Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
How opinion polls affect voting in Bangkok's gubernatorial election

In response to the widely publicized failure of most pollsters to predict the winner of the Bangkok governor election on 3 March 2013, this study examined the published results of opinion polls in the news media to see how they had affected the voter preference and what errors existed. The study analyzed a series of poll results by five major pollsters for the pre-election and exit polls during the governor election campaign from January to March 2013 and, then, compared them with the final results of governor election. The poll results lent partial support to the spiral of silence theory. Among all pollsters, only NIDA Poll projected the right prediction for Democrat candidate M. R. Sukhumbhand Paribatra as the winner. Its pre-election polls showed his final victory occurring in the last leg of the election campaign as a result of the late swing voters against the ruling Pheu Thai Party attaining monopoly on power. Suan Dusit and Abac Polls showed the existence of the bandwagon effect for Pheu Thai candidate Pol. Gen. Pongsapat Pongcharoen. Besides their polling effects, major factors accounting for errors included shy Democrat factor, late swing of voters, sampling error, and nonresponse bias.
Comparison of EJC-enhanced and EJC-independent NMD in human cells reveals two partially redundant degradation pathways

In nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD), an exon-junction complex (EJC) located downstream from a termination codon acts as an enhancing signal, but is generally not required. We compared “EJC-enhanced” and “EJC-independent” modes of NMD with regard to their requirement for seven known NMD factors in human cells. This study suggests the existence of several mechanistically distinct branches of NMD and reveals a redundancy of the endo- and exonucleolytic mRNA degradation pathways in both modes of NMD.
An Efficient Non-repudiation Mechanism for SIP-Based Services

Using various multimedia services through Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), the dispute issues must be concerned because subscribers of application service providers may repudiate service consumption fee. However, the related standards of SIP and accounting do not specify any mechanism to settle this dispute. In this paper, a non-repudiation mechanism for SIP accounting is presented to address the dispute between application service providers and consumers. This scheme is efficient because the client with a resource-limited device never need any time-consuming operation. Furthermore, it is practical since the proposed scheme can be easily added into the existing SIP accounting without much modification.
Economic Integration of Yunnan with the Greater Mekong Subregion

This paper examines the process of economic integration between the Chinese province of Yunnan and its riparian areas of the Mekong region. The gravity model of trade is used to investigate the evolution of Yunnan's international trade integration between 1988 and 1999. Although Greater Mekong Subregion cooperation efforts have had a positive effect on trade, trade has progressively decreased from an above-standard level to a normal level, according to the gravity model of trade. During this process, Yunnan's trade has increased with other countries such as Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia. This evolution is in line with Yunnan's development and indicates a progressive re-orientation of its trade toward more developed partners. The results suggest that the Mekong cooperation project has to broaden its perspective, taking into consideration Yunnan's expanding trade relations with countries outside the Greater Mekong Subregion. Copyright 2006 East Asian Economic Association and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
Effects of Media Dependencies

A review of existing research shows some evidence that persons dependent on television news for public affairs information are more likely to have negative attitudes toward government and to be less well informed about that government than persons dependent on newspapers Such a relationship between dependency and evaluations and knowledge of government was replicated here, though only where local government was concerned The meaning of the dependency concept is explored and empirical evidence is offered that dependency is distinct from simple exposure to the media
Hopping, jumping and looping by restriction enzymes.

Type II restriction endonucleases recognize specific DNA sequences and cleave both strands of the DNA at fixed locations at or near their recognition sites. Many of these enzymes are dimeric proteins that recognize, in symmetrical fashion, palindromic DNA sequences. They generally catalyse independent reactions at each recognition site on the DNA, although in some cases they act processively; cutting the DNA first at one site, then translocating along the DNA to another site and cutting that before leaving the DNA. The way in which the degree of processivity varies with the length of DNA between the sites can reveal the mechanism of translocation. In contrast with the common view that proteins move along DNA by 'sliding', the principal mode of transfer of the EcoRV endonuclease is by 'hopping' and 'jumping', i.e. the dissociation of the protein from one site followed by its re-association with another site in the same DNA molecule, either close to or distant from the original site. Other type II restriction enzymes require two copies of their recognition sites for their DNA cleavage reactions. Many of these enzymes, such as SfiI, are tetramers with two DNA-binding surfaces. SfiI has no activity when bound to just one recognition site, and instead both DNA-binding surfaces have to be filled before it becomes active. Although the two sites can be on separate DNA molecules, SfiI acts optimally with two sites on the same DNA, where it traps the DNA between the sites in a loop. SfiI thus constitutes a test system for the analysis of DNA looping.
Improving GPGPU Performance via Cache Locality Aware Thread Block Scheduling

Modern GPGPUs support the concurrent execution of thousands of threads to provide an energy-efficient platform. However, the massive multi-threading of GPGPUs incurs serious cache contention, as the cache lines brought by one thread can easily be evicted by other threads in the small shared cache. In this paper, we propose a software-hardware cooperative approach that exploits the spatial locality among different thread blocks to better utilize the precious cache capacity. Through dynamic locality estimation and thread block scheduling, we can capture more performance improvement opportunities than prior work that only explores the spatial locality between consecutive thread blocks. Evaluations across diverse GPGPU applications show that, on average, our locality-aware scheduler provides 25 and 9 percent performance improvement over the commonly-employed round-robin scheduler and the state-of-the-art scheduler, respectively.
Direct Transition of Outgrowing Bacterial Spores to New Sporangia Without Intermediate Cell Division

Vinter, Vladimir (Syracuse University, Syracuse, N.Y.), and Ralph A. Slepecky. Direct transition of outgrowing bacterial spores to new sporangia without intermediate cell division. J. Bacteriol. 90:803–807. 1965. —A direct transition was observed of the primary cell developed after germination of Bacillus cereus spores into new sporangia without intermediate division stages. Two simple methods were used for replacement of outgrowing spores into diluted medium or saline. Elongated primary cells prevented from division by limitation of nutrients in the suspending medium were able to form new forespores in 8 hr and sporangia in 12 hr. These new sporangia were still marked by attached envelopes of the original spore. Under the same conditions, cells replaced during the first divisions quickly lysed. Spores formed in the elongated primary cell during “microcycle sporogenesis” possessed normal heat resistance and refractility and were later released from sporangia.
The intentionality of insight

Rather than duplicating biomedical research measuring insight, or suggesting models by which one could more reliably measure a person with dementia's insight, I turn to the notion of insight reflexively. Based on ethnographic research with four `intimate circles of care', I explore the consciousness of people with AIDS dementia's insight, the intentionality of insight in the phenomenological sense. Since insight is a capacity of all humans, I also include in my unit of analysis the meanings of insight for significant others. With intentionality, what matters most are the meanings made of and the positions taken towards insight. I do not address what we understand philosophically as knowledge or question the definitions of awareness or insight. I focus on the ethnographic description of the meanings and positions that informants had of insight. Intentionality is not necessarily truth or fact, but rather a position taken. From the meanings and positions taken by informants, four themes of the intentionality of insight emerged: insight as heart-wrenching; agency, control and purpose; the hope of losing insight; and insight as life-giving. Intentionality of insight emerged in relation to intimacy, emotions and relationships. Insight was experienced within and narrated through a liminal state.
Generation of combined-modality tetrahedral meshes

Registering and combining anatomical components from different image modalities, like MRI and CT that have different tissue contrast, could result in patient-specific models that more closely represent anatomical structures than a model based on either modality alone. In this study, we combined a pair of CT and MRI scans of a pig thorax from two different subjects to make a tetrahedral mesh. Registration of the images is a challenging step in any multimodal imaging and we compared four different registration techniques including rigid, affine, thin plate spline morphing (TPSM), and iterative closest point (ICP), to superimpose the segmented bones from the CT scan on the soft tissues segmented from the MRI. We achieved best visual results with TPSM and affine techniques, which both resulted in the bones remaining close to, but not overlapping, important soft tissue. We also compared simulated results from computing ECGs and defibrillation potentials based on the original MRI model and combined geometric models of the torso. Both qualitatively and quantitatively, the combined geometric models performed similarly to the original MRI model.
Archaea Dominate Ammonia Oxidizers in the Permian Water Ecosystem of Midland Basin

We investigated the existence and characteristics of ammonia oxidizers in Permian water from Midland Basin. Molecular surveys targeting the amoA gene showed that only ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) exist and have potential activity in this special environment. In contrast, no ammonia-oxidizing bacteria (AOB) were detected in the water. Phylogenetic analysis indicated that 72–89% of the total screened AOA clones were affiliated with those found in underground water, and 10–24% of the AOA clones were related to those found in marine water or sediments. Our results indicate AOA might be the most abundant ammonia-oxidizing microbes in this ecological niche.
Disablist Bullying in Schools: Giving a Voice to Student Teachers.

This paper reports in detail on the qualitative findings from a study which aimed to critically examine the experiences and confidence of student teachers in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland in relation to disablist bullying. This paper focuses in particular on the voice of student teachers from six focus group interviews (n = 29) carried out among final year teacher education students in both jurisdictions. Students were asked about their experiences of dealing with bullying incidents during school placement, and in particular incidents involving children with special educational needs and disabilities. The study highlights the lack of preparation of the student teachers as a result of the absence of any focus on disablist bullying in initial teacher education courses, and a subsequent lack of confidence in dealing with such incidents which were found to be often challenging and complex. Students reported that they often resorted to ad hoc, instinct-led responses or overlooked incidents entirely, with few basing their responses on prior learning in initial teacher education. Implications are discussed and a policy and practice update is provided since the completion of the study in 2011.
Probing attentional modulation of contextual cueing

The repetition of spatial layout implicitly facilitates visual search (contextual cueing effect; Chun & Jiang, 1998). Although a substantial number of studies have explored the mechanism underlying the contextual cueing effect, the manner in which contextual information guides spatial attention to a target location during a visual search remains unclear. We investigated the nature of attentional modulation by contextual cueing, using a hybrid paradigm of a visual search task and a probe dot detection task. In the case of a repeated spatial layout, detection of a probe dot was facilitated at a search target location and was inhibited at distractor locations relative to nonrepeated spatial layouts. Furthermore, these facilitatory and inhibitory effects possessed different learning properties across epochs (Experiment 1) and different time courses within a trial (Experiment 2). These results suggest that contextual cueing modulates attentional processing via both facilitation to the location of “to-be-attended” stimuli and inhibition to the locations of “to-be-ignored” stimuli.
Amyloid β Protein Dimer-Containing Human CSF Disrupts Synaptic Plasticity: Prevention by Systemic Passive Immunization

The current development of immunotherapy for Alzheimer's disease is based on the assumption that human-derived amyloid β protein (Aβ) can be targeted in a similar manner to animal cell-derived or synthetic Aβ. Because the structure of Aβ depends on its source and the presence of cofactors, it is of great interest to determine whether human-derived oligomeric Aβ species impair brain function and, if so, whether or not their disruptive effects can be prevented using antibodies. We report that untreated ex vivo human CSF that contains Aβ dimers rapidly inhibits hippocampal long-term potentiation in vivo and that acute systemic infusion of an anti-Aβ monoclonal antibody can prevent this disruption of synaptic plasticity. Aβ monomer isolated from human CSF did not affect long-term potentiation. These results strongly support a strategy of passive immunization against soluble Aβ oligomers in early Alzheimer's disease.
Variational Inference with Rényi Divergence

We introduce the variational R\'enyi bound (VR) that extends traditional variational inference to R\'enyi's alpha-divergences. This new family of variational lower-bounds unifies a number of existing variational methods, and enables a smooth interpolation from the evidence lower-bound to the log (marginal) likelihood that is controlled by the value of alpha. The reparameterization trick, Monte Carlo estimation and stochastic optimisation methods are deployed to obtain a unified implementation for the VR bound optimisation. We further consider negative alpha values and propose a novel variational inference method as a new special case in the proposed framework. Experiments on variational auto-encoders and Bayesian neural networks demonstrate the wide applicability of the VR bound.
Managing social relations: the dimension of intellectual labour

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to show that the management of social relations involves specific forms of intellectual labour. An Australian study explores this through life‐history interviews.Design/methodology/approach – Career‐ and life‐history interviews were conducted with 16 intellectual workers whose professions involve the management of social relations. Both individual case studies and group analysis were conducted.Findings – In some situations this labour is carried out by a collective intellectual increasingly integrated with information technology. Several modes of the organization of knowledge can be specified. Extensive links with global society are found, yet few respondents make global society itself part of their object of knowledge. Participants perform classic functions of assembling and reticulating knowledge, and some have high levels of training, yet tend to refuse an “intellectual” identity.Originality/value – Local practice tilts away from ivory‐tower models of social kn.
Prenatal Exposure to Airborne Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons and Risk of Intrauterine Growth Restriction

Background Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) are ubiquitous air pollutants generated by combustion of organic material, including fossil fuel. Objectives It has been an open question whether prenatal exposure to air pollution in general and PAHs in particular significantly increases the risk of intrauterine growth restriction, including small size for gestational age (SGA), and preterm delivery. Here, we have examined this hypothesis in a cohort of mothers and newborns in New York City. Methods Subjects were young, nonsmoking, healthy African-American (n = 224) and Dominican (n = 392) mother–newborn pairs residing in New York City whose prenatal PAH exposures were estimated by personal air monitoring. Questionnaire and medical record data were obtained. Results A 1 natural-log (ln)-unit increase in prenatal PAH exposure was associated with a 2-fold increase in risk of symmetric intrauterine growth restriction (i.e., SGA and fetal growth ratio < 85%) among full-term African Americans (p < 0.05). Preterm delivery risk was 5-fold greater among African Americans per ln-unit increase in prenatal PAH exposure. The same unit increase in exposure significantly increased the ratio of head circumference to birth weight by 0.04% in African Americans. These effects were not observed in Dominicans. Conclusion Prenatal PAH exposure is likely to contribute to the occurrence of SGA as well as preterm births among African Americans. The lack of an association in Dominicans might reflect modification of the risk by healthful cultural practices among recent Dominican immigrants. Given that PAHs are globally generated and distributed pollutants, our observations have potential implications for environmental health and energy policies.
SEEFT: Planned Social Event Discovery and Attribute Extraction by Fusing Twitter and Web Content

Social events comprise some of the most popular topics in social media. Automatically identifying planned social events and extracting structured information, such as event title, date, and location, would enable more effective index, display and search for social events. However, the informal and noisy nature of language used in social media can degrade the quality of event extraction, resulting in broken titles, incorrect or absent attributes - making the resulting event databases not suitable for realistic applications. Previous work mostly focused on event identification and categorization in Twitter. Yet, event title extraction, arguably one of the most useful and difficult tasks in this domain, has never been investigated. In this paper, we address the task of identifying and extracting structured information (titles, dates, locations) for planned social events, and introduce SEEFT, a social event extraction system, which uses social media content to discover events. To extract the event title and other attributes, SEEFT fuses the original social media content and the content of other Tweets and webpages. Experiments over multiple popular event types and more than a thousand of event instances show that SEEFT significantly outperforms the previous state-of-the-art system in event identification. Moreover, by fusing information from multiple sources, SEEFT is able to extract event titles with high accuracy, providing the foundation for practical applications such as event discovery, search, and recommendation.
Effect of Choice Making on a Self-Care Activity in Mentally Retarded Adult and Adolescent Males

Of central importance to occupational therapy is the issue of motivation in activity. The purpose of this study was to look at the effects of choice on motivation during an activity undertaken by mentally retarded adult and adolescent males Each subject was given a choice of five wrinkled T-shirts that had sports logos on them. The subject chose one and was asked to iron the T-shirt before he took it to keep. Counterbalancing for order of presentation, we designed the study so that each subject also experienced not having a choice between five T-shirts and then having to iron the one given to him. The amount of ironing was measured by calculating the amount of water evaporation A one-tailed t test indicated that with this population, choice in an activity was a significant motivator for increased participation in a subsequent activity (p < .05). Results are discussed in terms of the need for research to build a theoretical base upon which practice directed to developing a sense of efficacy in mentally retarded and other populations can be founded.
Teaching Phonological Awareness and Metacognitive Strategies to Children with Reading Difficulties: A comparison of two instructional methods

This paper describes an applied training study which investigated the differential effects of two instructional methods on the reading performance of primary school children with reading difficulties. Sixty five children aged 7-10 participated. Twenty five children were assigned to each of two experimental groups: direct instruction in phonological awareness and the alphabetic principle, or the same direct instruction in phonological awareness in conjunction with training in specific metalinguistic concepts and metacognitive strategies. Fifteen children were selected as controls. Reading performance from baseline was measured within a pretest, posttest, and delayed posttest experimental design. Data and results are presented on 60 children owing to attrition. Results showed that direct instruction in phonological awareness improved the reading performance of children with reading difficulties over time. However, direct instruction in phonological awareness in conjunction with explicit training in specific metalinguistic concepts and metacognitive strategies was more advantageous overall.
Wireless Sensor and Actor Network - Security Analysis

Wireless sensor and actor networks (WSANs) refer to a group of sensors and actors linked by wireless medium to perform distributed sensing and actuation tasks. In such a network, sensors gather information about the physical world, while actors take decisions and then perform appropriate actions upon the environment, which allows a user to effectively sense and act at a distance. WSANs are exposed to numerous security threats that can adversely act the success of import applications. Although WSANs share many common grounds with sensor networks, it is difficult to apply existing security technologies due to the fact that WSANs contain actor nodes that are resource-independent and mobile. This paper aims to study the security aspects of these networks. It paper first introduces sensor networks, its architecture and working and then presents security related problems, threats, risks and characteristics and then finally security defence measures. Additionally, the paper gives a brief introduction to proposed protocols for sensor network security applications. It also highlights experimental work necessary to make these applications more reliable and robust in the real world.