Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Effects of Melatonin on Adrenal Cortical Functions of Indian Goats under Thermal Stress

The study was conducted with the primary objective to establish the influence of melatonin on adrenocortical functions to ameliorate thermal stress in goats. Endocrine secretions and several other blood biochemical parameters reflecting the animals adrenocortical stress response were determined over a one-week period after goats had been exposed to 40°C and 60%RH for 10 days. The study was conducted for a period of 17 days in psychrometric chamber. The animals served as self-controls prior to start of the experiment. Blood samples were drawn on day 10 to establish effect of thermal stress. Chemical adrenalectomy was achieved using metyrapone followed by exogenous melatonin treatment. 40°C of thermal stress which is quite normal in tropical zone significantly (P ≤ .05) influenced all parameters except plasma insulin. Metyrapone treatment significantly (P ≤ .05) affected plasma levels of glucose, total protein, total cholesterol, cortisol, and aldosterone. Metyrapone aggravated thermal stress by decreasing cortisol level in goats. Melatonin treatment at 11:00 AM significantly (P ≤ .05) influenced plasma levels of glucose, total protein, total cholesterol, cortisol, aldosterone and insulin. Metyrapone treatment aggravated thermal stress although administration of melatonin could ameliorate the condition. This establishes the role of melatonin in relieving thermal stress in goats.
What Can Decision Analysis Do for Invasive Species Management?

Decisions about management of invasive species are difficult for all the reasons typically addressed by multiattribute decision analysis: uncertain outcomes, multiple and conflicting objectives, and many interested parties with differing views on both facts and values. This article illustrates how the tools of multiattribute analysis can improve management of invasive species, with an emphasis on making explicit the social values and preferences that must inform invasive species management. Risk assessment protocols developed previously for invasive species management typically suffer from two interacting flaws: (1) separating risk assessment from risk management, thus disrupting essential connections between the social values at stake in invasive species decisions and the scientific knowledge necessary to predict the likely impacts of management actions, and (2) relying on expert judgment about risk framed in qualitative and value‐laden terms, inadvertently mixing the expert's judgment about what is likely to happen with personal preferences. Using the values structuring and probability‐modeling elements of formal decision analysis can remedy these difficulties and make invasive species management responsive to both good science and public values. The management of feral pigs in Hawaiian ecosystems illustrates the need for such an integrated approach.
Clinical outcomes of severe malnutrition in a high tuberculosis and HIV setting

Objective Case death rates for severe childhood malnutrition remain stubbornly elevated in high HIV prevalence settings, despite the implementation of WHO guidelines. This study examined case death and other clinical outcomes in malnourished children with and without HIV infection. Methods A prospective, observational study was undertaken at three tertiary hospitals in Johannesburg, South Africa. All severely malnourished children had their HIV status established, and anthropometric, clinical and diagnostic findings and admission outcomes were analysed. Findings Just over half (51%) of the 113 severely malnourished children were HIV infected, but 31/58 (54%) of these children had their positive status diagnosed only after admission. Marasmic children were significantly more likely to be HIV infected (OR 9.7, 95% CI 3.5 to 29.1). Tuberculosis (TB) was strongly suspected and treated in 27 children (24%) although confirmed in only five (4%). The overall case death rate was 11.5%. HIV infection, pallor and shock were significant predictors of death. HIV-infected children were six times more likely to die compared with HIV-negative children (19% vs 3.6%, OR 6.2, 95% CI 1.2 to 59). HIV-‘affected’ children (HIV negative but exposed) and HIV-negative children had similar outcomes. Conclusion HIV infection significantly increases severe malnutrition case death. WHO guidelines for the management of severe malnutrition in high HIV prevalence settings need to be modified to include routine HIV and TB testing and offer guidance on the criteria and timing of TB treatment and highly active antiretroviral therapy initiation.
Understanding Behavioral Health and Treatment Engagement with Former Users of Prenatal Substances: A Strengths-Focused Mixed Methods Inquiry

Accessible services for users of prenatal substances are lacking, and treatment engagement is poor with services that are available. Furthermore, legal consequences are often punitive, which ultimately damages the well-being of mother and child. Milagro and FOCUS are two New Mexico programs that provide comprehensive, coordinated care, including medication-assisted treatment, to former users of prenatal substances during pregnancy (in the Milagro Program) and for three years post-birth (in the FOCUS Program). This mixed methods study explored the lived experiences of women from this complex, high-risk population, using a high-engagement sample of women who utilized services at both Milagro and FOCUS. Twenty-four former opioid users ages 25 to 42, with children ages 3 months to 35 months, were interviewed about their experiences of substance use, treatment services, and motherhood. To further characterize this sample, the study measured adverse childhood experiences, socioeconomic status, social support, and participants’ therapeutic alliances with their early intervention specialists in the
360° Video Journalism: Experimental Study on the Effect of Immersion on News Experience and Distant Suffering

ABSTRACT News producers are increasingly experimenting with news in virtual reality and 360° video, which is often presented as the ultimate form of immersive journalism as it provides viewers with a first-person experience of a news event. Audiences are deemed to be more involved with the presented story, raising assumptions that they may be more engaged with the event and feel more empathic towards the subject of the story, especially in the case of foreign news, as distance is virtually narrowed. This experimental study (n = 149) assesses whether 360° international disaster news leads to a higher sense of presence, higher enjoyment, higher subjective involvement towards the topic, and increased engagement with distant suffering towards the victim. Using an existing news item produced by the Belgian public broadcaster VRT on a Syrian oil worker, a between-subject experimental study was undertaken, comparing four 360° video conditions: single viewpoint, drag-and-drop 360°, 360° with a cardboard VR device, and 360° with a head-mounted VR device. A verbal, qualitative debrief allowed for a better understanding of the results, which show that 360° video journalism leads to a higher sense of presence and higher levels of enjoyment. However, no effect on distant suffering or subjective involvement is found.
Basque-Spanish bilingual children’s expressive and receptive grammatical abilities

Expressive-receptive gaps in lexical abilities have been documented for bilingual children, but few studies have investigated whether a similar gap is observed at the grammatical level. The current study assessed grammatical abilities through sentence production and comprehension tasks in both languages in 17 Basque-Spanish simultaneous bilingual 6- through 9-year-olds (both languages acquired before three years of age). The children scored lower in Basque than Spanish for sentence production, but no significant differences were found for sentence comprehension. While an expressive-receptive gap was found for both languages, this gap was larger in Basque than in Spanish. Object-verb agreement errors were especially prevalent in Basque production, possibly because verbs in Spanish only agree with the subject. These results demonstrate that expressive-receptive gaps are also observed in bilingual children’s grammatical abilities and may vary depending on the structural similarity between the two languages.
A Hybrid Genetic Algorithm for Flexible Task Collaborative Scheduling

Flexible job scheduling is considered a NP-hard problem (FJS). A hybrid algorithm based on Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Simulated Annealing (SA) is proposed, which is used to schedule the tasks. A two dimensional matrix encoding is adopted, row operator and column operator are advanced accordingly, column crossover operator and column mutation are chosen by considering the Constraints. Elitist selection strategy is employed for accelerating the colony convergence. Capabilities and other factors which would influence the design results are considered when creating individual. Time scheduling and optimization are implemented in decoding phase. Finally, a simulation experiment is carried out by using the proposed algorithm, and comparison with the other algorithm is implemented, it is showed that the convergent velocity is fast and the search ability is better.
ROBUST ASR WITH UNRELIABLE DATA AND MINIMAL ASSUMPTIONS

Human speech perception withstands a wide variety of distortions, both experimentally applied and naturallyoccurring. A novel approach to these situations in robust ASR identifies the spectro-temporal regions which carry reliable speech evidence and treats the remainder as missing or uncertain. This standpoint makes minimal assumptions about any noise background. This paper describes two approaches to the adaptation of continuous-density hidden Markov model-based speech recognisers to deal with missing and uncertain acoustic data. The first computes output probabilities on the basis of the reliable evidence only, while the second estimates values for the unreliable regions by conditioning on the reliable parts. Both techniques are evaluated on the TIDigits corpus for several NOISEX noise sources, using spectral subtraction to identify reliable regions. These studies demonstrate that the two schemes behave comparably, and that both produce a significant performance advantage over spectral subtraction alone.
Intermediation in Five States : Estimates of Financial Performance and Growth Strategies

The theoretical literature concerning supply chain intermediation is surveyed to develop a framework of five intermediary states. Data collected on 58 electronic healthcare portals are used to test hypotheses concerning intermediation states, growth strategies and firm profitability, in a sample representing both traditional and electronic intermediaries. The study finds a positive relationship between more capital intensive states of intermediation and profitability, as well as finding a higher frequency of acquisitions as growth strategies in these same intermediary states.
Stationary Coexistence of Hexagons and Rolls via Rigorous Computations

In this work we introduce a rigorous computational method for finding heteroclinic solutions of a system of two second order differential equations. These solutions correspond to standing waves between rolls and hexagonal patterns of a two-dimensional pattern formation PDE model. After reformulating the problem as a projected boundary value problem (BVP) with boundaries in the stable/unstable manifolds, we compute the local manifolds using the parameterization method and solve the BVP using Chebyshev series and the radii polynomial approach. Our results settle a conjecture by Doelman et al. [European J. Appl. Math., 14 (2003), pp. 85--110] about the coexistence of hexagons and rolls.
Role of Chondroitin Sulfate Proteoglycans in Axonal Conduction in Mammalian Spinal Cord

Chronic unilateral hemisection (HX) of the adult rat spinal cord diminishes conduction through intact fibers in the ventrolateral funiculus (VLF) contralateral to HX. This is associated with a partial loss of myelination from fibers in the VLF (Arvanian et al., 2009). Here, we again measured conduction through the VLF using electrical stimulation while recording the resulting volley and synaptic potentials in target motoneurons. We found that intraspinal injection of chondroitinase-ABC, known to digest chondroitin sulfate proteoglycans (CSPGs), prevented the decline of axonal conduction through intact VLF fibers across from chronic T10 HX. Chondroitinase treatment was also associated with behavior suggestive of an improvement of locomotor function after chronic HX. To further study the role of CSPGs in axonal conduction, we injected three purified CSPGs, NG2 and neurocan, which increase in the vicinity of a spinal injury, and aggrecan, which decreases, into the lateral column of the uninjured cord at T10 in separate experiments. Intraspinal injection of NG2 acutely depressed axonal conduction through the injected region in a dose-dependent manner. Similar injections of saline, aggrecan, or neurocan had no significant effect. Immunofluorescence staining experiments revealed the presence of endogenous and exogenous NG2 at some nodes of Ranvier. These results identify a novel acute action of CSPGs on axonal conduction in the spinal cord and suggest that antagonism of proteoglycans reverses or prevents the decline of axonal conduction, in addition to stimulating axonal growth.
Log-Likelihood Ratio to Improve Hard Decision Viterbi Algorithm

Hard decision of Viterbi decoder suffer from the need of high Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) to achieve reasonable Bit Error Rate (BER). For the purpose of improving the efficiency of its performance, it must increase the constraint length of the code, in this case highlights the problem of complexity in the structure. Several methods are used to solve this problem. In this paper the Log-Likelihood Ratio (LLR) with 3 bit soft decision and unquantized scheme has been implemented with simple transceiver using Convolutional codes. Results are achieved using the last version of Matlab (R2011b) illustrates that such scheme 2.7 dB over conventional system. In addition it has been examine such system with increasing the speed of data rate to double, the results of simulation confirm that it need 7 dB to achieve 10 -6 BER.
On the paradox of efficiency improvement at the micro level and Productivity Slowdown at the macro level: The case of Efficient Inventory Control

Last decades show a Productivity Slowdown at the macro level, but at the micro level we have seen a huge attention for business economics and operations management and we now have a decade of booming stock markets. This paper tries to tackle that paradox by singling out the issue of Efficient Inventory Control. This seems to be the part of the business process that comes closest to the problem of the Productivity Slowdown. Namely, when inventories are reduced, then this normally means that part of demand is serviced from inventories, and this means lower production. Estimating stylized relationships for the US, we find that inventories in 1997 are 25% lower than they would have been otherwise, and the level of production is 0.56% lower at an annual basis. However, real GDP growth is not really affected, since the annual change in inventory is a very small percentage of GDP. Thus, business success stories that are based upon inventory reduction - which is regarded as efficiency improvement at the micro level - can be reconciled with stagnation at the macro economic level.
A proposal for the privacy leakage verification tool for Android application developers

Nowadays, smartphone market has been growing rapidly, and smartphone has become essential as a business tool. One of the crucial advantages of a smartphone is an installable third-party application. Number of these has continued to grow explosively. However, vulnerabilities in smartphone applications are seemed as serious problem. This is not only for the smartphone users, also for smartphone application developers and/or vendors. Until now, most vulnerability tests on smartphone applications are targeted that has been packaged as a commercial product and distributed in application marketplaces. These tests are performed on dynamically on application binaries. In this paper, we aim to develop the static vulnerability verification tool that can be utilized for smartphone application developers and/or vendors in the implementation and/or test phase of development process. This tool intakes source codes and determine where to read the privacy information in the source codes, and determine where to write/send the information in there. Then analyze the privacy information transfer and/or transform flow and report the possibilities of privacy information leakage to application developers.
Cultural Heritage in Marker-Less Augmented Reality: A Survey

Augmented Reality (AR) is considered as one of the most significant technologies in the field of computer graphics and is utilized for many applications. In this paper, we have presented a comprehensive survey for cultural heritage using Augmented Reality systems. This survey describes the main objectives and characteristics of Marker-less Augmented Reality Systems through presenting up-to-date research results in this area. We describe the marker-less technologies in the area of AR, indoor marker-less AR, outdoor marker-less AR, real-time solutions to the tracking problem, real-time registration, cultural heritage in AR, 3D remonstration techniques, as well as presenting the problems in each research.
Intracellular degradation of unassembled asialoglycoprotein receptor subunits: a pre-Golgi, nonlysosomal endoproteolytic cleavage

The human asialoglycoprotein receptor is a heterooligomer of the two homologous subunits H1 and H2. As occurs for other oligomeric receptors, not all of the newly made subunits are assembled in the RER into oligomers and some of each chain is degraded. We studied the degradation of the unassembled H2 subunit in fibroblasts that only express H2 (45,000 mol wt) and degrade all of it. After a 30 min lag, H2 is degraded with a half-life of 30 min. We identified a 35-kD intermediate in H2 degradation; it is the COOH-terminal, exoplasmic domain of H2. After a 90-min chase, all remaining intact H2 and the 35- kD fragment were endoglycosidase H sensitive, suggesting that the cleavage generating the 35-kD intermediate occurs without translocation to the medial Golgi compartment. Treatment of cells with leupeptin, chloroquine, or NH4Cl did not affect H2 degradation. Monensin slowed but did not block degradation. Incubation at 18-20 degrees C slowed the degradation dramatically and caused an increase in intracellular H2, suggesting that a membrane trafficking event occurs before H2 is degraded. Immunofluorescence microscopy of cells with or without an 18 degrees C preincubation showed a colocalization of H2 with the ER and not with the Golgi complex. We conclude that H2 is not degraded in lysosomes and never reaches the medial Golgi compartment in an intact form, but rather degradation is initiated in a pre-Golgi compartment, possibly part of the ER. The 35-kD fragment of H2 may define an initial proteolytic cleavage in the ER.
Measuring the Intrusiveness of Advertisements: Scale Development and Validation

Abstract The current study examines consumers'perceptions of the intrusiveness of advertisements. A scale is developed to tap an underlying construct that has not previously been measured. Following traditional methods of scale development, the study uses expert-generated adjective lists, expands possible measures using a thesaurus, and finally reduces the number of items statistically to derive a new measure of advertising intrusiveness. The scale is validated using samples in different experimental conditions and is found to be valid, reliable, and parsimonious. The importance of such a scale for the field of advertising is discussed.
The Gap between the Chromatic number and the Distinguishing Chromatic Number

The Distinguishing Chromatic Number of a graph G, denotedD(G), was first defined in (5) as the minimum number of colors needed to properly color G such that no non-trivial automorphismof the graph G fixes each color class of G. In this paper, we consider certain 'natural' families of bipartite graphs that have reasonably large automorphism groups and we show that in all those cases, the distinguishing chromatic number is precisely 3. We also consider random Cayley graphs ( A,S) defined over certain abelian groups A and show that with high probability, �D() ≤ �() + 1.
Executive subprocesses in working memory: relationship to catechol-O-methyltransferase Val158Met genotype and schizophrenia.

BACKGROUND Cognitive dysfunction in the working memory domain seems to be under genetic control and is a candidate intermediate phenotype in schizophrenia. Genes that affect working memory processing may contribute to risk for schizophrenia. METHODS Working memory and attentional processing were assessed in a large and unselected sample of schizophrenic patients, their healthy siblings, and controls (N = 250). We used the n-back task because it allows parametric analysis over increasing loads and delays and parsing of subcomponents of executive cognition and working memory, including temporal indexing and updating. Participants were genotyped for catechol-O-methyltransferase (COMT) at the Val158Met locus, which has been shown to affect executive cognition and frontal lobe function, likely because of genetically determined variation in prefrontal dopamine signaling. RESULTS A significant COMT genotype effect was found: Val/Val individuals had the lowest n-back performance, and Met/Met individuals had the highest performance. Effects were similar in the 1- and 2-back conditions and across all groups, whereas no effect on the Continuous Performance Test was seen, suggesting that genotype was not affecting working memory subprocesses related to attention, load, or delay. Siblings also performed significantly worse than controls on the 1- and 2-back conditions. CONCLUSIONS A prefrontal cognitive mechanism common to the 1- and 2-back conditions, probably executive processes involved in information updating and temporal indexing, is sensitive to the COMT genotype. Considering that the 3 participant groups were affected more or less linearly by the COMT genotype, an additive genetic model in which the effect of allele load is similar in its effects on prefrontally based working memory irrespective of the genetic or environmental background in which it is expressed is suggested. The findings also provide convergent evidence that an intermediate phenotype related to prefrontal cortical function represents a viable approach to understanding neuropsychiatric disorders with complex genetic etiologies and individual differences in cognition.