Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Antioxidants Prevent γ-Hexachlorocyclohexane-Induced Inhibition of Rat Myometrial Gap Junctions and Contractions1

Abstract Lindane (γ-hexachlorocyclohexane) is a commonly used pesticide that bioaccumulates in mammalian adipose tissue. Lindane inhibits gap junctional intercellular communication and oscillatory contractions of pregnant rat myometrium in vitro. The present study investigated the role of oxidative stress in lindane's inhibition of myometrial function in mid-gestation pregnant rat uteri. Lucifer yellow dye was microinjected into cultured myocytes to assess gap junctional intercellular communication. Lindane exposure (100 μM) resulted in a time-dependent, biphasic inhibition of dye transfer. This pattern of inhibition was also seen upon cell exposure to the pro-oxidant, tert-butyl hydroperoxide (100 μM). Lindane's initial and secondary-onset dye transfer inhibitions were reversed by cotreatment and pretreatment with the antioxidants, α-tocopherol (25–100 μM), diphenyl-1,4-phenylene diamine (10–30 μM), and superoxide dismutase (100–400 U/ml). d-mannitol (100–300 mM) also reversed lindane's initial dye transfer inhibition. Nitro blue tetrazolium reduction to formazan (measured spectrophotometrically) was elevated upon exposure of cultured cells to lindane or tert-butyl hydroperoxide, indicating the presence of reducing agents. Lipid peroxidation, assessed as thiobarbituric acid-reactive substances, was also elevated in lindane-exposed cell cultures. α-Tocopherol reversed this elevation. Finally, uterine contractility was assessed by measuring isometric contractions of uterine strips hung in standard muscle baths. Pretreatment with α-tocopherol prevented lindane's abolishment of uterine contractions in vitro. These data support the hypothesis that lindane inhibits uterine contractility and myometrial gap junctions by establishing an oxidative stress environment.
A Hybrid Method for XML Clustering

An effective XML cluster method called neighbor center clustering algorithm (NCC) is presented in this paper, whose similarity is obtained through both structural and content information contained in XML files. Structural similarity is measured by the idea of Longest Common Subsequence, while content similarity is achieved using TF-IDF principles. It reduces computation complexity by avoiding direct search for cluster centers. Experiments show that the NCC can obtain high purity and F-measure value and is suitable and applicable for clustering XML with both homogenous and heterogeneous structures.
Extending the theory of goal ambiguity to programs: Examining the relationship between goal ambiguity and performance

One of the main assumptions of empirical studies conducted on the influence of goal ambiguity in public management is that goal ambiguity relates negatively to performance. However, this relationship has rarely been tested at the program level because common goal ambiguity and performance measures for disparate government programs have been scant. The availability of Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) results for a number of federal programs provides the opportunity for an analysis testing the foregoing assumption. Measures of program goal ambiguity—target, timeline, and program evaluation—are shown to have negative relationships with different program performance scores, taking into account alternative influences or biases on performance. This analysis extends the theory of goal ambiguity by providing the first analysis of large-sample federal programs. The theoretical and practical implications are presented in the discussion and conclusion.
ServiceTrust: Trust Management in Service Provision Networks

Service provision networks are popular platforms for decentralized service management. eBay and Amazon are two representative examples of enabling and hosting service provision networks for their customers. Trust management is a critical component for scaling service provision networks to larger set of participants. This paper presents Service Trust, a quality sensitive and attack resilient trust management facility for service provision networks. Service Trust has three unique features. First, it encapsulates quality-sensitive feedbacks by multi-scale rating scheme and incorporates the variances of user's behaviors into the local trust algorithm. Second, Service Trust measures the similarity of two users' feedback behavior and aggregate the local trust values into the global trust algorithm by exploiting pairwise feedback similarity scores to weight the contributions of local trust values towards the global trust of a participant. Finally, pairwise feedback similarity weighted trust propagation is utilized to further strengthen the robustness of global trust computation against malicious or sparse feedbacks. Experimental evaluation with independent and colluding attack models show that Service Trust is highly resilient to various attacks and highly effective compared to Eigen Trust, one of the most popular and representative trust models to date.
Reporting Sexual Harassment: Exploring a Predictive Model

The purposes of this study were (a) to explore the utility of a model for predicting reporting of sexual harassment and (b) to collect data on the incidence of sexual harassment using the Sexual Experiences Questionnaire (SEQ; Fitzgerald et al., 1988). The sample included 214 tenure-track faculty women and 276 women graduate students. The full model postulated that age, marital status, feminist ideology, and frequency of behavior would be directly related to perceived offensiveness of the behavior. In turn, perceived offensiveness, normative expectations for reporting, and perceived outcomes of reporting would directly influence reporting. As predicted, perceived offensiveness showed a direct influence on reporting, and feminist ideology and frequency of behavior were significant predictors of perceived offensiveness. Incidence data showed that the most frequently experienced situations involved gender harassment and seductive behaviors. Results suggest that educating women about the offensiveness of sexual harassment might increase frequency of reporting. Also, further exploration of the model seems warranted.
Finding Email in a Multi-Account, Multi-Device World

Email is far from dead; in fact the volume of messages exchanged daily, the number of accounts per user, and the number of devices on which email is accessed have been constantly growing. Most previous studies on email have focused on management and retrieval behaviour within a single account and on a single device. In this paper, we examine how people find email in today's ecosystem through an in-depth qualitative diary study with 16 participants. We found that personal and work accounts are managed differently, resulting in diverse retrieval strategies: while work accounts are more structured and thus email is retrieved through folders, personal accounts have fewer folders and users rely primarily on the built-in search option. Moreover, retrieval occurs primarily on laptops and PCs compared to smartphones. We explore the reasons, and uncover barriers and workarounds related to managing multiple accounts and devices. Finally, we consider new design possibilities for email clients to better support how email is used today.
Predictive Validity of School Grades -A Meta-analysis

Les resultats scolaires servent frequemment de pronostic a de futurs succes academiques ou professionnels, ceci en contradiction avec les doutes emis sur la valeur representative des notes scolaires et plus specialement sur leur valeur predictive. Utilisant la methode de la generalisation de validite decrite par Schmidt et Hunter, une meta-analyse est calculee a partir de 63 etudes allemandes, 102 echantillons independants et une population complete de 29.422 personnes. La validite en moyenne corrigee des notes obtenues au baccalaureat pour la prevision de reussite universitaire est ϱ= 0.456, celle des notes obtenues a la fin du premier cycle pour la prevision de reussite professionnelle ϱ= 0.408, cette methode pouvant rivaliser avec la validite des meilleures predictions psychologiques en selection de personnel. Concernant les etudes sur la reussite lors de l'apprentisage, les seules reserves pourraient venir du cadre des publications et de l'anciennete des etudes montrant une validite plus elevee des etudes publiees et plus anciennes, que des etudes inedites et plus recentes. School reports are frequently used predictors of further academic or vocational training success. This is in contrast to doubts concerning measurement quality of school marks, especially their predictive validity. Using Schmidt and Hunter's method of validity generalisation, a meta-analysis is calculated using 63 German studies with 102 independent samples and a total sample size of 29,422 subjects. The mean corrected validity of final school grades for the prediction of university examinations is ϱ= 0.456; for the prediction of vocational training success it is ϱ= 0.408, matching the validities of the best psychological predictors in personnel selection. The only distinctive moderators that could be found were publication form and age of the studies for the vocational group, showing higher validities for published and earlier studies than for unpublished and recent ones.
Further empirical research of the factors to impact synergetic innovation for large and middle size enterprises in

This paper follows the concept of synergetic innovation, based on the questionnaire into Chinese large and middle size enterprises, makes a empirical analysis on the factors to impact synergetic innovation which in the total innovation management(TIM), for large and middle size enterprises in China. The results of empirical research shows: There are 12 of 20 factors that influence synergetic innovation; and 8 of 20 factors not to influence synergetic innovation as a whole. But through further analyzing the 8 factors on the basis of variance analysis, we know that 3 of 8 factors having been significant statistical discrepancies, based on enterprise size, industry, ownership, and management level, etc. Therefore, we think while promoting TIM, firstly we should analyze the enterprises by classification, secondly based on the classification and categories to deal with the factors.
Regulatory Capture in the Globalisation of Accounting Standards

The Australian Financial Reporting Council recently shocked the world business community by unexpectedly announcing a change in the nation's approach to global-accounting-standards development. The change involved switching from ensuring consistency of Australian accounting standards with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs) developed by the International Accounting Standards Board to outright adoption of IFRSs by 2005. At the time of the announcement, Australia had the most developed international harmonisation programme of any country with a well-developed financial reporting system. Events surrounding the change demonstrate how political the accounting standard-setting process can be as it continues to receive front-page media attention, and as it provides a platform in parliamentary and electoral debate. In the meantime, the US role in the global accounting standard-setting arena has moved through phases of indifference to potential active dominance, and European influences have waxed and waned. We examine whether swings in political and regulatory influences that occur when globalisation becomes a national and international goal are explained by regulatory capture theory. We also address the extent to which a subset of a single nation's regulatory system plays a key role in a series of larger national and international games. Drawing upon experiences in Australia, the United States, and the European Union, we identify political influences on initiatives to reform accounting-standard-setting environments, policies, and processes.
L'hôpital compétitif. Et l'humain, dans tout ça ?

Le systeme public de soins a la francaise, en particulier l’hopital – realite et symbole auxquels les Francais sont si attaches –, sont soumis depuis 1996, quelle que soit la couleur politique des gouvernements successifs, a un flux incessant de reformes destinees a en ameliorer la gestion, l’efficacite, la securite, voire a developper sa competitivite. Dans cette volonte de l’adapter au contexte neoliberal, de le contraindre a en adopter les principes, deux exemples suggerent que les mots employes pour designer les reformes et les intentions affichees pour les justifier sont loin d’etre univoques : la demarche qualite a surtout conduit a instituer une culture de l’evaluation quantitative, tandis que la tarification a l’activite a ouvert la voie vers une gestion commerciale des hopitaux, a l’image de celle des cliniques privees. De ce parcours complexe et couteux, le « don de soins » ne sort pas grandi. Les hopitaux, certes, sont plus modernes et plus surs, mais le patient, le plus souvent seul avec sa souffrance, n’y trouve pas son compte.
Windows to the soul: vision science as a tool for studying biological mechanisms of information processing deficits in schizophrenia

Cognitive and information processing deficits are core features and important sources of disability in schizophrenia. Our understanding of the neural substrates of these deficits remains incomplete, in large part because the complexity of impairments in schizophrenia makes the identification of specific deficits very challenging. Vision science presents unique opportunities in this regard: many years of basic research have led to detailed characterization of relationships between structure and function in the early visual system and have produced sophisticated methods to quantify visual perception and characterize its neural substrates. We present a selective review of research that illustrates the opportunities for discovery provided by visual studies in schizophrenia. We highlight work that has been particularly effective in applying vision science methods to identify specific neural abnormalities underlying information processing deficits in schizophrenia. In addition, we describe studies that have utilized psychophysical experimental designs that mitigate generalized deficit confounds, thereby revealing specific visual impairments in schizophrenia. These studies contribute to accumulating evidence that early visual cortex is a useful experimental system for the study of local cortical circuit abnormalities in schizophrenia. The high degree of similarity across neocortical areas of neuronal subtypes and their patterns of connectivity suggests that insights obtained from the study of early visual cortex may be applicable to other brain regions. We conclude with a discussion of future studies that combine vision science and neuroimaging methods. These studies have the potential to address pressing questions in schizophrenia, including the dissociation of local circuit deficits vs. impairments in feedback modulation by cognitive processes such as spatial attention and working memory, and the relative contributions of glutamatergic and GABAergic deficits.
Listening to students

Written assessment feedback has not been widely researched despite higher education students continually expressing the need for meaningful and constructive feedback. This qualitative study employing focus groups captures and interprets the student perspective of written assessment feedback. Participants were Registered Nurses and non-traditional entrants to higher education. The findings generated a framework of themes and categories representing the feedback process experienced by the students. The themes were `learning from', `the process of receiving' and `making sense of' feedback. When this framework incorporates strategies such as `feed-forward', self-managed learning and personalized guidance it then represents a heuristic model of effective written assessment feedback. The model, created as a result of the research, should enhance the student experience and aid understanding of the complex processes associated with providing written assessment feedback.
The time course of generating causal antecedent and causal consequence inferences

The present study tested whether causal antecedent and causal consequence inferences are generated on‐line during comprehension and also determined the time course of their activation. The study manipulated inference category, the rate of word presentation in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) format, and the delay between the last word in a sentence and the test word (i.e., SOA interval). Lexical decision latencies were collected on test strings (i.e., nonwords, inference words, or unrelated words) which were presented after each sentence in the passages. The results indicated that there was a threshold of 400 ms after stimulus presentation (RSVP and SOA) before causal antecedents were generated on‐line, whereas causal consequences were not generated on‐line. These results support a bridging model of inference generation which assumes that causal antecedent inferences are needed to bridge an explicit text event with prior passage content, whereas expectation inferences are not normally generated o.
The Epidemiology of Lead Toxicity in Adults: Measuring Dose and Consideration of Other Methodologic Issues

We review several issues of broad relevance to the interpretation of epidemiologic evidence concerning the toxicity of lead in adults, particularly regarding cognitive function and the cardiovascular system, which are the subjects of two systematic reviews that are also part of this mini-monograph. Chief among the recent developments in methodologic advances has been the refinement of concepts and methods for measuring individual lead dose in terms of appreciating distinctions between recent versus cumulative doses and the use of biological markers to measure these parameters in epidemiologic studies of chronic disease. Attention is focused particularly on bone lead levels measured by K-shell X-ray fluorescence as a relatively new biological marker of cumulative dose that has been used in many recent epidemiologic studies to generate insights into lead’s impact on cognition and risk of hypertension, as well as the alternative method of estimating cumulative dose using available repeated measures of blood lead to calculate an individual’s cumulative blood lead index. We review the relevance and interpretation of these lead biomarkers in the context of the toxico-kinetics of lead. In addition, we also discuss methodologic challenges that arise in studies of occupationally and environmentally exposed subjects and those concerning race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status and other important covariates.
Zum Krankheitsbegriff der Autismus-Spektrum-Störungen (ASS)

Zusammenfassung Der Krankheitsbegriff in der Psychiatrie oszilliert zwischen naturalistischen und normativistischen Ansätzen. Für den Zweck der Erörterungen in diesem Beitrag soll ein naturalistischer Begriff psychiatrischer Erkrankungen vorausgesetzt werden, demzufolge psychische Krankheiten als Störungen von Fähigkeiten verstanden werden können, die uns unter normalen, gesunden Umständen zur Verfügung sind. Im Fall autistischer Störungen wird eine dimensionale Auffassung eines Spektrums von autistischen Störungen favorisiert. Ein weiterer wichtiger Aspekt betrifft den longitudinalen Verlauf autistischer Störungen. Während intuitive soziale Fähigkeiten über das gesamte Leben gestört bleiben, können soziale Lernprozesse einen Teil der Störungen kompensieren. Ein einheitliches nosologisches Konzept aber, das die Verursachung und die neurobiologische Vermittlung autistischer Störungen erklären könnte und auch den Verlauf der Erkrankung mitberücksichtigt, fehlt bisher. Dies ist die zentrale Herausforderung zukünftiger Forschung auf dem Gebiet autistischer Störungen.
La gestion du risque d'abordage dans le domaine du transport maritime : proposition d'un modèle générique tridimensionnel de la sécurité

Cette these s’inscrit dans le cadre theorique tres general de la securite des systemes complexes. Son terrain d’application est la marine marchande. L’objectif de cette recherche est double : 1. Investiguer la gestion du risque d’abordage grâce a une demarche systemique s’interessant a la fois aux conditions de l’echec et a celles du succes. 2. Explorer les liens entre les trois concepts lies a la securite que sont la Culture de securite, le Systeme de Management de la Securite et la Resilience. La culture de securite constitue un sous-ensemble de la culture organisationnelle globale. Elle se compose d’un ensemble de valeurs, de croyances, d’attitudes, de normes et de pratiques concernant la securite. Partage par les membres d’une organisation, cet ensemble influence directement les comportements mis en oeuvre dans le cadre du travail. Dans le cadre de cette these, nous avons tout d’abord realise une analyse du domaine de travail du systeme du transport maritime, ainsi, qu’une etude des cas d’abordage entre navires repertories par le MAIB (Marine Accident Investigation Branch). Ces analyses ont permis, respectivement, d’identifier les barrieres de defense du systeme et de mettre en evidence les principales causes a l’origine des accidents. Les etudes suivantes ont cherche a apprehender la culture de securite d’un armement repute sur, grâce a un couplage de methodes qualitatives et quantitatives. L’analyse du systeme de management de l’armement a demontre que celui-ci etait performant. Il s’appuie sur un solide systeme de retour d’experience et se montre participatif. Une enquete portant sur le climat de securite a ete menee aupres de plusieurs equipages, a l’aide d’un questionnaire inspire de celui de Havold. Elle montre qu’une grande majorite des operateurs adhere a une culture de securite positive, bien que les scores soient significativement influences par la fonction et par le niveau hierarchique des repondants. Enfin, l’analyse de l’activite des chefs de quart en passerelle a mis en evidence des mecanismes de gestion diachronique et synchronique des risques externes (i.e. Risque de collision). Les resultats de ces differentes etudes conduisent a discuter de l’articulation entre Culture de Securite, Resilience et Systeme de Management de la Securite. La proposition d’un modele tridimensionnel de la securite montre que la Culture de Securite semble en effet agir comme le mediateur des deux autres concepts. Elle permettrait egalement au systeme de conserver une importante part de securite geree, malgre la forte composante de securite reglee liee aux contraintes reglementaires importantes du secteur.
Statistics of Natural Stochastic Textures and Their Application in Image Denoising

Natural stochastic textures (NSTs), characterized by their fine details, are prone to corruption by artifacts, introduced during the image acquisition process by the combined effect of blur and noise. While many successful algorithms exist for image restoration and enhancement, the restoration of natural textures and textured images based on suitable statistical models has yet to be further improved. We examine the statistical properties of NST using three image databases. We show that the Gaussian distribution is suitable for many NST, while other natural textures can be properly represented by a model that separates the image into two layers; one of these layers contains the structural elements of smooth areas and edges, while the other contains the statistically Gaussian textural details. Based on these statistical properties, an algorithm for the denoising of natural images containing NST is proposed, using patch-based fractional Brownian motion model and regularization by means of anisotropic diffusion. It is illustrated that this algorithm successfully recovers both missing textural details and structural attributes that characterize natural images. The algorithm is compared with classical as well as the state-of-the-art denoising algorithms.