Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Inter-Relationship between Vocal and Psychological Characteristics: A Literature Review

The inter-relationship between vocal behaviour and psychological variables is discussed through a review of the literature. Emotional and personality correlates of normal voice, the relationship between psychopathology and voice, and psychological concomitants of voice disorders are discussed. Possible reasons for the existence of a relationship are considered and research problems in the area are highlighted. The difficulty in separating vocal and psychological variables is emphasized and the consequences for assessment and treatment are considered.
Estimates of worst case baseline West Nile virus disease effects in a suburban New York county

Abstract Serosurveys conducted where West Nile Virus (WNV) caused health impacts were used to construct a model of potential worst case health impacts in a suburban setting. This model addressed two common public perceptions regarding mosquito control activities and WNV disease: it is not a disease of major consequence, and exposed populations quickly become immune. Comparisons to blood bank infection and serious disease incidence data were similar to some of the serosurvey model results. Accounting for theoretical increasing immunity, even over a 20-year period, did not substantially reduce the potential impacts. The model results were approximately an order of magnitude greater than those actually experienced in Suffolk County, NY; differences in mosquito populations and/or the degree of mosquito control between Suffolk County and serosurvey sites seem to be the reason for the differences.
Adaptation of a Psycho-Oncology Intervention for Black Breast Cancer Survivors

Black women are traditionally underserved in all aspects of cancer care. This disparity is particularly evident in the area of psychosocial interventions where there are few programs designed to specifically meet the needs of Black breast cancer survivors. Cognitive-behavioral stress management intervention (CBSM) has been shown to facilitate adjustment to cancer. Recently, this intervention model has been adapted for Black women who have recently completed treatment for breast cancer. We outline the components of the CBSM intervention, the steps we took to adapt the intervention to meet the needs of Black women (Project CARE) and discuss the preliminary findings regarding acceptability and retention of participants in this novel study.
Effects of sperm insemination on the final meiotic maturation of mouse oocytes arrested at metaphase I after in vitro maturation

Objective The aims of this study were to investigate whether fertilization could induce the resumption of meiosis in mouse oocytes arrested at metaphase I (MI) after in vitro maturation (IVM), and to investigate the effect of Ca2+ chelator treatment at the time of fertilization on the transition from MI to metaphase II (MII). Methods MII-stage and arrested MI-stage mouse oocytes after IVM were fertilized, and then embryonic development was monitored. Blastocysts from each group were transferred into 2.5 days post-coitum pseudo-pregnant ICR mice. MI oocytes after IVM were treated with a Ca2+ chelator to investigate the effect of Ca2+ oscillations on their maturation. Results As insemination time increased, the number of oocytes in the MI group that reached the MII stage also increased. The blastocyst rates and total cell numbers in the MII group were significantly higher than in the MI group. No pregnancy occurred in the MI group, but 10 pregnancies were achieved (10 of 12) in the MII group. The proportion of MI oocytes that matured to MII oocytes after fertilization was significantly higher in the non-treated group than in the Ca2+ chelator-treated group. Conclusion The findings that a higher proportion of MI-arrested oocytes progressed to MII after fertilization and that the MI-to-MII transition was blocked by Ca2+ chelator treatments before fertilization indicate that the maturation of MI oocytes to MII oocytes is associated with intracellular Ca2+ oscillations driven by fertilization.
Medical curriculum reform in Sun Yat-sen University: implications from the results of GMER evaluation in China

Created by interlocking economies, a global language, the informatics revolution and rapid travel, globalization has penetrated all aspects of human life including science, environment, public health and medicine. Physicians are now members of a global community. The global physician should possess universal core essential competences required for medical practice throughout the world. The Institute for International Medical Education (IIME), created by the China Medical Board (CMB) of New York, has developed the “ global minimal essential requirements” (GMER) that define the knowledge, skills, professional behavior and ethics that all physicians must have regardless of where they received their general medical education and training. The IIME initiated a pilot project in China in October, 2003, to evaluate the graduates of the 7- or 8-year track program of eight leading medical schools, including Medical School of Sun Yat-sen University. The results of GMER evaluation indicated strengths and areas for improvement of our school in relation to international standards, which greatly re-invigorate our enthusiasm on medical curriculum reform on the new 8-year track program in Medical School of Sun Yat-sen University. The modifications of our medical curriculum for the new 8-year track program based on the results of GMER evaluation are discussed in this paper.
Small RNA Pathways That Protect the Somatic Genome

Transposable elements (TEs) are DNA elements that can change their position within the genome, with the potential to create mutations and destabilize the genome. As such, special molecular systems have been adopted in animals to control TE activity in order to protect the genome. PIWI proteins, in collaboration with PIWI-interacting RNAs (piRNAs), are well known to play a critical role in silencing germline TEs. Although initially thought to be germline-specific, the role of PIWI–piRNA pathways in controlling TEs in somatic cells has recently begun to be explored in various organisms, together with the role of endogenous small interfering RNAs (endo-siRNAs). This review summarizes recent results suggesting that these small RNA pathways have been critically implicated in the silencing of somatic TEs underlying various physiological traits, with a special focus on the Drosophila model organism.
Large Connectivity for Dynamic Random Geometric Graphs

We provide the first rigorous analytical results for the connectivity of dynamic random geometric graphs - a model for mobile wireless networks in which vertices move in random directions in the unit torus. The model presented here follows the one described. We provide precise asymptotic results for the expected length of the connectivity and disconnectivity periods of the network. We believe that the formal tools developed in this work could be extended to be used in more concrete settings and in more realistic models, in the same manner as the development of the connectivity threshold for static random geometric graphs has affected a lot of research done on ad hoc networks.
Near-Infrared Spectroscopy to Predict the Course of Necrotizing Enterocolitis

Objectives To investigate whether cerebral, liver, and infraumbilical regional tissue oxygen saturation (rSO2) and fractional tissue oxygen extraction (FTOE) could be used to diagnose necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC) and complicated NEC (Bell’s stage 3B or death) during its early stages. Methods A prospective observational cohort study of preterm infants with suspected or diagnosed NEC. We compared the mean eight-hour cerebral, liver, and infraumbilical rSO2 and FTOE values of infants with no NEC and definite NEC and of infants with uncomplicated and complicated NEC in the first forty-eight hours after onset of symptoms, suspicious for NEC. Furthermore, we determined cut-off values by generating receiver operating characteristics curves in case of significant differences in the first eight-hour mean values of rSO2 between infants with no NEC and definite NEC and between infants with uncomplicated and complicated NEC. Results We included 33 patients: 13 no NEC, 10 with uncomplicated NEC, and 10 with complicated NEC. We found no significant differences in the first twenty-four hours after onset of symptoms in rSO2 and FTOE between infants with no NEC and definite NEC. In preterm infants with complicated NEC, we observed significantly lower cerebral, liver, and infraumbilical rSO2 and higher FTOE within twenty-four hours after onset of symptoms compared with infants with uncomplicated NEC. A continuous cerebral rSO2 ≤ 71% and liver rSO2 ≤ 59% in the first eight hours after onset of symptoms predicted the onset of complicated NEC with a sensitivity of 1.0 and specificity of 0.8, and a sensitivity of 1.0 and specificity of 1.0, respectively. Conclusions By measuring the cerebral and splanchnic oxygenation it is possible to differentiate complicated NEC from uncomplicated NEC. In our sample, NIRS monitoring did not proof useful for distinguishing between definite NEC and no NEC in preterm infants with clinical signs suspicious of NEC.
Adult Age Invariance in Sentence Unitization

We examined age differences on a letter detection task that was performed on four-word sentences in order to examine how letter-level and word-level processing is integrated with sentence-level unitization. Sentence-level unitization is defined as the formation of a sentence-level code that delays access to letter-level or word-level codes. There was a consistent word-frequency disadvantage for both age groups in which it took longer to detect letters within high and medium high frequency words than in low frequency words. This finding suggested that word-level and letter-level input channels were involved in a parallel “horse race” to the central processor while simultaneously outputting codes to the sentence-level at the second tier of processing. The present data also revealed that both age groups showed a larger relative increase in reaction time for letter detection for the fourth word position compared to the third word position on syntactically “intact” sentences relative to syntactically “scrambled” sentences. These data indicated that both age groups formed sentence-level codes that made letter-level codes more difficult to access. Finally, older adults' data showed a larger cost than younger adults' data for scrambled sentences than for intact sentences. These results suggest that older adults are more reliant on a syntactical processor that facilitates the parafoveal preview during the reading of syntactically intact sentences. These data suggest that whereas there are age differences in the perceptual processing of letters and words, sentence unitization and syntactical processing remain intact with increasing adult age.
RESOLVING COMPREHENSION FAILURE THROUGH TEXT LOOKBACKS: DIRECT TRAINING AND PRACTICE EFFECTS AMONG GOOD AND POOR COMPREHENDERS IN GRADES SIX AND SEVEN

As part of a research program investigating strategic action to remedy perceived comprehension failures, 11 good comprehenders and 11 poor comprehenders were selected at each of two levels. Working with narrative texts, their spontaneous use of “text lookbacks” (rereading) and response to training and practice were evaluated in a first session. In a second session, one week later, maintenance of effects of training and practice was assessed. Good comprehenders at both grade levels were far more likely than poor comprehenders to use lookbacks on all narratives. Training and practice improved performance for all subject groups, however, and this improved performance was sustained over time. Speculation about successful components of the intervention is offered, and suggestions for future research are provided.
Investigating public science interest and understanding: evidence for the importance of free-choice learning

Historically, most of the focus of science education has been on pre-college and college level schooling. Although some of the public's interest and knowledge about science is unquestionably shaped by compulsory schooling, given that the average adult spends only a fraction of their life participating in some kind of formal schooling, we argue that the contribution of school-based science learning to the long-term public understanding of science is limited, particularly for the majority of Americans who do not go on to post-secondary schooling. This article shows that the majority of the public constructs much of its understanding of science over the course of their lives, gathering information from many places and contexts, and for a diversity of reasons. A random telephone survey of Los Angeles, California residents found that nearly half (43 percent) of the public's self-reported science understanding derives from leisure time, free-choice learning; science understanding was primarily acquired for reasons related to personal interest, need and/or curiosity. The conclusion drawn from this preliminary investigation is that future efforts to understand and support the public's understanding of science will require approaches that take into account individual differences and the unique personal and context-specific nature of knowledge; findings also support the value of asset-based approaches to education which build from strengths rather than dwelling upon deficits.
Two‐way Gaussian mixture models for high dimensional classification

Mixture discriminant analysis (MDA) has gained applications in a wide range of engineering and scientific fields. In this article, under the paradigm of MDA, we propose a two‐way Gaussian mixture model for classifying high dimensional data. This model regularizes the mixture component means by dividing variables into groups and then constraining the parameters for the variables in the same group to be identical. The grouping of the variables is not pre‐determined, but optimized as part of model estimation. A dimension reduction property for a two‐way mixture of distributions from a general exponential family is proved. Estimation methods for the two‐way Gaussian mixture with or without missing data are derived. Experiments on several real data sets show that the parsimonious two‐way mixture often outperforms a mixture model without variable grouping; and as a byproduct, significant dimension reduction is achieved. Copyright © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Statistical Analysis and Data Mining 3: 259‐271, 2010
Intra-Topic Variability Normalization based on Linear Projection for Topic Classification

This paper proposes a variability normalization algorithm to reduce the variability between intra-topic documents for topic classification. Firstly, an optimization problem is constructed based on linear variability removable assumption. Secondly, a new feature space for document representation is found by solving the optimization problem with kernel principle component analysis (KPCA). Finally, effective feature transformation is taken through linear projection. As for experiments, state-of-the-art SVM and KNN algorithm are adopted for topic classification respectively. Experimental results on a free-style conversational corpus show that the proposed variability normalization algorithm for topic classification achieves 3.8% absolute improvement for micro-F1 measure.
Inter-firm knowledge creation: A re-appreciation of embeddedness from a relational perspective

Embeddedness studies often follow a structural approach, arguing, for example, that long-term relations are necessary for trust to develop. A case study of the Dutch company Océ shows that such need not be the case. Taking the process of knowledge creation as the starting-point of analysis, this can be explained. However, it is the content of network relations, what is going on inside them, that needs to be examined rather than their structure. This approach is more in line with Granovetter's original embeddedness argument. After all, it is not the fact that actors are embedded that matters, but how this affects their actions.
Absolute Calibration and Characterization of the Multiband Imaging Photometer for Spitzer. I. The Stellar Calibrator Sample and the 24 μm Calibration

We present the stellar calibrator sample and the conversion from instrumental to physical units for the 24 μm channel of the Multiband Imaging Photometer for Spitzer (MIPS). The primary calibrators are A stars, and the calibration factor based on those stars is 4.54 × 10-2 MJy sr−1 (DN s−1)−1, with a nominal uncertainty of 2%. We discuss the data reduction procedures required to attain this accuracy; without these procedures, the calibration factor obtained using the automated pipeline at the Spitzer Science Center is 1.6% ± 0.6% lower. We extend this work to predict 24 μm flux densities for a sample of 238 stars that covers a larger range of flux densities and spectral types. We present a total of 348 measurements of 141 stars at 24 μm. This sample covers a factor of ∼460 in 24 μm flux density, from 8.6 mJy up to 4.0 Jy. We show that the calibration is linear over that range with respect to target flux and background level. The calibration is based on observations made using 3 s exposures; a preliminary analysis shows that the calibration factor may be 1% and 2% lower for 10 and 30 s exposures, respectively. We also demonstrate that the calibration is very stable: over the course of the mission, repeated measurements of our routine calibrator, HD 159330, show a rms scatter of only 0.4%. Finally, we show that the point‐spread function (PSF) is well measured and allows us to calibrate extended sources accurately; Infrared Astronomy Satellite (IRAS) and MIPS measurements of a sample of nearby galaxies are identical within the uncertainties.
Published Case Studies of Waterborne Disease Outbreaks—Evidence of a Recurrent Threat

Residents of affluent nations are remarkably lucky to have high‐quality, safe drinking water supplies that most residents of modern cities enjoy, particularly when considered in contrast to the toll of death and misery that unsafe drinking water causes for most of the world's population. Some may presume that drinking‐water disease outbreaks are a thing of the past, but complacency can easily arise. A review of drinking water outbreaks in developed countries over the past 3 decades reveals some of the reasons why drinking water outbreaks keep occurring when society clearly has the means to prevent them. Prevention of future outbreaks does not demand perfection, only a commitment to learn from past mistakes and to act on what has been learned.
An Economic Model of a Professional Sports League

This paper investigates the economic structure of professional sports to determine the extent to which the current operating rules justify exemption of professional sports leagues from some aspects of antitrust statutes. We construct a formal decision-making model incorporating certain fundamental features of the industry. Within the context of the model we find that, under current rules of operation, equalization of playing strengths is generally not consistent with profit maximization by teams. However, we suggest a rule that guarantees convergence to a path of equal playing strengths under decentralized control of teams. As an example we study baseball leagues. Some refinements of the model are introduced, for example, incorporating time lags and training costs that result when teams train their own players.
Illness outbreak associated with Escherichia coli O157:H7 in Genoa salami. E. coli O157:H7 Working Group.

BACKGROUND An outbreak of Escherichia coli O157:H7 infection was identified in the spring of 1998, with a 7-fold increase in the number of laboratory-confirmed E. coli O157:H7 cases in southern Ontario. This prompted an intensive investigation by local, provincial and federal public health officials. METHODS Case interviews of 25 people from southern Ontario were conducted using a broad food history and environmental exposure survey. Laboratory investigations involved both case and food sampling. Specimens of foods sold locally and reportedly consumed by those affected were tested. Common suppliers of suspected foods were identified by cross-referencing suppliers' lists with stores frequented by those who fell ill. A case-control study involving 25 cases and 49 age-matched controls was conducted. This was followed by a comprehensive environmental investigation of the meat processing plant identified as the source of the E. coli. RESULTS Thirty-nine outbreak-related cases occurred between April 3 and June 2, 1998. Of the 36 case specimens tested all were positive for E. coli O157:H7. The case-control study identified Genoa salami as the most probable (odds ratio 8 [confidence interval 2-35]) source of the outbreak. Samples of Genoa salami produced by the most commonly identified supplier later tested positive for E. coli O157:H7, and the pathogen matched the same pulsed-field gel electrophoresis pattern and phage type of the case specimens. INTERPRETATION Our investigation, which led to a national recall of the brand of dry fermented Genoa salami identified as the source of the outbreak, supports an adherence to stringent manufacturing requirements for fermented meat products. A review of the Canadian standards for fermented meat processing and the effectiveness of their implementation is warranted.
Probabilistic clustering based on Langevin mixture

In this paper, we propose a statistical framework for clustering spherical data which are usually found in machine learning, data mining and computer vision applications. Our framework is based on finite Langevin mixture models which provide a very natural representation of normalized vectors in high dimensional spaces in which the data lie on unit hypersphere. Moreover, we developed minimum message length (MML) criterion for the selection of finite Langevin mixture components from which different probabilistic information divergence distances are then derived. Through empirical experiments, we demonstrate the merits of the proposed learning framework through challenging applications involving spam filtering using visual email content and email categorization.
Physicians' opinions of a health information exchange

BACKGROUND Arizona Medicaid developed a Health Information Exchange (HIE) system called the Arizona Medical Information Exchange (AMIE). OBJECTIVE To evaluate physicians' perceptions regarding AMIE's impact on health outcomes and healthcare costs. MEASUREMENTS A focus-group guide was developed and included five domains: perceived impact of AMIE on (1) quality of care; (2) workflow and efficiency; (3) healthcare costs; (4) system usability; and (5) AMIE data content. Qualitative data were analyzed using analytical coding. RESULTS A total of 29 clinicians participated in the study. The attendance rate was 66% (N=19) for the first and last month of focus-group meetings and 52% (N=15) for the focus group meetings conducted during the second month. The benefits most frequently mentioned during the focus groups included: (1) identification of "doctor shopping"; (2) averting duplicative testing; and (3) increased efficiency of clinical information gathering. The most frequent disadvantage mentioned was the limited availability of data in the AMIE system. CONCLUSION Respondents reported that AMIE had the potential to improve care, but they felt that AMIE impact was limited due to the data available.
Measuring Software Diversity, with Applications to Security

In this work, we briey introduce and discuss some of the diversity measures used in Ecology. After a succinct description and analysis of the most relevant ones, we single out the Shannon-Weiner index. We justify why it is the most informative and relevant one for measuring software diversity. Then, we show how it can be used for eectively assessing the diversity of various real software ecosystems. We discover in the process a frequently overlooked software monopoly, and its key security implications. We nally extract some conclusions from the results obtained, focusing mostly on their security implications.