Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Focusing on Women in STEM: A Longitudinal Examination of Gender-Based Earning Gap of College Graduates

This study investigates the underrepresentation of women in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) occupations from the aspect of earning differentials. Using a national data source that tracked college graduates' work experiences over a ten-year time frame post-bachelor's degree, this study examines longitudinally the gender-based earning gaps of college graduates in STEM fields, and compares the earning differentials between STEM and non-STEM occupations. The findings indicate a significant departure between the earning profiles of men and women within the first ten years of employment. Further, findings indicate that women in STEM occupations experienced multiple earning penalties concurrent with their growing family obligations. To increase the representation of women in STEM fields, interventions are called for to encourage a family-friendly workplace that is open to and supportive of women managing a home and career. Also, incentives are needed to support women's continuation to graduate education as a means to increase their human capital and to level their earning power.
MMP‐9 in translation: from molecule to brain physiology, pathology, and therapy

Matrix metalloproteinase‐9 (MMP‐9) is a member of the metzincin family of mostly extracellularly operating proteases. Despite the fact that all of these enzymes might be target promiscuous, with largely overlapping catalogs of potential substrates, MMP‐9 has recently emerged as a major and apparently unique player in brain physiology and pathology. The specificity of MMP‐9 may arise from its very local and time‐restricted actions, even when released in the brain from cells of various types, including neurons, glia, and leukocytes. In fact, the quantity of MMP‐9 is very low in the naive brain, but it is markedly activated at the levels of enzymatic activity, protein abundance, and gene expression following various physiological stimuli and pathological insults. Neuronal MMP‐9 participates in synaptic plasticity by controlling the shape of dendritic spines and function of excitatory synapses, thus playing a pivotal role in learning, memory, and cortical plasticity. When improperly unleashed, MMP‐9 contributes to a large variety of brain disorders, including epilepsy, schizophrenia, autism spectrum disorder, brain injury, stroke, neurodegeneration, pain, brain tumors, etc. The foremost mechanism of action of MMP‐9 in brain disorders appears to be its involvement in immune/inflammation responses that are related to the enzyme's ability to process and activate various cytokines and chemokines, as well as its contribution to blood–brain barrier disruption, facilitating the extravasation of leukocytes into brain parenchyma. However, another emerging possibility (i.e., the control of MMP‐9 over synaptic plasticity) should not be neglected. The translational potential of MMP‐9 has already been recognized in both the diagnosis and treatment domains. The most striking translational aspect may be the discovery of MMP‐9 up‐regulation in a mouse model of Fragile X syndrome, quickly followed by human studies and promising clinical trials that have sought to inhibit MMP‐9. With regard to diagnosis, suggestions have been made to use MMP‐9 alone or combined with tissue inhibitor of matrix metalloproteinase‐1 or brain‐derived neurotrophic factor as disease biomarkers.
Page detection using embedded tags

We describe a robust working prototype of a system for accurate page-ID detection from bound paper books. Our method uses a new RFID technology to recognize book page location. A thin flexible transponder tag with a unique ID is embedded in the paper of each page, and a tag reader is affixed to the binding of the back of the book. As the pages turn, the tag reader notices which tags are within its read range and which have moved out of its range (which is about four inches). The human interacts with the book naturally, and is not required to perform any actions for page detection that are not usual in book interaction. The page-detection data can be used to enhance the experience of the book, or to enable the book as a controller for another system. One such system, an interactive museum exhibit, is briefly described.
Integrated VCO Design for MICS Transceivers

The 402-405 MHz MICS (medical implant communication service) band has recently been allocated by the US Federal Communication Commissions (FCC) with the potential to replace the low frequency inductive coupling techniques in implantable devices. This paper investigates the designs of VCO (voltage controlled oscillator) architectures that will be essential building blocks of such wireless implantable devices. Three different integrated quadrature VCOs that meet the requirements of the MICS standard are designed in 0.18 mum TSMC CMOS process to propose an optimum choice. The fabricated VCO's are a four stage differential ring VCO, an LC tank VCO directly loaded with a poly-phase filter and an 800 MHz LC tank VCO with a high frequency master-slave divider. All three architectures target a VCO gain of KVCO = 15 MHz/V with 3 calibration control and 2 FSK (frequency-shift keying) control signals and are designed for 1.5 V supply voltage
Antibodies to the Extracellular Pore Loop of TRPM8 Act as Antagonists of Channel Activation

The mammalian transient receptor potential melastatin channel 8 (TRPM8) is highly expressed in trigeminal and dorsal root ganglia. TRPM8 is activated by cold temperature or compounds that cause a cooling sensation, such as menthol or icilin. TRPM8 may play a role in cold hypersensitivity and hyperalgesia in various pain syndromes. Therefore, TRPM8 antagonists are pursued as therapeutics. In this study we explored the feasibility of blocking TRPM8 activation with antibodies. We report the functional characterization of a rabbit polyclonal antibody, ACC-049, directed against the third extracellular loop near the pore region of the human TRPM8 channel. ACC-049 acted as a full antagonist at recombinantly expressed human and rodent TRPM8 channels in cell based agonist-induced 45Ca2+ uptake assays. Further, several poly-and monoclonal antibodies that recognize the same region also blocked icilin activation of not only recombinantly expressed TRPM8, but also endogenous TRPM8 expressed in rat dorsal root ganglion neurons revealing the feasibility of generating monoclonal antibody antagonists. We conclude that antagonist antibodies are valuable tools to investigate TRPM8 function and may ultimately pave the way for development of therapeutic antibodies.
Extending topological nexttime logic

We provide an extension of topological nexttime logic by an operator expressing an increase of sets. The resulting formalism enables one to reason about the change of sets in the course of (discrete) linear time. We establish completeness and decidability of the new system, and determine its complexity. As for the latter, we obtain a 'low' upper complexity bound of the corresponding satisfiability problem: NP; this is due to the fact that the time operators involved in our logic are comparatively weak. It is intended that the system is applicable to diverse fields of temporal reasoning.
Wie bewältigen Lehrer interkulturelle Konflikte in der Schule?: eine Wirksamkeitsanalyse im Kontext des multiaxialen Coping-Modells

Die Erziehungswissenschaftlerin Petra Buchwald und der Psychologe Tobias Ringeisen verwenden in ihrem Beitrag Hofstedes vierdimensionales Kulturmodell als Ausgangspunkt zur Darstellung kultureller Einflusse im Denken und Fuhlen von Lehrenden und Schulern, um auf dieser Basis Bewaltigungsstrategien von Lehrenden im interkulturellen Kontext zu untersuchen.
Estimating Sunlight Polarization Using a Fish-eye Lens

In outdoor scenes, polarization of the sky provides a significant clue to understanding the environment. The polarized state of light conveys the information for obtaining the orientation of the sun. Robot navigation, sensor planning, and many other application areas benefit from using this navigation mechanism. Unlike previous investigations, we analyze sky polarization patterns when the fish-eye lens is not vertical, since a camera in a general position is effective in analyzing outdoor measurements. We have tilted the measurement system based on a fish-eye lens, a CCD camera, and a linear polarizer, in order to analyze transition of the 180-degree sky polarization patterns while tilting. We also compared our results measured under overcast skies with the corresponding celestial polarization patterns calculated using the single-scattering Rayleigh model.
Pushing precipitation to the extremes in distributed experiments: recommendations for simulating wet and dry years

Intensification of the global hydrological cycle, ranging from larger individual precipitation events to more extreme multiyear droughts, has the potential to cause widespread alterations in ecosystem structure and function. With evidence that the incidence of extreme precipitation years (defined statistically from historical precipitation records) is increasing, there is a clear need to identify ecosystems that are most vulnerable to these changes and understand why some ecosystems are more sensitive to extremes than others. To date, opportunistic studies of naturally occurring extreme precipitation years, combined with results from a relatively small number of experiments, have provided limited mechanistic understanding of differences in ecosystem sensitivity, suggesting that new approaches are needed. Coordinated distributed experiments (CDEs) arrayed across multiple ecosystem types and focused on water can enhance our understanding of differential ecosystem sensitivity to precipitation extremes, but there are many design challenges to overcome (e.g., cost, comparability, standardization). Here, we evaluate contemporary experimental approaches for manipulating precipitation under field conditions to inform the design of ‘Drought‐Net’, a relatively low‐cost CDE that simulates extreme precipitation years. A common method for imposing both dry and wet years is to alter each ambient precipitation event. We endorse this approach for imposing extreme precipitation years because it simultaneously alters other precipitation characteristics (i.e., event size) consistent with natural precipitation patterns. However, we do not advocate applying identical treatment levels at all sites – a common approach to standardization in CDEs. This is because precipitation variability varies >fivefold globally resulting in a wide range of ecosystem‐specific thresholds for defining extreme precipitation years. For CDEs focused on precipitation extremes, treatments should be based on each site's past climatic characteristics. This approach, though not often used by ecologists, allows ecological responses to be directly compared across disparate ecosystems and climates, facilitating process‐level understanding of ecosystem sensitivity to precipitation extremes.
Measuring the behavioral impact of machine translation quality improvements with A/B testing

In this paper we discuss a process for quantifying the behavioral impact of a domain-customized machine translation system deployed on a large-scale e-commerce platform. We discuss several machine translation systems that we trained using aligned text from product listing descriptions written in multiple languages. We document the quality improvements of these systems as measured through automated quality measures and crowdsourced human quality assessments. We then measure the effect of these quality improvements on user behavior using an automated A/B testing framework. Through testing we observed an increase in key e-commerce metrics, including a signiﬁcant increase in purchases.
Genome wide association studies and prion disease

Over the last decade remarkable advances in genotyping and sequencing technology have resulted in hundreds of novel gene associations with disease. These have typically involved high frequency alleles in common diseases and with the advent of next generation sequencing, disease causing recessive mutations in rare inherited syndromes. Here we discuss the impact of these advances and other gene discovery methods in the prion diseases. Several quantitative trait loci in mouse have been mapped and their human counterparts analysed (HECTD2, CPNE8); other candidate genes regions have been chosen for functional reasons (SPRN, CTSD). Human genome wide association has been done in variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) and are ongoing in larger collections of sporadic CJD with findings around, but not clearly beyond, the levels of statistical significance required in these studies (THRB-RARB, STMN2). Future work will include closer integration of animal and human genetic studies, larger and combined genome wide association, analysis of structural genetic variantion and next generation sequencing studies involving the entire coding exome or genome.
Carbonyl Stress: Increased Carbonyl Modification of Tissue and Cellular Proteins in Uremia

Advanced glycation end-products (AGEs) are formed during non enzymatic glycation and oxidation (glycoxidation) reactions. This process is accelerated in diabetics owing to hyperglycemia, and it has been implicated in the pathogenesis of diabetic complications. Surprisingly, AGEs increase in normoglycemic uremic patients to a much greater extent than in diabetics. AGE accumulation in uremia cannot be attributed to hyperglycemia nor simply to a decreased removal by glomerular filtration. Recently gathered evidence has suggested that, in uremia, the increased carbonyl compounds derived from carbohydrates and lipids modify proteins not only by glycoxidation reaction but also by lipoxidation reaction (“carbonyl stress”). Carbonyl stress has been implicated in the pathogenesis of long-term uremic complications such as dialysisrelated amyloidosis. With regard to continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD), the peritoneal cavity appears to be in a state of severe overload of carbonyl compounds derived from CAPD solution containing high glucose, from heat sterilization of the solution, and from uremic circulation. Carbonyl stress might modify not only peritoneal matrix proteins and alter their structures, but also react with mesothelial and endothelial cell surface proteins and initiate a range of inflammatory responses. Carbonyl stress might therefore contribute to the development of peritoneal sclerosis in patients with long-term CAPD.
Multi-Word-Co-occurrence collection from texts for health-problem diagnosis

This research aims to collect multi-word co-occurrences with health-problem/symptom concepts for health-problem diagnosis from wed-board documents. The result of this research is a benefit for assisting the ordinary people in preliminary diagnosis health problems. The multi-Word-Co of the research is based on an event expression by a verb phrase. However, the research contains two main problems; the first problem is how to identify multi-word co-occurrence including the multi-word co-occurrence boundary with the symptom concept after the stop word removal. The second one is the ambiguous multi-word co-occurrence concept. Therefore, the machine learning with Naïve Bayes is applied to solve the consequent words of the verb phrase (after the stop word elimination) as the multi-word co-occurrence with the symptom concept. The results of this research can provide the high precision of the symptom concept determination through multiword co-occurrences on documents.
Who, then what? The need for interventions to help young people with perinatally acquired HIV disclose their HIV status to others.

There has been considerable interest in paediatric HIV disclosure. This is the process leading to full disclosure (when the condition is named for the HIV-positive child, usually by a caregiver or healthcare worker). WHO guidelines state that children should be aware of the name of their condition by the age of 12, with younger children told their status incrementally to accommodate their cognitive skills and emotional maturity in preparation for full disclosure [3]. There is evidence, however, of variation in the age of full disclosure with this taking place later in resource-limited contexts than in other parts of the world [4]. Being aware of one’s status (full disclosure) is a prerequisite for onward disclosure and there is evidence of more onward disclosure if children are aware of their status earlier [5]. How one was disclosed to, for example, if there was an opportunity to ask questions about HIV and to feel listened to, may also impact on onward disclosure decision-making.
esponse of the microbial community to environmental change uring seagrass transplantation

Previous studies have shown that interactions between seagrasses and sediment microbial communities can influence the success of seagrass transplantation. How the microbial community responds to transplantation and how that may influence seagrass survival still remains unclear. We sampled the sediment microbial community during a restoration project of shoalgrass (Halodule wrightii) to determine how the abundance and diversity of dsrB (sulfate reduction) and nirK (denitrification) genes change during transplantation. We related these patterns to the health of the restored seagrass bed. Our results show that transplanted seagrass cores act as microhabitats that retain sediment and microbial characteristics from the donor site for at least two months after transplantation. The diversity of dsrB genes remained significantly different between transplanted seagrass cores and native sediment in the restoration site. There was little difference in the abundance of dsrB and nirK genes between donor site, transplants and native sediment, which suggests that the size of these populations was not influenced by the presulfide ence of H. wrightii. After transplantation, abundance of dsrB genes and porewater sulfide concentrations increased over time, corresponding with a decrease in health and survival of the transplanted seagrass cores. Increasing sulfide concentrations likely contributed to the mortality of the transplanted seagrass bed. However, the failure of the restoration project was probably due to a combination of factors, including the lack of water movement and the high amplitude of diurnal cycles of dissolved oxygen in the water column of the restoration site.
Workforce Reduction and Survivors' Psyche: A Review

The global economic slowdown has necessitated strategies such as downsizing, restructuring, etc. This has widely affected the employees, whether they are the victims or survivors. While the victims have always been a matter of concern, the present paper examines the psychological status of the survivors. The review of literature takes into account recent empirical findings on dimensions such as motivation, commitment, etc of the survivors. Along with interpretation of existing dimension we present the possible impact on behavioral outcomes as communication, leadership, etc. These empirical studies have shown evidences contrary to commonsense rationale and linkages. While workforce reduction has become inevitable, if certain processes are taken care of, the transition becomes smoother or else the whole exercise of cutting costs might backfire.
Hardware/compiler codevelopment for an embedded media processor

Embedded and portable systems running multimedia applications create a new challenge for hardware architects. A microprocessor for such applications needs to be easy to program like a general-purpose processor and have the performance and power efficiency of a digital signal processor. This paper presents the codevelopment of the instruction set, the hardware, and the compiler for the Vector IRAM media processor. A vector architecture is used to exploit the data parallelism of multimedia programs, which allows the use of highly modular hardware and enables implementations that combine high performance, low power consumption, and reduced design complexity. It also leads to a compiler model that is efficient both in terms of performance and executable code size. The memory system for the vector processor is implemented using embedded DRAM technology, which provides high bandwidth in an integrated, cost-effective manner. The hardware and the compiler for this architecture make complementary contributions to the efficiency of the overall system. This paper explores the interactions and tradeoffs between them, as well as the enhancements to a vector architecture necessary for multimedia processing. We also describe how the architecture, design, and compiler features come together in a prototype system-on-a-chip, able to execute 3.2 billion operations per second per watt.
Plasma F2A Isoprostane Levels in Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s Disease

Background: Oxidative damage is implicated in the pathophysiology of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). F2-isoprostane is a marker of lipid peroxidation which is elevated in AD CSF. Plasma F2-isoprostane has been proposed as a diagnostic marker for AD and mild cognitive impairment (MCI). Objective: To determine whether plasma F2-isoprostane levels differ between nondemented control individuals and patients with AD, MCI, or Parkinson’s disease (PD). Methods: We collected plasma from191 outpatients with a diagnosis of AD (49), MCI (47), nondemented PD (47), and no dementia (48). Plasma levels of the isoprostane iP2α-IV (F2A) were determined by gas chromatography/mass spectroscopy. Results: Mean plasma levels of F2A isoprostane did not differ significantly between the four diagnostic groups. Within the MCI and AD groups, F2A levels did not correlate with duration of memory impairment or with cognitive test scores. F2A levels were marginally lower in users of cholinesterase inhibitors and individuals with an APOE Ε4 allele. Conclusions: While CSF isoprostane levels are elevated in AD, plasma isoprostane measures were neither sensitive nor specific for the clinical diagnosis of MCI or AD.
NEO-Fünf-Faktoren-Inventar nach Costa und McCrae (NEO-FFI)

Das NEO-Funf-Faktoren-Inventar nach Costa und McCrae (NEO-FFI, Borkenau & Ostendorf, 2007) ist ein Fragebogen zur Selbstbeschreibung und erfasst die sog. „Big Five“: Neurotizismus, Extraversion, Offenheit fur Erfahrungen, Vertraglichkeit und Gewissenhaftigkeit. Es liegt in einer zweiten, neu normierten und vollstandig uberarbeiteten deutschsprachigen Auflage vor. Die Gutekriterien weisen es als ein hochwertiges Verfahren aus, das – mit Einschrankungen – auch in der personaldiagnostischen Praxis eingesetzt werden kann.
Welfare Reform and Children's Health

This study investigates the effect of the Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF) program on children's health outcomes using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation over the period 1994 to 2005. The TANF policies have been credited with increased employment for single mothers and a dramatic drop in welfare caseload. Our results show that these policies also had a significant effect on various measures of children's medical utilization among low-income families. These health measures include a rating of the child's health status reported by the parents, the number of times that parents consulted a doctor, and the number of nights that the child stayed in a hospital. We compare the overall changes of health status and medical utilization for children with working and nonworking mothers. We find that the child's health status as reported by the parents is affected by the maternal employment status.