Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evaluation of ultraviolet, visible, and near infrared spectroscopy for the analysis of wine compounds

Martelo-Vidal M.J., Vazquez M. (2014): Evaluation of ultraviolet, visible, and near infrared spectroscopy for the analysis of wine compounds. Czech J. Food Sci., 32: 37–47. Spectroscopy of UV-VIS-NIR combined with chemometric analyses was used as a non-destructive technique to build models for the quantitative characterisation of the main compounds of wine. The work in mixtures can give insight into how interferences affect the performance of calibrations in wines. Ethanol, glycerol, glucose, tartaric acid, malic acid, lactic acid, and acetic acid were evaluated as pure compounds and in mixtures. Different pre-treatments for the spectra and modelling strategies such as partial least squares (PLS) regression or Principal Component Regression (PCR) were evaluated. All pure compounds studied showed a good relationship between spectra and concentrations. However, interferences were observed in the mixtures and only good models for ethanol, tartaric acid, and malic acid were obtained. The best model was obtained in the NIR region for ethanol and in the UV region for tartaric acid and malic acid. The results indicate that NIR spectroscopy could be used as an alternative to conventional chemical methods for ethanol determination and UV spectroscopy for the determination of tartaric acid and malic acid.
Endogenous attention modulates attentional and motor interference from distractors: evidence from behavioral and electrophysiological results

Selective visual attention enhances the processing of relevant stimuli and filters out irrelevant stimuli and/or distractors. However, irrelevant information is sometimes processed, as demonstrated by the Simon effect (Simon and Rudell, 1967). We examined whether fully irrelevant distractors (task and target-irrelevant) produce interference (measured as the Simon effect), and whether endogenous orienting modulated this interference. Despite being fully irrelevant, distractors were attentionally coded (as reflected by the distractor-related N2pc component), and interfered with the processing of the target response (as reflected by the target-related lateralized readiness potential component). Distractors’ attentional capture depended on endogenous attention, and their interference with target responses was modulated by both endogenous attention and distractor location repetition. These results demonstrate both endogenous attentional and motor modulations over the Simon effect produced by fully irrelevant distractors.
Distributed under Creative Commons Cc-by 4.0 Shaps-c: the Snaith-hamilton Pleasure Scale Modified for Clinician Administration

Anhedonia, a diminished or lack of ability to experience and anticipate pleasure represents a core psychiatric symptom in depression. Current clinician assessment of anhedonia is generally limited to one or two all-purpose questions and most well-known psychometric scales of anhedonia are relatively long, self-administered, typically not state sensitive, and are unsuitable for use in clinical settings. A user-friendly tool for a more in-depth clinician assessment of hedonic capacity is needed. The present study assessed the validity and reliability of a clinician administered version of the Snaith-Hamilton Pleasure Scale, the SHAPS-C, in 34 depressed subjects. We compared total and specific item scores on the SHAPS-C, SHAPS (self-report version), Montgomery-˚ Asberg Depression Rating Scale (MADRS), and the Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology-Self Rating version (IDS-SR). We also examined construct, content, concurrent, convergent, and discriminant validity, internal consistency , and split-half reliability of the SHAPS-C. The SHAPS-C was found to be valid and reliable. The SHAPS and the SHAPS-C were positively correlated with one another, with levels of depression severity, as measured by the MADRS, and the IDS-SR total scores, and with specific items of the MADRS and IDS-SR sensitive to measuring hedonic capacity. Our investigation indicates that the SHAPS-C is a user friendly, reliable, and valid tool for clinician assessment of hedonic capacity in depressed bipolar and unipolar patients.
The use of Organotypic Hippocampal Slice Cultures to Evaluate Protection by Non-competitive NMDA Receptor Antagonists against Excitotoxicity

There is great interest in testing neuroprotectants which inhibit the neurodegeneration that results from excessive activation of N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors. As an alternative to in vivo testing in animal models, we demonstrate here the use of a complex in vitro model to compare the efficacy and toxicity of NMDA receptor inhibitors. Organotypic hippocampal slice cultures were used to compare the effectiveness of the Alzheimer's disease drug, memantine, the Parkinson's disease drug, procyclidine, and the novel neuroprotectant, gacyclidine (GK11), against NMDA-induced toxicity. All three drugs are non-competitive NMDA receptor open-channel blockers that inhibit excitotoxic injury, and their neuroprotective capacities have been extensively investigated in vivo in animal models. They have also been evaluated as potential countermeasure agents against organophosphate poisoning. Quantitative densitometric image analysis of propidium iodide uptake in hippocampal regions CA1, CA3 and DG, showed that, after exposure to 10μM NMDA for 24 hours, GK11 was the most potent of the three drugs, with an IC50 of about 50nM and complete protection at 250nM. When applied at high doses, GK11 was still the more potent neuroprotectant, and also the least cytotoxic. These findings are consistent with those from in vivo tests in rodents. We conclude that the slice culture model provides valuable pre-clinical data, and that applying the model to the screening of neuroprotectants might significantly limit the use of in vivo tests in animals.
Prevention of Rheumatic Fever and Bacterial Endocarditis Through Control of Streptococcal Infections

Rheumatic fever is a recurrent disease which frequently can be prevented. Infection with group A streptococci precipitates both initial and recurrent attacks; therefore, prevention of rheumatic fever and rheumatic heart disease depends upon the control of streptococcal infections. This may be accomplished, one by prevention of streptococcal infections in rheumatic subjects, and, two by early and adequate treatment of streptococcal infections in all individuals. Bacterial endocarditis may result from dental and other surgical procedures in patients with rheumatic or congenital heart disease. When such procedures are undertaken, these patients should be protected by administration of antibiotics in therapeutic doses.
Antiretroviral treatment for adult HIV infection in 2002: updated recommendations of the International AIDS Society-USA Panel.

OBJECTIVE New information warrants updated recommendations for the 4 central issues in antiretroviral therapy: when to start, what drugs to start with, when to change, and what to change to. These updated recommendations are intended to guide practicing physicians actively involved in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)- and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS)-related care. PARTICIPANTS In 1995, physicians with specific expertise in HIV-related basic science and clinical research, antiretroviral therapy, and HIV patient care were invited by the International AIDS Society-USA to serve on a volunteer panel. In 1999, others were invited to broaden international representation. The 17-member panel met regularly in closed meetings between its last report in 2000 and April 2002 to review current data. The effort was sponsored and funded by the International AIDS Society-USA, a not-for-profit physician education organization. EVIDENCE AND CONSENSUS PROCESS The full panel was convened in late 2000 and assigned 7 section committees. A section writer and 3 to 5 section committee members (each panel member served on numerous sections) identified relevant evidence and prepared draft recommendations. Basic science, clinical research, and epidemiologic data from the published literature and abstracts from recent (within 2 years) scientific conferences were considered by strength of evidence. Extrapolations from basic science data and expert opinion of the panel members were included as evidence. Draft sections were combined and circulated to the entire panel and discussed in a series of full-panel conference calls until consensus was reached. Final recommendations represent full consensus agreement of the panel. CONCLUSIONS Because of increased awareness of the activity and toxicity of current drugs, the threshold for initiation of therapy has shifted to a later time in the course of HIV disease. However, the optimal time to initiate therapy remains imprecisely defined. Availability of new drugs has broadened options for therapy initiation and management of treatment failure, which remains a difficult challenge.
1 Story Guided Virtual Cultural Heritage Applications

Virtual cultural heritage applications, particularly virtual museums, nowadays include various forms of storytelling. Every object, site or artifact is better perceived and understood through the adjoining story. Interactive applications naturally request the storytelling to become interactive as well. This paper describes the concepts of interactive digital storytelling in our virtual museums and cultural heritage presentations and discusses their advantages and drawbacks recognized through user evaluation. We used digital stories not only to introduce visitors with the context and information on the objects, but also to enhance their navigation through virtual environments with purpose of learning and perceiving maximum amount of offered information.
Putting the Spotlight on Small Metal Age Pottery Scatters in Northern Calabria (Italy)

ABSTRACT This paper presents the results of an in-depth multidisciplinary restudy of small Metal Age surface scatters recorded in earlier fieldwalking surveys in northern Calabria (Italy). Guided by a stratified sampling approach based on site types and topographic positions, high-resolution surface collections at the selected sites were combined with geophysical surveys, test pits, and soil studies to investigate both archaeological deposits and the site formation processes that have an effect on their detectability. This approach is shown to result in a better definition of archaeological ‘sites’, and to help fill in details of regional exploitation and settlement dynamics at the landscape scale. At this broader scale we are also able to model post-depositional processes and slope dynamics affecting the preservation of the archaeological record. With regard to methodology, our study has enabled the evaluation of diverse archaeological detection methods and the fine-tuning of field strategies for the study of Metal Age remains.
Mechanics of Fatigue

Introduction Fatigue Crack Nucleation and Early Growth Mechanics of Fatigue Crack Growth Fatigue Crack Growth in Linear Elastic Bodies Fatigue Crack Growth in Linear Elastic Bodies (continued) Fatigue Cracks in Elasto-Plastic Bodies Crack Growth in Hereditary Media Environmentally Affected Fatigue and Related Phenomena Fracture and Fatigue of Fiber Composites Fracture and Fatigue in Laminate Composite Structures References Indexes
Monkey-in-the-browser: malware and vulnerabilities in augmented browsing script markets

With the constant migration of applications from the desktop to the web, power users have found ways of enhancing web applications, at the client-side, according to their needs. In this paper, we investigate this phenomenon by focusing on the popular Greasemonkey extension which enables users to write scripts that arbitrarily change the content of any page, allowing them to remove unwanted features from web applications, or add additional, desired features to them. The creation of script markets, on which these scripts are often shared, extends the standard web security model with two new actors, introducing novel vulnerabilities. We describe the architecture of Greasemonkey and perform a large-scale analysis of the most popular, community-driven, script market for Greasemonkey. Through our analysis, we discover not only dozens of malicious scripts waiting to be installed by users, but thousands of benign scripts with vulnerabilities that could be abused by attackers. In 58 cases, the vulnerabilities are so severe, that they can be used to bypass the Same-Origin Policy of the user's browser and steal sensitive user-data from all sites. We verify the practicality of our attacks, by developing a proof-of-concept exploit against a vulnerable user script with an installation base of 1.2 million users, equivalent to a "Man-in-the-browser" attack.
Pathways @bullet the Poverty and Inequality Report 2015 Education

A t the fiftieth anniversary of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which was intended to eliminate achievement gaps between poor and non-poor children and between black and white children , it is useful to examine the progress we have made in achieving those goals. In this report, I examine how the states have fared in eliminating racial gaps in both achievement and college completion, although obviously a full account of educational inequality would, at minimum, require an examination of socioeconomic gaps as well. Given that deep racial gaps in educational achievement figure so prominently in the American story of education, a careful examination of where we stand, some 50 years after one of the key equalizing interventions, is surely warranted. I lead off with a brief overview of national trends in achievement gaps, in order to provide historical context for the analyses that follow. Next, I examine the current size of racial achievement and educational attainment gaps in each of the states, asking " Does the fate of a black or Hispanic child depend on the state into which she or he happens to be born? " In the final section, I explore the causes of racial achievement gaps. Although a full assessment of their causes is beyond the scope of this report, I provide some key evidence here regarding the extent to which we should " blame " state education policy for the gaps. Specifically, I describe the associations between achievement gaps and the relative socioeconomic status of blacks, Hispanics, and whites. If achievement gaps are strongly correlated with racial socioeconomic disparities , this suggests that reducing these gaps may be best approached by addressing the labor market, neighborhood, and related institutions that generate those socioeconomic gaps in the first place. If, on the other hand, the gaps are very large even for blacks, Hispanics, and whites from families of the same socioeconomic standing, and if gaps vary substantially even among states with similar racial socioeconomic disparities , then it may be that states' educational systems and institutions are contributing to inequality. 1 To the extent that this is the case, we should take a long and hard look at how these achievement gaps are being generated , with one of the main hypotheses being that differences in school quality are to be blamed. trends in Racial academic achievement Gaps I begin, then, by examining national trends in …
Cycles of Electronic Health Records Adaptation by Physicians: How Do the Positive and Negative Experiences with the EHR System Affect Physicians' EHR Adaptation Process?

The integration of EHR in IT infrastructures supporting organizations enable improved access and recording of patient data, enhanced ability to make improved decisions, improved quality and reduced errors in patient care. Despite these benefits, there are mixed results as to the use of EHR. The literature suggests that the reasons for the limited use relate to policy, financial and usability considerations, but it does not provide an understanding of reasons for physicians' limited interaction and adaptation of EHR. Following an analysis of qualitative data, collected in a case study at a hospital using interviews, this research explains how physicians interact with EHR. The key contribution of this research is in explaining how physicians interact with EHR in terms of concepts that are grounded in the real world experiences of physicians. The model of positive and negative physician work cycles is introduced and discussed. Contributions to research and practice are presented.
Estimation of the Effective Number of Founders That Initiate an Infection after Aphid Transmission of a Multipartite Plant Virus

ABSTRACT The fecundity of RNA viruses can be very high. Thus, it is often assumed that viruses have large populations, and RNA virus evolution has been mostly explained using purely deterministic models. However, population bottlenecks during the virus life cycle could result in effective population numbers being much smaller than reported censuses, and random genetic drift could be important in virus evolution. A step at which population bottlenecks may be severe is host-to-host transmission. We report here an estimate of the size of the population that starts a new infection when Cucumber mosaic virus (CMV) is transmitted by the aphid Aphis gossypii, based on the segregation of two CMV genotypes in plants infected by aphids that acquired the virus from plants infected by both genotypes. Results show very small effective numbers of founders, between one and two, both in experiments in which the three-partite genome of CMV was aphid transmitted and in experiments in which a fourth RNA, CMV satellite RNA, was also transmitted. These numbers are very similar to those published for Potato virus Y, which has a monopartite genome and is transmitted by aphids according to a different mechanism than CMV. Thus, the number of genomic segments seems not to be a major determinant of the effective number of founders. Also, our results suggest that the occurrence of severe bottlenecks during horizontal transmission is general for viruses nonpersistently transmitted by aphids, indicating that random genetic drift should be considered when modeling virus evolution.
Encapsulated hydrophilic polymer beads containing indomethacin as controlled release drug delivery systems

Encapsulated hydrophilic polymer beads containing indomethacin were prepared by a combined technique of bead polymerization and phase separation. The drug delivery system consisted of the copolymer of 2‐hydroxyethyl methacrylate and acrylamide as the core matrix and ethyl cellulose as the barrier membrane. The drug was incorporated into the polymer matrix during the formation of the beads. The system was found to be useful as a sustained release dosage form. Release of drug from the coated beads followed a zero‐order rate up to 40% of the drug released. A linear relationship exists between the rate of release and the reciprocal amount of ethyl cellulose used for coating, indicating that the drug release was controlled by the coating thickness. Addition of polyvinyl pyrrolidone in the formulation significantly increased the amount of drug released. Blood level studies showed that drug absorption from the encapsulated beads was slower than that of indomethacin powder. It appeared that indomethacin was completely absorbed from the encapsulated beads.
Effects of Waves by Boats on Mangrove in Dongzhai Harbor of Hainan

The effect of boat-generated waves on mangrove forests could be reflected by width change of tidal inlets by using satellite image in this study. Our results showed that the distributions of mangrove zone on the side of tidal inlets were degenerated by boat-generated waves from 2009 to 2011 in Dongzhai Harbor Mangrove Natural Reserve. The main reason of this change was strong erosion of tidal flat caused by the waves generated by high speed and frequencies boats for tourists. To protect the mangrove forests of the tidal inlets, the drive speed and pass frequencies of the boats in waterway should be restricted and decreased.
Mental health and support among young key populations: an ecological approach to understanding and intervention

The patterning of the HIV epidemic within young key populations (YKPs) highlights disproportionate burden by mental disorders in these populations. The mental wellbeing of YKPs is closely associated with biological predispositions and psychosocial factors related to YKPs’ sexual and gender identities and socio‐economic status. The purpose of this paper is to highlight sources of risk and resilience, as well as identify treatment and supports for mental health disorders (MHDs) among YKPs.
Privacy-preserving classification of vertically partitioned data via random kernels

We propose a novel privacy-preserving support vector machine (SVM) classifier for a data matrix A whose input feature columns are divided into groups belonging to different entities. Each entity is unwilling to share its group of columns or make it public. Our classifier is based on the concept of a reduced kernel K(A, B′), where B′ is the transpose of a random matrix B. The column blocks of B corresponding to the different entities are privately generated by each entity and never made public. The proposed linear or nonlinear SVM classifier, which is public but does not reveal any of the privately held data, has accuracy comparable to that of an ordinary SVM classifier that uses the entire set of input features directly.
A Preference-Based Evolutionary Algorithm for Multi-Objective Optimization

In this paper, we discuss the idea of incorporating preference information into evolutionary multi-objective optimization and propose a preference-based evolutionary approach that can be used as an integral part of an interactive algorithm. One algorithm is proposed in the paper. At each iteration, the decision maker is asked to give preference information in terms of his or her reference point consisting of desirable aspiration levels for objective functions. The information is used in an evolutionary algorithm to generate a new population by combining the fitness function and an achievement scalarizing function. In multi-objective optimization, achievement scalarizing functions are widely used to project a given reference point into the Pareto optimal set. In our approach, the next population is thus more concentrated in the area where more preferred alternatives are assumed to lie and the whole Pareto optimal set does not have to be generated with equal accuracy. The approach is demonstrated by numerical examples.