Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
On the Negative Effects of E-Commerce: A Sociocognitive Exploration of Unregulated On-line Buying

There is mounting anecdotal and survey evidence of unregulated buying on the Internet, including impulsive and compulsive buying that in extreme cases may constitute a behavioral addiction. Learning theory models of unregulated buying were critically reviewed and reconceptualized in terms of the self-regulatory mechanism from Bandura's (1986) social cognitive theory. A new explanation of unregulated buying was proposed in which depression weakens effective self-regulation. Features that may have encouraged or discouraged unregulated buying were identified at popular electronic commerce sites. Many features may have disrupted accurate self-observation and fostered advantageous social comparisons with other excessive shoppers. The potential for unregulated consumption to disrupt orderly electronic marketplaces was discussed.
Cultural Capital, Ambition and the Explanation of Inequalities in Learning Outcomes: A Comparative Analysis

This article is devoted to the explanation of the influence of social origins on student achievement. Using the data of the Project for International Student Assessment on 25 nations, I show that cultural capital provides a relevant, but far from exhaustive, account of schooling inequalities; furthermore, the explanatory power of Bourdieu’s theory seems impressively similar across countries. I also try to argue that, in order to elaborate a more satisfactory explanation, we need to take into account at least two more factors: occupational aspirations and economic resources. Finally, I discuss whether the above mentioned factors can be integrated into a coherent theoretical framework to achieve a better understanding of educational inequalities.
Dark matter in dwarf spheroidals - I. Models

This paper introduces a new two-parameter family of dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxy models. The mass distribution has a Plummer profile and falls like R−4 in projection, in agreement with the star-count data. The first free parameter controls the velocity anisotropy and the second controls the dark matter content. The dark matter distribution can be varied from one extreme of mass-follows-light through a near-isothermal halo with flat rotation curve to the other extreme of an extended dark halo with harmonic core. This family of models is explored analytically in some detail – the distribution functions, the intrinsic moments and the projected moments are all calculated. For the nearby Galactic dSphs, samples of hundreds of discrete radial velocities are becoming available. A technique is developed to extract the anisotropy and dark matter content from such data sets by maximizing the likelihood function of the sample of radial velocities. This is constructed from the distribution function and corrected for observational errors and the effects of binaries. Tests on simulated data sets show that samples of ∼1000 discrete radial velocities are ample to break the degeneracy between mass and anisotropy in the nearby dSphs. Interesting constraints can already be placed on the distribution of the dark matter with samples of ∼160 radial velocities (the size of the present-day data set for Draco). The Space Interferometry Mission or SIM allows very accurate differential astrometry at faint magnitudes. This can be used to measure the internal proper motions of stars in the nearby Galactic dSphs. Our simulations show that ∼100 proper motions are sufficient to demolish the mass–anisotropy degeneracy completely. The target stars in Draco are at magnitudes of V∼19–20 and the required proper motion accuracy is 3–6 μas yr-1. The measurement of the proper motions of a sample of ∼100 stars uncontaminated with binaries will take about 400 h of SIM time, or under 2 per cent of the mission lifetime.
Positive Reinforcement and Behavioral Deficits of Children with Autism

Editor's Note: Current methods and procedures used to teach and manage persons with autism are based on concepts, theories, and interpretations of educational and behavioral science pioneers. Thus, while present-day strategies and procedures used with persons with autism may appear unique and original, they are often applications or refinements of previously identified theories and methods. One significant influence on instructional and management procedures used by professionals and parents with children and youth with autism was C.B. Ferster's 1961 article, “Positive Reinforcement and Behavioral Deficits of Autistic Children” (Child Development, Vol. 32, pp. 437-456). In this classic article, Ferster presented a case for the use of operant conditioning methods with children with autism and, in so doing, was a catalyst for subsequent development of training and management procedures for persons with autism and developmental disabilities. This issue of Focus on Autistic Behavior features a reprint of Ferster's famous article. Moreover, three prominent professionals react to the article, including their analysis of the extent to which Ferster's thoughts and suggestions are current. The reactions are by Stephen C. Luce, PhD, director of clinical services at the May Institute, Chatham, Massachusetts;
O EFEITO DA MARCA NA NEGLIGÊNCIA DA OMISSÃO: UMA PESQUISA EXPERIMENTAL

Omission negligence is characterized by the lack of sensibility regarding unmentioned or unknown information. This phenomenon is very recurring, since it is not rare that a consumer has to make a decision supported by a judgment formulated from incomplete information. Prior research indicated that people often cannot identify the absence of important information, which results in strong convictions being formed based on little consistent evidence. The main purpose of this work is to comprehend brand effects on omission negligence. Three experiments were conducted, involving 769 undergraduate students of business administration. Empirical experiments support the understanding that individuals with a low contextual cognitive level (non-experts) are insensitive to attribute omission and are also extremely positive when completing evaluations, even when there is no apparent reason for that. Upon comparing the experiments' findings, it is understood that a recognized brand more incisively influences experts' evaluation than non-experts'. Even though experts anchor their judgments in a more strict evaluation of available attributes, a recognized brand has a strong influence on the object's general evaluation.
A distributed system design for next generation storage and remote replication

The business continuity is essential for any enterprise application where remote replication enables customers to store the data on a Logical Disk (LDisk) at the local site and replicate the same at remote locations. In case of a disaster at local site, the replicated LDisk (remote copy) at remote site is marked as primary copy and the remote copy is made available without any downtime. The replication to destination is configured either in sync-mode or async-mode. In case of async-mode, the host IOs are first processed by the source array at the local site. A snapshot of the LDisk is triggered periodically and the new snapshot is replicated to the destination array at remote site. In this configuration, one particular node of source array becomes loaded with ongoing host IOs, snapshot, and replication activities. In the scale-out model, a storage array consists of multiple nodes and hence, the replication tasks and responsibilities can be distributed to a different node. We propose a cloning mechanism called DeltaClone, which replicates the incremental changes of LDisk across nodes. The ownership of a LDisk and its DeltaClone are assigned to two different nodes which are called as master node and slave node respectively. When the periodic request is triggered to synchronize the LDisk data with its remote copy, the current DeltaClone is frozen and it is then merged with remote copy. Hence, the replication tasks are carried out at slave node without affecting the performance of the master node and the ongoing host IOs. The slave node is re-elected periodically to ensure the dynamic load-balancing across the nodes. Our distributed design improves the overall storage performance and the simulation results showed that the proposed method outperforms the traditional methods.
Individual Mobility Profiles: Methods and Application on Vehicle Sharing

In this paper we present a methodology for extracting mobility profiles of individuals from raw digital traces (in particular, GPS traces), and study criteria to match individuals based on profiles. We instantiate the profile matching problem to a specific application context, namely proactive car pooling services, and therefore develop a matching criterion that satisfies various basic constraints obtained from the background knowledge of the application domain. In order to evaluate the impact and robustness of the methods introduced we present an experiment which is performed on a massive dataset containing GPS traces of private cars.
Using a decellularized splenic matrix as a 3D scaffold for hepatocyte cultivation in vitro: a preliminary trial

Using a decellularized liver matrix (DLM) to reengineer liver tissue is a promising therapy for end-stage liver disease. However, the limited supply of donor organs still hampers its potential clinical application, while a xenogenic decellularized matrix may bring a risk of zoonosis and immunological rejection. Therefore, an appropriate alternative scaffold is needed. In this research, we established a decellularized splenic matrix (DSM) in a rodent model, which preserved the 3D ultrastructure, the components of the extracellular matrix (ECM) and the native vascular network. The DSM and DLM had similar components of ECM, and similar mechanical properties. Hepatocytes were seeded to the DSM and DLM for dynamic culturing up to 6 d, and distributed both in decellularized sinusoidal spaces and around the vessels. The TUNEL-positive cell percentage in a dynamic culturing decellularized splenic matrix (dDSM) was 10.7% ± 3.6% at 3d and 25.8% ± 5.6% at 5d, although 14.2% ± 4.5% and 24.8% ± 2.9%, respectively, in a dynamic culturing decellularized liver matrix (dDLM) at the same time point (p > 0.05). Primary hepatocytes in the dDSM and dDLM expressed albumin, G6pc and Ugt1a1. The gene expression of Cyp2b1, Cyp1a2 and HNF1α in the gene transcription level revealed hepatocytes had lower gene expression levels in the dDSM compared with the dDLM at 3d, but better than those in a sandwich culture. The cumulative albumin production at 6 d of culture was 80.7 ± 9.6 μg per million cells in the dDSM and 89.6 ± 4.6 μg per million cells in the dDLM (p > 0.05). In summary, the DSM is a promising 3D scaffold for hepatocyte cultivation in vitro.
Pharmacology and Therapeutics of Bronchodilators

Bronchodilators are central in the treatment of of airways disorders. They are the mainstay of the current management of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and are critical in the symptomatic management of asthma, although controversies around the use of these drugs remain. Bronchodilators work through their direct relaxation effect on airway smooth muscle cells. at present, three major classes of bronchodilators, β2-adrenoceptor (AR) agonists, muscarinic receptor antagonists, and xanthines are available and can be used individually or in combination. The use of the inhaled route is currently preferred to minimize systemic effects. Fast- and short-acting agents are best used for rescue of symptoms, whereas long-acting agents are best used for maintenance therapy. It has proven difficult to discover novel classes of bronchodilator drugs, although potential new targets are emerging. Consequently, the logical approach has been to improve the existing bronchodilators, although several novel broncholytic classes are under development. An important step in simplifying asthma and COPD management and improving adherence with prescribed therapy is to reduce the dose frequency to the minimum necessary to maintain disease control. Therefore, the incorporation of once-daily dose administration is an important strategy to improve adherence. Several once-daily β2-AR agonists or ultra-long-acting β2-AR-agonists (LABAs), such as indacaterol, olodaterol, and vilanterol, are already in the market or under development for the treatment of COPD and asthma, but current recommendations suggest the use of LABAs only in combination with an inhaled corticosteroid. In addition, some new potentially long-acting antimuscarinic agents, such as glycopyrronium bromide (NVA-237), aclidinium bromide, and umeclidinium bromide (GSK573719), are under development, as well as combinations of several classes of long-acting bronchodilator drugs, in an attempt to simplify treatment regimens as much as possible. This review will describe the pharmacology and therapeutics of old, new, and emerging classes of bronchodilator.
From Digitized Data to NURB Surface Meshes

A common reverse engineering problem is to convert several hundred thousand points collected from the surface of an object via a digitizing process, into a coherent geometric model that is easily transferred to a CAD software such as a solid modeler for either design improvement or manufacturing and analysis. These data are very dense and makes data-set manipulation difficult and tedious. Many commercial solutions exist but involve time consuming interaction to go from points to surface meshes such as BSplines or NURBS (Non Uniform Rational BSplines). Our approach differs from current industry practice in that we produce a mesh with little or no interaction from the user. The user can produce bi-quadratic or bi-cubic BSpline surfaces and can choose the number of patches, tolerance etc. as parameters to the system. The BSpline surface is both compact and continuous. The former property reduces the large storage overhead, and the later eliminates the rippling effect that a scanner often produces. In addition, the nature of the BSpline allows one to easily and smoothly alter the surface, making re-engineering extremely feasible. The BSpline surface is created using the principle of higher orders least squares with smoothing functions at the edges. Both linear and cylindrical data sets are handled using a different set of parameterization schemes, a key factor in the correct solution of the resulting BSplines. Also, because of the BSpline’s continuous nature, a multiresolutional-triangulated mesh can quickly be produced. This last fact means that an STL file is simple to generate. STL files can also be easily used as input to the system.
Background Modeling Based on Bidirectional Analysis

Background modeling and subtraction is an essential task in video surveillance applications. Most traditional studies use information observed in past frames to create and update a background model. To adapt to background changes, the background model has been enhanced by introducing various forms of information including spatial consistency and temporal tendency. In this paper, we propose a new framework that leverages information from a future period. Our proposed approach realizes a low-cost and highly accurate background model. The proposed framework is called bidirectional background modeling, and performs background subtraction based on bidirectional analysis, i.e., analysis from past to present and analysis from future to present. Although a result will be output with some delay because information is taken from a future period, our proposed approach improves the accuracy by about 30% if only a 33-millisecond of delay is acceptable. Furthermore, the memory cost can be reduced by about 65% relative to typical background modeling.
O nline C haracter R ecognition of H andwritten C ursive Script

Text recognition is an area of pattern recognition that has been the subject of considerable interest during the last five decades. Handwritten text show wide stylistic variations. In this paper cursive characters have been recognized. Segmentation of words into characters is performed by feature extractor method. The segmented characters are then given as the input to template matching algorithm in which an incoming input is re-sized and each and every character in it is extracted. Then the extracted character is matched against the standard templates. Here pixel by pixel matching takes place for recognition. Recognition of unconstrained handwritten text is very difficult because characters cannot be reliably isolated especially when the text is cursive handwriting. But it is implemented in this project with high accuracy.
Sympathetic guitar: can a digitally augmented guitar be a social entity?

Previous work suggests that people treat interactive media as if they were social entities. By drawing a parallel between socio-cognitive theory and interface design, we intend to experimentally determine whether deliberate design decisions can have an effect on users' perception of an interactive medium as a social entity. In this progress report, we describe the theoretical underpinnings and motivations which led to the design and implementation of the Sympathetic Guitar: a guitar interface which supplements standard acoustic sound with a spatially-separate audio response based on the user's hand positions and performance dynamics. This prototype will be used for investigating user response to a specific, socially-relevant design decision.
Ultrasonic Doppler sensor for speaker recognition

In this paper we present a novel use of an acoustic Doppler sonar for multi-modal speaker identification. An ultrasonic emitter directs a 40 kHz tone toward the speaker. Reflections from the speaker's face are recorded as the speaker talks. The frequency of the tone is modified by the velocity of the facial structures it is reflected by. The received ultrasonic signal thus contains an entire spectrum of frequencies representing the set of all velocities of facial components. The pattern of frequencies in the reflected signal is observed to be typical of the speaker. The captured ultrasonic signal is synchronously analyzed with the corresponding voice signal to extract specific characteristics that can be used to identify the speaker. Experiments show that the information this can result in significant improvements in speaker identification accuracy both under clean conditions and in noise.
Evidence for functionally active protease-activated receptor-3 (PAR-3) in human vascular smooth muscle cells

Summary The present study investigates whether vascular smooth muscle cells of the human saphenous vein (SMC) express a functionally active protease-activated receptor-3 (PAR-3). PAR-3 mRNA was detected by RT-PCR. In the presence of thrombin, a rapid and transient increase in PAR-3 mRNA was observed. Stimulation of SMC with thrombin or the synthetic PAR-3-activating peptide, TFRGAP, resulted in transient mobilization of intracellular calcium. After a preceding challenge with thrombin, the calcium signal to TFRGAP was abolished, suggesting cleavage and subsequent desensitization of PAR-3 by thrombin. Activation of PAR-3 by TFRGAP elicited a time-dependent activation of the extracellular-signal-regulated kinase (ERK)-1/2 with a maximum response 10-20 min after stimulation. At 200 µM, TFRGAP increased 3H]-thymidine incorporation into cellular DNA about two-fold. These data indicate that PAR-3 is expressed in human SMC and triggers intracellular signaling. Thus, in the SMC PAR-3 might contribute to thrombin-induced responses.
Predictors of Biased Self-perception in Individuals with High Social Anxiety: The Effect of Self-consciousness in the Private and Public Self Domains

“Biased self-perception,” the tendency to perceive one’s social performance as more negative than observers do, is characteristic of socially anxious individuals. Self-attention processes are hypothesised to underlie biased self-perception, however, different models emphasise different aspects of self-attention, with attention to the public aspects of the self being prominent. The current study aimed to investigate the relative contribution of two types of dispositional self-attention; public- and private self-consciousness to biased self-perception in a high (n = 48) versus a low (n = 48) social anxiety group undergoing an interaction task. The main finding was that private self-consciousness explained substantial and unique variance in biased negative self-perception in individuals with high social anxiety, while public self-consciousness did not. This relationship was independent of increments in state anxiety. Private self-consciousness appeared to have a specific association with bias related to overestimation of negative social performance rather than underestimation of positive social performance. The implication of this finding is that current treatment models of Social anxiety disorder might include broader aspects of self-focused attention, especially in the context of formulating self-evaluation biases.
Pathogenic Landscape of Transboundary Zoonotic Diseases in the Mexico–US Border Along the Rio Grande

Transboundary zoonotic diseases, several of which are vector borne, can maintain a dynamic focus and have pathogens circulating in geographic regions encircling multiple geopolitical boundaries. Global change is intensifying transboundary problems, including the spatial variation of the risk and incidence of zoonotic diseases. The complexity of these challenges can be greater in areas where rivers delineate international boundaries and encompass transitions between ecozones. The Rio Grande serves as a natural border between the US State of Texas and the Mexican States of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León, and Tamaulipas. Not only do millions of people live in this transboundary region, but also a substantial amount of goods and people pass through it everyday. Moreover, it occurs over a region that functions as a corridor for animal migrations, and thus links the Neotropic and Nearctic biogeographic zones, with the latter being a known foci of zoonotic diseases. However, the pathogenic landscape of important zoonotic diseases in the south Texas–Mexico transboundary region remains to be fully understood. An international perspective on the interplay between disease systems, ecosystem processes, land use, and human behaviors is applied here to analyze landscape and spatial features of Venezuelan equine encephalitis, Hantavirus disease, Lyme Borreliosis, Leptospirosis, Bartonellosis, Chagas disease, human Babesiosis, and Leishmaniasis. Surveillance systems following the One Health approach with a regional perspective will help identifying opportunities to mitigate the health burden of those diseases on human and animal populations. It is proposed that the Mexico–US border along the Rio Grande region be viewed as a continuum landscape where zoonotic pathogens circulate regardless of national borders.
The Past as Nation: Three Dimensions of Armenian Identity

This article argues that the key to understanding nationhood is its relationship with the past - 'its' history. It accepts that nations are essentially modern constructs, based on subjective and objective characteristics, but this is not how members of a nation usually define their collective. What is crucial in the answer to the question 'when is the nation? ' is not a given date (which is never fixed and regularly shifts based on need), but how and why the 'when' is defined. Hence, what needs to be analysed are the dynamics of formulating identity and the interpretation of history for contemporary purposes. Using the case of the Armenians, the article demonstrates that the question 'when is the nation? ' is answered in terms of three broad time frames: fourth century AD, 2000 BC or earlier and 1915. Each approach looks at the past to define the nation, and, based on its world view, provides an appropriate answer. These differences are not just historiographical debates among specialists, but widely held views affecting current Armenian national identity.