Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Public and private beliefs of political leaders: Saddam Hussein in front of a crowd and behind closed doors

We ask if the public speech of political leaders is diagnostic of their private beliefs, and investigate through content analysis of the rhetoric of Saddam Hussein, the former president of Iraq. We collected Saddam’s public speeches and interviews on international affairs from 1977–2000, producing a data set of 330,000 words. From transcripts of Saddam speaking in private, we garnered a comparison corpus of 58,000 words. These text-sets were processed to locate markers of conflict, control and complexity. We find that Saddam’s hostile, conflict-oriented worldview and his perception of himself as a significant political actor was consistent across public and private domains. The major difference between these spheres was his more complex private view of international affairs compared to his more definitive public stance. Our evidence supports the notion that private beliefs can be inferred from the public speech of political leaders.
Online Action in Campaign 2000: An Exploratory Analysis of the U.S. Political Web Sphere

This study examines the nature of political action on and between election-oriented Web sites during the 2000 election season in the United States, based on Web materials and interviews with political Web producers. Our analysis focuses on 3 facets of online action: coproduction, carnival, and mobilization. We suggest these portend an evolution of political Communication, and we point to ways in which the 2000 political Web re-shaped the U.S. electoral process. Through this article we seek to contribute to the emerging literatures on Web studies in general and on the role of the Internet in electoral politics.
Data Management and Analysis Methods

This chapter is about methods for managing and analyzing qualitative data. By qualitative data the authors mean text: newspapers, movies, sitcoms, e-mail traffic, folktales, life histories. They also mean narratives--narratives about getting divorced, about being sick, about surviving hand-to-hand combat, about selling sex, about trying to quit smoking. In fact, most of the archaeologically recoverable information about human thought and human behavior is text, the good stuff of social science.
Using Mobile Sensors to Enhance Coverage in Linear Wireless Sensor Networks

One of the main challenges of using Linear Wireless Sensor Networks (LSN) is the reliability of the connections among the nodes. Faults in a few contiguous nodes may cause the creation of holes which will result in dividing the network into multiple disconnected segments. As a result, sensor nodes that are located between holes may not be able to deliver their sensed information which negativity affects the network sensing coverage. This paper develops two models to utilize mobile sensors to help recover from these faults and enhance coverage. The first model utilizes mobile sensors to cover the holes while the second model has the feature of reallocating previously deployed mobile sensors for best possible coverage. In both models, the added mobile nodes can provide additional sensing coverage as well as enable connectivity among disconnected segments in the LSN. Evaluations and comparisons between both models are provided. In addition, an analytical model for finding the expected number of mobile sensors needed for maintaining high coverage in a LSN with specific configurations is developed and validated.
Do Apparent Diffusion Coefficient Measurements Predict Outcome in Children with Neonatal Hypoxic-Ischemic Encephalopathy?

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI) permits early detection and quantification of hypoxic-ischemic (HI) brain lesions. Our aim was to assess the predictive value of DWI and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) measurements for outcome in children with perinatal asphyxia. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Term neonates underwent MR imaging within 10 days after birth because of asphyxia. MR imaging examinations were retrospectively evaluated for HI brain damage. ADC was measured in 30 standardized brain regions and in visibly abnormal areas on DWI. In survivors, developmental outcome until early school age was graded into the following categories: 1) normal, 2) mildly abnormal, and 3) definitely abnormal. For analysis, category 3 and death (category 4) were labeled “adverse,” 1 and 2 were “favorable,” and 2–3 and death were “abnormal” outcome. Differences in outcome between infants with and without DWI abnormalities were analyzed by using χ2 tests. The nonparametric Mann-Whitney U test analyzed whether ADC values in visible DWI abnormalities correlated with age at imaging. Logistic regression analysis tested the predictive value for outcome of the ADC in each standardized brain region. Receiver operating characteristic analysis was used to find optimal ADC cutoff values for each region for the various outcome scores. RESULTS: Twenty-four infants (13 male) were included. Mean age at MR imaging was 4.3 days (range, 1–9 days). Seven infants died. There was no difference in outcome between infants with and without visible DWI abnormalities. Only ADC of the posterior limb of the internal capsule correlated with age. ADC in visibly abnormal DWI regions did not have a predictive value for outcome. Of all measurements performed, only the ADC in the normal-appearing basal ganglia and brain stem correlated significantly with outcome; low ADC values were associated with abnormal/adverse outcome, and higher ADC values, with normal/favorable outcome (basal ganglia: P = .03 for abnormal, P = .01 for adverse outcome; brain stem: P = .006 for abnormal, P = .03 for adverse outcome). CONCLUSIONS: ADC values in normal-appearing basal ganglia and brain stem correlated with outcome, independently of all MR imaging findings including those of DWI. ADC values in visibly abnormal brain tissue on DWI did not show a predictive value for outcome.
1998 NATIONWIDE SURVEY OF COURT‐CONNECTED DIVORCE EDUCATION PROGRAMS

This second nationwide survey of 3,118 counties and independent cities indicates that 1,516 counties or cities in the United States currently have education programs available for divorcing parents. This is in contrast to results from a 1993–1994 study in which 541 counties had programs available, and is an increase of 180%. Comparisons are made between programs that are mandated and not mandated by the court or state and between court-provided and community-provided programs. Curriculum, format, funding, and evaluation efforts of programs are summarized. A typical program is described, and implications of the findings for program developers and court systems are included.
Military trauma and social development: The moderating and mediating roles of peer and sibling relations in mental health

We first examined how war-related traumatic events impact on peer and sibling relations, and how the quality of these relations in turn are associated with children’s mental health, indicating a mediation model. Second, we tested the moderating (protective) effects of good peer and sibling relations in attenuating the link between trauma and mental health. The participants were 227 Palestinian boys and girls aged 10—14 years living in the Gaza Strip. They reported\ their exposure to military trauma, evaluated the qualities of peer relationships (loneliness and friendship) and siblingship (warmth, intimacy, conflict and rivalry), and reported symptoms of PTSD, CDI depression and SDQ psychological distress. The results show that exposure to military trauma was associated with intense rivalry in sibling relations and with low friendship quality especially among girls and younger children. The association between military trauma and symptoms was mediated by poor friendship and rivaling sibling relations. Only sibling relations but not peer relations had a moderating effect, as military trauma was not associated with severe symptoms among children who enjoyed considerable intimacy and warmth and lacked rivalry in their siblingships. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of the roles of peer and sibling relations in helping children in traumatic war conditions.
Semantic foundations for heterogeneous systems

The ability to incorporate increasingly sophisticated functionality makes the design of electronic embedded systems complex. Many factors, beside the traditional considerations of cost and performance, contribute to making the design and the implementation of embedded systems a challenging task. The inevitable interactions of an embedded system with the physical world require that its parts be described by multiple formalisms of heterogeneous nature. Because these formalisms evolved in isolation, system integration becomes particularly problematic. In addition, the computation, often distributed across the infrastructure, is frequently controlled by intricate communication mechanisms. This, and other safety concerns, demand a higher degree of confidence in the correctness of the design that imposes a limit on design productivity. The key to addressing the complexity problem and to achieve substantial productivity gains is a rigorous design methodology that is based on the effective use of decomposition and multiple levels of abstraction. Decomposition relies on models that describe the effect of hierarchically composing different concurrent parts of the system. An abstraction is the relationship between two representations of the same system that expose different levels of detail. To maximize their benefit, these techniques require a semantic foundation that provides the ability to formally describe and relate a wide range of concurrency models. This Dissertation proposes one such semantic foundation in the form of an algebraic framework called Agent Algebra. Agent Algebra is a formal framework that can be used to uniformly present and reason about the characteristics and the properties of the different models of computation used in a design, and about their relationships. This is accomplished by defining an algebra that consists of a set of denotations, called agents, for the elements of a model, and of the main operations that the model provides to compose and to manipulate agents. Different models of computation are constructed as distinct instances of the algebra. However, the framework takes advantage of the common algebraic structure to derive results that apply to all models in the framework, and to relate different models using structure-preserving maps. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)
Availability of activity-related resources in senior apartments: does it differ by neighbourhood socio-economic status?

ABSTRACT Research has shown that the level of activity of the residents of a city's neighbourhood is related to the availability of activity-related resources. This study aimed to characterise the housing environment in which many older adults live by exploring what activity-related resources were available in senior apartment buildings in one Canadian city, Winnipeg. Of 195 senior apartment buildings in the city, 190 were surveyed to examine whether variation in the buildings' activity resources was related to neighbourhood characteristics, particularly socio-economic status. Resources were classified as those for physical activities (e.g. exercise classes), social activities (e.g. card games), and services (e.g. a grocery-store shuttle). The neighbourhood characteristics were taken from census data and included socio-economic and socio-demographic measures. The apartment buildings varied considerably in the resources available, and a positive relationship was found between neighbourhood income and physical and social activity programmes and services. Lower residential stability and a higher percentage of residents living alone were also related to the buildings' resource-richness, and senior apartment buildings with limited activity-related resources clustered in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. How senior apartments are resourced should be examined in relation to the neighbourhood in which they are located.
Facial expression recognition with LBP and SLPP combined method

The way to extract facial expression features from 3D face image is significant in 3D expression recognition. However, most of the feather extraction methods are based on geometric. In this paper, we extend a combined strategy for Local Binary Patterns (LBP) and Supervised Locality Preserving Projection (SLPP) in facial expression recognition. First, we use LBP to get the histogram of the image. Then the SLPP method is used to reduce the dimension. At last, the k-Nearest Neighbor algorithm is used as the classifier. The recognition rate of the combined method is compared with the traditional methods including PCA, LDA and SLPP. The result shows that the recognition accuracy of the LBP and SLPP combined method is better than that the others in the field of 3D facial expression recognition.
Quaternion-based IMU and stochastic error modeling for intelligent vehicles

This paper focuses on the development of an IMU measurement simulator for navigation estimation algorithms validation. Its aim is to generate the sensor measurements thanks to an input trajectory described by the position and the orientation. The proposed models are derived from an inverse kinematic modeling of the sensors and an identification of their stochastic errors. These latter are composed of the biases instability, random walks and finally the sensors dynamics and bandwidth. The error model parameters of a low cost MEMS-IMU are determined using the Allan Variance method. In a second step, a Matlab simulator is built gathering the aforementioned models. Thanks to their completeness, this simulation tool is characterized by its wide range of application fields and dynamics that can be described. Its aim is to determine, from the time-dependent position and orientation data, the IMU measurements (3D accelerations and angular rates) without any object model. Finally, the simulator is validated using real experiments performed with an instrumented test car in normal driving as well as in obstacle avoidance situations.
Chronic Dopamine D2 Receptor Activation Does Not Affect Survival and Differentiation of Cultured Dopaminergic Neurons: Morphological and Neurochemical Observations

Abstract: Primary cultures of rat ventral mesencephalon were used to elucidate the role of chronic stimulation of dopamine (DA) D2 autoreceptors in the development of fetal dopaminergic neurons in vitro. Cultured dopaminergic neurons, as visualized by tyrosine hydroxylase immunocytochemistry, became more differentiated in the course of cultivation time and exhibited specific high‐affinity uptake for [3H]DA. In rat striatal tissue, activation of D2 receptors has been shown to inhibit the release of DA. Previously accumulated [3H]DA was released from the cultures upon depolarization in a Ca2+‐dependent manner. K+‐evoked [3H]DA release could be inhibited by the selective D2 receptor agonists LY 171555 and N0437 in a concentration‐dependent manner. The inhibitory effects of LY 171555 and N0437 were antagonized by the selective DA D2 receptor antagonist sulpiride. These observations are indicative for the expression of functional D2 receptors in the cultures. Daily treatment of these cultures for 7 days with LY 171555 or sulpiride did not lead to any change in protein content, the number of tyrosine hydroxylase‐immunoreactive neurons, or the uptake capacity for [3H]DA. Our data demonstrate that chronic stimulation of DA D2 receptors does not impair survival or differentiation of cultured fetal dopaminergic neurons.
Retrospective Analysis of Metabolic Syndrome: Prevalence and Distribution in Executive Population in Urban Pakistan

Background. Metabolic Syndrome (MetS) is a major public health concern. Objective. The aim of this study was to estimate the frequency of MetS, its components, and factors associated with MetS amongst apparently healthy individuals in Pakistan. Methods. A retrospective cross-sectional study was conducted at the executive Clinics of Aga Khan Hospital, Pakistan. Medical records of patients aged ≥18 years visiting the clinics from July 2011 to December 2011 were consecutively reviewed. Records in which either MetS components data or 10% of overall data was missing were excluded. A total of 1329 participants' records was included in final analysis. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 19 and multivariable logistic regression was used to identify the factors associated with MetS. Results. A total of 847 (63.7%) participants had MetS; mean age of the participants were 47.6 ± 11.6 years. About 70.4% were males and 29.6% were females. Approximately 70% of participants had BMI ≥25 kg/m2. MetS was associated with male gender (AOR = 2.1; 95% C.I: 1.6–3.2) and history of diabetes among parents (AOR = 3.0; 95% C.I: 1.6–6.0). Conclusion. This study shows that a large proportion of population has MetS and is overweight or obese. This requires urgent interventions on part of health care providers' especially family physicians. Educating masses about life style factors can make a difference. Further researches on this issue are warranted.
Ocular development in the Oman shark, Iago omanensis (Triakidae), Gulf of Aqaba, Red Sea

Ocular ontogenesis was studied in embryos of the placental viviparous shark, Iago omanensis, abundant in the Gulf of Aqaba, Red Sea, at depths of 150–1500 meters. Samples of gravid females were collected bi‐monthly, and their embryos extracted. The eyes of 220 of those embryos of various dimensions were dissected and routinely prepared for histological and electron microscopic studies. The initial signs of eyes appear in embryos of 8 mm total length (TL). The primordial zone of germinal neural cells appears in 12 mmTL embryos and at 26 mm separation of the visual layer of the retina and the plexiform layers is initiated. From this stage on until 60 mmTL the nuclear and plexiform parts of the retina continue to develop and outer segments of the visual cells begin to form. Concomitant with ripening of the inner and outer plexiform layers, the tapetal layers of melanocytes and tapetal platelets of reflecting guanine also begin to ripen. The tapetum in Iago is of the cellular type. In embryos of 140–145 mmTL (6–7 months old), as they approach term, the visual cells, their synaptic connections and the intermediate cell types of the retina are all full developed. The melanocytes, rich in pigmentation, and sacs of tapetal platelets, penetrate deeply between the lamellated outer segments of the visual cells. Data are provided on growth parameters of the retinal cell layers and growth of the eyes during embryonic development. According to the position of the nuclei of the visual cells, the retina of Iago appears to be duplex, with rods and cones. Anat Rec 256:389–402, 1999. © 1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The impact of outdoor management development (OMD) programmes

This study investigated the impact of an outdoor management development (OMD) programme for teambuilding skills. A total of 26 first line recruitment managers attended and were asked to complete three questionnaires: (pre and post attendance) team climate inventory (TCI); occupational motivation questionnaire (OMQ); and the pressure management indicator (PMI). Of the participants, 12 (control group) were asked to complete the questionnaires one month prior to the course. Three of the four main TCI scales showed no improvement after the course. There was an increase in the post‐group scores for the achievement/development and stimulation scales of the occupational motivation questionnaire. However, the PMI results indicated that as many as 50 per cent of the participants were experiencing high levels of pressure and reported low levels of mental wellbeing pre and post attendance. It was concluded that a greater impact could be achieved if the participants were not over‐pressured and/or not experiencing low levels of mental wellbeing.
On entropy minimization for near-lossless differential coding

In this letter we investigate near-lossless signal coding for which the reconstruction signal is required to have an absolute error in each component bounded by a tolerance /spl tau/. For differential coding no practical algorithm is known that computes an optimal reconstruction, i.e., one for which the sequence of consecutive differences has minimal entropy. In this letter we give the optimal lower bound for the entropy of the differences of the reconstruction and, in addition, present tighter bounds for some special cases.
The Link Between Mental Health Problems and Youth Violence in Adolescence

The early identification of mental illness in youngsters is an important goal for youth, their families, and society. This study utilized continuous indicators of DSM-oriented psychopathology to explore the link between adolescent mental health and physical violence. Relying on data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) and controlling for various community, friend, family, and individual risk factors of violence, the role of various mental health problems on self-reported violence is examined. Both violence prevalence and frequency outcomes were studied. Results indicated that oppositional defiant problems was a weak predictor of violence prevalence but stronger predictor of violence frequency, controlling for other indicators. Other individual-level predictors of violence included prior violence, deviant peers, family criminality and mental health problems, and poor family relations. Community-level predictors were neighborhood ties, neighborhood decline, neighborhood organizations, and anomie, though the latter variable reduced offending.
Mining Social Behavioral Biometrics in Twitter

Online Social Networking Sites (SNSs) are considered as one of the well-established mediums of mass communication in today's world. Similar to physical world humans tend to have unique pattern of social communication in virtual world. However, analysis of such web based communication patterns is rarely seen for person identification. Most of the existing biometric recognition systems use either individual physiological or behavioural traits. A framework for the analysis of the web-based social interaction data as biometric features is largely unexplored until now. In this paper, a framework to accumulate and analyze social communication based data from online SNSs is presented. Analysis of such features explores personal characteristics, knowledge, and communication patterns that can successfully be utilized as Social Behavioral Biometric features. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed social behavioral biometric features are significantly useful for person authentication.
Frequency, Specialization, and Violence in Offending Careers

Do frequent, violent offenders possess the same characteristics as frequent, nonviolent offenders? Although only a few studies have examined this question, a few limitations reduce the generalizability of the findings. In an effort to overcome some of those limitations, this article uses data from the Philadelphia Collaborative Perinatal Project to examine two interrelated questions. First, do frequent, violent offenders possess the same characteristics as frequent, nonviolent offenders? Second, is there specificity or generality in violence? In general, the results suggest that frequent, violent offenders are indistinguishable from frequent, nonviolent offenders and that involvement in violence is primarily a function of increasing offense frequency; that is, there is no tendency to specialize in violence. Implications for future theoretical research are addressed.