Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Skeleton In The Closet: The Battered Woman Syndrome, Self Defense, And Expert Testimony

The common practice of wife beating is a 'skeleton in the closet' of many families today. 1 In recent years, however, the public has focused much attention on the phenomenon of the battered woman, bringing the battering relationship and its consequences to the forefront of American social consciousness. The numbers are staggering: FBI statistics show that a husband or boyfriend beats a woman in the United States approximately every eighteen seconds; other sources estimate that somewhere between two and six million women will be beaten by their mates each year; and experts believe that between one-half and two-thirds of all marriages will experience at least one battering incident during the relationship. • The figures are somewhat speculative since wife beating is still
Effects of repeated dosing with mechanistically distinct antinociceptive ligands in a rat model of neuropathic spinal cord injury pain

A lack of efficacy of some analgesic drugs has been previously described in rats with neuropathic spinal cord injury (SCI) pain. It has been suggested that repeated dosing in these animals over time may eventually lead to efficacy. However, it is also possible that efficacy may diminish over time with repeated dosing. This study evaluated the efficacy of various drugs upon repeated dosing over time in a rat model of SCI pain. Four weeks following an acute spinal cord compression at the mid‐thoracic level, rats developed decreased hind paw withdrawal threshold, suggestive of below level neuropathic hypersensitivity. Either cannabinoid (CB) receptor agonist CP 55,940, the anticonvulsant carbamazepine or gabapentin, the antidepressant amitriptyline or vehicle was administered over a period of 7 days. Neither carbamazepine nor amitriptyline demonstrated efficacy either after a single or repeated dosing. Beginning with a 50% efficacious dose of gabapentin, the effect of gabapentin in SCI rats neither increased nor decreased over the treatment period. The antinociceptive effect of CP 55,940 was maintained for the entire treatment period, which was mediated by CB1 but not CB2 receptors. The current data suggest that sustained antinociception can be obtained with some drugs in rats with neuropathic SCI pain. Furthermore, the current data do not substantiate the notion that repeated treatment with initially ineffective drugs will eventually lead to efficacy; treatments that are not acutely effective are unlikely to demonstrate clinical efficacy.
Coping with Stress and the Emergence of Multidrug Resistance in Fungi

The incidence of invasive fungal infections poses a serious global health threat, killing nearly 1.4 million people a year—a number comparable to deaths from tuberculosis. Factors that contribute to this disease burden and high mortality include insufficient diagnostics and treatment, and the increasing numbers of individuals with immune system defects who are particularly susceptible to fungal pathogens [1].
Effects of Phytoecdysteroids (PEDS) Extracted from Cyanotis arachnoidea on Rumen Fermentation, Enzyme Activity and Microbial Efficiency in a Continuous-Culture System

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effects of supplementation of phytoecdysteroids (PEDS) extracted from Cyanotis arachnoidea on rumen fermentation, enzymes activity and microbial efficiency in a dual flow continuous-culture system. A single-factor experimental design was used with twelve fermenters in 4 groups with 3 replicates each. Fermenters were incubated for a total of 7 days that included first 4 days for adaptation and last 3 days for sampling. PEDS was added at levels of zero (as control), 5, 10, and 15 mg/g of the substrate (DM). The results showed that increasing supplementation levels of PEDS resulted in incremental digestibility of dry matter (DMD) (quadratic, P = 0.001) and organic matter (OMD) (quadratic, P = 0.031), but unchanged digestibility of neutral detergent fiber (NDFD), crude protein (CPD) and acid detergent acid (ADFD). As supplementation levels of PEDS increased, there were decreased response in the concentration of ammonia nitrogen (NH3-N) (linear, P = 0.015) and increased response in molar proportions of butyrate (linear, P = 0.004), but unchanged response in total volatile fatty acid (TVFA) and the molar proportion of acetate and propionate, respectively. Increasing PEDS supplementation levels decreased the ratio of acetate to propionate (linear, P = 0.038), suggesting an alteration of rumen fermentation pattern occurring due to PEDS supplementation in the diet. Supplementation of PEDS significantly increased activities of glutamate dehydrogenase (quadratic, P = 0.001), alanine dehydrogenase (quadratic, P = 0.004), glutamate synthase (linear, P = 0.038), glutamine synthetase (quadratic, P = 0.011), respectively. There were no discernible differences in the activity of carboxymethyl cellulose (CMCase), xylanase and protease regardless of the treatments. The daily production of microbial nitrogen (linear, P = 0.002) and microbial efficiency (MOEEF) (linear, P = 0.001) increased linearly as supplementation levels of PEDS increased. The decreased response of fluid NH3-N and the increased response of MN indicated that PEDS positively increased the synthesis of microbial proteins.
Gamification to improve adherence to diabeteic treatment in Saudi Arabia

Diabetes mellitus is one of the most common illnesses in the twentieth century. Latest studies estimate a dramatic increase in diabetes cases in the Middle East. There are many Arab countries in the top ten countries where diabetes is most prevalent; Saudi Arabia is amongst these countries. Diabetes requires a great deal of care and management of several aspects of the patient’s life. Ranging from keeping records of ones glucose levels and associated information, to having the emotional and social support needed to cope with the condition. This paper, proposes the first Arabic system for managing diabetes using gamification.
Blood Pressure Decrease During the Acute Phase of Ischemic Stroke Is Associated With Brain Injury and Poor Stroke Outcome

Background and Purpose— Studies on the relation between blood pressure (BP) and stroke outcome have shown contradictory results. We explored the association of systolic (SBP) and diastolic (DBP) BP during acute stroke with early neurological deterioration, infarct volume, neurological outcome, and mortality at 3 months. Methods— We included 304 patients with acute ischemic stroke. SBP and DBP on admission and on the first day were the average values of all readings obtained in the emergency department and during a 24-hour period after patient allocation in the stroke unit. Results— A U-shaped effect was observed: for every 10 mm Hg ≤180 mm Hg of SBP, the risk of early neurological deterioration, poor outcome, and mortality increased by 6%, 25%, and 7%, respectively, whereas for every 10 mm Hg >180 mm Hg, the risk of early neurological deterioration increased by 40% and the risk of poor outcome increased by 23%, with no effect on mortality. Mean infarct volume increased 7.3 and 5.5 cm3 for every 10 mm Hg ≤180 and >180 mm Hg. A similar pattern was found in patients with DBP ≤100 or >100 mm Hg. These effects disappeared after adjustment for the use of antihypertensive drugs and BP drop >20 mm Hg within the first day, with the latter being the more important prognostic factor of poor outcome. Conclusions— High and low SBP and DBP, as well as a relevant drop in BP, are associated with poor prognosis in patients with ischemic stroke.
Towards a Real-Time Reference Architecture for Autonomic Systems

Autonomic computing aims to embed automation in IT management software such that it can adapt to changes in the configuration, provisioning, protection, and resource utilization variations of the IT infrastructure at run time. It is, therefore, almost natural to consider this control software framework as being designed with control principles in mind. One of the research trends considers autonomic computing as a control system that resolves constraints related to the optimal usage of resources based on external requests made by users or processes in a reactive way. In this paper, a real-time reference architecture is introduced in which components implementing functions of realtime system elements or blocks such as transducers, controllers, and actuators are designed. The architecture of the autonomic computing software also contains components that implement functionalities specific to real-time systems. The transducers, controllers, and actuators are thus connected via realtime pattern components such as concurrency, priority, and reliability patterns.
Transfected connexin45 alters gap junction permeability in cells expressing endogenous connexin43

Many cells express multiple connexins, the gap junction proteins that interconnect the cytosol of adjacent cells. Connexin43 (Cx43) channels allow intercellular transfer of Lucifer Yellow (LY, MW = 443 D), while connexin45 (Cx45) channels do not. We transfected full-length or truncated chicken Cx45 into a rat osteosarcoma cell line ROS-17/2.8, which expresses endogenous Cx43. Both forms of Cx45 were expressed at high levels and colocalized with Cx43 at plasma membrane junctions. Cells transfected with full-length Cx45 (ROS/Cx45) and cells transfected with Cx45 missing the 37 carboxyl-terminal amino acids (ROS/Cx45tr) showed 30-60% of the gap junctional conductance exhibited by ROS cells. Intercellular transfer of three negatively charged fluorescent reporter molecules was examined. In ROS cells, microinjected LY was transferred to an average of 11.2 cells/injected cell, while dye transfer between ROS/Cx45 cells was reduced to 3.9 transfer between ROS/Cx45 cells was reduced to 3.9 cells. In contrast, ROS/Cx45tr cells transferred LY to > 20 cells. Transfer of calcein (MW = 623 D) was also reduced by approximately 50% in ROS/Cx45 cells, but passage of hydroxycoumarin carboxylic acid (HCCA; MW = 206 D) was only reduced by 35% as compared to ROS cells. Thus, introduction of Cx45 altered intercellular coupling between cells expressing Cx43, most likely the result of direct interaction between Cx43 and Cx45. Transfection of Cx45tr and Cx45 had different effects in ROS cells, consistent with a role of the carboxyl-terminal domain of Cx45 in determining gap junction permeability or interactions between connexins. These data suggest that coexpression of multiple connexins may enable cells to achieve forms of intercellular communication that cannot be attained by expression of a single connexin.
Modeling unvoiced sounds in statistical parametric speech synthesis with a continuous vocoder

In this paper, we introduce an improved excitation model for statistical parametric speech synthesis. Our earlier vocoder [1], which applies continuous F0 in combination with Maximum Voiced Frequency (MVF), is extended. The focus of this paper is on the modeling of unvoiced consonants, for which two alternative methods are proposed. The first method applies no postprocessing during MVF estimation to reduce the unwanted voiced component of unvoiced speech sounds. The second separates voiced and unvoiced excitation based on the phonetic labels of the text to be synthesized. In an objective experiment we found that the first method produces unvoiced sounds that are closer to natural speech in terms of Harmonics-to-Noise Ratio. A subjective listening test showed that both methods are more natural than our baseline system, and the second method is significantly preferred.
Analysis of Topological Properties for IP-Networks in Norway

We investigate the Norwegian IP-networks connected to the Internet based on recent research in scale free networks and random network topology models. The network has been probed with a simple Traceroute tool and several key metrics have been calculated and presented for making conclusions both about the network and the chosen research methodology. In addition to the established metrics we introduce a new metric to assess the tree-likeness of the explored network.
Fighting Intrusions in Wireless LANs: A Need for the Reference Model

A traditional way to improve security of wired computer network can be achieved by applying access control policies to the front door of network. However these policies may be not sufficient and effective any more when applied to the wireless local area networks (WLANs). WLANs are different from the traditional wired LANs in terms of their exposure to potential threats, vulnerability and security techniques. Intrusions to WLANs are facts of the everyday life and handling them becomes more and more difficult. Currently there is no standardised reference model which may help to design, compare and evaluate the existing or future intrusion handling systems (IHSs) for WLANs. Analysis of the commercial IHSs shows that they all are built as a proprietary systems which are neither taking into consideration existence of other IHSs nor they are trying to find the ways to establish inter-IHS collaboration which may help to achieve better security for the end- users. Hence this paper starts by an analysis of the features of existing IHSs for WLANs, follows with proposing the new ways to enhance their design, and then is discussing development of such a novel reference model for a scalable distributed IHS architecture.
On the accuracy of the high‐redshift cluster luminosity function

We study the reliability of the statistical background subtraction method for computing the Ks-band luminosity function of cluster galaxies at z ∼ 1 using mock Red-sequence Cluster Survey cluster catalogues constructed from GALFORM semi-analytic galaxies. The underlying cluster luminosity function in the mocks is compatible with recent estimates at z ∼ 1 by several authors. We simulate different samples where the number of clusters with Ks-band photometry goes from five to a maximum of 50, in order to find the most suitable observational sample to carry out this study; the current observational status in the near-infrared wavelength range has been reached using five real clusters at z ∼ 1. We compute the composite luminosity function for several samples of galaxy clusters with masses ≃1.5 x 10 14 M ⊙ assuming a flux-limited, complete sample of galaxies down to Ks = 21.0 mag. We find that the Schechter fit parameters Ks* and a for a sample of galaxies with no redshift information are rather poorly constrained if both parameters are allowed to vary freely; if a is fixed at a fiducial value, then Ks* shows significantly improved stochastic uncertainties but can be influenced by systematic deviations. We find a significantly improved accuracy in the luminosity function parameters when adding photometric redshift information for bright cluster galaxies. The impact of a 10-fold increase in the number of clusters with available Ks-band photometry is that of decreasing stochastic errors in Ks* and a by factors of ≃2 and ≃4, respectively, for accuracies of up to (ΔKS* /Ks*) stochastic = 0.02 and (Δα/α) stochastic = 0.09. The dwarf-to-giant ratios inferred from the luminosity functions of red-sequence galaxies in the mock catalogue agree very well with the underlying values; however, there is an indication that the semi-analytic model overpredicts the abundance of dwarf galaxies by up to a factor of 3 with respect to recent measurements. Finally, we find that in order to use estimates of Ks* to study the formation redshift of cluster galaxies at z = 1, the sample would need to contain 520 z ∼ 1 clusters, for an accuracy of ∼2 Gyr at the 68 per cent confidence level. However, combining this method with other estimates may significantly reduce the sample size, and allow important new constraints on galaxy formation models.
An Application of System Dynamics Model to Evaluate Information and System Performance

As more organizational resources are expanded in designing and developing information systems and networks, it becomes increasingly important to assess the benefits actually derived from the systems. Information provided by systems is a resource available to organizations or decision-makers. The introduction of an information system should be justified on a cost-saving ground like other resources. However, it is not easy to measure or quantify the benefit and the value of information system. Although several approaches for evaluating information system have been suggested, they show significant difficulties in applying to complex and dynamic environments. This study applies system dynamics model to evaluate information and system performance. A system dynamics model is used as a laboratory setting to evaluate information system by examining the relative merits of information attributes (availability, accuracy, and timeliness) in terms of their impact on the overall system performance. System performance is discussed with three different aspects; expansion, stability, and efficiency.
Unit feature based pruning of large-scale speech corpus using decision tree

In this paper, we proposed and realized a corpus pruning method using decision tree. In the process of clustering, instead of conventional method, we measure the distance of pitch contours by feature vector composed by slope mean. The subjective and objective evaluation results showed that synthetic outputs based on corpus pruned through our method are close to outputs based on no-pruning corpus and are superior to conventional method with the same storage size.
Further Observations on Smart-Card-Based Password-Authenticated Key Agreement in Distributed Systems

This paper initiates the study of two specific security threats on smart-card-based password authentication in distributed systems. Smart-card-based password authentication is one of the most commonly used security mechanisms to determine the identity of a remote client, who must hold a valid smart card and the corresponding password to carry out a successful authentication with the server. The authentication is usually integrated with a key establishment protocol and yields smart-card-based password-authenticated key agreement. Using two recently proposed protocols as case studies, we demonstrate two new types of adversaries with smart card: 1) adversaries with pre-computed data stored in the smart card, and 2) adversaries with different data (with respect to different time slots) stored in the smart card. These threats, though realistic in distributed systems, have never been studied in the literature. In addition to point out the vulnerabilities, we propose the countermeasures to thwart the security threats and secure the protocols.
Computational Study on a PTAS for Planar Dominating Set Problem

The dominating set problem is a core NP-hard problem in combinatorial optimization and graph theory, and has many important applications. Baker [JACM 41,1994] introduces a k-outer planar graph decomposition-based framework for designing polynomial time approximation scheme (PTAS) for a class of NP-hard problems in planar graphs. It is mentioned that the framework can be applied to obtain an O(2ckn) time, c is a constant, (1+1/k)-approximation algorithm for the planar dominating set problem. We show that the approximation ratio achieved by the mentioned application of the framework is not bounded by any constant for the planar dominating set problem. We modify the application of the framework to give a PTAS for the planar dominating set problem. With k-outer planar graph decompositions, the modified PTAS has an approximation ratio (1 + 2/k). Using 2k-outer planar graph decompositions, the modified PTAS achieves the approximation ratio (1+1/k) in O(22ckn) time. We report a computational study on the modified PTAS. Our results show that the modified PTAS is practical.
Relationship quality influences attitudes toward and perceptions of infidelity

This study was conducted at the Psychology Research Centre (UID/PSI/01662/2013), University of Minho. Joana Arantes has been supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (IF/01298/2014). Andre Silva receives funding from the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (PD/BD/115906/2016). We thank Randolph Grace for his helpful comments. The raw data reported in this study are available upon request.
Neuroprotection Following Stroke in the Gyrencephalic Non-Human Primate Brain

Many pharmacological agents that have shown promise as stroke neuroprotectants in rodent studies have failed when tested in clinical trials. It was therefore suggested to evaluate such neuroprotectants in gyrencephalic non-human primate (NHP) stroke models as an intermediate step to bridge the translational gap between rodent and human studies. To date, there has been a paucity of model systems to do so. Furthermore, there is no clear evidence that stroke neuroprotection in the gyrencephalic brain can protect against ischemic tissue damage or improve functional outcome. Using cynomolgus macaques we tested the hypothesis that neuroprotection is feasible in the gyrencephalic NHP brain with the neuroprotectant Tat-NR2B9c, a PSD-95 inhibitor. TatNR2B9c reduced stroke volume and improved behavioural outcomes in a model middle cerebral artery occlusion (MCAO). Tat-NR2B9c was subsequently tested in a model of embolic stroke in the cynomolgus macaque. Tat-NR2B9c reduced the number and total volume of embolic strokes in this model and was used to design a subsequent human trial that ultimately had similar results.
Spray Droplet Characterization from a Single Nozzle by High Speed Image Analysis Using an In-Focus Droplet Criterion

Accurate spray characterization helps to better understand the pesticide spray application process. The goal of this research was to present the proof of principle of a droplet size and velocity measuring technique for different types of hydraulic spray nozzles using a high speed backlight image acquisition and analysis system. As only part of the drops of an agricultural spray can be in focus at any given moment, an in-focus criterion based on the gray level gradient was proposed to decide whether a given droplet is in focus or not. In a first experiment, differently sized droplets were generated with a piezoelectric generator and studied to establish the relationship between size and in-focus characteristics. In a second experiment, it was demonstrated that droplet sizes and velocities from a real sprayer could be measured reliably in a non-intrusive way using the newly developed image acquisition set-up and image processing. Measured droplet sizes ranged from 24 μm to 543 μm, depending on the nozzle type and size. Droplet velocities ranged from around 0.5 m/s to 12 m/s. The droplet size and velocity results were compared and related well with the results obtained with a Phase Doppler Particle Analyzer (PDPA).