Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Correlates of Job Satisfaction: A Study of the Two Factor Theory in an Educational Setting

Abstract This study investigated the generality of the dual factor theory of job satisfaction as proposed by Herzberg, Mausner, and Snyderman (1959). Two questionnaires were employed to examine the sources of job satisfaction and dissatisfaction for elementary school principals in Israel. Results generally supported the two factor theory. Factors designated by Herzberg et al. as satisfiers were dominant sources of job satisfaction in this study as well. A comparison of the answers to the two questionnaires indicated that the attitudes toward the items are usually consistent. Results also showed that the two factor theory is contingent on individual factors.
Design and Evaluation of the RUPERT Wearable Upper Extremity Exoskeleton Robot for Clinical and In-Home Therapies

A wearable, portable, low-cost, and easy-to-use upper extremity exoskeleton robot, RUPERT, is presented here for clinical and in-home therapies of patients who have survived a stroke. The robot system has five degrees-of-freedom and is driven by compliant and safe pneumatic muscles. Its primary function is to assist the movement of an affected arm in 3-D space and perform a daily training program in a virtual environment. Subjects are recruited for experiments of both clinical and in-home therapies. While using RUPERT, most subjects exhibited significant improvements in various functional measures. During their in-home therapy trials, subjects expressed enthusiasm regarding the modules and the use of our robotic system. The experimental results look promising and the proposed robotic system exhibits a good prospect for a future commercialized in-home therapy product.
Slowness and the preceding preparatory interval effect in schizophrenia

Measured the reaction times (RTs) of 25 schizophrenic (SCZ), 69 matched normal, and 14 bipolar Ss to a tone preceded by a preparatory interval (PI) of varying length. RTs increase when the PI for the immediately preceding trial (PPI) is longer than the PI for the current trial. Several studies have shown that this PPI effect is heightened in schizophrenia. The authors replicated this finding. However, they found that the size of the PPI effect within groups increased with overall slowness and that the least squares regression line relating the PPI effect difference score to overall slowness did not differ between groups, nor did SCZ Ss' regression line differ from that of normal Ss. Group differences on the PPI effect were also analyzed by taking residuals for members of all groups from the normal Ss' regression line of the PPI effect difference score on overall slowness. Groups did not differ on these residuals, nor did SCZ Ss differ from normal Ss. The authors conclude that the heightening of the PPI effect in schizophrenia is like that observed in equally slow normal Ss. This finding suggests that the PPI effect does not appear to be a promising marker of a distinctive SCZ pathology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Early Intervention Practice and Research in Ontario, Canada: Listening to the Field

In the province of Ontario, Canada, early intervention services are in need of networking opportunities in order to further a research agenda and support early childhood educators in the field. The authors describe the political circumstances facing new graduates of early childhood education (ECE) training programs and the discrepancy between the ECE curriculum they are exposed to and the realities of the field they enter. Efforts to create a new network of early intervention professionals in order to address some of the challenges facing early intervention in the province are described.
Serotonin Transporter Genotype Modulates Subgenual Response to Fearful Faces Using an Incidental Task

This study assessed the impact of serotonin transporter genotype (5-HTTLPR) on regional responses to emotional faces in the amygdala and subgenual cingulate cortex (sgACC), while subjects performed a gender discrimination task. Although we found no evidence for greater amygdala reactivity or reduced amygdala–sgACC coupling in short variant 5-HTTLPR homozygotes (s/s), we observed an interaction between genotype and emotion in sgACC. Only long variant homozygotes (la/la) exhibited subgenual deactivation to fearful versus neutral faces, whereas the effect in s/s subjects was in the other direction. This absence of subgenual deactivation in s/s subjects parallels a recent finding in depressed subjects [Grimm, S. , Boesiger, P., Beck, J., Schuepbach, D. , Bermpohl, F. , Walter, M. , et al. Altered negative BOLD responses in the default-mode network during emotion processing in depressed subjects. Neuropsychopharmacology, 34, 932–943, 2009]. Taken together, the findings suggest that subgenual cingulate activity may play an important role in regulating the impact of aversive stimuli, potentially conferring greater resilience to the effects of aversive stimuli in la/la subjects. Using dynamic causal modeling of functional magnetic resonance imaging data, we explored the effects of genotype on effective connectivity and emotion-specific changes in coupling across a network of regions implicated in social processing. Viewing fearful faces enhanced bidirectional excitatory coupling between the amygdala and the fusiform gyrus, and increased the inhibitory influence of the amygdala over the sgACC, although this modulation of coupling did not differ between the genotype groups. The findings are discussed in relation to the role of sgACC and serotonin in moderating responses to aversive stimuli [Dayan, P., & Huys, Q. J., Serotonin, inhibition, and negative mood. PLoS Comput Biol, 4, e4, 2008; Mayberg, H. S. , Liotti, M. , Brannan, S. K. , McGinnis, S. , Mahurin, R. K. , Jerabek, P. A. , et al. Reciprocal limbic–cortical function and negative mood: Converging PET findings in depression and normal sadness. Am J Psychiatry, 156, 675–682, 1999].
Business Ethics in Person: Bringing Case Experiences Into the Classroom

In recent years accrediting bodies and academic professional associations have increasingly called upon the university to attend to the perceived need in the business community for professionals trained in the ethical dimensions of decision making. In response, the university business curriculum has increased the number of course offerings in the past decade with titles reflecting topics related to corporate social responsibility and business ethics. The intent of such courses is to provide the student with an awareness of the complexity, diversity and salience of the many socioethical issues in the direct environment of the modern corporation and within the corporate walls. Additionally, the courses guide the student in developing the ability to analyze and to act effectively in ethical decision situations they
Formal and Informal Deterrents to Domestic Violence: The Dade County Spouse Assault Experiment

Recent formulations of deterrence theory suggest that informal sanctions mediate the effects of formal sanctions. A randomized field experiment in Dade County was designed to test the relative effectiveness of different police responses to incidents of spouse abuse. We test whether the deterrent effect of arrest interacts with the informal sanctions implied by employment status and marital status. The results indicate that, overall, formal arrest has no effect on occurrence of a subsequent assault. This overall lack of effect masks two offsetting effects: Arrest has a statistically significant deterrent effect among employed suspects, whereas arrest leads to a significant increase in subsequent assaults among unemployed suspects. The interaction effect between arrest and employment status was also statistically significant. There were no significant effects associated with marital status. The interaction effect between arrest and a composite measure of "commitment" based on both employment and marital status was also statistically significant. (abstract Adapted from Source: American Sociological Review, 1992. Copyright © 1992 by the American Sociological Association) Florida Deterrence Spouse Abuse Offender Domestic Violence Offender Domestic Violence Intervention Spouse Abuse Intervention Offender Arrest Adult Offender Adult Male Adult Violence Male Offender Male Violence Partner Violence Violence Against Women Police Response Police Intervention 04-02
Employee Participation: Diverse Forms and Different Outcomes

Participation in decision making (PDM) takes several distinct forms. A review of empirical studies demonstrates that effects of participation on satisfaction and performance vary according to form. The findings cast doubt on the conclusions of earlier reviews based on a unidimensional view of PDM and raise several issues for the study and practice of PDM.
Using Temporal Abduction for Biosignal Interpretation: A Case Study on QRS Detection

In this work, we propose an abductive framework for bio signal interpretation, based on the concept of Temporal Abstraction Patterns. A temporal abstraction pattern defines an abstraction relation between an observation hypothesis and a set of observations constituting its evidence support. New observations are generated abductively from any subset of the evidence of a pattern, building an abstraction hierarchy of observations in which higher levels contain those observations with greater interpretative value of the physiological processes underlying a given signal. Non-monotonic reasoning techniques have been applied to this model in order to find the best interpretation of a set of initial observations, permitting even to correct these observations by removing, adding or modifying them in order to make them consistent with the available domain knowledge. Some preliminary experiments have been conducted to apply this framework to a well known and bounded problem: the QRS detection on ECG signals. The objective is not to provide a new better QRS detector, but to test the validity of an abductive paradigm. These experiments show that a knowledge base comprising just a few very simple rhythm abstraction patterns can enhance the results of a state of the art algorithm by significantly improving its detection F1-score, besides proving the ability of the abductive framework to correct both sensitivity and specificity failures.
Anti-CD4 monoclonal antibody reduces the dose of cyclophosphamide required to induce tolerance to H-2 haplotype identical skin allografts in mice.

Cyclophosphamide (CP)-induced tolerance which consists of a single i.p. injection of 200 mg/kg CP 2 days after priming with 1 x 10(8) donor spleen cells (SC), leads to long-lasting donor-specific skin allograft tolerance in H-2 compatible, multiminor antigen incompatible, murine strain combinations. In this system, the optimal dose of CP has been suggested to be 200 mg/kg, however, such a dose of CP causes strong myelosuppression. In the present study, we therefore attempted to reduce the dose of CP by administering anti-CD4 monoclonal antibody (mAb) before donor cell priming in this tolerance-inducing system. When C3H/He (C3H; H-2k, Mls-1b) mice were injected i.p. with 200 micrograms anti-CD4 mAb on day -3, 1 x 10(8) AKR/J (AKR; H-2k, Mls-1a) SC plus 3 x 10(7) bone marrow cells (BMC) i.v. on day -2 and then 100 mg/kg CP i.p. on day 0, a long-lasting donor-specific skin allograft tolerance was established; furthermore, the decreases in the number of leukocytes and the concentration of hemoglobin (Hb) in the peripheral blood were all less in the C3H mice treated with this new combined protocol than in the C3H mice injected with 200 mg/kg CP following the previous protocol. In the periphery of these tolerant mice, the number of donor-reactive V beta 6+CD4+ T cells decreased and mixed chimerism was observed on both days 14 and 80. On the other hand, in the mice injected with AKR SC, BMC plus 100 mg/kg CP without anti-CD4 mAb, the number of V beta 6+CD4+ T cells decreased on day 14, and then recovered by day 80 when the mixed chimerism disappeared. These results therefore suggest that the combined use of anti-CD4 mAb with CP can reduce the dose of CP without affecting the efficiency of inducing donor-specific tolerance, probably due to the enhancement of the destruction effect of donor-reactive T cells by CP.
User-level communication based cooperative caching

Cooperative caching is an important element in many distributed systems. However, fewer researches have been focused on how to improve it based on user-level communication technologies that are used more and more widely. This paper presents a user-level communication based caching design, called uniform caching, to decrease the complexity of I/O modules. Uniform caching uses communication memory as the cache directly and employs RDMA (Remote Direct Memory Access) methods to access the remote cache, which can improve access-performance and eliminate data copies between the cache and the communication layer. Our analysis figures out this design can reduce remote-access time about 17.8% than the traditional cooperative caching averagely while the improvement is independent of the cooperative caching algorithm used. Moreover, the prototype of uniform caching on GM has been implemented and achieves a satisfying result.
Use of Tethered Enzymes as a Platform Technology for Rapid Analyte Detection

Background Rapid diagnosis for time-sensitive illnesses such as stroke, cardiac arrest, and septic shock is essential for successful treatment. Much attention has therefore focused on new strategies for rapid and objective diagnosis, such as Point-of-Care Tests (PoCT) for blood biomarkers. Here we use a biomimicry-based approach to demonstrate a new diagnostic platform, based on enzymes tethered to nanoparticles (NPs). As proof of principle, we use oriented immobilization of pyruvate kinase (PK) and luciferase (Luc) on silica NPs to achieve rapid and sensitive detection of neuron-specific enolase (NSE), a clinically relevant biomarker for multiple diseases ranging from acute brain injuries to lung cancer. We hypothesize that an approach capitalizing on the speed and catalytic nature of enzymatic reactions would enable fast and sensitive biomarker detection, suitable for PoCT devices. Methods and findings We performed in-vitro, animal model, and human subject studies. First, the efficiency of coupled enzyme activities when tethered to NPs versus when in solution was tested, demonstrating a highly sensitive and rapid detection of physiological and pathological concentrations of NSE. Next, in rat stroke models the enzyme-based assay was able in minutes to show a statistically significant increase in NSE levels in samples taken 1 hour before and 0, 1, 3 and 6 hours after occlusion of the distal middle cerebral artery. Finally, using the tethered enzyme assay for detection of NSE in samples from 20 geriatric human patients, we show that our data match well (r = 0.815) with the current gold standard for biomarker detection, ELISA—with a major difference being that we achieve detection in 10 minutes as opposed to the several hours required for traditional ELISA. Conclusions Oriented enzyme immobilization conferred more efficient coupled activity, and thus higher assay sensitivity, than non-tethered enzymes. Together, our findings provide proof of concept for using oriented immobilization of active enzymes on NPs as the basis for a highly rapid and sensitive biomarker detection platform. This addresses a key challenge in developing a PoCT platform for time sensitive and difficult to diagnose pathologies.
Is Old Money Better than New? Duration and Monetary Regimes

Abstract We compare the duration and performance of different monetary regimes, especially the contrast between countries those that fix exchange rates and those that target inflation. Inflation targeting is a more durable policy; no country has yet been forced to abandon an inflation target, while many have abandoned fixed exchange rates. Indeed, even though inflation targeting began only in 1990, the duration of inflation targeting regimes is at least as long as, or longer than all alternative monetary regimes for comparable countries. Regime duration also matters in monetary policy; older regimes are typically more successful than younger ones in achieving low inflation.
Robust Parameter Estimation of Nonlinear Systems Using Sliding-Mode Differentiator Observer

This paper presents the design, simulation, and experimental results of a new scheme for the robust parameter estimation of uncertain nonlinear dynamic systems. The technique is established on the estimation of robust time derivatives using a variable-structure differentiator observer. A second-order sliding motion is established along designed sliding manifolds to estimate the time derivatives of flat outputs and inputs, leading to better tracking performance of estimates during transients. The parameter convergence and accuracy analysis is rigorously explored systematically for the proposed class of estimators. The proposed method is validated using two case studies; first, the parameters of an uncertain nonlinear system with known, but uncertain nominal parametric values are estimated to demonstrate the convergence, accuracy, and robustness of the scheme; in the second application, the experimental parameter estimation of an onboard-diagnosis-II-compliant automotive vehicle engine is presented. The estimated parameters of the automotive engine are used to tune the theoretical mean value engine model having inaccuracies due to modeling errors and approximation assumptions. The resulting dynamics of the tuned engine model matches exactly with experimental engine data, verifying the accuracy of the estimates.
A prospective study of patterns of fatigue in multiple sclerosis

We sought to identify clinical characteristics and socio‐demographic variables associated with longitudinal patterns of fatigue in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients. A questionnaire including the Fatigue Severity Scale (FSS) was mailed to a community sample of 502 MS patients three times 1 year apart. Three patterns of fatigue were defined: persistent fatigue (PF) (mean FSS score ≥5 at all time‐points), sporadic fatigue (SF) (mean FSS score ≥5 at one or two time‐points) and no fatigue (mean FSS score <5 at all time‐points). Among the 267 (53%) patients who responded at all time‐points, 101 [38%, 95% confidence intervals (CI) 32–44] had persistent, 98 (37%, 95% CI 31–43) sporadic and 68 (25%, 95% CI 20–31) no fatigue. Persistent and sporadic fatigue were more common in patients with, increased neurological impairment (P < 0.001), primary progressive MS (P = 0.01), insomnia (P < 0.001), heat sensitivity (P < 0.001), sudden‐onset fatigue (P < 0.001) or mood disturbance (P < 0.001) compared with patients without fatigue. Multivariable analysis showed that depression (PF P = 0.02, SF P < 0.001), heat sensitivity (PF P = 0.04, SF P = 0.02) and physical impairment (PF P = 0.004, SF P = 0.01) were associated with both sporadic and persistent fatigue. About 75% of the patients had persistent or sporadic fatigue over a 2 years observation period. Multivariable analyses confirmed a significant association between levels of depression, physical impairment and persistent fatigue.
High expression of Lifeact in Arabidopsis thaliana reduces dynamic reorganization of actin filaments but does not affect plant development

Lifeact is a novel probe that labels actin filaments in a wide range of organisms. We compared the localization and reorganization of Lifeact:Venus‐labeled actin filaments in Arabidopsis root hairs and root epidermal cells of lines that express different levels of Lifeact: Venus with that of actin filaments labeled with GFP:FABD2, a commonly used probe in plants. Unlike GFP:FABD2, Lifeact:Venus labeled the highly dynamic fine F‐actin in the subapical region of tip‐growing root hairs. Lifeact:Venus expression at varying levels was not observed to affect plant development. However, at expression levels comparable to those of GFP:FABD2 in a well‐characterized marker line, Lifeact:Venus reduced reorganization rates of bundles of actin filaments in root epidermal cells. Reorganization rates of cytoplasmic strands, which reflect the reorganization of the actin cytoskeleton, were also reduced in these lines. Moreover, in the same line, Lifeact:Venus‐decorated actin filaments were more resistant to depolymerization by latrunculin B than those in an equivalent GFP:FABD2‐expressing line. In lines where Lifeact: Venus is expressed at lower levels, these effects are less prominent or even absent. We conclude that Lifeact: Venus reduces remodeling of the actin cytoskeleton in Arabidopsis in a concentration‐dependent manner. Since this reduction occurs at expression levels that do not cause defects in plant development, selection of normally growing plants is not sufficient to determine optimal Lifeact expression levels. When correct expression levels of Lifeact have been determined, it is a valuable probe that labels dynamic populations of actin filaments such as fine F‐actin, better than FABD2 does. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Parsing and Quering XML Documents in SML

The Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a language for storing and exchanging structured data in a sequential format. Though originally designed for the use in document processing, it is by now employed for representation of data in virtually all areas of computing, especially on the Internet. The basis of all XML processing software is an XML parser, which parses a document in XML syntax and exposes it as a document tree to the application. Document processing then basically reduces to tree manipulation. Modern functional programming languages like SML and HASKELL with their treestructured data-types are therefore well-suited for implementing such applications. Nonetheless, the area of XML processing software is dominated by JAVA. Functional programming languages play a minor role, partly due to the lack of a complete implementation of an XML parser. One of the most important tasks in document processing is querying, that is the extraction of parts of a document that match a structural condition and are in a specific context. Due to the tree-like view of documents, querying XML can be implemented with techniques from tree language and automata theory. These techniques must, however, be adapted to the needs of XML. One specific requirement is that even extremely large documents must be processed. It must therefore be possible to perform the querying algorithm in a single pass through the document, without the need of constructing a copy of the document tree in memory. This work is divided into two parts: The first part presents fxp, an XML parser written completely in SML. We describe the implementation of fxp and discuss our experiences with SML. We analyze the run-time behavior of fxp and compare it to XML parsers written in imperative and object-oriented programming languages. The second part presents an XML querying algorithm based on forest automata theory. The algorithm locates all matches of a query in at most two passes through the document. For an important subclass of queries even a single run suffices. Moreover, we discuss the implementation of the algorithm based on fxp. For each of the two parts a separate, more detailed introduction is given.