Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sodium Bicarbonate Cotransporter Polymorphisms Are Associated With Baseline and 10-Year Follow-Up Blood Pressures

The NaHCO3 cotransporter gene (SLC4A5) on chromosome 2 encodes a protein that transports sodium and bicarbonate across the cell membrane and regulates cellular pH. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Family Blood Pressure Program found linkage of blood pressure–related traits to the chromosomal region containing SLC4A5 and phenotype associations with single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in this gene. However, the results were inconsistent over various phenotypes and SNPs. Nevertheless, the evidence was strong enough to propose this gene as a blood pressure–related gene. To extend these findings, SLC4A5 SNPs were genotyped in an independent set of 96 Utah pedigrees of 1040 adult subjects at baseline, 760 of whom were followed longitudinally for 10 years. After adjusting for age, gender, body mass index, and polygenic correlations within pedigrees, SNP hcv1137534 was significantly associated with both systolic blood pressure and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) at baseline (unadjusted P=0.009 and P=0.043; respectively) and at 10-year follow-up (P=0.008 and P=0.007; respectively). In secondary tests of association of baseline-stressed blood pressure, hcv1137534 was borderline or significantly associated with DBP change during an isometric handgrip test (P=0.054), DBP change from supine to standing (P=0.020), and DBP change after a 50° tilt (P=0.034). There was no evidence for compensation of abnormal SLC4A5 sodium transport by genotype-specific differences in sodium–lithium countertransport, lithium–potassium cotransport, altered plasma sodium, chloride, or CO2 levels. Therefore, in these Utah pedigrees, the SLC4A5 gene was significantly associated with blood pressure and persisted after 10 years of follow-up. These results additionally confirm the involvement of SLC4A5 with blood pressure control, although the mechanism is still unclear.
The Application of Artificial Neural Networks In Forecasting Economic Time Series

The Box-Jenkins “Autoregressive Integrated Moving Average” (ARIMA) models have been the traditional and most widely used approach for forecasting. These models gave good forecasts for future observations in many cases but they were not always successful in many other cases. This is because the forecasts converge to the mean of the series after three or four forecast values. The accuracy of forecasts obtained by fitting time series models to economic data, such as stock price indices, received a great attention by many economists. In the present study, we applied neural networks (ANN) methods on forecasting the daily data of Al-Quds Index of the Palestinian Stock Exchange Market. ANN proved to be useful as an alternative method to BoxJenkins approach, particularly in the case of nonlinear data and for forecasting many future values. The forecasting capabilities of ANN are studied and compared with traditional ARIMA models through fitting both ANN and ARIMA models to forecast the logarithms of the daily data of Al-Quds Index in 3 years, and the results of ANN proved to be more efficient than those of the ARIMA models.
Human perception of electrical stimulation on the surface of somatosensory cortex

Recent advancement in electrocorticography (ECoG)-based brain-computer interface technology has sparked a new interest in providing somatosensory feedback using ECoG electrodes, i.e., cortical surface electrodes. We conducted a 28-day study of cortical surface stimulation in an individual with arm paralysis due to brachial plexus injury to examine the sensation produced by electrical stimulation of the somatosensory cortex. A high-density ECoG grid was implanted over the somatosensory and motor cortices. Stimulation through cortical surface electrodes over the somatosensory cortex successfully elicited arm and hand sensations in our participant with chronic paralysis. There were three key findings. First, the intensity of perceived sensation increased monotonically with both pulse amplitude and pulse frequency. Second, changing pulse width changed the type of sensation based on qualitative description provided by the human participant. Third, the participant could distinguish between stimulation applied to two neighboring cortical surface electrodes, 4.5 mm center-to-center distance, for three out of seven electrode pairs tested. Taken together, we found that it was possible to modulate sensation intensity, sensation type, and evoke sensations across a range of locations from the fingers to the upper arm using different stimulation electrodes even in an individual with chronic impairment of somatosensory function. These three features are essential to provide effective somatosensory feedback for neuroprosthetic applications.
Working the Play: How a Card Game Negotiates Perceptions of Work and Productivity

Based on the ethnographic study of the card game Bela , this paper rethinks the intersections and interstices between game and non-game contexts, challenging the presumption that play is unproductive and non-materialistic. By embedding the rules of the game into its socio-cultural context, the paper identifies a symbolic space of shared stories, emotions and personal interests that coexist with, modify and lubricate the rules of the game. By considering play as a way of engaging the world, rather than a categorically identified, bounded and thus inconsequential activity, I explore how the open-endedness of the card game relates to broader life experiences, and particularly how it shapes and influences perceptions of work and productivity. Key words: play, work, productivity, contingency, playfulness as disposition
‘This is England’: sanitized fandom and the national soccer team

This essay examines attempts by The Football Association to develop an official supporter’s group for the England men’s national team. It is argued that The FA’s perception of desired fandom relies on the continued imagining of an outdated ‘hooligan’ stereotype, associated with ‘rough’ white working‐class masculinity and related subcultural gatherings such as skinheads. The FA’s quest for a new England fandom articulates with broader public discourse on a ‘new’ England – i.e. making football fandom relevant to a multicultural society. While such an ambition is admirable in principle, this essay warns that The FA risks abetting a tendency to culturally and discursively marginalize the lower echelon of the English white working class. As such, the essay is not only of interest to football scholarship, but also to readers interested in current debates about English national identity and whiteness.
Triple Bands Inverted-U Shaped Monopole Antenna for Application in ISM , WiMAX , and UNII

In this paper, the simulation and measured results of CPW-fed inverted-U shaped monopole for application in ISM, WiMAX, and UNII bands are presented. The proposed antenna has good agreement between the measured and the simulation results. The proposed antenna has a 6 dB return loss with bandwidth 596 MHz (2,2082,804 MHz) in the lower band, 381 MHz (3,327-3,708 MHz) in the middle band, and 647 MHz (5,236-5,883 MHz) in the higher band. The proposed triple-band CPW-fed inverted-U shaped monopole covered the ISM, WiMAX, and UNII bands. Keywords—inverted-U monopole, bandwidth, radiation, gain.
Distinguishing different DNA heterozygotes by high-resolution melting.

High-resolution melting was recently introduced as a technique to genotype single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within small amplicons (1). This closed-tube method (including rapid-cycle PCR) can be completed in <15 min and does not require real-time PCR instruments (2), allele-specific PCR (3), or fluorescently labeled oligonucleotides (4)(5)(6). The process is made possible by heteroduplex-detecting DNA dyes that can be used at saturating concentrations without inhibiting PCR (7). Wild-type and homozygous mutant samples are distinguished by melting temperature ( T m) shifts. Heterozygous samples are best distinguished from homozygotes, not by T m, but by altered curve shape. Heterozygous samples produce heteroduplexes that melt at lower temperatures than homoduplexes. Melting curves of amplified heterozygotes include 2 homoduplexes and 2 heteroduplexes, giving a skewed composite melting curve easily distinguished from the curves for homozygotes by curve shape (1). However, it was not clear whether different heterozygotes within the same amplicon could be distinguished from each other based on curve shape differences. Four different classes of SNPs have been defined based on the homo- and heteroduplexes that are produced after amplification (1). Because the heteroduplex mismatches of SNPs in different classes are different, their melting curves should be distinguishable if the resolution of the instrumentation is sufficient. It is also possible that different heterozygotes in the same class may be distinguishable. Although the mismatches are the same, nearest-neighbor stability parameters depend on the bases adjacent to the mismatches; therefore, the predicted stabilities are often different. We selected DNA samples retrospectively from those submitted to ARUP Laboratories for standard clinical genotyping of HFE , factor V Leiden, and factor II polymorphisms. DNA was extracted from blood samples by use of the MagNa Pure instrument (Roche) and genotyped by use of adjacent hybridization probe (HybProbe™) methods (4)(5) on a LightCycler®. …
Compression Optimized Tracing of Digital Curves using Graph Theory

The use of an alphabet of line segments to compose a curve is a possible approach for curve data compression. An existing state-of-the-art method considers a quadtree decomposition of the curve to perform the substitution of the curve parts from the alphabet of line segments. In this paper, we propose a graph theory based algorithm for tracing the curve directly to eliminate the quadtree decomposition needs. This approach obviously improves the compression efficiency, as longer line segments can be used. We tune our method further by selecting optimal turns at junctions during tracing the curve. We also discuss briefly how other application fields can take advantage of the presented approach.
Control Transferring between Automated and Manual Driving using Shared Control

In this research, we propose a method to connect automated and manual driving by haptic shared control (HSC) to achieve shared authority mode and authority transfer method in this mode. Driving simulator experiments showed that the smoother steering behaviors were observed with the proposed method even when rapid steering was required just after taking the control by human drivers.
The impact of background music on adult listeners: A meta-analysis

Background music has been found to have beneficial, detrimental, or no effect on a variety of behavioral and psychological outcome measures. This article reports a meta-analysis that attempts to summarize the impact of background music. A global analysis shows a null effect, but a detailed examination of the studies that allow the calculation of effects sizes reveals that this null effect is most probably due to averaging out specific effects. In our analysis, the probability of detecting such specific effects was not very high as a result of the scarcity of studies that allowed the calculation of respective effect sizes. Nonetheless, we could identify several such cases: a comparison of studies that examined background music compared to no music indicates that background music disturbs the reading process, has some small detrimental effects on memory, but has a positive impact on emotional reactions and improves achievements in sports. A comparison of different types of background music reveals that the tempo of the music influences the tempo of activities that are performed while being exposed to background music. It is suggested that effort should be made to develop more specific theories about the impact of background music and to increase the methodological quality of relevant studies.
Memories of parenting practices are associated with psychopathy in juvenile male offenders

Despite the large body of research documenting parenting practices as risk factors for the development of child and adolescent disruptive behaviour, the association with psychopathy is notably less known. The goal was to examine, in 75 institutionalized juvenile male offenders, the association between self-reported memories of parenting practices during childhood (Alabama Parenting Questionnaire) and psychopathy (Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version). Results showed that ineffective parenting practices as inconsistent discipline and poor monitoring/supervision were significantly associated with increased levels of psychopathic traits. Interestingly, only two of the four facets of the construct, lifestyle and antisocial, were associated with these parenting behaviours. Findings highlight the importance of considering parenting practices in the study of the early development of psychopathy and suggest that the facets could be rooted in distinct underlying etiologic-dispositional factors with differentiated developmental pathways and different psychosocial correlates. The study lends support to the multidimensional approach of psychopathy as a syndrome.
Bricolageliturgie: Liturgical Studies Revisited

This article examines a fifth trend, complementary to the four identified in a previous article, in contemporary liturgy visible in churches in the Netherlands as well as South Africa. Drawing on the specific case in the Netherlands of a service in which a minister was ordained, the tendency to mix liturgies is highlighted. This “cut-and-paste” liturgy can be described as “bricolage liturgy”. The term “bricolage” is not new: its use by Claude Levi-Strauss and Jacques Derrida is investigated in order to better apply the term to liturgy. Bricolage liturgy is a-centrical and a-typical. Jesus Christ, then, is the point of departure for understanding the rituals of liturgy, without restricting a service to a set pattern.
HazeWatch: A participatory sensor system for monitoring air pollution in Sydney

This paper describes our experiences with building and deploying a low-cost participatory system for urban air pollution monitoring in Sydney. Though air pollution imposes significant health costs on the urban community globally, today's published data on pollution concentrations is spatially too sparse, and does not allow for sufficiently accurate estimation of exposures for (potentially mobile) individuals in order to make medical inferences. The HazeWatch project described in this paper uses several low-cost mobile sensor units attached to vehicles to measure air pollution concentrations, and users' mobile phones to tag and upload the data in real time. The greater spatial granularity of data thus collected enables creation of pollution maps of metropolitan Sydney viewable in real-time over the web, as well as personalized apps that show the individual's exposure history and allow for route planning to reduce future exposure. We share the insights we obtained from building and trialling such a system in Sydney, and highlight challenges that can be addressed collaboratively by groups developing similar systems world-wide.
Toward a Role‐Theoretic Conception of Embeddedness1

Attempting to formalize Granovetter's embeddedness argument, rational choice theorists have viewed social relationships as repeated games. This article argues that role theory would provide a better metatheoretical perspective on embeddedness. A preliminary sketch of role theory suggests a promising theoretical methodology. To illustrate, I construct a repeated‐game model in which the players are not individuals but roles (a profit‐maximizing “businessperson” and nonstrategic “friend”); the businessperson role acts strategically in light of a metatule that governs intrapersonal role switching.
Behavior simulation on securities equilibrium price and volume with heterogeneity

This paper proposes a new perspective to consider equilibrium system with price and quantity based on classical demand-supply analysis, combining with modern financial assets pricing theory. In this system, investors are heterogeneous, their valuations about the assets are different, and they have different demand or supply function. The money wealth and assets quantity hold by investors in the market affect equilibrium, equilibrium price and trade volume are determined at the same time. Through simulation on this system, it turns out the method can interpret much phenomena in real market.
Age Effects in Second Language Learning: Stepping Stones Toward Better Understanding

The effect of age of acquisition on ultimate attainment in second language learning has been a controversial topic for years. After providing a very brief overview of the ideas that are at the core of the controversy, I discuss the two main reasons why these issues are so controversial: conceptual misunderstandings and methodological difficulties. The main part of the article then makes suggestions for improvement in subject selection, data collection, and instrumentation, in the hope that both sides of the debate will be able to agree on them. More sophisticated research in this area is of the utmost importance given how crucial understanding age effects is for educational policy and curriculum design. Where foreign language learning rather than second language learning is concerned, directly relevant research, carried out with classroom foreign language learners, is even more sorely needed.
Spectral assignment and cytotoxicity of 22-hydroxytingenone from Glyptopetalum sclerocarpum.

22-Hydroxytingenone was reisolated from a new source, Glyptopetalum sclerocarpum M. Laws and, for the first time, its unambiguous 13C-NMR assignments were accomplished through the use of APT, HETCOR, and selective INEPT spectroscopy. Intense, but nonspecific cytotoxic activity was observed when this substance was evaluated with a battery of cell lines comprised of the P-388 lymphocytic leukemia, KB carcinoma of the nasopharynx, and a number of human cancer cell types, i.e. HT-1080 fibrosarcoma, LU-1 lung cancer, COL-2 colon cancer, MEL-2 melanoma, and BC-1 breast cancer.
Una revisión de la alteración de las propiedades reforzantes de los eventos en humanos

Alteration of the consequential properties of the events in humans: A review. The alteration of the consequential properties of the events is one of the keys to understand behavioural fluctuation. Numerous theories have been proposed to explain the emergence, maintenance and change of the motivation to do something or to quit doing it, but not all of them have been helpful. In this paper, we present the concept of motivation within the functional- analytic perspective, as well as a review of the procedures implemented for the alteration of the consequential functions. Such procedures will be classified on the basis of their utilization, or not, of direct management of contingencies to alter the consequential properties of the stimuli. This criterion distinguishes the early development of the functional-analytic perspective from the late development, the last one focused on the alteration of behavioural functions in the absence of any direct experience with the events. Finally, some of the gaps in relation to the involvement of verbal processes in the motivational control exerted by the events are discussed, with a special emphasis in the clinical implications.
The relationship between criminology studies and punitive attitudes

Policymakers and researchers have long been interested in the punitive attitudes of police and correctional officers. This research examined the punitive attitudes of 206 police and correctional officers at the beginning and towards the end of academic studies. The results indicate that (a) the police officers held more punitive attitudes compared with the correctional officers; (b) the correctional officers, but not the police officers, held less punitive attitudes in the last year than in the first year of studies; (c) male police officers generally held more punitive attitudes than their female counterparts; (d) belief in classical theories, which was found to be the strongest predictor of harsher punitive attitudes, was greater among police than correctional officers. The implications of the results are discussed.
Educational transitions and differential learning environments: How explicit between-school tracking contributes to social inequality in educational outcomes

ABSTRACT—The different forms of educational tracking implemented in national educational systems can influence both gains in students’ learning and the development of social differences in educational outcomes. Using the German school system as an example, this article identifies 2 mechanisms by which explicit between-school tracking—that is, the allocation of students to different types of schools or curricula at the beginning of secondary level—increases the strength of the link between socioeconomic background and student achievement. First, the transition to a secondary track is associated with social background—The more educationally advantaged the parents, the higher a student’s chance of being enrolled in a high-track school. Second, ability grouping at the secondary level produces relatively homogeneous developmental environments, with higher learning rates in high tracks. The long-term consequences of tracking and potential countermeasures are discussed.
How the use of transference and countertransference, particularly in parent–infant psychotherapy, can inform the work of an education or childcare practitioner

The article describes how an early years teacher was able to use her understanding of the history of transference and countertransference, and in particular its usage today in parent–infant psychotherapy, to inform her practice and develop her role in a children's centre 1. Vignettes describe the author's struggle to make sense of her experiences with disturbed children in the classroom and track her attempts to use the concepts of transference and countertransference to support childcare practitioners. It is concluded that, while work in the transference and countertransference is risky and complicated, childcare and education practitioners are working in the mire of infantile projections whether we recognise this fact or not. It is proposed that support should be provided to help all early years practitioners own and scrutinise the difficult feelings the work inevitably stirs up. The use of ‘psychoanalytic infant observation’ and ‘work discussion groups’, as a means of providing this support, are discussed.
SIFT & MRLBP Descriptors Based Age Invariant Face Recognition

Automatic face recognition is an important problem, but age invariant face recognition is a major challenge. The face appearance of a person is subject to significant change due to age progression over time. In this paper, the discriminative model is proposed to match face images of a subject at different ages. To develop a discriminative model for age invariant face recognition based on an appropriate feature representation and classification. Where Local Feature Description is used for feature representation and classification is done using MFDA. In this approach, each face is represented by designing a local feature description scheme. It consists of Scale Invariant Feature Transform (SIFT) and Multi-scale Robust Local Binary Patterns (MRLBP) which serve as local descriptors. In MFDA, multiple LDA-based classifiers are constructed and these classifiers are combined to generate a robust decision by using a fusion rule. The superiority of proposed method is examined and demonstrated through FGNET database. For the discriminative model with SIFT and MRLBP, the recognition accuracy is 92.38%.