Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Theory‐Driven Subgroup‐Specific Evaluation of an Intervention to Reduce Private Car Use1

In the context of a 2-wave panel study, we used Ajzen’s (1991) theory of planned behavior (TPB) as the theoretical framework for deriving and systematically testing hypotheses as to how an intervention (a “free” ticket for public transportation) influences the travelmode choice of students. The empirical results show that this intervention caused a drastic decrease in students’ car use. The effect of the intervention on behavior is mediated by the causal chain postulated by the TPB. In the second step, we analyzed whether there were subgroup-specific reactions to the intervention. Surprisingly, the subgroup analysis shows that students with more negative attitudes toward policy measures restricting car use reacted more strongly to the intervention than did students with a more positive attitude. The focus of the present study is the evaluation and theory-driven explanation of the effects of an environmental policy measure aiming to reduce students’ car use for university routes. At present, in the literature one finds only weakly interconnected lines of research on this question. One line concentrates on environmental behavior change, as targeted by behavior analysts and others designing interventions to encourage environmental preservation behavior (Dwyer, Leeming, Cobem, Porter, & Jackson, 1993; Geller et al., 1990; Geller, Winett, & Everett, 1982; Kruse & Arit, 1984). If Dwyer et al. are right, this research had its first peak in the late 1970s and 198Os, and it is stagnating at the moment. According to Dwyer et al., behavioral scientists became discouraged by the lack of support and the difficulty of working with large systems, public policies, and deeply ingrained cultural practices, in spite of some successhl demonstrations. Another problem that can be identified in much of the work in this area is the lack of a clear theoretical framework for developing and studying the effects of socialscience-based interventions.
Ribonucleotide reductase and the regulation of DNA replication: an old story and an ancient heritage

All organisms that synthesize their own DNA have evolved mechanisms for maintaining a constant DNA/cell mass ratio independent of growth rate. The DNA/cell mass ratio is a central parameter in the processes controlling the cell cycle. The co‐ordination of DNA replication with cell growth involves multiple levels of regulation. DNA synthesis is initiated at specific sites on the chromosome termed origins of replication, and proceeds bidirectionally to elongate and duplicate the chromosome. These two processes, initiation and elongation, therefore determine the total rate of DNA synthesis in the cell. In Escherichia coli, initiation depends on the DnaA protein while elongation depends on a multiprotein replication factory that incorporates deoxyribonucleotides (dNTPs) into the growing DNA chain. The enzyme ribonucleotide reductase (RNR) is universally responsible for synthesizing the necessary dNTPs. In this review we examine the role RNR plays in regulating the total rate of DNA synthesis in E. coli and, hence, in maintaining constant DNA/cell mass ratios during normal growth and under conditions of DNA stress.
Identificación de los facilitadores clave de la mejora continua y su relación con las conductas

Purpose of the paper: establecer una lista de 22 facilitadores propuestos por la literatura. Filtrar esa lista eliminando aquello se pueda considerarse una conducta en lugar de un facilitador, quedando finalmente reducida a 11 facilitadores. Proponer una relacion entre facilitadores y conductas. Design/Methodology/Approach: revision de literatura, focus group de expertos y mandos de empresa.
Stress in Context: Morpho-Syntactic Properties Affect Lexical Stress Assignment in Reading Aloud

Recent findings from English and Russian have shown that grammatical category plays a key role in stress assignment. In these languages, some grammatical categories have a typical stress pattern and this information is used by readers. However, whether readers are sensitive to smaller distributional differences and other morpho-syntactic properties (e.g., gender, number, person) remains unclear. We addressed this issue in word and non-word reading in Italian, a language in which: (1) nouns and verbs differ in the proportion of words with a dominant stress pattern; (2) information specified by words sharing morpho-syntactic properties may contrast with other sources of information, such as stress neighborhood. Both aspects were addressed in two experiments in which context words were used to induce the desired morpho-syntactic properties. Experiment 1 showed that the relatively different proportions of stress patterns between grammatical categories do not affect stress processing in word reading. In contrast, Experiment 2 showed that information specified by words sharing morpho-syntactic properties outweighs stress neighborhood in non-word reading. Thus, while general information specified by grammatical categories may not be used by Italian readers, stress neighbors with morpho-syntactic properties congruent with those of the target stimulus have a primary role in stress assignment. These results underscore the importance of expanding investigations of stress assignment beyond single words, as current models of single-word reading seem unable to account for our results.
On Experience of Building Knowledge Portals on Humanities

The paper discusses experience of building knowledge portals providing the systematization and integration of knowledge and information resources on humanities, as well as the content-based access to them. To provide a sufficiently complete and consistent representation of the knowledge and information resources, their systematization and integration are performed on the basis of ontology. The suggested approach to building knowledge portals based on ontology was successfully used in the projects aimed at development of the scientific knowledge Internet portals on archeology and computational linguistics.
‘Culture’, ‘civilization’ and the sociology of sport

Abstract This paper discusses some of the work that I and a number of colleagues at the University of Leicester have done on sport in relation to what the late Norbert Elias (1939) called the theory of the ‘civilizing process’. It is first necessary to outline some of the basic assumptions of the ‘figurational/process‐socilogical’ approach (Mennell, 1989) on which this work is based and to respond to some of the criticisms that have been made of it. I shall start, however, by offering a brief comment on the history of the sociology of sport and the current ‘state of play ‘ in the field.
Extensions of the Bloch–Pólya theorem on the number of real zeros of polynomials

Nous prouvons qu'il existe des constantes absolues ci > 0 et c 2 > 0 telles que pour tout {a 0 ,a 1 ,. ,a n )⊂[1,M], 1 < M < exp(c 1 n 1/4 ), il existe b 0 ,b 1 ,. ,b n ∈ {-1,0,1} tels que P(z) = n Σ j=0 b j a j z J a au moins c 2 n 1/4 changements de signe distincts dans ]0,1[. Cela ameliore et etend des resultats anterieurs de Bloch et Polya.
Effectiveness of a combined (4% chlorhexidine digluconate shampoo and solution) protocol in MRS and non-MRS canine superficial pyoderma: a randomized, blinded, antibiotic-controlled study.

BACKGROUND There is a lack of studies comparing topical antiseptics to systemic antibiotics in the treatment of canine superficial pyoderma. HYPOTHESIS/OBJECTIVES To compare the efficacy of topical chlorhexidine with systemic amoxicillin-clavulanic acid for the treatment of canine superficial pyoderma. ANIMALS A randomized controlled trial was conducted in dogs with superficial pyoderma. Group T (n = 31) was treated topically with 4% chlorhexidine digluconate shampoo (twice weekly) and solution (once daily) for 4 weeks. Group S (n = 20) was treated orally with amoxicillin-clavulanic acid (25 mg/kg) twice daily for 4 weeks. METHODS Bacterial culture and susceptibility testing were performed on clinical specimens collected before treatment. Severity of lesions and number of intracellular bacteria were evaluated using four-point scales to calculate a total pyoderma score for each dog. Pruritus was assessed by owners using a visual analog scale (range 0-10). Scores were analysed for statistical differences between groups T and S. RESULTS Staphylococcus pseudintermedius was isolated from 48 dogs, including eight meticillin-resistant strains (MRSP). Although the number of dogs was small, no significant differences in pyoderma and pruritus scores were observed between groups throughout the study except for day 1, when group S had a significantly higher total score than group T (P = 0.03). Treatment with chlorhexidine products resulted in resolution of clinical signs in all dogs including those infected with MRSP. CONCLUSION AND CLINICAL IMPORTANCE Topical therapy with chlorhexidine digluconate products may be as effective as systemic therapy with amoxicillin-clavulanic acid. This finding supports the current recommendations to use topical antiseptics alone for the management of superficial pyoderma.
Efficient test generation for army network protocols with conflicting timers

During the University of Delaware (UD's) and CCNY's (City College of the City University of New York) ongoing effort to generate conformance tests for the US Army network protocol MIL-STD 188-220, a significant obstacle has been addressed-when multiple timers are running simultaneously, a test sequence may become unrealizable if there are conflicting conditions based on the protocol's timers. This problem, termed the conflicting timers problem, is handled in the hitherto generated tests by manually expanding a protocol's extended FSM based on the set of conflicting timers, resulting in test sequences that are far from minimum-length. Similar inconsistencies, but based on arbitrary linear variables, are present in the extended FSMs modeling VHDL specifications. This paper presents an efficient solution to the conflicting timers problem that eliminates the redundancies of manual state expansion. CCNY's inconsistency removal algorithms are applied to a new model for real-time protocols with multiple timers. The new model captures complex timing dependencies by using simple linear expressions. this modeling technique, combined with the CCNY's inconsistency removal algorithms, is expected to significantly shorten the test sequences without compromising their fault coverage.
Bootstrapping for Named Entity Tagging Using Concept-based Seeds

A novel bootstrapping approach to Named Entity (NE) tagging using concept-based seeds and successive learners is presented. This approach only requires a few common noun or pronoun seeds that correspond to the concept for the targeted NE, e.g. he/she/man/woman for PERSON NE. The bootstrapping procedure is implemented as training two successive learners. First, decision list is used to learn the parsing-based NE rules. Then, a Hidden Markov Model is trained on a corpus automatically tagged by the first learner. The resulting NE system approaches supervised NE performance for some NE types.
The Effects of Using Video Texts Supported with Advance Organizers and Captions on Chinese College Students' Listening Comprehension: An Empirical Study

ABSTRACT Listening plays a significant role in the language acquisition process and in communication, and its development as a key second/foreign language skill has gradually become of chief concern to language teachers and scholars. Applying high technology to furthering language learning is becoming commonplace. Most language teachers acknowledge that videos expose students to authentic materials and aid the identification of words and the clarification of unfamiliar cultural concepts. This study compares listening comprehension rates for video texts using a variety of techniques: advance organizers; captions; a combination of both; and none of the foregoing. The subjects of the study were 170 students at Ming-Hsin Institute of Technology, Hsinchu, Taiwan. They viewed four different video segments each attended with one of the four above-listed treatments, and a Latin square design was used to collect data. After each viewing, a set of ten multiple<hoice items was administered to examine comprehension rates. The results showed that more effective comprehension occurred when using the combination of techniques than when using any one singly. Furthermore, they revealed that captions on videos best helped bridge the competence gap between reading and listening and enhanced language learning. The implications of the results for the use of video for listening comprehension are discussed.
An Efficient Relay Sensor Placing Algorithm for Connectivity in Wireless Sensor Networks

Randomly deployed sensor networks often make initial communication gaps inside the deployed area, even in an extremely high-density network. How to add relay sensors such that the underlying graph is connected and the number of relay sensors added is minimized is an important problem in wireless sensor networks. This paper presents an Efficient Relay Sensor Placing Algorithm (ERSPA) for solving such a problem. Compared with the minimum spanning tree algorithm and the greedy algorithm, ERSPA achieves better performance in terms of the number of relay sensors added. Simulation results show that the average number of relay sensors added by the minimal spanning tree algorithm is approximately two times that of the ERSPA algorithm.
Genetic mapping of a murine locus controlling development of T helper 1/T helper 2 type responses.

Genetic background of the T cell can influence T helper (Th) phenotype development, with some murine strains (e.g., B10.D2) favoring Th1 development and others (e.g., BALB/c) favoring Th2 development. Recently we found that B10.D2 exhibit an intrinsically greater capacity to maintain interleukin 12 (IL-12) responsiveness under neutral conditions in vitro compared with BALB/c T cells, allowing for prolonged capacity to undergo IL-12-induced Th1 development. To begin identification of the loci controlling this genetic effect, we used a T-cell antigen receptor-transgenic system for in vitro analysis of intercrosses between BALB/c and B10.D2 mice and have identified a locus on murine chromosome 11 that controls the maintenance of IL-12 responsiveness, and therefore the subsequent Th1/Th2 response. This chromosomal region is syntenic with a locus on human chromosome 5q31.1 shown to be associated with elevated serum IgE levels, suggesting that genetic control of Th1/Th2 differentiation in mouse, and of atopy development in humans, may be expressed through similar mechanisms.
Self-Inactivating Lentivirus Vector for Safe and Efficient In Vivo Gene Delivery

ABSTRACT In vivo transduction of nondividing cells by human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1)-based vectors results in transgene expression that is stable over several months. However, the use of HIV-1 vectors raises concerns about their safety. Here we describe a self-inactivating HIV-1 vector with a 400-nucleotide deletion in the 3′ long terminal repeat (LTR). The deletion, which includes the TATA box, abolished the LTR promoter activity but did not affect vector titers or transgene expression in vitro. The self-inactivating vector transduced neurons in vivo as efficiently as a vector with full-length LTRs. The inactivation design achieved in this work improves significantly the biosafety of HIV-derived vectors, as it reduces the likelihood that replication-competent retroviruses will originate in the vector producer and target cells, and hampers recombination with wild-type HIV in an infected host. Moreover, it improves the potential performance of the vector by removing LTR sequences previously associated with transcriptional interference and suppression in vivo and by allowing the construction of more-stringent tissue-specific or regulatable vectors.
Study on the therapeutic effects of salicylazosulfapyridine on ulcerative colitis in rats

Objective: To explore the therapeutic effects of salicylazosulfapyridine (SASP) on rats with ulcerative colitis (UC). Methods: The UC rat model was induced by coloclysis with TNBS (trinitrobenzene sulfonic acid)/alcohol. Thirty male SD rats were randomly divided into sham group, model group and SASP group with 10 rats in each group. During the two-week drug treatment, the weights, the intestinal mucosal injuries and the inflammation levels of rats in three different groups were recorded. Results: Compared with the model group, the body weight losses of rats (P<0.05) caused by UC were significantly improved and the incidences of loose stools (P<0.05) were alleviated in the SASP group. SASP could improve the injuries and morphological pathology changes of the colon tissue of rats, including the decrease of colon index, ulcer ratio and the number of aberrant crypt foci (ACF). SASP could significantly lower the inflammatory reactions in colon mucosa and effectively control the inflammation (P<0.05). Conclusion: SASP can effectively relieve intestinal inflammatory reactions and have good effects on UC in rats.
Design Methodology for 2.4GHz Dual-Core Microprocessor

This paper presents a design methodology that was applied to the design of a 2.4GHz dual-core SPARC64trade microprocessor with 90nm CMOS technology. It focuses on the newly adopted techniques, such as efficient data management in dual-core design, fast delay calculation of the noise-immune clock distribution circuit, enhanced signal integrity analysis of a large-scale custom macro design, and enhanced diagnosis capability using a logic BIST circuit.
When Should Learning Agents Switch to Explicit Knowledge?

According to psychological models, learned knowledge can be distinguished into implicit and explicit knowledge. The former can be exploited, but cannot be verbalized easily (e. g., to explain it to another person). The latter is available in an explicit form, it often comprises generalized, rule-based knowledge which can be verbalized and explained to others. During a learning process, the learned knowledge starts in an implicit form and gets explicit as the learning process progresses, and humans benefit from exploiting such generalized, rule-based knowledge when learning. This paper investigates how learning agents can benefit from explicit knowledge which is extracted during a learning process from a learned implicit representation. It is clearly shown that an agent can already benefit from explicit knowledge in early phases of a learning process.
Distributed extremum seeking over directed graphs

We consider the problem of steering the state of a group of agents with integrator dynamics to the solution of an optimization problem in the form of a sum of strictly convex separable functions, each available to an individual agent, with shared linear constraints. Under the assumption that the agents are capable of communicating over a network prescribed by a directed graph, not necessarily weight-balanced, we provide a procedure for designing a class of gradient-free distributed extremum seeking control laws that achieve this objective. The novelty of this procedure is in taking advantage of Lie brackets to generate a distributed dynamics that approximates the trajectories of the corresponding saddle-point dynamics, which is not necessarily distributed. Several examples illustrate our results.
Married Once, Twice, and Three or More Times: Data From the American Community Survey

Some people might marry more than once in their lifetime. The demographic characteristics of groups by number of marriages have received little attention. As there is limited knowledge about how demographic profiles differ by number of remarriages, this descriptive report offers detailed tabulations of basic demographic characteristics by number of marriages. The logistic regression predicting the likelihood of having 2 or more marriages in a sample of ever married adults (age > 21) complements the project. By using data from the single-year American Community Survey 2010 Public Use Microdata Sample file, it is found that about 20% of the population reports being married more than once. Regression results indicate that educational attainment, race or ethnic status, age, nativity, disability, and personal income are all associated with the probability of experiencing multiple marriages. Future efforts should continue to provide descriptive characteristics of the population by number of marriages to better understand population-level trends.
Dietary polyunsaturated fatty acid and antioxidant modulation of vascular dysfunction in the spontaneously hypertensive rat.

Two currently available edible oils-olive and canola-and two oil blends of plant origin having different n-3/n-6 polyunsaturated fatty acid (PUFA) ratios were evaluated for their ability to modify vascular dysfunction in the spontaneously hypertensive rat (SHR). Synthetic diets supplemented with test oils (5% w/w) were fed for 12 weeks, and segments of thoracic aorta used to assess vascular function. Vessels from the SHR displayed a spontaneous constrictor response after the inhibition of endothelial cell nitric oxide (NO) with N(omega)-nitro-L-arginine (NOLA). Dietary alpha -linoleate enrichment led to a reduction (P<0.05) in this abnormality with a dietary n-3/n-6 PUFA ratio of 1.0 (blend-1) yielding the best outcome. Relaxation to acetylcholine (ACh) was unaffected by dietary lipid supplementation. NOLA treated rings also displayed contractions to ACh that were abolished by indomethacin, thromboxane antagonists SQ29548, picotamide and flavonoids kaempferol and quercetin. In contrast, alpha-tocopherol, rutin and the lipoxygenase inhibitor esculetin resulted in only partial (30-55%) inhibition, and were ineffective against the NOLA-induced contraction suggesting the operation of different biochemical mechanisms in mediating the spontaneous and Ach-induced contractions. Results implicate plant-based oils and antioxidants as potential modulators of vascular function.
Linear approaches to camera calibration from sphere images or active intrinsic calibration using vanishing points

Spherical objects and vanish points are often used for camera calibration. An occluding contour of a sphere is projected to a conic in the perspective image, and using a moving active camera, the trajectory of a vanishing point in the perspective images is also a conic when the camera is rotated about a fixed 3D axis whereas the translation of the camera is arbitrary. In fact, the problems of camera calibration using conics from spheres or vanishing points can be described by same mathematic representations. Two linear approaches to the problems are proposed in this paper: one based on the geometric interpretation of the relation between image conics and the image of the absolute conic, and the other using the special structure of the problems in algebra. Only three such conics are needed for the two linear approaches, and the minimum number for previous nonlinear optimization methods is also three. All five intrinsic parameters are recovered linearly without making assumptions, such as, zero-skew or unitary aspect ratio which are often used in previous methods. The two linear algorithms have been tested in extensive experiments with respect to noise sensitivity and also made comparisons with recent calibration techniques.