Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Association between Distress Tolerance and Alcohol Related Problems: The Pathway of Drinking to Cope

ABSTRACT Binge drinking (BD) and alcohol related problems (ARP) are highly prevalent among college students. However, current models examining ARP suggest drinking quantity only accounts for a portion of the variance, suggesting other variables contribute to ARP. Distress tolerance (DT), or the ability to withstand negative affect, is associated with alcohol misuse and may be an important mechanism related to ARP. However, studies have reported inconsistent findings on this association, which may be due to the use of only global scores to measure DT rather than specific DT components. Furthermore, the mechanisms underlying this association remain unknown. Drinking to cope with negative affect has been associated with both DT and ARP, suggesting it may be a mechanism explaining the relationship between DT and ARP. The current study examined the association between specific proposed DT components (i.e., tolerance, absorption, appraisal, and regulation) and drinking to cope and ARP in 147 college students who BD. A hierarchical linear regression was performed in order to examine which DT component best predicted ARP. Four follow-up mediation models were then tested to examine whether drinking to cope mediated the relationship between each DT component and ARP. Appraisal of DT was the only DT component that significantly predicted ARP, in the model controlling for drinking quantity and sex differences. Drinking to cope mediated the relationship between ARP and tolerance, absorption, and regulation, but not appraisal of DT. Implications for furthering our understanding of DT and treatment of BD as it relates to DT are explored.
A broad competence to respond to SHORT ROOT revealed by tissue-specific ectopic expression

In plants, cell fate specification depends primarily on position rather than lineage. Recent results indicate that positional information can be transmitted through intercellular trafficking of transcription factors. The SHORT ROOT (SHR) gene, a member of the GRAS family of putative transcription factors, is involved in root radial patterning in Arabidopsis. Correct radial patterning depends on the positional information transmitted through limited SHR intercellular movement and translated into cell division and specification by competent target cells. To investigate the regulation of SHR movement and the competence to respond to it, we drove expression of a translational fusion SHR::GFP using four different tissue-specific promoters. In a wild-type background, SHR::GFP was not able to move from either phloem companion cells or epidermal cells, both of which have been shown to support movement of other proteins, suggesting a requirement for tissue-specific factors for SHR movement. When expressed from its native promoter in plants with multiple endodermal layers, SHR::GFP was not able to move beyond the first endodermal layer, indicating that movement is not limited by a mechanism that recognizes boundaries between cell types. Surprisingly, movement of SHR::GFP was observed when ectopic expression from an epidermal promoter was placed in a scarecrow (scr) mutant background, revealing a possible role for SCR in limiting movement. Analysis of the competence to respond to SHR-mediated cell specification activity indicated that it was broadly distributed in the epidermal lineage, while competence to respond to the cell division activity of SHR appeared limited to the initials and involved induction of SCR. The spatial distribution of competence to respond to SHR highlights the importance of tightly regulated movement in generating the root radial pattern.
Policy-Enhanced Linux

Abstract : Graduates from the various computer fields need to have a better education in the area of computer security problems and their solutions. In particular, there appears to be little exposure to the enforcement of non-discretionary or Mandatory Access Control (MAC) policies in automated systems. One cause of this deficiency is the expense, limited availability, and limited functionality of operating systems that support such policies. This paper provides a detailed description of an effort to modify the Linux operating system to support MAC policies and overcome these obstacles, with the hope that it can be used to improve computer security education.
Single Event Upset Detection and Correction in Virtex-4 and Virtex-5 FPGAs

A design for the detection and correction of single event upsets (SEUs) in the configuration memory of field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) is presented. Larger configuration memories and shrinking design rules have caused concerns to rise about SEUs in highreliability high-availability systems using FPGAs. We describe the operation and architecture of the proposed design as well as its implementation in Xilinx Virtex-4 and Virtex-5 FPGAs. 1
Encounter Decision Aid vs. Clinical Decision Support or Usual Care to Support Patient-Centered Treatment Decisions in Osteoporosis: The Osteoporosis Choice Randomized Trial II

Purpose Osteoporosis Choice, an encounter decision aid, can engage patients and clinicians in shared decision making about osteoporosis treatment. Its effectiveness compared to the routine provision to clinicians of the patient’s estimated risk of fracture using the FRAX calculator is unknown. Methods Patient-level, randomized, three-arm trial enrolling women over 50 with osteopenia or osteoporosis eligible for treatment with bisphosphonates, where the use of Osteoporosis Choice was compared to FRAX only and to usual care to determine impact on patient knowledge, decisional conflict, involvement in the decision-making process, decision to start and adherence to bisphosphonates. Results We enrolled 79 women in the three arms. Because FRAX estimation alone and usual care produced similar results, we grouped them for analysis. Compared to these, use of Osteoporosis Choice increased patient knowledge (median score 6 vs. 4, p = .01), improved understanding of fracture risk and risk reduction with bisphosphonates (p = .01 and p<.0001, respectively), had no effect on decision conflict, and increased patient engagement in the decision making process (OPTION scores 57% vs. 43%, p = .001). Encounters with the decision aid were 0.8 minutes longer (range: 33 minutes shorter to 3.0 minutes longer). There were twice as many patients receiving and filling prescriptions in the decision aid arm (83% vs. 40%, p = .07); medication adherence at 6 months was no different across arms. Conclusion Supporting both patients and clinicians during the clinical encounter with the Osteoporosis Choice decision aid efficiently improves treatment decision making when compared to usual care with or without clinical decision support with FRAX results. Trial Registration clinical trials.gov NCT00949611
Weak heterogeneity as a way of adapting multicores to real workloads

There is a growing consensus that heterogeneous multicores are the future of CPUs. These processors would be composed of cores that are specifically adapted or tuned to particular types of applications and use cases, thereby increasing performance. The move from homogeneous to heterogeneous multicores causes the design space to explode, however. An architect of a heterogeneous processor must make design decisions per processor core rather than once for the entire processor as before. Currently, there are no methods for handling this design complexity to yield a processor that performs well for real workloads. As a step forward, we propose weak heterogeneity. A weakly heterogeneous processor is one whose cores are different, but not significantly so. The cores share an ISA and major microarchitectural features, differing only in minor details. Limiting the design space in this way allows us to explore the heterogeneous space without becoming overwhelmed by its size. We show preliminary results suggesting that a design space so constrained still has interesting trade-offs among performance, power consumption, and area.
High-frequency ambient noise in warm shallow waters

In deep water, the dominant sources of natural ocean noise are often events occurring at the sea/air interface. In shallow water, particularly if it is warm, this is often no longer the case. Where wind-related noise is less pronounced, snapping shrimp alone can easily dominate the soundscape over two decades of bandwidth. Particularly for ambient noise imaging, the high frequency content of these sources (up to at least 250 kHz) provides good angular resolution, at the cost of short range due to absorption. Despite the central role that these animals can play in shallow-water ambient noise, very little is known about their spatial and temporal ensemble acoustic behaviour. Some data collected in Singapore and elsewhere are presented, and the temporal statistics discussed. It is found that some features of ensemble snapping shrimp noise appear to be quite robust, suggesting that knowledge of these properties can be used to improve algorithms for ambient noise oceanography. Two physical models are proposed which are consistent with our acoustic observations.
Modelling Consciousness

Short Abstract Thè`relational mind'' approach to the inner content of consciousness is developed in terms of various control structures and processing strategies, and their possible neurobiological identifications in brain sites. This leads naturally to a division of consciousness into a passive and an active part. A global control structure for thèsingle strand' aspect of consciousness is proposed as the thalamo-nucleus reticularis thalami-cortex coupled system, which is shown to support experimental data on electrical stimulation of awareness [Libet (1964)]. Local control, in terms of excitatory transfer from sites of semantic memory to working memory, is shown to explain subliminal perception timing [Marcel (1980)]. The inner content of consciousness is suggested as arising from the resulting relational features between inputs and stored semantic and episodic memories. Long Abstract A possible physical model of consciousness is presented to allow for a solution to the problem of analysing what it is like to be another conscious being. This is based on the Relational Model of the mind, in which semantically coded inputs on various working memories compete amongst each other whilst having their activities supported and amplified by earlier stored episodic representations. The first part of the paper gives a general account of the Relational Model of the Mind [Taylor(1973,1991)]. This uses the idea that the content of consciousness is determined by the use of those past memories most closely related or most relevant to that input. This model is used as a framework throughout the paper to guide the development. It leads to the needs for memory buffers where activity is held long enough for it to combine with past memories. These are sited posteriorly, leading to a posterior or passive conscious component and an anterior or active one. 2 The comparison with other recent models of consciousness is then made, so as to allow a better appreciation as to how the present appproach can be seen as an extension of a particular past model or alternately as a new approach altogether. The need for competition between activities in various modalities is then raised , in order to give a semblance of uniqueness to the experience of consciousness, based on the evoked relational activities in various codes and modalities. A candidate system in the brain for the site of that competition is proposed as the thalamo-nucleus reticularis thalami (NRT)-cortical complex. Earlier results on analysis [Taylor (1992a), (1992b)] and simulation [Taylor and Alavi (1993)] …
Efﬁcient Exploitation of Multimedia Documents: Exploring, Indexing and Searching in Very Large Databases

the ﬁrst local descriptors used were the differential invariants. Established by Florack [63], their use for image comparison was proposed by Schmid [ 74]. Each descriptor is a combination of the ﬁrst derivatives of the signal at the interest point. These descriptors appeared experimentally very robust to geometric and photometric transforms. An even more powerful descriptor was then proposed by Lowe: the SIFT descriptor [68]. It is composed of 16 local histograms of gradient directions around the interest point. Such descriptors can be used in many applications: image comparison for object recognition, image copy detection, detection of repeats in television streams. While they are very reliable, such descriptors are not without problems. As many descriptors can be computed for a single image, a collection of one million of images can generate a database of one billion of descriptors. That is why speciﬁc indexing techniques are required to handle them. Up to now, most of them are computed from decompressed images, while most formats are based on image compression. Thus it would be interesting to directly compute the descriptors in the compressed domain. Finally, their evaluation for very large image collection (several millions of images) is still an open and interesting problem.
A Lexicon and Behavioral Study on the Status of the Syllable in Japanese

Labrune (2012) recently proposed that the moras are not the immediate constituent of the syllable but of the foot in Japanese. This contradicts with more traditional models of Japanese prosody that acknowledge the presence of the syllable inside the foot. Labrune’s proposal is important given the prevalent assumption in the literature that the syllable is a prosodic unit present in all languages (Selkirk 1984). The present study further explored the nature of the prosodic structure in Japanese. The result from a statistical analysis of distributions of segments within the bisyllabic words in Japanese was consistent with prosodic structures where the onset consonant is not directly linked to the syllable node in Japanese. A speeded word-repetition experiment indicated that a mora type undergoes some forms of changes more often when they are positioned lower in the mora hierarchy. Specifically, the lower a mora class is positioned in the mora hierarchy, the more likely it undergoes changes in productions. Discussions of the current findings are provided to the effect that positing the syllable unit in Japanese phonology may not be necessary, lending further indirect support for the prosodic model of Japanese along the line of Labrune (2012).
PGPS servers with time-varying capacities

We consider a server with a time-varying capacity, We show that the virtual time implementation of the packetized generalized processor sharing (PGPS) scheme in Parekh and Gallager (1993) does not yield the right approximation of the generalized processor sharing (GPS) scheme in such an environment. Via the concept of change of time, we observe that a server with a time-varying capacity can be viewed as a server with a constant capacity under an appropriate change of clock. This leads to a modified version of the virtual time implementation and various bounds of the PGPS server with a time-varying capacity.
Novel small molecules potentiate premature termination codon readthrough by aminoglycosides

Nonsense mutations introduce premature termination codons and underlie 11% of genetic disease cases. High concentrations of aminoglycosides can restore gene function by eliciting premature termination codon readthrough but with low efficiency. Using a high-throughput screen, we identified compounds that potentiate readthrough by aminoglycosides at multiple nonsense alleles in yeast. Chemical optimization generated phthalimide derivative CDX5-1 with activity in human cells. Alone, CDX5-1 did not induce readthrough or increase TP53 mRNA levels in HDQ-P1 cancer cells with a homozygous TP53 nonsense mutation. However, in combination with aminoglycoside G418, it enhanced readthrough up to 180-fold over G418 alone. The combination also increased readthrough at all three nonsense codons in cancer cells with other TP53 nonsense mutations, as well as in cells from rare genetic disease patients with nonsense mutations in the CLN2, SMARCAL1 and DMD genes. These findings open up the possibility of treating patients across a spectrum of genetic diseases caused by nonsense mutations.
Nanoliposomal artemisinin for the treatment of murine visceral leishmaniasis

Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is a fatal, vector-borne disease caused by the intracellular protozoa of the genus Leishmania. Most of the therapeutics for VL are toxic, expensive, or ineffective. Sesquiterpenes are a new class of drugs with proven antimicrobial and antiviral activities. Artemisinin is a sesquiterpene lactone with potent antileishmanial activity, but with limited access to infected cells, being a highly lipophilic molecule. Association of artemisinin with liposome is a desirable strategy to circumvent the problem of poor accessibility, thereby improving its efficacy, as demonstrated in a murine model of experimental VL. Nanoliposomal artemisinin (NLA) was prepared by thin-film hydration method and optimized using Box–Behnken design with a mean particle diameter of 83±16 nm, polydispersity index of 0.2±0.03, zeta potential of −27.4±5.7 mV, and drug loading of 33.2%±2.1%. Morphological study of these nanoliposomes by microscopy showed a smooth and spherical surface. The mechanism of release of artemisinin from the liposomes followed the Higuchi model in vitro. NLA was free from concomitant signs of toxicity, both ex vivo in murine macrophages and in vivo in healthy BALB/c mice. NLA significantly denigrated the intracellular infection of Leishmania donovani amastigotes and the number of infected macrophages ex vivo with an IC50 of 6.0±1.4 µg/mL and 5.1±0.9 µg/mL, respectively. Following treatment in a murine model of VL, NLA demonstrated superior efficacy compared to artemisinin with a percentage inhibition of 82.4%±3.8% in the liver and 77.6%±5.5% in spleen at the highest dose of 20 mg/kg body weight with modulation of cell-mediated immunity towards protective Th1 type. This study is the first report on the use of a liposomal drug delivery system for artemisinin as a promising alternative intervention against VL.
Increased juvenile predation is not associated with evolved differences in adult brain size in Trinidadian killifish (Rivulus hartii)

Abstract Vertebrates exhibit extensive variation in brain size. The long‐standing assumption is that this variation is driven by ecologically mediated selection. Recent work has shown that an increase in predator‐induced mortality is associated with evolved increases and decreases in brain size. Thus, the manner in which predators induce shifts in brain size remains unclear. Increased predation early in life is a key driver of many adult traits, including life‐history and behavioral traits. Such results foreshadow a connection between age‐specific mortality and selection on adult brain size. Trinidadian killifish, Rivulus hartii, are found in sites with and without guppies, Poecilia reticulata. The densities of Rivulus drop dramatically in sites with guppies because guppies prey upon juvenile Rivulus. Previous work has shown that guppy predation is associated with the evolution of adult life‐history traits in Rivulus. In this study, we compared second‐generation laboratory‐born Rivulus from sites with and without guppies for differences in brain size and associated trade‐offs between brain size and other components of fitness. Despite the large amount of existing research on the importance of early‐life events on the evolution of adult traits, and the role of predation on both behavior and brain size, we did not find an association between the presence of guppies and evolutionary shifts in Rivulus brain size. Such results argue that increased rates of juvenile mortality may not alter selection on adult brain size.
Broadcast stability in random access

We introduce and study the problem of broadcast stability in a network where nodes utilize the ALOHA protocol to gain random access to the channel. We make use of the dominating systems argument used in previous works and also develop a novel method for finding the region of stable arrival rates of packets. The stability region is obtained by analyzing the broadcast service process for a channel with multipacket reception. Our results exhibit the effect of probabilistic reception and multipacket reception on the broadcast stability region. We also show that the broadcast stability region is contained within the stability region for unicast transmission. Our work is applicable to the broadcast transmission that underlies communication in many wireless networks, including multihop networks. In addition, our new method for finding the stability region may be applicable to previously unsolved problems, including the stability region for arbitrarily many sources and destinations
Réunion de consommateurs : Comprendre les motivations de la participation

Pourquoi un individu participe-t-il a une reunion de consommateurs ? Une question simple dont la reponse conditionne le comportement des participants et la qualite du materiel qualitatif recueilli en groupe. Cet article explore les motivations de la participation a une reunion de consommateurs et presente une typologie des participants. L'etude presentee conduit a des implications pratiques quant a la conduite et l'analyse des reunions de consommateurs
Chromatic contrast detection in spatial chromatic noise

The spectral properties of chromatic-detection mechanisms were investigated using a noise-masking paradigm. Contrast-detection thresholds were measured for a signal with a Gaussian spatial profile, modulated in the equiluminant plane in the presence of spatial chromatic noise. The noise was distributed within a sector in the equiluminant plane, centered on the signal direction. Each stimulus consisted of two adjacent fields, one of which contained the signal, separated horizontally by a gap with the same average chromaticity as the uniform background. Observers were asked to judge on which side of the central fixation point the signal was displayed via a two-alternative, forced-choice (2AFC) paradigm. Contrast thresholds were measured for four color directions and three sector widths at increasing levels of the average energy of the axial component of the noise. Results show that contrast thresholds are unaffected by the width of the noise sector, as previously found for temporally modulated stimuli (D'Zmura & Knoblauch, 1998). The results are consistent with the existence of spectrally broadband linear-detection mechanisms tuned to the signal color direction and support the hypothesis of the existence of higher-order color mechanisms with sensitivities tuned to intermediate directions in color space.
Aerial image mosaicking with online calibration - A feasibility study

Compiling individual aerial images to a larger mosaic image is important for many remote sensing tasks, e.g. mapping. The standard way to address this problem is to orthorectify the image and later compile it together. For the orthorectification the orientation and the location of the camera has to be measured accurately and a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) is needed or ground control points have to be set manually. In this paper we present a feasibility study on an approach which works purely on original camera images without any GPS and/or IMU. The intern and extern camera parameters and the 3D feature points are calculated based on Structure from Motion (SfM). The ground surface is assumed to be flat and a plane is fitted on the 3D feature points. A virtual camera is calculated then which is perpendicular to the plane and the images are transformed into each other by a homography. We test this approach on image sequences captured by a standard DSLR camera.