Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Institutional Influences on the Provision of After-School Nature Programs

Abstract:This study examines the institutional factors that affect organizations' decisions to offer after-school nature programs. Data are from interviews of 31 staff and administrators of after-school programs in San Diego, CA. Results show support for the importance of nature education experiences in general, and that such activities are more likely to be offered if they directly support the agency's mission, if the onsite supervisor and/or a staff person has an interest or knowledge in that area, if delivery and cost issues are overcome, and if they have evidence that the children like the activity. After-school nature education providers can ease some of the logistic challenges by understanding the social dynamics and organizational issues involved.
Linkage analysis of schizophrenia controlling for population substructure

Etiological heterogeneity and complexity has hampered attempts to identify predisposing genes for schizophrenia. We sought to minimize the number of segregating genes involved by focusing on a population isolate with elevated disease prevalence. We exploited the well‐established population history, and searched for disease susceptibility loci in families from two alternative founder lineages. We studied 28 schizophrenia pedigrees (123 nuclear families) from an outlying municipality on the eastern border of Finland. We divided the families based on their genealogy and defined two routes of immigration: southern and northern. We examined the kinship coefficients and allele frequency distributions within each group, and performed a linkage analysis based on 497 microsatellite markers across the genome. A high degree of historical relatedness was demonstrated by higher sharing of alleles than predicted by the relationships we identified within the previous four generations alone, as would be expected. Between the two subpopulations, allele frequencies were significantly different, consistent with their isolated genealogies. The southern families showed some evidence of linkage in a schizophrenia locus at 4q23 (Z = 3.3) near our previous finding with quantitative variation in verbal learning and memory [Paunio et al. (2004); Hum Mol Genet 13: 1693–1702], while the northern pedigrees gave most significant evidence on 10q21 (Z = 2.53). Joint analysis of families from both lineages suggested evidence of linkage only at 3p14 (Z = 3.18). Thus the detailed genealogical information led us to identification of distinct linkage signals for schizophrenia susceptibility loci between the three analyses we performed. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The infrared Hourglass cluster in M8

A detailed study of the Hourglass nebula in the M8 star-forming region is presented. The study is mainly based on recent subarcsec-resolution JHK s images taken at Las Campanas Observatory and complemented with archival Hubble Space Telescope (HST) images and longslit spectroscopy retrieved from the European Southern Observatory Archive Facility. Using the new numerical code CHORIZOS, we estimate the distance to the earliest stars in the region to be 1.25 kpc. Infrared photometry of all the sources detected in the field is given. From analysis of the JHK s colour‐colour diagrams, we find that an important fraction of these sources exhibit significant infrared excess. These objects are candidates to be low- and intermediate-mass premain-sequence stars. Based on HST observations, the spatial distribution of gas, dust and stars in the region is analysed. A morphological analysis of these images also reveals a rich variety of structures related to star formation (proplyds, jets, bow shocks), similar to those observed in M16 and M42, along with the detection of the first four Herbig‐Haro objects in the region. Furthermore, a long-slit spectrum obtained with the New Technology Telescope confirms the identification of one of them (HH 870) in the core of the Hourglass nebula, providing the first direct evidence of active star formation by accretion in M8.
Neuro-Fuzzy Systems for Intelligent Reactive Power Control

In this paper, we present a neuro-fuzzy model for intelligent reactive power control and efficient utilization of power. The proposed neuro-fuzzy model will assist the conventional power control systems with added intelligence. For on-line control, voltage and current are fed into the network after preprocessing and standardization. The model was trained with a 24-hour load demand pattern and performance of the proposed method is evaluated by comparing the test results with the actual expected values. For performance comparison purposes, we also used an artificial neural network trained by a backpropagation algorithm. Test results reveal that the proposed neuro-fuzzy model performed better than the neural network.
‘Analysis of leadership styles developed by teachers and administrators in technical-technological programs: the case of the Cooperative University of Colombia’

Abstract This work is part of a wider research effort in the field of leadership and organizational development, coordinated by the University of Granada and the A.R. E.A Research Group (Analysis of Educational Reality in Andaluz), HUM/672. It was developed in the Cooperative University of Colombia, a country where technical and technological programmes have been promoted in the past 10 years through institutions of higher education. We build on the idea that knowing the leadership styles of teachers and principals is fundamental. The main objective of the study is thus to formulate achievement strategies to improve the educative centre and the educational community at several levels: as individuals, as groups and as an organization. To this aim we conducted a descriptive research with a non-experimental design by the poll method, through the implementation of the ‘Multifactor Leadership Questionnaire by Bass and Avolio – MLQ’ instrument, administered to teachers and principals of technical-technological programmes of the Cooperative University of Colombia. Results show that the elements of Transformational Leadership are predominant over the other types of Leadership. They thus emerge as the key element to strengthen, through individual training processes and organizational improvement strategies, in order to achieve optimal organizational results. This must be carried out from within the educational entity, through the motivation of students and work groups, strengthening the practices of teachers and principals in the development of basic organizational and academic functions.
Pharmacokinetic Properties ofAnti‐Influenza Neuraminidase Inhibitors

Neuraminidase inhibitors are the mainstay of anti‐influenza treatment. Oseltamivir is the most widely used drug but is currently available only as an oral formulation. Resistance spreads rapidly in seasonal H1N1 influenza A viruses, which were universally resistant in 2008, because of the H275Y mutation in the neuraminidase (NA) gene. Oseltamivir is a prodrug for the active carboxylate metabolite. Ex vivo conversion in blood samples may have confounded early pharmacokinetic studies. Oseltamivir shows dose linear kinetics, and oseltamivir carboxylate has an elimination half‐life (t1/2β) after oral administration in healthy individuals of approximately 7.7 hours. Oseltamivir carboxylate is eliminated primarily by tubular secretion, and both clearance and tissue distribution are reduced by probenecid. The H275Y mutation in NA confers high‐level oseltamivir resistance and intermediate peramivir resistance but does not alter zanamivir susceptibility. Zanamivir is available as a powder for inhalation, and a parenteral form is under development. Zanamivir distributes in an apparent volume of distribution approximating that of extracellular water and is rapidly eliminated (t1/2β of approximately 3.0 hours). Peramivir is slowly eliminated (t1/2β of 7.7‐20.8 hours) and is prescribed as either a once‐daily injection or as a single infusion. Laninamivir is a recently developed slowly eliminated compound for administration by inhalation.
Moments and Similarity Measure Feature Based Image Steganalysis Technique (MSM)

Steganalysis is art and science of detecting messages hidden using steganography. In this article a novel universal image steganalysis technique is proposed in which various moments like invariant, statistical moments and Zernike and various other similarity measure parameters like MSE, PSNR, RMSE, SSIM, Shannon’s ENTROPY, DC Coefficient, DCT distance, NAE and Average Difference i.e. total 24 features are selected as the features. The proposed steganalysis methods has been designed based on three classifiers i) Back Propagation Neural Network and ii) SVM classifier and iii) K-nearest neighbor classifier. The proposed universal steganalyzer has been tested against few of the various well-known steganographic techniques which operate in both the spatial and transform domains. The experiments are performed using a large data set of JPEG and BMP images obtained from publicly available websites. The image data set is categorized with respect to different features of the image to determine their potential impact on steganalysis performance. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed technique compared to other existing techniques.
Attention Modulates Maintenance of Representations in Visual Short-term Memory

Recent studies have shown that selective attention is of considerable importance for encoding task-relevant items into visual short-term memory (VSTM) according to our behavioral goals. However, it is not known whether top–down attentional biases can continue to operate during the maintenance period of VSTM. We used ERPs to investigate this question across two experiments. Specifically, we tested whether orienting attention to a given spatial location within a VSTM representation resulted in modulation of the contralateral delay activity (CDA), a lateralized ERP marker of VSTM maintenance generated when participants selectively encode memory items from one hemifield. In both experiments, retrospective cues during the maintenance period could predict a specific item (spatial retrocue) or multiple items (neutral retrocue) that would be probed at the end of the memory delay. Our results revealed that VSTM performance is significantly improved by orienting attention to the location of a task-relevant item. The behavioral benefit was accompanied by modulation of neural activity involved in VSTM maintenance. Spatial retrocues reduced the magnitude of the CDA, consistent with a reduction in memory load. Our results provide direct evidence that top–down control modulates neural activity associated with maintenance in VSTM, biasing competition in favor of the task-relevant information.
Characteristics of Accelerometry Respondents to a Mail-Based Surveillance Study

Background Differences in the characteristics of respondents and nonrespondents to a survey can be a cause of selection bias. The aim of this study was to determine the sociodemographic and lifestyle characteristics of respondents to a field-based accelerometry survey. Methods A cross-sectional mail survey was sent to 4000 adults (50% male; age 20 to 69 years) who were randomly selected from the registries of residential addresses of 4 cities in Japan. There were 1508 respondents (responding subsample) to the initial questionnaire. A total of 786 participants from the responding subsample also agreed to wear an accelerometer for 7 days (accelerometer subsample). Age, sex, and city of residence were compared between the accelerometer subsample and all 3214 nonrespondents, including those who did not respond to the initial questionnaire. In addition, multiple logistic regression analyses were used to compare the sociodemographic and lifestyle characteristics of the accelerometer subsample and the 722 respondents who participated in the questionnaire survey but not the accelerometry (questionnaire-only subsample). Results As compared with all nonrespondents, the accelerometer subsample included significantly more women, middle-aged and older adults, and residents of specific cities. Multiple logistic regression analyses comparing the accelerometer and questionnaire-only subsamples revealed that participation in the accelerometry survey was greater among nonsmokers (odds ratio, 1.35; 95% confidence interval, 1.02–1.79) and persons who reported a habit of leisure walking (1.56, 1.21–2.01). Conclusions Sex, age, city of residence, smoking status, and leisure walking were associated with participation in accelerometry. This response pattern reveals potential selection bias in mail-based accelerometry studies.
Measuring the Utility of a Cyber Incident Mission Impact Assessment ( CIMIA ) Notification Process

Information is a critical asset on which all modern organizations depend to meet their mission objectives. Military organizations, in particular, have embedded Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) into their core mission processes as a means to increase their operational efficiency, exploit automation, improve decision quality, and enable real-time situational awareness. However, an extreme dependence upon ICT results in an environment where a cyber incident can result in severe mission degradation, or possibly failure, with catastrophic consequences to life, limb, and property. In this paper, we present the initial results of an experiment designed to measure the utility of a Cyber Incident Mission Impact Assessment (CIMIA) notification process. CIMIA is focused upon minimizing the consequences following an information incident by maintaining real-time situational awareness of mission critical resources so appropriate contingency actions can be taken in a timely manner to assure mission success. The results of the experiment show that implementing a CIMIA notification process significantly reduced the response time required for subjects to recognize and take proper contingency measures. The research confirms that timely and relevant notification following a cyber incident is an essential element of mission assurance. KeywordsCIMIA, Cyber incident notification, mission assurance, human subjects experiment, contingency planning
Characterization of a Standardized Ex-vivo Porcine Model to Assess Short Term Intraocular Pressure Changes and Trabecular Meshwork Vitality After Pars Plana Vitrectomy with Different Silicone Oil and BSS Tamponades

ABSTRACT Purpose: The aim of this study was to characterize a standardized porcine ex-vivo testing system for intraocular pressure (IOP) monitoring after vitrectomy with different endotamponades. Methods: Twenty-four pig eyes, six per endotamponade group were obtained immediately postmortem. After pars plana vitrectomy, vitreous substitutes (silicone oil 1000 mPas, 2000 mPas, 5000 mPas, and Balanced Salt Solution (BSS)) were instillated and IOP was observed over 24-hours. Infusion pumps with Dulbecco’s Modified Eagle Medium (DMEM) simulated a constant aqueous humor circulation. A histological examination of the trabecular meshwork with DAPI- and TUNEL-staining was performed to detect the amount of apoptotic cells. Results: TUNEL-assay showed a mean cell death rate of 3.78% (SD ± 1.46%) for silicone oil endotamponades compared to 5.05% (SD ± 2.18%) in BSS group. One-way ANOVA (p = 0.425) showed no significant difference between both groups. Mean IOP in silicone oil endotamponades was 9.50 mmHg (SD ± 1.68 mmHg) at baseline, 13.23 mmHg (SD ± 0.79 mmHg) after 1 hour, 18.46 mmHg (SD ± 2.13 mmHg) after 12 hours and 15.51 mmHg (SD ± 2.82 mmHg) 24 hours after instillation. A comparison of all silicone oil groups (one-way ANOVA, Bonferroni post-hoc test, p = 0.269 to 1.000) didn’t reveal significant differences in mean IOP. Conclusion: The standardized ex-vivo porcine model represents an effective alternative to the in-vivo testing in animals. Maintaining the trabecular and uveoscleral outflow pathway enables a pseudo in-vivo analysis.
Secure, accurate and precise time synchronization for wireless sensor networks

Secure time synchronization is a key service for wireless sensor networks (WSN). The special nature of WSNs imposes challenging and intertwined requirements on secure time synchronization design. We show that secure time synchronization techniques proposed to date fail to fulfil the security, accuracy, precision and energy-cost required trade-off for WSNs. We propose a novel pairwise and clusterwise-based approach to securely synchronize nodes of a WSN. We develop a meshed network of cluster heads to securely transfer global time among cluster heads. Then, in turn, cluster heads transfer global time to the nodes of each cluster. The analysis in this paper shows that this approach exhibits very advanced security, accuracy, precision and low-energy trade-off. Moreover, this approach can equally be applied to star or peer-to-peer-based clustered WSNs.
From kinematics to dynamics in thin galactic discs

We present a method for recovering the distribution functions of edge-on thin axisymmetric discs directly from their observable kinematic properties. The most generally observable properties of such a stellar system are the line-of-sight velocity distributions of the stars at different projected radii along the galaxy. If the gravitational potential is known, then the general two-integral distribution function can be reconstructed using the shapes of the high-velocity tails of these line-of-sight distributions. If the wrong gravitational potential is adopted, then a distribution function can still be constructed using this technique, but the low-velocity parts of the observed velocity distributions will not be reproduced by the derived dynamical model. Thus, the gravitational potential is also tightly constrained by the observed kinematics.
The Identification Service in Health Information Exchange

Regional health information exchange (HIE) is becoming the focus of health information technology in China. According to Chinese administration properties and specific requirements, the HIE adopts a centralized architecture, in which the clinical documents are stored and exchanged in a centralized platform. To integrate all the clinical information of a patient, it is critical to identify the patient in the HIE domain uniquely. In this paper, an identification service based on IHE PIX profile is designed and implemented. We selected the resident ID card number as the Master Patient Identifier (MPI) to setup cross-reference and designed a match algorithm for clinical documents from various healthcare institutions. Our design provides a viable solution for the regional HIE platform in China.
SSENet-2011: A Network Intrusion Detection System dataset and its comparison with KDD CUP 99 dataset

In recent years the attack vectors in the network world have increased many fold with the increased usage of Internet and with the exponential growth of various applications. Network Intrusion Detection System (NIDS) is one of the most sought after system by security experts in safeguarding the network from both external and internal attacks. NIDS works mainly in two modes: Online and Offline. Online or real-time NIDS, such as Snort, Bro, etc., examines the packet structure to find intrusions, if any, and alerts the administrator. On the other hand, offline NIDS logs the packets flowing to and from the network, constructs features based on connections, and creates a dataset. Such NIDS datasets are used in research purposes for applying data mining, machine learning, evolutionary algorithms, etc., to detect attacks. KDD CUP 99 is one such widely used popular IDS dataset. KDD CUP 99 dataset is obsolete because many of the attacks performed to create the dataset do not exist now. Moreover, the features constructed do not pertain to network activities. It is a mixture of host based as well as network based features. So, the need for a new dataset, conforming to the present network activities and attack vectors, is inevitable. This motivated us to come out with a NIDS dataset, SSENet-2011 dataset, in this paper. SSENet-2011 dataset was constructed using Tstat tool. A real time experiment was performed, the network packets were captured, features were constructed, and the dataset was created. The created SSENet-2011 dataset was compared with the KDD CUP 99 dataset. From the experiments it is evident that a closed and secluded network such as SSENet and Tstat tool help researchers in developing and analyzing a new dataset which reflects the changing scenario of network activities.
Ultrasonic and LIDAR Sensors for Electronic Canopy Characterization in Vineyards: Advances to Improve Pesticide Application Methods

Canopy characterization is a key factor to improve pesticide application methods in tree crops and vineyards. Development of quick, easy and efficient methods to determine the fundamental parameters used to characterize canopy structure is thus an important need. In this research the use of ultrasonic and LIDAR sensors have been compared with the traditional manual and destructive canopy measurement procedure. For both methods the values of key parameters such as crop height, crop width, crop volume or leaf area have been compared. Obtained results indicate that an ultrasonic sensor is an appropriate tool to determine the average canopy characteristics, while a LIDAR sensor provides more accuracy and detailed information about the canopy. Good correlations have been obtained between crop volume (CVU) values measured with ultrasonic sensors and leaf area index, LAI (R2 = 0.51). A good correlation has also been obtained between the canopy volume measured with ultrasonic and LIDAR sensors (R2 = 0.52). Laser measurements of crop height (CHL) allow one to accurately predict the canopy volume. The proposed new technologies seems very appropriate as complementary tools to improve the efficiency of pesticide applications, although further improvements are still needed.
Acute serotonin 2A receptor blocking alters the processing of fearful faces in the orbitofrontal cortex and amygdala

Background: The serotonin 2A (5-HT2A) receptor has been implicated in neural-processing of emotionally salient information. To elucidate its role in processing of fear and anger, healthy individuals were studied with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) after 5-HT2A receptor blockade, while judging the gender of neutral, fearful and angry faces. Methods: 5-HT2A receptors were blocked with ketanserin to a variable degree across subjects by adjusting the time between ketanserin-infusion and onset of the fMRI protocol. Neocortical 5-HT2A receptor binding in terms of the binding potential (BPp) was assessed prior to fMRI with 18F-altanserin positron emission tomography (PET) and subsequently integrated in the fMRI data analysis. Also functional connectivity analysis was employed to evaluate the effect of ketanserin blocking on connectivity. Results: Compared to a control session, 5-HT2A receptor blockade reduced the neural response to fearful faces in the medial orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), independently of 5-HT2A receptor occupancy or neocortical 5-HT2A receptor BPp. The medial OFC also showed increased functional coupling with the left amygdala during processing of fearful faces depending on the amount of blocked 5-HT2A receptors. Conclusions: 5-HT2A receptor mediated signaling increases the sensitivity of the OFC to fearful facial expressions and regulates the strength of a negative feedback signal from the OFC to amygdala during processing of fearful faces.