Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Parental Time or Money: What Matters More for Children's School Success?

Parental Time or Money: What Matters More for Children’s School Success? Aleksandra Holod Previous research suggests that the home environment explains up to one half of the association between poverty and low cognitive skills. Building on this research, this study provides a more nuanced analysis of the family processes through which socioeconomic status (SES) is associated with children’s academic outcomes by: 1) including maternal education and family income as predictors of parenting and children’s academic skills, and 2) separating the home environment into parental investments of time and materials. Data are drawn from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K; n=20,582). Structural equation modeling is used to examine the extent to which these parental investments mediate associations between markers of SES and children’s reading and math achievement. Models also test for moderation of the productivity of parental investments. Results indicate that SES is associated with children’s school success via a pathway in which maternal education influences the extent to which parents invest in learning materials for their children, and these learning materials in turn foster development of early literacy and numeracy skills. Parental time has an unexpected negative association with children’s achievement, which is explained in supplemental models. Family income and maternal education also moderate the productivity of parental investments, such that the negative effect of time and the positive effect of materials are magnified in more advantaged households. Findings suggest that the following interventions may be worthwhile policy priorities: 1) support for low-SES mothers’ pursuit of further education, and/or 2) provision of learning materials for children in disadvantaged families.
Service Level Agreement for Distributed Services: A Review

Cloud computing has change the strategy of the way of providing distributed services for many business and government agents. Cloud computing delivers a scalable and on demand services for most users in different domains. This new technology brings many challenges to service providers and customers especially for users who already own complicated legacy systems. This paper examines challenges related to the concepts of trust, SLA management, and cloud computing. We focus on SLA definition in cloud computing to achieve the aim of presenting a clear structure of SLA for cloud users and improve the way of building trustworthy relationship between service provider and customer. In this paper, we start with the presenting the importance of cloud computing and the need of SLA for cloud computing. Then, survey of cloud computing architecture is provided. Then, we discuss existing frameworks of service level agreements in different domains such as web services and grid computing. The last part of literature review discusses advantages and limitations of performance measurement models in SOA, distributed systems, grid computing, and cloud services. Finally, we summarize and conclude our work.
Narrow Grass Hedge Effects on Phosphorus and Nitrogen in Runoff Following Manure and Fertilizer Application

ABSTRACT: Runoff losses of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) from field applied manure can contribute to surface water pollution. Grass hedges may reduce runoff losses of nutrients and sediment. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of narrow switchgrass (Panicum virgatum L.) hedges (−0.75 m wide) on the transport of P and N from a field receiving beef cattle feedlot manure under tilled and no-till conditions. This study was conducted on a steep (12 % average slope) Monona silt loam (fine-silty, mixed, superactive, mesic Typic Hapludolls) soil near Treynor, Iowa. The experiment was a split-plot with no-till and disked systems as main plots and subplots of manure, fertilizer, and check with or without a grass hedge. A rainfall simulator was used and runoff was collected from both the initial and the following wet simulations. Only 38% of the no-till plots and 63% of disked plots had any runoff during the initial 6.4 cm hr−1 water application. A single narrow grass hedge reduced runoff concentrations of dissolved P (DP) by 47%, bioavailable P (BAP) by 48%, particulate P (PP) by 38%, total P (TP) by 40%, and NH4-N by 60% during the wet simulation on the no-till plots receiving manure, compared with similar plots with no hedges. The corresponding reductions in concentrations as a result of a grass hedge for DP, BAP, PP, TP, and NH4-N on the disked plots were 21, 29, 43, 38, and 52%, respectively. Runoff NH4-N concentration from fertilizer applied to the disked plots was reduced by 61%, NO3-N by 21%, and total N (TN) by 27% during the wet simulation when grass hedges were used. Grass hedges also reduced total quantities of DP, BAP, TP, and NH4-N during the wet simulation. The TP loss was 3.3% of applied P fertilizer and was 0.3% of applied manure P. Narrow grass hedges were effective in reducing P and N losses in runoff from both manure and fertilizer application.
Nevirapine-resistant human immunodeficiency virus: kinetics of replication and estimated prevalence in untreated patients

The nonnucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitor nevirapine rapidly selects for mutant human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in vivo. The most common mutation occurs at amino acid residue 181 in patients receiving monotherapy. After the initiation of nevirapine therapy, plasma and peripheral blood mononuclear cell samples were collected at frequent intervals and assayed for HIV RNA levels and the proportion of virus containing a mutation at residue 181. HIV RNA levels remained stable for the first 24 h after initiation of therapy and rapidly declined between 1 and 7 days. There was a consistent maximum decrease of 2 log10 HIV RNA copies per ml of plasma (range, 1.96 to 2.43) from baseline after 2 weeks in all monotherapy subjects. The estimated median half-life of HIV RNA was 1.11 days (range, 0.63 to 1.61). After 14 days of therapy, HIV RNA levels began to increase and 181 mutant virus was detected. The estimated doubling time of the emerging virus population ranged from 1.80 to 5.73 days. Viral DNA in peripheral blood mononuclear cells turned over from wild type to the mutant with a mutation at residue 181 significantly more slowly than did HIV RNA in plasma. In two subjects, the calculated prevalence of the 181 mutant virus prior to treatment was 7 and 133 per 10,000 copies of plasma HIV RNA.
Consciousness, accessibility, and the mesh between psychology and neuroscience

Abstract How can we disentangle the neural basis of phenomenal consciousness from the neural machinery of the cognitive access that underlies reports of phenomenal consciousness? We see the problem in stark form if we ask how we can tell whether representations inside a Fodorian module are phenomenally conscious. The methodology would seem straightforward: Find the neural natural kinds that are the basis of phenomenal consciousness in clear cases – when subjects are completely confident and we have no reason to doubt their authority – and look to see whether those neural natural kinds exist within Fodorian modules. But a puzzle arises: Do we include the machinery underlying reportability within the neural natural kinds of the clear cases? If the answer is “Yes,” then there can be no phenomenally conscious representations in Fodorian modules. But how can we know if the answer is “Yes”? The suggested methodology requires an answer to the question it was supposed to answer! This target article argues for an abstract solution to the problem and exhibits a source of empirical data that is relevant, data that show that in a certain sense phenomenal consciousness overflows cognitive accessibility. I argue that we can find a neural realizer of this overflow if we assume that the neural basis of phenomenal consciousness does not include the neural basis of cognitive accessibility and that this assumption is justified (other things being equal) by the explanations it allows.
ADAM17 is regulated by a rapid and reversible mechanism that controls access to its catalytic site

Protein ectodomain shedding is crucial for cell–cell interactions because it controls the bioavailability of soluble tumor necrosis factor-α (TNFα) and ligands of the epidermal growth factor (EGF) receptor, and the release of many other membrane proteins. Various stimuli can rapidly trigger ectodomain shedding, yet much remains to be learned about the identity of the enzymes that respond to these stimuli and the mechanisms underlying their activation. Here, we demonstrate that the membrane-anchored metalloproteinase ADAM17, but not ADAM10, is the sheddase that rapidly responds to the physiological signaling pathways stimulated by thrombin, EGF, lysophosphatidic acid and TNFα. Stimulation of ADAM17 is swift and quickly reversible, and does not depend on removal of its inhibitory pro-domain by pro-protein convertases, or on dissociation of an endogenous inhibitor, TIMP3. Moreover, activation of ADAM17 by physiological stimuli requires its transmembrane domain, but not its cytoplasmic domain, arguing against inside–out signaling via cytoplasmic phosphorylation as the underlying mechanism. Finally, experiments with the tight binding hydroxamate inhibitor DPC333, used here to probe the accessibility of the active site of ADAM17, demonstrate that this inhibitor can quickly bind to ADAM17 in stimulated, but not quiescent cells. These findings support the concept that activation of ADAM17 involves a rapid and reversible exposure of its catalytic site.
A Construction Scheme for Scale Free DHT-Based Networks

In this paper, we propose PowerDHT, a novel scheme to extend the classic DHT-based overlay to a network with scale free-like properties. PowerDHT has a distributed rewiring method to improve the structure of the overlay network to a power-law-like graph. Our scheme is characterized through minimal, typically local-only, changes. Through simulations, we show that our proposal constructs an overlay network with an extended peer's neighborhood knowledge and a reduced network diameter at no additional cost and that it supports a more effective flooding e.g. for generic search.
Epidermoid carcinoma–derived antimicrobial peptide (ECAP) inhibits phosphorylation by protein kinases in vitro

Animal peptide antibiotics are thought to mediate their cytotoxic and growth inhibitory action on bacteria, fungi, and cancer cells through a membrane‐targeted mechanism. Although the membrane interactions of the peptide antibiotics and their penetration through the membranes have been studied in several models, the precise chain of events leading to cell death or growth arrest is not established yet. In this study we used in vitro kinase assays followed by imaging analyses to examine the effect of human cationic antimicrobial peptide ECAP on the activity of the protein kinases. We report that HPLC‐grade ECAP is responsible for inhibition of EGFR autophosphorylation in plasma membrane fractions obtained from A‐431 cells. The activity of ECAP is concentration dependent with a half‐inhibitory concentration in the range of 0.1–0.2 μM. Marked decrease in autophosphorylation of immunoprecipitated non‐receptor protein kinases belonging to different families, namely PKCμ, Lyn and Syk, is observed in the presence of as little as 0.2 μM of the peptide. Among the examined non‐receptor protein kinases PKCμ was the most sensitive to the inhibitory action of ECAP, whereas Syk was inhibited least of all. ECAP exerted no detectable cytotoxicity on non‐nucleate animal cells at concentrations up to 3 μM. The capability of ECAP to inhibit protein kinases at concentrations, that are at least 10 fold lower than antibacterial and cytotoxic ones, suggests that the protein kinases are possible intracellular targets for antimicrobial peptides. We suppose that inhibition of the protein kinases may provide a mechanism for the action of cationic antimicrobial peptides on host cells including tumour cells. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Analysis of syntactic patterns for identification of features from unstructured reviews

Collecting consumer opinion about products through web is becoming more popular day by day. The opinion of users is helpful to consumers, retailors, and manufacturers in decision making. Due to the huge number user reviews it is impossible to summarize it. Therefore systems are required for mining consumer reviews data efficiently. Opinion mining is an interesting area of research due to its applications in various fields. One of the challenging issues in this area is the identification of opinion components from unstructured reviews. The work of opinion mining is natural language dependent. Therefore syntactic patterns play a key role in identifying the opinion components. In this paper we have presented analysis of synaptic patterns for products features identification from unstructured reviews. Basically the noun phrases are used for named entity identification; however all noun phrases are not features. The problem is how to restrict the patterns to get the features. After in-depth analysis and evaluation we identify a new pattern which shown comparatively best result.
Fitness Correlates of Song Repertoire Size in Free‐Living Song Sparrows (Melospiza melodia)

Models of sexual selection propose that exaggerated secondary sexual ornaments indicate a male’s own fitness and the fitness of his offspring. These hypotheses have rarely been thoroughly tested in free‐living individuals because overall fitness, as opposed to fitness components, is difficult to measure. We used 20 years of data from song sparrows (Melospiza melodia) inhabiting Mandarte Island, British Columbia, Canada, to test whether a male’s song repertoire size, a secondary sexual trait, predicted overall measures of male or offspring fitness. Males with larger song repertoires contributed more independent and recruited offspring, and independent and recruited grandoffspring, to Mandarte’s population. This was because these males lived longer and reared a greater proportion of hatched chicks to independence from parental care, not because females mated to males with larger repertoires laid or hatched more eggs. Furthermore, independent offspring of males with larger repertoires were more likely to recruit and then to leave more grandoffspring than were offspring of males with small repertoires. Although we cannot distinguish whether observed fitness variation reflected genetic or environmental effects on males or their offspring, these data suggest that female song sparrows would gain immediate and intergenerational fitness benefits by pairing with males with large song repertoires.
Competitiveness of Slovenia as a Tourist Destination

In an increasingly saturated market the fundamental task for the destination management, is understanding how tourism destination competitiveness can be enhanced and sustained. Competitiveness of a tourist destination is an important factor that positively influences the growth of the market share. Therefore tourism managers have to identify and explore competitive advantages and analyse the actual competitive position. There exist different approaches that model the competitiveness (Ritchie and Crouch 1993; Evans and Johnson 1995; Hassan 2000; Kozak 2001; De Keyser and Vanhove 1994; Dwyer, Livaic and Mellor 2003). Among all we follow the framework (Dwyer, Livaic and Mellor 2003), which was developed in a collaborative effort by researchers in Korea and Australia and presented in Sydney in 2001, and conduct an empirical analysis on Slovenia as a tourist destination. The aim of this paper is to present the model of destination competitiveness. The paper presents the results of a survey, based on indicators associated with the model, to determine the competitiveness of Slovenia as a tourist destination.
Design and implementation of algorithm for DES cryptanalysis

With the advent of low cost Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA's), building special purpose hardware for computationally intensive applications has now become possible. Cryptanalysis of block ciphers involves massive computations which are independent of each other and can be instantiated simultaneously so that the solution space is explored at a faster rate. This paper presents the design for Hardware implementation of Data Encryption Standard (DES) cryptanalysis on FPGA using exhaustive key search. Two architectures viz. Iterative and Loop unrolled DES architecture are implemented. The aim of this work is to make cryptanalysis faster and better.
Effects of Suprasegmental Phonological Alternations on Early Word Recognition: Evidence from Tone Sandhi

Early language acquisition is potentially complicated by the presence of many sources of variability in the speech signal. A frequent example of variability is phonological alternations, which can lead to context-driven changes in the realization of a word. The aim of the current study was to investigate effects of a highly frequent yet scarcely researched type of suprasegmental phonological alternation – tone Sandhi – on early spoken word recognition. The tone Sandhi rule investigated herein involves a tone change of the first syllable in a disyllabic unit. In accordance with third tone Sandhi, when two dipping tone syllables are juxtaposed in connected speech, the first syllable is dissimilated to a high rising tone. For example, ‘flour mill’ (unaltered pre-Sandhi form [(214) (214)]) undergoes tonal alternation resulting in the altered post-Sandhi form [(35) (214)]. In the current study, preschoolers’ sensitivity to the effects of tone Sandhi when processing familiar words was investigated via a preferential looking paradigm. Words varied in their phonological form: one set of words was labeled with a phonological alternation due to Sandhi (Post Sandhi), one set of words was labeled with an unaltered Sandhi form (Pre Sandhi), one set consisted of non Sandhi words (Correct Pronunciation, and one set were labeled with a tonal alternation not associated with Sandhi rules (Mispronunciation). Post-Sandhi forms and correct pronunciations were associated with visual referents with comparable strength, with only a subtle processing cost observed for post-Sandhi forms in the time course of lexical selection. Likewise, pre-Sandhi forms and true mispronunciations were rejected as labels for visual references with comparable strength, with only subtle differences observed in the time course of lexical selection. Findings are discussed in terms of their impact on prevailing theories of lexical representation.
A Statistical–Physical Model of Interference in Diffusion-Based Molecular Nanonetworks

Molecular nanonetworks stand at the intersection of nanotechnology, biotechnology, and network engineering. The research on molecular nanonetworks proposes the interconnection of nanomachines through molecule exchange. Amongst different solutions for the transport of molecules between nanomachines, the most general is based on free diffusion. The objective of this paper is to provide a statistical-physical modeling of the interference when multiple transmitting nanomachines emit molecules simultaneously. This modeling stems from the same assumptions used in interference study for radio communications, namely, a spatial Poisson distribution of transmitters having independent and identically distributed emissions, while the specific molecule emissions model is in agreement with a chemical description of the transmitters. As a result of the property of the received molecular signal of being a stationary Gaussian Process (GP), the statistical-physical modeling is operated on its Power Spectral Density (PSD), for which it is possible to obtain an analytical expression of the log-characteristic function. This expression leads to the estimation of the received PSD probability distribution, which provides a complete model of the interference in diffusion-based molecular nanonetworks. Numerical results in terms of received PSD probability distribution and probability of interference are presented to compare the proposed statistical-physical model with the outcomes of simulations.
Nephroblastomatosis or Wilms tumor in a fourth patient with a somatic PIK3CA mutation

Wilms tumor and nephroblastomatosis are associated with syndromic conditions including hemihyperplasia. Hemihyperplasia is genetically heterogeneous and may be the result of genomic abnormalities seen in Beckwith–Wiedemann syndrome, mosaic chromosome or genomic abnormalities, or somatic point mutations. Somatic missense mutations affecting the PI3K‐AKT‐MTOR pathway result in segmental overgrowth and are present in numerous benign and malignant tumors. Here, we report a fourth patient with asymmetric overgrowth due to a somatic PIK3CA mutation who had nephroblastomatosis or Wilms tumor. Similar to two of three reported patients with a somatic PIK3CA mutation and renal tumors, he shared a PIK3CA mutation affecting codon 1047, presented at birth with asymmetric overgrowth, and had fibroadipose overgrowth. Codon 1047 is most commonly affected by somatic mutations in PIK3CA‐related overgrowth spectrum (PROS). While the fibroadipose overgrowth phenotype appears to be common in individuals with PIK3CA mutations at codon 1047, individuals with a clinical diagnosis of Klippel–Trenaunay syndrome or isolated lymphatic malformation also had mutations affecting this amino acid. Screening for Wilms tumor in individuals with PROS‐related hemihyperplasia may be considered and, until the natural history is fully elucidated in larger cohort studies, may follow guidelines for Beckwith–Wiedemann syndrome, or isolated hemihyperplasia. It is not known if the specific PIK3CA mutation, the mosaic distribution, or the clinical presentation affect the Wilms tumor or nephroblastomatosis risk in individuals with PROS. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Nitrate is reduced by heterotrophic bacteria but not transferred to Prochlorococcus in non-axenic cultures.

Abstract The ability to assimilate nitrate in non-axenic isolates of Prochlorococcus spp. was addressed in this work, particularly in three low-irradiance adapted strains originating from ocean depths with measurable nitrate concentrations. None of the studied strains was able to use nitrate as the sole nitrogen source. Nitrate reductase (NR; EC 1.6.6.2) activity was, however, detected using the methyl viologen/dithionite assay in crude extracts from all studied Prochlorococcus strains. Characterization of this activity unambiguously demonstrated its enzymatic origin. We observed that NR activity did not decrease in vivo under darkness. Attempts to detect the narB gene (coding for NR in other cyanobacteria) by PCR with primers designed on the basis of the specific codon usage in Prochlorococcus were unsuccessful. However, when primers were designed considering the codon frequencies typical of other bacteria, we could amplify different fragments of nas genes, coding for bacterial assimilatory NRs. Similar amplification products were obtained using colonies of contaminant bacteria from Prochlorococcus cultures as PCR template. Furthermore, NR activity was found in cultures of these contaminants, demonstrating the non-cyanobacterial origin of the enzyme. These results strongly suggest that the studied strains of Prochlorococcus lack NR, in spite of inhabiting environments with nitrate as the main nitrogen source. In addition, they indicate that the nitrite produced by heterotrophic bacteria is not transferred to Prochlorococcus for growth, thus discarding a trophic nitrogen chain between heterotrophic bacteria and Prochlorococcus in the studied cultures.