Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Medicaid Managed Care and Working-Age Beneficiaries with Disabilities and Chronic Illnesses

Even after a decade of study, there are still many questions about how working-age adults with disabilities or chronic illnesses are faring in Medicaid managed care. This article draws from recent research to examine two critical issues: the need for better outcome measures specific to this population and the importance of evaluations that accurately estimate program effects, despite continued policy change, considerable differences among States, and extreme population diversity. The authors outline a research agenda that will help policymakers develop a more precise sense of how managed care practices affect different subgroups of working-age adults with disabilities and chronic illnesses and how practices could be altered to improve Medicaid's ability to meet their needs.
Molecular mechanism for feedback regulation of C4 biosynthesis in guinea pig peritoneal macrophage

Previous reports have shown that regulation of local extrahepatic production of complement may not reflect the regulation of plasma concentrations of the corresponding proteins and, further, that alteration of the tissue microenvironment can affect local macrophage protein synthesis. This report describes the molecular basis for control of the biosynthesis and secretion of a class III major histocompatibility complex gene product, the fourth component of complement (C4), from guinea pig macrophages by extracellular native C4 protein. The effect is specific for C4 synthesis, since production of C2 and total secreted protein was unaffected by fluid phase C4. C4 synthesis by extracellular C4 is regulated at a pretranslational level, without an effect on posttranslational proteolytic cleavage, glycosylation, or secretion. Specific C4 and factor B cDNA probes were used to demonstrate, by dot hybridization and Northern blot analysis, a decrease in messenger RNA coding for C4 that paralleled the inhibition of C4 biosynthesis, while the amount of total RNA and mRNA specific for factor B remained constant. Inhibition of C4 biosynthesis and the disappearance of mRNA encoding C4 occurred between 4 and 6 h after exposure of the macrophages to biologically active or methylamine- inactivated C4 protein. These data demonstrate that regulation of C4 biosynthesis by guinea pig macrophages serves as a model for the study of the molecular mechanisms of macrophage activation as well as the control of production of a component of the inflammatory response.
Patterns and Problems of Information Use in the Production of Articles by Academics in the Humanities and Social Sciences in Thailand

This study aimed to analyze the patterns of the use of information by academics in the humanities and social sciences in Thailand when producing academic articles, and to study and compare the problems encountered in their use of information based on the variables: gender, age, education, academic role and discipline. Citation analysis includes 3,464 citations from 203 articles in six qualified journals indexed in the Thai Citation Index Centre and international databases. A survey research using a questionnaire was sent to 203 academics who had published articles in the selected journals. The statistics for data analysis were frequency, percentage, range, t-test, and F-test. The key findings showed that the most widely used sources were books, journals, master’s theses, PhD dissertations, websites, newspapers, research reports, interviews, proceedings, and lecture notes. They preferred single-author works published within the last 10 years. The average to publish one article, the researcher used approximately 18 citations. The problems of information use encountered included those related to information resource centers/libraries, the academics in the humanities and social sciences themselves, humanities and social sciences information, and publisher, all of which were at a moderate level. However, there were problems at a high level in respect of information resources, and the staff of the information resource centers/libraries, and also in respect of the users being able to think of search terms, using library tools, and evaluating information.
Moving Beyond Love and Luck: Building Right Relationships and Respecting Lived Experience in New Zealand Autism Policy

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) diagnoses have been rising rapidly in recent years and New Zealand is just one country grappling with the policy challenges this presents. Currently, love, such as a supportive family, and luck, that appropriate services are available, are required by people with autism and their families for good outcomes, a situation that is neither equitable nor sustainable. Autism was first named as a separate condition in 1943. The concept of autism has developed significantly since then in many ways, including as the cultural identity that many autistic adults now claim. Influenced by the international disability rights movement and local activism, New Zealand policy is now based on the social model of disability, whereby society as a whole has responsibility for removing disabling barriers. In 1997, a New Zealand mother, unable to find appropriate support at a time of crisis, killed her autistic daughter. A decade of policy work followed, leading to the 2008 publication of the New Zealand Autism Spectrum Disorder Guideline (Ministries of Health and Education, 2008) which is the first whole-of-spectrum, whole-of-life, whole-of-government, best practice approach in the world to address the extensive issues surrounding ASD. Prioritisation and initial attempts at implementation revealed new problems. The complexity, lack of simple solutions and fragmentation of autism policy indicates that this is a 'wicked' policy problem. To move beyond this situation requires innovative and collaborative approaches. The 'transformative paradigm' is a research methodology which builds on recent developments in participatory and emancipatory research, and disciplines such as disability studies. It advocates approaches based on mixed methods, social justice, ethics and partnership, so is particularly suited to examining a problem such as autism, and indicating ways forward. There is untapped expertise among those with lived experience of autism and their families to tackle the 'wicked' aspects of autism, but to harness this expertise requires relationship building which addresses power imbalances and past injustices. This thesis analyses New Zealand autism policy and suggests ways this lived experience could be better respected and incorporated into policy processes, in an attempt to move past the currently required variables of love and luck.
Terms of Agreement: Rethinking Consent for Pervasive Computing

With its emphasis on ‘smart environments’, the vision of pervasive computing raises critical concerns with respect to consent. When sensors capture data about people, and digital systems interpret and respond to that data below the line of user visibility, two fundamental questions arise. First, are current notions of consent relevant in the emerging class of pervasive systems and, secondly, what are the practical consequences of dealing with consent for such environments? This paper reflects on the key principles of consent and the challenges raised by pervasive systems through a review of multidisciplinary perspectives on consent and technology. The developing complexity and decreasing visibility of pervasive computing systems, coupled with the increasing value and sensitivity of personal data, mean that it is no longer sufficient to design systems that assume users capable of making informed decisions at a single moment. In particular, the unprecedented sensitivity of contextual data, and the potential harms associated with inferences made on the basis of that data, highlights the need to revisit our design principles. Many of these discussions are nuanced and implicate a broad range of perspectives; however, it is clear that there is unlikely to be a ‘moment of consent’ in pervasive systems. In order to progress this agenda we offer the following set of recommendations to designers, as considerations for future systems design: (i) electronic consent mechanisms (ECMs) must cease to be designed around ‘moments in time’ and allow for negotiation, (ii) systems should enable establishment of user expectations and development of norms, (iii) systems should be sensitive to thirdparty interactions and (iv) we should move beyond designing for user control towards designing for user autonomy.
Southern Africa and modern human origins.

This paper argues that southern Africa was a remote part of the Old World in the late Pleistocene (125-10 ka ago). Because of this isolated position there was continuity without significant replacement in the resident population. Isolation and the relatively recent spread of agriculture to the region has allowed a section of this population to survive into the present. They are the Bushmen (San). Studies of geographic patterning in conventional genetic markers and mitochondrial DNA indicate that the Bushman clade has a long evolutionary history in southern Africa. Estimates of more than 100 ka for the continued presence of this population in the region are supported in archaeological investigations of sites with long sequences such as Klasies River main site and Border Cave. Human remains dating to the earlier part of the late Pleistocene have been recovered from these sites and the samples form a morphological series with the Klasies River remains possibly 20 ka older than those from Border Cave. There is no fossil record for the later Pleistocene, however, at a period when selection for a gracile morphology may have been pronounced. The cultural associations in the earlier late Pleistocene are with the Middle Stone Age. Expressions of cultural 'style' and the occurrence of similar artefact design types in the Middle and Later Stone Ages can be interpreted with reference to the ethnographic present. Temporal continuity can be shown in the geographical distribution of stylistic markers and this suggests participation in a shared cognitive system. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
Emerging Service Delivery Models for Educating Homeless Children and Youth: Implications for Policy and Practice

This article addresses the complex and challenging issues of providing an appropriate educational opportunity to homeless children and youth. Concomitant with the contemporary growth in homelessness in American society, educational programs designed to accommodate homeless children and youth have been developed in recent years. A discussion of emerging educational service delivery systems for homeless children and youth, with a particular emphasis on policy implications for overcoming the barriers to their education, is provided.
Modified differential evolution with local search algorithm for real world optimization

Real world optimization problems are used to judge the performance of any Evolutionary Algorithm (EA) over real world applications. This is why the performance of any EA over the real world optimization problems is very important for judging its efficiency. In this work, we represent a multi-population based memetic algorithm CDELS. It is hybridization of a competitive variant of Differential Evolution (DE) and a Local Search method. As the number of optima is large in this case, we have also incorporated a distant search method to hop from one optima to other optima. However, it is well known that DE has fast but less reliable convergence property. To overcome this limitation, a hybrid mutation strategy is developed to balance between exploration and thorough search. In addition, a proximity checking method is applied to distribute the subpopulations over a larger portion of the search space as this further enhances the searching ability of the algorithm. The performance of CDELS algorithm is evaluated on the test suite provided for the Competition on Testing Evolutionary Algorithms on Real-world Numerical Optimization Problems in the 2011 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation and the simulation results are shown in this paper.
Passion wanted! Socialisation of positive emotions in consulting firms

Earlier works on organisational socialisation concentrated predominantly on cognitive conceptions or negative emotions. Against this background, this paper explores the socialisation of positive emotions in five European consulting firms. We show that positive emotions are socialised in different phases and by different agents, culminating in an expanded zone of emotional indifference by which we mean that reciprocally perceived positive emotions help manifest over time into a stable relationship. Our study adds to the literature by explicitly integrating positive emotions and rather commonly neglected socialisation agents. However, we are critical of perspectives that suggest that management can directly influence positive emotions.
Aphasia LIFT: Exploratory investigation of an intensive comprehensive aphasia programme

Background: Intensive comprehensive aphasia programs (ICAPs) are gaining popularity in the international aphasia rehabilitation community. ICAPs comprise at least three hours of treatment per day over at least two weeks, have definable start and end dates for one cohort and use a variety of formats including individual treatment, group therapy, education and technology to improve language and communication. While intensive treatment approaches have demonstrated equivocal results on impairment-based measures, positive changes on activity/participation measures provide support for ICAPs in rehabilitation of chronic aphasia. Aphasia Language Impairment and Functional Therapy (LIFT) is a research-based ICAP developed for the purpose of evaluating treatment outcomes across the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) domains. Aims: The aim of this study was to estimate the magnitude of treatment effects yielded by Aphasia Aphasia LIFT in the domains of language impairment, functional communication and communication-related quality of life (QOL). Methods & Procedures: Eleven individuals with chronic post-stroke aphasia (mean = 26.9 months) completed Aphasia LIFT. The programme comprised individual impairment-based and functional treatment, group therapy, and computer-based treatment for 40 hours over two weeks (n = 4, LIFT 1) or 100 hours over four weeks (n = 7, LIFT 2). Assessments of confrontation naming, discourse production, functional communication and communication-related quality of life were completed at pre-treatment, immediately post-treatment and six to eight weeks following treatment termination. Outcomes & Results: Group-level analyses revealed acquisition and maintenance of treatment effects, as evidenced by significant improvement on at least one outcome measure at follow-up in all domains. The most consistent pattern of improvement at an individual level was observed on measures of functional communication and communication-related QOL. Conclusions: Aphasia LIFT yielded positive outcomes across ICF domains, and in many cases the treatment effect was enduring. These results demonstrate that Aphasia LIFT was successful in meeting the overarching goal of ICAPs, to maximise communication and enhance life participation in individuals with aphasia. Further research into ICAPs is warranted.
STAT3β, a Splice Variant of Transcription Factor STAT3, Is a Dominant Negative Regulator of Transcription*

The 89-kDa STAT3 protein is a latent transcription factor which is activated in response to cytokines (interleukin (IL)-5 and −6) and growth factors (epidermal growth factor). Binding of IL-5 to its specific receptor activates JAK2 which leads to the tyrosine phosphorylation of STAT3 proteins. Here we report the cloning of a cDNA encoding a variant of the transcription factor STAT3 (named STAT3β) which was isolated by screening an eosinophil cDNA library. Compared to wild-type STAT3, STAT3β lacks an internal domain of 50 base pairs located near the C terminus. This splice product is a naturally occurring isoform of STAT3 and encodes a 80-kDa protein. We found by reconstitution of the human IL-5R in COS cells that like STAT3, STAT3β is phosphorylated on tyrosine and binds to the pIRE from the ICAM-1 promoter after IL-5 stimulation. However, STAT3β fails to activate a pIRE containing promoter in transient transfection assays. Instead, co-expression of STAT3β inhibits the transactivation potential of STAT3. These results suggests that STAT3β functions as a negative regulator of transcription.
Associations between adolescents' sexual Risk behavior and scores on six psychometric scales: Impulsivity predicts Risk

ABSTRACT The objective of this study was to identify associations of six paper-and-pencil instruments with a composite index of sexual risk behavior among adolescents. Adolescents (N = 478) were sampled from community-based organizations, two homeless shelters, a detention center, and a drug treatment center. Participants completed a battery of 12 risk behavior questions and six scales: Attitudes Toward Prevention, Social Provision Scale, AIDS Knowledge Test, Condom Attitude Scale for Adolescents, Impulse Control Scale, and the Risk Taking Propensity Inventory. Multiple linear regression assessed associations for males and females separately. The Millon Impulse Control Scale and the Risk Taking Propensity Inventory were associated with risk outcome for males and females. The Condom Attitudes Scale predicted risk outcome in males. For both genders, the Risk Taking and the Millon Impulse Control Scales were collinear. The Millon Impulse Control Scale was the best measure of risk outcome for both genders, bu.
Relating two semantic descriptions of functional logic programs

A distinctive feature of modern functional logic languages like Toy or Curry is the possibility of programming non-strict and non-deterministic functions with call-time choice semantics. For almost ten years the CRWL framework [6,7] has been the only formal setting covering all these semantic aspects. But recently [1] an alternative proposal has appeared, focusing more on operational aspects. In this work we investigate the relation between both approaches, which is far from being obvious due to the wide gap between both descriptions, even at syntactical level.
Attentional Biases for Facial Expressions in Social Phobia: The Face-in-the-Crowd Paradigm

The present study examines the attentional bias hypothesis for individuals with generalised social phobia (GSPs). Socially phobic individuals were hypothesised to exhibit attentional bias towards threat stimuli relevant to interpersonal situations. This hypothesis was tested using the face-in-the-crowd paradigm. GSPs and nonanxious controls (NACs) detected an angry, happy, neutral, or disgust target face in a crowd of 12 distracter photographs. Results indicated that, compared to NACs, GSPs exhibited greater attentional biases for angry than for happy faces in a neutral crowd. GSPs were more slowed down in their performance by happy and angry versus neutral distracters; NACs did not exhibit such sensitivity to distracter type. Finally, GSPs were faster in detecting anger than disgust expressions; NACs detected both types of faces equally quickly. Implications of these findings for the maintenance of social phobia are discussed.
Robust fairness-ensuring beamforming with imperfect CSI in cloud radio access networks

The cloud radio access network (C-RAN) is sensitive to the constrained fronthaul links and imperfect channel state information (CSI). In this paper, a robust fairness-ensuring beamforming is designed for the fronthaul-constrained C-RAN with imperfect CSI. In particular, an enhanced imperfect CSI model is formulated, in which four kinds of error sources are considered. Based on the proposed model, the mean square error (MSE) of the received message is derived. To guarantee the fairness amongst user equipments, a max-MSE minimization optimization problem is formulated, which is non-convex. To address the non-convexity, a robust algorithm is proposed by introducing auxiliary variables and ℓ0-ℓ2 norm conversion. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness and fairness of the proposed robust max-MSE minimization algorithm under different error conditions.
Reproductive outcome and survival of common bottlenose dolphins sampled in Barataria Bay, Louisiana, USA, following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill

Common bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) inhabit bays, sounds and estuaries across the Gulf of Mexico. Following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, studies were initiated to assess potential effects on these ecologically important apex predators. A previous study reported disease conditions, including lung disease and impaired stress response, for 32 dolphins that were temporarily captured and given health assessments in Barataria Bay, Louisiana, USA. Ten of the sampled dolphins were determined to be pregnant, with expected due dates the following spring or summer. Here, we report findings after 47 months of follow-up monitoring of those sampled dolphins. Only 20% (95% CI: 2.50–55.6%) of the pregnant dolphins produced viable calves, as compared with a previously reported pregnancy success rate of 83% in a reference population. Fifty-seven per cent of pregnant females that did not successfully produce a calf had been previously diagnosed with moderate–severe lung disease. In addition, the estimated annual survival rate of the sampled cohort was low (86.8%, 95% CI: 80.0–92.7%) as compared with survival rates of 95.1% and 96.2% from two other previously studied bottlenose dolphin populations. Our findings confirm low reproductive success and high mortality in dolphins from a heavily oiled estuary when compared with other populations. Follow-up studies are needed to better understand the potential recovery of dolphins in Barataria Bay and, by extension, other Gulf coastal regions impacted by the spill.
Mutual thermal coupling in SiGe:C HBTs

This paper studies the mutual thermal coupling in trench isolated SiGe:C HBTs featuring peak fT and peak fmax of ~300GHz and ~400GHz, respectively. Inter- and intra-device thermal coupling parameters are extracted on specially designed test structures consisting of a five-finger HBT and a five-transistor array. The obtained coupling parameters are implemented in a distributed transistor model that considers self-heating as well as thermal coupling between devices. Very good agreement is achieved between circuit simulations and measurements.