Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Drilling Deeper: A Systematic, Context-Sensitive Investigation of Causal Mechanisms in the Oil–Conflict Link

Abstract This article employs an innovative methodology to study causal mechanisms in the oil–conflict link by combining a systematic approach with taking into account country details. Engaging in a deductive test of causal mechanisms in a controlled comparison of four major oil exporters, results show that no oil-related causal mechanism can fully explain the differences in violence. A more inductive analysis complemented by process tracing suggests a more comprehensive mechanism: oil contributes to the formation of opposition through grievances. Levels of violence, however, vary largely according to non-oil conditions – particularly the cohesiveness of opposition and the reaction of government to challengers.
Opg, Rank, and Rankl in Tooth Development: Co-ordination of Odontogenesis and Osteogenesis

Osteoprotegerin (OPG), receptor activator of nuclear factor-κB (RANK), and RANK ligand (RANKL) are mediators of various cellular interactions, including bone metabolism. We analyzed expression of these three genes during murine odontogenesis from epithelial thickening to cytodifferentiation stages. Opg showed expression in the thickening and bud epithelium. Expression of Opg and Rank was observed in both the internal and the external enamel epithelium as well as in the dental papilla mesenchyme. Although Rankl expression was not detected in tooth epithelium or mesenchyme, it was expressed in pre-osteogenic mesenchymal cells close to developing tooth germs. All three genes were detected in developing dentary bone at P0. The addition of exogenous OPG to explant cultures of tooth primordia produced a delay in tooth development that resulted in reduced mineralization. We propose that the spatiotemporal expression of these molecules in early tooth and bone primordia cells has a role in co-ordinating bone and tooth development.
Prosodic attribute model for spoken language identification

Prosodic information is believed to carry language-specific information useful to spoken language recognition. Modeling prosodic features is a challenging problem, on which a wide diversity of approaches have been investigated. In this paper, a novel prosodic attribute model (PAM) is proposed to capture prosodic features with compact models. It models the language-specific co-occurrence statistics of a comprehensive set of prosodic features. When the prosodic LID system with PAM is evaluated in NIST Language Recognition Evaluations (LRE) 2007 and 2009, it demonstrates respectively 21% and 11% relative EER reduction compared to a phonotactic LID system. The contributions of prosodic features in detecting some of the target languages, including tonal languages, are even more substantial. It is also noted that most prosodic attributes in the comprehensive set are making positive contributions.
Major Human Cytomegalovirus Structural Protein pp65 (ppUL83) Prevents Interferon Response Factor 3 Activation in the Interferon Response

ABSTRACT We have identified a cytomegalovirus virion protein capable of modulating the rapid induction of an interferon-like response in cells that follows virus binding and penetration. Functional genomics revealed a role for the major cytomegalovirus structural protein, pp65 (ppUL83), in counteracting this response. The underlying mechanism involves a differential impact of this structural protein on the regulation of interferon response factor 3 (IRF-3). In contrast, NF-κB is activated independent of pp65, and neither STAT1 nor STAT3 becomes activated by either virus. pp65 is sufficient to prevent the activation of IRF-3 when introduced alone into cells. pp65 acts by inhibiting nuclear accumulation of IRF-3 and is associated with a reduced IRF-3 phosphorylation state. Thus, this investigation shows that the major structural protein of cytomegalovirus is committed to the modulation of the IRF-3 response, a primary mediator of the type I interferon response. By subverting IRF-3, the virus escapes throwing a central alarm devoted to both immediate antiviral control and regulation of the immune response.
Campus Values in Mate Selection: A Replication.

This study was designed to examine and compare campus values in mate selection from 1939 to 1967. A replication of previous research done in 1939 by Hill and in 1956 by McGinnis was undertaken in 1967 by sending a questionnaire concerned with factors in mate selection to a random sample of students on four college campuses. From the findings it was concluded that the current college population has not departed significantly from values in mate selection held a generation ago. In fact, responses indicate a remarkable degree of consistency between the values voiced by the two generations.
Improved Hierarchical Clustering for Face Images in Videos: Integrating positional and temporal information with HAC

Efficient techniques for face clustering, along with speech and text recognition, can provide the means for rapid browsing and accurate retrieval of videos from large video databases. Observing that video data contains information about not only the face features, but also the temporal ordering of the faces and positional coordinates of the face-regions within the video frame, an attempt is made to consolidate all of these details into the framework of the flexible and intuitive hierarchical clustering algorithm. This paper outlines a novel initialization mechanism for the hierarchical clustering to follow, based on the temporal and positional information of the face-samples extracted from a video. Experiments with news broadcast videos show that the novel algorithm is considerably more efficient than it's parent, and is promising for future exploration.
How accurately can primary school teachers predict the scores of their pupils in standardised tests of attainment? A study of some non-cognitive factors that influence specific judgements.

(1985). How Accurately can Primary School Teachers Predict the Scores of their Pupils in Standardised Tests of Attainment? A Study of some non‐Cognitive Factors that Influence Specific Judgements. Educational Studies: Vol. 11, No. 1, pp. 41-60.
Development of emotional attachment on a cleaning robot for the long-term interactive affective companion

Emotional interaction has been widely applied to many robotic applications. Emotional behavior, which is complementary to limited cognitive ability in a service robot, is becoming the attractive service task even including its own therapeutic functions. This paper focused on the user study of an interactive affective companion by using a cleaning robot as a pet. The cognitive and emotional subsumption model is designed for the robust behavior selection with the response to human's commands. In addition, we testified the appropriateness of long-term interaction through tablet-based modality.
Application of Improved BP Network in the Flaws Evaluation of Conductive Materials

The back-propagation (BP) network is widely recognized as a powerful training tool of the multilayer neural networks (MLNNs). Usually it suffers from a slow convergence rate and often results in local minimums, since it applies the steepest descent method to update the network weights. A variety of related algorithms have been introduced to address that problem. Levenberg-Marquardt algorithm is one of the fastest types of these algorithms. This paper presents an approximation calculation for Hesse matrix to train the neural networks when the second order item can not be omitted, and the improved algorithm is successfully used in the surface flaws evaluation of the conductive materials based on eddy current testing (ECT).
A Critical Analysis of Grade 3 Testing in Ontario

The recent re-introduction of province-wide group achievement testing in Ontario has placed new demands, challenges, and some stresses on students, parents, and teachers. As consultants, school psychologists are in a position to meet these challenges because of their advanced knowledge about standardized testing and their knowledge of what can be reasonably expected from students based on the students' cognitive development. This paper uses multiple perspectives to evaluate the Grade 3 Assessment, with the main focus on the degree to which the items reflect current curriculum guidelines. We also examine whether the demands placed on the children are consistent with what we know about the cognitive development of 8-9 year-old-children. Although the Grade 3 Assessment is based on the Ontario Curriculum (1997), many items exceed what should be expected from a typical Grade 3 student when children's cognition is considered. Given the political implications of province-wide testing, tests need to be impeccably constructed. This analysis is intended to provide school psychologists with a framework for disseminating information about the value and limitations of the Grade 3 Assessment.
Reduction in Unnecessary Clinical Laboratory Testing Through Utilization Management at a US Government Veterans Affairs Hospital.

OBJECTIVES To implement an electronic laboratory utilization management system (laboratory expert system [LES]) to provide safe and effective reductions in unnecessary clinical laboratory testing. METHODS The LES is a set of frequency filter subroutines within the Veterans Affairs hospital and laboratory information system that was formulated by an interdisciplinary medical team. RESULTS Since implementing the LES, total test volume has decreased by a mean of 11.18% per year compared with our pre-LES test volume. This change was not attributable to fluctuations in outpatient visits or inpatient days of care. Laboratory cost savings were estimated at $151,184 and $163,751 for 2012 and 2013, respectively. A significant portion of these cost savings was attributable to reductions in high-volume, large panel testing. No adverse effects on patient care were reported, and mean length of stay for patients remained unchanged. CONCLUSIONS Electronic laboratory utilization systems can effectively reduce unnecessary laboratory testing without compromising patient care.
Wireless for the factory: The Wi-Fact analysis

Wireless in shop-floors is a bet: it outlines the possibility of making automation more flexible and to simplify plant reconfiguration. However, the specific context subtends several challenging requirements, which the available off-the-shelf solutions are not 100%-ready to cope with. By the way, the potential benefits of wireless for automation are so significant that it is worth investigating novel techniques to enforce the available wireless transceivers, so as to make them suitable for factories. The Italian regional project Wi-Fact is putting under close scrutiny the context of wireless automation to identify the most significant threats and proposing solutions to stem them. This paper take stock of the project achievements at its mid-term turning point.
Conversational telephone speech recognition

This paper describes the development of a speech recognition system for the processing of telephone conversations, starting with a state-of-the-art broadcast news transcription system. We identify major changes and improvements in acoustic and language modeling, as well as decoding, which are required to achieve state-of-the-art performance on conversational speech. Some major changes on the acoustic side include the use of speaker normalization (VTLN), the need to cope with channel variability, and the need for efficient speaker adaptation and better pronunciation modeling. On the linguistic side the primary challenge is to cope with the limited amount of language model training data. To address this issue we make use of a data selection technique, and a smoothing technique based on a neural network language model. At the decoding level lattice rescoring and minimum word error decoding are applied. On the development data, the improvements yield an overall word error rate of 24.9% whereas the original BN transcription system had a word error rate of about 50% on the same data.
Perceptual Capacity of the Isolated Visual Cortex in the Cat

The split-brain approach was utilized in 6 cats to test the degree of functional autonomy in the visual system. The central visual cortex of one hemisphere was isolated by the removal of most of the extravisual neocortex of the same hemisphere. Visual inflow was restricted to the isolated side in four cases by sectioning the crossed optic fibres at the chiasma and masking one eye and in two cases by section of the contralateral optic tract. The isolation produced severe deficits in visual performance, although all cases retained some ability to learn and to recall simple pattern discriminations. The results of two- and three-stage removals of the non-visual cortex, and of terminal section of the callosum, as well as histology of the lateral geniculate nucleus indicated that geniculo-striate damage was not the limiting factor. Removal of fronto-parietal cortex produced as much or more decrement in visual discrimination than did removal of temporal cortex.
Retrospective Priming and Masked Semantic Priming: The Interfering Effects of Prime Activation

Abstract This paper presents three experiments that examine the relationship between retrospective priming and masked semantic priming. Using the pre-cueing paradigm (Hirshman and Durante, 1992), retrospective priming was varied by manipulating prime presentation duration, prior exposure to the primes, and prime-target SOA. All three experiments provided support for the hypothesis that masked semantic printing decreases as retrospective priming increases. We present an account of these findings which focus on the idea that prime activation can interfere with target processing. This account highlights that the failure to fully represent the processing interactions of sequentially presented items constitutes an important gap in contemporary models of semantic priming.
The SARS-coronavirus nsp7+nsp8 complex is a unique multimeric RNA polymerase capable of both de novo initiation and primer extension

Uniquely among RNA viruses, replication of the ∼30-kb SARS-coronavirus genome is believed to involve two RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) activities. The first is primer-dependent and associated with the 106-kDa non-structural protein 12 (nsp12), whereas the second is catalysed by the 22-kDa nsp8. This latter enzyme is capable of de novo initiation and has been proposed to operate as a primase. Interestingly, this protein has only been crystallized together with the 10-kDa nsp7, forming a hexadecameric, dsRNA-encircling ring structure [i.e. nsp(7+8), consisting of 8 copies of both nsps]. To better understand the implications of these structural characteristics for nsp8-driven RNA synthesis, we studied the prerequisites for the formation of the nsp(7+8) complex and its polymerase activity. We found that in particular the exposure of nsp8's natural N-terminal residue was paramount for both the protein's ability to associate with nsp7 and for boosting its RdRp activity. Moreover, this ‘improved’ recombinant nsp8 was capable of extending primed RNA templates, a property that had gone unnoticed thus far. The latter activity is, however, ∼20-fold weaker than that of the primer-dependent nsp12-RdRp at equal monomer concentrations. Finally, site-directed mutagenesis of conserved D/ExD/E motifs was employed to identify residues crucial for nsp(7+8) RdRp activity.
Akt phosphorylation site found in human caspase-9 is absent in mouse caspase-9.

Caspase-9 is one caspase upstream of caspase-3 and its activation is stimulated by Apaf-1/cytochrome c and inhibited by Akt signals. BAD phosphorylation by Akt is an essential step for growth factor-mediated inhibition of caspase activation. Recently, it was shown that human caspase-9 is phosphorylated by Akt and that its protease activity is reduced. To clarify the molecular mechanism of regulation of caspase-9 activation in neuronal apoptosis, we isolated two alternative splicing products of mouse caspase-9, caspase-9L and caspase-9S, from a P19 embryonal carcinoma cell cDNA library. Curiously, the Akt phosphorylation sites and motifs found in human caspase-9 were absent in both mouse caspase-9L and -9S. Mouse caspase-9 was not phosphorylated by activated Akt in vitro. Reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction analysis showed that the absent Akt motif is not limited to caspase-9 expressed in P19 embryonal carcinoma cells but also occurs in caspase-9 expressed in mouse, rat, and monkey. These results suggest that inhibition of caspase-9 activation by Akt-dependent phosphorylation is not generalized across species.
Living with uncertainty: disappearing modernities and polluted urbanity in post‐2000 Harare, Zimbabwe

Most studies of Zimbabwean migration and the country’s politico‐economic crisis focus on the material aspects of these two issues. In this article, through dual‐sited ethnographic work, I illustrate the symbolisms and meanings that are entangled within political and economic decline in urban Zimbabwe. Using data from fieldwork in Zimbabwe and South Africa, I argue that ‘crisis’ has carried with it a re‐configuration of the meanings associated with urbanity. This leads to a contradiction between how the state and citizens view ‘proper’ modernity. In combination with political factors, the state’s attempts to maintain modernity have led to a paradigm of pollution being associated with poor urbanites. This symbolism and its correspondent reality were found to have influenced the migration of informants in South Africa. It is thus not only economic and political relations that are at stake in present‐day Zimbabwe.
Incrementally Maintaining Classification using an RDBMS

The proliferation of imprecise data has motivated both researchers and the database industry to push statistical techniques into relational database management systems (RDBMSes). We study strategies to maintain model-based views for a popular statistical technique, classification, inside an RDBMS in the presence of updates (to the set of training examples). We make three technical contributions: (1) A strategy that incrementally maintains classification inside an RDBMS. (2) An analysis of the above algorithm that shows that our algorithm is optimal among all deterministic algorithms (and asymptotically within a factor of 2 of a non-deterministic optimal strategy). (3) A novel hybrid-architecture based on the technical ideas that underlie the above algorithm which allows us to store only a fraction of the entities in memory. We apply our techniques to text processing, and we demonstrate that our algorithms provide an order of magnitude improvement over non-incremental approaches to classification on a variety of data sets, such as the Citeseer and DBLife.
Denoising of tube-type bottle image based on independent component analysis and nonsubsampled contourlet transform

In this paper a new image denoising algorithm is presented based on independent component analysis(ICA) and nonsubsampled contourlet transform(NSCT), taking full advantage of NSCT's strong points of translation-invariant, multidirection-selectivity and ICA's strong point of higher order statistical property, then a noisy image is denoised by maximum likelihood estimation of the noisy version of the ICA model. The simulation results have shown that the performance of the above method is superior both in signal to noise ratio(SNR) and edge preservation. This algorithm is suitable for defects monitoring systems in tube-type bottle.
What does mindfulness really mean? A canonical perspective

The purpose of this paper is to determine the meaning and function of mindfulness meditation using as the source of inquiry the Pāli Canon, the oldest complete collection of Buddhist texts to survive intact. Mindfulness is the chief factor in the practice of satipa hāna, the best known system of Buddhist meditation. In descriptions of satipa hāna two terms constantly recur: mindfulness (sati) and clear comprehension (sampajanna). An understanding of these terms based on the canonical texts is important not only from a philological angle but because such understanding has major bearings on the actual practice of meditation. The word sati originally meant ‘memory,’ but the Buddha ascribed to this old term a new meaning determined by the aims of his teaching. This meaning, the author holds, might best be characterized as ‘lucid awareness. ’ He questions the common explanation of mindfulness as ‘bare attention,’ pointing out problems that lurk behind both words in this expression. He also briefly discusses the.
The application scheme of dynamic data protection in SaaS based on DIFC

Data security concerns are one of obstacles to adopt cloud computing on a large scale. Especially users cannot control the behavior of SaaS applications how to use their data in SaaS cloud. It is hard to verify whether the security protocols have been performed or not. In addition, the service model of single instance multi-tenant causes the threat of data leakage between tenants who share the same application instance. A universality dynamic data protection scheme in SaaS cloud services is proposed in the paper. This scheme focus on how to use decentralized information flow control (DIFC) model to prevent cloud programs revealing users' private data and stop the data leakage between tenants. A project application example is given, and its security is analyzed. The scheme has the advantage that the security policy can be set by the user independent. It can realize distributed authorization, and can be made of a small number of trusted codes to implement the strategy execution. This made the code monitoring easier.