of everyday work. Reflection is not studied as a hidden, mental process, but instead as a visible practice directed at past, present, or future objects. Enabling reflective practice, thus making learning more visible in the everyday agendas of the organisation, calls for genuine commitment and appreciation of reflective and dialogic ways of working. Reflective practice calls for a culture that values continuous discovery and experimentation. This appreciation is ultimately realised in reward systems, organisations’ official values and shared norms, thus forming a language and a culture that embrace reflection.