Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Microstructure and Nonohmic Properties of SnO2-Ta2O5-ZnO System Doped with ZrO2

The microstructure and nonohmic properties of SnO2-Ta2O5-ZnO varistor system doped with different amounts of ZrO2 (0–2.0 mol%) were investigated. The proposed samples were sintered at 1400°C for 2 h with conventional ceramic processing method. By X-ray diffraction, SnO2 cassiterite phase was found in all the samples, and no extra phases were identified in the detection limit. The doping of ZrO2 would degrade the densification of the varistor ceramics but inhibit the growth of SnO2 grains. In the designed range, varistors with 1.0 mol% ZrO2 presented the maximum nonlinear exponent of 15.9 and lowest leakage current of 110 μA/cm2, but the varistor voltage increased monotonously with the doping amount of ZrO2.
Intracellular domain of desmoglein 3 (pemphigus vulgaris antigen) confers adhesive function on the extracellular domain of E-cadherin without binding catenins

For the extracellular (EC) domain of E-cadherin to function in homophilic adhesion it is thought that its intracytoplasmic (IC) domain must bind alpha- and beta-catenins, which link it to the actin cytoskeleton. However, the IC domain of pemphigus vulgaris antigen (PVA or Dsg3), which is in the desmoglein subfamily of the cadherin gene superfamily, does not bind alpha- or beta-catenins. Because desmogleins have also been predicted to function in the cell adhesion of desmosomes, we speculated that the PVA IC domain might be able to act in a novel way in conferring adhesive function on the EC domain of cadherins. To test this hypothesis we studied aggregation of mouse fibroblast L cell clones that expressed chimeric cDNAs encoding the EC domain of E-cadherin with various IC domains. We show here that the full IC domain of PVA as well as an IC subdomain containing only 40 amino acids of the PVA intracellular anchor (IA) region confer adhesive function on the E-cadherin EC domain without catenin-like associations with cytoplasmic molecules or fractionation with the cell cytoskeleton. This IA region subdomain is evolutionarily conserved in desmogleins, but not classical cadherins. These findings suggest an important cell biologic function for the IA region of desmogleins and demonstrate that strong cytoplasmic interactions are not absolutely necessary for E- cadherin-mediated adhesion.
Feeling controlled in marriage: A phenomenon specific to physically aggressive couples?

Spouses in maritally happy nonaggressive (H; n = 21), distressed nonaggressive (DNA; n = 16), and distressed aggressive (DA; n = 20) marriages were interviewed about their perceptions of their spouse as controlling. Four areas of spousal control were assesed: involvement in decision making, relationships with family and friends, freedom to plan activities independently, and sense of competence and self-respect. Overall, as expected, spouses in happy marriages reported feeling less controlled than spouses in the 2 distressed groups. Few gender differences were obtained, with the exception that wives in aggressive marriages were more likely to report that their husbands controlled their sense of competence and self-respect. Differences between the DA and DNA groups depended on the specific area of control. Wives in the aggressive couples were significantly more likely than their husbands to state that their spouse's aggression was an attempt to control them.
Gaining agency through healthy embodiment in groups for depressed women

The paper explores the effect of group participation on depressed women's ‘doing depression’ and ‘doing pleasure’ in Finland over three time periods. Quantitative data and qualitative data are analysed. To assess statistically the differences between the time periods, the Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-ranks z-test is applied to the quantitative data. Coping with emotions through self-focused attention, depressed women are reluctant to initiate instrumental behaviour. They tend to respond to their lives in a ruminative way. Moving towards pleasure rather than depression characterized women's activities as a result of the group process; they learned to embody health, while envisaging hope for the future. Our emphasis on embodiment allows us to consider agency as a contemporary group therapeutic effect as well as to contextualize psychotherapy research within post-modern thinking. While the findings do not provide an indisputable list of the ways women's activities changed over time or all the advantages of group participation, they do suggest areas for future exploration in connection with depressed women's healthy embodiment in a healing group context and advance an understanding of how the experience and duration of depression can be altered if the public and private boundaries of depressed women's embodied routines are broken down and self-isolation is challenged.
The Effect of Carbohydrate Supplementation on Multiple Sessions and Bouts of Resistance Exercise

The effects of carbohydrate (CHO) supplementation on multiple sets of resistance training exercise during the second training session on a given training day were examined with 6 resistance-trained men (mean ± SEM; age: 24.3 ± 2.1 years; height: 176.9 ± 1.6 cm; body mass: 82.6 ± 2.8 kg). The subjects participated in a randomized, counterbalanced, double-blind protocol with testing days separated by at least 1 week. A CHO supplement consisting of 0.3 g? kg body mass−1 or placebo (P) was ingested during the morning training session, 4 hours of recovery, and the sets of squats performed to exhaustion (STE). The STE consisted of sets of 10 repetitions of squats performed at 55% of 1 repetition maximum, with a 3-minute rest between sets, performed to muscular failure. Performance measured in number of sets (CHO: 18.7 ± 4.8; P: 11.3 ± 2.7), repetitions (CHO: 198.7 ± 46.8; P: 131.0 ± 27.2), and duration (CHO: 77.7 ± 19.4 minutes; P: 46.1 ± 8.9 minutes) were statistically different between the CHO and P trials. The results suggest that CHO supplementation enhances the performance of multiple STEs during the second workout on a given day.
Neural Network L 1 Adaptive Control of MIMO Systems with Nonlinear Uncertainty

An indirect adaptive controller is developed for a class of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) nonlinear systems with unknown uncertainties. This control system is comprised of an L 1 adaptive controller and an auxiliary neural network (NN) compensation controller. The L 1 adaptive controller has guaranteed transient response in addition to stable tracking. In this architecture, a low-pass filter is adopted to guarantee fast adaptive rate without generating high-frequency oscillations in control signals. The auxiliary compensation controller is designed to approximate the unknown nonlinear functions by MIMO RBF neural networks to suppress the influence of uncertainties. NN weights are tuned on-line with no prior training and the project operator ensures the weights bounded. The global stability of the closed-system is derived based on the Lyapunov function. Numerical simulations of an MIMO system coupled with nonlinear uncertainties are used to illustrate the practical potential of our theoretical results.
Different influence of backward masking on visual pattern recognition in the early stages of presenile dementia and normal ageing

The effect of backward masking with illumination of all fields or with a checkerboard pattern, respectively, on the recognition of pattern + or T was measured on four groups of subjects: 21 presenile onset DAT patients, 16 patients with a questionable vascular dementia of the same age (CVD group), 15 age‐matched control subjects (EC group) and 16 younger control subjects (YC group, mean age 22 years). The pattern stimulus had a duration of 20 ms and was followed by the masking stimulus pattern (20 ms duration) with increasing intervals in steps of 5 ms. The mean recognition threshold (RT) for each of the four possible pattern–mask combinations was measured in five trials. The RTs decreased within the five trials in all groups. DAT patients and CVD patients adapted with different speeds during the five trials. We found a small significant RT difference between elder and younger control subjects, whereas patients had increased RTs in the first trial and differences in the four variants in the further trials compared with age‐matched controls. The test contributes to a set of data for diagnosis and differential diagnosis in the early stages of presenile dementia.
Reproducibility of grading systems in oral epithelial dysplasia

Objective: To assess inter and intra observer variability in grading oral epithelial dysplasia (OED) using Smith and Pindborg grading system, WHO classification system and Brothwell DJ et al. classification system. Study design: In the study 45 histological tissues of dysplasia, 15 each of mild, moderate and severe dysplasia were coded and blindly graded by three observers in three grading systems. Further on the same observers graded 15 slides again of the previous 45 for analyzing the reproducibility in the three grading systems. The individual significance of various indicators of dysplasia among various grades of dysplasia was also assessed. Result: Inter observer agreement was significantly higher in Brothwell system as compared to WHO and Smith and Pindborg system. Intra observer agreement was significantly higher in Smith and Pindborg system, but the predictability and the probability index was distributed over a larger range in this system. Each indicator of dysplasia was also found to be statistically significant (P<0.05) for grading dysplasia. Conclusion: The present study puts forth the inherent intricacies in the grading of oral premalignant lesions. Key words:Carcinoma, dysplasia, grading systems, reproducibility.
Trust in Uzbekistan

Although trust is a lively area of research, it is rarely investigated in countries outside of commonly available cross-national public-opinion datasets. In an effort to fill this empirical void and to draw conclusions concerning the general determinants of trust, the current article employs detailed survey data from a frequently overlooked Central Asian country, Uzbekistan, to test the relationship between particularized trust and demographic traits previously identified as influential. While a number of Uzbek demographic characteristics coincide with previously identified determinants of trust, age and education yield negative effects not previously found. Interestingly, individual-level demographic variables become insignificant when controlling for regional, religious, and linguistic variation. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical implications.
THE MIXING APPROACH TO STOCHASTIC VOLATILITY AND JUMP MODELS

This article introduces mixing theorems, which offer both a theoretical and computational approach to certain advanced option models. Before explaining them, we first review a little background about option pricing theory. The Black-Scholes-Merton family of models is a wellknown and sensible starting framework for understanding option prices. The framework relies on the assumption that the underlying stock price (or security price) follows a process known as geometric Brownian motion (GBM). This model has some very strong points in its favor: (i) it’s consistent with stocks as limited liability securities (and so the prices never fall below zero), (ii) it has uncorrelated returns, which are a compelling consequence of highly efficient markets with strong statistical support over many time scales, and (iii) it’s very tractable computationally.
Scoring Constructed Responses Using Expert Systems

The use of constructed-response items in large scale standardized testing has been hampered by the costs and difficulties associated with obtaining reliable scores. The advent of expert systems may signal the eventual removal of this impediment. This study investigated the accuracy with which expert systems could score a new, nonmultiple-choice item type. The item type presents a faulty solution to a computer programming problem and asks the student to correct the solution. This item type was administered to a sample of high school seniors enrolled in an Advanced Placement course in Computer Science who also took the Advanced Placement Computer Science (APCS) examination. Results indicated that the expert systems were able to produce scores for between 82% and 95% of the solutions encountered and to display high agreement with a human reader on the correctness of the solutions. Diagnoses of the specific errors produced by students were less accurate. Correlations with scores on the objective and free-response sections of the APCS examination were moderate. Implications for additional research and for testing practice are offered.
Personal learning environments: design and use / Los entornos personales de aprendizaje en la educación superior: del diseño al uso

Abstract This study focuses on the uses that two groups of higher education students make of technological resources offered by an institution to build their own personal learning environments. The main thesis is that these uses depend on the techno-pedagogical design of the teaching and learning process in which the technological resources are framed. In order to explore and illustrate this thesis two instructional sequences have been analysed. Both use the same technological design, the Elgg platform, which allows users to select and organize a set of resources or widgets according to their interests and needs. The results show that in both cases the uses that students make of technology are related to the characteristics and requirements of the particular techno-pedagogical designs. We conclude that the key is not to offer technological resources to the students so they can build their own personal learning environments, but to design activities that attract and induce them to build these personal environments and to guide and support the process of construction.
Cholesterol reduction rapidly improves endothelial function after acute coronary syndromes. The RECIFE (reduction of cholesterol in ischemia and function of the endothelium) trial.

BACKGROUND Cholesterol lowering reduces coronary events. One mechanism could be improvement of endothelial function. In line with this hypothesis, this study investigates whether cholesterol reduction can result in rapid improvement of endothelial function after acute coronary syndromes. METHODS AND RESULTS Patients with acute myocardial infarction or unstable angina and total cholesterol levels at admission >/=5.2 mmol/L or LDL >/=3.4 mmol/L were randomized to placebo (n=30) or pravastatin 40 mg daily (n=30) for 6 weeks. Brachial ultrasound was used to measure endothelium-dependent flow-mediated dilatation (FMD) and response to endothelium-independent nitroglycerin. Changes in the levels of markers of platelet activation, coagulation factors, and plasma endothelin levels were also assessed. Total and LDL cholesterol levels were similar at admission and before randomization in both groups. With pravastatin, but not with placebo, they decreased by 23% (P<0.05) and 33% (P<0.01), respectively. FMD was unchanged with placebo, 5.43+/-0.74% (mean+/-SEM) to 5.84+/-0.81%, but increased with pravastatin, 4.93+/-0.81% to 7.0+/-0.79% (P=0.02), representing a 42% relative increase. Responses to nitroglycerin were similar during the time course of the study in the 2 groups. Markers of platelet activity, coagulation factors, and endothelin levels were not affected by pravastatin. CONCLUSIONS Cholesterol reduction with pravastatin initiated early after acute coronary syndromes rapidly improves endothelial function after 6 weeks of therapy.
Optimizing Multivariate Performance Measures from Multi-View Data

To date, many machine learning applications have multiple views of features, and different applications require specific multivariate performance measures, such as the F-score for retrieval. However, existing multivariate performance measure optimization methods are limited to single-view data, while traditional multi-view learning methods cannot optimize multivariate performance measures directly. To fill this gap, in this paper, we propose the problem of optimizing multivariate performance measures from multi-view data, and an effective method to solve it. We propose to learn linear discriminant functions for different views, and combine them to construct an overall multivariate mapping function for multi-view data. To learn the parameters of the linear discriminant functions of different views to optimize a given multivariate performance measure, we formulate an optimization problem. In this problem, we propose to minimize the complexity of the linear discriminant function of each view, promote the consistency of the responses of different views over the same data points, and minimize the upper boundary of the corresponding loss of a given multivariate performance measure. To optimize this problem, we develop an iterative cutting-plane algorithm. Experiments on four benchmark data sets show that it not only outperforms traditional single-view based multivariate performance optimization methods, but also achieves better results than ordinary multi-view learning methods.
Design and Implementation of Resistance Mechanisms against Malicious Code Attack for Secure SoC

Although code download can improve the applicable flexibility of the secure SoC, it also brings up new secure threats to the inner sensitive information and resource. In order to resist malicious code attack, the logic design of secure memory management of different levels is presented using software and hardware co-design method, and some access strategies for identification and so on are proposed. combining the hardware logic with the strategies, the secure function of code download and sensitive information protection is performed, and it can resist malicious code attack for the secure SoC effectively.
Cell-Specific Establishment of Poliovirus Resistance to an Inhibitor Targeting a Cellular Protein

ABSTRACT It is hypothesized that targeting stable cellular factors involved in viral replication instead of virus-specific proteins may raise the barrier for development of resistant mutants, which is especially important for highly adaptable small (+)RNA viruses. However, contrary to this assumption, the accumulated evidence shows that these viruses easily generate mutants resistant to the inhibitors of cellular proteins at least in some systems. We investigated here the development of poliovirus resistance to brefeldin A (BFA), an inhibitor of the cellular protein GBF1, a guanine nucleotide exchange factor for the small cellular GTPase Arf1. We found that while resistant viruses can be easily selected in HeLa cells, they do not emerge in Vero cells, in spite that in the absence of the drug both cultures support robust virus replication. Our data show that the viral replication is much more resilient to BFA than functioning of the cellular secretory pathway, suggesting that the role of GBF1 in the viral replication is independent of its Arf activating function. We demonstrate that the level of recruitment of GBF1 to the replication complexes limits the establishment and expression of a BFA resistance phenotype in both HeLa and Vero cells. Moreover, the BFA resistance phenotype of poliovirus mutants is also cell type dependent in different cells of human origin and results in a fitness loss in the form of reduced efficiency of RNA replication in the absence of the drug. Thus, a rational approach to the development of host-targeting antivirals may overcome the superior adaptability of (+)RNA viruses. IMPORTANCE Compared to the number of viral diseases, the number of available vaccines is miniscule. For some viruses vaccine development has not been successful after multiple attempts, and for many others vaccination is not a viable option. Antiviral drugs are needed for clinical practice and public health emergencies. However, viruses are highly adaptable and can easily generate mutants resistant to practically any compounds targeting viral proteins. An alternative approach is to target stable cellular factors recruited for the virus-specific functions. In the present study, we analyzed the factors permitting and restricting the establishment of the resistance of poliovirus, a small (+)RNA virus, to brefeldin A (BFA), a drug targeting a cellular component of the viral replication complex. We found that the emergence and replication potential of resistant mutants is cell type dependent and that BFA resistance reduces virus fitness. Our data provide a rational approach to the development of antiviral therapeutics targeting host factors.
Effectiveness of the bag-of-words approach on the object search problem in 3D domain

In this work, we investigate the application of the Bag-of-Words approach for object search task in 3D domain. Image retrieval task solutions, operating on datasets of thousands and millions images, have proved the effectiveness of Bag-of-Words approach. The availability of low cost RGB-D cameras is a rise of large datasets of 3D data similar to image corpuses (e.g. RoboEarth). The results of such an investigation could be useful for many robot scenarios like place recognition from a large dataset of samples of places acquired during the long-term observation of an environment. The first goal of our research presented in this paper is focused on the sensitivity of the Bag-of-Words approach to various parameters (e.g. spacial sampling, surface description etc.) with respect to precision, stability and robustness. The experiments are carry out on two widely-used datasets in object instance identification task in 3D domain.
N‐Syndecan and HB‐GAM (Heparin‐Binding Growth‐Associated Molecule) associate with early axonal tracts in the rat brain

Heparin‐Binding Growth‐Associated Molecule (HB‐GAM)/pleiotrophin is an 18 kDa extracellular matrix‐ and cell‐surface‐associated protein shown to enhance neurite outgrowth of perinatal forebrain neurones in vitro. The heparan sulphate proteoglycan N‐syndecan ( Raulo et al. 1994 ) has been isolated as a receptor/coreceptor for the HB‐GAM. We have investigated, whether HB‐GAM and N‐syndecan could have a similar role in neurite outgrowth and axon guidance in early axonal tracts of brain. In the present study N‐syndecan was found to be spatiotemporally associated with the developing axonal tracts already on embryonic day 9 in rat, as revealed by coexpression with class III β‐tubulin, which is one of the earliest neuronal markers ( Easter et al. 1993 ; Brittis et al. 1995 ). Later, N‐syndecan and HB‐GAM were detected in the first afferent serotonergic projections arising from the pontine raphe nuclei. The expression pattern of HB‐GAM peaked in the developing rhombencephalon at embryonic stage (E) 13–14. At the same time, N‐syndecan was expressed in the developing raphe neurones growing neurites towards the diencephalon along HB‐GAM immunoreactive pathways. When rhombencephalic neurones were cultured on decreasing concentrations of substrate‐bound HB‐GAM, E13 neurones showed a significantly better neurite outgrowth response than E11, E16 or E18 neurones. The neurite outgrowth of raphe neurones in vitro was inhibited by adding soluble heparin or N‐syndecan into the culture medium, whereas addition of chondroitin sulphate had no effect. In a simple pathway assay, E13 raphe neurones selectively preferred attaching and growing neurites on pathways containing HB‐GAM as compared with regions containing either laminin or fibronectin alone. Our results suggest that HB‐GAM may function as a developmentally regulated cue for rhombencephalic neurones that possess N‐syndecan on their cell membrane.