Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The effect of token reinforcement on moderate-to-vigorous physical activity exhibited by young children

by Rutvi R. Patel University of the Pacific 2017 We used a multiple-baseline across participants and combined reversal and multielement design to assess the effects of contingent-token-reinforcement, compared to noncontingent-token-reinforcement, on moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) exhibited by four preschool-aged children. Three children engaged in higher levels of MVPA when tokens were delivered contingent on MVPA compared to baseline (no token) and noncontingent-token conditions. Although MVPA was differentiated across contingent-token sessions and corresponding baseline (no token) control probes for three of the four participants, some variability was apparent. The present study demonstrated that the delivery of tokens contingent on MVPA can increase and maintain MVPA exhibited by preschool-aged children, resulting in more MVPA than in baseline conditions and conditions in which tokens are awarded without respect to MVPA.
Interaction Between Thromboxane A2 and 5‐Hydroxytryptamine Receptor Subtpes in Human Coronary Arteries

BackgroundPlatelets release two powerful vasoconstrictors - thromboxane A2 (TXA2) and 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT). Animal studies have suggested that these two substances may act in a synergistic fashion to stimulate platelet activity and smooth muscle vasoconstriction. Methods and ResultsTo assess the interaction between TXA2 and 5-HT at the individual 5--HT receptor subtypes reported to mediate contraction, the effect of the amine was determined in the presence of differing concentrations of the thromboxane mimetic U46619. A total of 168 vessel segments were removed from 20 recipient hearts of patients undergoing cardiac transplantation. Segments were set up in isolated organ baths and tested for their response to 5-HT in the presence of an EC10, EC30, or EC50 concentration of U46619 (n=4). A synergistic response was only seen in a small number of the segments tested under these conditions. However, in the presence of ketanserin (10-6 M) to block 5-HT2 receptors, there was a significant increase in the response to 10-6 M 5-HT in the presence of both the EC30 (p<0.025) and EC50 (p<0.0S) concentrations of U46619 (n=4). The potentiation of non-5-HT2 receptor mediated responses to 5-HT, in the presence of U46619 (EC30), could be prevented by 10-7 M methiothepin, a nonselective 5-HT1-like/5-HT2 receptor antagonist. ConclusionsThese data indicate that TXA2 receptor activation can increase the response of 5-HT mediated by 5-HT1-like receptors in human coronary arteries. 5-HT1-like receptors have been shown to mediate the contractile effect of 5-HT in patients with variant and chronic stable angina. Thus, platelet contents may act together at specific receptor subtypes in the induction of myocardial ischemia.
Improving Nonintrusive Load Monitoring Efficiency via a Hybrid Programing Method

Nonintrusive load monitoring (NILM) aims to disaggregate the total power consumption profile measured at the household power inlet into device-level insights. While many studies focus on the modeling methodologies, few of them address the challenge of the computation efficiency which is critical for practical applications. The NILM problem is essentially a nondeterministic polynomial-time hard problem, meaning that obtaining the exact optimal solution is technically intractable. This paper proposes a fast method to address the approximation to the solutions of such problems from an optimization point of view. It is shown that by taking advantage of the constraint programing framework, the computational efficiency of the proposed NILM scheme can be significantly improved while comparable solution accuracy can also be preserved. Simulations conducted on the popular public datasets validate the effectiveness and efficiency of our proposed method.
At the interface between phonetics and pragmatics: non-local F0 effects on the perception of Cosenza Italian tunes

Analysing the tune meaning is often equivalent to analysing the meaning contribution of the “nucleus” (the intonation region starting from the last pitch accented syllable until the end of the intonation phrase). In this paper we report results from an identification task in Cosenza Italian, suggesting that listeners are able to identify the contrast between questions and statements by exploiting phonetic differences in the implementation of the rise-fall prenuclear contour. Such results mirror previous studies on Neapolitan and German and raise questions on the contribution of prenuclear f0 details to tune meaning.
MicroRNA-9 suppresses the growth, migration, and invasion of malignant melanoma cells via targeting NRP1

MicroRNAs (miRs) are a class of small noncoding RNAs that negatively regulate the gene expression by directly binding to the 3′ untranslated region of their target mRNA, thus resulting in mRNA degradation or translational repression. miR-9 has recently been demonstrated to play a role in the development and progression of malignant melanoma (MM), but the regulatory mechanism of miR-9 in the malignant phenotypes of MM still remains largely unknown. In this study, a total of 73 pairs of MM tissues and adjacent normal tissues were collected. Real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction and Western blot were used to detect the mRNA and protein expression of miR-9. MTT assay, wound healing assay, and transwell assay were conducted to determine the cell proliferation, migration, and invasion. Luciferase reporter assay was used to determine the targeting relationship between miR-9 and NRP1. Our data demonstrated that miR-9 expression was significantly downregulated in MM tissues compared with that in adjacent normal tissues. The decreased miR-9 level was significantly associated with the tumor stage and metastasis of MM. We also found that the expression level of miR-9 was decreased in MM cell lines (G361, B16, A375, and HME1) compared with normal skin HACAT cells. Ectopic expression of miR-9 led to a significant decrease in the ability of proliferation, migration, and invasion in A375 cells. NRP1 was further identified as a direct target gene of miR-9, and the protein expression of NRP1 was negatively regulated by miR-9 in A375 cells. Furthermore, overexpression of NRP1 reversed the suppressive effects of miR-9 on the malignant phenotypes of A375 cells. In vivo study revealed that miR-9 overexpression decreased the tumor growth, while overexpression of NRP1 increased MM growth. In summary, our findings suggest that the miR-9/NRP1 axis may serve as a potential target for the treatment of MM.
APPLICATION OF MOTIVATION-HYGIENE THEORY AMONG WORKERS OF SOCIAL CARE INSTITUTIONS

Motivation of workers is a field of interest to any institution. Motivated workers displaying high levels of satisfaction, or otherwise lack of dissatisfaction, have a positive impact on the overall work performance. The study aims to measure motivation levels and the influence of factors such as motivation-hygiene on satisfaction/dissatisfaction level among workers of social care institutions. A quantitative method of assessment is used. The sample consists of 110 workers. Results show a positive and statistically significant correlation between motivation factors and the levels of satisfaction with work. Responsibility is the selected factor with the biggest impact on satisfaction by the workers of the institutions surveyed. There is a positive but not statistically significant correlation between such factors as hygiene and lack of satisfaction at work. To the workers, the responsible supervisor is the factor with the biggest impact on the lack of satisfaction at work, while administrative policies are calculated as being r (Pearson) = -0.27 and sig = 0.761, which shows that they influence the dissatisfaction levels at work. Therefore institutions must pay attention to motivation strategies with the purpose of increasing satisfaction and thus decreasing dissatisfaction levels at work.
T Lymphocyte Myosin IIA is Required for Maturation of the Immunological Synapse

The role of non-muscle myosin IIA (heavy chain encoded by the non-muscle myosin heavy chain 9 gene, Myh9) in immunological synapse formation is controversial. We have addressed the role of myosin IIA heavy chain protein (MYH9) in mouse T cells responding to MHC-peptide complexes and ICAM-1 in supported planar bilayers – a model for immunological synapse maturation. We found that reduction of MYH9 expression levels using Myh9 siRNA in proliferating mouse CD4+ AND T cell receptor (TCR) transgenic T cells resulted in increased spreading area, failure to assemble the central and peripheral supramolecular activation clusters (cSMAC and pSMAC), and increased motility. Surprisingly, TCR microcluster speed was reduced marginally, however TCR microclusters dissipated prior to forming a cSMAC. TCR microclusters formed in the Myh9 siRNA-treated T cells showed reduced phosphorylation of the Src family kinase (SFK) activation loop and displayed reduced cytoplasmic calcium ion (Ca2+) elevation. In addition, Myh9 siRNA-treated cells displayed reduced phosphorylation of the Cas-L substrate domain – a force-dependent SFK substrate – which was observed in control siRNA-treated cells in foci throughout the immunological synapse except the cSMAC. Cas-L exhibited TCR ligation-dependent induction of phosphorylation. These results provide further evidence that T cell activation is modulated by intrinsic force-generating systems and can be viewed as a mechanically responsive process influenced by MYH9.
Preliminary Experience of using mbeddr for Developing Embedded Software

Over the last years, as part of the LW-ES KMU Innovativ research project, a team of developers at itemis and fortiss have developed the mbeddr system, which relies on language engineering to build a new class of environment for embedded software development. In essence, mbeddr consists of a set of extensions to C (such as state machines, units, interfaces and components) as well as a few additional languages for requirements engineering, documentation and product line engineering. mbeddr is still new, but a number of systems have been built with mbeddr. In this paper I summarize some preliminary experience with using mbeddr’s default extensions to build embedded systems based on a set of case studies. The ability for mbeddr to be extended is not discussed in this paper, even though this has proven very useful as well.
Sources of Error in Retarders and Waveplates

Error sources that afflict true zero order, compound zero order and multi-order linear retarders include variations in temperature, angle of incidence, wavelength, and the presence of multiple reflections. This application note contains technical information designed to aid the user in producing the highest quality results and in making the best purchasing choice among retarder types for the intended application.
Mining and ranking streams of news stories using cross-stream sequential patterns

We present a new method for mining and ranking streams of news stories using cross-stream sequential patterns and content similarity. In particular, we focus on stories reporting the same event across the streams within a given time window, where an event is defined as a specific thing that happens at a specific time and place. For every discovered cluster of stories reporting the same event we create an itemset-sequence consisting of stream identifiers of the stories in the cluster, where the sequence is ordered according to the timestamps of the stories. Furthermore, we record exact timestamps and content similarities between the respective stories. Given such a collection of itemset-sequences we use it for two tasks: (I) to discover recurrent temporal publishing patterns between the news streams in terms of frequent sequential patterns and content similarity and (II) to rank the streams of news stories with respect to timeliness of reporting important events and content authority. We demonstrate the applicability of the presented method on a multi-stream of news stories was gathered from RSS feeds of major world news agencies.
The Fundamental Role of Early Environments to Developing an Emotionally Healthy Brain

The quality of early socioemotional environments has a clear link to emotional health. Findings from neuroscientific and behavioral studies explain this enduring link, and findings focus on the plasticity of emotional brain development. Implications include (a) prioritizing individuals as early as possible and throughout development, (b) remaining mindful that stable caregiving is a basic need for children, and (c) supporting children’s emotional development which means supporting their families. Addressing these needs is a large task, but not addressing these needs confers an even larger mental health cost to the individual as well as to society more broadly.
Improve Service Interface Adaptation Using Sub-ontology Extraction

Interface mismatches are common among web services interactions. It happens when the interacting services have different message signatures. Semantic Web technologies are proposed to address this problem. If services are annotated with shared ontologies, an interface adapter may be generated by connecting messages that annotated with same or similar concepts. Unfortunately, services are usually annotated with different ontologies. As a result, different ontologies need to be aligned before adaptation. Aligning large ontologies can be time-consuming and inaccurate, which leads to inefficient and unsuccessful web service adaptation. In this paper, we tackle the problem by proposing a sub-ontology extraction method to generate Representation Ontology for each service. The Representation Ontologies can significantly increase alignment speed and accuracy, which consequently improve the process of interface adapter generation. Related tests are conducted to evaluate our work.
A retrospective longitudinal cohort study of Johne ’ s disease prevalence in a dairy herd Ba

The objective of this retrospective cohort study was to evaluate the effi cacy of selected Johne’s-disease control measures on a dairy farm. The Dairy Comp 305 archive fi les for 455 Holstein dairy cows born in 1996, 1997 and 1998 were used. The tested heifers were grouped into annual birth cohorts. Kinetic ELISA (KELA) results and fecal-culture results for solid(HEYM) and liquid-media systems (ESP Culture System II) were described and compared between birth cohorts. Only one animal had a high KELA score. Nevertheless, the fecal-culture results showed that there were animals shedding in the highest category even in test year 2001 in all birth cohorts. The 1997 birth cohort showed a lower rate of fecal positive culture results compared to the 1996 and 1998 cohorts. Out of 455 cows in the study, 43 were culled because of Johne’s disease clinical signs or high fecal-culture results. This cause-specifi c cull risk was 20% (21/105 animals) in 1996, 12% (12/100 animals) in 1997 and 10% (10/100 animals) in 1998. Survival analysis, where animals were classifi ed according to the KELA and fecal-culture results for all animals tested as heifers, showed that heifers with the highest KELA value and/or the highest fecal-culture results had the shortest survival time in the herd. Analysis of birth cohorts led to an enhanced understanding of the response to the Johne’s-control procedures. In this herd, early shedding led to short herd-survival.
Pancreatic stem cells

Controversy over whether pancreatic islet cells arise from adult stem or progenitor-like cells actually predates the discovery of insulin, and the recent use of islet transplantation to treat diabetes has only intensified interest in this question. Recent breakthroughs, particularly those based on Cre-loxP lineage-tracing in the mouse, have resolved some aspects of this controversy, but not all. We now know that insulin-producing βcells and other islet cells derive from multipotent progenitors in the embryo, but that their maintenance and expansion in postnatal life is driven primarily by proliferation of existing differentiated cells. This appears to be true even during regeneration, and seems to apply to the exocrine acinar cells as well as islets. Following pancreatic duct ligation, however, islet precursors re-appear in the injured pancreas, arising from ducts and differentiating into new islet cells. Thus, while the pancreas does not normally rely on classical stem cells, a stem cell-like mechanism for new islet differentiation may be inducible under specific circumstances. Understanding the signals that promote β-cell formation in the embryo and adult should facilitate efforts to derive clinicallyuseful β-cells in vitro, either from adult ducts or embryonic stem cells.
3D structure from 2D motion

This article motivates the structure from motion (SfM) approaches by describing some current practical applications. This is followed by a brief discussion of the background of the field. Then, several techniques are outlined that show various important approaches and paradigms to the SfM problem. Critical issues, advantages and disadvantages are pointed out. Subsequently, we present our SfM approach for recursive estimation of motion, structure, and camera geometry in a nonlinear dynamic system framework. Results are given for synthetic and real images. These are used to assess the accuracy and stability of the technique. We then discuss some practical and real-time applications we have encountered and the reliability and flexibility of the approach in those settings. Finally, we conclude with results from an independent evaluation study conducted by industry where the proposed SfM algorithm compared favorably to alternative approaches.
Task Sequencing for High-Level Sensor-Based Control

Classical sensor-based approaches tend to constrain all the degrees of freedom of a robot during the execution of a task. In this paper, a new solution is proposed. The key idea is to divide the global full-constraining task into several subtasks, which can be applied or inactivated to take into account potential constraints of the environment. Far from any constraint, the robot moves according to the full task. When it comes closer to a configuration to avoid, a higher level controller removes one or several subtasks, and activates them again when the constraint is avoided. The last controller ensures the convergence at the global level by introducing some look-ahead capabilities when a local minimum is reached. The robot accomplishes the global task by automatically sequencing sensor-based tasks, obstacle avoidance, and short deliberative phases. In this paper, a complete solution to implement this idea is proposed, along with several experiments that prove the validity of this approach
Analytical investigation of the switching frequency harmonic characteristic for common mode reduction modulator

Common mode voltage (CMV) generated by two-level voltage source rectifier/inverter adjustable speed drive (ASD) system is troublesome and requires extra hardware fixes, which increase production costs and can lead to increased installation costs. The use of the common mode reduction modulator (CMRM) to control the common mode voltage has received some attention over the past few years. It is attractive for its software selectivity, no additional components, etc. From a product design viewpoint, there is a need to analytically analyze and quantify the switching frequency harmonic characteristics for the CMRM. A complete design-oriented analytical analysis of the switching frequency harmonic characteristic of CMRM for a two-level voltage source rectifier/inverter ASD system is presented in this paper. An analytical harmonic flux formula for CMRM is derived, followed by a per carrier cycle and per fundamental cycle calculation of the harmonic flux RMS value. The analytical solution has been verified against both the simulated and the experimental tested load current harmonic components.
Natural Killer Cells in Healthy and Diseased Subjects

Natural killer cells or NK cells have been known since the 70s on the basis of their functional properties [1, 2], but essentially no molecular markers existed able to specifically identify them. Still in the early eighties, the few scientists that worked in NK cells field had difficulty convincing about the existence of those cells while, in the same period, immunologists were essentially in the search of the δ-chain of the T-cell receptor.
Authorship Attribution Analysis of Thai Online Messages

This paper presents a framework to identify the authors of Thai online messages. The identification is based on 53 writing attributes and the selected algorithms are support vector machine (SVM) and C4.5 decision tree. Experimental results indicate that the overall accuracies achieved by the SVM and the C4.5 were 79% and 75%, respectively. This difference was not statistically significant (at 95% confidence interval). As for the performance of identifying individual authors, in some cases the SVM was clearly better than the C4.5. But there were also other cases where both of them could not distinguish one author from another.
The Future of Gravitational Optics

In this speculative, millennial essay, I try to anticipate what sort of novel gravitational optics investigations might be undertaken after it becomes possible to map and monitor roughly 1012 sources (of which 109 may be usefully variable) comprehensively throughout electromagnetic and other spectra over the whole sky. Existing techniques suffice to produce three‐dimensional maps of the dark matter distribution of the accessible universe, to explore black hole spacetimes, and to magnify images of the first luminous sources, terrestrial planets, and compact objects.
Attempting arts integration: secondary teachers’ experiences with spoken word poetry

ABSTRACT Spoken word poetry is an art form that involves poetry writing and performance. Past research on spoken word has described the benefits for poets and looked at its use in pre-service teacher education; however, research is needed to understand how to assist in-service teachers in using this art form. During the 2016–2017 school year, 15 teachers joined a study group to gather strategies for teaching spoken word. Participants were invited to attend two 4-hour workshops and two public events at a university, and they received monthly bulletins. The year-long qualitative case study included observations, questionnaires, interviews, and artifacts. Materials were analyzed using grounded theory. This study found that teachers had a range of experiences integrating this art form into their classrooms. Some teachers reported meaningful and empowering experiences as they and their students wrote and performed spoken word. Others faced obstacles, including set curriculum and testing, which prevented them from using spoken word at all. Their testimonies reveal varying degrees of teacher agency in regard to curriculum. Teacher education can address these issues by helping teachers anticipate obstacles to integrating new material and by showing teachers how to respond as creative problem-solvers with agency.
Forming Visual Expressions With Augmented Fashion

Wearable devices have a crucial impact on our bodies since they directly affect our appearance. However, wearable design practitioners focus more on the practical functionalities of the technology, leaving more investigation needed on what kind of visual expressions the technology might enable on wearable devices. With a critical approach on this functional perspective, the authors conducted a design workshop with fashion design and engineering students in which they first created art expressions and then wearable devices by using technological components. This practitioner’s essay reflects on the resulting hands-on design experiences in new visual expressions that would not have been possible with just traditional materials.