Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
An Evaluation of Six Brief Interventions That Target Drug-Related Problems in Correctional Populations

Finding brief effective treatments for criminal justice populations is a major public need. The CJ-DATS Targeted Intervention for Corrections (TIC), which consists of six brief interventions (communication, anger, motivation, criminal thinking, social networks, and HIV/sexual health), was tested in separate federally-funded randomized control studies. In total, 1,573 criminal justice-involved individuals from 20 correction facilities participated (78 % males; 54 % White). Multilevel repeated measures analyses found significant gains in knowledge, attitudes, and psychosocial functioning (criteria basic to knowledge, attitude, and practices (KAP) and TCU treatment process models). While improvements were less consistent in criminal thinking, overall evidence supported efficacy for the TIC interventions.
Truth Discovery to Resolve Object Conflicts in Linked Data

In the community of Linked Data, anyone can publish their data as Linked Data on the web because of the openness of the Semantic Web. As such, RDF (Resource Description Framework) triples described the same real-world entity can be obtained from multiple sources; it inevitably results in conflicting objects for a certain predicate of a real-world entity. The objective of this study is to identify one truth from multiple conflicting objects for a certain predicate of a real-world entity. An intuitive principle based on common sense is that an object from a reliable source is trustworthy; thus, a source that provide trustworthy object is reliable. Many truth discovery methods based on this principle have been proposed to estimate source reliability and identify the truth. However, the effectiveness of existing truth discovery methods is significantly affected by the number of objects provided by each source. Therefore, these methods cannot be trivially extended to resolve conflicts in Linked Data with a scale-free property, i.e., most of the sources provide few conflicting objects, whereas only a few sources have many conflicting objects. To address this challenge, we propose a novel approach called TruthDiscover to identify the truth in Linked Data with a scale-free property. Two strategies are adopted in TruthDiscover to reduce the effect of the scale-free property on truth discovery. First, this approach leverages the topological properties of the Source Belief Graph to estimate the priori beliefs of sources, which are utilized to smooth the trustworthiness of sources. Second, this approach utilizes the Hidden Markov Random Field to model the interdependencies between objects to estimate the trust values of objects accurately. Experiments are conducted in the six datasets to evaluate TruthDiscover.
Fast Approaches to Improve the Robustness of a Railway Timetable

The train timetabling problem (TTP) consists of finding a train schedule on a railway network that satisfies some operational constraints and maximizes some profit function that accounts for the efficiency of the infrastructure usage. In practical cases, however, the maximization of the objective function is not enough, and one calls for a robust solution that is capable of absorbing, as much as possible, delays/disturbances on the network. In this paper we propose and computationally analyze four different methods to improve the robustness of a given TTP solution for the aperiodic (noncyclic) case. The approaches combine linear programming (LP) and ad hoc stochastic programming/robust optimization techniques. We computationally compare the effectiveness and practical applicability of the four techniques under investigation on real-world test cases from the Italian railway company Trenitalia. The outcome is that two of the proposed techniques are very fast and provide robust solutions of comparable quality with respect to the standard (but very time consuming) stochastic programming approach.
Party Promises, Voter Understanding, and Mandate Responsiveness in East European Politics

The literature on reform policy fulfillment after the collapse of Communism identifies mandate responsiveness as the weakest aspect of the quality of democracy in Eastern Europe. We build on this research and specify both direct and interaction effects of party promises and voter understanding on policy outcomes. On the empirical level, we develop a measure of citizen comprehension of party positions to analyze this component of the mandate model, previously omitted in much of the scholarship on the topic. Our findings suggest that elements of mandate responsiveness are emerging in the post-communist countries, and that they are present in some policy areas but not in others. The effect of campaign pledges on policy outcomes is contingent on voter awareness of what politicians promise. This knowledge is improved by the distinctiveness in party programs regarding democratization and marketization. Related Articles Lipsmeyer, Christine S. 2009. “Post-Communist Mandates. ” Politics & Policy 37 (4): 715-734. http://onlinelibrary.wiley. com/doi/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2009. 00195.x/abstract Kim, Myunghee. 2007. “Citizens’ Confidence in Government, Parliament and Political Parties. ” Politics & Policy 35 (3): 496-521. http://onlinelibrary.wiley. com/doi/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2007. 00070.x/abstract Whitefield, Stephen, and Robert Rohrschneider. 2009. “Representational Constituency: Stability and Change in Political Cleavages in Central and Eastern Europe. ” Politics & Policy 37 (4): 667-690. http://onlinelibrary.wiley. com/doi/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2009. 00193.x/abstract Related Media http://blogs.lse. ac.uk/europpblog/2015/10/27/what-does-law-and-justices-election-victory-in-poland-mean-for-europe/ http://nottspolitics.org/2015/03/09/promises-promises-in-the-croatian-presidential-elections/ http://blogs.lse. ac.uk/europpblog/2013/10/22/the-once-stable-czech-party-system-is-at-risk-of-unravelling-in-this-weeks-parliamentary-elections/ La literatura sobre el cumplimiento de politicas de reforma luego del colapso del comunismo identifica a la capacidad de respuesta de respuesta gubernamental como el aspecto mas debil de la democracia en Europa del Este. Desarrollamos esta linea de investigacion estableciendo los efectos directos e indirectos de las promesas de campana y la compresion del electorado de las politicas resultantes de estos compromisos.A nivel empirico, desarrollamos una escala de comprension de la inclinacion politica de un partido por parte del electorado para analizar este componente en el modelo de respuesta gubernamental, un factor previamente omitido en la investigacion de este tema. Nuestros resultados sugieren que ciertos elementos de respuesta gubernamental estan surgiendo en paises post comunistas, y que estos estan presentes en ciertas politicas pero ausentes en otras. El efecto de las promesas de camapana en la politica resultante depende de la compresion del electorado de las promesas politicas. La comprension de las promesas de campana es mejorada por la distincion de los programas de democratizacion y mercadotecnia de cada partido.
Endocrine Studies of the Untreated Progeny of Thyroidectomized Rats

Extract: Experiments were conducted to assess late and persistent endocrine changes in the progeny of rats born of and/or nursed by thyroidectomized (Tx) dams. Forty-five female rats were radiothyroidectomized several weeks before mating with normal males, and compared with the progeny of 26 control females. In all, 248 progeny were studied when adult.Tx dams had significantly reduced fertility (87% of controls), increased pup (11% versus 0) and maternal mortality (27% versus 0), and smaller litters (6.5 versus 11.8 pups/litter). It was shown that the offspring of thyroidectomized female rats had delayed eye opening (15.3 versus 14.3 days), smaller weaning (40.4 versus 54.4 g) and adult body weights (230 versus 260 g), smaller pituitary glands (12.2 versus 14.0 mg), and enlarged thyroid glands (14.2 versus 12.4 mg). Ovarian and testicular weights were decreased (73.9 versus 83.7 mg and 3.2 versus 3.6 g, respectively). The serum thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH) concentrations were increased from 53.8 to 84.4 μU/ml in the males. The pituitary TSH contents were not significantly altered, and the serum TSH response to thyrotropin releasing hormone (TRH) was normal. These persistent effects differed from the late effects of both fetal and neonatal hypothyroidism and neonatal underfeeding. Cross-fostering experiments showed that the diminished weaning weights were the result of the pups being nursed by the hypothyroid dams. The increased nursing mortality and the pituitary and thyroidal changes were the result of prenatal influences produced by the hypothyroid dams, since being nursed by a normal foster dam did not prevent them. The persistently enlarged thyroid glands and the elevated serum TSH in the male offspring of thyroidectomized dams suggested a permanent alteration in the set point of pituitary-thyroid regulation as the consequence of maternal hypothyroidism.Speculation: It is speculated that the intrauterine environment provided by the pregnant hypothyroid mother produces permanent alterations in endocrine regulatory mechanisms in the offspring. It is suggested that the transplacental transfer of fetal thyroxine (T4) to the hypothyroid mother places a burden on the fetal pituitary-thyroid axis that permanently alters its function in these progeny. We have shown previously that during a critical perinatal period, T4 excess or deficiency can permanently alter hypothalamo-pituitary regulatory function in the offspring.
A preliminary assessment of two hospital food service systems using parameters of food safety and consumer opinion

The goal of any hospital caterer should be to provide food that meets nutritional requirements, satisfies the patient, improves morale and is microbiologically safe. Food distribution to hospital wards plays a critical role. The aim of this study was to compare two hospital food service systems using parameters of food safety and consumer opinion. An NHS hospital was selected where food delivery was due to change from a plated system to a cafeteria trolley system. Samples (50g) of dishes (n=27) considered to be high-risk were collected for three consecutive days from breakfast, lunch and supper meals. The samples were taken from a pre-ordered tray (similar to that of a patient) in the plated system and from the trolley on the ward in the cafeteria system of meal delivery (approxi mately six months after its introduction). Consumer opinions cards (n=180) were distributed and interviews also conducted. Microbiologically, the quality of food items delivered by both systems was satisfactory. However, concern was raised with the plated system, not for hot foods cooling down but for chilled foods warming up and being sustained in ambient conditions. Overall con sumer satisfaction and experience was enhanced with the trolley system. Food was hotter and generally per ceived to be of a better quality. Satisfaction with cold desserts was not dependent on the delivery system.
TKDM - a reconfigurable co-processor in a PC's memory slot

This paper presents TKDM, a PC-based high-performance reconfigurable computing environment. The TKDM hardware consists of an FPGA module that uses the DIMM (dual inline memory module) bus for high-bandwidth and low-latency communication with the host CPU. The system's firmware is integrated with the Linux host operating system and offers functions for data communication and FPGA reconfiguration. The intended use of TKDM is that a dynamically reconfigurable co-processor for data streaming applications. The system's firmware can be customized for specific application domains to facilitate simple and easy-to-use programming interfaces.
The Interworking between EDCA 802.11e and DiffServ

The provisioning of quality-of-service (QoS) with interworking between heterogeneous mobile environments will be of vital importance for the future success of mobile telecommunications. As each network technology has its own distinct QoS mechanism, it becomes essential to support interworking methods between different QoS technologies, in order to guarantee end-to-end QoS in heterogeneous networks. This paper investigates the interworking between differentiated service (DiffServ) core networks and the IEEE 802.11e QoS-enabled wireless LAN (WLAN). An interworking framework is proposed, in addition to a mapping scheme from the DiffServ per-hob behaviors (PHBs) to the 802.11e enhanced distributed coordinated access (EDCA) access categories (AC). The interworking framework is evaluated by means of simulation demonstrating the conformance of 802.11e EDCA to DiffServ PHBs in an end-to-end architecture.
Effects of Exercise Training and Deconditioning on Platelet Aggregation Induced by Alternating Shear Stress in Men

Objective— Alternating shear stress, which resembles the flow condition in stenotic arteries, induces platelet aggregation. This study investigated how exercise training and deconditioning influence alternating shear-induced platelet aggregation (ASIPA) and clarify the mechanisms underlying ASIPA. Methods and Results— Thirty healthy male sedentary subjects were randomly divided into control and trained groups. The trained men were trained on a bicycle ergometer at ≈60% of maximal oxygen consumption for 30 minutes per day, 5 days per week for 8 weeks, and then were deconditioned for 8 weeks. The experimental results indicate the following: (1) short-term strenuous exercise increases the extent of ASIPA and is accompanied by increased the von Willebrand factor (vWF) binding and P-selectin expression on platelets in both the control and trained groups, whereas the enhancement of platelet function decreases after exercise training in trained subjects; (2) at rest and immediately after exercise, ASIPA and the vWF binding and P-selectin expression on platelets are reduced by training, but remain unchanged in the control group; and (3) deconditioning reverses the effects of training on resting and postexercise state. Conclusions— Exercise training suppresses the extent of ASIPA, probably by reducing vWF binding to platelets and P-selectin expression on platelets. However, deconditioning reverses the training effects.
Eligibility for HIV/AIDS treatment among adults in a medical emergency setting at an urban hospital in Uganda.

BACKGROUND Despite global effort to scale up access to antiretroviral therapy (ART), many people in need of HIV/AIDS care in Uganda have not been reached. HIV testing and ART are not widely offered as routine medical services and data on HIV/AIDS in emergency settings in Sub-Saharan Africa is limited. We determined the HIV prevalence and eligibility for ART in a medical emergency unit at Mulago hospital. METHODS In a cross-sectional study, we interviewed 223 patients who were systematically selected from the patients' register from October through December 2004. HIV testing was offered routinely and results were delivered within 30 minutes. We evaluated HIV infected patients for WHO clinical stage of disease and referred them for HIV/AIDS care. RESULTS Out of 223 patients, 111 (50%) had HIV infection of whom 78 (70%) had WHO clinical stage 3 and 4 of disease thereby requiring ART. Overall, 84 out of 111 (76%) HIV positive patients had not received any specific HIV/AIDS care. CONCLUSION The burden of HIV infection in the medical emergency unit is high and majority of the patients who required ART had no prior HIV/AIDS care. We recommend scale up of HIV/AIDS care in acute care settings in order to increase access to ART.
Memetic Algorithm with Local Search Chaining for Continuous Optimization Problems: A Scalability Test

Memetic algorithms arise as very effective algorithms to obtain reliable and high accurate solutions for complex continuous optimization problems. Nowadays, higher dimensional optimization problems are an interesting field of research, that introduces new problems for the optimization process, making recommendable to test the scalable capacities of optimization algorithms. In particular, in memetic algorithms, a higher dimensionality increases the domain space around each solution, requiring that the local search method must be applied with a high intensity. In this work, we present a preliminar study of a memetic algorithm that assigns to each individual a local search intensity that depends on its features, by chaining different local search applications. This algorithm has obtained good results in continuous optimization problems and we study whether, using this intensity adaptation mechanism with the scalable LS method MTS-LS2, the algorithm is scalable enough for being a good algorithm for medium and high-dimensional problems. Experiments are carried out to test the ability of being scalable, and results obtained show that the proposal is scalable in many of the functions, scalable and non-scalable, of the benchmark used.
A prospective study of the effects of age of initiation of alcohol and drug use on young adult substance dependence.

OBJECTIVE Previous cross-sectional research has disagreed about whether an adolescent's age of onset of alcohol use is a unique predictor of later alcohol dependence or whether it is merely a correlate of those factors that produce alcohol dependence. The current study tests this question in a longitudinal sample, and extends the literature by testing whether age of onset of alcohol and drug use predicts alcohol and drug dependence. METHOD Data from an ongoing study of children of alcoholics and matched controls (n = 395) were collected during three annual interviews during adolescence and two 5-year follow-ups in young adulthood. RESULTS Taking a first drink of alcohol at or before age 13 was unrelated to the odds of alcohol and drug dependence when the adolescent did not also participate in early drug use or when correlated risk factors were taken into account. On the other hand, early drug use elevated the odds of drug dependence by young adulthood, even while controlling for shared risk factors. CONCLUSIONS The current study provides support for the notion that early-adolescent onset of alcohol use is a marker of risk for later dependence rather than a causal influence. Moreover, it provides evidence for the impact of early drug use on drug-substance dependence. Implications for theory and intervention are discussed.
Tropical rain forest tree growth and atmospheric carbon dynamics linked to interannual temperature variation during 1984–2000

During 1984–2000, canopy tree growth in old-growth tropical rain forest at La Selva, Costa Rica, varied >2-fold among years. The trees' annual diameter increments in this 16-yr period were negatively correlated with annual means of daily minimum temperatures. The tree growth variations also negatively covaried with the net carbon exchange of the terrestrial tropics as a whole, as inferred from nearly pole-to-pole measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) interpreted by an inverse tracer–transport model. Strong reductions in tree growth and large inferred tropical releases of CO2 to the atmosphere occurred during the record-hot 1997–1998 El Niño. These and other recent findings are consistent with decreased net primary production in tropical forests in the warmer years of the last two decades. As has been projected by recent process model studies, such a sensitivity of tropical forest productivity to on-going climate change would accelerate the rate of atmospheric CO2 accumulation.
“A pit to put women in”: professionalism, work intensification, sexualisation and work–life balance in the legal profession in England and Wales

Abstract Today, the rhetorical commitment to diversity and inclusion is almost universally espoused across the legal profession in England and Wales, and issues such as the position of women lawyers and alternative ways of working are recurring themes in the trade press. Yet statistical evidence clearly reveals a profession segmented by gender: its powerful and well remunerated positions remain overwhelmingly occupied by white men, and its working practices continue to require a professional identity unencumbered by responsibility for social reproduction. This paper draws on qualitative research to flesh out this picture and to reflect on some of the mechanisms which produce women's sub-professional status – which, it is argued, include the discourse of professionalism. Some themes identified by respondents – such as hyper-masculine work cultures in which women figure as backrooms technicians – are longstanding. Other themes concern either new developments or a deepening of trends already under way, which appear to be having a particularly adverse impact on women's working conditions. These trends include the intensification of work; the heightened significance of client care, leading to the development of ‘boundary spanning roles’ that generate even greater demands in terms of time and emotional labour, and the accentuation of misogyny and harassment consequent on the eclipse of traditional gentlemanly professionalism by a sexualised corporate culture. Under these conditions the possibility of the profession developing working conditions which offer work–life balance appears remote.
Analysis of 30 synthetic cannabinoids in oral fluid using liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry.

In recent years, the analysis of synthetic cannabinoids in human specimens has gained enormous importance in the broad field of drug testing. Nevertheless, the considerable structural diversity among synthetic cannabinoids already identified in 'herbal mixtures' hampers the development of comprehensive analytical methods. As the identification of the main metabolites of newly appearing substances is very laborious and time-consuming, the detection of the parent compounds in blood samples is the current approach of choice for drug abstinence testing. Whenever blood sampling is not possible however, the need for alternative matrices arises. In this article, we present a fully validated liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (LC/ESI-MS/MS) method for the analysis of 30 synthetic cannabinoids in oral fluid samples collected with the Dräger DCD 5000 collection device. The method proved to be suitable for the quantification of 28 substances. The limits of detection were in the range from 0.015 to 0.9 ng/ml, while the lower limits of quantification ranged from 0.15 to 3.0 ng/ml. The method was successfully applied to 264 authentic samples during routine analysis. A total of 31 samples (12%) was tested positive for at least one of the following synthetic cannabinoids: AM-694, AM-2201, JWH-018, JWH-019, JWH-081, JWH-122, JWH-203, JWH-210, JWH-250, JWH-307, MAM-2201, and RCS-4. Given that stabilization of the collection pads after sampling is warranted, the collection device provides satisfactory sensitivity. Hence, whenever blood sampling is not possible, the Dräger DCD 5000 collection device offers a good tool for the analysis of synthetic cannabinoids in oral fluid in the broad field of drug testing.