Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Beliefs about antipsychotic versus hypoglycemic medications among individuals with serious mental illness and type 2 diabetes

Background This study compared the beliefs held by individuals with coexisting serious mental illness and type 2 diabetes regarding the necessity and risks of taking antipsychotic versus hypoglycemic medications. We also investigated whether nonadherent patients differed from adherent patients in their beliefs about medications. Methods Forty-four individuals with type 2 diabetes and serious mental illness who were prescribed hypoglycemic and antipsychotic medications completed a cross-sectional assessment of medication beliefs and adherence for both medication types. Results Patients perceived a greater need for hypoglycemic versus antipsychotic medications; however, their beliefs were not associated with nonadherence to either medication type. Conclusion These results suggest that individuals with coexisting serious mental illness and type 2 diabetes have stronger convictions regarding the necessity of their diabetes medication for maintaining their health.
Une approche psychosociale de la protection de l'environnement : Perspective temporelle et distance psychologique

Les problemes environnementaux sont l'un des enjeux majeurs auxquels doivent faire face nos societes actuelles. Comprendre les determinants des comportements de protection de l'environnement est donc important. Apres avoir expose les variables classiquement etudiees comme les variables de personnalite ou attitudinales, nous proposons deux axes de recherche adaptes a la specificite de notre objet d'etude portant sur des risques souvent presentes comme distants. Dans le premier axe, nous soutiendrons que la capacite a se projeter dans le temps permet de lier le comportement avec ses consequences futures pour l'environnement et devrait ainsi favoriser l'engagement pour la protection de l'environnement. Apres avoir expose le cadre conceptuel de la perspective temporelle, nous avons realise une revue de la litterature montrant qu'effectivement une orientation vers le futur est liee a davantage d'engagement en faveur de l'environnement. Nos etudes n'ont cependant pas retrouve ce lien. Nous avons par contre montre une correlation negative entre l'orientation vers le present fataliste ou le passe negatif et les comportements pro-environnementaux. L'importance d'autres variables a ete demontree lors de ces experiences comme les preoccupations environnementales, le rapport a la nature et l'implication culturelle. Dans le deuxieme axe, nous defendrons la posture inverse en soutenant que c'est en rapprochant la perception des risques environnementaux que l'on favorise les comportements pro-environnementaux. Apres avoir presente le cadre conceptuel de la distance psychologique et son lien avec les niveaux de construits, nous proposons deux etudes, l'une mesurant la distance percue vis-a-vis des problemes environnementaux et l'autre la manipulant. Ces etudes ont d'abord permis de caracteriser la distance percue vis-a-vis de differents problemes environnementaux, ceux-ci etant percus comme relativement proches sur toutes les dimensions a l'exception de la dimension sociale ou ils sont a la fois proches et distants. Nous avons ensuite montre qu'une distance proche est associee a davantage de preoccupations environnementales, a une evaluation comme plus reels et plus graves des risques et enfin a davantage d'intentions comportementales d'agir en faveur de l'environnement. Nous conclurons ce travail en mettant nos resultats en perspective et en proposant des applications en terme de communication sur les problemes environnementaux.
Environment and Disease Risks

A new paradigm is needed to assess how a lifetime of exposure to environmental factors affects the risk of developing chronic diseases. Although the risks of developing chronic diseases are attributed to both genetic and environmental factors, 70 to 90% of disease risks are probably due to differences in environments (1–3). Yet, epidemiologists increasingly use genome-wide association studies (GWAS) to investigate diseases, while relying on questionnaires to characterize “environmental exposures. ” This is because GWAS represent the only approach for exploring the totality of any risk factor (genes, in this case) associated with disease prevalence. Moreover, the value of costly genetic information is diminished when inaccurate and imprecise environmental data lead to biased inferences regarding gene-environment interactions (4). A more comprehensive and quantitative view of environmental exposure is needed if epidemiologists are to discover the major causes of chronic diseases.
EEG based artificial learning of motor coordination for visually inspired task using neural networks

Damage in parietal and/or motor cortex of the brain can lead to inability in proper visuo-motor coordination, hampering movement planning and execution. The objective of this work is to predict joint coordinates of hand by sequential prediction of the parietal and motor cortex Electroencephalogram (EEG) features from their occipital counterparts using artificial neural networks (ANNs). EEG signals during hand movement execution are acquired from occipital, parietal and motor cortical regions and the joint coordinates of hand are acquired using Kinect sensor. The acquired EEG signals are preprocessed followed by extraction of wavelet features and selection of the best features using Principal Component Analysis. The EEG features originating from one brain region are mapped to the features of another brain region using regression analysis on artificial neural networks with Back Propagation learning. The mapped motor cortical EEG signals are finally used to predict the hand joint coordinates using Back Propagation learning based ANN. The performances of various weight adaptation techniques for Back Propagation learning are evaluated. Regression analysis results indicate that Levenberg-Marquardt optimization based weight adaptation performed best in terms of mean squared error, slope of the best linear fit and correlation coefficient between the original values and predicted results.
Intelligent Context-Sensitive Help for Dynamic User and Environment Contexts

RAMACHANDRAN, ASHWIN. Intelligent Context-Sensitive Help for Dynamic User and Environment Contexts. (Under the direction of R. Michael Young). The problem of providing help for complex application interfaces has been a source of interest for a number of researcher efforts. As the computational power of computers increases, typical applications not only increase in functionality but also in the degree of interaction with the computational environment in which they reside. There are powerful software tools available today used for both specialized and nonspecialized tasks that are often used by novice users who attempt tasks without significant training or knowledge of the application’s interface. These kinds of applications are diverse and complicated in the variety of functionality they provide, often interacting with other applications on the user’s system. With current platforms (Windows, Macintosh, Linux etc) providing extensive multi-tasking facilities, interaction with these applications is sometimes affected by the context of the environment itself (e.g., application windows being minimized, maximized or obscured by those of other applications). The interdependencies between applications and their environments increase the difficulty of providing effective context-sensitive help when building an application’s help documentation. The purpose of this research is to create an Intelligent Help System, which incorporates these interactions and affecting factors when providing help. The SmartAidè system, which was developed as part of this effort, works on the premise that the user has a goal when interacting with the application. This document will provide a detailed overview of the architecture of the system along with the underlying design decisions. The system was then evaluated against traditional application help documentation to test its effectiveness. The results and analysis of this evaluation have been enumerated. INTELLIGENT CONTEXT-SENSITIVE HELP FOR DYNAMIC USER AND ENVIRONMENT CONTEXTS
One State’s Use of Program Evaluation to Improve Correctional Practices

Trends in criminal justice programming can sometimes lead one to question the direction the field is taking related to rehabilitation. This article presents one state’s attempt to evaluate the quality of residential treatment services in the state across a primary and then follow-up outcome evaluation. This article outlines study results specific to treatment effects by risk. The study finds consistent evidence in support of the risk principle across both studies. The article also outlines what the state did with the recommendations from these studies, and how that affected the delivery of correctional programming in that state.
Efficiently decodable and searchable natural language adaptive compression

We address the problem of adaptive compression of natural language text, focusing on the case where low bandwidth is available and the receiver has little processing power, as in mobile applications. Our technique achieves compression ratios around 32% and requires very little effort from the receiver. This tradeoff, not previously achieved with alternative techniques, is obtained by breaking the usual symmetry between sender and receiver dominant in statistical adaptive compression. Moreover, we show that our technique can be adapted to avoid decompression at all in cases where the receiver only wants to detect the presence of some keywords in the document. This is useful in scenarios such as selective dissemination of information, news clipping, alert systems, text categorization, and clustering. Thanks to the asymmetry we introduce, the receiver can search the compressed text much faster than the plain text. This was previously achieved only in semistatic compression scenarios.
Media-based modulation: A new approach to wireless transmission

It is shown that embedding part or all of the information in the (intentional) variations of the transmission media (end-to-end channel) can offer significant performance gains vs. traditional SISO, SIMO and MIMO systems, at the same time with a lower complexity. This is in contrast with the traditional wireless systems where the information is entirely embedded in the variations of an RF source prior to the antenna to propagate via the channel to the destination. In particular, it is shown that using a single transmit antenna and D receive antennas; significant savings in energy with respect to a D×D traditional MIMO are achieved. Similar energy savings are possible in SISO, and SIMO setups.
From heterogeneous expectations to exchange rate dynamics

O objetivo deste trabalho foi analisar como o comportamento heterogeneo dos agentes influencia a dinâmica da taxa de câmbio em curto e longo prazos. Examinaram-se os tipos de informacao que os agentes utilizam para tomar decisoes que antecipem a taxa de câmbio. Foram investigadas metodologias baseadas em simulacoes de agentes interativos, seguindo o Santa Fe Artificial Stock Market. Cada trader foi modelado como um agente autonomo e interativo, e a agregacao do seu comportamento resultou na dinâmica do mercado de câmbio. Um algoritmo genetico foi usado para modelar o comportamento do agente, e o mercado simulado tende a replicar o mercado real de câmbio de euro/dolar. Foram considerados quatro tipos de agente com comportamento puro: fundamentalista, trader com feedback positivo e negativo, trader ingenuo e trader que segue noticias (positivas e negativas). Para reproduzir os fatos estilizados da dinâmica da taxa de câmbio, selecionou- se uma proporcao ajustada para cada tipo de agente, a fim de evitar a necessidade de considerar comportamento mimetico, agentes adaptativos ou agentes causadores de ruido puros.
Planning Movements in a Simple Redundant Task proportional to inertia , this causes the minimum work

get height and width. Subjects produced more humeral There are infinitely many different combinations of arm than forearm rotation, and their movement paths in joint postures which will place the hand at the same point angle space were approximately straight (data not in space [1]. Given this abundance, how is one configshown). With increasing target height there was less uration chosen over another? Two main hypotheses humeral rotation and concomitantly more forearm rotahave been proposed to solve this problem [2]. Postural tion. This pattern was observed in all seven subjects. models suggest that the posture adopted is purely We compared these postures with predictions based determined by the desired hand position (known as on the minimum work model [5], which suggests that Donders’ law) [3, 4]. Transport models suggest that the peak kinetic energy, which scales with inertia, is the adopted posture depends on where the hand has minimized during a movement. For quantitative predicmoved from. A specific transport model, the minimum tions, the lower arm was approximated as a cylinder of work model, has been proposed in which the adopted radius r 4 cm and length l 40 cm, with uniform posture is the one that minimizes the amount of work density and mass M, yielding a humeral:forearm rotation required to move the hand to the new location [5]. inertia ratio of 67:1 (Ml/3:Mr/2). The upper arm was not The postural model predicts that the posture will be modeled, as it does not contribute significantly to the independent of where the hand has moved from, task. As work is proportional to inertia, this principle whereas the transport models predict that the posture predicts that forearm rotations will be very heavily fawill depend on the previous posture. We have devised vored over humeral rotations—which conflicts with our a simple redundant task—touching a target bar using data. We generated minimum work predictions for the a hand-held virtual stick—to examine these models. two final postures in each trial by predicting them based The results show that neither model alone can account on the starting posture. This root-mean-squared predicfor the data. We propose a control planning strategy tion error for humeral and forearm rotations was 18.7 in which there is a combined cost function that has and 38.9 , respectively. Predictions remained poor both a postural term as well as a transport term. when, instead of calculating the ratio of inertias, we fit
Gamma-Secretase Represents a Therapeutic Target for the Treatment of Invasive Glioma Mediated by the p75 Neurotrophin Receptor

The multifunctional signaling protein p75 neurotrophin receptor (p75NTR) is a central regulator and major contributor to the highly invasive nature of malignant gliomas. Here, we show that neurotrophin-dependent regulated intramembrane proteolysis (RIP) of p75NTR is required for p75NTR-mediated glioma invasion, and identify a previously unnamed process for targeted glioma therapy. Expression of cleavage-resistant chimeras of p75NTR or treatment of animals bearing p75NTR-positive intracranial tumors with clinically applicable γ-secretase inhibitors resulted in dramatically decreased glioma invasion and prolonged survival. Importantly, proteolytic processing of p75NTR was observed in p75NTR-positive patient tumor specimens and brain tumor initiating cells. This work highlights the importance of p75NTR as a therapeutic target, suggesting that γ-secretase inhibitors may have direct clinical application for the treatment of malignant glioma.
A comparative study of PID controller tuning using GA, EP, PSO and ACO

The aim of this paper is to study the tuning of a PID controller using soft computing techniques. The methodology and efficiency of the proposed method are compared with that of traditional methods. Determination or tuning of the PID parameters continues to be important as these parameters have a great influence on the stability and performance of the control system. The results obtained reflect that use of soft computing based controller improves the performance of process interms of time domain specifications, set point tracking, regulatory changes and also provides an optimum stability.
Effects of Aging on Kidney Graft Function, Oxidative Stress and Gene Expression after Kidney Transplantation

Conflicting results have been reported regarding the effects of donor age, recipient age and donor-recipient age difference on short- and long-term outcomes after kidney transplantation. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of recipient age on graft function, oxidative stress, and gene expression after renal transplantation. Fifty male Fischer 344 rats [25 young (Y, 4 months), 25 senior (S, 16 months)] were randomized to 6 groups: 2 sham groups (Y and S, n = 5 in each group) and 4 renal transplant groups[young-to-young (Y-Y), young-to-senior (Y-S), senior-to-young (S-Y), senior-to-senior (S-S), (n = 10 in each group)]. The left kidneys were transplanted from donor to recipient. After 12 weeks, systematic blood pressure, graft weight, graft function, histology and oxidative stress were measured. Microarray analysis and quantitative real-time PCR confirmation were performed to study gene expression in the grafts. There were no differences in renal graft function between young and senior kidney cross-transplantation. Transplanted kidneys showed no significant differences in glomerulosclerosis index compared to non-transplanted kidneys but had significantly different tubulointerstitium scores compared to age-matched controls. Senior rats had lower SOD activity and higher MDA content than young rats. SOD activity was significantly lower and MDA content significantly higher in the Y-S group than in the Y-Y group. There were 548 transcript differences between senior and young kidneys with 36 upregulated and 512 downregulated transcripts. There were 492 transcript differences between Y-S and Y-Y groups with 127 upregulated and 365 downregulated transcripts. There were 1244 transcript differences between the S-Y and S-S groups with 680 upregulated and 574 downregulated transcripts. Oxidative stress and gene expression profile was significantly different in the Y-S compared to the S-Y group. The identified differences were mainly in the MAPK and insulin signal pathways, making these potential targets for therapeutic intervention.
12: Something More: Moments of Meeting and the Teacher-Learner Relationship

The Boston Group. drawing upon developmental and clinical research, has identifiedspecial moments in humaninteraction thatthey call "moments ofmeet ing . " These moments occurspontaneously withinthecontext ofongoing relational interaction andcan effictively restructure relationships. we thinkoftbes« moments ofmeeting as pivotalmoments because oftheir potentially pivotaleffect on rela tionships. In this chapter webriefly describe thetheory underlying these moments ofrelational change. using examples from education. Then wesuggest strategies that mayhelp teachers participate creatively in such moments. Finally, weexplore theimplications ofthis theoryfor theconcept ofauthenticity.
Silicon carbide integrated circuits for extreme environments

Analog and digital integrated circuits capable of operating reliably at 300 °C for 2000 hours were designed and fabricated in silicon carbide. These circuits are critical for the development of tools and instrumentation for geothermal exploration. Lateral MOSFETs and resistors were built on Si-face, 4°-off, N+ 4H-SiC substrates. Compact models of these devices were then generated and used to design the circuits, including operational amplifiers, ring oscillators, counters, shift registers and logic gates. The circuits were then fabricated and packaged using specially developed high temperature packaging processes. The integrated circuits were designed to interface with sensors and transducers to produce analog signals that can be digitized and transmitted via a telemetry system capable of sustained operation at 300 °C.
A proposal of layered sensor for analysis of muscular activity

In this paper, a new sensor for analysis of muscular activity is proposed. The proposed sensor is the layered structure of a thin stainless steel electrode, a PVDF film with transparent electrodes, and optical sensors. Electromyogram (EMG), mechanomyogram (MMG) and oxygen consumption based on near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) are simultaneously measured by the stainless steel electrode, the PVDF film, and the optical sensors, respectively. From these data, the muscular activity is analyzed. Therefore, it is the merit of the proposed sensor to be able to reduce the restriction to the skin by the sensors at multipoints measurements because three types of information are detected by a pair of proposed sensors. In this experiment, EMG, MMG, and oxygen consumption, that is, NIRS measurements at the forearm were demonstrated by the proposed sensor. The possibility of the simultaneous measurement of EMG, MMG and NIRS at same position by the proposed sensor was discussed.
Aldh1-Expressing Endocrine Progenitor Cells Regulate Secondary Islet Formation in Larval Zebrafish Pancreas

Aldh1 expression is known to mark candidate progenitor populations in adult and embryonic mouse pancreas, and Aldh1 enzymatic activity has been identified as a potent regulator of pancreatic endocrine differentiation in zebrafish. However, the location and identity of Aldh1-expressing cells in zebrafish pancreas remain unknown. In this study we demonstrate that Aldh1-expressing cells are located immediately adjacent to 2F11-positive pancreatic ductal epithelial cells, and that their abundance dramatically increases during zebrafish secondary islet formation. These cells also express neurod, a marker of endocrine progenitor cells, but do not express markers of more mature endocrine cells such as pax6b or insulin. Using formal cre/lox-based lineage tracing, we further show that Aldh1-expressing pancreatic epithelial cells are the direct progeny of pancreatic notch-responsive progenitor cells, identifying them as a critical intermediate between multi-lineage progenitors and mature endocrine cells. Pharmacologic manipulation of Aldh1 enzymatic activity accelerates cell entry into the Aldh1-expressing endocrine progenitor pool, and also leads to the premature maturation of these cells, as evidenced by accelerated pax6b expression. Together, these findings suggest that Aldh1-expressing cells act as both participants and regulators of endocrine differentiation during zebrafish secondary islet formation.