Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Legislative Recruitment And Legislative Careers

A long-standing line of inquiry in legislative research has dealt with the social backgrounds, recruitment, and career experiences of legislators. This review essay begins by considering the ways in which opportunities to serve in a legislative assembly are distributed in a variety of societies. It then reviews studies of the motives, incentives, and goals of persons seeking legislative offices, and assesses the relationship between the opportunity to serve as a legislator and the desire to do so. Next it considers the processes through which people become members of legislative assemblies, especially contrasting the United States with non-American systems. Finally, the essay takes stock of research on the careers of legislators, and notes findings on the professionalization of the legislative career. Who belongs to legislative assemblies and how they got there are questions which have attracted the attention of a wide variety of scholars. Researchers interested in political elites, in social stratification, in the political role of personality, in the processes of modernization, and many other large matters have studied the backgrounds and careers of legislators. And next to college sophomores, legislators may be the most accessible subjects for social science research around. The result is a large amount of research which seems, on its face, to have little to say to students of legislative institutions. (For review of this general literature, see Lasswell, Lerner, and Rothwell, 1952; Matthews, 1954a; Bell, Hill, and Wright, 1961; Keller, 1963; Marvick,
Left-Handedness and Male-Male Competition: Insights from Fighting and Hormonal Data

Male-male competition can shape some behavioral or morphological traits of males. Here we investigate if this competition could play a role in the persistence of the polymorphism of handedness in human populations. A negative frequency-dependent selection mechanism has been hypothesized, based on the fact that left-handed men may benefit from a “surprise” advantage during fighting interactions because they are rare in human populations. This advantage may thereby enhance the probability of survival of left-handed men and/or their reproductive success through an increase in social status. In this study, we first explored the association between hand preference and lifetime fighting behavior in a population of 1,161 French men. No effect of hand preference on the probability of fighting was detected, suggesting that the innate propensity to fight does not differ between left- and right-handers. However, among men who had been involved in at least one fight during their lifetime, left-handers reported significantly more fights than right-handers. To explore the biological basis of this behavior, we also investigated the testosterone concentration in saliva samples from 64 French university students. Consistent with frequencies of fights, we found a significantly higher average testosterone concentration in left-handers than in right-handers. We suggest that these behavioral and hormonal differences may be acquired throughout life due to previous experiences in a social context and may favor the persistence of left-handers in humans.
Studies on the Pathophysiology of Cancer-Induced Depression

Word Count: 252 Article Word Count: 5,038 Number of Figures: 7 Number of Tables: 3 Ph.D. Thesis – M. G. Nashed McMaster University Medical Sciences
Deployable Application Layer Solution for Seamless Mobility Across Heterogeneous Networks

The steady increase in user demand for “all the time, everywhere access” asks for effective and portable solutions for mobility management. Traditionally, global mobility has been addressed by solutions at the network layer. This is the case of Mobile IP and related approaches. On the other hand, this class of solutions presents several drawbacks, such as high overhead, poor scalability, inefficiencies at the transport layer, and inability to take into account user preferences and QoS specifications. These drawbacks seriously affect the ability of the systems to provide seamless handovers, that is, transparent management of mobility and continuity of service when changing network connection point. Moreover, most of the proposed solutions cannot deal with vertical handovers, which involve access points equipped with different radio technology (e.g., WLAN and GPRS). In this paper we propose WiOptiMo, an application layer solution for mobility management and seamless handover in heterogeneous multi-technology networks. Working at the application layer, and making use of active and passive cross-layer monitoring, WiOptiMo can overcome most of the drawbacks of previous solutions. It is an integrated approach that can deal effectively with both macroand micro-mobility. Its design has been driven by the objective of realizing a system which is fully portable, energy and cpu aware, and fully compliant to current standards. The inclusion of autonomic components in WiOptiMo’s design empowers the system with basic self-tuning and self-configuring capabilities. We present a detailed description of the system and discuss its pro and cons. Results from real-world experiments are reported to assess the efficiency and the efficacy of the approach.
Estimation of the multiple testing burden for genomewide association studies of nearly all common variants

Genomewide association studies are an exciting strategy in genetics, recently becoming feasible and harvesting many novel genes linked to multiple phenotypes. Determining the significance of results in the face of testing a genomewide set of multiple hypotheses, most of which are producing noisy, null‐distributed association signals, presents a challenge to the wide community of association researchers. Rather than each study engaging in independent evaluation of significance standards, we have undertaken the task of developing such standards for genomewide significance, based on data collected by the International Haplotype Map Consortium. We report an estimated testing burden of a million independent tests genomewide in Europeans, and twice that number in Africans. We further identify the sensitivity of the testing burden to the required significance level, with implications to staged design of association studies. Genet. Epidemiol. 2008. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
An extension of the positive real lemma to descriptor systems

The well-known positive real lemma characterizes positive realness of transfer functions of time-invariant linear systems via the solvability of certain linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). In this article, we propose an extension of the positive real lemma and the underlying linear matrix inequalities to descriptor systems. We prove that the solvability of these LMIs is sufficient and, under an additional assumption, also necessary for positive realness of transfer functions of time-invariant linear descriptor systems. Our results also show why known extensions of the bounded real lemma to descriptor systems cannot be used to obtain the extension of the positive real lemma presented in this article.
Highly Efficient Arsenic Removal Using a Composite of Ultrafine Magnetite Nanoparticles Interlinked by Silane Coupling Agents

Arsenic (As) contamination in groundwater is a great environmental health concern and is often the result of contact between groundwater and arsenic-containing rocks or sediments and from variation of pH and redox potentials in the subsurface. In the past decade, magnetite nanoparticles (MNPs) have been shown to have high adsorption activity towards As. Alerted by the reported cytotoxicity of 5–12 nm MNP, we studied the adsorption behavior of 1.15 nm MNP and a MNP composite (MNPC), MNPs interlinked by silane coupling agents. With an initial concentration of As at 25 mg L−1, MNPs exhibited high adsorption capacity for As(V) and As (III), 206.9 mg·g−1 and 168.6 mg·g−1 under anaerobic conditions, respectively, and 109.9 mg·g−1 and 108.6 mg·g−1 under aerobic conditions, respectively. Under aerobic conditions, MNPC achieved even higher adsorption capacity than MNP, 165.1 mg·g−1 on As(V) and 157.9 mg·g−1 on As(III). For As(V) at 50 mg L−1, MNPC achieved an adsorption capacity as high as 341.8 mg·g−1, the highest in the literature. A kinetic study indicated that this adsorption reaction can reach equilibrium within 15 min and the rate constant of As(V) is about 1.9 times higher than that of As(III). These results suggested that MNPC can serve as a highly effective adsorbent for fast removal of As.
Prognostic value of dobutamine stress myocardial perfusion echocardiography in patients with known or suspected coronary artery disease and normal left ventricular function

Objective We sought to determine the prognostic value of qualitative and quantitative analysis obtained by real-time myocardial perfusion echocardiography (RTMPE) in patients with known or suspected coronary artery disease (CAD). Background Quantification of myocardial blood flow reserve (MBFR) in patients with CAD using RTMPE has been demonstrated to further improve accuracy over the analysis of wall motion (WM) and qualitative analysis of myocardial perfusion (QMP). Methods From March 2003 to December 2008, we prospectively studied 168 patients with normal left ventricular function (LVF) who underwent dobutamine stress RTMPE. The replenishment velocity reserve (β) and MBFR were derived from RTMPE. Acute coronary events were: cardiac death, myocardial infarction and unstable angina with need for urgent coronary revascularization. Results During a median follow-up of 34 months (5 days to 6.9 years), 17 acute coronary events occurred. Abnormal β reserve in ≥2 coronary territories was the only independent predictor of events hazard ratio (HR) = 21, 95% CI = 4.5–99; p<0.001). Both, abnormal β reserve and MBFR added significant incremental value in predicting events over qualitative analysis of WM and MP (χ2 = 6.6 and χ2 = 24.6, respectively; p = 0.001 and χ2 = 6.6 and χ2 = 15.5, respectively; p = 0.012, respectively). When coronary angiographic data was added to the multivariate analysis model, β reserve remained the only predictor of events with HR of 21.0 (95% CI = 4.5–99); p<0.001. Conclusion Quantitative dobutamine stress RTMPE provides incremental prognostic information over clinical variables, qualitative analysis of WM and MP, and coronary angiography in predicting acute coronary events.
Bioassay-Guided Isolation of Neuroprotective Compounds from Uncaria rhynchophylla against Beta-Amyloid-Induced Neurotoxicity

Uncaria rhynchophylla is a component herb of many Chinese herbal formulae for the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases. Previous study in our laboratory has demonstrated that an ethanol extract of Uncaria rhynchophylla ameliorated cognitive deficits in a mouse model of Alzheimer's disease induced by D-galactose. However, the active ingredients of Uncaria rhynchophylla responsible for the anti-Alzheimer's disease activity have not been identified. This study aims to identify the active ingredients of Uncaria rhynchophylla by a bioassay-guided fractionation approach and explore the acting mechanism of these active ingredients by using a well-established cellular model of Alzheimer's disease, beta-amyloid- (Aβ-) induced neurotoxicity in PC12 cells. The results showed that six alkaloids, namely, corynoxine, corynoxine B, corynoxeine, isorhynchophylline, isocorynoxeine, and rhynchophylline were isolated from the extract of Uncaria rhynchophylla. Among them, rhynchophylline and isorhynchophylline significantly decreased Aβ-induced cell death, intracellular calcium overloading, and tau protein hyperphosphorylation in PC12 cells. These results suggest that rhynchophylline and isorhynchophylline are the major active ingredients responsible for the protective action of Uncaria rhynchophylla against Aβ-induced neuronal toxicity, and their neuroprotective effect may be mediated, at least in part, by inhibiting intracellular calcium overloading and tau protein hyperphosphorylation.
Measurement of lung volumes in patients with obstructive lung disease. A matter of time (constants).

A 57-year-old man with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease complains of increasing shortness of breath on exertion over the preceding 3 months. He experiences dyspnea after walking approximately 100 m, a mild productive cough, and wheezing, and he has recently gained 5 kg (11 pounds) in body weight. Physical examination demonstrates abdominal obesity, mild expiratory wheezing with a few inspiratory crackles at the lung bases, and mild lower extremity edema. He weighs 86.4 kg, and his height is 171 cm. Posterioranterior and lateral chest radiographs (Figure 1) are suggestive of hyperinflation. Pulmonary function test results are shown in Table 1.
Are the American People “Pretty Prudent”? Public Responses to U.S. Uses of Force, 1950–1988

A new consensus has emerged in recent years that the public responds to foreign affairs in reasonable ways. Bruce Jentleson (1992) has contributed to this optimistic revisionism, arguing that the public is “pretty prudent” in the “post post-Vietnam period. ” The American people, he suggests, now discriminate between using the military to force foreign policy restraint on aggressive adversaries and using it to coerce internal political change. We test Jentleson's hypothesis, with several theoretically interesting controls, using regression analyses of all thirty-eight major uses of force that occurred during a U.S. foreign policy crisis, 1950–1988. We do not find support for Jentleson's periodization of the post—World War II era; but our analyses do indicate that the American people have, throughout the postwar years, been more supportive of using military force to resist aggression than to engineer internal change in other countries.
Genetic and Evolutionary Computation : Who , What , Where , When , and Why

In this paper, we start by providing a gentle introduction to the field of genetic and evolutionary computation, particularly focusing on genetic algorithms, but also touching upon other areas. We then move on to briefly analyse the geographic distribution of research excellence in this field, focusing our attention specifically on Italian researchers. We then present our own interpretation of where and how genetic and evolutionary computation fits in the broader landscape of artificial intelligence research. We conclude by making a prediction of the future impact of this technology in the short term.
Costs and savings of parenting interventions: results of a systematic review

BACKGROUND This systematic review of economic evaluations of universal preventative or targeted treatment parenting interventions that aim to enhance parent-infant interaction is primarily intended to inform decision makers who have to make difficult spending decisions, especially at a time of reduced spending allocations. A synthesis of available costs and savings about parenting interventions that set out to enhance parent-infant interaction is presented. This topic is important specifically in view of the UK Governments' emphasis on the equalities agenda and the early years. The benefits of positive early life experiences, which include good parent-infant interaction, are far reaching and may be positively correlated with improved educational, health and well-being outcomes and reduced criminality. METHODS A literature search was undertaken using on-line indexing databases between 2004 and 2014 that included the search terms 'parent', 'infant', 'interaction', 'cost benefit analysis' and their synonyms. RESULTS Despite existing economic studies generally focusing upon targeted short-run outcomes, significant savings were observed in the included studies. Parenting interventions could save the health service around £2.5k per family over 25 years and could save the criminal justice system over £145k per person over the life course. In light of the escalating costs of remedial services, these potential savings may provide the UK and other governments with a robust incentive to invest in early years parenting interventions. CONCLUSIONS Parenting interventions can be economically efficient and return savings on investment. Moreover, and one might argue as a moral imperative of democratic societies, population health can be improved and health inequalities reduced. An important debate is needed about early years policy, to include acknowledgement of the differences between UK and international healthcare systems and the potential savings from the synergistic and spin-off effects of early years interventions to inform decision-making to fund and implement appropriate action.
Two-step learning about normal and exceptional human behaviors incorporating patterns and knowledge

Human activity recognition, especially exceptional activity recognition has been regarded as an important aspect in intelligent service robotics. Several challenges in activity recognition — unexpected and untypical exceptional behaviors, a small but growing number of training examples — make it hard to solve this problem. Despite the variety of human behaviors, there are some normal patterns, especially scenario — oriented human activities. This paper presents an incremental learning method for exceptional behavior patterns based on prerequisites. The proposed method models the normal activities as prerequisites from several demonstrations following a given scenario, and learns autonomously and incrementally new exceptional activities, which may not follow the scenario. Case studies show that the proposed method can gradually improve the recognition rate, and incrementally learn new exceptional human activities.
Chronic Kidney Disease Following Non‐Myeloablative Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation

Chronic kidney disease (CKD) following myeloablative allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) occurs in 20% of survivors at 1 year and is believed to be due to radiation nephritis. Non‐myeloablative allogeneic HCT is a recent procedure that employs significantly lower doses of chemoradiotherapy, however, incidence and risk factors for CKD following non‐myleoablative HCT have not been defined.
Building a semi-autonomous sociable robot platform for robust interpersonal telecommunication

This thesis presents the design of a software platform for the Huggable project. The Huggable is a new kind of robotic companion being developed at the MIT Media Lab for health care, education, entertainment and social communication applications. This work focuses on the social communication application as it pertains to using a semi-autonomous robotic avatar in a remote environment. The software platform consists of an extensible and robust distributed software system that connects a remote human puppeteer to the Huggable robot via internet. The paper discusses design decisions made in building the software platform and describes the technologies created for the social communication application. An informal trial of the system reveals how the system's puppeteering interface can be improved, and pinpoints where performance enhancements are needed for this particular application. Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Cynthia Breazeal Title: Associate Professor in MAS, MIT Media Lab
Patterns without Patches: Hierarchical Self-Assembly of Complex Structures from Simple Building Blocks

Nanoparticles with “sticky patches” have long been proposed as building blocks for the self-assembly of complex structures. The synthetic realizability of such patchy particles, however, greatly lags behind predictions of patterns they could form. Using computer simulations, we show that structures of the same genre can be obtained from a solution of simple isotropic spheres, with control only over their sizes and a small number of binding affinities. In a first step, finite clusters of well-defined structure and composition emerge from natural dynamics with high yield. In effect a kind of patchy particle, these clusters can further assemble into a variety of complex superstructures, including filamentous networks, ordered sheets, and highly porous crystals.
Association of a TNF&bgr; Gene Polymorphism with Complications After Major Abdominal Operations

In injured patients, it has been shown that a polymorphism of the tumor necrosis factor-&bgr; (TNF&bgr;) gene is related to the development of sepsis. We investigated the relation of TNF&bgr; gene polymorphism with the development of severe complications after elective major abdominal operations, and with production of TNF&agr; perioperatively. In the present investigation, the Nco I polymorphism was studied in genomic DNA isolated from the blood of 172 patients. Preoperatively and postoperatively, lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-stimulated production of TNF&agr; in the patients' whole blood was tested in vitro. Genotypes and TNF&agr; production were related to the occurrence of severe complications. Postoperatively, 15% (n = 26) of the patients developed severe complications. The overall mortality was 2% (n = 3). The homozygous TNFB2 genotype was found in 54% of the patients, the homozygous TNFB1 genotype was found in 14% of the patients, and the heterozygous genotype was found in 32% of the patients. In patients with complications, the B2B2 genotype was much more frequent (21/26, 81%) than in those without complications (72/146, 49%;P < 0.003). The development of complications was associated with a lower capacity to produce TNF&agr; 3 and 7 days after the operation. In patients without complications, the TNF&bgr; polymorphism was not related to different levels of TNF&agr; production. These data indicate an association between TNF&bgr; polymorphism and postoperative complications and they suggest the B2/B2 genotype as a high risk factor for the development of sepsis after elective operative trauma.
Women's satisfaction with prenatal care settings: a focus group study.

BACKGROUND Patient satisfaction is considered, together with health status, to be an outcome of the delivery of health care services as well as a measure of its quality. A focus group study of 50 low-income Mexican-American Puerto Rican, African-American, and white women in Chicago, Illinois, explored the characteristics of prenatal care that affect women's satisfaction. METHODS Transcripts from the focus groups were analyzed using researcher-derived coding categories to develop broad themes. RESULTS Despite their diverse ethnic backgrounds, participants revealed few differences with respect to what they value in prenatal care. Aspects of care that appeared to affect women's satisfaction included the "art of care, " the technical competence of the practitioner, continuity of caregiver, and the atmosphere and physical environment of the care setting. The one characteristic that did not appear to affect satisfaction was the caregiver's ethnicity. CONCLUSION Knowledge of how the characteristics of prenatal care affect women's satisfaction can help increase use of care and ultimately improve perinatal outcomes.
Transient downregulation of Bmp signalling induces extra limbs in vertebrates

Bone morphogenetic protein (Bmp) signalling has been implicated in setting up dorsoventral patterning of the vertebrate limb and in its outgrowth. Here, we present evidence that Bmp signalling or, more precisely, its inhibition also plays a role in limb and fin bud initiation. Temporary inhibition of Bmp signalling either by overexpression of noggin or using a synthetic Bmp inhibitor is sufficient to induce extra limbs in the Xenopus tadpole or exogenous fins in the Danio rerio embryo, respectively. We further show that Bmp signalling acts in parallel with retinoic acid signalling, possibly by inhibiting the known limb-inducing gene wnt2ba.