Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Intact implicit learning in autism spectrum conditions

Individuals with autism spectrum condition (ASC) have diagnostic impairments in skills that are associated with an implicit acquisition; however, it is not clear whether ASC individuals show specific implicit learning deficits. We compared ASC and typically developing (TD) individuals matched for IQ on five learning tasks: four implicit learning tasks—contextual cueing, serial reaction time, artificial grammar learning, and probabilistic classification learning tasks—that used procedures expressly designed to minimize the use of explicit strategies, and one comparison explicit learning task, paired associates learning. We found implicit learning to be intact in ASC. Beyond no evidence of differences, there was evidence of statistical equivalence between the groups on all the implicit learning tasks. This was not a consequence of compensation by explicit learning ability or IQ. Furthermore, there was no evidence to relate implicit learning to ASC symptomatology. We conclude that implicit mechanisms are preserved in ASC and propose that it is disruption by other atypical processes that impact negatively on the development of skills associated with an implicit acquisition.
Nenglish: An Inevitable Reality or Merely a Mirage

Several discussions are being held on which variety of English to adopt and adapt to it around the world. Nepal, where modern English education began in the 1850s, is also at the crossroads because English teachers and practitioners here are in dilemmas whether to follow British/American versions, Hinglish (Indian variety of English) or their own Nenglish (Nepali Variety of English). Although there is a trend of developing local varieties around the world, some scholars are skeptic as this championing can lead to anarchy in a small developing country like Nepal. Key words: Nenglish; Hinglish; Received pronunciation; Standard English Journal of NELTA Vol. 15 No. 1-2 December 2010 Page: 43-53 Uploaded date: 4 May, 2011 DOI: 10.3126/nelta.v15i1-2.4608
Relations among Moral Reasoning, Locus of Control, and Demographic Variables among College Students

This study was conducted to examine the relationships among Rest's Defining Issues Test, Rotter's Internal-External Locus of Control Scale, and demographic variables. 205 undergraduates from two secular universities and one religious liberal arts college from the Middle Atlantic states were given the Defining Issues Test, the Internal-External Locus of Control Scale, and a demographic questionnaire. The Pearson correlations indicated significant associations between the Defining Issues Test scored for percentage of principled reasoning about moral dilemmas and five demographic variables. Analysis of variance indicated significant differences between the group means for the Defining Issues Test scores on three demographic variables and between the group means for the Internal-External Locus of Control Scale scores on two demographic variables. A stepwise multiple regression analysis using five variables predicted a significant amount of the variance (25%) in the Defining Issues Test scores and two variables that predicted a significant amount of the variance (7%) in the Internal-External Locus of Control Scale scores. The Defining Issues Test is both a developmental and cognitive measure. In addition, the Internal-External Locus of Control Scale scores showed a significant relationship with religious affiliation and with Defining Issues Test scores.
Measuring IT core capabilities for electronic commerce: results from a confirmatory factor analysis

This paper reports on the theoretical development and empirical validation of a measurement instrument for three IT core capabilities in an electronic commerce context. The instrument is based on the work of Feeny and Willcocks and includes the capabilities “IS/IT governance,” “business system thinking,” and “relationship building. ” It was validated using a sample consisting of 179 respondents, all IT managers or CIOs. Results demonstrate that the constructs are reliable (alpha coefficients > 0.8) and valid. A confirmatory factor analysis on the data set yields a moderately acceptable model fit. The model also demonstrates highly significant factor loadings (p < 0.001). We show that a respecification of a competing model in which “IS/IT governance” is split into “business IT strategic thinking” and “IT management” provides better measures of fit. The paper concludes that core capabilities of IT departments are useful constructs to incorporate in future research. They are able to successfully predict behaviors that have relatively little overlap. Recommended further research includes the relationship between capabilities and governance structures, as well as further investigation into how IT core capabilities are formed and strengthened in organizations.
Chemical Composition and In Vitro Cytotoxic and Antimicrobial Activities of the Essential Oil from Leaves of Zanthoxylum monogynum St. Hill (Rutaceae)

Background: The Zanthoxylum monogynum species belongs to the family Rutaceae and is found in Southeast, Midwest, and Northeast Brazil. For this genus several biological activities have been described. Methods: The essential oil (EO) was obtained from the leaves of Zanthoxylum monogynum by hydro-distillation and was analyzed by gas chromatograph and gas chromatograph/mass spectrometry (GC and GC/MS). Also the EO of Z. monogynum was evaluated for in vitro cytotoxic activity against six tumor cell lines and for antimicrobial activity, performing disk diffusion and MIC assays with yeast and bacterial strains. Results: The chemical analysis afforded the identification of 18 components (99.0% of the EO). The major components were found to be citronellol (43.0%) and farnesol (32.0%). The in vitro cytotoxic activity against tumor cell lines, resulted in IC50 values ranging from 11–65 µg/mL against all tested cell lines. Antimicrobial activity of the essential oil was also tested and oil was effective, especially against Cryptococcus sp. yeast. All the tested yeast strains showed at least 90% growth inhibition. Conclusions: the essential oil from leaves of Z. monogynum has a different qualitative and quantitative composition when compared to the composition previously described. Also this EO has significant cytotoxic activity and moderate activity against Cryptococcus sp. and Saccharomyces cereviseae yeasts.
Human Rights and Structural Adjustment

The structural adjustment programs (SAPs), which are imposed on developing countries that apply to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or to the World Bank for loans, have been subject to criticism for a long time. The IMF and the Bank require SAPs as conditions for lending and demand applicant governments to tighten their belts by reducing spending; liberalize their economies through privatization, deregulation, and trade liberalization; encourage exports by devaluating the national currency; increase government revenues by adopting tax reforms; secure property rights to attract foreign investment; and freeze wages to fight inflation. Entailing the elimination or reduction of government subsidies on food and utilities, cuts in social spending, lay-offs, and regressive tax systems, the SAPs affect the fixedand low-income groups disproportionally and thus are referred to as “austerity measures” by their critics. A group of these critics has defined these negative impacts of the SAPs as violations of economic and social rights. Some researchers have further drawn attention to the increased violations of physical integrity and civil rights in countries that enter into agreements with the IMF or the World Bank. Abouharb and Cingranelli provide a review of this literature, which sometimes yields contradictory findings, address the defensive arguments presented by the two financial agencies, and offer a systematic analysis of 131 countries for the 1981– 2003 period to test if the implementation of SAPs is related to human rights conditions. They find that the longer period of living by the IMF and Bank conditionality is correlated with lower levels of economic and social rights, increases in civil conflict, torture, extrajudicial executions, disappearances and political imprisonment, and declines in worker rights. They find the correlation between the number of years under the IMF/Bank rules and procedural democracy to be positive but note that the procedural democracy, limited to holding periodic competitive elections, may lack substance and fail to ensure people’s right to participate in governance and to influence policies that affect their lives.
A Parallel Algorithm for Single Row Routing Problems

Single Row Routing problem is one of the important subproblems in the layout design of multilayer printed circuit boards. This routing technique has also been applied to routing of microwave citcuits and other routing problems. The single row routing problem has been extensively studied and several sequential algorithms have been proposed. In this paper, we present a parallel hypercube algorithm for the single row routing problem. The basis of this parallel algorithm is a new O(n2 log n) sequential algorithm based on the concept of modified cut numbers and a graph decomposition scheme. The sequential algorithm is based on generalizing the concepts underlying two existing sequential algorithms. A parallel algorithm for the hypercube architecture with N processors is then developed by combining the nice features of the sequential algorithm with an efficient allocation scheme. This results in a parallel algorithm of complexity. The experimental results show that our algorithm achieves a speed up factor that is quite close to the theoretical bound while maintaining the quality of the solutions, as compared to any existing sequential algorithm. Moreover, the algorithm produces 28% better results than any existing results.
Athens' failed bid for the Olympic Games: The role of ego-involvement and affect on the collective self-esteem of Greek-Canadians

For Canadian-born Greek-Canadians, the failure of Athens’ bid for the 1996 Olympic Summer Games was presumed to evoke social comparison at a group level. Although this process may inJluence social identity (collective self-esteem), the effect was expected to be qualijied by the subject’s degree of involvement or self-engagement with the event. Pre-event (prior to the announcement of the awarding of the Games to Atlanta, U.S.A.) and post-event responses were obtained from 63 female and 44 male Canadian-born Greek-Canadian university students. In a series of hierarchical multiple regression analyses controlling for pre-event collective self-esteem, involvement and levels ofpost-event positive emotions enhanced the prediction of post-event collective self-esteem on three subscales directly related to selJ: Low involvement subjects and those experiencing less post-event positive emotion evidenced a decline in post-event collective self-esteem, whereas their high counterparts exhibited a relative stability in esteem scores. With a comparison group of 84 Canadian-born Italian-Canadian university students, for whom the outcome of the Olympic bid was irrelevant to their ethnic origin, involvement and affect were unrelated to post-event collective self-esteem. Results were interpreted as consistent with previous research linking group failure to increased group cohesion and involvement with stability in the attitude-change literature.
Image matching for repetitive patterns

Repetitive patterns exist widely in real world images, and matching images with plenty of repetitive patterns remains a challenging task. We present in this paper a novel feature matching algorithm of images with notably repetitive patterns, in which a reliable initial correspondence set is established, purified and propagated using a voting strategy, incorporating a local geometrical constraint. Experiments have demonstrated that the proposed algorithm outperforms state-of-the-art feature matching methods on matching images with plenty of repetitive patterns.
Integrating distributed Bayesian inference and reinforcement learning for sensor management

This paper introduces a sensor management approach that integrates distributed Bayesian inference (DBI) and reinforcement learning (RL). DBI is implemented using distributed perception networks (DPNs), a multiagent approach to performing efficient inference, while RL is used to automatically discover a mapping from the beliefs generated by the DPNs to the actions that enable active sensors to gather the most useful observations. The resulting method is evaluated on a simulation of a chemical leak localization task and the results demonstrate 1) that the integrated approach can learn policies that perform effective sensor management, 2) that inference based on a correct observation model, which the DPNs make feasible, is critical to performance, and 3) that the system scales to larger versions of the task.
Neck Circumference: Independent Predictor for Overweight and Obesity in Adult Population

Background: Neck circumference (NC) measurement, an index of upper body fat (BF) distribution, seems promising as a community-based screening measure for overweight and obesity in want of evidence on its validity as a screener. Objective: The objective of this study was to determine the validity of NC as a screener for overweight and obesity in adults in community settings against BF percentage (BF%). Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional community-based study involved data collection on a predesigned, pretested, and semi-structured schedule that included the sociodemographic characteristics and anthropometric measurements of respondents. Results: NC correlated positively with body weight, waist circumference, and hip circumference. NC was found to have good discriminatory power with cutoff values of 36.55 cm for males and 34.05 cm for females, with maximum sensitivity and specificity to predict overweight and obesity in comparison to direct BF% estimation on receiver operating characteristic analysis. Conclusion: NC has a fair validity as a community-based screener for overweight and obese individuals in the study context. Further studies may be carried out to explore the generalizability of this observation.
T opic ontology construction from English and Slovene language technologies corp ora

This paper presents the OntoGen topic ontology construction tool and the process of building topic ontologies from English and Slovene research papers in the domain of language technologies. We were interested in how cleaning the documents (e.g. removing the references section), manual concept moving and renaming, or using supervised active learning affect the ontologies. Gradnja ontologij tematik iz angleškega in slovenskega korpusa jezikovnih tehnologij V članku predstavljamo orodje OntoGen ter proces gradnje ontologij tematik iz angleških in slovenskih znanstvenih člankov s področja jezikovnih tehnologij. Zanimalo nas je, kako čiščenje člankov (npr. brisanje poglavja z viri), ročno preimenovanje in premeščanje konceptov ter uporaba metode aktivnega učenja vplivajo na ontologije tematik.
The sourcing of ebusiness projects: research into practice

How in practice have organizations gone about moving to e-business, or at least placing themselves usefully on the Web? A study of 78 corporations in a three year period identifies a variety of rationales and practices. A key issue is the e-sourcing policy adopted. The paper identifies the internal and external development routes taken, determinants of success and also identifies when and why organizations bring e-business development work back in-house. The paper also looks at the total outsourcing/partnering route, the trade-offs involved, and draws conclusions from the findings.
Ductal Carcinoma Arising from Ectopic Breast Tissue Following Microcalcification Observed on Screening Mammography: A Case Report and Review of the Literature

Ectopic breast tissue can occur anywhere along the incompletely regressed mammary ridge. Among the various types of breast choristoma, ectopic breast tissue, which has only glandular tissue without a nipple or areola, is most commonly detected in axillary areas. However, ectopic breast cancer is often not detected until significant clinical symptoms have been revealed, or diagnosis is delayed. Furthermore, an examination of ectopic breast tissue tends to be omitted from a screening mammography. Especially, the microcalcifications of ectopic breast tissue are difficult to delineate on mammography. Herein, the authors report a case of ectopic breast carcinoma that showed clustered microcalcifications on screening mammography, and discuss the interpretation and implications of microcalcification in ectopic breast tissue.
A novel pen-based Bluetooth-enabled insulin delivery system with insulin dose tracking and advice

ABSTRACT Introduction: Diabetes is growing in prevalence internationally. As more individuals require insulin as part of their treatment, technology evolves to optimize delivery, improve adherence, and reduce dosing errors. Insulin pens outperform vial and syringe in simplicity, dosing accuracy, and user preference. Bolus advisors improve dosing confidence and treatment adherence. The InPen System offers a novel approach to treatment via a wireless pen that syncs to a mobile application featuring a bolus advisor, enabling convenient insulin dose tracking and more accurate bolus advice among other features. Areas covered: Existing technology for insulin delivery and bolus advice are reviewed. The mechanics and functionality of the InPen device are delineated. Findings from formative testing and usability studies of the InPen system are reported. Future directions for the InPen system in the treatment of diabetes are discussed. Expert opinion: Diabetes management is complex and largely data-driven. The InPen System offers a promising new opportunity to avail insulin pen-users of features known to improve treatment efficacy, which have otherwise primarily been available to those using pumps. Given that the majority of insulin users do not use insulin pumps, the InPen System is poised to improve glucose control in a significant portion of the diabetes population.
House‐dust mite content in mattresses in relation to residential characteristics and symptoms in atopic and nonatopic children living in northern Norway

The occurrence of house‐dust mites (HDMs) was investigated in the mattresses of 19 children previously found to be skin prick test (SPT) positive to HDM and in 19 nonatopic children derived from an extensive survey of 424 schoolchildren, all living in northern Norway. Domestic mites were counted and identified microscopically. Mite counts ranging from 10 to 1800 mites per gram mattress dust were found in 10 of the 19 HDM‐sensitized children compared to none in the control group, corresponding to an odds ratio of more than 20. Of the 540 domestic mites found, 70 were identified by species. Dermatophagoides pteronyssinus (Dpt) was the only HDM species identified (64 mites), while five were storage mites and one was a Tarsonemus species. Positive radioallergosorbent tests (RAST) to Dpt were demonstrated in 9/10 children with and in 5/9 without mite infestation compared to none in the control group. Elevated IgE levels were also found more frequently in children with mite‐infested mattresses than in those without. IgE levels were within normal levels in all 19 children in the control group. Latent atopy was found in four children, three with and one without mite infestation. There was no correlation between the concentration of mites and the degree of sensitization. Poor ventilation, increased humidity, and water leak(s) were associated with the presence of domestic mites in mattresses. As HDM growth is highly dependent on humidity and microhabitat, it should be possible to avoid HDM exposure and allergy in this region.
Telex: Anticensorship in the Network Infrastructure

In this paper, we present Telex, a new approach to resisting state-level Internet censorship. Rather than attempting to win the cat-and-mouse game of finding open proxies, we leverage censors' unwillingness to completely block day-to-day Internet access. In effect, Telex converts innocuous, unblocked websites into proxies, without their explicit collaboration. We envision that friendly ISPs would deploy Telex stations on paths between censors' networks and popular, uncensored Internet destinations. Telex stations would monitor seemingly innocuous flows for a special "tag" and transparently divert them to a forbidden website or service instead. We propose a new cryptographic scheme based on elliptic curves for tagging TLS handshakes such that the tag is visible to a Telex station but not to a censor. In addition, we use our tagging scheme to build a protocol that allows clients to connect to Telex stations while resisting both passive and active attacks. We also present a proof-of-concept implementation that demonstrates the feasibility of our system.
Immunohistochemical Identification and Pathologic Findings in Natural Cases of Equine Abortion Caused by Leptospiral Infection

The aim of this study was to examine the utility of immunohistochemistry (IHC) in the diagnosis of leptospiral equine abortion and to compare IHC to silver staining and serology of the aborted mares. Ninety-six fetuses from 57 farms were examined using all 3 diagnostic techniques, revealing evidence of leptospiral infection in 3 fetuses (3.1%) from 3 (5.3%) different farms. A new finding in 1 of these confirmed cases of leptospiral abortion was the presence of macroscopic pinpoint grayish-white nodules that had a histologic correlate of hepatic necrosis; other histologic findings were consistent with those previously reported. IHC performed using 2 different leptospiral antisera (multivalent whole-cell rabbit antiserum and rabbit antiserum against the major outer membrane protein LipL32) yielded similar results. IHC was more sensitive (19/21 [90.5%] tissue samples) than silver staining (8/21 [38.1%] tissue samples), and more specific than serology performed using the microscopic agglutination test. The primary advantage of IHC over silver staining was the ability of IHC to identify leptospiral antigen not only as morphologically intact spiral forms.
Scale‐up of MSC under hypoxic conditions for allogeneic transplantation and enhancing bony regeneration in a rabbit calvarial defect model

To realize the therapeutic potential of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), we aimed to develop a method for isolating and expanding New Zealand rabbit MSCs in a great scale. Rabbit MSCs expanded under hypoxic and normoxic conditions were compared in terms of replication capacity, differentiation potential, and the capacity for allogeneic transplantation in a calvarial defect model. The cells from all tested rabbits were expanded more rapidly when plated at low‐density under hypoxic conditions compared to under normoxic conditions. Moreover, cells expanded under hypoxic conditions increased in the potential of osteoblastic, adipocytic, and chondrocytic differentiation. More importantly, radiographic analysis and micro‐CT measurement of bone volume revealed the hypoxic cells when transplanted in the calvarial defects of another rabbit increased in the ability to repair bone defect compared to the normoxic cells. Six weeks after allogeneic transplantation of hypoxic MSCs, histological analysis revealed a callus spanned the length of the defect, and several bone tissues spotted in the implant. At 12 weeks, new bone had formed throughout the implant. Using BrdU labeling to track the transplanted cells, the hypoxic cells were more detected in the newly formed bone compared to the normoxic cells. For defects treated with allogeneic MSCs, no adverse host response could be detected at any time‐point. In conclusion, we have developed a robust method for isolation and expansion of rabbit MSCs by combining low‐density with hypoxic culture, which can be applied for the design of clinical trials in allogeneic transplantation of MSCs for bone healing. © 2012 Orthopaedic Research Society. Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Orthop Res 30:1213–1220, 2012