Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Hopkins Verbal Learning Test—Revised: Normative data and analysis of inter-form and test–retest reliability.

The Hopkins Verbal Learning Test (HVLT) is a brief verbal learning and memory test with six alternate forms. The HVLT is ideal in situations calling for repeated neuropsychological examinations, but it lacks a delayed recall trial which is essential for the assessment of abnormal forgetting. We present a revised version of the HVLT which includes a delayed recall trial, and therefore delays the yes/no recognition trial. The equivalence of test forms was examined in two separate studies using between-groups and within-subjects research designs. In both studies, the six forms of the revised HVLT (HVLT-R) were found to be equivalent with respect to the recall trials, but there were some modest differences in recognition. Recommendations for the use of the HVLT-R in serial neuropsychological examinations are provided, as well as normative data tables from a sample of 541 subjects, spanning ages 17 to 88 years.
Testing hypotheses about individual variation in plasma corticosterone in free-living salamanders

ABSTRACT In vertebrates, many responses to stress as well as homeostatic maintenance of basal metabolism are regulated by plasma glucocorticoid hormones (GCs). Despite having crucial functions, levels of GCs are typically variable among individuals. We examined the contribution of several physiological factors to individual variation in plasma corticosterone (CORT) and the number of corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH) neurons in the magnocellular preoptic area of the brain in free-living Allegheny Mountain dusky salamanders. We addressed three hypotheses: the current-condition hypothesis, the facilitation hypothesis and the trade-off hypothesis. Differential white blood cell count was identified as a strong contributor to individual variation in baseline CORT, stress-induced CORT and the number of CRH neurons. In contrast, we found no relationship between CORT (or CRH) and body condition, energy stores or reproductive investment, providing no support for the current-condition hypothesis or the trade-off hypothesis involving reproduction. Because of the difficulties of interpreting the functional consequences of variation in differential white blood cell counts, we were unable to distinguish between the facilitation hypothesis or the trade-off hypothesis related to immune function. However, the strong association between differential white blood cell count and hypothalamic-pituitary–adrenal/interrenal (HPA/I) activation suggests that a more thorough examination of immune profiles is critical to understanding variation in HPA/I activation. Summary: Measures of immune function (blood lymphocytes) but not body condition or reproductive investment are associated with individual variation in glucocorticoid hormones in free-living salamanders.
The Influence of Osteoporosis on the Marital Relationship of Older Couples

Thirty-four older wives and their husbands participated in interviews about adaptation to the wives’osteoporosis and its influence on their relationship. For most couples, the wives’osteopo-rosis resulted in changes in the structure of their marital relationship but not the overall quality of the marriage. Discrepancies in pain perceptions were associated with lower marital adjustment for wives but not for husbands. The findings suggest the need to focus on the dynamics of the marital relationship to understand chronic illness in late-life families.
Intense terahertz radiation and their applications

In this paper, we will review both past and recent progresses in the generation, detection and application of intense terahertz (THz) radiation. We will restrict the review to laser based intense few-cycle THz sources, and thus will not include sources such as synchrotron-based or narrowband sources. We will first review the various methods used for generating intense THz radiation, including photoconductive antennas (PCAs), optical rectification sources (especially the tilted-pulse-front lithium niobate source and the DAST source, but also those using other crystals), air plasma THz sources and relativistic laser–plasma sources. Next, we will give a brief introduction on the common methods for coherent THz detection techniques (namely the PCA technique and the electro-optic sampling), and point out the limitations of these techniques for measuring intense THz radiation. We will then review three techniques that are highly suited for detecting intense THz radiation, namely the air breakdown coherent detection technique, various single-shot THz detection techniques, and the spectral-domain interferometry technique. Finally, we will give an overview of the various applications that have been made possible with such intense THz sources, including nonlinear THz spectroscopy of condensed matter (optical-pump/THz-probe, THz-pump/THz-probe, THz-pump/optical-probe), nonlinear THz optics, resonant and non-resonant control of material (such as switching of superconductivity, magnetic and polarization switching) and controlling the nonlinear response of metamaterials. We will also provide a short perspective on the future of intense THz sources and their applications.
Publishing anti-apartheid literature: Athol Fugard’s Statements plays

This article addresses the creation of Athol Fugard’s plays not as performances or as texts, but as material objects, and examines how the meaning and value of his plays were constructed through the interventions of his publisher. The paper draws attention to the sharp distinction in the way that Fugard’s performances and published plays have been received, most acutely with respect to the plays Sizwe Bansi is Dead, The Island and Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act. These plays directly addressed and attacked apartheid legislation and enforcement. In performance in South Africa between 1972–1973 they were regarded as radical and subversive by the South African authorities as well as by audiences and critics. The Oxford University Press edition of this trilogy, Statements: Three Plays (1974), was by contrast packaged as a literary and commercial product that circulated free from censorship. This essay explores the reasons for this dichotomy through a detailed author/publisher case study of the publication history of the plays. It analyses the means by which Fugard was re-branded as an “Oxford author” through the book’s publication in the Oxford Paperback Series, and assesses the impact of this brand on the reception of Fugard’s plays. The published book was also a more individualistic creative product than the performances of the plays: the Press applied a conventional model of authorship which served to defuse the radical, interracial partnership between Fugard and his co-writers Winston Ntshona and John Kani. Likewise, the political content was neutralized as the plays were promoted as allegorical literary works of universal significance. By these means, it is argued, Fugard was successfully incorporated into the literary establishment in the UK, the USA and South Africa under apartheid.
Language and Memory Development in Children with Down Syndrome at Mainstream Schools and Special Schools: A comparison

Increasingly, children with Down syndrome are receiving their education in mainstream schools but little research has investigated whether these placements may influence language and memory development. The present study compared 22 children with Down syndrome in mainstream school placements matched for chronological age with 22 children attending special schools in a different LEA where mainstream placements were rare. The children were assessed to obtain measures of the following language and memory abilities: receptive vocabulary; grammar comprehension; sentence repetition; digit span; face recognition; and memory for hand movements. Children in mainstream placements achieved significantly higher scores for vocabulary, grammar and digit span measures, but not for non-language based memory measures. More importantly, even after controlling for age and receptive vocabulary, grammar understanding and digit spans were significantly greater for the mainstream children.
Feature Generation and Selection for Information Retrieval

Ranking is a central problem in information retrieval. Much work has been done in the recent years to automate the development of ranking models by means of supervised machine learning. Feature selection aims to provide sparse models which are computationally efficient to evaluate, and have good ranking performance. We propose integrating the feature selection as part of the training process for the ranking algorithm, by means of a wrapper method which performs greedy forward selection, using leave-query-out crossvalidation estimate of performance as the selection criterion. We introduce a linear time training algorithm we call greedy RankRLS, which combines the aforementioned procedure, together with regularized risk minimization based on pairwise least-squares loss. The training complexity of the method is O(kmn), where k is the number of features to be selected, m is the number of training examples, and n is the overall number of features. Experiments on the LETOR benchmark data set demonstrate that the approach works in practice.
Distribution of Mid-Latitude Ground Ice on Mars from New Impact Craters

Martian Impact Impact craters form frequently on Mars, exposing material that would otherwise remain hidden below the surface. Byrne et al. (p. 1674) identified mid-latitude craters that formed over the last few years, imaged them in great detail with a camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and monitored subsequent changes. The craters excavated buried water ice, which was later seen sublimating away. In addition, some craters might have excavated completely through the ice. The observations are consistent with models and other observations that suggest water ice should be stable decimeters to about 1 meter below the martian surface at latitudes poleward of about 40°; and suggest that, in the recent past, Mars had a wetter atmosphere than at present. Observations of ground ice exposed by recent impact craters probe the composition of the upper layers of the surface of Mars. New impact craters at five sites in the martian mid-latitudes excavated material from depths of decimeters that has a brightness and color indicative of water ice. Near-infrared spectra of the largest example confirm this composition, and repeated imaging showed fading over several months, as expected for sublimating ice. Thermal models of one site show that millimeters of sublimation occurred during this fading period, indicating clean ice rather than ice in soil pores. Our derived ice-table depths are consistent with models using higher long-term average atmospheric water vapor content than present values. Craters at most of these sites may have excavated completely through this clean ice, probing the ice table to previously unsampled depths of meters and revealing substantial heterogeneity in the vertical distribution of the ice itself.
Detection of Fetal Anatomies from Ultrasound Images using a Constrained Probabilistic Boosting Tree

We propose a novel method for the automatic detection and measurement of fetal anatomical structures i n ultrasound images. This problem offers a myriad of challenges, including: difficulty of modeling the appearance variations of the visual object of interest; robustness to speckle noise and s ignal drop-out; and large search space of the detection procedure . Previous solutions typically rely on the explicit encoding of prior knowledge and formulation of the problem as a perceptual grouping task solved through clustering or variational approaches. These methods are constrained by the validity o f the underlying assumptions and usually are not enough to captur e the complex appearances of fetal anatomies. We propose a novel system for fast automatic detection and measurement o f fetal anatomies that directly exploits a large database of e xpert annotated fetal anatomical structures in ultrasound images. Our method learns automatically to distinguish between the appearance of the object of interest and background by training a constrained probabilistic boosting tree classifier. Thissystem is able to produce the automatic segmentation of several fet al anatomies using the same basic detection algorithm. We show results on fully automatic measurement of biparietal diameter (BPD), head circumference (HC), abdominal circumference ( AC), femur length (FL), humerus length (HL), and crown rump length (CRL). Notice that our approach is the first in the literature to deal with the HL and CRL measurements. Extensive experiment s (with clinical validation) show that our system is, on average, close to the accuracy of experts in terms of segmentation and obstetric measurements. Finally this system runs under hal f second on a standard dual-core PC computer.
Daily worrying and somatic health complaints: Testing the effectiveness of a simple worry reduction intervention

This study examines whether worry is prospectively associated with somatic complaints and whether a worry reduction intervention can decrease these complaints. One hundred and seventy-one high school students (16–17 years old) kept a log of their worry duration and frequency for 6 days, of whom half were instructed to try to postpone worrying to a special 30-min worry period each day (‘postponers’). Somatic symptoms during ‘the last 3 days’ were assessed before and after the 6 days. At follow-up, postponers reported fewer complaints than controls, controlled for baseline. This reduction appeared to be mediated by worry duration, and pertained to, amongst others, lower back pain, neck pain, coughing/bronchitis, breathing difficulties and stomach pains. Thus, daily worry appears to be prospectively related to a broad set of somatic complaints, and its effect might be reversed by a simple intervention. Possible underlying mechanisms include prolonged physiological activity and illness-related perseverative cognition.
Open string amplitudes in various gauges

Recently, Schnabl constructed the analytic solution of the open string tachyon. Subsequently, the absence of the physical states at the vacuum was proved. The development relies heavily on the use of the gauge condition different from the ordinary one. It was shown that the choice of gauge simplifies the analysis drastically. In this paper we perform the calculation of the amplitudes in Schnabl gauge and find that the off-shell amplitudes is still complicated. To find simple off-shell amplitudes, we choose different gauges for the states and propagators. In particular, we propose a modified Schnabl gauge for the propagator and show that this gauge choice simplifies the calculation of the off-shell amplitudes. We also show that this modified use of the propagator reproduces the on-shell four point amplitudes correctly. We apply this method to open superstring field theory.
Population-based case-control study on risk factors for esophageal cancer in five high-risk areas in China.

OBJECTIVE To study major etiological factors for esophageal cancer in upper gastrointestinal cancer high risk areas in China. METHODS Five areas with high incidences of esophageal and gastric cancer with good quality cancer registration data were selected for the study: Cixian, Shexian from Hebei Province, Linxian from Henan Province, Feicheng from Shandong Province and Zhuanghe from Liaoning Province. A total of 250 cases were randomly recruited from the cancer registration database diagnosed as arising in the lower esophageal segment since January 1, 2009. Three controls were identified and matched with each case as having similar characteristics, such as gender, sex and residency. Questionnaires were applied by face to face interview with trained staff, and data entry was conducted using EPIDATA software. Conditional logistic models were employed for univariate and multivariate analyses to evaluate odd ratios and 95% confident intervals, with SPSS 13.0 statistic software. RESULTS In single variable analysis, gastrointestinal history, GERD, smoking, passive smoking, alcohol drinking, hot food, pickled food, overnight vegetable, dried food, no breakfast, false dining posture were found to be risk factors of esophageal cancer. Eating more fresh vegetables and high BMI were protective factors. Gastrointestinal history (OR=12.658), not taking regular meals (3.465), overnight vegetables (OR=3.296), GERD (OR=3.044), hot food (OR=2.510), passive smoking (OR=2.423), pickled food (OR=2.273), alcohol drinking (OR=2.074), seldom eating breakfast(OR=1.987), and false dining posture (OR=1.977) increased the risk of esophageal cancer on multivariate logistic analysis, and fresh vegetables (OR=0.279) and BMI≥25 (OR=0.528) continued to be protective. CONCLUSIONS Esophageal cancer could be caused by genetics acting in synergy with environmental factors. Health education for the general population in high risk areas should be strengthened, with intervention programs of nutrition and lifestyle focusing on effective prevention and control for upper gastrointestinal cancer.
Brute force interactions: leveraging intense physical actions in gaming

People use a wide range of intensity when interacting with computers, spanning from subtle to brute force. However, computer interfaces so far have mainly focused on interactions restrained to limited force and do not consider extreme physical and brutal interactions, such as those encountered in contact sports. We present an exploration on the topic of "Brute Force" that aims to support researchers and designers who want to leverage the benefits of such forceful interactions. We present the results of a survey on this topic and describe how the salient themes could be used to inspire design work, in particular in a mediated environment, augmented with computing technology. We describe how the themes inspired certain features, and how technological limitations were overcome during this process. We hope with our work we can encourage designers to expand their range of supported interactions to include these physically intense behaviors we call Brute Force that are exhibited in many activities in people's lives.
TARSIUS: a system for traffic-aware route search under conditions of uncertainty

This demo presents TARSIUS---a system for traffic-aware route search. In a traffic-aware route search (TARS), the user provides start location, target location and search terms, which specify types of geographical entities that should be visited along the route. A TARS query may include additional temporal constraints and limitations on the order by which entities are visited. The goal is to find the fastest route from the start location to the target, via entities of the specified types, while taking into account variations in the travel speed, due to changes in traffic conditions. Planning a route under conditions of uncertainty requires the system to also take into account the possibility that some visited entities will not satisfy the user requirements so that the route may need to go via several entities of the same type. In the demonstration we present the system. We demonstrate a web-based user interface that facilitates the formulation of TARS queries. We show how queries are posed and evaluated over a database that contains real traffic data. Since answering a TARS query is NP-hard, we present three heuristics to the problem. Using the system, we illustrate the routes that are computed by these heuristics.
Forced-Choice False Recognition Controlling for Response Bias Correlates With Dissociative Amnesia Controlling for Imagery, but Not With Image Vividness Controlling for Dissociation

In the present study of false memory, subjects completed the Prevalence of Visual Imagery Test (PVIT), the Vividness of Visual Imagery Questionnaire (VVIQ), and the Curious Experiences Survey (CES); then, after generating visual images, viewing categorically related pictures, and viewing categorically related words, subjects completed forced-choice source recognition tests for whether they had “imaged” the word, the picture, or the image in a given category. Scoring higher on the CES Dissociative Amnesia/Fugue factor—controlling for the VVIQ and the PVIT—was associated both with poorer memory of the imaged source of visual images and with false memory of an imaged source for pictures. In contrast, greater image vividness on the VVIQ—controlling for CES factors—was not statistically associated with memory of an imaged source for images, pictures, or words. Greater image prevalence on the PVIT—controlling for CES factors—was associated with better memory of the imaged source of visual images and with less false memory of an imaged source for words.
Synthesis, characterization and application of biodegradable polymer grafted novel bioprosthetic tissue

Abstract Animal tissue has an extended history of clinical use in applications like heart valve bioprosthesis devices, cardiovascular surgical applications etc. but often does not last long after implantation in the body due to rapid unwanted degradation. The goal of this work is to develop novel composite biomaterials by grafting biological tissue with synthetic, biodegradable polymers. In the current research phase, porcine submucosa, ureter and bovine pericardial tissue are grafted with poly DL-lactide (PLA), poly glycolide (PGA) and poly DL-lactide glycolide (PLGA) copolymers. The grafted and control tissues are characterized by FTIR and SEM. The biodegradability of the tissue-graft composite materials is determined by pepsin and collagenase digestion assays, showing it can be tailored by varying the grafted polymer type and amount. The grafted tissues can be tuned for a particular clinical or tissue engineering applications including drug delivery with little or no burst release and sustained/controlled delivery.
Multivariate Analysis of Correlated Selection and Kin Selection , with an ESS Maximization Method

Kin selection coefficients are used in two distinct ways. First, these coefficients measure phenotypic correlations that affect the marginal costs and benefits of behaviors. For example, the phenotypic correlation in sex ratio produced by two females in an isolated patch influences the favored sex ratio. Second, kin selection coefficients describe genotypic correlations that measure fidelity of transmission. For example, a female values daughters vs. nieces according to genotypic correlations. It is widely known that kin selection coefficients may be interpreted as phenotypic or genotypic correlations in different contexts. However, these different interpretations have never been fully separated, and their different roles have not been clearly explained. I provide proofs of a generic analytical approach. The technique automatically separates phenotypic correlations among social partners from genotypic components of transmission. The result is a general method that can be derived from first principles and applied to multivariate problems in social evolution. I emphasize a simple, practical maximization method that can be used to calculate equilibrium conditions for complex social interactions. 7 1997 Academic Press Limited
Telerehabilitation across sectors: The experiences of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients and healthcare professionals

The purpose of this paper is to describe the qualitative perspectives of telerehabilitation as concerns the interaction between COPD patients and healthcare professionals. The case study approach is chosen as the overall research strategy for this study. A randomised study (n=111) has also been conducted. The paper conclude that telerehabilitation process becomes a learning process which is more than an individual cognitive process, since learning takes place in interaction with healthcare professionals, the family and network of the COPD patients.