Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Intraspecific variation in the diet of the Mexican garter snake Thamnophis eques

The Mexican Garter Snake (Thamnophis eques) is a terrestrial-aquatic generalist that feeds on both aquatic and terrestrial prey. We describe size-related variation and sexual variation in the diet of T. eques through analysis of 262 samples of identifiable stomach contents in snakes from 23 locations on the Mexican Plateau. The snake T. eques we studied consumed mostly fish, followed in lesser amounts by leeches, earthworms, frogs, and tadpoles. Correspondence analysis suggested that the frequency of consumption of various prey items differed between the categories of age but not between sex of snakes, and the general pattern was a reduction of prey item diversity with size of snake. Snake length was correlated positively with mass of ingested prey. Large snakes consumed large prey and continued to consume smaller prey. In general, no differences were found between the prey taxa of male and female snakes, although males ate two times more tadpoles than females. Males and females did not differ in the mass of leeches, earthworms, fishes, frogs and tadpoles that they ate, and males and females that ate each prey taxon were similar in length. We discuss proximate and functional determinants of diet and suggest that the observed intraspecific variation in T. eques could be explored by temporal variation in prey availability, proportions of snake size classes and possible sexual dimorphism in head traits and prey dimensions to assess the role of intersexual resource competition.
Take Your Partners: A Description of a Student Social System in a Secondary School Dance Class

This study examined the operations of a student social system within an elective physical education dance class. Its methodology is based on the findings of Allen (1986), who determined that students have two main agendas in classes, namely, to give teachers what they want while having fun and socializing with classmates. Consistent with previous findings, many students in this study were particularly adept at finding ways to minimize work and have fun while still doing enough to pass the course. These findings are explained in conjunction with the task structure and accountability systems put in place by the teacher. That is, the teacher seemed to be content to trade off lower levels of participation in the instructional task system for at least nondisruptive behavior, thereby allowing a relatively unimpeded achievement of the students’ social objectives.
Incapacitation and imprisonment: prisoners' involvement in community-based crime

Abstract The impact of incapacitation on prisoners' offending behaviour is a neglected area of research. The aim of this study was to examine the extent and nature of prisoners' involvement in community-based crime in the UK. Participants were selected from nine prisons in the UK and consisted of 360 prisoners, 81 females and 279 males. Offenders were interviewed to assess levels and forms of involvement in community-based crime and perceptions of other prisoners' involvement. Levels of prisonization and institutional and demographic characteristics were used to identify vulnerability to involvement in community-based crime. Twenty-five per cent of the sample admitted personal involvement and 63% reported other prisoners' involvement in a diverse range of crimes. Analyses revealed prisoners involved in community-based crime are likely to be young, male recidivists who hold prisonized attitudes. Prisoners who are white, prisonized and recidivist reported highest levels of other prisoners' involvement in community-based crime. No age or gender differences delineated prisoners' reports of others' involvement. The results show that incarcerating offenders may not prevent their involvement in community-based offending. Discussion centres on the characteristics of involved prisoners and considers the implications of the results for rehabilitation and penal policy.
A New Approach for Detecting Client–Treatment Matching in Psychological Therapy

Abstract Identifying the treatments that are most effective for specific clients (i.e., client–treatment matching) is a major goal of research in psychological therapy. Unfortunately, there is little evidence that clients differ in the treatments to which they respond. This could result from the use of between–subjects designs that might be insensitive to client–treatment matching. In other areas of psychology, Generalizability (G) and Social Relations Model (SRM) designs routinely obtain large, conceptually identical matching effects. The current study investigated client–treatment matching using a G/SRM design. Postpartum women with a history of drug use completed three computer–delivered treatment segments of a brief motivational intervention, and rated themselves on state motivation for change following each segment. Strong client–treatment matching effects were found when using G/SRM analyses, but not when using between–subjects analyses. G/SRM methods might be more sensitive to client–treatment matc.
Learning Low-Rank Representations with Classwise Block-Diagonal Structure for Robust Face Recognition

Face recognition has been widely studied due to its importance in various applications. However, the case that both training images and testing images are corrupted is not well addressed. Motivated by the success of low-rank matrix recovery, we propose a novel semi-supervised low-rank matrix recovery algorithm for robust face recognition. The proposed method can learn robust discriminative representations for both training images and testing images simultaneously by exploiting the classwise block-diagonal structure. Specifically, low-rank matrix approximation can handle the possible contamination of data. Moreover, the classwise block-diagonal structure is exploited to promote discrimination of representations for robust recognition. The above issues are formulated into a unified objective function and we design an efficient optimization procedure based on augmented Lagrange multiplier method to solve it. Extensive experiments on three public databases are performed to validate the effectiveness of our approach. The strong identification capability of representations with block-diagonal structure is verified.
One-For-All: Visualization of the Information Visualization Symposia

We developed our own tool to visualize the history of the Infovis Symposiums. We call our tool “One-For-All”, because we want to generate one image to at once answer all four tasks of the contest effectively (though not necessarily optimally). Furthermore, we designed the tool to be intuitive, that is, we would like the user to immediately make sense of the visualization, even without a legend or a user guide. These are ambitious goals, but we believe that a good visualization should meet these criteria. Much preprocessing was needed before visualization. First, we have to coalesce the keywords, for example, we manually group “hierarchy” and “hierarchies” as the same keyword. Next, we find the most important keywords, with the most number of papers. We use these keywords as research areas within information visualization. We also notice that many of the 2002 papers do not have keywords, so we have to manually insert keywords according to their titles. We are not allowed to look up external information, that is, we cannot find their actual keywords from the publication. Next, we re-arrange the areas using MDS such that those areas with the most cross-references are placed near to one another. Since there is so much data, we find the important papers/authors, according to how much they are cited, and we emphasize them in our visualization. In the overview visualization of Figure 2, we show a lot of information, for example, (1) important keywords and all the papers under them, (2) related research areas (eg. graph is next to hierarchies), (3) citations, (4) important authors, (5) important papers, and (6) important external papers. A key design feature is that all these very different information can be visualized clearly in one single display. The way this is achieved is through color-coding, so that if any user is interested in any particular information, he/she just has to focus attention on that color. For example, if you focus on the cyan words, you see all the first authors, and everything else fades away (try it out yourself! ). The important papers are represented by bigger circles according to how many citations they have within Infovis. Their titles are also labelled. The two most important papers also have their citations highlighted. In this way, the important papers are immediately visible. We can see that the top two papers are both in the earliest year (1995), and they are also in two very different topics, since they only have two common papers refer to them. The layout consists of vertical grey columns of research areas within Infovis. The areas that contain more papers are thicker and are labelled with darker text. We can clearly see that the most important area is “hierarchies” and this area contains many recent papers. “Graph drawing” particularly has many papers in 2001. “Information retrieval” has many papers early in 1995, but no papers in recent years. Adjactent to “Information retrieval” is “Information analysis”, which has many papers from 1996 to 1999. This is interesting because analyisis logically follows retrieval, so it makes sense.
A High-Throughput Cell-Based Screen Identified a 2-[(E)-2-Phenylvinyl]-8-Quinolinol Core Structure That Activates p53

p53 function is frequently inhibited in cancer either through mutations or by increased degradation via MDM2 and/or E6AP E3-ubiquitin ligases. Most agents that restore p53 expression act by binding MDM2 or E6AP to prevent p53 degradation. However, fewer compounds directly bind to and activate p53. Here, we identified compounds that shared a core structure that bound p53, caused nuclear localization of p53 and caused cell death. To identify these compounds, we developed a novel cell-based screen to redirect p53 degradation to the Skip-Cullin-F-box (SCF) ubiquitin ligase complex in cells expressing high levels of p53. In a multiplexed assay, we coupled p53 targeted degradation with Rb1 targeted degradation in order to identify compounds that prevented p53 degradation while not inhibiting degradation through the SCF complex or other proteolytic machinery. High-throughput screening identified several leads that shared a common 2-[(E)-2-phenylvinyl]-8-quinolinol core structure that stabilized p53. Surface plasmon resonance analysis indicated that these compounds bound p53 with a KD of 200 ± 52 nM. Furthermore, these compounds increased p53 nuclear localization and transcription of the p53 target genes PUMA, BAX, p21 and FAS in cancer cells. Although p53-null cells had a 2.5±0.5-fold greater viability compared to p53 wild type cells after treatment with core compounds, loss of p53 did not completely rescue cell viability suggesting that compounds may target both p53-dependent and p53-independent pathways to inhibit cell proliferation. Thus, we present a novel, cell-based high-throughput screen to identify a 2-[(E)-2-phenylvinyl]-8-quinolinol core structure that bound to p53 and increased p53 activity in cancer cells. These compounds may serve as anti-neoplastic agents in part by targeting p53 as well as other potential pathways.
The Influence of Tourist Experience on Perceived Value and Satisfaction with Temple Stays: The Experience Economy Theory

ABSTRACT Temple stays are emerging global cultural attractions that provide tourists with unique experiences and influence perceptions of value and satisfaction. This study examines the influence of escape, entertainment, esthetic, and educational experiences on perceptions of functional and emotional values as well as tourist satisfaction with temple stays. The results of the study show that escape and entertainment experiences are important predictors of both functional and emotional values. Esthetic experience influences emotional value, whereas educational experience affects functional value. Both functional and emotional values influence tourist satisfaction. Theoretical and practical implications of the study results are discussed.
A minority of foci or pan-nuclear apoptotic staining of γH2AX in the S phase after UV damage contain DNA double-strand breaks

UV irradiation induces histone variant H2AX phosphorylated on serine 139 (γH2AX) foci and high levels of pan-nuclear γH2AX staining without foci, but the significance of this finding is still uncertain. We examined the formation of γH2AX and 53BP1 that coincide at sites of double-strand breaks (DSBs) after ionizing radiation. We compared UV irradiation and treatment with etoposide, an agent that causes DSBs during DNA replication. We found that during DNA replication, UV irradiation induced at least three classes of γH2AX response: a minority of γH2AX foci colocalizing with 53BP1 foci that represent DSBs at replication sites, a majority of γH2AX foci that did not colocalize with 53BP1 foci, and cells with high levels of pan-nuclear γH2AX without foci of either γH2AX or 53BP1. Ataxia-telangiectasia mutated kinase and JNK mediated the UV-induced pan-nuclear γH2Ax, which preceded and paralleled UV-induced S phase apoptosis. These high levels of pan-nuclear γH2AX were further increased by loss of the bypass polymerase Pol η and inhibition of ataxia-telangiectasia and Rad3-related, but the levels required the presence of the damage-binding proteins of excision repair xeroderma pigmentosum complementation group A and C proteins. DSBs, therefore, represent a small variable fraction of UV-induced γH2AX foci dependent on repair capacity, and they are not detected within high levels of pan-nuclear γH2AX, a preapoptotic signal associated with ATM- and JNK-dependent apoptosis during replication. The formation of γH2AX foci after treatment with DNA-damaging agents cannot, therefore, be used as a direct measure of DSBs without independent corroborating evidence.
The Family Point of View, Family Social Capital, and Firm Performance

Based on the social capital, conflict, and ethics literatures, this study introduces a new concept, the family point of view, and provides theoretical arguments resulting in the following hypotheses: (a) The family point of view emerges from collaborative dialogue, which helps develop agreement to ethical norms; (b) the presence of ethical norms further helps cultivate family social capital; and (c) as a resource in a family business, family social capital is positively related to family firm performance. Using structural equation modeling, an exploratory test of 405 small family firms found support for all three hypotheses. The findings indicate a fully mediated relationship among collaborative dialogue, ethical norms, family social capital, and firm performance. The study not only highlights the importance of moral infrastructure in family firms but also helps clarify components of family social capital.
Sink or Swim: Child Care Teachers' Perceptions of Entry Training Experiences

The purpose of this study was to explore child care teachers' perceptions of their initial preservice and in-service training experiences. Eighteen child care teachers working in six for-profit centers were interviewed. Based on the participants' responses, the findings are organized in two themes. First, because many of them entered the field without significant training and education, received little or no preservice training, and then participated in minimal amounts of in-service training, these teachers described their experience as being “thrown into the classroom. ” Second, due to this lack of training, the teachers discussed the ways in which they were “figuring out how to do it” in terms of using their own natural abilities, learning by experience, and learning from other teachers by watching and asking questions. The findings of this study have implications for the field in terms of designing and structuring professional development opportunities for child care teachers to better meet their needs within particular contexts.
On the Consistency of AUC Pairwise Optimization

AUC (area under ROC curve) is an important evaluation criterion, which has been popularly used in many learning tasks such as class-imbalance learning, cost-sensitive learning, learning to rank, etc. Many learning approaches try to optimize AUC, while owing to the non-convexity and discontinuousness of AUC, almost all approaches work with surrogate loss functions. Thus, the consistency of AUC is crucial; however, it has been almost untouched before. In this paper, we provide a sufficient condition for the asymptotic consistency of learning approaches based on surrogate loss functions. Based on this result, we prove that exponential loss and logistic loss are consistent with AUC, but hinge loss is inconsistent. Then, we derive the $q$-norm hinge loss and general hinge loss that are consistent with AUC. We also derive the consistent bounds for exponential loss and logistic loss, and obtain the consistent bounds for many surrogate loss functions under the non-noise setting. Further, we disclose an equivalence between the exponential surrogate loss of AUC and exponential surrogate loss of accuracy, and one straightforward consequence of such finding is that AdaBoost and RankBoost are equivalent.
When can women close the gap? A meta-analytic test of sex differences in performance and rewards

Drawing on macro and micro domains in gender research, we meta-analytically test whether occupation-, industry-, and job-level factors mitigate or exacerbate differences in performance evaluations (k = 93; n = 95,882) and rewards (k = 97; n = 378,850) between men and women. Based on studies conducted across a variety of work settings and spanning nearly 30 years, we found that the sex differences in rewards (d = .56) (including salary, bonuses, and promotions) were 14 times larger than sex differences in performance evaluations (d = .04), and that differences in performance evaluations did not explain reward differences between men and women. The percentage of men in an occupation and the complexity of jobs performed by employees enhanced the male–female gap in performance and rewards. In highly prestigious occupations, women performed equally, but were rewarded significantly lower than men. Only a higher representation of female executives at the industry level enabled women to reverse the gender gap in .
Laser pointer interaction techniques using peripheral areas of screens

This paper presents new interaction techniques that use a laser pointer to directly manipulate applications displayed on a large screen. The techniques are based on goal crossing, and the key is that the goals of crossing are the four peripheral screen areas, which are extremely large. This makes it very easy for users to execute commands, and the crossing-based interaction enables users to execute fast and continuous commands.
Commentary: Mediation Analysis, Causal Process, and Cross-Sectional Data

Maxwell, Cole, and Mitchell (2011) extended the work of Maxwell and Cole (2007), which raised important questions about whether mediation analyses based on cross-sectional data can shed light on longitudinal mediation process. The latest article considers longitudinal processes that can only be partially explained by an intervening variable, and Maxwell et al. showed that the same general conclusions are obtained, namely that analyses of cross-sectional data will not reveal the longitudinal mediation process. While applauding the advances of the target article, this comment encourages the detailed exploration of alternate causal models in psychology beyond the autoregressive model considered by Maxwell et al. When inferences based on cross-sectional analyses are compared to alternate models, different patterns of bias are likely to be observed. I illustrate how different models of the causal process can be derived using examples from research on psychopathology.
MDR-1 and CYP3A5 Polymorphisms in Pediatric Idiopathic Nephrotic Syndrome: Impact on Susceptibility and Response to Steroids (Preliminary Results).

BACKGROUND Oral steroid treatment is the first line of therapy for childhood nephrotic syndrome (NS). However, resistance to this treatment has been observed in some patients. Here, we investigated the association of two steroid metabolism-related genes with susceptibility to childhood NS and the steroid response. METHODS We genotyped the single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) of MDR-1 [C1236T (rs1128503), G2677T/A (rs2032582), and C3435T (rs1045642)] and the CYP3A5 gene (A6986G) in 63 NS patients and 110 age and gender matched controls by PCR-RFLP. RESULTS Based on multivariate logistic regression analysis carrying the G2677A A allele seemed to multiply both the risk of NS and the risk of developing glucocorticoid (GC) resistance by three-fold (OR = 3.50, [1.37 - 7.06] , p < 0.001, OR = 3.07, [1.06 - 26.10], p = 0.048, respectively). When combined into haplotype, the TAT (1236_T, 2677_A, and 3435_T) haplotype conferred a two-fold NS risk (OR = 2.26, [1.11 - 4.58], p = 0.023) and almost three-fold risk to develop resistance to GC (OR = 2.69, [1.12 - 8.79], p = 0.044). However, TAT carriers seemed to have less risk to develop NS at late age (OR = 0.34, [0.12 - 0.92], p = 0.037). The C1236T (MDR-1) and the A6986G (CYP3A5) polymorphisms showed a trend of association to GC resistance but these associations did not reach the statistical significance (OR = 2.83, [0.54 - 14.67], p = 0.294), (OR = 2.11, [0.53 - 8.38], p = 0.28), respectively. CONCLUSIONS Here we report that only the G2677A polymorphism was associated to NS susceptibility and steroid resistance. The TAT haplotype was associated with NS susceptibility especially at an early age and with steroid resistance.
An Ontology-based contextual pre-filtering technique for Recommender Systems

Context-aware Recommender Systems aim to provide users with the most adequate recommendations for their current situation. However, an exact context obtained from a user could be too specific and may not have enough data for accurate rating prediction. This is known as the data sparsity problem. Moreover, often user preference representation depends on the domain or the specific recommendation approach used. Therefore, a big effort is required to change the method used. In this paper we present a new approach for contextual pre-filtering (i.e. using the current context to select a relevant subset of data). Our approach can be used with existing recommendation algorithms. It is based on two ontologies: Recommender System Context ontology, which represents the context, and Contextual Ontological User Profile ontology, which represents user preferences. We evaluated our approach through an offline study which showed that when used with well-known recommendation algorithms it can significantly improve the accuracy of prediction.