Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Document Title: Problem Behaviors in Maltreated Children and Youth: Influential Child, Peer, and Caregiver Characteristics

To provide better customer service, NCJRS has made this Federally-funded grant final report available electronically in addition to traditional paper copies. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. This dissertation examines the problem behaviors of maltreated children and adolescents, and the predictors of changes in behavior over 18 months. Problem behaviors include aggression, delinquency, risky sexual practices, substance abuse, and suicidal behaviors. Data are from the National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being (NSCAW), the first national probability survey of children assessed following a child maltreatment report. All analyses were conducted with calculated sample weights in SAS using SUDAAN® to adjust standard errors, account for clustering and stratification in the sampling design, and allow for inferences about problem behaviors in the population of children and youth investigated as victims of child maltreatment in the U.S. Many child characteristics were associated with higher levels of aggression and delinquency at baseline—e.g., hyperactivity-impulsivity-attention (HIA) problems, low social skills and depression. Delinquent and aggressive adolescents were also likely to have deviant peers, be substance abusers, engage in high-risk sexual behaviors, and report harsh discipline. For 6-to 10-year olds, high cumulative risk was associated with high levels of aggression at baseline. Changes in problem behavior did not vary by as many factors as were found in bivariate analyses. For 6-to 10-year-old males, factors associated with aggressive behavior ii This document is a research report submitted to the U.S. Department of Justice. This report has not been published by the Department. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. change included race/ethnicity, new maltreatment report, academic achievement, and cumulative risk. For 6-to 10-year olds females, age, maltreatment type, poverty, and cumulative risk were associated with aggressive behavior change. Factors associated with aggressive and delinquent behavior change over 18 months varied by gender for maltreated adolescents. For males, behavior change varied by age and peer rejection. For females, behavior change varied by age, child welfare services, peer rejection, and deviant peer associations. Risky sexual behavior varied by sexually assaultive behavior and level of caregiver monitoring for males and child welfare services, maltreatment type, and race/ethnicity for females. Factors associated with changes in substance abuse also varied by gender. For males, changes …
Measures Inherent to Treatments in Program Effectiveness Reviews

Abstract Program effectiveness reviews in education seek to provide educators with scientifically valid and useful summaries of evidence on achievement effects of various interventions. Different reviewers have different policies on measures of content taught in the experimental group but not the control group, called here treatment-inherent measures. These are contrasted with treatment-independent measures of content emphasized equally in experimental and control groups. The What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) averages effect sizes from such measures with those from treatment-independent measures, while the Best Evidence Encyclopedia excludes treatment-inherent measures. This article contrasts effect sizes from treatment-inherent and treatment-independent measures in WWC reading and math reviews to explore the degree to which these measures produce different estimates. In all comparisons, treatment-inherent measures produce much larger positive effect sizes than treatment-independent measures. Based on these findings, it is suggested that program effectiveness reviews exclude treatment-inherent measures, or at least report them separately.
A comparative study on methods of optimal sample preparation for the analysis of oligonucleotides by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry.

Metal adducts (e.g., Na+ and K+) significantly hinder the analysis of oligonucleotides by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF-MS). Although a number of sample purification methods exist, to date no comparative study exists to determine the most efficient method for purifying oligonucleotides. The objective of this work was to perform such a study. Several different oligonucleotide samples were synthesized. Aliquots of these samples were then purposely contaminated with sodium acetate to generate representative contaminated (salted) oligonucleotide samples. A number of popular oligonucleotide purification techniques were then tested as to their effectiveness at removing Na+ from the salted samples. The effectiveness of Na+ removal was qualitatively assessed by comparing the MALDI mass spectra of the original sample, the salted sample, and the salted sample after purification. Micropipet tips packed with C18 reversed-phase packing material (e.g., Zip Tips) appear to be the most effective means of purifying the oligonucleotides investigated. Minidialysis was found to be an effective alternative for purifying higher molecular weight oligonucleotides (> 10,000 u).
Short-term load forecasting using wavenet ensemble approaches

Time series forecasting plays a key role in many areas of science, finance and engineering, mainly for the estimation of trend or seasonality of a variable under observation, aiming to serve as basis for future purchase decisions, choice of design parameters or maintenance schedule. Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs) have proven to be suitable in linear or nonlinear functions mapping. However, the ANNs, implemented in its most simplistic form, tend to have a loss in overall performance. This work aims to obtain a prediction model for a short-term load problem through the usage of wavenets ensemble, which is an ANN approach capable in combining the best characteristics of each ensemble component, in order to achieve a higher overall performance. We adopted the usage of bootstrapping, cross-validation and the inputs decimation approaches for the ensemble construction. For the components selection, `constructive' and `no selection' methods were applied. Finally, the combination is held though simple average, mode or stacked generalization. The results show that it is possible to improve the generalization ability through effective committees depending on the methods used to construct the ensemble. The total relative improvement achieved in respect to the naive model, was over 95%, regardless the number of sub wavenets, and for the best component, the relative improvement was 93.91% using five wavenets. We conclude that the most frequent and effective set, but not always with the lower MSE (Mean Squared Error), was using constructive bagging with simple average.
Recognizing User Context Using Mobile Handsets with Acceleration Sensors

User context recognition is one of the important technologies for realizing context aware services. Conventional multi sensor based approach has advantages in that it can generate variety of contexts with less computation resources by using many different sensors. However, such systems tend to be complex and cumbersome and, thus, do not fit in well with mobile environment. In this sense, a single sensor based approach is suitable for mobile environments. In this paper, we show a context inference scheme that realizes a user posture inference with only one acceleration sensor embedded in a mobile handset. Our system automatically detects the sensor position on the user's body and selects the most relevant inference method dynamically. Our experimental results show that the system can infer a user's posture (sitting, standing, walking, and running) with an accuracy of more than 96%.
Coupling of fMRI and NIRS measurements in the study of negative BOLD response to intermittent photic stimulation

Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) in combination with Near Infrared Spectroscopy (NIRS) is finding widespread use in the analysis of brain function. While most of the studies deal with the detection of positive responses, here we focus on negative responses to visual stimulation. In a group fMRI study on Intermittent Photic Stimulation (IPS) we detected a sustained Negative BOLD Response (NBR) in the extrastriate visual cortex. To confirm and better characterize NBR, we repeated the same protocol during NIRS recordings. In this paper we show fMRI results and demonstrate the NBR on the basis of NIRS findings.
A secretory kinase complex regulates extracellular protein phosphorylation

Although numerous extracellular phosphoproteins have been identified, the protein kinases within the secretory pathway have only recently been discovered, and their regulation is virtually unexplored. Fam20C is the physiological Golgi casein kinase, which phosphorylates many secreted proteins and is critical for proper biomineralization. Fam20A, a Fam20C paralog, is essential for enamel formation, but the biochemical function of Fam20A is unknown. Here we show that Fam20A potentiates Fam20C kinase activity and promotes the phosphorylation of enamel matrix proteins in vitro and in cells. Mechanistically, Fam20A is a pseudokinase that forms a functional complex with Fam20C, and this complex enhances extracellular protein phosphorylation within the secretory pathway. Our findings shed light on the molecular mechanism by which Fam20C and Fam20A collaborate to control enamel formation, and provide the first insight into the regulation of secretory pathway phosphorylation. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.06120. 001
Hepatitis B Vaccination Coverage Levels Among Healthcare Workers in the United States, 2002-2003

Background. Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is a well recognized risk for healthcare workers (HCWs), and routine vaccination of HCWs has been recommended since 1982. By 1995, the level of vaccination coverage among HCWs was only 67%. Objective. To obtain an accurate estimate of hepatitis B vaccination coverage levels among HCWs and to describe the hospital characteristics and hepatitis B vaccination policies associated with various coverage levels. Design. Cross-sectional survey. Methods. A representative sample of 425 of 6,116 American Hospital Association member hospitals was selected to participate, using probability-proportional-to-size methods during 2002-2003. The data collected included information regarding each hospital's hepatitis B vaccination policies. Vaccination coverage levels were estimated from a systematic sample of 25 HCWs from each hospital whose medical records were reviewed for demographic and vaccination data. The main outcome measure was hepatitis B vaccination coverage levels. Results. Among at-risk HCWs, 75% had received 3 or more doses of the hepatitis B vaccine, corresponding to an estimated 2.5 million vaccinated hospital-based HCWs. The coverage level was 81% among staff physicians and nurses. Compared with nurses, coverage was significantly lower among phlebotomists (71.1%) and nurses' aides and/or other patient care staff (70.9%; P < .05). Hepatitis B vaccination coverage was highest among white HCWs (79.5%) and lowest among black HCWs (67.6%; P < .05). Compared with HCWs who worked in hospitals that required vaccination only of HCWs with identified risk for exposure to blood or other potentially infectious material, hepatitis B vaccination coverage was significantly lower among HCWs who worked in hospitals that required vaccination of HCWs without identified risk for exposure to blood or other potentially infectious material (76.6% vs 62.4%; P < .05). Conclusions. In the United States, an estimated 75% of HCWs have been vaccinated against hepatitis B. Important differences in coverage levels exist among various demographic groups. Hospitals need to identify methods to improve hepatitis B vaccination coverage levels and should consider developing targeted vaccination programs directed at unvaccinated, at-risk HCWs who have frequent or potential exposure to blood or other potentially infectious material.
Association of Angiotensin Converting Enzyme gene Polymorphism and Indian Army Triathletes Performance

Purpose It is well known that the effects of exercise training gives inter individual differences which might be due to genetic diversity. This study aims to explore the probable relation between angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE) alleles and physical fitness parameters in elite athletes. Methods Twenty-nine national level Indian Army Triathletes who volunteered for the study were taken as subjects and 101 healthy age matched control group subjects were taken for comparison of genotype frequencies. The following parameters were checked in triathletes: blood pressure, body mass index, VO2 max, muscular endurance, flexibility and power. DNA was extracted from blood using standard phenol-chloroform method. Genotyping was done using PCR specific for ACE (I/D) polymorphism, followed by agarose gel electrophoresis method. Variation of the parameters among different genotypes was compared. Genotype frequencies of triathletes were compared with the control group as well. Results No difference was observed between fitness parameters of three genotype groups’ triathletes, while the frequency of I allele was found to be very high in triathletes compared with the control group. Conclusion It can be concluded that there might be a positive association between I allele of ACE gene and endurance.
RNA polymerase sub-unit β (rpoB) characterization of Ehrlichia canis detected from dogs and Rhipicephalus sanguineus ticks in Cebu, Philippines

Ehrlichia canis, a canine tick-borne pathogen with wide geographic distribution, has been serologically and molecularly detected in the Philippines. The present study aimed to characterize E. canis detected from Rhipicephalus sanguineus ticks and dogs in Cebu, Philippines, using the RNA polymerase sub-unit Beta (rpoB), a gene that has been used for disease diagnosis and resolution of phylogenetic relationships between closely- related species. Using a 16S rRNA gene-based PCR that screens Ehrlichia spp. , DNA samples obtained from the blood of 10 dogs, confi rmed to be serologically positive for E. canis, were tested and found positive for E. canis after subsequent DNA sequencing. DNA from infected ticks and the 16S rRNA-E. canis-positive canine blood samples from the present study were further analyzed using the rpoB gene. All registered Ehrlichia spp. rpoB gene sequences were aligned to design specifi c primers that can amplify a partial 1572-bp length sequence of E. canis. The obtained sequences revealed 99.8-100 % identities with each other, and 99.8-100 % and 87.8-89.1 % identities with registered E. canis and E. chaffeensis sequences from the USA, respectively. Phylogenetic analysis revealed that the obtained partial rpOB sequences formed a clade with E. canis strains from the USA. The present study is the fi rst rpoB characterization of E. canis in the Philippines, and apparently in Asia, and provides additional evidence of the presence of the pathogen in the country. It also adds information on the high conservation of the rpoB gene in E. canis.
Social media and education … now the dust has settled

In 2009 we commissioned a special issue of Learning, Media & Technology to explore the issues surrounding education and social media ( … or ‘social software’ as it fleetingly was being referred to at the time). The original call for papers challenged authors to provide empirical perspectives on the emerging ‘messy realities’ of social media, learning and education. The resulting issue of the journal (34, 2) contained some the first detailed accounts of the social, cultural and political dimensions of this ‘new wave’ of digital media use in education.
WEAKLY SUPERVISED ALIGNMENT OF MULTISENSOR IMAGES

Manifold alignment has become very popular in recent literature. Aligning data distributions prior to product generation is an appealing strategy, since it allows to provide data spaces that are more similar to each other, regardless of the subsequent use of the transformed data. We propose a methodology that finds a common representation among data spaces from different sensors using geographic image correspondences, or semantic ties. To cope with the strong deformations between the data spaces considered, we propose to add nonlinearities by expanding the input space with Gaussian Radial Basis Function (RBF) features with respect to the centroids of a partitioning of the data. Such features allow us to cope with nonlinear transformations, while keeping a simple and efficient linear formulation. The proposed method is multi-domain and does not require co-registration, rather only a partial degree of spatial overlap. We test it on a challenging problem of multisensor classification transferring a model trained on a WorldView 2 image to predict land cover of a 3-bands orthophoto and show that we can transfer the model with an accuracy comparable to the one that would have been obtained by a model trained on the target image with an image-specific ground truth.
Democracy and Crime: A Multilevel Analysis of Homicide Trends in Forty-Four Countries, 1950-2000

Despite simultaneous increases in democratization and violent crime rates in many countries during the second half of the twentieth century, the authors could find no prior studies that have directly examined possible connections between these two processes. The civilization perspective predicts that violent crime rates will decline along with the civilizing effects of democratization, the conflict perspective predicts that violent crime rates will increase along with the brutalizing effects of the market economies that so far have universally accompanied democratization, and the modernization perspective predicts that violent crime rates will initially increase with the transition to democracy but then decline as democracies mature. Our analysis of data from forty-four countries from 1950 to 2000 shows the most support for a modernization perspective: violent crime rates are highest for transitional democracies. However, as predicted by the conflict perspective, we also find that during the second half of the twentieth century homicide rates gradually increased for full democracies.
Dual Decomposition Based Power Allocation for Downlink OFDM Non-Coherent Cooperative Transmission System

In this paper, we study the subchannel power allocation problem to maximize the total throughput of the downlink orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) multiple access points (APs) systems with non-coherent cooperative transmission. Although the problem has been claimed as a non-convex optimization problem, we prove that the duality gap between the original problem and its dual optimization problem is nearly zero when the number of subchannel is large, which implies solving the problem in the dual domain. Then, the problem is solved with the standard Lagrange dual decomposition method with an acceptable deviation. In addition, in order to reduce the complexity of the dual decomposition based method, we propose a suboptimal low-complexity algorithm, at a minor cost of the total throughput. Numerical results are also given to verify the proposed schemes.
Financial loss in pyramid savings schemes, downward social mobility and acute coronary syndrome in transitional Albania

Objective: Extensive financial losses caused by the collapse of pyramid savings schemes led to the 1997 turmoil in Albania. The authors' aim was to assess the association of financial loss and social mobility with acute coronary syndrome (ACS) 6–9 years after the precipitous collapse. Methods: A population-based case–control study was conducted in Tirana, the Albanian capital, in 2003–6. 467 non-fatal consecutive ACS patients were recruited (370 men aged 59.1 (SD 8.7) years and 97 women 63.3 (SD 7.1) years, 88% response). The control group comprised 469 men (53.1 (SD 10.4) years) and 268 women (54.0 (SD 10.9) years, 69% response). Information on the absolute financial loss (in US$), relative loss and subjective social mobility was obtained by a structured interviewer-administered questionnaire. Associations of financial loss and social mobility with ACS were assessed by multivariable-adjusted logistic regression. Results: Financial loss in pyramid scams was frequent in both ACS patients (55%) and controls (41%). Downward subjective social mobility was noted in 31% of patients and 12% of controls. Upon adjustment for sociodemographic and socioeconomic characteristics and conventional coronary risk factors, ACS was associated with both financial loss (OR 1.9, 95% CI 1.4 to 2.6) and downward social mobility (OR 2.2, 95% CI 1.4 to 3.3). Although the association with financial loss was partly mediated through subjective social mobility, both maintained independent associations with ACS. Conclusions: In the wake of a nationwide catastrophic collapse of savings that led to losses totalling about 40% of the Albanian gross domestic product, the authors detected apparent long-term deleterious health effects of financial loss and downward intragenerational subjective social mobility.
Developing a scale measurement of market uncertainty: A Cluster Analysis on Taiwan's financial services

The way to ensure a company's long-term advantages for survival is to completely know market uncertainty. Though the financial services have been made great contributions to Taiwan's economic development, past research pays little attention on them without a scale development of market uncertainty. Building on extensive literature, a 53-item survey questionnaire was developed and 323 respondents from 28 domestic financial services were selected as the sample of this study. Using an exploratory factor analysis (EFA), we would retrieve four dimensions of market uncertainty, including market situation, market forecasting, market innovation and competitor's threats. Meanwhile, we would divide market uncertainty into three groups by cluster analysis and further verify them with business performance as well as project efficiency.
Macrophage P2X7 Receptor Function Is Reduced during Schistosomiasis: Putative Role of TGF-β1

Schistosomiasis is a chronic inflammatory disease whose macrophages are involved in immunopathology modulation. Although P2X7 receptor signaling plays an important role in inflammatory responses mediated by macrophages, no reports have examined the role of P2X7 receptors in macrophage function during schistosomiasis. Thus, we evaluated P2X7 receptor function in peritoneal macrophages during schistosomiasis using an ATP-induced permeabilization assay and measurements of the intracellular Ca2+ concentration. ATP treatment induced significantly less permeabilization in macrophages from S. mansoni-infected mice than in control cells from uninfected animals. Furthermore, P2X7-mediated increases in intracellular Ca2+ levels were also reduced in macrophages from infected mice. TGF-β1 levels were increased in the peritoneal cavity of infected animals, and pretreatment of control macrophages with TGF-β1 reduced ATP-induced permeabilization, mimicking the effect of S. mansoni infection. Western blot and qRT-PCR data showed no difference in P2X7 protein and mRNA between uninfected, infected, and TGF-β1-treated groups. However, immunofluorescence analysis revealed reduced cell surface localization of P2X7 receptors in macrophages from infected and TGF-β1-treated mice compared to controls. Therefore, our data suggest that schistosomiasis reduces peritoneal macrophage P2X7 receptor signaling. This effect is likely due to the fact that infected mice have increased levels of TGF-β1, which reduces P2X7 receptor cell surface expression.