Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Quality of Life among Thai Sex Workers: How Important are Work, Educational and Personal Characteristics in Shaping Subjective Well-being?

Little work explores subjective well-being (SWB) differences among unique populations. This study rests on a data from commercial female sex workers (CFSW) that was collected in Thailand during January and February 2007. Past research in SWB indicates that women who have more formal education, those who feel positively about their income rank and working conditions, and those who feel connected to others in their community report greater well-being compared to others. Moreover, Biswas-Diener and Diener (2006) found that sex workers in Calcutta were generally satisfied with their personal domains. Most Thai sex workers, in our sample, were generally satisfied with their personal domains (relative income, marital status, and working conditions); however, less satisfaction was reported about feeling part of the community.
Autonomic Cardiovascular Control during Hypoxia in the Dog

The mechanisms controlling cardiovascular responses to hypoxia are poorly understood. We studied effects of parasympathetdc blockade by atropine (Px) and sympathectomy by adrenalectomy plus 6-hydroxydopamine (Sx) in five unanesthetdzed dogs acutely exposed to hypoxic conditions (Paoi-35 mm Hg). In intact dogs during hypoxia, heart rate increased by 55 ± 10 (SEM) beats/min. After either Px or Sx, heart rate increased by only 34 ± 4 beats/min during hypoxia. Combined Sx and Px abolished the heart rate response to hypoxia. In intact dogs, hypoxia decreased stroke volume by 6 ± 1 ml. After Sx, hypoxia still decreased stroke volume (5 ± 1 ml), but stroke volume increased during Px (5 ± 2 ml). The stroke volume response was eliminated by Sx plus Px. Cardiac output increased during hypoxia alone (1.2 ± 0.2 liters/min) and in the presence of Px (2.0 ± 0.5 liters/min) and Sx (0.8 ± 0.3 liter/min); this response was abolished by Sx plus Px. Systemic arterial pressure increased during hypoxia alone (16 ± 4 mm Hg) and in the presence of Px (21 ± 7 mm Hg), but failed to change during either Sx or Sx plus Px. Total systemic vascular resistance fell during hypoxia alone (5 ± 2 mm Hg/ liter per min) and in the presence of Px (3 ± 1 mm Hg/liter per min and Sx (5 ± 2 mm Hg/liter per min), but failed to fall during Sx plus Px. We conclude that the autonomic nervous system plays a major role in mediating these cardiovascular systemic responses to hypoxia. The pattern of responses suggests that sympathetic activity increases heart rate, stroke volume, cardiac output, and blood pressure during hypoxia. whereas decreased parasympathetic activity increases heart rate and cardiac output and decreases stroke volume. If both components of the autonomic system are blocked, the systemic hypoxic response is eliminated. Ore Res 44: 569-676, 1979
Investigation of polarization and depolarization current measurements for the assessment of oil-paper insulation of aged transformers

Moisture and ageing strongly influence the dielectric properties of oil/paper insulation system of power transformer. Moisture measurement in oil sample generally gives inconclusive information since oil/paper moisture equilibrium is temperature dependent and takes a long time to be in equilibrium. Direct moisture measurement of paper sample is not practicable for in-service transformers. The measurement and evaluation of the "dielectric response" and conductivity is one possible way of diagnosing a transformer insulation condition. In a recent research project, polarization and depolarization current measurement has been used for assessing the condition of oil/paper insulation. The polarization and depolarization current (PDC) analysis is a nondestructive dielectric testing method for determining the conductivity and moisture content of insulation materials in a transformer. On the basis of this analysis it is possible to take further actions like oil-refurbishment, drying or replacement of the winding of the transformer. This paper presents a description of the PDC technique with the physical and mathematical background and some results of PDC measurements on several transformers. Analyses and interpretation of the field test data are also presented in this paper.
Measuring Temporal Self-Regulation in Children With and Without Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

A new parent report measure entitled the Salience, Organization and Management of Time Scale (SOMTS) that assessed the temporal regulation of children with and without Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD) in everyday contexts was developed over three phases (item generation, preliminary validation, and factorial structure). Items were compiled from related earlier instruments plus parental interviews, with final selection determined on the basis of item affectivity indices. The final study was, in part, an online study. Principal components analysis and confirmatory factor analyses from a sample of parents of children with (n = 194) and without (n = 142) AD/HD indicated a three factor structure of the new instrument (Verbalizing temporal structures, Temporal self-regulation, and Conceptualizing and sequencing time). Significant between-group differences revealed children with AD/HD performed worse on all three factors compared to children without AD/HD. The factors exhibited moderate discriminant validity when used individually and excellent discriminant validity when used in combination. The three distinct and reliable factors identified by the new instrument map well onto themes emphasized in a comprehensive theory of AD/HD and the between-group differences are consistent with the theory's characterization of a developmental delay in sense of time in young people with the disorder.
12-hour ultra-marathons - Increasing worldwide participation and dominance of Europeans

Ultra-marathon running is of increasing popularity. Participation and performance trends in ultra-marathons have been previously investigated for 100 mile runs, multi-stage ultra-marathons, triathlons and ultra-triathlons, but not for 12-hour runs. We examined participation and performance trends in 12-hour runs held all over the world. Gender, nationality and age in runners competing in 12-hour runs worldwide from 1981 to 2010 were investigated. The annual number of participants in 12-hour runs increased significantly over time for athletes originating from Africa, Asia, Europe, North America and Oceania (P < 0.05). Most of the runners participated in races taking place in the USA and also the most runners originated from the USA, which was followed alternately by Germany and France. Top ten European runners achieved the longest running distances with an average of 134.7±1.9 km for women and 155.8±2.5 km for men, facing the top three nations Russia, Germany and Japan with 130.7±2.6 km and 154.1±3.4 km, 131.8±3.5 km and 146.8±4.1km, 132.1±4.3 km and 144.9±1.3 km for the top ten women and men, respectively. To summarize, participation in 12-hour runs increased in the last 30 years. Europe was the continent with the highest annual number of participants and where the most runners came from. European top ten runners achieved the best performances. Future studies about 12-hour runs need to investigate up to what extent participation and performance trends depend on aspects like age, training, anthropometry, nutrition, experience, and weather.
The Revolving Door to Gold Mountain: How Chinese Immigrants Got around U.S. Exclusion and Replenished the Chinese American Labor Pool, 1900–1910 1

This study provides a quantitative perspective on the Chinese American migratory system of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including the magnitude of various means for evading the U.S. embargo on Chinese immigration. Three sources are explored, including federal immigration summaries, census microdata, and a sample of person-voyage records for steamship arrivals at the port of San Francisco (n = 5,707). Whereas parameter estimates vary among the sources from nearly twofold (gross migration) up to fourfold (net migration), all results are consistent with a revolving-door system in which young male workers arrived as replacements for departing older male workers.
Declared Causality in Wide-Area Replicated Storage

Wide-area replicated storage systems are increasingly popular, despite significant shortcomings. Such systems allow for geographic placement of replicas near clients at a global scale, but they struggle to balance consistent global views with update performance. Eventual consistency -- best-effort propagation of updates -- often fails to meet expectations for update order. Causal consistency provides stronger ordering guarantees, but it can order updates unnecessarily, resulting in decreased performance. Understanding which updates require ordering relies on input from the application, as it alone knows the semantics of its computation. In this paper, we report on our initial efforts at providing such an application programming interface, and we show through a simple workload the potential benefits and costs of this approach. We also describe our future plans with application-declared causality.
Decreased photosynthesis in the erect panicle 3 (ep3) mutant of rice is associated with reduced stomatal conductance and attenuated guard cell development

The ERECT PANICLE 3 gene of rice encodes a peptide that exhibits more than 50% sequence identity with the Arabidopsis F-box protein HAWAIIAN SKIRT (HWS). Ectopic expression of the Os02g15950 coding sequence, driven by the HWS (At3g61950) promoter, rescued the hws-1 flower phenotype in Arabidopsis confirming that EP3 is a functional orthologue of HWS. In addition to displaying an erect inflorescence phenotype, loss-of-function mutants of Os02g15950 exhibited a decrease in leaf photosynthetic capacity and stomatal conductance. Analysis of a range of physiological and anatomical features related to leaf photosynthesis revealed no alteration in Rubisco content and no notable changes in mesophyll size or arrangement. However, both ep3 mutant plants and transgenic lines that have a T-DNA insertion within the Os02g15950 (EP3) gene exhibit smaller stomatal guard cells compared with their wild-type controls. This anatomical characteristic may account for the observed decrease in leaf photosynthesis and provides evidence that EP3 plays a role in regulating stomatal guard cell development.
On the Data Delivery Delay taken by Random Walks in Wireless Sensor Networks

In recent years, the use of random walk techniques in wireless sensor networks has attracted considerable interest among numerous research efforts. The popularity of this approach is attributed to the natural properties of random walks such as locality, simplicity, low-overhead and inherent robustness. However, throughout the variety of research works that assess the effectiveness of random walk techniques, most results are derived from a qualitative view or by means of simulations. Furthermore, when analytical tools are used, the obtained results often provide bounds on various performance metrics of interest, which may have little consequences for practical applications. Instead, our goal in this paper is to quantify the effectiveness of such techniques based on the derivation of closed-form expressions.In particular, we focus on the delay taken for the random walk to deliver messages from sensor to sink nodes and study its statistics through closed-form derivations.
A general algorithm to compute the steady-state solution of product-form cooperating Markov chains

In the last few years several new results about product-form solutions of stochastic models have been formulated. In particular, the Reversed Compound Agent Theorem (RCAT) and its extensions play a pivotal role in the characterization of cooperating stochastic models in product-form. Although these results have been used to prove several well-known theorems (e.g., Jackson queueing network and G-network solutions) as well as novel ones, to the best of our knowledge, an automatic tool to derive the product-form solution (if present) of a generic cooperation among a set of stochastic processes, is not yet developed. In this paper we address the problem of solving the non-linear system of equations that arises from the application of RCAT. We present an iterative algorithm that is the base of a software tool currently under development. We illustrate the algorithm, discuss the convergence and the complexity, compare it with previous algorithms defined for the analysis of the Jackson networks and the G-networks. Several tests have been conducted involving the solutions of a (arbitrary) large number of cooperating processes in product-form by RCAT.
Claw‐free 3‐connected P11‐free graphs are hamiltonian

We show that every 3‐connected claw‐free graph which contains no induced copy of P11 is hamiltonian. Since there exist non‐hamiltonian 3‐connected claw‐free graphs without induced copies of P12 this result is, in a way, best possible. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Graph Theory 47: 111–121, 2004
Distributed Approximating Global Optimality with Local Reinforcement Learning in HetNets

This paper proposes a distributed multiagent reinforcement learning framework for resource allocation problems in heterogeneous wireless networks (HetNet). The base station, pico transmitters and user equipments collaborate to improve the system throughput and energy efficiency by handling the inter-cell interference based on the local observable environment. Utilizing the sparsity and tree structure of connection graph of the network, the collaboration is carried out through a distributed calculation of the optimal action via the message passing method. The tradeoff between the system throughput and the energy efficiency is addressed by a weighting parameter in the reward function. Simulation results show that the proposed framework outperforms the traditional inter-cell interference coordination method and improves overall performance.
Landscapes of Property

If we want to explore the social dimensions of property, we need to think of it not only historically but also geographically, entailing both practices in and representations of social space. The concept of landscape is a useful bridging device here, given its double meaning as both a material space and as a particular way of seeing space. Landscapes, in both senses, can serve to reify and naturalize dominant property relations but can also serve as spaces of contestation. Such landscapes, however, cannot be disentangled from the places in which they are positioned. The A. uses this framework to make sense of resistance to gentrification in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, Canada, a poor neighborhood with a rich history of activism. A collective property claim by the poor has been staked out through the material use, production, and representation of an urban landscape. Such local meanings and practices, however, are threatened by outsiders, who are seen to map and use this landscape in very different ways.
Profiter de l’innovation collaborative : alliances de R&D et mécanismes de protection des actifs technologiques

Depuis la fin des annees 1970 et l'emergence d'un contexte d'innovation ouverte, les alliances de R&D sont devenues un imperatif pour de nombreuses entreprises innovantes. Pourtant, elles presentent d'importants risques de detournement d'actifs technologiques, qui peuvent conduire les partenaires a ne pas profiter de la collaboration. Il s'agit ici de contribuer a une meilleure comprehension des strategies de protection d'actifs, en proposant un cadre integrateur recensant l'ensemble des mecanismes de protection des actifs technologiques a disposition des entreprises qui s'engagent dans une alliance de R&D. A partir de ce cadre, les principales relations de substitution et de complementarite existant entre les differents mecanismes sont mises en evidence.
Using functional near infrared spectroscopy to measure moral decision-making: effects of agency, emotional value, and monetary incentive

The prefrontal cortex (PFC) has been investigated extensively with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and identified as a neural substrate central to emotion regulation and decision-making, particularly in the context of utilitarian moral dilemmas. However, there are two important limitations to prior work: (1) fMRI imposes strict constraints on the physical environment of the participant and (2) experimental manipulations have yet to consider the role of agency and personal incentive on both brain-based and behavioral correlates. To address the first limitation, we investigated functional near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS), which showed it was a potential alternative to fMRI for observing the decision-making processes in a less-constrained environment [1]. To address the second, we examined the role of agency in deciding moral and non-moral dilemmas and whether the influences can be further modulated by way of monetary incentives. Our findings show that all three factors exert influences on both.
Development of nine polymorphic microsatellite loci in the spined loach, Cobitis taenia, and cross‐species amplification in the related species C. elongatoides, C. taurica and C. tanaitica

Nine polymorphic microsatellite loci were developed for the spined loach, Cobitis taenia (Teleostei: Cobitidae). The loci were validated using 50 individuals from a population in Belgium. Moderate to high levels of polymorphism were detected (two to 11 alleles). In addition, most markers amplified successfully in three closely related taxa that are known to hybridize with C. taenia: C. elongatoides, C. taurica and C. tanaitica. Some of the loci are most likely diagnostic among species. These markers will be valuable for the study of the historical and contemporary interactions within C. taenia and the Cobitis species complex.
Two-staged image colorization based on salient contours

In this paper we present a novel colorization technique that manages to significantly reduce color bleeding artifacts caused by weak object boundaries and also requires only abstract color indications and placement from the user. It is essentially a two-staged color propagation algorithm. Guided by the extracted salient contours of the image, we roughly mark and divide the image in two differently treated image area categories: Homogeneous color areas of high confidence and critical attention-needing areas of edges and region boundaries. The method was tested with user drawn scribble images, but can be easily adopted by image exemplars employing techniques, as well.
The American Civil War as a Trial by Battle

Confined alone in a cell in New York's Fort Lafayette in the heat of the summer of 1865, former Confederate naval secretary Stephen R. Mallory had little to do but reflect on the fate of the defeated Confederacy. Convinced that his life might be forfeit if the United States government made good on its threat to try him for treason, Mallory composed a lengthy letter to President Andrew Johnson petitioning for a pardon and seeking to explain his views on the demise of the Confederacy and the fate of the states' right to secede from the Union. While Mallory stressed his opposition to disunion in 1861, on the grounds of its inexpediency, he admitted that he had placed loyalty to his state above his duty as a citizen of the United States. He had “regarded the commands of my state as decisive of my path of duty; and I followed where she led. ” Nonetheless, Mallory went on to disclaim his belief in the principle of secession in very striking terms, describing the death of secession in the crucible of the Civil War as the result of a trial by battle. Mallory never specifically denied secession's constitutionality; instead, he told Johnson that because he “recognize[ed] the death [of the Confederacy] as the will of Almighty God, I regard and accept His dispensation as decisive of the questions of slavery and secession. ”
Prevalence and severity of cerebral amyloid angiopathy: a population‐based study on very elderly Finns (Vantaa 85+)

M. Tanskanen, M. Mäkelä, L. Myllykangas, I. ‐L. Notkola, T. Polvikoski, R. Sulkava, H. Kalimo and A. Paetau (2012) Neuropathology and Applied Neurobiology38, 329–336
A fast, GPU-based geometrical placement planner for unknown sensor-modelled objects and placement areas

A Personal Robot should be able to handle unknown objects in unknown environments. For a manipulation task the question what to do with an object once it had been grasped is one of the most essential ones beside the grasping task itself. Moreover, the planning time should be at least as fast as the time the robot needs for its motions. We propose a fast placement planner for sensor-modelled objects in complex environments. The planner computes a stable position and orientation for the object in the environment. The algorithm uses only geometric information, most notably no force or torque sensor is required. In particular, we introduce a novel approach regarding the pose computation. By means of experiments with various household objects the robustness and performance are validated. Further on, we compare our approach with a pose computation using a physics simulation framework.
Is the Supernova of A.D. 185 Recorded in Ancient Roman Literature?

Records of possible supernova explosions have not been found so far in the ancient Greek and Latin literature. ' This is partly a fault of the ancients, in apparently failing to monitor the sky on a regular and systematic basis and to record clearly the details of unusual celestial "portents" that were observed,2 and partly a fault of the moderns, in relying perhaps too heavily on the results of previous scholarly searches through the Western literature.3
A reconceptualization of physical education: The intersection of gender/race/social class

Over the past several years, numerous reports have reported data documenting declining participation in physical activity among youth. We argue that the gender, race and social class differences in these data have not been an important consideration, and that understanding the implications of these differences is crucial for improving physical education curriculum. Because schooling should carry the responsibility of educating children to adopt and maintain a physically active lifestyle, the most prominent physical education curriculum in the United States, the sport-based physical education curriculum, requires the reconceptualization of current practice. As a basis for this reconceptualization, we begin by extending the analysis of gender as a unitary category to a dynamic relational analysis of gender, race and social class. Therefore, by using feminism/poststructuralism as a theoretical framework, we deconstruct historically dominant gender, race, and social class discourses around the body in sports and physical education to demonstrate the fluidity and contradictory nature of these categories. Finally, we conclude by highlighting the usefulness of feminism/poststructuralism for investigating racialized masculinities and femininities in future physical education research, and suggest pedagogical approaches that might further reconceptualize today's multi-activity sport-based physical education curricula and pedagogy.