Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Persistence of Neighborhood Disadvantage

This research examined the combined impact of alcohol and previous experience growing up in a disadvantaged neighborhood on aggression in a laboratory setting. Participants were 505 young adult social drinkers between 21 and 35 years of age who completed a retrospective measure of neighborhood disadvantage and then participated in an experimental procedure, where they either consumed an alcohol or placebo beverage. They were subsequently tested on a laboratory aggression task in which they were provoked by receiving electric shocks from a fictitious opponent under the guise of a competitive reaction-time task. Aggression was operationalized as shock intensities and durations administered, in retaliation, by the participants to their fictitious opponent. Acute alcohol intoxication significantly increased aggression for those who grew up in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Thus, our investigation supports Sampson’s notions of “legacies of neighborhood inequality” with important implications for the etiology and prevention of violence in real-world settings.
The Effects of a Physical Activity Intervention on the way Elementary School Girls Play

Introduction Background Purpose of Study Hypothesis Limitations Review of the Literature Childhood Obesity Physical Activity in Overweight Children Gender Differences Regarding Play Physical Activity Interventions Methods Sample Research Design Physical Activity Coding Activity Intensity Classification Behavior Classification Statistical Analysis Results Quantitative Assessment Qualitative Assessment Discussion Activity Intensity Energy Expenditure Behavioral Approaches to Activity Conclusion References 2 3 3 5 5 5 7 7 8 10 11 13 13 13 13 14 14 15 16 16 18 20 20 21 22 22
Considering Culturally Relevant Parenting Practices in Intervention Development and Adaptation

A randomized prevention pilot trial compared caregivers who participated in the Black Parenting Strengths and Strategies (BPSS) Program with control caregivers. BPSS is a strengths- and culturally based parenting program designed to improve aspects of parenting associated with the early development of conduct problems and the promotion of social and cultural competence. Parenting variables included monitoring, positive parenting, harsh discipline, and the use of proactive racial socialization. Child variables included conduct problems and social competence. Relative to control caregivers, intervention caregivers used significantly more racial socialization strategies, positive parenting practices, and less harsh discipline. Also, despite caregivers' multiple risk factors, high rates of attendance and satisfaction were achieved. Results of this pilot support the feasibility, acceptability, and potential efficacy of a culturally relevant intervention program.
Phonological Text Alexia: Poor Pseudoword Reading Plus Difficulty Reading Functors and Affixes in Text

On single word reading tasks, two patients with impaired pseudoword reading (phonological alexia) read most words correctly and did not have particular difficulty reading functors compared with nouns and adjectives. However, their reading of text was markedly impaired, and errors occurred predominantly on functors and affixed words. The results of studies involving word span, pseudoword matching, and the technique of Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) suggest that these patients' selective problems reading functors in text, and their difficulty reading pseudowords, are the result of an inability to hold multiple phonological codes in memory. This may be the result of insufficient activation of phonological representations, excessive retroactive and proactive phonological interference, or both.
Mitochondrial Alterations and Oxidative Stress in an Acute Transient Mouse Model of Muscle Degeneration

Background: Human muscular dystrophies and inflammatory myopathies share common pathological events. Results: The cardiotoxin (CTX) model displayed acute and transient muscle degeneration and all the cellular events usually implicated in human muscle pathology. Conclusion: Mitochondrial alterations and oxidative stress significantly contribute to muscle pathogenesis. Significance: The CTX model is valuable in understanding the mechanistic and therapeutic paradigms of muscle pathology. Muscular dystrophies (MDs) and inflammatory myopathies (IMs) are debilitating skeletal muscle disorders characterized by common pathological events including myodegeneration and inflammation. However, an experimental model representing both muscle pathologies and displaying most of the distinctive markers has not been characterized. We investigated the cardiotoxin (CTX)-mediated transient acute mouse model of muscle degeneration and compared the cardinal features with human MDs and IMs. The CTX model displayed degeneration, apoptosis, inflammation, loss of sarcolemmal complexes, sarcolemmal disruption, and ultrastructural changes characteristic of human MDs and IMs. Cell death caused by CTX involved calcium influx and mitochondrial damage both in murine C2C12 muscle cells and in mice. Mitochondrial proteomic analysis at the initial phase of degeneration in the model detected lowered expression of 80 mitochondrial proteins including subunits of respiratory complexes, ATP machinery, fatty acid metabolism, and Krebs cycle, which further decreased in expression during the peak degenerative phase. The mass spectrometry (MS) data were supported by enzyme assays, Western blot, and histochemistry. The CTX model also displayed markers of oxidative stress and a lowered glutathione reduced/oxidized ratio (GSH/GSSG) similar to MDs, human myopathies, and neurogenic atrophies. MS analysis identified 6 unique oxidized proteins from Duchenne muscular dystrophy samples (n = 6) (versus controls; n = 6), including two mitochondrial proteins. Interestingly, these mitochondrial proteins were down-regulated in the CTX model thereby linking oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction. We conclude that mitochondrial alterations and oxidative damage significantly contribute to CTX-mediated muscle pathology with implications for human muscle diseases.
Combining Relevance Information in a Synchronous Collaborative Information Retrieval Environment

Traditionally information retrieval (IR) research has focussed on a single user interaction modality, where a user searches to satisfy an information need. Recent advances in both web technologies, such as the sociable web of Web 2.0, and computer hardware, such as tabletop interface devices, have enabled multiple users to collaborate on many computer-related tasks. Due to these advances there is an increasing need to support two or more users searching together at the same time, in order to satisfy a shared information need, which we refer to as Synchronous Collaborative Information Retrieval. Synchronous Collaborative Information Retrieval (SCIR) represents a significant paradigmatic shift from traditional IR systems. In order to support an effective SCIR search, new techniques are required to coordinate users' activities. In this chapter we explore the effectiveness of a sharing of knowledge policy on a collaborating group. Sharing of knowledge refers to the process of passing relevance information across users, if one user finds items of relevance to the search task then the group should benefit in the form of improved ranked lists returned to each searcher. In order to evaluate the proposed techniques we simulate two users searching together through an incremental feedback system. The simulation assumes that users decide on an initial query with which to begin the collaborative search and proceed through the search by providing relevance judgments to the system and receiving a new ranked list. In order to populate these simulations we extract data from the interaction logs of various experimental IR systems from previous Text REtrieval Conference (TREC) workshops.
When Parasites Are Good for Health: Cestode Parasitism Increases Resistance to Arsenic in Brine Shrimps

Parasites and pollutants can both affect any living organism, and their interactions can be very important. To date, repeated studies have found that parasites and heavy metals or metalloids both have important negative effects on the health of animals, often in a synergistic manner. Here, we show for the first time that parasites can increase host resistance to metalloid arsenic, focusing on a clonal population of brine shrimp from the contaminated Odiel and Tinto estuary in SW Spain. We studied the effect of cestodes on the response of Artemia to arsenic (acute toxicity tests, 24h LC50) and found that infection consistently reduced mortality across a range of arsenic concentrations. An increase from 25°C to 29°C, simulating the change in mean temperature expected under climate change, increased arsenic toxicity, but the benefits of infection persisted. Infected individuals showed higher levels of catalase and glutathione reductase activity, antioxidant enzymes with a very important role in the protection against oxidative stress. Levels of TBARS were unaffected by parasites, suggesting that infection is not associated with oxidative damage. Moreover, infected Artemia had a higher number of carotenoid-rich lipid droplets which may also protect the host through the “survival of the fattest” principle and the antioxidant potential of carotenoids. This study illustrates the need to consider the multi-stress context (contaminants and temperature increase) in which host-parasite interactions occur.
Looking for America: The Disassociation of Urban Youth

Abstract Many educational initiatives have been and continue to be based on a macro-social system understanding of communal roles, values, norms, interactions, perceptions, and realities. This practice neglects the unique impediments and social norms that exist within the myriad of micro-social systems in the United States. This work draws attention to the disassociation of America's inner-city youth through an analysis of educational initiatives and macro-social system beliefs that have prescribed a macro-social system remedy for micro-social system ailments.
Intraarticular tissue proliferation after immobility: methods of assessment and preliminary results in rat knee joints.

OBJECTIVE To develop methods to quantify intraarticular connective tissue proliferation after immobility and to report results in an animal model of joint contracture. METHODS Six rats had their right knee joints immobilized with an internal fixator for 3 weeks. The joints were harvested and sectioned. We measured the length of synovial intima and the subintimal area with image analysis software. Proliferating synoviocytes were identified by immunohistochemistry using the "proliferating cell nuclear antigen" antibody and were counted under optical microscopy on whole joint sections. Two outcomes were analyzed: the subintimal area and a synoviocyte proliferation index (number of proliferating synoviocytes/synovial intima length). Both were obtained for posterior and anterior aspects of the knee. RESULTS Intra and interobserver reliabilities over 87% were found with these measurement techniques. Subintimal area means were not statistically different between immobilized and contralateral knees. In all subjects, the synoviocyte proliferation index (SPI) posteriorly was higher in immobilized than in contralateral knees (p<0.05), due to an increase in proliferating cells (p<0.05) rather than a change in synovial intima length (p>0.05). The SPI anteriorly was comparable in immobilized and contralateral knees (p>0.05). CONCLUSION We developed methods to measure intraarticular connective tissue proliferation in a contracture model in vivo. Proliferative changes in the posterior aspect of the knee suggest local mediation of connective tissue proliferation in the contracture process. These methods and preliminary results will benefit investigators assessing interventions in similar models.
Reasoning about Knowledge by Variable Forgetting

In this paper, we investigate knowledge reasoning within a simple framework called knowledge structure. We use variable forgetting as a basic operation for one agent to reason about its own or other agents' knowledge. In our framework, two notions namely agents' observable variables and the weakest sufficient condition play important roles in knowledge reasoning. Given a background knowledge base T and a set of observable variables Oi, for each agent i, we show that the notion of agent i knowing a formula φ can be defined as a weakest sufficient condition of φ on Oi under T. Moreover, we show how to capture the notion of common knowledge by using a generalized notion of weakest sufficient condition. We also discuss possible applications of our framework in some interesting domains such as the automated analysis of the well-known muddy children puzzle and the verification of the revised Needham-Schroeder protocol.
Specific Onboarding Practices for the Socialization of New Employees

Onboarding is frequently used by organizations to help socialize newcomers, but little research has focused on the specific onboarding practices organizations use or the effectiveness of those practices in facilitating newcomer adjustment. To begin addressing this gap, this study explores specific onboarding practices and evaluates the Inform‐Welcome‐Guide framework of onboarding practices. Data are presented from representatives of 10 organizations regarding what onboarding practices they offer and how those practices are offered. Three hundred seventy‐three new employees from those same 10 organizations also shared their perceptions of the practices they experienced, when those practices were experienced, and the perceived helpfulness of those practices. Lastly, the extent to which new employees were socialization was assessed. Several research questions and hypotheses among these variables were examined, and most of the hypotheses supported. Implications of these findings for future research and practice are discussed.
Changing personal epistemologies in early childhood pre-service teachers using an integrated teaching program

This study investigated changes in pre-service teachers' personal epistemologies as they engaged in an integrated teaching program. Personal epistemology refers to individual beliefs about the nature of knowing and knowledge and has been shown to influence teaching practice. An integrated approach to teaching, based on both an implicit and explicit focus on personal epistemology, was developed by an academic team within a Bachelor of Education (Early Childhood). The teaching program integrated content across four units of study, modelling personal epistemologies implicitly through collaborative reflexive practice. The students were also required to engage in explicit reflections on their personal epistemologies. Quantitative measures of personal epistemology were collected at the beginning and end of the semester using the Epistemological Beliefs Survey (EBS) to assess changes across the teaching period. Results indicated that pre-service teachers' epistemological beliefs about the integration of knowledge became more sophisticated over the course of the teaching period. Qualitative data included pre-service teachers' responses to open ended questions and field experience journal reflections about their perceptions of the teaching program and were collected at the end of the semester. These data showed that pre-service teachers held different conceptions about learning as integration, which provided a more nuanced understanding of the EBS data. Understanding pre-service teachers' epistemological beliefs provides promising directions for teacher preparation and professional enrichment.
A Framework for Similarity Search with Space-Time Tradeoffs using Locality-Sensitive Filtering

We present a framework for similarity search based on Locality-Sensitive Filtering (LSF), generalizing the Indyk-Motwani (STOC 1998) Locality-Sensitive Hashing (LSH) framework to support space-time tradeoffs. Given a family of filters, defined as a distribution over pairs of subsets of space with certain locality-sensitivity properties, we can solve the approximate near neighbor problem in $d$-dimensional space for an $n$-point data set with query time $dn^{\rho_q+o(1)}$, update time $dn^{\rho_u+o(1)}$, and space usage $dn + n^{1 + \rho_u + o(1)}$. The space-time tradeoff is tied to the tradeoff between query time and update time, controlled by the exponents $\rho_q, \rho_u$ that are determined by the filter family. Locality-sensitive filtering was introduced by Becker et al. (SODA 2016) together with a framework yielding a single, balanced, tradeoff between query time and space, further relying on the assumption of an efficient oracle for the filter evaluation algorithm. We extend the LSF framework to support space-time tradeoffs and through a combination of existing techniques we remove the oracle assumption. Building on a filter family for the unit sphere by Laarhoven (arXiv 2015) we use a kernel embedding technique by Rahimi & Recht (NIPS 2007) to show a solution to the $(r,cr)$-near neighbor problem in $\ell_s^d$-space for $0 < s \leq 2$ with query and update exponents $\rho_q=\frac{c^s(1+\lambda)^2}{(c^s+\lambda)^2}$ and $\rho_u=\frac{c^s(1-\lambda)^2}{(c^s+\lambda)^2}$ where $\lambda\in[-1,1]$ is a tradeoff parameter. This result improves upon the space-time tradeoff of Kapralov (PODS 2015) and is shown to be optimal in the case of a balanced tradeoff. Finally, we show a lower bound for the space-time tradeoff on the unit sphere that matches Laarhoven's and our own upper bound in the case of random data.
Pedestrian Detection Based on a New Two-Step Framework

In this paper, we propose a new framework in pedestrian detection using a two-step classification algorithm, which is a “coarse to fine” course. The framework consists of a full-body detection (FBD) step and a head-shoulder detection (HSD) step. The FBD step uses fusion of Haar-like and HOG features to get better performance, and the HSD step utilizes edgelet features for classification and detection. The pedestrian data is obtained from MIT, INRIA dataset and surveillance videos for training. The experiment carried out on videos from campus and CAVIAR dataset illustrates that the proposed method is robust and feasible enough for pedestrian detection and could handle occlusions more accurately than other methods.
Discriminative training based on an integrated view of MPE and MMI in margin and error space

Recent work has demonstrated that the Maximum Mutual Information (MMI) objective function is mathematically equivalent to a simple integral of recognition error, if the latter is expressed as a margin-based Minimum Phone Error (MPE) style error-weighted objective function. This led to the proposal of a general approach to discriminative training based on integrals of MPE-style loss, calculated using “differenced MMI” (dMMI), a finite difference of MMI functionals evaluated at the edges of a margin interval. This article aims to clarify the essence and practical consequences of the new framework. The recently proposed Error-Indexed Forward-Backward Algorithm is used to visualize the close agreement between dMMI and MPE statistics for narrow margin intervals, and to illustrate the flexible control of the weight that can be given to different error levels using broader intervals. New speech recognition results are presented for the MIT OpenCourseWare/MIT-World corpus, showing small performance gains for dMMI compared to MPE for some choices of margin interval. Evaluation with an expanded 44K word trigram language model confirms that dMMI with a narrow margin interval yields the same performance as MPE.
Nuclear factor-kappaB in inflammatory bowel disease and colorectal cancer

Mucosal immune system in gut plays a protective role in maintaining a balance between pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory mediators. This immunological balance is severely impaired in idiopathic inflammatory disease (IBD). Inflamed colonic mucosa demonstrates abnormalities in the molecular pathways before any histological evidence of dysplasia or cancer. In IBD, inflamed gut mucosa is characterized by a high level of pro-inflammatory cytokines like TNF-α, IL-6, and IFN-γ secreted by effector cells, which subsequently causes mucosal damage. There are several lines of evidence indicating that nuclear factor-kappaB (NF-κB) is a key regulator in this response. Activated NF-κB acts as a mediator in colorectal cancer (CRC) by inducing cellular proliferation, enhancing migration and up-regulating of anti-apoptotic proteins. Several genes have been found linked to IBD-associated cancers. Genome-wide association studies have also identified several associated genes. Alternatively it is assumed that chronic inflammation is the main cause of CRC which is supported by the fact that, colon cancer risk increases with duration over 10 years of IBD. These findings emphasize the importance of NF-κB inhibitor as a therapeutic target in CRC. This review focuses on the diverse roles of NF-κB in IBD related carcinogenesis and specific subunits of NFκB family, providing insights to develop new therapeutic strategy in treatment of IBD as well as prevent subsequent development of CRC.
Shiga Toxin Is Transported into the Nucleoli of Intestinal Epithelial Cells via a Carrier-Dependent Process

Shiga toxin (Stx) produced by the invasive Shigella dysenteriae serotype 1 (S. dysenteriae1) causes gastrointestinal and kidney complications. It has been assumed that Stx is released intracellularly after enterocyte invasion by S. dysenteriae1. However, there is little information about Stx distribution inside S. dysenteriae1-infected enterocytes. Here, we use intestinal epithelial T84 cells to characterize the trafficking of Stx delivered into the cytosol, in ways that mimic aspects of S. dysenteriae1 infection. We find that cytoplasmic Stx is transported into nucleoli. Stx nucleolar movement is carrier- and energy-dependent. Stx binding to the nucleoli of normal human enterocytes in vitro supports possible roles for nucleolar trafficking in toxin-induced intestinal pathology.
Conversational Agents for Game-Like Virtual Environments

Insp. Gray: I’d like to ask you a few questions about last night. Coln. Mustard:Fire away young man, I’ve got nothing to hide. (Mustard uses phrase ’young man’ he feels a superiority in the social relationship with the inspector) (Mustard is a defensive person protests innocence straight away) Insp. Gray: Were you in the ballroom at all last night? Coln. Mustard:Yes. I was in the ballroom between 1945 hours and 2000 hours. (Mustard is an army man dictates choice of ’1945 hours’ over ’seven forty-five’) (Mustard is confident of himself very affirmative tone used) Insp. Gray: Okay. So where had you been before you went to the ballroom? Coln. Mustard:I was in the Kitchen (Abrupt. Dislikes the Inspectors questioning) Insp. Gray: But Mrs. White was in the Kitchen at that time and said that she didn’t see anyone else. Coln. Mustard:Well she must be mistaken. (Very defensive. Authoritative about the fact commanding personality) Insp. Gray: She seemed very confident she was right. Are you sure you’ve not made a mistake? Coln. Mustard:I’m absolutely certain! (Very defensive and angry strengthens his claim with the use of the adverb) Coln. Mustard:You should talk to Mrs. Peacock. I saw her heading towards the library at 1945 hours. She seemed very suspicious. (Changes subject dominant personality disliked previous conversational direction) Insp. Gray: Why do you say that? Coln. Mustard:She hates reading, and never goes to the library. (Authoritative confident of his knowledge) Insp. Gray: Okay. Thanks for your time. Figure 1. Example Conversation from the Cluedo Game