Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
SmartList: exploring intelligent hand-written list support

Here we report on SmartList our prototype for exploring essential features for a handwritten list program. On a freeform list, a lot of information is encoded in the layout and non-text ink: currently there is no effective pen-based computer program to support this activity. Although modern handwriting recognizers can achieve good recognition accuracy, this is not sufficient to support list making. Our prototype and its evaluation are presented in this paper. We identify accurate ink recognition as an essential element for such intelligent pen-based systems.
A INFLUÊNCIA DE ESTADOS EMOCIONAIS POSITIVOS E NEGATIVOS NO

O objetivo deste trabalho e estudar a area da psicologia da emocao e da psicologia cognitiva, dentro do arcabouco do processamento de informacao. Para cumprir esta pesquisa, um total de 42 sujeitos participou e dois experimentos foram realizados e comparados: o primeiro ativava nodos emocionais; o segundo ativava nodos cognitivos. Ambos experimentos trabalhavam com priming e tinham tarefas de reconhecimento de palavras, medidas pelo tempo de reacao, atraves do computador. Dentro de cada experimento existia uma divisao de categorias de palavras, onde foi feita uma analise intra-grupo atraves da analise da variância. Nesta analise, os resultados nao demonstraram uma diferenca significativa. Foi feita tambem uma analise inter-grupo, utilizando o teste-T. Desta vez, a diferenca entre os experimentos foi significativa. Estes resultados mostram que a existencia do modelo hipotetico dos nodos emocionais, ainda pouco explorada, nao deve ser desprezada.
Gender identity: a multidimensional analysis with implications for psychosocial adjustment.

This study examined the relations between components of gender identity and psychosocial adjustment. The aspects of gender identity assessed were (a) feelings of psychological compatibility with one's gender (i.e. feeling one is a typical member of one's sex and feeling content with one's biological sex), (b) feelings of pressure from parents, peers, and self for conformity to gender stereotypes. and (c) the sentiment that one's own sex is superior to the other (intergroup bias). Adjustment was assessed in terms of self-esteem and peer acceptance. Participants were 182 children in Grades 4 through 8. Felt gender compatibility (when operationalized as either self-perceived gender typicality or feelings of contentment with one's biological sex) was positively related to adjustment, whereas felt pressure and intergroup bias were negatively associated with adjustment. The results provide new insights into the role of gender identity in children's well-being, help identify sources of confusion in previous work, and suggest directions for future inquiry.
Good Governance and Trade Policy: Are They the Keys to Africa's Global Integration and Growth?

Economists often argue that the level and structure of a country's trade barriers and the quality of its governance policies (for example, regulating foreign investment or limiting commercial activity with red tape) have a major influence on its economic growth and performance. One problem testing those relations empirically was the unavailability of objective cross-country indices of the quality of governance and statistics on developing countries'trade barriers. The authors use new sources of empirical information to test the influence of trade and governance policies on economic performance. They use a model similar to those used in the literature on causes and implication of economic growth but focus more heavily on the World Bank's index of the speed with which countries are integrating into the world economy. Their results show that countries that adopted less restrictive governance and trade policies achieved significantly higher levels of per capita GDP; experienced higher growth rates for exports, imports, and GDP; and were more successful integrating with the world economy. Regression results indicate that national trade and governance regulations explain over 60 percent of the variance in some measures of economic performance, implying that a country's own national policies shape its rate of development, industrialization, and growth. Their tests provide new insights into the phenomenon of economic"convergence,"showing that poorer open countries are integrating more rapidly into the global economy than others. This finding parallels what others have observed about economic growth rates. They test their empirical results in a case study asking whether inappropriate national policies have caused Sub-Saharan Africa's dismal economic performance. The evidence strongly supports this proposition. Indices of the quality of national governance show that African countries have generally adopted the most inappropriate (restrictive) fiscal, monetary, property, and wage policies and that their own trade barriers (including customs procedures constraining commercial activity) are among the world's highest. Improving African trade and governance policies to levels currently prevailing in such (non-expecptional) countries as Jordan, Panama, and Sri Lanka would be consistent with a seven fold increase in per capita GDP (to about $3,500) and an annual increase of 3 or 4 percentage points in the growth rate for this variable.
Immunogenicity and safety of the human papillomavirus 6, 11, 16, 18 vaccine in HIV-infected young women.

BACKGROUND The objective of this study was to determine whether the 3-dose quadrivalent human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine series (HPV-6, -11, -16, -18) is immunogenic and safe in young women infected with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). METHODS We enrolled 99 women aged 16-23 years in a phase 2, open-label, multicenter trial, conducted from 2008 to 2011 by the Adolescent Medicine Trials Network for HIV/AIDS Interventions. Outcome measures were immunogenicity 4 weeks after dose 3, measured by (1) geometric mean titers (GMTs) and (2) seroconversion rates for HPV-6, -11, -16, and -18, among those seronegative and HPV DNA negative for each type. Immune responses were compared to those of a historical comparison group of HIV-negative women (n = 267) using univariate methods. Clinical and laboratory adverse events were assessed after each dose. RESULTS The mean age of subjects was 21.4 years; 80% were non-Hispanic black, 69 were not taking antiretroviral therapy (ART), and 30 were taking ART. No differences in GMTs were noted among participants taking ART vs the comparison group, but GMTs were lower in participants not taking ART vs the comparison group for HPV-16 (2393 vs 3892 milli-Merck units per milliliter [mMU/mL], P = .012) and HPV-18 (463 vs 801 mMU/mL, P = .003). Seroconversion rates were 100% for HPV-6, -11, -16, and -18 among participants taking ART. Rates ranged from 92.3% (for HPV-18) to 100.0% (for HPV-6) among participants not taking ART. One severe adverse event (fatigue) was noted. CONCLUSIONS In a sample of HIV-infected women who were HPV DNA and HPV seronegative, immune responses to HPV vaccination were generally robust and the vaccine was well tolerated.
Processing Sentiments and Opinions in Text : A Survey

Much of the current research is now focusing on the area of sentiment analysis as the amount of internet documents (especially online reviews like product reviews, movie reviews and etc.) are increasing rapidly. In sentiment analysis, the usual tasks include sentiment word or phrase identification, sentiment orientation identification and sentiment sentence or document classification. Sentiment analysis are helpful in a wide range of applications, including message filtering (Spertus, 1997), product review summarization (Hu and Liu, 2004a), movie review recommender systems (Pang et al., 2002; Terveen et al., 1997; Tatemura, 2000). Some challenging aspects of sentiment analysis exist in use of other types of words, sentiment lexicon construction, dealing with negation expressions, degrees of sentiment, complexity of sentence/document, words in different contexts, heterogenous text sentiment classification etc.
The Influence of Family Microsystems on Children's Theory of Mind:Factors,Process and Mechanism

Based on research about the influence of family on children's theory of mind at home and abroad,the family microsystems can be divided into three sub-microsystems:(1) family demography sub-microsystem that includes family socioeconomic status and sibling number and type,(2) parent-child interactive sub-microsystem involving attachment type,parenting style,emotional expression and parent-child play,and(3) sibling-child interactive sub-microsystem including cooperation-conflict and pretend play.The mechanism model of family microsystems' impact on child's theory of mind can be assumed as follows:the family socioeconomic status and the sibling number and type in the family demography sub-microsystem influence the child's ToM through the parent-child interactive sub-microsystem and the sibling-child interactive sub-microsystem respectively,all the factors in these two sub-microsystems influence the child's ToM through the mediator of Mind-Mindedness.This mechanism model should be tested in the future.
Chemoattractant-stimulated polymorphonuclear leukocytes contain two populations of actin filaments that differ in their spatial distributions and relative stabilities

Chemoattractants stimulate actin polymerization in lamellipodia of polymorphonuclear leukocytes. We find that removal of chemoattractant results in rapid (within 10 s at 37 degrees C) and selective depolymerization of the F-actin located in lamellipodia. Addition of 10 microM cytochalasin B, in the presence of chemoattractant, also resulted in rapid and selective depolymerization of lamellar F-actin. The elevated F-actin level induced by chemoattractant rapidly returns to the level present in unstimulated cells after (a) a 10-fold decrease in chemoattractant concentration; (b) the addition of 10 microM cytochalasin B; or (c) cooling to 4 degrees C. The F-actin levels of unstimulated cells are only slightly affected by these treatments. Based on the similar effects of cytochalasin addition and chemoattractant dilution, it is likely that both treatments result in actin depolymerization from the pointed ends of filaments. Based on our results we propose that chemoattractant-stimulated polymorphonuclear leukocytes contain two distinct populations of actin filaments. The actin filaments within the lamellipodia are highly labile and in the continued presence of chemoattractant these filaments are rapidly turning over, continually polymerizing at their plus (barbed) ends, and depolymerizing at their minus ends. In contrast, the cortical F-actin filaments of both stimulated and unstimulated cells are differentially stable.
HSP27 inhibits cytochrome c‐dependent activation of procaspase‐9

We have previously shown that the small heat shock protein HSP27 inhibited apoptotic pathways triggered by a variety of stimuli in mammalian cells. The present study demonstrates that HSP27 overexpression decreases U937 human leukemic cell sensitivity to etoposide‐induced cytotoxicity by preventing apoptosis. As observed for Bcl‐2, HSP27 overexpression delays poly(ADP‐ribose)polymerase cleavage and procaspase‐3 activation. In contrast with Bcl‐2, HSP27 overexpression does not prevent etoposide‐induced cytochrome c release from the mitochondria. In a cell‐free system, addition of cytochrome c and dATP to cytosolic extracts from untreated cells induces the proteolytic activation of procaspase‐3 in both control and bcl‐2‐transfected U937 cells but fails to activate procaspase‐3 in HSP27‐overexpressing cells. Immunodepletion of HSP27 from cytosolic extracts increases cytochrome c/dATP‐mediated activation of procaspase‐3. Overexpression of HSP27 also prevents procaspase‐9 activation. In the cell‐free system, immunodepletion of HSP27 increases LEDH‐AFC peptide cleavage activity triggered by cytochrome c/dATP treatment. We conclude that HSP27 inhibits etoposide‐induced apoptosis by preventing cytochrome c and dATP‐triggered activity of caspase‐9, downstream of cytochrome c release. —Garrido, C. , Bruey, J.‐M. , Fromentin, A. , Hammann, A. , Arrigo, A. P., Solary, E. HSP27 inhibits cytochrome c‐dependent activation of procaspase‐9. FASEB J. 13, 2061–2070 (1999)
Dynamically Reconfigurable Software Defined Radio for GNSS Applications

Abstract : Historically, the military has used special purpose Global Positioning System (GPS) radios for radio navigation. This has the disadvantage of locking users into fixed technology solutions designed to meet a fixed set of requirements. Software Defined Radios (SDR) have the advantage of being able to easily adapt to provide new capabilities using current generation technology. Continued improvements in SDR technology are enabling their use for Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) applications that require small form factor, low-power designs. This has the added benefit of allowing the signal processing algorithms for future GPS signals to be included in the GNSS SDR design without changing or modifying the hardware of the GPS receiver. This paper describes a GNSS SDR reconfigurable architecture that leverages the flexibility of a SDR to re-use resources for processing the different GPS signals. The paper also discusses the benefits of this GNSS SDR approach for military and civil users compared with conventional special purpose GNSS receiver solutions.
The role of RNA metabolism in neurological diseases

Abstract Neurodegenerative disorders are commonly encountered in medical practices. Such diseases can lead to major morbidity and mortality among the affected individuals. The molecular pathogenesis of these disorders is not yet clear. Recent literature has revealed that mutations in RNA-binding proteins are a key cause of several human neuronal-based diseases. This review discusses the role of RNA metabolism in neurological diseases with specific emphasis on roles of RNA translation and microRNAs in neurodegeneration, RNA-mediated toxicity, repeat expansion diseases and RNA metabolism, molecular pathogenesis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and frontotemporal dementia, and neurobiology of survival motor neuron (SMN) and spinal muscular atrophy.
ICT Value Emergence Through Interactions within an organisational system: A conceptual model

Although Information Communication Technology (ICT) is an essential business tool and a competitive necessity, it remains unclear how ICT value is created. We explore the process of ICT value creation through employing systems theory and notions of complexity. Through these lenses, the process of ICT value creation is conceptualised and presented as an adaptive, self-organising and co-evolving system. It’s due to non-linear interdependencies and interactions among the system’s elements that even small changes may lead to un-proportional change in the system’s output, that is, ICT value. Elements of this system are ICT applications, users, organisational goals and culture, and the external environment. Subsequent research employing simulation will explore the dynamics and interactivity of the components as ICT value is created.
Applying Dissimilarity Representation to Off-Line Signature Verification

In this paper, a two-stage off-line signature verification system based on dissimilarity representation is proposed. In the first stage, a set of discrete left-to-right HMMs trained with different number of states and codebook sizes is used to measure similarity values that populate new feature vectors. Then, these vectors are input to the second stage, which provides the final classification. Experiments were performed using two different classification techniques -- AdaBoost, and Random Subspaces with SVMs -- and a real-world signature verification database. Results indicate that the performance is significantly better with the proposed system over other reference signature verification systems from literature.
New Results on Particle Acceleration in the Centaurus A Jet and Counterjet from a Deep Chandra Observation

We present new deep Chandra observations of the Centaurus A jet, with a combined on-source exposure time of 719 ks. These data allow detailed X-ray spectral measurements to be made along the jet out to its disappearance at 4.5 kpc from the nucleus. We distinguish several regimes of high-energy particle acceleration; while the inner part of the jet is dominated by knots and has properties consistent with local particle acceleration at shocks, the particle acceleration in the outer 3.4 kpc of the jet is likely to be dominated by an unknown distributed acceleration mechanism. In addition to several compact counterjet features, we detect probable extended emission from a counterjet out to 2.0 kpc from the nucleus and argue that this implies that the diffuse acceleration process operates in the counterjet as well. A preliminary search for X-ray variability finds no jet knots with dramatic flux density variations, unlike the situation seen in M87.
Phytoplankton Cell Size Reduction in Response to Warming Mediated by Nutrient Limitation

Shrinking of body size has been proposed as one of the universal responses of organisms to global climate warming. Using phytoplankton as an experimental model system has supported the negative effect of warming on body-size, but it remains controversial whether the size reduction under increasing temperatures is a direct temperature effect or an indirect effect mediated over changes in size selective grazing or enhanced nutrient limitation which should favor smaller cell-sizes. Here we present an experiment with a factorial combination of temperature and nutrient stress which shows that most of the temperature effects on phytoplankton cell size are mediated via nutrient stress. This was found both for community mean cell size and for the cell sizes of most species analyzed. At the highest level of nutrient stress, community mean cell size decreased by 46% per °C, while it decreased only by 4.7% at the lowest level of nutrient stress. Individual species showed qualitatively the same trend, but shrinkage per °C was smaller. Overall, our results support the hypothesis that temperature effects on cell size are to a great extent mediated by nutrient limitation. This effect is expected to be exacerbated under field conditions, where higher temperatures of the surface waters reduce the vertical nutrient transport.
InSite: QoE-aware video delivery from cloud data centers

The Internet is witnessing a rapid increase in video traffic. Due to the scalability and the cost-savings offered by cloud-computing, Internet video service providers are increasingly delivering their content from multi-tenant cloud data centers. One of the major challenges faced by such a video service provider is the management of the Quality-of-Experience (QoE) of the end-users in the presence of Variable Bit Rate (VBR) video flows, time varying network conditions in the Internet, and the bounded egress bandwidth provided by the data center. To this end, we present InSite, a light-weight and easy-to-deploy solution for managing the QoE of a set of video flows of a service provider, which are served from a data center. InSite is deployed at the egress of a data center, between the video servers and the clients, and manages the video flows that are transmitted over TCP. The solution uses a novel generalized binary search technique to concurrently search for the appropriate flow rates for a set of flows, with the goal of maximizing the QoE-fairness across the flows, as opposed to TCP-fairness. The search takes into account the total egress bandwidth allocated for the set of video flows at the data center, the unknown and possibly time-varying capacities of any remote bottleneck links, and the playout buffer sizes of the video flows. The solution is also designed to operate with minimal modifications to the video servers and the clients. In our evaluations using extensive ns-3 simulations and a testbed implementation for serving videos over TCP, we observe that deploying InSite achieves several folds reduction in playout stalls over a system without InSite.
Problems with the Static Root of Trust for Measurement

In 2011 the National Institute of Standard and Technology (NIST) released a draft of special publication 800155. This document provides a more detailed description than the Trusted Platform Module (TPM) PC client specification for content that should be measured in the BIOS to provide an adequate Static Root of Trust for Measurement (SRTM). In this paper we look at the implementation of the SRTM from a Dell Latitude E6400 laptop. We describe how the implementation of the SRTM on this system doesn’t meet all the requirements set forth by both the TPM PC client specification and the NIST guidance. We also show how a 51 byte patch to the SRTM can cause it to provide a forged measurement to the TPM indicating that the BIOS is pristine. If a TPM Quote is used to query the boot state of the system, this TPM-signed falsification will then serve as the root of misplaced trust. We also show how reflashing the BIOS may not necessarily remove this trust-subverting malware.
Examining the Influence of Behavioral Factors on Compliance and Persistence with Glatiramer Acetate Injection for Relapsing-Remitting Multiple Sclerosis

Objective: To evaluate the relationship between compliance and persistence with glatiramer acetate (GA) and the behavioral variables in the transtheoretical model of change. Methods: Patients diagnosed with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis and being treated with GA for the first time, whether treatment-naive (TN) or treatment-experienced (TE), were eligible for this prospective, observational, 12-week study. Institutional Review Board approval was obtained for each of 32 US study sites, and written informed consent was obtained for all patients prior to study procedures. Four office visits were required. Study procedures included baseline self-injection training and patient-reported behavioral variable surveys. Injection competence and medication compliance and persistence were assessed at weeks 4 and 12. Results: A total of 257 patients were enrolled; 80.9% were female, 81.6% white, and 60.0% TN. The evaluable population included 146 TN patients and 88 TE patients having discontinued beta-interferons. TE patients were at a significantly higher readiness stage, were less concerned about the negative aspects of self-injection, but had lower levels of MS self-efficacy than TN patients. While compliance and persistence rates did not differ between TN and TE groups, there were differences in outcome predictors. For the TN patients both higher self-injection competence at baseline and improvement in self-injection competence over the first month of therapy were predictive of better compliance and persistence with GA. Separate from injection competence, higher levels of functional self-efficacy were directly associated with better persistence in TN patients. None of the behavioral variables appeared to predict compliance or persistence for the TE patients. Conclusion: Among the TN, injection competency at baseline and improvement over the first month of use were significant predictors of compliance and persistence to GA at 12 weeks.Improving self-injection competence should be a priority when planning interventions for TN patients. Behavioral factors predicting compliance and persistence among TE patients require further study. ClinicalTrials.gov (number NCT00238654)