Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Service users’ experiences of the treatment decision-making process in psychosis: A phenomenological analysis

Objectives: We aimed to explore the treatment decision-making experiences of individuals with psychosis, and their implications for increasing service users’ autonomy through clinical practice and research. Design: A qualitative design was used to explore in depth service users’ experiences of treatment decision-making. Method: People with non-affective psychosis took part in semi-structured interviews that sought to elicit rich descriptions of their subjective experiences of treatment decision-making encounters. These were analysed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA). Results: The interviews of seven service users with multiple experiences of treatment for psychosis were analysed. Four themes emerged around influences on treatment decision-making: (1) a need to feel listened to; (2) psychotic experiences, treatment and stigma; (3) communication and support; (4) differing conceptions of recovery. There was an over-arching theme of empowerment. Conclusions: Influences on participants’ empowerment emerged at multiple levels, from their sense of self-worth to prevailing social constructions around psychosis. Service users’ participation in decision-making about treatment for psychosis might be enhanced where clinicians are able to pay close attention to disempowering aspects of their experience. The development of more comprehensive models of decisional capacity may support this endeavour.
Wife's labor supply and marital dissolution: evidence from the NLSY79

In response to the changing family and social structures in the United States, an accurate understanding of mechanisms and the driving forces of marrital dissolution is important in many aspects. For one, the knowledge helps policy and law makers to conjecture possible results of the legislation (e.g. unilateral divorce law, child alimony, or child custody), and the welfare system (e.g. welfare bene ts to children and women after divorce) on marriages, divorces, and labor supply. Our goal is to provide additional evidence to a debatable issue in labor and family economics: Does married women's labor supply increases the chance of their future divorces? or is the relationship the other way around? Prior studies have produced con icting results. We rst propose and estimate a dynamic model, namely a divorce hazard analysis, that allows us to predict the risks of marital dissolution at di erent stages during the marital life course as a function of endogenous wife's labor supply. By estimating the proposed model on a more recent data set, the NLSY79, we hope to address econometrics issues occured in earlier studies, as well as present new evidence for these competing claims.
New social movements and political opportunities in Western Europe

We present a number of concepts and hypotheses concerning the impact of the political opportunity structure on the mobilisation pattern of new social movements in Western Europe. The hypotheses refer to the general level of mobilisation in a given country, the general forms and strategies of action employed, the system level at which mobilisation is typically oriented and the development of the level of mobilisation across time. The hypotheses are tested in a comparative analysis of France, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland. The analysis reveals country-specific variations in the mobilisation patterns of new social movements, which are largely in line with the theoretical expectations and serve to confirm the relevance of the political process approach for the study of social movements.
DEVELOPMENT OF NONLINEAR PREDICTIVE MODEL-BASED FEEDFORWARD CONTROL FROM CLOSED-LOOP FREELY-EXISTING REAL DATA

Introduction The control of chemical processes in industry is a very important aspect of everyday operations. The ability to maintain control has an impact on process safety, product quality and plant profitability [1]. In recent years, many different advanced control techniques have been developed. Many chemical and biological processes exhibit nonlinear behavior, but model-based control schemes have often used linear models, which can be sufficient if the process is operated over a small range of inputs [2, 3]. Real processes also often exhibit complicated dynamic responses to changes in the process inputs, including nonlinear dynamics. The performance of any model-based controller is highly dependent on the model that is used to predict process behavior. The procedures for developing the model can be time-consuming and costly, requiring the process to be perturbed in order to determine cause-and-effect behavior between the process inputs and outputs. It is desirable to be able to identify the process model without causing significant upsets to everyday operations. Ideally, historical data from the plant database could be used to develop the models to be used for prediction of process output response to changes in the inputs. The advantages of using this historical data are numerous. The data is readily available, is collected frequently, covers the “typical” operating space of the process, and does not require specific perturbations of the process inputs. However, several problems can be encountered if plant historical data is used. The process inputs are likely to be highly correlated, and the range of the inputs may not be very broad. Distillation is an example of a process that would benefit from a model-based controller that can be built using plant historical data. The high degree of interaction between process variables makes it a complicated problem for control. There have been many applications of feedforward control to distillation processes. Among these, several have attempted to address the process response of product composition to various input disturbances such as feed flow and feed composition [4-6], but none have attempted to compensate for multiple input disturbances occurring simultaneously. The purpose of this work is to demonstrate a method of developing a nonlinear process model under highly correlated inputs that can be used for a feedforward controller that will compensate for multiple input disturbances simultaneously. The model can be developed using historical plant data collected under closed-loop conditions and still effectively determine cause-effect behavior between the inputs and output of the process.
Racial Disparity in Debt Collection Lawsuits : A Study of Three Metro Areas

Background: Debt collection lawsuits can result in serious damage for consumers. Judgments can have many consequences, but most significantly, they allow plaintiffs to garnish consumers’ wages and bank accounts. Although such suits number in the millions each year, strikingly little research has been done on the topic. How many judgments were obtained against debtors last year? No one knows. Nor can anyone say which companies sue the most, how much, or little, they sue over or even how common garnishments are. The primary goal of this analysis was to explore whether these suits disproportionately impact black communities. This report is part of a larger investigation by ProPublica into the largely hidden use of the courts by creditors and collectors to collect consumer debts and which segments of the population are affected by this process. Methods: To conduct this analysis, we examined court judgments arising from debt collection lawsuits in three large metropolitan areas: Chicago (Cook County, Illinois), St. Louis (St. Louis City and County, Missouri), and Newark (Essex County, New Jersey). Our study selected a five-year window of cases from 2008 through 20121. Results: In all three metropolitan areas, we found a disproportionate number of judgments in predominantly black communities when compared to white ones. This risk of judgment, we found, was twice as high in majority black census tracts as majority white census tracts, holding income constant. We also found that certain types of plaintiffs consistently showed more of a racial imbalance in their lawsuits than others. Conclusions: Our analysis clearly demonstrates the disparate impact of debt collection lawsuits on black neighborhoods. The cause of this disparate impact is not clear. However, we present evidence that the gap in assets between black and white households is likely a significant contributor. Our results, combined with the relative lack of research on debt collection lawsuits, illustrate the pressing need for further research2. 1Due to a peculiarity of the court system database, the Essex County window is slightly different: July 1, 2007, through June 30, 2012. 2We would like to thank the following people for their helpful advice and time in reviewing our work: William Darity, Jr. of Duke University, Robert Lawless of University of Illinois College of Law, Stefania Albanesi of Ohio State University, Peter Holland of the University of Maryland Francis King Carey Law School, Thomas Shapiro of Brandeis University, Ethan Cohen-Cole of Econ One, and J. Michael Collins and David Pate of the University of Wisconsin.
Early Option Exercise: Never Say Never

A classic result by Merton (1973) is that, except just before expiration or dividend payments, one should never exercise a call option and never convert a convertible bond. We show theoretically that this result is overturned when investors face frictions. Early option exercise can be optimal when it reduces short-sale costs, transaction costs, or funding costs. We provide consistent empirical evidence, documenting billions of dollars of early exercise for options and convertible bonds using unique data on actual exercise decisions and frictions. Our model can explain as much as 98% of early exercises by market makers and 67% by customers.
Team Learning within the Armed Forces Frontline Learning

Subjects such as knowledge management and learning organisations have become extremely important aspects of management literature from the start of the nineteen nineties. Writers such as Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) and Senge (1990) have ploughed the field for these terms. A striking definition of organisational learning is “making conscious use of learning processes on an individual, group, and systemic level, in order to continuously transform the organisation in a direction that becomes more satisfactory for its stakeholders all the time” (Dixon, 1997, p. 17).
Irrigation Patterns and Scheduling of a Telecontrolled Irrigation District in Northeastern Spain

AbstractOver the last 10 years, telecontrol systems have been incorporated into the majority of modern collective pressurized irrigation networks in Spain. This type of infrastructure provides many opportunities for irrigation management but actually, in Spain, is only used for standardized network operations. The Candasnos irrigation district (CID), located in northeastern Spain, is equipped with this system, and contains a variety of different pressurized systems. Telecontrol data and crop water requirements were used to analyze the evolution of irrigation performance (SIPI) of maize, alfalfa, and stone fruits. Irrigation guidelines for stone fruit were analyzed and compared with those of standard and regulated deficit irrigation (RDI) irrigation strategies. Ten solid-set irrigation systems were monitored to determine on-farm irrigation patterns. The average SIPI of maize, alfalfa, and peach was 83, 107, and 123%, respectively. The average SIPI showed a high irrigation performance, but the spatial and t.
Enumeration of sandy sediment bacteria: are the counts quantitative or relative?

Several tests were carrled out to enable evaluation of the precis~on with which sandy sediment bacteria could be enumerated. This represented the first attempt to place direct epifluorescence counts of benthic bacteria on a quantitative, rather than relative, ground. The tests cornb~ned in situ radioisotope ( [ ' H ] , [14C]) labeling of sediment bactena, bacterial dislodgment by ultrasonic treatment, and bacterial enumeration via fluorescent staining. The results provided direct and indirect evidence that the employed protocol for bacterial enumeration accounted for 88 to 98% of all bacteria present in sediments. The identified approach thus allowed for a rather complete quantification of sediment bacteria. Since this protocol was more effective that the alternative techniques used in earlier studies, sediment bacteria may have been repeatedly undercounted in the past.
Positive nonlinear CVFE scheme for an anisotropic seawater intrusion model with cross-diffusion in an unconfined aquifer

We consider a degenerate parabolic system modelling the ow of fresh and saltwater in an anisotropic porous medium in the context of seawater intrusion. We propose and analyze a nonlinear Control Volume Finite Element scheme. This scheme ensures the nonnegativity of the discrete solution without any restriction on the mesh and on the anisotropy tensor. Moreover It also provides a control on the entropy. Based on these nonlinear stability results, we show that the scheme converges towards a weak solution to the problem. Numerical results are provided to illustrate the behavior of the model and of the scheme.
Observation of interlayer excitons in 
MoSe2
 single crystals

So far, spatially indirect or charge transfer excitons are only known to exist in certain heterostructures. Here, via confocal reflection spectroscopy and quantitative comparison with theoretical analysis using the Dirac-Bloch equations, the authors identify a previously unknown species of spatially indirect exciton in bilayer to multilayer MoSe${}_{2}$ single crystals. They coexist with spatially direct ones at a lower energy, stable only because of the two-dimensional nature of electrons in layered materials. The interlayer exciton binding energy and oscillator strength are comparatively large, enabling convenient optical access to dipolar systems and potentially powerful cavity effects.
HUMAN UMBILICAL CORD MATRIX MESENCHYMAL STEM CELLS SUPPRESS THE GROWTH OF BREAST CANCER BY EXPRESSION OF TUMOR SUPPRESSOR GENES by NAOMI OHTA

Previous studies have shown that both human and rat umbilical cord matrix mesenchymal stem cells (UCMSC) possess the ability to control the growth of breast carcinoma cells. Comparative analysis of two types of UCMSC suggest that rat UCMSC-dependent growth regulation is significantly stronger than that of human UCMSC. Accordingly, the present study was designed to clarify their different tumoricidal abilities by analyzing gene expression profiles in two types of UCMSC. Gene expression profiles were studied by microarray analysis using Illumina HumanRef-8-V2 and RatRef-12 BeadChip for the respective UCMSC. The gene expression profiles were compared to untreated naïve UCMSC and those co-cultured with species-matched breast carcinoma cells; human UCMSC vs. MDA-231 human carcinoma cells and rat UCMSC vs. Mat B III rat carcinoma cells. The following selection criteria were used for the screening of candidate genes associated with UCMSC-dependent tumoricidal ability; 1) gene expression difference should be at least 1.5 fold between naive UCMSC and those co-cultured with breast carcinoma cells; 2) they must encode secretory proteins and 3) cell growth regulation-related proteins. These analyses screened 17 common genes from human and rat UCMSC. The comparison between the two sets of gene expression profiles identified that two tumor suppressor genes, adipose-differentiation related protein (ADRP) and follistatin (FST), were specifically up-regulated in rat UCMSC, but down-regulated in human UCMSC when they were co-cultured with the corresponding species’ breast carcinoma cells. The suppression of either protein by the addition of a specific neutralizing antibody in co-culture of rat UCMSC with Mat B III cells significantly abrogated UCMSC ability to attenuate the growth of carcinoma cells. Over-expression of both genes by adenovirus vector in human UCMSC enhanced their ability to suppress the growth of MDA-231 cells. In the breast carcinoma lung metastasis model generated with MDA-231 cells, systemic treatment with FST-over-expressing human UCMSC significantly attenuated the tumor burden. These results suggest that both ADRP and FST may play important roles in exhibiting stronger tumoricidal ability in rat UCMSC than human UCMSC and imply that human UCMSC can be transformed into stronger tumoricidal cells by enhancing tumor suppressor gene expression.
Document Clustering based on Genetic Algorithm using D-Individual

Document clustering using genetic algorithm shows good performance. However the genetic algorithm has problem of performance degradation by premature convergence phenomenon. In this paper, we proposed the document clustering based on Genetic Algorithm using D-Individual (DIGA) to solve this problem. Genetic algorithm is based on the diversity of population and the capability to convergence. Success of genetic algorithm depends on these two factors. If we use these factors efficiently, we can get a better solution in reduced execution time. We apply DIGA to Reuter-21578 text collection and demonstrate the effect of our clustering algorithm. The results show that our DIGA has better performance than traditional clustering algorithms (K-means, Group Average and genetic algorithm) in various experiments.
Experimental study on capillary flow through polymer microchannel bends for microfluidic applications

Microchannel bends of rectangular cross-section were fabricated on polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) by hot embossing, with a range of channel widths from 55 µm to 400 µm. The capillary movement of the interface between air and dyed water through the microchannels was recorded and analysed. The microfluidic flow behaviour as a function of the channel aspect ratio was studied. The evaluated Reynolds number was always less than 1.0 in each channel of every device. The air–water interface velocity in the devices was proportional to the channel aspect ratio. The air–water interface velocity shows a prominent increase at 90° separation angle. We observed an increasing trend of the air–water interface velocity with increasing channel aspect ratio. We have studied the separation of 10 µm polystyrene microparticles using a simple microchannel bend structure. We have obtained approximately 100% efficiency for the combined separation and clog-free blocking of 10 µm polystyrene microparticles using the above capillary flow behaviour in a modified microchannel bend structure.
ISOLATION AND IDENTIFICATION OF CHROMOBACTERIUM SP. FROM DIFFERENT ECOSYSTEMS

ABSTRACT Objectives: The study was aimed at isolating and identifying violacein-producing bacteria from the different ecosystems. Methods: The violet color pigment (violacein) producing bacteria was isolated and identified morphologically and genomically. Results: A total of ten bacterial Chromobacterium sp. were isolated from different sources such as soil and water. The violacein productivity was screened by the total isolates and the selected two strains were identified as Chromobacterium violaceum CV4 and Chromobacterium vaccinii CV5 by morphologically and genomically. Conclusion: In the present study, the two isolate was morphologically and genomically identified as Chromobacterium violaceum CV4 and Chromobacterium vaccinii CV5, last one was found to be the novel strain from natural sources which possess a high violacein producing capability. Keywords : Chromobacterium sp. , Violacein, Pigment production.
Regimes in Simple Systems

Abstract Dynamical systems possessing regimes are identified with those where the state space possesses two or more regions such that transitions of the state from either region to the other are rare. Systems with regimes are compared to those where transitions are impossible. A simple one-dimensional system where a variable is defined at N equally spaced points about a latitude circle, once thought not to possess regimes, is found to exhibit them when the external forcing F slightly exceeds its critical value F* for the appearance of chaos. Regimes are detected by examining extended time series of quantities such as total energy. A chain of k* fairly regular waves develops if F < F*, and F* is found to depend mainly upon the wavelength L* = N/k*, being greatest when L* is closest to a preferred length L0. A display of time series demonstrates how the existence and general properties of the regimes depend upon L*. The barotropic vorticity equation, when applied to an elongated rectangular region, exhibits.
Total concentration and bioavailability of lead in urban sewage sludge: Test case inthe WWTP of the city of Dolores Hidalgo, México

In recent years, the production of sludge from wastewater has greatly increased worldwide due to demand for better water quality and the imposition of stricter environmental laws. One of the main problems of pollution of the sewage sludge is the concentration and availability of heavy metals which may contain, because these sludges represent a risk to the environment and to human health. Hence the importance of finding alternatives to generate stable and non-hazardous waste for proper disposal or reuse in order to contribute to sustainable development. One of the alternatives for the disposal of sludge is its use for agricultural soil improvement, because they are an important source of nutrients due to its content of organic matter, macronutrients like N, P and K and some micronutrients such as Cu and Zn. However, it should be considered the risk posed by the use of sludge because may contain high concentrations of potentially toxic elements such as heavy metals, thus concentration and speciation studies of metals are needed to obtain more detailed information on their bioavailability. The sludge used in this study are samples from a urban-municipal WWTP in state of Guanajuato. This sludge was found to not meet the maximum permissible lead (Pb) content in dry basis according to the provisions of the NOM-004-SEMARNAT 2002, because they exceed the maximum lead limit by approximately 25%. The lead availability was determined by the speciation method of the Community Bureau of Reference(BCR) where it was observed that the exchangeable and reducible fraction occupy approximately 24% of the lead in the sludge sample. While the residual fraction and oxidizable fraction occupy 45% and 30%, respectively.
Computer Vision and Kinematic Sensing in Robotics

To use vision in a robotic setting it is important to achieve realtime performance. Real-time vision may be used to directly steer robots using for instance visual servoing techniques. In this thesis, an experimental vision setup using a stereo rig mounted on an industrial robot (ABB Irb-6) was built from ground up and then used to perform two experiments; visual servoing and collection of data for calibration of stereo rig and positioning of second robot (ABB Irb-2000) using visual feedback. The system is currently capable of achieving a ~15Hz visual feedback rate which could be easily extended into the 20Hz domain.
Analysis of a Clone-and-Own Industrial Automation System : An Exploratory Study

In industry the development of similar products is often addressed by cloning and modifying existing artifacts. This so called “cloneand-own” approach is often considered to be a bad practice, but is still perceived as a favorable and natural software reuse approach by many practitioners. In this paper, we present the research direction, context and related literature of an exploratory study on the analysis of an industry system developed using the clone-and-own approach. The main objective of our study is to understand and quantify the benefits and drawbacks of this approach, by analyzing the evolution and change characteristics of this system. We intend to present the initial results of this study at the seminar.