Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Implications of Class, Race, and Ethnicity for Political Networks

Previous research demonstrates the importance of citizens’ communication networks as an influence on their political behavior. Yet most findings are limited to samples of Whites or the interaction of Whites with their discussants. This article extends our attention to the social networks of Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and noncitizens, and explores how communication processes differ across them. Using data from the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality, we first compare various characteristics of social networks across racial and ethnic groups. Second, we test whether the network-based advantages of Whites, compared with other groups, result from differences in individual socioeconomic status or from group-based social resources. Third, we investigate whether interracial interaction affects race-related attitudes. In conclusion, we urge scholars who study social networks to recognize the important consequences of racial diversity for more fully understanding the political behavior of all Americans, whether Anglo, Black, Latino, or Asian.
Novel ω-Conotoxins from Conus catus Discriminate among Neuronal Calcium Channel Subtypes*

ω-Conotoxins selective for N-type calcium channels are useful in the management of severe pain. In an attempt to expand the therapeutic potential of this class, four new ω-conotoxins (CVIA–D) have been discovered in the venom of the piscivorous cone snail, Conus catus, using assay-guided fractionation and gene cloning. Compared with other ω-conotoxins, CVID has a novel loop 4 sequence and the highest selectivity for N-type over P/Q-type calcium channels in radioligand binding assays. CVIA−D also inhibited contractions of electrically stimulated rat vas deferens. In electrophysiological studies, ω-conotoxins CVID and MVIIA had similar potencies to inhibit current through central (α1B-d) and peripheral (α1B-b) splice variants of the rat N-type calcium channels when coexpressed with rat β3 in Xenopus oocytes. However, the potency of CVID and MVIIA increased when α1B-d and α1B-b were expressed in the absence of rat β3, an effect most pronounced for CVID at α1B-d (up to 540-fold) and least pronounced for MVIIA at α1B-d (3-fold). The novel selectivity of CVID may have therapeutic implications. 1H NMR studies reveal that CVID possesses a combination of unique structural features, including two hydrogen bonds that stabilize loop 2 and place loop 2 proximal to loop 4, creating a globular surface that is rigid and well defined.
Redox Potentials of Glutaredoxins and Other Thiol-Disulfide Oxidoreductases of the Thioredoxin Superfamily Determined by Direct Protein-Protein Redox Equilibria*

Glutaredoxins belong to the thioredoxin superfamily of structurally similar thiol-disulfide oxidoreductases catalyzing thiol-disulfide exchange reactions via reversible oxidation of two active-site cysteine residues separated by two amino acids (CX 1 X 2C). Standard state redox potential (E°′) values for glutaredoxins are presently unknown, and use of glutathione/glutathione disulfide (GSH/GSSG) redox buffers for determining E°′ resulted in variable levels of GSH-mixed disulfides. To overcome this complication, we have used reverse-phase high performance liquid chromatography to separate and quantify the oxidized and reduced forms present in the thiol-disulfide exchange reaction at equilibrium after mixing one oxidized and one reduced protein. This allowed for direct and quantitative pair-wise comparisons of the reducing capacities of the proteins and mutant forms. Equilibrium constants from pair-wise reaction with thioredoxin or its P34H mutant, which have accurately determined E°′ values from their redox equilibrium with NADPH catalyzed by thioredoxin reductase, allowed for transformation into standard state values. Using this new procedure, the standard state redox potentials for the Escherichia coliglutaredoxins 1 and 3, which contain identical active site sequences CPYC, were found to be E°′ = −233 and −198 mV, respectively. These values were confirmed independently by using the thermodynamic linkage between the stability of the disulfide bond and the stability of the protein to denaturation. Comparison of calculatedE°′ values from a number of proteins ranging from −270 mV for E. coli Trx to −124 mV for DsbA obtained using this method with those determined using glutathione redox buffers provides independent confirmation of the standard state redox potential of glutathione as −240 mV. Determining redox potentials through direct protein-protein equilibria is of general interest as it overcomes errors in determining redox potentials calculated from large equilibrium constants with the strongly reducing NADPH or by accumulating mixed disulfides with GSH.
Molecular‐dynamics simulation of phenylalanine transfer RNA. II. Amplitudes, anisotropies, and anharmonicities of atomic motions

The atomic motions from a molecular‐dynamics simulation of yeast tRNAPhe are analyzed and compared with those observed in protein simulations. In general, the tRNA motions are of larger amplitude, they are more anisotropic, and they arise from potentials of mean force that are more anharmonic than in the protein case. In both cases, the amplitudes are largest for atoms on the surface of the molecules. On the other hand, the most anisotropic and anharmonic atomic motions are generally found in the interior of the tRNA, while they are found on the surface of the protein. These differences are discussed in terms of the differences in structure between nucleic acids and proteins.
A Generic Difference Algorithm for UML Models

It is state-of-the-art to use the Unified Modelling Language (UML) to describe software system models. In order to support cooperative team work a version management system which supports UML models is absolutely necessary. The essential part of such systems is the ability to calculate differences and present them to the developer. This paper presents an approach for computing differences between UML models encoded as XMI files. In contrast to our previous work, we present a generic approach, with which we are able to cover a broad range of UML diagram types. It also does not require persistent identifiers of diagram elements. Our prototype implementation shows, that our difference algorithm used leads to good runtimes in the case of small documents and acceptable runtimes in the case of large documents. Overall, it has a very low error rate, i.e. the quality of the differences is almost optimal.
Maximum entropy hadamard sensing of sparse and localized signals

The quest for optimal sensing matrices is crucial in the design of efficient Compressed Sensing architectures. In this paper we propose a maximum entropy criterion for the design of optimal Hadamard sensing matrices (and similar deterministic ensembles) when the signal being acquired is sparse and non-white. Since the resulting design strategy entails a combinatorial step, we devise a fast evolutionary algorithm to find sensing matrices that yield high-entropy measurements. Experimental results exploiting this strategy show quality gains when performing the recovery of optimally sensed small images and electrocardiographic signals.
Perspectives on Psychological Science Intersubjective Culture the Role of Intersubjective Perceptions in Cross-cultural Research

Intersubjective perceptions refer to shared perceptions of the psychological characteristics that are widespread within a culture. In this article, we propose the intersubjective approach as a new approach to understanding the role that culture plays in human behavior. In this approach, intersubjective perceptions, which are distinct from personal values and beliefs, mediate the effect of the ecology on individuals' responses and adaptations. We review evidence that attests to the validity and utility of the intersubjective approach in explicating culture's influence on human behaviors and discuss the implications of this approach for understanding the interaction between the individual, ecology, and culture; the nature of cultural competence; management of multicultural identities; cultural change; and measurement of culture. culture intersubjective norm s cultural influence cultural change Abstract Full Text (PDF) Seeking help from close, same-sex friends: Relational costs for Japanese and personal costs for European Canadians
Automated Composition of Web Services by Planning at the Knowledge Level

In this paper, we address the problem of the automated composition of web services by planning on their "knowledge level" models. We start from descriptions of web services in standard process modeling and execution languages, like BPEL4WS, and automatically translate them into a planning domain that models the interactions among services at the knowledge level. This allows us to avoid the explosion of the search space due to the usually large and possibly infinite ranges of data values that are exchanged among services, and thus to scale up the applicability of state-of-the-art techniques for the automated composition of web services. We present the theoretical framework, implement it, and provide an experimental evaluation that shows the practical advantage of our approach w.r. t. techniques that are not based on a knowledgelevel representation.
Identification of 5α,6α-Epoxycholesterol as a Novel Modulator of Liver X Receptor Activity

The liver X receptors (LXRα and LXRβ) are members of the nuclear receptor superfamily that function as key transcriptional regulators of a number of biological processes, including cholesterol homeostasis, lipid metabolism, and keratinocyte differentiation. Natural ligands that activate LXRs include oxysterol derivatives such as 25-hydroxycholesterol, 27-hydroxycholesterol, 22(R)-hydroxycholesterol, 20(S)-hydroxycholesterol, and 24(S),25-epoxycholesterol. Related oxysterols, such as 5α,6α-epoxycholesterol (5,6-EC) are present in a number of foods and have been shown to induce atherosclerosis in animal models. Intriguingly, these oxysterols have also been detected in atherosclerotic plaques. Using a variety of biochemical and cellular assays, we demonstrate that 5,6-EC is the first dietary modulator and an endogenous LXR ligand with cell and gene context-dependent antagonist, agonist, and inverse agonist activities. In a multiplexed LXR-cofactor peptide interaction assay, 5,6-EC induced the recruitment of a number of cofactor peptides onto both LXRα and LXRβ and showed an EC50 of approximately 2 μM in peptide recruitment. Furthermore, 5,6-EC bound to LXRα in a radiolabeled ligand displacement assay (EC50 = 76 nM), thus demonstrating it to be one of the most potent natural LXRα ligands known to date. Analysis of endogenous gene expression in various cell-based systems indicated the potential of 5,6-EC to antagonize LXR-mediated gene expression. Furthermore, it also induced the expression of some LXR-responsive genes in keratinocytes. These results clearly demonstrate that 5,6-EC is an LXR modulator that may play a role in the development of lipid disorders, such as atherosclerosis, by antagonizing the agonistic action of endogenous LXR ligands.
Alpha-beta filter based target tracking in clustered wireless sensor networks

The emerging field of wireless sensor networks (WSNs) allows novel methods of designing surveillance and tracking systems. Tracking moving targets in WSNs is a canonical application of practical importance to military as well as civilian fields. Since WSNs are highly constrained in computation, communication and energy resources, the application is required to be designed with minimal resource consumption. The collaborative and distributed approach in WSN is suited for effective utilization of scarce resources. In this paper, a Hierarchical Clustered network architecture has been considered for target tracking. A computationally simple predictive target tracking approach using α-β filter is proposed, evaluated and compared against a Kalman filter based approach.
Safe motion planning in dynamic environments

This paper addresses the problem of motion planning (MP) in dynamic environments. It is first argued that dynamic environments impose a real-time constraint upon MP: it has a limited time only to compute a motion, the time available being a function of the dynamicity of the environment. Now, given the intrinsic complexity of MP, computing a complete motion to the goal within the time available is impossible to achieve in most real situations. Partial motion planning (PMP) is the answer to this problem proposed in this paper. PMP is a motion planning scheme with an anytime flavor: when the time available is over, PMP returns the best partial motion to the goal computed so far. Like reactive navigation scheme, PMP faces a safety issue: what guarantee is there that the system will never end up in a critical situation yielding an inevitable collision? The answer proposed in this paper to this safety issue relies upon the concept of inevitable collision states (ICS). ICS takes into account the dynamics of both the system and the moving obstacles. By computing ICS-free partial motion, the system safety can be guaranteed. Application of PMP to the case of a car-like system in a dynamic environment is presented.
Generalization of metric classification algorithms for sequences classification and labelling

The article deals with the issue of modification of metric classification algorithms. In particular, it studies the algorithm k-Nearest Neighbours for its application to sequential data. A method of generalization of metric classification algorithms is proposed. As a part of it, there has been developed an algorithm for solving the problem of classification and labelling of sequential data. The advantages of the developed algorithm of classification in comparison with the existing one are also discussed in the article. There is a comparison of the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm with the algorithm of CRF in the task of chunking in the open data set CoNLL2000.
Fully Convolutional Neural Networks for Crowd Segmentation

In this paper, we propose a fast fully convolutional neural network (FCNN) for crowd segmentation. By replacing the fully connected layers in CNN with 1 by 1 convolution kernels, FCNN takes whole images as inputs and directly outputs segmentation maps by one pass of forward propagation. It has the property of translation invariance like patch-by-patch scanning but with much lower computation cost. Once FCNN is learned, it can process input images of any sizes without warping them to a standard size. These attractive properties make it extendable to other general image segmentation problems. Based on FCNN, a multi-stage deep learning is proposed to integrate appearance and motion cues for crowd segmentation. Both appearance filters and motion filers are pretrained stage-by-stage and then jointly optimized. Different combination methods are investigated. The effectiveness of our approach and component-wise analysis are evaluated on two crowd segmentation datasets created by us, which include image frames from 235 and 11 scenes, respectively. They are currently the largest crowd segmentation datasets and will be released to the public.
Generalized F0 modelling with absolute and relative pitch features for singing voice synthesis

Natural pitch fluctuations are essential to human singing. To effectively synthesize singing voice, the generation of these pitch fluctuations is necessary. Previous synthesis methods classify and reproduce them individually. These fluctuations, however, are found to be dependent and vary under different contexts. This paper proposes a generalized framework for F0 modelling to learn and generate these fluctuations on a note basis. Context-dependent hidden Markov models, representing the possible fluctuations observed in particular musical contexts, are built. To capture the pitch fluctuation and the voicing transitions in human singing, we employ both absolute and relative pitch as the modelling features. Results of our experiments on pitch accuracy and quality of synthesized singing showed that the proposed framework achieves accurate pitch generation and better naturalness of synthesized outputs.
Quantitative and Qualitative Intersections between the Eight State Questionnaire and the Profile of Mood States

Canonical-redundancy analyses were computed across the Profile of Mood States (POMS) and the Eight State Questionnaire (8SQ) on a sample of 289 college undergraduates in order to estimate the degree of measurement overlap of the two multidimensional mood-state instruments. Additionally, content similarities and differences across subscales were investigated via a stepwise forward multiple regression approach. Results indicated some measurement commonality across instruments, but also demonstrated that the POMS and 8SQ tap considerable discrete mood-state variance. These findings add to a gradually emerging picture of the interrelationships among emotional states.
LORAIN: a step closer to the PDES 'holy grail'

Automatic parallelization of models has been the "Holy Grail" of the PDES community for the last 20 years. In this paper we present LORAIN -- Low Overhead Runtime Assisted Instruction Negation -- a tool capable of automatic emission of a reverse event handler by the compiler. Upon detection of certain instructions, LORAIN is able to account for, and in many cases reverse, the computation without resorting to state-saving techniques. For our PDES framework, we use Rensselaer's Optimistic Simulation System (ROSS) coupled with the LLVM compiler to generate the reverse event handler. One of the primary contributions of this work is that LORAIN operates on the LLVM-generated Intermediate Representation (IR) as opposed to the model, high-level source code. Through information gleaned from the IR, LORAIN is able to analyze, instrument, and invert various operations and emit efficient reverse event handlers at the binary code level. This preliminary work demonstrates the potential of this tool. We are able to reverse both the PHOLD model (a synthetic benchmark) as well as Fujimoto's airport model. Our results demonstrate that LORAIN-generated models are able to execute at a rate that is over 97% of hand-written, parallel model code performance.
Participatory choral music as a means of engagement in a veterans' mental health and addiction treatment setting

Background: the purpose of this study was to investigate how participation in a music-based performance and instruction program influenced the sense of engagement experienced by participants at a residential setting for at-risk veterans. Methods: semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants in a veterans' choir program conducted at the facility. Results: prominent themes that emerged from the interview included (1) the veterans' personal motivations for participating; (2) emotions associated with participation; and (3) perceptions of intragroup dynamics. Conclusions: primary conclusions drawn include: (1) opportunities to connect with others through shared interests may contribute to sense of engagement; (2) connections forged with other residents of the facility extended beyond relationships established in the choir through increased recognition associated with performances; and (3) the choir represented a diversion from pressing concerns and may have served as a means of facilitating adjustment to change at a measured pace.
Open-Field Activity of Albino Rats as a Function of Sex, Age, and Repeated Testing

Forced open-field exploration of Wistar rats was examined as influenced by age, sex, and repeated testing. The first phase of the study compared nine days of repeated testing among 28- and 98-day-old males and females. The older groups decreased in activity during the initial testing days. The younger groups increased above the older rats' activity levels during the last days of testing. Females generally had higher activity than males. The younger rats were tested at 48, 68, 88, and 108 days of age in the second phase of the study. Females had higher activity than did males and no interactions of sex with age or repeated testing days were significant. When subjects were 48 and 68 days old activity increased more rapidly over the six testing days compared to the 88- and 108-day-old periods. Results are discussed in relation to previous research using forced- and free-exploration procedures.
Novel fabrication method of diverse one-dimensional Pt/ZnO hybrid nanostructures and its sensor application

A novel low-temperature, solution-phase method for the facile fabrication of a variety of one-dimensional (1D) metal/metal oxide hybrid nanostructures has been developed. This method is based on the wet chemical synthesis of metal oxide nanowires, followed by the surface coating of metal nanoparticles on metal oxide nanowire templates via reduction of metal ions along with controlled etching of metal oxide nanowires at the core, all in a low-temperature liquid environment. As a proof-of-concept, we applied this method to the fabrication of various 1D Pt/ZnO hybrid nanostructures including Pt nanoparticle-coated ZnO nanowires/nanotubes and Pt nanotubes on silicon and polymer substrates. The diverse morphology tuning is attributed to the control of pH in the solution with different metal precursor concentrations and amounts of reducing agent. The change of morphology, crystalline structure, and composition of various 1D Pt/ZnO hybrid nanostructures was observed by SEM, TEM (HRTEM), XRD and ICP-AES, respectively. Further, we have demonstrated a highly sensitive strain sensor (gauge factor = 15) with a Pt nanotube film fabricated by the developed method on a flexible polymer substrate.
Engagement with drug treatment and testing orders: A qualitative study

Aims. To examine the experiences of offenders in engaging with Drug Treatment and Testing Orders (DTTOs). To identify the processes common to successful engagement and how those processes differ in unsuccessful engagement. Design. Grounded theory method utilising data from semi-structured interviews with DTTO participants. Participants. Fifteen informants at varied stages of DTTO participation across South Yorkshire, England. Findings. Engagement appeared to be affected by factors related to the organisation of services, intensity and relevance of activities, and relationships with staff. There was a changing emphasis in the importance of different aspects as the DTTO progressed. Factors identified relate to well-organised services and the concept of programme integrity. Conclusions. Many of the factors identified as supporting enhanced engagement with DTTOs are under the control of services and staff. There are particular implications for communication among staff and between the staff and offenders.
Connectivity Compression for Stripified Triangle Meshes Using Basic Strips

This paper presents a new triangle meshes compression algorithm, which encodes connectivity information between vertex chains in the meshes that are already stripified. The algorithm builds up basic strips based on the vertex chains of the original strips at first. The information of redundant edges is implicit hence the only information need to encode is about absent edges. The proposed algorithm provides a new representation that is guaranteed to encode connectivity information of any meshes in less than 2 bits/T, and in 1.2 bits/T on average in the experiment results using FTSG. In the experiments, the method was proved to have good performance.