Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
East, west, boom and bust: the spread of house prices and rents in Ireland, 2007–2012

As the Global Financial Crisis has shown, housing market bubbles can have widespread economic consequences. Housing submarkets matter but economic theory is divided on how the spread of prices between low- and high-value segments varies with the market cycle and few studies examine the issue. This paper addresses that gap, using a detailed data-set of over one million property listings for Ireland from 2006 to 2012. Using hedonic methods, controlling for time and attributes, standardised prices for over 1100 sales zones and 300 lettings zones are calculated and then compared for mid-2007 and mid-2012. There are four key findings. Although, firstly, the spread of prices across different property sizes increased significantly between bubble and crash, the spread of rents, secondly, fell. There was, thirdly, at most a small fall in the spread of both prices and rents across space. Lastly, in both periods, the spread of rents was constrained relative to that of prices, particularly in the upper tail. The evidence from Ireland indicates that the relative gap between low- and high-value segments grew in the crash. This is important for macro-prudential policy. There are also local implications, as Ireland deals with legacy supply issues, predominantly in low-value segments.
Hypoglycemic profile and ameliorative potential of aqueous garlic extract on sperm characteristics in glibenclamide treated diabetic male rats

This study was carried out to determine the protective effect of aqueous garlic extract on testicular and spermatogenic changes in glibenclamide treated diabetic male rats. Thirty matured male rats were used in this study and were assigned into five groups of six rats each. Diabetes was induced in groups 1, 2, 3, 5 but not induced in group 4. Rats in group 1 were treated with glibenclamide (0.6 mg/kg) daily for 21 days. Rats in group 2 were treated with glibenclamide (0.6 mg/kg) and garlic extracts (Allium sativum) at the dose of 300 mg/kg for 21 days. Rats in group 3 were untreated diabetic given distilled water. Rats in group 4 were the normal control, given distilled water. Rats in group 5 were treated with garlic (300 mg/kg) dissolved in distilled water. On day 21 post treatment, there was a significant (p < 0.05) decrease in the fasting blood sugar (FBS) level of glibenclamide treated group when compared to garlic treated group and diabetic untreated group but there was a significant (p < 0.05) decrease in the FBS level of co-administration of glibenclamide and garlic when compared to glibenclamide alone and garlic alone. There were significant (p < 0.05) increases in testicular sperm count, epididymal sperm count and percentage sperm motility of group 2 when compared to groups 1, 3 and 5. From the above result, co-administration of glibenclamide and garlic extract produced optimum hypoglycemic activity and protective effect on testicular sperm and epididymal sperm counts, and percentage sperm motility in diabetic male rats. Key words: Diabetes, fasting blood sugar (FBS), garlic, glibenclamide, sperm count, sperm motility.
Molecular intervention in Pierce's Disease

Pierce's Disease (PD) is one of the most devastating diseases threatening grapevines in the USA caused by the Gram negative bacterium Xylella fastidiosa. There is no effective control method for Pierce’s Disease and control is mainly achieved by suppressing transmission of the glassy winged sharpshooter (GWSS) insect vector. The study of the surface proteins of X. fastidiosa may provide targets that may be attractive sites for intervention. MopB is an outer membrane protein, which has been identified on the X. fastidiosa surface. Blocking MopB with antibodies may prevent or reduce transmission of the pathogen. The main goal of this research was to generate recombinant antibodies to be used to investigate the interaction of MopB with the plant and GWSS. Towards this goal, recombinant MopB has been produced and used with sera from five mice immunized with whole heat killed X. fastidiosa in an Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent assay (ELISA). The ELISA results revealed the presence of antibodies against the recombinant MopB protein. In vitro combinatorial antibody ribosome display libraries were assembled from immunoglobulin transcripts rescued from the spleens of mice immunized with heat-killed X. fastidiosa. The libraries were used in a single round of selection against the outer-membrane protein MopB, resulting in the isolation of a panel of recombinant antibodies. The potential use of selected anti- MopB antibodies was demonstrated by the successful application of the 4XfMopB3 antibody in ELISA, Western blot and immunofluorescence assays. Pantoea agglomerans, a candidate bacterium for PD paratransgenic approach was engineered to express and secrete selected anti-MopB (4XfMopB3) single chain antibody. The expression cassette that include the pelB secretion signal was created and tested for its efficiency in secreting the 4XfMopB3 antibody in E. coli and P. agglomerans. The 4XfMopB3 antibody was successfully expressed and secreted in E. coli while it was only expressed in P. agglomerans.
Forbidden tears: From ancient Finnish lamenting to contemporary transpersonal grief work

The post-Freudian stoic, tearless responses to death and grieving seem to dominate some Western responses to loss. The ancient Finno-Karelian lamenting traditions not only recognize weeping, but, more importantly, melodic weeping with words, as a necessary part of the rites of passage, such as funerals, weddings, conscripts or other occasions. The lament tradition offers a transpersonal alternative to express grieving, recognizing not only the spiritual needs of the mourner, but also the deceased. The ancient tradition is modified for contemporary transpersonal grief work to be aided by the Grief Work Prism of Consciousness checklist.
Automatic Generation of Exercises for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs)

There has been a lot of research made on random graph generation, however most existing generators only oﬀer a probabilistic expectation that a certain property will exist in the ﬁnal graph. Therefore, this graphs are not adequate to be used as exercises in introductory algorithms courses since their properties may not relate to the algorithms being studied. We propose new algorithms that generate graphs parameterized by speciﬁc properties, specially selected for classes’ exercises. Our algorithms generate unweighted, undirected, connected graphs and weighted, directed graphs. We evaluated our algorithms by implementing a set of tools which were used in an introductory algorithms’ course lectured at our University. Our tools were used to evaluate the current automatic grading process, to generate the graphs used to grade students’ solutions for curricular exercises and to ﬁnd problems in those solutions with small inputs. The results were highly positive.
The Image of Death: Study Forms of Family Communication about Understanding and Meaning of Diabetes Mellitus in Mekarsari Village, West Java

Diabetes Mellitus falls into the category of noncommunicable diseases. Diabetes Mellitus is a disease that have a high risk of death. However, Diabetes Mellitus can be prevented by the application of a healthy lifestyle. The personage who has important role in setting a healthy lifestyle is a family. The role of family in preventing Diabetes Mellitus is by communicating, maintaining, and regulating healthy consumption patterns in each family. This research is done by using qualitative method, which is with case study model. Methods of data retrieval conducted by using in-depth interviews and observations involving the residents of Gambung, Mekarsari Village, Pasir Jambu Subdistrict, Bandung Regency, West Java. The sampling method was conducted by purposive sampling in accordance with the need of answer the research questions by the people residing in the area of Mekarsari Village. The author finds a form of communication that gives a picture of the insight of society in the village of Mekarsari about Diabetes Mellitus, which are the image of death. The informants feel afraid to do prevention of Diabetes Mellitus from the beginning by checking blood sugar levels. It happens because of the knowledge that they get through the empirical knowledge / experience that = the deaths is caused by the Diabetes Mellitus. Whereas the death is not really caused by the Diabetes Mellitus but it occurs because of low family understanding of the Diabetes Mellitus.so that the form of communication that occurs within the family in the environment is a form of communication that links between Diabetes Mellitus disease with a high risk of death. This has an impact on the lack of community figures in checking early, because they believe by knowing the disease gives effect to them will be unfavorable to individuals in the family. Keywords— diabetes mellitus; disease; family; communication
A note on the nonparametric estimation of the bivariate distribution under dependent censoring

Consider a random vector (T 1, T 2), and assume that both T 1 and T 2 are subject to random right censoring. We propose new estimators of the bivariate and marginal distributions of T 1 and T 2. The estimators do not require the common assumption of independence between the vector of survival and censoring times, but allow for a certain type of dependent censoring. The proposed estimator of the marginal distribution generalizes the estimator of Cheng (1989). The estimators have intuitive, closed form expressions and are easy to compute. The weak convergence of the estimators is obtained. As an application we discuss the estimation of the regression coefficients in a polynomial regression model, when both the response and the covariate are subject to censoring.
Influence of Alcohol on Cognitive Functioning and Neural Functional Connectivity in Adolescents

Author(s): Nguyen-Louie, Thanh Tam | Advisor(s): Tapert, Susan F. | Abstract: Rationale: Neurodevelopment may be shaped by environmental factors such as alcohol intake. More than 20% of U.S. high school students began drinking before age 14. Adults who initiated drinking before age 14 are four times more likely to develop psychosocial and psychiatric difficulties than those who began drinking after turning 20. Little is known, however, about how the age of alcohol use onset influences brain development.Design: This study prospectively examined the effects of alcohol use onset age on neurocognitive functioning in healthy adolescent drinkers. Youth underwent a neuropsychological battery and neuroimaging session at baseline (M = 13.6 years-old, SD = 0.8), before substance use initiation, and at follow-up (M = 20.2 years-old, SD = 1.5), to evaluate changes in frontoparietal context-dependent functional connectivity (cdFC) during a visual working memory task, and neuropsychological performance. Hierarchical linear regressions examined if earlier ages of onset for first and regular alcohol use adversely influenced neurocognition and functional connectivity, above and beyond baseline neurocognition, substance use severity, and familial and social environment factors.Results: As hypothesized, an earlier age of first drinking onset predicted poorer performances in psychomotor speed and visual attention (psl.05; N = 215) and an earlier age of weekly drinking onset predicted poorer performances in cognitive inhibition and working memory, controlling for baseline neuropsychological performance, drinking duration, and past-year marijuana use (psl.05; N = 127). Age of first and regular drinking onset did not significantly predict follow-up frontoparietal cdFC. Exploratory whole brain analyses suggested that, as hypothesized, earlier ages of regular drinking onset were associated with higher cdFC between subcortical and fronto-temporal areas, and linked to poorer neuropsychological performance. Conclusion: This was the first study to assess the association between age of onset on neurocognition and cdFC in adolescents. Initiation of any or weekly alcohol use at younger ages are risk factors for poorer neuropsychological functioning and subcortical-cortical hyper-connectivity. This may have important implications for public policies related to the legal drinking age and prevention programming, as this study suggests that early onset of drinking increases risk alcohol-related neurocognitive vulnerabilities. Further studies are needed to replicate these preliminary findings.
The relationship between community sporting event participants and the media. The case of Abu Dhabi

ABSTRACT The present study proposes a combined effort of a theory of media portrayal implemented into the ‘Event-tourist career trajectory model’ developed by [Getz, D. , & Andersson, T. D. (2010). The event-tourist career trajectory: A study of high-involvement amateur distance runners. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, 10(4), 468–491]. The relation between sport and media has been mainly concentrated in studies of the history of sport, gender studies, cultural and leisure studies, but little is known about media influence on event-participating athletes. An online questionnaire was used to collect data from athletes at two community events organized in Abu Dhabi, Zayed Marathon and TriYas Triathlon in 2016. The questionnaire constituted 4 sections: motivational factors, media influence, travel style and behavioural changes, event and destination choice. Descriptive statistics (mean, SD and t-test) were calculated to understand statistically significant differences between runners and triathletes. Moreover, a factor analyses was performed for the 9 items measuring media influence in order to identify underlying dimensions of media items. Results show that athletes from different sport disciplines differ in some items, which confirm the fact that not all athletes have the same motivation, media preferences, travel styles and behaviour, but they may have a very similar attitude towards event and destination choices. Factor analyses also gives meaningful findings; it shows that active participants of community events participate more at sport events when they see a possibility to become popular via media. Theoretical and practical implementations are further researched.
Modelling Melodic Discrimination Tests: Descriptive and Explanatory Approaches

Melodic discrimination tests have been used for many years to assess individual differences in musical abilities. These tests are usually analysed using classical test theory. However, classical test theory is not well suited for optimizing test efficiency or for investigating construct validity. This paper addresses this problem by applying modern item response modelling techniques to three melodic discrimination tests. First, descriptive item response modelling is used to develop a short melodic discrimination test from a larger item pool. The resulting test meets the test-theoretic assumptions of a Rasch (1960) item response model and possesses good concurrent and convergent validity as well as good testing efficiency. Second, an explicit cognitive model of melodic discrimination is used to generate hypotheses relating item difficulty to structural item features such as melodic complexity, similarity, and tonalness. These hypotheses are then tested on response data from three melodic discrimination tests () using explanatory item response modelling. Results indicate that item difficulty is predicted by melodic complexity and melodic similarity, consistent with the proposed cognitive model. This provides useful evidence for construct validity. This paper therefore demonstrates the benefits of item response modelling both for efficient test construction and for test validity.
Data-Oriented Parsing with Discontinuous Constituents and Function Tags

Statistical parsers are e ective but are typically limited to producing projective dependencies or constituents. On the other hand, linguisti- cally rich parsers recognize non-local relations and analyze both form and function phenomena but rely on extensive manual grammar development. We combine advantages of the two by building a statistical parser that produces richer analyses. We investigate new techniques to implement treebank-based parsers that allow for discontinuous constituents. We present two systems. One system is based on a string-rewriting Linear Context-Free Rewriting System (LCFRS), while using a Probabilistic Discontinuous Tree Substitution Grammar (PDTSG) to improve disambiguation performance. Another system encodes the discontinuities in the labels of phrase structure trees, allowing for efficient context-free grammar parsing. The two systems demonstrate that tree fragments as used in tree-substitution grammar improve disambiguation performance while capturing non-local relations on an as-needed basis. Additionally, we present results of models that produce function tags, resulting in a more linguistically adequate model of the data. We report substantial accuracy improvements in discontinuous parsing for German, English, and Dutch, including results on spoken Dutch.
Evaluation of the effect of cholesterol supplementation on experimental pulmonary arterial hypertension

Cardiac cachexia (CC) is a serious complication of heart failure (HF), characterized by involuntary weight loss, independent of food intake and associated with poor prognosis. Given the lack of therapeutic strategies for CC, further research is needed to explore its complex pathophysiology and to test new preventive and therapeutic approaches. The cholesterol paradox is based on reports that low total cholesterol and low-density lipoprotein serum levels worsen prognosis in HF. Considering the endotoxin-lipoprotein hypothesis, which states that higher circulating levels of cholesterol and lipoproteins can attenuate the CC-related immune activation, we hypothesized that enhancing cholesterol intake would ameliorate HF and CC in experimental pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). This study aimed to test the endotoxin-lipoprotein hypothesis in vivo by evaluating functional and molecular effects of a cholesterol supplemented diet in monocrotaline (MCT)-induced rat PAH. Wistar Han rats were injected with MCT (60 mg/kg) or an equal volume of vehicle and, five days after, MCT-injected rats were randomly allocated to consume either normal diet or a cholesterol supplemented diet (cholesterol 2 % and cholic acid 0.25 %). Between the 25th and 30th day, animals underwent echocardiographic and haemodynamic evaluation. We assessed body weight (BW) evolution, peak of oxygen consumption, cardiomyocyte cross-sectional area and pulmonary arterioles wall-thickness. Plasma concentration of total cholesterol, high density lipoprotein-cholesterol (HDL-C), non-HDL cholesterol, triglycerides, tumour necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) and endotoxin LPS was also determined. The results showed that MCT effectively induced the development of PAH and right ventricle hypertrophy and failure, accompanied by a significant reduction of BW, which is related with CC. Cholesterol supplemented diet induced a significant increase of plasma total cholesterol, HDL-C and non-HDL cholesterol concentration, liver weight and left ventricle cardiomyocyte cross-sectional area. We found also a trend towards lower plasma levels of TNF-α and endotoxin LPS, suggesting that the higher lipoprotein content might reduce the inflammatory activation induced by endotoxin LPS. Further research is needed regarding cholesterol supplementation in CC, in order to clarify these effects.
Assessment of Soil Erosion Using RUSLE and GIS in Upper Manimuktha Subwatershed, Tamilnadu

Soil erosion is being considered as one of the most critical environmental hazards of modern times in the world. Among the predictive equation developed to estimate soil loss, the most used for hilly and plain areas, is the USLE. The USLE, a paper-based model, was computerized and updated subsequently called as RUSLE. The RUSLE factors (R, K, LS, C and P) were computed and presented by raster layer in a GIS environment, then multiplied together to predict soil erosion rates and maps. The R rainfall factor corresponding to rainfall values was calculated using regression equations. LS factor was estimated from the DEM. The C and P factors for various land use/cover with different slopes were collected from literatures on soil loss estimate using RUSLE in India. All the RUSLE factors were multiplied on pixel by pixel basis and in final the spatial distribution of the soil erosion was obtained. Output result was then reclassified into erosion class based on the erosion intensity values as slight, moderate, high, very high, severe and very severe. The predicted average annual soil erosion from the Muktha river sub-watershed 4C1A2e (Upper Manimuktha) is 95.04 ton hayr. This study can serve as effective deriving strategies for land planning and management in the environmentally sensitive soil eroded areas.
Trauma, Torture, and Transformation in the Forensic Assessor

In this article, I present the case study of an Ethiopian woman, reportedly a victim of torture in her country of origin, who was seeking political asylum in the United States. I evaluated this woman as part of a forensic psychological assessment for Immigration Court. The assessment was conducted to determine whether the woman's descriptions of her torture and the resulting symptoms of psychological trauma were consistent with a credible claim of political persecution. While maintaining a neutral stance required of forensic psychological examiners, I nonetheless had a powerfully transformative experience in the assessment role regarding the experience of human courage. This event led me to reexamine the meaning of neutrality in forensic psychological assessments involving victims of torture and perhaps in other forensic roles as well.
Design of a Ground Static Load Test for a 3 m Joined Wing Flexible Sensorcraft

Operational requirements for High Altitude, Long Endurance (HALE) aircraft capable of carrying advanced sensor arrays over large territorial areas can be achieved by light weight and geometrically unconventional aerostructures. The Boeing Joined Wing SensorCraft (JWSC) concept is one such example. However, the joined wing configuration presents design challenges due to its non-linear aeroelastic behaviour. Computational models to predict the non-linear aeroelastic behaviour have been developed and reported in the open literature, however experimental data to benchmark analytical predictions is still non-existent. The objective of this thesis is to design a Ground Static Load Test (GSLT), its apparatus and procedures to evaluate the structural response of a flexible joined wing sensorcraft, to understand its static behaviour in terms of displacements, strains and aft wing twist angles when subject to a 2.25g pull-up maneuver. A careful test plan matrix was designed including the appropriate boundary conditions, finite element solvers, ground static test rigs and data acquisition systems. The structural computational model was updated based on the linear deflections. Finally, the validity of the model updating process of a non-linear structure using linear displacements was assessed.
Temporal and Spatial[ Resolution Requirements for a Soil Moisture Mission

The temporal and spatial resolution requirements for a soil moisture mission are addressed through a synthetic identical twin data assimilation study. Simulations were made for observations with various temporal resolutions (1, 2,3,5, 10, 15,20 and 30 days), and spatial resolutions (0.5,6, 1218,30,60 and 120 minutes of arc). It was found that daily observations of surface soil moisture achieved the best predictions of soil moisture and evapotranspiration, with the greatest impact of temporal resolution being for 1 to 5 days. It was also fiound that observations with a spatial resolution less than the model resolution produced the best results, with spatial resolutions greater than the model resolution yieldhg only a slight degradation.