Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Contrast Effects in Consumer Judgments: Changes in Mental Representations or in the Anchoring of Rating Scales?

Contrast effects in consumers' judgments of products can stem from changes in how consumers mentally represent the stimuli or in how they anchor rating scales when mapping context-invariant mental representations onto those scales. We present a framework for distinguishing between these types of contrast effects on the basis of whether changes in mean ratings of multiattribute stimuli are accompanied by evidence of changes in their rank order. We also report two empirical studies. In study 1, mean overall ratings of a “core set” of car profiles showed contrast effects due to manipulations of the ranges of gas mileage and price in several sets of “context profiles. ” Diagnostic tests implied that these effects reflected changes in response-scale anchoring rather than in mental representations. In study 2, consumers high and low in knowledge of automobile prices showed equally large contrast effects on ratings of the expensiveness of a core set of real cars. Diagnostic tests showed that these reflected true changes in mental representation for low-knowledge consumers but only changes in scale anchoring for more knowledgeable ones. Thus, ostensibly similar context effects on simple ratings have different underlying causes and implications for behavior. The findings suggest alternative interpretations of contrast effects in past research on price perception, consumer satisfaction, and service quality.
Uncoupled mixture probability density estimation based on an improved support vector machine model

Support vector machine(SVM) is a new approach for probability density estimation problems. But there are some shortcomings in the SVM based method, for example, the method can only optimize the model directly, and the slack factors must belong to the optimized range of solutions. On this basis, an improved SVM model named single slack factor SVM probability density estimation model is proposed in the paper. In this model, the scale of object function is reduced, so the computation efficient is greatly enhanced. The experiment results on uncoupled mixture probability density estimation show the effectiveness and feasibility of the model.
Enhanced Performance and Global Reachability Of Manet Nodes With Multihoming Using Nemo Wireless Communication

—Wireless technology is widely used as a communication medium in various areas of technology. User demand for high mobility increases daily i.e. the change in their position with respect to the internet blended with persistent connection. These services can be delivered efficiently by using Mobile IP or NEMO. MANET i.e. Mobile Ad hoc Network routing protocols were originally developed and implemented to support the mobility of nodes within a MANET. However, despite getting relative stability of the protocol implementations, seamlessly incorporating MANETs into the internet still remains a major challenge that has held up the deployment and progress in major mobile scenarios. Further to support the mobility, management mechanism; IETF i.e. Internet Engineering Task Force proposed NEMO i.e. Network Mobility which is an extension of MIPv6 i.e. Mobile IPv6. However, it is still not able to provide global reachability and session persistence without packet loss and handover latency. We propose a solution by integrating the existing MANET routing protocol with the NEMO protocol. But it is also unable to completely solve the problem because of congestion which reduces the efficiency of the network and the other issues are handover latency and packet loss. This results in inefficient use of the available bandwidth. So the proposed solution integrates the AODV routing protocol with the NEMO protocol and implementation of pre-registration technique in NEMO. It will enable us to provide the efficient localized communication and robustness of MANETs, as well as the global reachability and the ability to provide structured approach that NEMO is expected to support.
Imagining Society: Constructivism and the English School

This article critically examines the current relationship between constructivism and the English School. Scholars in each school have worked largely with stereotypes of the other, and this has greatly impeded productive dialogue and cross-fertilization. A more fruitful strategy is to treat both schools as bounded fields of debate, as rich and diverse realms of internally contested thought. Constructivism is characterized by three key axes of debate: between sociological institutionalists, Habermasian communicative action theorists, and Foucauldian genealogists; between unit-level, systemic, and holistic theorists; and between interpretivists and positivists. The English School is also divided between pluralists and solidarists, between those who identify the school with international society theory and those who see it as inherently multifaceted, and between those who emphasize interpretive or eclectic methodologies. Opening up each approach in this way enables us to identify new, more fruitful axes of dialogue between the two perspectives.
A GUI for MLN

This paper focuses on the incorporation of the Markov Logic Network (MLN) formalism as a plug-in for UnBBayes, a Java framework for probabilistic reasoning based on graphical models. MLN is a formalism for probabilistic reasoning which combines the capacity of dealing with uncertainty tolerating imperfections and contradictory knowledge based a Markov Network (MN) with the expressiveness of First Order Logic. A MLN provides a compact language for specifying very large MNs and the ability to incorporate, in modular form, large domain of knowledge (expressed in First Order Logic sentences) inside itself. A Graphical User Interface for the software Tuffy was implemented into UnBBayes to facilitate the creation, and inference of MLN models. Tuffy is a Java open source MLN engine.
Contribution of ellagic acid on the antioxidant potential of medicinal plant Epilobium hirsutum

abstract In the present study, the possible role of ellagic acid (EA) on antioxidant potential of Epilobium hirsutum (EH) in rat liver was investigated. Wistar rats were intraperitoneally treated with 37.5 mg/kg of EH and 10 mg/kg of EA for 9 days. Effects of EH and EA on antioxidant [glutathione peroxidase (GPx) and superoxide dismutases (SOD)] and Phase II [NADPH quinone oxidoreductase 1 (NQO1) and glutathione S-transferases (GSTs)] enzyme activities, as well as protein and mRNA expressions of those, were investigated. Polyphenolic content of EH was determined by LC-MS/MS analysis. EH and EA injection to rats resulted in a significant increase of NQO1 (3.6-fold and 4.7-fold), GPx (1.45-fold), and SOD (1.34-fold and 1.27-fold) enzyme activities, whereas total GST (46% and 57%) and its isoforms,and GST mu (57% and 72%), and GST theta (60% and 68%) activities were significantly decreased. Western-blot and qRT-PCR analysis showed that NQO1 and GPx protein and mRNA expressions were increased significantly (P < 0.0001), whereas GST mu and GST theta were significantly decreased (P < 0.0001).
Understanding of mental states in later childhood: an investigation of theory of mind in autism spectrum disorder and typical development with a novel task

Abstract The developmental trajectories of Theory of Mind (ToM) in later childhood and into adolescence have not been thoroughly investigated, partly due to a lack of sensitive paradigms that can chart development in typical populations or in individuals with a core deficit in ToM, such as those with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The present study assessed understanding of emotions, beliefs, and intentions using both an established ToM task () and the more recently developed Comic Strip Task (CST; ). Participants comprised 12 typically-developing (TD) children (mean age: 12·0 years, range: 9·9–14·8 years) and 12 high-functioning children with ASD (mean age: 11·0 years, range: 9·1–13·6 years). Results indicated that the ASD group were not impaired on any of the ToM tasks relative to TD children. It was concluded that although children with high-functioning ASD appear to develop basic ToM skills, they do not generalize these to naturalistic situations. The comic-strip paradigm is suggested as a promising way to approach the measurement of ToM across childhood in typical children and those with ASD.
Adaptive power management of hybrid electric vehicle with neural based PID controller

The term hybrid electric vehicle depicts the form of a hybrid vehicle which has two or more than two sources of energy used as the input of the vehicle. Designing and modeling of the hybrid vehicle is more or less a new barrier for this work, so we take the standard consideration for the every parameter used in designing of hybrid vehicle model. The main objective of the paper is to focus on the control strategies used in the hybrid electric vehicle such that, the motor torque-speed characteristics are capable of following the unknown load. Unknown load in this case refers to the unknown velocity pattern of the driver behind the wheels. After testing the system with standard drive cycles, we concluded that the tracing of the reference drive cycle can be made error free or error can be reduced by using the Neural based PID controller rather than the traditional PID controller. Not only the standard drive cycles, but with a suitably trained neural network, random cycles can also be accurately traced.
Arabic word decomposition techniques for offline Arabic text transcription

Recently, sub-word based language models (LM) that use morphological and Part-of-Arabic word decomposition techniques are investigated for open vocabulary Arabic text recognition. Experimental results under different conditions (i.e; several Arabic databases) have shown that systems using subword LMs outperformed those using standard word LMs. This paper investigates and compares the efficiency of these sub-word based LMs under the same experimental conditions, since such investigation has not been conducted yet. The paper also proposes and evaluates a sub-word based LMs that combines both morphological and PAW decomposition techniques. Experiments are conducted on three benchmarking Arabic databases (i.e, Khatt, Maurdor printed and Maurdor handwritten). The analysis of the performance of each system in terms of In-Vocabulary Word Error (IV-WE) and Out-Of-Vocabulary Word Accuracy OOV-WA) was conducted.
Performance Analysis of Parallel Systems Approaches and Open Problems

Parallel computing is rapidly evolving to include het erogeneous collections of distributed and parallel sys tems Concurrently applications are becoming in creasingly multidisciplinary with code libraries im plemented using diverse programming models To optimize the behavior of complex applications on heterogeneous systems performance analysis soft ware must also evolve replacing post mortem anal ysis with real time adaptive optimization tightly integrating compile time analysis with performance measurement and prediction and supporting high modality visualization and software manipulation In this paper we brie y survey the state of the art in each of these areas and sketch a series of open re
The Innovation Boundary: A Replication with Increased Costs.

A mathematical model for examining the conditions under which individuals innovate or try new things was tested. In earlier research the model had been validated in a zero-cost condition. This replication raised the costs so that the costto-rewards ratio was . 25. The four main variables of the model were current success level, target success level, costs of trying new things, and rewards for successful performance. A well-defined innovation boundary was found to exist at this cost-to-rewards ratio, and individuals behaved as predicted by their position with respect to the boundary. * In an earlier paper (Slevin, 1971), one case of a mathematical model of innovative behavior was developed and tested. This paper reports on a replication of that model for an increased costs-to-rewards ratio. Since the earlier paper reviewed the literature and described the model in detail, only a brief description of them is given here. THE MODEL
Issue Ownership for Non-Presidential Television Spots

Petrocik's (1996) theory of political party issue ownership predicts that candidates will emphasize the issues on which their own party is considered most effective. This prediction has been confirmed in presidential campaign messages, but it has yet to be tested with non-presidential campaign discourse. Computer content analysis of over 1100 political television spots from 1980 to 2002 (most spots were from 2002) discovered that overall, Democratic candidates discussed their own party's issues more than did Republicans, whereas Republicans discussed Republican issues more than did Democratic candidates. However, local ads and US Senate spots from 2002 did not follow issue ownership predictions (candidates did not discuss their own party's issues significantly more than the other party's issues). Unlike presidential spots, non-presidential advertising discusses Democratic issues more than Republican ones; the Republican Party owns more national or federal issues such as national defense and foreign policy.
Identification of a single ancestral CYP1B1 mutation in Slovak Gypsies (Roms) affected with primary congenital glaucoma

Primary congenital glaucoma (PCG) is an autosomal recessive eye disease that occurs at an unusually high frequency in the ethnic isolate of Roms (Gypsies) in Slovakia. Recently, we linked the disease in this population to the GLC3A locus on 2p21. At this locus, mutations in the cytochrome P4501B1 (CYP1B1) gene have been identified as a molecular basis for this condition. Here, we report the results of CYP1B1 mutation screening of 43 PCG patients from 26 Slovak Rom families. A homozygous G→A transition at nucleotide 1505 in the highly conserved region of exon 3 was detected in all families. This mutation results in the E387K substitution, which affects the conserved K helix region of the cytochrome P450 molecule. Determination of the CYP1B1 polymorphic background showed a common DNA haplotype in all patients, thus indicating that the E387K mutation in Roms has originated from a single ancestral mutational event. The Slovak Roms represent the first population in which PCG is found to result from a single mutation in the CYP1B1 gene, so that a founder effect is the most plausible explanation of its increased incidence. An ARMS-PCR assay has been developed for fast detection of this mutation, thus allowing direct DNA based prenatal diagnosis as well as gene carrier detection in this particular population. Screening of 158 healthy Roms identified 17 (10.8%) mutation carriers, indicating that the frequency of PCG in this population may be even higher than originally estimated.
The distribution of catecholamines between plasma and platelets in cyclosporin A-induced hypertensive rats.

One of the most serious side effects of the immunosuppressive agent, cyclosporin A (CsA), is drug-related hypertension. As it is generally accepted, the sympathetic nervous system may play an important role in the development or maintenance of this abnormal pathophysiological situation. This study is aimed at assessing plasma and platelet catecholamines, and a possible connection to cyclosporin A-induced increased arterial blood pressure. It was thus based on an investigation in which Wistar rats were divided into three groups: one taking only orange juice (control) and the other two receiving 5 and 30 mg kg(-1)('trough' and 'peak') of cyclosporin A (Sandimmun Neoral), daily, for 7 weeks. Plasma and platelet noradrenaline, adrenaline and dopamine levels and arterial blood pressures were evaluated before the start of the study (week 0) and after 2, 4 and 7 weeks. Plasma and platelet catecholamines increased drastically in the 'peak' CsA concentration-treated group, which contrasts with the slight decrease observed in the group treated with the 'trough' concentration. However, both groups revealed an increase in blood pressures, when compared with the control group. These findings suggest that at least 'peak' cyclosporin A concentration alters significantly the plasma and platelets catecholamines levels, which may contribute to the cyclosporin A-induced hypertension. Other contributions, regardless of catecholamine content disturbances, might occur, at least at 'trough' CsA concentrations.
Simultaneous Quantitative Live Cell Imaging of Multiple FRET-Based Biosensors

We have developed a novel method for multi-color spectral FRET analysis which is used to study a system of three independent FRET-based molecular sensors composed of the combinations of only three fluorescent proteins. This method is made possible by a novel routine for computing the 3-D excitation/emission spectral fingerprint of FRET from reference measurements of the donor and acceptor alone. By unmixing the 3D spectrum of the FRET sample, the total relative concentrations of the fluorophores and their scaled FRET efficiencies are directly measured, from which apparent FRET efficiencies can be computed. If the FRET sample is composed of intramolecular FRET sensors it is possible to determine the total relative concentration of the sensors and then estimate absolute FRET efficiency of each sensor. Using multiple tandem constructs with fixed FRET efficiency as well as FRET-based calcium sensors with novel fluorescent protein combinations we demonstrate that the computed FRET efficiencies are accurate and changes in these quantities occur without crosstalk. We provide an example of this method’s potential by demonstrating simultaneous imaging of spatially colocalized changes in [Ca2+], [cAMP], and PKA activity.
Insights into the morphology of symbiotic shrimp eyes (Crustacea, Decapoda, Palaemonidae); the effects of habitat demands

Morphometric differences in the optical morphology of symbiotic palaemonid shrimps can be observed among species symbiotic with different host organisms. Discriminant functional analysis revealed three distinct groups within the species examined. Of these, bivalve symbionts appear to have an eye design that is solely unique to this host-symbiont grouping, a design that spans across multiple genera of phylogenetically unrelated animals. Although some taxonomic effects may be evident, this does not explain the difference and similarities in eye morphology that are seen within these shrimps. Therefore evolutionary pressures from their host environments are having an impact on the optical morphology of their eyes however, as indicated by host-hopping events there ecological adaptations occur post host invasion.
Wild Argentinian Amaryllidaceae, a New Renewable Source of the Acetylcholinesterase Inhibitor Galanthamine and Other Alkaloids

The Amaryllidaceae family is well known for its pharmacologically active alkaloids. An important approach to treat Alzheimer’s disease involves the inhibition of the enzyme acetylcholinesterase (AChE). Galanthamine, an Amaryllidaceae alkaloid, is an effective, selective, reversible, and competitive AChE inhibitor. This work was aimed at studying the alkaloid composition of four wild Argentinian Amarillydaceae species for the first time, as well as analyzing their inhibitory activity on acetylcholinesterase. Alkaloid content was characterized by means of GC-MS analysis. Chloroform basic extracts from Habranthus jamesonii, Phycella herbertiana, Rhodophiala mendocina and Zephyranthes filifolia collected in the Argentinian Andean region all contained galanthamine, and showed a strong AChE inhibitory activity (IC50 between 1.2 and 2 µg/mL). To our knowledge, no previous reports on alkaloid profiles and AChEIs activity of wild Argentinian Amarillydaceae species have been publisihed. The demand for renewable sources of industrial products like galanthamine and the need to protect plant biodiversity creates an opportunity for Argentinian farmers to produce such crops.
A lumped Galerkin method for the numerical solution of the modified equal-width wave equation using quadratic B-splines

The numerical solution of the one-dimensional modified equal width wave (MEW) equation is obtained by using a lumped Galerkin method based on quadratic B-spline finite elements. The motion of a single solitary wave and the interaction of two solitary waves are studied. The numerical results obtained show that the present method is a remarkably successful numerical technique for solving the MEW equation. A linear stability analysis of the scheme is also investigated.
Can religious beliefs combat negative peer influence during adolescence?

The purpose of this study was to identify religiosity dimensions that might be efficacious in helping adolescents combat negative peer influence. In past studies, the protective elements of religiosity were small to non-existent once peer influence was considered. However, peer influence can take many forms and the relation between susceptibility to negative peer influence and religious beliefs is not clear. Two hundred and twenty high school students were surveyed on several dimensions of religiosity via the Attitude to Christianity Inventory, different forms of peer influence (i.e., peer conformity and perceptions of peer behaviours) and their own pro- and anti-social conduct. Through hierarchical regression analyses some religiosity dimensions (i.e., the Bible and social justice) were found to be more protective than others in predicting conduct in the context of peer conformity. Implications for intervention were addressed.
Roles of the Fast-Releasing and the Slowly Releasing Vesicles in Synaptic Transmission at the Calyx of Held

In the calyx of Held, fast and slow components of neurotransmitter release can be distinguished during a step depolarization. The two components show different sensitivity to molecular/pharmacological manipulations. Here, their roles during a high-frequency train of action potential (AP)-like stimuli were examined by using both deconvolution of EPSCs and presynaptic capacitance measurements. During a 100 Hz train of AP-like stimuli, synchronous release showed a pronounced depression within the 20 stimuli. Asynchronous release persisted during the train, was variable in its amount, and was more prominent during a 300 Hz train. We have shown previously that slowly releasing vesicles were recruited faster than fast-releasing vesicles after depletion. By further slowing recovery of the fast-releasing vesicles by inhibiting calmodulin-dependent processes (Sakaba and Neher, 2001b), the slowly releasing vesicles were isolated during recovery from vesicle depletion. When a high-frequency train was applied, the isolated slowly releasing vesicles were released predominantly asynchronously. In contrast, synchronous release was mediated mainly by the fast-releasing vesicles. The results suggest that fast-releasing vesicles contribute mainly to synchronous release and that depletion of fast-releasing vesicles shape the synaptic depression of the synchronous phase of EPSCs, whereas slowly releasing vesicles are released mainly asynchronously during high-frequency stimulation. The latter is less subject to depression presumably because of a rapid vesicular recruitment process, which is a characteristic of this component.