Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Familialism, Privacy of Problems and Egalitarianism as Predictors of Recognition and Disclosure of Abuse

FAMILIALISM, PRIVACY OF PROBLEMS AND EGALITARIANISM AS PREDICTORS OF RECOGNITION AND DISCLOSURE OF ABUSE Adriana Pilafova, Ph.D. George Mason University, 2011 Dissertation Director: Dr. Lauren Cattaneo In the field of intimate partner violence, research often explores differences among ethnic groups in the experience of and responses to abuse. This study investigated the possibility that such differences are caused by variance in particular cultural values. Specifically, it examined how two cultural values (egalitarianism and individualism) are related to tolerance of and timeframe for disclosure of abuse. According to Hofstede‟s (1980, 1983) seminal work on cultural values, egalitarianism is defined as the extent to which members of the culture accept egalitarian distribution of power, and individualism is defined as an emphasis on personal autonomy, self-fulfillment and freedom of choice, including the extent to which family privacy and wellbeing is a priority. In order to assess at what point a victim might recognize abuse as problematic, we constructed a series of scenarios of increasing abuse severity levels, and asked a sample of graduate and undergraduate international students from three universities in the Washington DC area (N =203) to read and respond to them. Analyses showed that participants‟ concern about psychological abuse grew as severity of psychological abuse increased. The nature of this increase was predicted by their egalitarian values, showing that the more egalitarian people were the more quickly they became concerned. Results also showed that people‟s concern was high as soon as the abuse became physical and remained high as the violence worsened. In addition, mediational analysis found that tolerance of abuse was a full mediator of the relationship between egalitarianism and disclosure, showing that people‟s egalitarian beliefs influenced how tolerant they were of abuse, which in turn influenced when they indicated they would disclose. Last, in the absence of egalitarian values, high familial values predicted earlier disclosure of abuse. Among other implications for research and practice, these results suggest the utility of using cultural values to understand reactions to abuse and highlight the differences in people‟s reactions to levels of severity in psychological abuse and physical abuse. Further discussion of the findings, implications for research and practice are also provided.
Cosmopolitan capabilities in the HE classroom

This study, concerning the development of cosmopolitan citizenship, draws on theories of human development and capabilities (Sen 1999; Nussbaum 2000) from a social justice perspective, where individual wellbeing is articulated as having the freedom to live a life of one’s choosing. In the context of an English to Speakers of Other Languages ( ESOL ) classroom this involves paying attention to pedagogical strategies, power dynamics and curriculum content as a means of developing valued beings and doings (or capabilities and functionings as they are described in the literature). Sample activities are presented and evaluated to see to what extent they achieve the desired end. These include critical pedagogical interventions, students’ artefacts and extracts from focus group interviews, class reports and reflective journals. Results from the textual data offer research evidence of successful curriculum change, demonstrating that the learning that takes place there can make a difference: in terms of the learners’ identity development, capability enhancement and cosmopolitan citizenship.
Forecasting market reaction permanence based on initial reaction: The case of technology partnerships in finland

Technology alliances present in concurrent competitive global business environment an important corporate activity to enhance the innovative engineering and technology capabilities. In present research, there exist a large number of event studies conducted on the technology alliance announcements' effects on the stock price and hence corporate value creation for shareholders. However, the intra-day reaction to technology alliance announcements and persistence of this reaction over time as well as the forecasting of the later returns has eluded earlier research. This study uses technology alliances announced in NASDAQ HEX between 2006 and 2010 to examine the returns and their permanence on the share price over different intervals between 1 minute and 1 day after the announcements to study whether the initial reaction can be used to forecast later reaction on the share price returns. The research is using intra-day and day-level event study method to find out what level of Cumulative Abnormal Return (CAR) is generated by the announcements. As a difference to the earlier studies, this study aspires to show that the first reaction within minutes after the announcement can be used to forecast the returns in the longer term. This study investigates whether short term minute reaction can be used to forecast longer term reaction up to the following day.
Population pharmacokinetics of omeprazole in a random Iranian population.

BACKGROUND Omeprazole is metabolized predominantly by CYP2C19, a polymorphically expressed enzymes that show marked interindividual and interethnic variation. These variations cause a substantial differences that have been reported in the pharmacokinetics of omeprazole. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the pharmacokinetic parameters of omeprazole in a random Iranian population. METHODS From the 20 subjects, only 17 healthy unrelated individuals of either sex (9 females age range 22-24 years) participated in the study. After an overnight fasting, a sample of blood was collected. The subjects received a single oral dose of 40 mg capsule of omeprazole (losec) and blood samples were taken up to 8 hours. Omeprazole was analyzed by the HPLC method and population pharmacokinetic analysis was performed using population pharmacokinetic modelling software P-Pharm. RESULTS The mean value for apparent plasma clearance (CL/F) was 20.8±6.9 (L.h(-1)). The corresponding value for apparent volume of distribution (V/F), and t 1/2 beta were 21.6±7.5 (L) and 0.8±0.3 (h), respectively. A comparison of the weight normalized V/F and CL/F of omeprazole between males and females revealed that both parameters were significantly higher in females than males (p≤0.03). CONCLUSION These results show a substantial interindividual variability in omeprazole pharmacokinetics and this might affect the therapeutic effects of omeprazole as reported previously.
Construction and automated deployment of local potential functions for global robot control and navigation

This report presents a method for addressing integrated navigation and control tasks for constrained dynamical systems. Specifically, we focus on solving this problem for an idealized point robot subject to bounds on velocity and acceleration. The basic approach divides the overall task into discrete sub-tasks, and achieves those sub-tasks using feedback control policies. The method is based on sequential composition of safe, reliable, and robust feedback control policies. This report presents an extension to the method of sequential composition that allows a new class of feedback control policies with goal sets, not just goal points. Where previous work only allowed for goal sets that were completely contained in the domain of another control policy, this extension allows the deployment of policies whose goal intersects the domains of multiple policies. This extension allows for a larger class of policies to be deployed, making it easier to build near globally convergent overall control policies. This report also details the new local control policies, defined over cells in the configuration space. The policies cause a large subset of initial states to exit the cell in a specified manner. The resulting composition of local control policies induces a global control strategy that brings any initial condition contained in the union of the domains of the control policies the goal, provided that there is a single connected component of free space containing both the start and goal configurations. The underlying control policies are designed to respect environmental constraints such as obstacles, velocity bounds, and acceleration bounds. Control policies for fully actuated kinematic and dynamical systems are developed. © 2003 Carnegie Mellon
Determination of drotaverine hydrochloride in dosage forms by its quenching effect on the luminescence of terbium complex

Article history: Received on: 09/04/2013 Revised on: 30/04/2013 Accepted on: 16/05/2013 Available online: 30/05/2013 A new, simple, sensitive luminescence method for the determination of drotaverine hydrochloride is developed and validated. The Drotaverine hydrochloride can remarkably quench the luminescence intensity of the Tb ion in terbium complex with 1-bythyl-4-hydroxy-2-oxo-1,2-dihydroquinoline-3-carboxylic acid-(4-methyl-pyridin-2yl)-amide (R) in aqueous solutions containing urotropine buffer (pH 7.5) at λex=317 nm and λem=545 nm. Under optimal conditions, the quenching of luminescence intensity is directly proportion to the concentration of Drotaverine hydrochloride in the range of 0.5-300 μg/mL and detection limit is 0. 16μg/mL. This method was applied for the determination of Drotaverine hydrochloride in tablets “No-spa”.
Rent-Seeking in Developed and Developing Countries: Cross Section and Time Series Studies.

The property rights issue is one of the most important institutional differences between developed/developing countries. The violation of the property rights results with rentseeking. In order to see if the extent of rent-seeking differs significantly between developed and developing countries, I applied a cross section and a time series study with the intention to measure rent-seeking. I found that rent-seeking is low in developed countries whilst it is high in developing counterparts. Turkey, as a developing country was my special case to apply time series study to see if rentseeking vary over the years. In my additional work for Turkey, I found that there is a cointegrating relationship between rent- seeking as a percentage of the budget LnRt and government size ( LnGYt ), and GNP per capita income ( LnGNPCt ).
Spatially Adaptive Kernel Regression Using Risk Estimation

An important question in kernel regression is one of estimating the order and bandwidth parameters from available noisy data. We propose to solve the problem within a risk estimation framework. Considering an independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) Gaussian observations model, we use Stein's unbiased risk estimator (SURE) to estimate a weighted mean-square error (MSE) risk, and optimize it with respect to the order and bandwidth parameters. The two parameters are thus spatially adapted in such a manner that noise smoothing and fine structure preservation are simultaneously achieved. On the application side, we consider the problem of image restoration from uniform/non-uniform data, and show that the SURE approach to spatially adaptive kernel regression results in better quality estimation compared with its spatially non-adaptive counterparts. The denoising results obtained are comparable to those obtained using other state-of-the-art techniques, and in some scenarios, superior.
Psychodiagnostic assessment of children : dimensional and categorical approaches

Preface. Acknowledgments. Contributors. Chapter 1. Classification and Diagnosis Concepts (R. Kamphaus, et al.). Chapter 2. Interpretation of Findings (R. Kamphaus). Chapter 3. Mental Retardation/Intellectual Disability (J. Campbell). Chapter 4. Learning Disabilities (R. Kamphaus). Chapter 5. Autism Spectrum Disorders (J. Campbell) Chapter 6. Depressive Disorders (J. Campbell). Chapter 7. Anxiety Disorders (J. Campbell). Chapter 8. Traumatic Brain Injury (J. Bloom, et al.). Chapter 9. Eating and Feding Disorders (K. Moon & J. Campbell). Chapter 10. Diagnosis of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder and Its Subtypes (M. Garcia-Barrera & R. Kamphaus). Chapter 11. Conduct Disorder and Oppositional Defiant Disorder (C. James & J. Campbell). Chapter 12. Assessment and Diagnosis of Substance Use in Childhood and Adolescence (M. VanDeventer & R. Kamphaus). Chapter 13. Cluster of Child Adjustment (E. Dowdy, et al.). References. Author Index. Subject Index.
Reinforcement learning for true adaptive traffic signal control

The ability to exert real-time, adaptive control of transportation processes is the core of many intelligent transportation systems decision support tools. Reinforcement learning, an artificial intelligence approach undergoing development in the machine- learning community, offers key advantages in this regard. The ability of a control agent to learn relationships between control actions and their effect on the environment while pursuing a goal is a distinct improvement over prespecified models of the environment. Prespecified models are a prerequisite of conventional control methods and their accuracy limits the performance of control agents. This paper contains an introduction to Q-learning, a simple yet powerful reinforcement learning algorithm, and presents a case study involving application to traffic signal control. Encouraging results of the application to an isolated traffic signal, particularly under variable traffic conditions, are presented. A broader research effort is outlined, including extension to linear and networked signal systems and integration with dynamic route guidance. The research objective involves optimal control of heavily congested traffic across a two-dimensional road network—a challenging task for conventional traffic signal control methodologies.
Nonmarital Cohabitation, Marriage, and Health Among Adolescents and Young Adults

A considerable amount of research has established that the married live longer, healthier lives than the previously- and never-married. Similar research on the health benefits of cohabitation is sparse, and virtually nonexistent from adolescence into young adulthood despite substantial levels of cohabitation at these ages. Using longitudinal data from Add Health (1995-2001/2002) and generalized linear model techniques the authors investigate the impact of nonmarital cohabitation and marriage on a range of physical and mental health indicators and health behaviors. They also consider the mechanisms through which cohabitation affects health (i.e., selection and protection) and contrast the health effects of cohabitation with those reported for marriage at these relatively early ages. Results indicate that the health benefits of marriage among this sample are weaker than expected based on previous studies of marriage and health, but broader than those for cohabitation. This is not unexpected given the relatively young ages of marriage in Add Health compared to other datasets containing respondents at older ages, which comprise much of the previous marriage and health literature. Cohabitors report lower physical health than married or single individuals, but that cohabiting males receive some mental health benefits relative to singles. Cohabiting men and women also engage in some better health behaviors than singles. There also appears to be some selection into cohabitation and marriage by individuals with relatively poor mental health and health behaviors that may contribute to the observed health differentials.
Molecular Communication in Fluid Media: The Additive Inverse Gaussian Noise Channel

In this paper, we consider molecular communication, with information conveyed in the time of release of molecules. These molecules propagate to the transmitter through a fluid medium, propelled by a positive drift velocity and Brownian motion. The main contribution of this paper is the development of a theoretical foundation for such a communication system; specifically, the additive inverse Gaussian noise (AIGN) channel model. In such a channel, the information is corrupted by noise that follows an IG distribution. We show that such a channel model is appropriate for molecular communication in fluid media. Taking advantage of the available literature on the IG distribution, upper and lower bounds on channel capacity are developed, and a maximum likelihood receiver is derived. Results are presented which suggest that this channel does not have a single quality measure analogous to signal-to-noise ratio in the additive white Gaussian noise channel. It is also shown that the use of multiple molecules leads to reduced error rate in a manner akin to diversity order in wireless communications. Finally, some open problems are discussed that arise from the IG channel model.
SVM sensitivity analysis: an application to currency crises aftermaths

A currency crisis is an economic event where a country's fixed exchange rate is under pressure by speculators. In some cases, currency crises are followed by strong recessions (e.g., recent Asian and Argentinean crises), but in other cases they are not. This paper seeks to determine what are the most significant factors in explaining the consequences of currency crises on the economy. This paper collects data on 25 variables for 64 currency crises between 1970 and 1999. This research uses a novel algorithm with support vector machines (SVM) for selecting significant variables. This algorithm works well with datasets characterized by nonlinearity and low variable-observation ratio. Variables of banking size and fragility, international trade, and devaluation were the most significant. Variables of banking supervision, economic development, and IMF intervention were found less significant. The variable selection results of the algorithm were compared with all-best subsets variable selection. The results of our algorithm are more consistent with the economic literature than the results from all-best subsets.
A 9.2–12.7 GHz Wideband Fractional-N Subsampling PLL in 28 nm CMOS With 280 fs RMS Jitter

This paper describes a fractional-N subsampling PLL in 28 nm CMOS. Fractional phase lock is made possible with almost no penalty in phase noise performance thanks to the use of a 10 bit, 0.55 ps/LSB digital-to-time converter (DTC) circuit operating on the sampling clock. The performance limitations of a practical DTC implementation are considered, and techniques for minimizing these limitations are presented. For example, background calibration guarantees appropriate DTC gain, reducing spurs. Operating at 10 GHz the system achieves -38 dBc of integrated phase noise (280 fs RMS jitter) when a worst case fractional spur of -43 dBc is present. In-band phase noise is at the level of -104 dBc/Hz. The class-B VCO can be tuned from 9.2 GHz to 12.7 GHz (32%). The total power consumption of the synthesizer, including the VCO, is 13 mW from 0.9 V and 1.8 V supplies.
Response and resistance to NF-κB inhibitors in mouse models of lung adenocarcinoma.

UNLABELLED Lung adenocarcinoma is a leading cause of cancer death worldwide. We recently showed that genetic inhibition of the NF-κB pathway affects both the initiation and the maintenance of lung cancer, identifying this pathway as a promising therapeutic target. In this investigation, we tested the efficacy of small-molecule NF-κB inhibitors in mouse models of lung cancer. In murine lung adenocarcinoma cell lines with high NF-κB activity, the proteasome inhibitor bortezomib efficiently reduced nuclear p65, repressed NF-κB target genes, and rapidly induced apoptosis. Bortezomib also induced lung tumor regression and prolonged survival in tumor-bearing Kras(LSL-G12D/wt);p53(flox/flox) mice but not in Kras(LSL-G12D/wt) mice. After repeated treatment, initially sensitive lung tumors became resistant to bortezomib. A second NF-κB inhibitor, Bay-117082, showed similar therapeutic efficacy and acquired resistance in mice. Our results using preclinical mouse models support the NF-κB pathway as a potential therapeutic target for a defined subset of lung adenocarcinoma. SIGNIFICANCE Using small-molecule compounds that inhibit NF-κB activity, we provide evidence that NF-κB inhibition has therapeutic efficacy in the treatment of lung cancer. Our results also illustrate the value of mouse models in validating new drug targets in vivo and indicate that acquired chemoresistance may later influence bortezomib treatment in lung cancer.
A GTP-driven motor moves proteins across the outer envelope of chloroplasts

The translocation of proteins across cellular membranes is a key mechanistic problem for every cell. The preprotein translocon at the chloroplast outer envelope is responsible for precursor protein recognition and translocation across the outer envelope. We have reconstituted the translocation process into proteoliposomes from single subunits or by using the purified translocon. Precursor proteins are recognized by the Toc34 receptor in an initial GTP-dependent process. Translocation across the plane of the membrane then occurs through the Toc75 channel in a GTP-dependent process. Correspondingly, GTP hydrolysis of Toc proteoliposomes is 100-fold enhanced in the presence of preprotein. Complete translocation is demonstrated by processing of the precursor form to the mature form by the stromal processing peptidase and by protease resistance of the imported protein. Molecular chaperones are not involved in this translocation event. We show that Toc159 acts as a GTP-driven motor in a sewing-machine-like mechanism.
Phylogenetic relationships of the pipid frogs Xenopus and Silurana: an integration of ribosomal DNA and morphology.

Relationships of the pipid frog genus Silurana (= Xenopus tropicalis group of some authors) are of particular interest to developmental and molecular biologists because of the purported ancestral (i.e., unduplicated) karyotype of S. tropicalis relative to the genus Xenopus. Although most previous studies have assumed that Silurana is the sister group of Xenopus, recent morphological work suggests that Silurana is more closely related both to the South American genus Pipa and to the African genera Hymenochirus and Pseudhymenochirus than it is to Xenopus. We examined 1,486 bp of relatively variable regions of the ribosomal DNA array (including portions of the 18S and 28S genes, as well as part of an internal transcribed spacer) in Hymenochirus, Silurana, and Xenopus, as well as the outgroup genus Spea, in order to test the alternative hypotheses of relationships for Silurana. Maximum-parsimony analysis using bootstrapping and an analysis using Lake's method of invariants both significantly support the sister-group relationship between Xenopus and Silurana rather than the relationship suggested by morphology. Analysis of the combined morphological/molecular data matrix also significantly supports the Xenopus-Silurana relationship. Although our results are not inconsistent with the recognition of the genus Silurana to accommodate the species formerly called X. tropicalis and X. epitropicalis, the proposed relationships do not require the recognition of this genus in order to render Xenopus monophyletic.