Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Effects of Audiovisual Stimulation on the Acceptance of Background Noise.

BACKGROUND Previous examinations of noise acceptance have been conducted using an auditory stimulus only; however, the effect of visual speech supplementation of the auditory stimulus on acceptance of noise remains limited. PURPOSE The purpose of the present study was to determine the effect of audiovisual stimulation on the acceptance of noise in listeners with normal and impaired hearing. RESEARCH DESIGN A repeated measures design was utilized. STUDY SAMPLE A total of 92 adult participants were recruited for this experiment. Of these participants, 54 were listeners with normal hearing and 38 were listeners with sensorineural hearing impairment. DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS Most comfortable levels and acceptable noise levels (ANL) were obtained using auditory and auditory-visual stimulation modes for the unaided listening condition for each participant and for the aided listening condition for 35 of the participants with impaired hearing that owned hearing aids. Speech reading ability was assessed using the Utley test for each participant. RESULTS The addition of visual input did not impact the most comfortable level values for listeners in either group; however, visual input improved unaided ANL values for listeners with normal hearing and aided ANL values in listeners with impaired hearing. ANL benefit received from visual speech input was related to the auditory ANL in listeners in each group; however, it was not related to speech reading ability for either listener group in any experimental condition. CONCLUSIONS Visual speech input can significantly impact measures of noise acceptance. The current ANL measure may not accurately reflect acceptance of noise values when in more realistic environments, where the signal of interest is both audible and visible to the listener.
Recombinant murine GM‐CSF from E. coli has biological activity and is neutralized by a specific antiserum.

We report the production and characterization of a mouse granulocyte‐macrophage colony stimulating factor (mGM‐CSF) made in Escherichia coli. The synthesis of mGM‐CSF was directed by a plasmid containing a gene isolated from the EL‐4 cell line. After induction of expression and accumulation of the protein in E. coli, mGM‐CSF accounted for 10% of total cellular protein. This recombinant mGM‐CSF was purified to 90% homogeneity by chaotrope extraction and gel filtration. Recombinant mGM‐CSF, like the native molecule, stimulates the growth of granulocyte and macrophage colonies in serum‐free cultures of mouse bone marrow cells. Antibodies raised against recombinant mGM‐CSF not only reacted with the recombinant protein but also neutralized the biological activity of both native and recombinant mGM‐CSF. These results indicate that the functional structure of the recombinant protein is similar to that of native mGM‐CSF.
Creativity and Openness: Further Validation of Two Creative Product Measures

This study sought to further validate two measures of creative imagination, and studied their relation to other creativity and personality measures. 151 college students completed the Urban and Jellen (1996) Test of Creative Thinking-Drawing Production (TCT-DP), an inventory of past creative accomplishments, a Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) story, and scales for creative personality and the 5-factor model. 86 of these participants also created autophotographic essays depicting themselves, scored for individuality/richness by consensual assessments. TCT-DP protocols were scored according to the manual, and also consensually assessed by teams of artist- and psychologist-judges. Factorial validity and relations to consensual assessments supported convergent and discriminant validity of the TCT-DP. The TCT-DP also correlated significantly with other creative products-the individuality of photo essays and rated creativity of TAT stories. Photo individuality correlated with past creative accomplishments in several areas. Adjective Check List-based creative personality scales related to most creativity measures, as did the "big 5" openness to experience domain, although the latter results seemed particularly compelling. Results support the domain generality rather than specificity position in an ongoing controversy in creativity research.
Aetiologies and risk factors for neonatal sepsis and pneumonia mortality among Alaskan infants

We evaluated all fatal neonatal sepsis and pneumonia cases occurring in Alaska during 1992–2000. Risk factors were evaluated using a database of all births occurring during the study period. Of 32 cases, group B streptococcus (GBS) was isolated from 21% (all <7 days of age), Candida spp. from 19% (all >7 days of age), non-GBS Gram-positive bacteria from 50% (53% <7 days of age), and Gram-negative infections from 38% (58% <7 days of age). Infants born at <37 weeks gestation accounted for 72% of cases and had an increased risk of GBS [rate ratio (RR) 9·1, 95% confidence interval (CI) 2·0–41] and non-GBS (RR 40, 95% CI 16–101) disease. Neonatal sepsis mortality has become an outcome concentrated among pre-term infants. Aetiologies include GBS during the early neonatal period, Candida spp. during the late neonatal period, and other bacteria during both periods.
Vibrio vulnificus infection and metalloprotease

Vibrio vulnificus is ubiquitous in aquatic environments; however, it occasionally causes serious and often fatal infections in humans. These include invasive septicemia contracted through consumption of raw seafood, as well as wound infections acquired through contact with brackish or marine waters. In most cases of septicemia, the patients have underlying disease(s), such as liver dysfunction or alcoholic cirrhosis, and the secondary skin lesions including cellulitis, edema and hemorrhagic bulla appear on the limbs. Although V. Vul produces various virulent factors including polysaccharide capsule, type IV pili, hemolysin and proteolytic enzymes, the 45‐kDa metalloprotease may be a causative factor of the skin lesions, because the purified protease enhances vascular permeability through generation of chemical mediators and also induces serious hemorrhagic damage through digestion of the vascular basement membrane. As well as other bacteria, V. Vul can regulate the protease production through the quorum‐sensing system depending on bacterial cell density. However, this system operates efficiently at 25°C, but not at 37°C. Therefore, V. vulnificus may produce sufficient amounts of the protease only in the interstitial tissue of the limbs, in which temperature is lower than the internal temperature of the human body.
Assessment of immunological markers and booster effects of Ag85B peptides, Ag85B, and BCG in blood of BCG vaccinated children: a preliminary report

Purpose In the present study, the protective immunological markers in serum and peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) of bacillus Calmette–Guérin (BCG) vaccinated and unvaccinated children were evaluated after vaccination. Further, PBMCs of children with low protective levels were boosted with BCG, Ag85B, and Ag85B peptides to study their booster effects to increase waning BCG induced immunity. Materials and Methods Fifty children from 1 month to 18 years of age were randomized for the study. Blood samples were collected from 27 participants with/without BCG vaccination. Immunological markers (anti-BCG, interferon γ [IFN-γ], and adenosine deaminase activity) were assessed in both serum and PBMCs of children. Children with low levels of protective immunological markers were further recruited and their PBMCs were boosted with BCG, Ag85B, and Ag85B peptides. Results Children in age group of 4-6 years were associated with significantly (p<0.05) higher BCG-specific IgG and IFN-γ levels compared to those in age group greater than 10 years. Vaccinated children had greater repertoire of immunological memory which on in vitro stimulation with BCG showed increase in BCG-specific response compared to unvaccinated controls. Assessment of booster effects of BCG, Ag85B, and Ag85B peptides in PBMCs of children revealed greater potential of peptides to boost BCG induced immunity compared to BCG and Ag85B. Conclusion To conclude, children within age 4-6 years are associated with high immunological markers which eventually diminish with age thereby suggesting need for booster dose in later years. Mycobacterium tuberculosis peptides along with BCG may be used as attractive candidates to boost such waning BCG induced immunity in children.
Strategic Decision Mking, Discourse, And Strategy As Social Practice

In this paper we argue that the existing conceptualizations of strategic decision making, while each affording valuable insights, offer only partial and disconnected perspectives of the strategy process that leave important questions un‐addressed. To overcome this problem we develop an empirically grounded conceptualization of strategic decisions as elements of a strategic discourse, operating at both the structural level of social reproduction and the instrumental level of intentional communication, and constituting the medium through which choices are discussed and recorded, interpretations developed and expressed, and strategic actions initiated, authorized and acknowledged. This conceptualization opens up a number of research questions concerning the role of strategic decision making in the overall strategy process and leads to a fruitful conceptualization of strategy itself as a technological and appropriative social practice.
Suppletion, natural morphology, and diagrammaticity

This paper challenges the widespread view of suppletion as nothing but morphologically nonfunctional diachronic residue. Within natural morphology suppletion has generally been treated as an unnatural' phenomenon that must be accounted for in extragrammatical terms. A richer notion of diagrammatic iconicity, however, inspired largely by Bybee's work, leads to an analysis in which suppletion in semantically generic, grammaticalized or grammaticalizing items fits quite well into the overall diagrammatic structure of inflecting languages in a way that is consistent with the main principles of natural morphology. I consider Bybee's view that all iconicity/structure should be regarded primarily as an epiphenomenal artifact of use and change but argue that some aspects of morphological change can most easily be understood if we grant some degree of psychological reality to diagrammaticity
Using Reflexive Eye Movements for Fast Challenge-Response Authentication

Eye tracking devices have recently become increasingly popular as an interface between people and consumer-grade electronic devices. Due to the fact that human eyes are fast, responsive, and carry information unique to an individual, analyzing person's gaze is particularly attractive for effortless biometric authentication. Unfortunately, previous proposals for gaze-based authentication systems either suffer from high error rates, or require long authentication times. We build upon the fact that some eye movements can be reflexively and predictably triggered, and develop an interactive visual stimulus for elicitation of reflexive eye movements that supports the extraction of reliable biometric features in a matter of seconds, without requiring any memorization or cognitive effort on the part of the user. As an important benefit, our stimulus can be made unique for every authentication attempt and thus incorporated in a challenge-response biometric authentication system. This allows us to prevent replay attacks, which are possibly the most applicable attack vectors against biometric authentication. Using a gaze tracking device, we build a prototype of our system and perform a series of systematic user experiments with 30 participants from the general public. We investigate the performance and security guarantees under several different attack scenarios and show that our system surpasses existing gaze-based authentication methods both in achieved equal error rates (6.3\%) and significantly lower authentication times (5 seconds).
Problem-Based Learning in Introductory American Politics Classes

Problem-based learning (PBL) is a student-centered learning model used heavily in the natural sciences. By supplying students with contextualized problems and stopping short of handing them the tools to solve the problems, instructors take on the role of facilitator rather than expert. Use of PBL in political science, and more generally the social sciences, has been limited, while research on the effectiveness of PBL on student learning in political science has been even scarcer. The authors explore the design and implementation of PBL exercises in an introductory American Politics and Government class. A range of topics are discussed including problem design, overcoming instructor and student reluctance, content coverage compared to a traditional survey course model, and PBL as a tool to improve information literacy. Assessment of the use of PBL is provided through measures of student satisfaction and learning outcomes. The results suggest that PBL should be considered as a viable pedagogical tool in political science.
The flow-service-quality framework: unified engineering for large-scale, adaptive systems

Modern enterprises are irreversibly dependent on large-scale, adaptive, component-based information systems whose complexity frequently exceeds current engineering capabilities for intellectual control, resulting in persistent difficulties in system development, management, and evolution. We propose an innovative framework of engineering representation and reasoning methods for developing these complex systems: the flow-service-quality (FSQ) framework. In dynamic network information systems with constantly varying function and usage, workflows and their corresponding traces of system services act as stable foundations for functional and non functional (quality attribute) specification, design, and operational control. Our objective is to provide theoretical foundations, language representations, and rigorous yet practical unified engineering methods to represent and reason about system flows as essential artifacts of system specification, design, and operation.
Effects of Stem and Likert Response Option Reversals on Survey Internal Consistency: If You Feel the Need, There is a Better Alternative to Using those Negatively Worded Stems

The controversy with regard to using reverse or negatively worded survey stems has been around for several decades; it is a practice of questionable utility intended to guard against acquiescence or response set behaviors. A 2 × 3 design in which item stem direction and item response pattern direction were crossed was used to determine effects on internal consistency reliability as measured by Cronbach’s alpha. The condition having the highest alpha was when all directly worded stems were used with bidirectional response options. Alpha was higher and accounted for at least 10%, and in one case 20%, higher internal consistency as compared with any of the three conditions in which negatively worded stems were used. This would indicate that the use of all directly worded stems and half of the response options going in one direction and half going in the other direction may be a better way of guarding against acquiescence and response set behaviors than the use of items with negatively worded stems.
A Universal Asymptotic Series for Error Rates over Fading Channels

The bit error rate performance of digital modulation over slow flat fading channels is characterized by the modulation, the channel statistics, and the diversity combining scheme. Here we present a universal asymptotic series that holds for arbitrary constellations under coherent demodulation. The fading distribution and combining laws are very general, although specific choices are needed to obtain concrete results. The approach is based upon a Mellin transform of the error rate probability, and an asymptotic series for the post-combining fading distribution. We apply the method to determine a universal comparison of maximal ratio and selction combining. The results provide a quantitative calculation of the relative performance that depends only on the ”deep fading” portion of the combined intesnity distribution. The results are valid for a wide variety of fading laws, including Rayleigh, Nakgami, Ricean, log-normal, and Generalized Gamma.
The Complex Interplay between DNA Injury and Repair in Enzymatically Induced Mutagenesis and DNA Damage in B Lymphocytes

Lymphocytes are endowed with unique and specialized enzymatic mutagenic properties that allow them to diversify their antigen receptors, which are crucial sensors for pathogens and mediators of adaptive immunity. During lymphocyte development, the antigen receptors expressed by B and T lymphocytes are assembled in an antigen-independent fashion by ordered variable gene segment recombinations (V(D)J recombination), which is a highly ordered and regulated process that requires the recombination activating gene products 1 & 2 (RAG1, RAG2). Upon activation by antigen, B lymphocytes undergo additional diversifications of their immunoglobulin B-cell receptors. Enzymatically induced somatic hypermutation (SHM) and immunoglobulin class switch recombination (CSR) improves the affinity for antigen and shape the effector function of the humoral immune response, respectively. The activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID) enzyme is crucial for both SHM and CSR. These processes have evolved to both utilize as well as evade different DNA repair and DNA damage response pathways. The delicate balance between enzymatic mutagenesis and DNA repair is crucial for effective immune responses and the maintenance of genomic integrity. Not surprisingly, disturbances in this balance are at the basis of lymphoid malignancies by provoking the formation of oncogenic mutations and chromosomal aberrations. In this review, we discuss recent mechanistic insight into the regulation of RAG1/2 and AID expression and activity in lymphocytes and the complex interplay between these mutagenic enzymes and DNA repair and DNA damage response pathways, focusing on the base excision repair and mismatch repair pathways. We discuss how disturbances of this interplay induce genomic instability and contribute to oncogenesis.
The Strategies and Efficacy of Child versus Adult Teachers.

ELLIS, SHARI, and ROGOFF, BARBARA. The Strategies and Efficacy of Child versus Adult Teachers. CHILD DEVELOPMENT, 1982, 53, 730-735. Informal reports of observations of teaching interactions in classrooms suggest that children instruct each other primarily through demonstration and modeling of tasks, while adult teachers show a greater reliance on verbal instruction. Although child and adult teachers appear to utilize very different teaching strategies, a number of authors believe that children may serve as effective teachers, perhaps even more effective than adults. In the present investigation, using 2 laboratory classification tasks resembling home and school activities, the differences between child and adult teaching strategies mirrored those suggested to occur in classroom settings. 9-year-old teachers used more nonverbal than verbal instruction, and referred more frequently to specific items than to higherorder grouping of items. Adult teachers used more verbal than nonverbal instruction, provided more group relationship information than information specific to items, and also elicited (or allowed) greater participation from the learners. Learners taught by adult teachers performed better on a posttest of learning and generalization than did those taught by child teachers. The lesser effectiveness of the child teachers is likely related to the number of demands, both cognitive and social, placed on the young teachers by the classification tasks used. Also, the children's strategy of nonverbal instruction may have been less appropriate for communicating the category structure of the materials than it would be for other tasks. The examination of peer teaching of social tasks or of other material more familiar to children may indicate that children can under other circumstances serve as proficient teachers.
When stopword lists make the difference

In this brief communication, we evaluate the use of two stopword lists for the English language (one comprising 571 words and another with 9) and compare them with a search approach accounting for all word forms. We show that through implementing the original Okapi form or certain ones derived from the Divergence from Randomness (DFR) paradigm, significantly lower performance levels may result when using short or no stopword lists. For other DFR models and a revised Okapi implementation,performance differences between approaches using short or long stopword lists or no list at all are usually not statistically significant. Similar conclusions can be drawn when using other natural languages such as French, Hindi, or Persian.
Sports Tourism Research 2000–2004: A Systematic Review of Knowledge and a Meta-Evaluation of Methods

This paper conducts a systematic search for peer-reviewed research published in the five years from the beginning of 2000 to the end of 2004, and identifies 80 articles that fall within its established search criteria. The systematic review establishes the range of activities that contemporary peer-reviewed sports tourism research has investigated, and the different aspects of the relationship between sport and tourism that have been examined. Following this, the meta-evaluation considers the significance of research questions that sports tourism research asks, the appropriateness of methodologies and methods used in sports tourism research, and the extent to which contemporary sports tourism research can be said to represent a body of knowledge, as opposed to a collection of unconnected individual studies. The conclusion of the meta-evaluation is that greater epistemological and methodological diversity is needed in sports tourism research, and that researchers need to give greater consideration to how their individual studies contribute to the development of knowledge in the area as a whole.
A soft relevance method for content-based scene categorization in the BoW framework

A new soft relevance technique for scene categorization is proposed in this paper. A popular approach for scene categorization is the Bag-of-Words (BoW) framework, where a histogram is calculated for each image as the image signature. However, in most of the existing BoW based image classification methods, all the image signatures are regarded equally, so the outlier images may be harmful to the classification performance. In view of this, this work tries to address the issue by estimating the soft relevance value of the image signatures using image signature space modeling and then incorporate it in Fuzzy Support Vector Machine (FSVM). The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated on NTU Scene-25 dataset, and it is shown to outperform some state-of-the-art methods in BoW framework for scene categorization.
Changes in diurnal variations in the fetal heart rate baseline with advancing gestational age

In order to longitudinally analyze the diurnal variations in fetal heart rate (FHR) baseline, 24-h FHR recordings were made at 21, 24, 27, 30, 33, and 36 weeks for a normal pregnant woman. Significant diurnal variations were found in all gestational weeks. The amplitude of diurnal variation increased with advancing gestation. The FHR baseline at 00:00–09:00 hours significantly decreased from 24 to 30 weeks, while that at 15:00–21:00 hours decreased after 27 weeks. These findings suggest that the changes in the diurnal variations of FHR baseline with advancing gestation reflect the process of development of the fetal nervous system.