Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cigarette Smoking Saturates Brain α4β2 Nicotinic Acetylcholine Receptors

Context 2-[18F]fluoro-3-(2(S)-azetidinylmethoxy) pyridine (2-F-A-85380, abbreviated as 2-FA) is a recently developed radioligand that allows for visualization of brain α4β2* nicotinic acetylcholine receptors (nAChRs) with positron emission tomography (PET) scanning in humans. Objective To determine the effect of cigarette smoking on α4β2* nAChR occupancy in tobacco-dependent smokers. Design Fourteen 2-FA PET scanning sessions were performed. During the PET scanning sessions, subjects smoked 1 of 5 amounts (none, 1 puff, 3 puffs, 1 full cigarette, or to satiety [2½ to 3 cigarettes]). Setting Academic brain imaging center. Participants Eleven tobacco-dependent smokers (paid volunteers). Main Outcome Measure Dose-dependent effect of smoking on occupancy of α4β2* nAChRs, as measured with 2-FA and PET in nAChR-rich brain regions. Results Smoking 0.13 (1 to 2 puffs) of a cigarette resulted in 50% occupancy of α4β2* nAChRs for 3.1 hours after smoking. Smoking a full cigarette (or more) resulted in more than 88% receptor occupancy and was accompanied by a reduction in cigarette craving. A venous plasma nicotine concentration of 0.87 ng/mL (roughly 1/25th of the level achieved in typical daily smokers) was associated with 50% occupancy of α4β2* nAChRs. Conclusions Cigarette smoking in amounts used by typical daily smokers leads to nearly complete occupancy of α4β2* nAChRs, indicating that tobacco-dependent smokers maintain α4β2* nAChR saturation throughout the day. Because prolonged binding of nicotine to α4β2* nAChRs is associated with desensitization of these receptors, the extent of receptor occupancy found herein suggests that smoking may lead to withdrawal alleviation by maintaining nAChRs in the desensitized state.
Set-Based Boosting for Instance-Level Transfer

The success of transfer to improve learning on a target task is highly dependent on the selected source data. Instance-based transfer methods reuse data from the source tasks to augment the training data for the target task. If poorly chosen, this source data may inhibit learning, resulting in negative transfer. The current best performing algorithm for instance-based transfer, TrAdaBoost, performs poorly when given irrelevant source data. We present a novel set-based boosting technique for instance-based transfer. The proposed algorithm, TransferBoost, boosts both individual instances and collective sets of instances from each source task. In effect, TransferBoost boosts each source task, assigning higher weight to those source tasks which show positive transferability to the target task, and then adjusts the weights of the instances within each source task via AdaBoost. The results demonstrate that TransferBoost significantly improves transfer performance over existing instance-based algorithms when given a mix of relevant and irrelevant source data.
Towards a critical theory of value creation in cross-sector partnerships

This article develops a critical theory of value creation in cross-sector partnerships by recasting value creation from the standpoint of the beneficiary. We first explain how distinct combinations of principles, relations and relational processes set largely non-overlapping foundations for conceptualizing the role of the beneficiary in value creation within Marxist, pragmatist and Frankfurt schools of thought. We introduce the construct of beneficiary voice to delineate and illustrate three distinct roles that beneficiaries may play in value creation in cross-sector partnerships: voice-receiving, voice-making and voice-taking. We then focus on the generative tensions to bridge value creation arguments across these three critical theories and thus contribute an overtly socialized and explicitly relational foundation of value creation in cross-sector partnerships.
African American Males

A total of 203 African American male junior and senior college students participated in a study to determine the relationships among components of racial identity and wellness. Differences were found between students attending predominantly White institutions (PWIs) and historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) on internalization racial identity attitudes, physical self-wellness, and social self-wellness. No relationships were found between racial identity and wellness. Implications for counseling and research are discussed.
Understanding Requirements through Filtering, Negotiating and Shifting

Traditional requirement engineering approaches pay little attention to how the requirements are interpreted and shared by different parties in an organization. Our study suggests that requirement shaping during a project can be described as a process where attitudes and expectations are filtered, shifted and negotiated repeatedly. We studied a large ecommerce platform development project and observed that preconceptions, attitudes and expectations about systems development among project participants filtered the understanding of software requirements, negotiating between project participants resolved the issues caused by filtering and shifts in these attitudes and expectations facilitated changes in the understanding of requirements. The study provides a new interpretation of how technology is collectively interpreted in organizations.
The dimensionality of workplace interpersonal trust and its relationship to workplace affective commitment

Trust is fundamental to the existence of human relationships, including the workplace relationship between employees and their co-workers and supervisors. This paper presents the results of a study that investigated the nature and dimensionality of interpersonal trust at work, specifically trust in co-workers and trust in supervisor. Survey questionnaire responses from 278 employees in four South African organisations were analysed. The research findings evidence that interpersonal trust is a multi-foci construct that is differentially related to corresponding foci of affective commitment.
Reversibility of Scrapie Inactivation Is Enhanced by Copper*

The only known difference between the cellular (PrPC) and scrapie-specific (PrPSc) isoforms of the prion protein is conformational. Because disruption of PrPSc structure decreases scrapie infectivity, restoration of the disease-specific conformation should restore infectivity. In this study, disruption of PrPSc (as monitored by the loss of proteinase K resistance) by guanidine hydrochloride (GdnHCl) resulted in decreased infectivity. Upon dilution of the GdnHCl, protease resistance of PrP was restored and infectivity was regained. The addition of copper facilitated restoration of both infectivity and protease resistance of PrP in a subset of samples that did not renature by the simple dilution of the GdnHCl. These data demonstrate that loss of scrapie infectivity can be a reversible process and that copper can enhance this restoration of proteinase K resistance and infectivity.
System and design of an Omni-directional vehicle

This paper presents a novel vehicle named omni-directional Kart (OK-1), in which robotic technologies, such as 4 wheel independent driving (4WID) and 4 wheel independent steering (4WIS), are integrated to decouple the motions of translation and rotation from each other. As a result, omni-directional motions such as zero radius turning (ZRT) and lateral parking (LP) are realized for better vehicle steerability and mobility in limited space.
Postsecondary Education Among Mexican American Youth

This study investigated how experiences in the family context contribute to the postsecondary educational attainment of Mexican American youth. The sample consisted of 104 recent high school graduates. One half of the sample was attending a 2-year college, and the other one half was not enrolled in any postsecondary institution. This study examined the relationships among family (i.e., parents' and older siblings' educational experiences, family income, and parental involvement) and education variables (i.e., high school and college grade point average, college attendance, and college aspirations). Variations within the Mexican American community, in particular acculturation and generational status, were examined in relation to youths' educational experiences.
Modeling and Analysis of Communication Networks in Multicluster Systems under Spatio-Temporal Bursty Traffic

Multicluster systems have emerged as a promising infrastructure for provisioning of cost-effective high-performance computing and communications. Analytical models of communication networks in cluster systems have been widely reported. However, for tractability and simplicity, the existing models are based on the assumptions that the network traffic follows the nonbursty Poisson arrival process and the message destinations are uniformly distributed. Recent measurement studies have shown that the traffic generated by real-world applications reveals the bursty nature in both the spatial domain (i.e., nonuniform distribution of message destinations) and temporal domain (i.e., bursty message arrival process). In order to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the system performance, a novel analytical model is developed for communication networks in multicluster systems in the presence of the spatio-temporal bursty traffic. The spatial traffic burstiness is captured by the communication locality and the temporal traffic burstiness is modeled by the Markov-modulated Poisson process. After validating its accuracy through extensive simulation experiments, the model is used to investigate the impact of bursty message arrivals and communication locality on network performance. The analytical results demonstrate that the communication locality can relieve the degrading effects of bursty message arrivals on the network performance.
The Effect of the Media on Body Satisfaction: the Role of Gender and Size

Media images of stereotypically attractive women are often cited as contributory factors in body size distortion and body dissatisfaction. In fact, recent research suggests that acute exposure to such images may exacerbate body distortion in women with eating disorders. The present study examined the effects of acute exposure to images of stereotypical attraction (thin pictures) compared to images of overweight individuals (fat pictures) in both men and women. Twenty men and 20 women completed measures of body satisfaction before and after viewing images of either thin or overweight individuals matched for the subject's gender. The results suggested that subjects of both gender reported feeling less satisfied with their bodies as measured by rating scales (e.g. feeling fat, feeling attractive), body silhouettes and body size estimation, after viewing the thin pictures and showed improved body satisfaction after viewing the overweight pictures. The results also suggested that this response was greater in the female than in the male subjects for some of the measures (e.g. feeling fat, feeling toned) and was unrelated to levels of restrained eating. The results are discussed in terms of the role of the media in determining body image and the possible use of such images in clinical practice.
Motor patterns of labriform locomotion: kinematic and electromyographic analysis of pectoral fin swimming in the labrid fish Gomphosus varius

Labriform locomotion is a widespread swimming mechanism in fishes during which propulsive forces are generated by oscillating the pectoral fins. We examined the activity of the six major muscles that power the pectoral fin of the bird wrasse Gomphosus varius (Labridae: Perciformes). The muscles studied included the fin abductors (arrector ventralis, abductor superficialis and abductor profundus) and the fin adductors (arrector dorsalis, adductor superficialis and adductor profundus). Our goals were to determine the pattern of muscle activity that drives the fins in abduction and adduction cycles during pectoral fin locomotion, to examine changes in the timing and amplitude of electromyographic (EMG) patterns with increases in swimming speed and to correlate EMG patterns with the kinematics of pectoral fin propulsion. EMG data were recorded from three individuals over a range of swimming speeds from 15 to 70 cm s-1 (1­4.8 TL s-1, where TL is total body length). The basic motor pattern of pectoral propulsion is alternating activity of the antagonist abductor and adductor groups. The downstroke is characterized by activity of the arrector ventralis muscle before the other abductors, whereas the upstroke involves nearly synchronous activity of the three adductors. Most EMG variables (duration, onset time, amplitude and integrated area) showed significant correlations with swimming speeds. However, the timing and duration of muscle activity are relatively constant across speeds when expressed as a fraction of the stride period, which decreases with increased velocity. Synchronous recordings of kinematic data (maximal abduction and adduction) with EMG data revealed that activity in the abductors began after maximal adduction and that activity in the adductors began nearly synchronously with maximal abduction. Thus, the pectoral fin mechanism of G. varius is activated by positive work from both abductor and adductor muscle groups over most of the range of swimming speeds. The adductors produce some negative work only at the highest swimming velocities. We combine information from pectoral fin morphology, swimming kinematics and motor patterns to interpret the musculoskeletal mechanism of pectoral propulsion in labrid fishes.
The exon junction complex controls transposable element activity by ensuring faithful splicing of the piwi transcript

The exon junction complex (EJC) is a highly conserved ribonucleoprotein complex that binds RNAs during splicing and remains associated with them following export to the cytoplasm. Malone et al. describe a novel function for the EJC and its splicing subunit, RnpS1, in controlling piwi transcript splicing, where, in the absence of RnpS1, the fourth intron of piwi is retained. RnpS1-dependent removal of this intron requires splicing of the flanking introns. These data demonstrate a novel role for the EJC in regulating piwi intron excision and provide a mechanism for its function during splicing.
Development and validation of the Diabetes Quality of Life Clinical Trial Questionnaire.

OBJECTIVE The objective of this study was to develop a valid and reliable health-related quality of life (HRQOL) questionnaire for use in multinational clinical trials of patients with type I and type II diabetes. METHODS Through patient focus groups and expert clinician panels in the United States (US) and France, relevant HRQOL domains for patients with type I and type II diabetes were identified. A draft questionnaire was developed by including validated, widely used generic and diabetes-specific domains and by developing original questions as required. A pilot study (n = 123) was conducted to evaluate the psychometric properties of the draft questionnaire with revisions being subsequently made. Data collected from two multinational clinical trials of patients with type I and type II diabetes were used to further validate and enhance the questionnaire (DQLCTQ). RESULTS A total of 942 patients were recruited in the clinical trials from Canada, France, Germany, and the United States. The mean age was 33.8 years for patients with type I diabetes (n = 468) and 58.2 years for patients with type II diabetes (n = 474). The mean HbAlc level at baseline was 8.6. The revised version of the questionnaire (DQLCTQ-R) contains a total of 57 questions comprising 8 generic and disease-specific domains, as follows: Physical Function; Energy/Fatigue; Health Distress; Mental Health; Satisfaction; Treatment Satisfaction; Treatment Flexibility; and Frequency of Symptoms. Intraclass correlation coefficients range from 0.74 to 0.90 and Cronbach's alphas range from 0.77 to 0.90. With very few exceptions, all eight domains were able to discriminate between type I and type II diabetes, tight and poor metabolic control, male and female, and good and poor self perceived control of diabetes. Four domains (Treatment Satisfaction, Health/Distress, Mental Health, and Satisfaction) were responsive to clinical change in metabolic control. CONCLUSION The DQLCTQ-R is a reliable, valid, and comprehensive HRQOL instrument. It is suitable in multinational clinical trials to evaluate new or alternative treatments for patients with type I and type II diabetes.
Evaluating Evaluations: The Case of Parent Involvement Programs

This article analyzes 41 studies that evaluated K–12 parent involvement programs in order to assess claims that such programs are an effective means of improving student learning. It examines the characteristics of the parent involvement programs, as well as the research design, data, and analytical techniques used in program evaluation. Our examination of evaluations found little empirical support for the widespread claim that parent involvement programs are an effective means of improving student achievement or changing parent, teacher, and student behavior. We do not conclude that programs are ineffective. Rather, serious design, methodological, and analytical flaws inherent in studies evaluating the effectiveness of parent involvement programs must be addressed before definite conclusions about program effectiveness can be reached. The findings of this study are particularly significant given the substantial federal support for parent involvement.
Identify changes of brain regional homogeneity in early and later adult onset patients with first-episode depression using resting-state fMRI

Objective Previous work exhibited different brain grey matter volume (GMV) changes between patients with early adult onset depression (EOD, age 18–29) and later adult onset depression (LOD, age 30–44) by using 30-year-old as the cut-off age. To identify whether regional homogeneity (ReHo) changes are also different between EOD and LOD by using same cut-off age, we used resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to detect the abnormal ReHo between patients with EOD and LOD in the present study. Methods Resting-state fMRI scans of 58 patients with EOD, 62 patients with LOD, 60 young healthy controls (HC), and 52 old HC were obtained. The ReHo approach was used to analyze the images. Results The ANOVA analysis revealed that the ReHo values in the frontoparietal, occipital, and cerebellar regions were significantly different among the four groups. Relative to patients with LOD, patients with EOD displayed significantly increased ReHo in the left precuneus, and decreased ReHo in the right fusiform. The ReHo values in the left precuneus and the right fusiform had no significant correlation with the score of the depression rating scale or illness duration in both patient subgroups. Compared to young HC, patients with EOD showed significantly increased ReHo in the right frontoparietal regions and the right calcarine. Furthermore, the increased ReHo in the right frontoparietal regions, right insula and left hippocampus, and decreased ReHo in the left inferior occipital gyrus, right middle occipital gyrus, left calcarine, and left supplementary motor area were observed in patients with LOD when compared to old HC. Conclusions The ReHo of brain areas that were related to mood regulation was changed in the first-episode, drug-naive adult patients with MDD. Adult patients with EOD and LOD exhibited different ReHo abnormalities relative to each age-matched comparison group, suggesting that depressed adult patients with different age-onset might have different pathological mechanism.
An efficient transport protocol for ad hoc networks: An end-to-end freeze TCP with timestamps

In ad hoc networks, loss-based congestion window progression by the traditional means of duplicate ACKs and timeouts causes high network buffer utilization due to large bursts of data, thereby degrading network bandwidth utilization. Moreover, network-oriented feedbacks to handle route disconnection events may impair packet forwarding capability by adding to MAC layer congestion and also dissipate considerable network resources at reluctant intermediate nodes. Here, we propose a new TCP scheme that does not require the participation of intermediate nodes. It is a purely end-to-end scheme using TCP timestamps to deduce link conditions. It also eliminates spurious reductions of the transmission window in cases of timeouts and fast retransmits. The scheme incorporates a receiver-oriented rate controller (rater), and a congestion window delimiter for the 802.11 MAC protocol. In addition, the transient nature of medium availability due to medium contention during the connection time is addressed by a freezing timer (freezer) at the receiver, which freezes the sender whenever heavy contention is perceived. Finally, the sender-end is modified to comply with the receiver-end enhancements, as an optional deployment. Simulation studies show that our modification of TCP for ad hoc networks offers outstanding performance in terms of goodput, as well as throughput.
Ethnicity and Entrepreneurship

We examine various approaches to explaining ethnic enterprise, using a framework based on three dimensions: an ethnic group's access to opportunities, the characteristics of a group, and emergent strategies. A common theme pervades research on ethnic business: Ethnic groups adapt to the resources made available by their environments, which vary substantially across societies and over time. Four issues emerge as requiring greater attention: the reciprocal relation between ethnicity and entrepreneurship, more careful use of ethnic labels and categories in research, a need for more multigroup, comparative research, and more process-oriented research designs.
Recent Developments in Structural Equation Modelling Research in Social Work Journals

The use of various structural equation modelling methods in social work research continues to expand. As more social work researchers become acquainted with structural equation modelling (SEM), there has been an increase in the application of the methods in social work academic journals. The study reported here is a systematic review of the literature covering SEM studies in social work journals that were published between February 2007 and March 2012. Among the factors associated with the increased use of SEM in socialworkresearcharetheavailabilityofuser-friendlystatisticalsoftware,suchasLISREL, AMOSand EQS,as wellas additional softwareincludingMplus,SAS (Proc Calis), Mxand R (lavaan.org). Based on the 2010 Journal Citation Reports, the review found that, indeed, there is improvement in both the number and quality of SEM studies. Specifically, n ¼ 59 studies were published in seventeen social work journals within the specified time frame. Discussion is directed towards improving SEM application in social work research.