Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Ambiguous Commodities, Unstable Frontiers: The Case of Burma, Siam, and Imperial Britain, 1800–1900

At the turn of the nineteenth century in Southeast Asia, the Kingdoms of Burma and Siam were largely stable, independent polities: powerful in relation to their neighbors, self-sufficient in terms of food, and possessing little reason to believe that these parameters would be changing within the clearly foreseeable future.See Victor Lieberman, “Secular Trends in Burmese Economic History, 1350–1830, and their Implications for State-Formation,” Modern Asian Studies 25, 1 (1991), p. 22. A century later, Burma as an independent entity had disappeared off the map, and Siam—at least in terms of its official foreign trade—was an economic satellite of the British Empire. Burmese teak now floated downstream to British Rangoon, while Siamese rice was carried to the world in the hulls of British ships. The Burmese monarchy had been disbanded; 93 percent of all official Siamese imports and exports were in the hands of London's merchants.George Curzon, “The Siamese Boundary Question,” The Nineteenth Century 34, July (1893), pp. 53–54. How did these transformations occur, and why? Were the processes of domination geared toward the economies, politics, or “geobodies” of these two countries, or toward an integrated combination of all three? What role did material objects of trade themselves play in this process, objects that were often deemed illegal as they passed through unstable, liminal spaces along the frontier?
Evaluation of the Trends, Concomitant Procedures, and Complications With Open and Arthroscopic Rotator Cuff Repairs in the Medicare Population

Background: Medicare insures the largest population of patients at risk for rotator cuff tears in the United States. Purpose: To evaluate the trends in incidence, concomitant procedures, and complications with open and arthroscopic rotator cuff repairs in Medicare patients. Study Design: Cohort study; Level of evidence, 3. Methods: All Medicare patients who had undergone open or arthroscopic rotator cuff repair from 2005 through 2011 were identified with a claims database. Annual incidence, concomitant procedures, and postoperative complications were compared between these 2 groups. Results: In total, 372,109 rotator cuff repairs were analyzed. The incidence of open repairs decreased (from 6.0 to 4.3 per 10,000 patients, P < .001) while the incidence of arthroscopic repairs increased (from 4.5 to 7.8 per 10,000 patients, P < .001) during the study period. Patients in the arthroscopic group were more likely to have undergone concomitant subacromial decompression than those in the open group (87% vs 35%, P < .001), and the annual incidence of concomitant biceps tenodesis increased for both groups (from 3.8% to 11% for open and 2.2% to 16% for arthroscopic, P < .001). While postoperative complications were infrequent, patients in the open group were more likely to be diagnosed with infection within 6 months (0.86% vs 0.37%, P < .001) but no more likely to undergo operative debridement (0.43% vs 0.26%, P = .08). Additionally, patients in the open group were more likely to undergo intervention for shoulder stiffness within 1 year (1.4% vs 1.1%, P = .01). Conclusion: In the Medicare population, arthroscopic rotator cuff repairs have increased in incidence and now represent the majority of rotator cuff repair surgery. Among concomitant procedures, subacromial decompression was most commonly performed despite evidence suggesting a lack of efficacy. Infections and stiffness were rare complications that were slightly but significantly more frequent in open rotator cuff repairs.
Ad framing effects for consumption products: An affect priming process

This research examines why positively framed messages work more effectively than negatively framed messages in product advertising by establishing an affect priming process model. Findings from Experiment 1 showed that positively framed ad messages evoked higher levels of positive affect and lower levels of negative affect than did negatively framed ad messages. Accordingly, positively framed ad messages generated more favorable ratings on ad believability, ad liking, and brand attitudes. Most importantly, this research demonstrated the process by which frame-evoked affect exerted influence on brand attitudes via its impacts on priming affect-congruent cognitive responses. Experiment 1 also found that positively framed ads encouraged participants to be attentive to and elaborate on messages more so than negatively framed ads. Findings from Experiment 2 further showed that ad framing effects were moderated by the type of product attributes being featured. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Locating people in indoor scenes for real applications

A real person description application needs, as a first step, a robust process of people location. To locate people it is required to find out the subject's position and extent. This paper presents a robust architecture for solving this problem in static images. The work presented combines in a probabilistic manner, information from background, skin and shape models. This method has been tested in a large set of images for a real application.
Self-stabilized biped walking under control of a novel reflexive network

Biologically inspired reflexive controllers have been implemented on various walking robots. However, due to the natural instability of biped walking, up to date, there has not existed a biped robot that depends exclusively on reflexive controllers for its dynamically stable walking control. In this paper, we present our design and experiments of a planar biped robot under control of a pure reflexive controller that includes only local extensor and flexor reflexes (no any other reflexes for explicit stability control). The reflexive controller is built with biologically inspired stretch receptors and model neurons. It requires fewer phasic feedbacks than those reflexive controllers of multilegged robots, and does not employ any kind of position or velocity control algorithm even on its low level. Instead, the approximate property of this reflexive controller has allowed our biped robot to substantially exploit its own passive dynamics in some stages of its walking gait cycle. Due to the interaction of the reflexive controller and the properly designed mechanics of the robot, the biped robot works as a closely coupled neuromechanical system, and demonstrates self-stabilizing property in the experiments of slightly perturbed walking, shallow slope walking, and various speed walking. Moreover, our biped robot can walk stably at a relatively high speed (nearly three leg-lengths per second). We know of no other biped robots that could attain such a high relative speed.
Radiologic staging in patients with endometrial cancer: a meta-analysis.

PURPOSE To apply a meta-analysis to compare the utility of computed tomography (CT), ultrasonography (US), and magnetic resonance (MR) imaging in staging endometrial cancer. MATERIALS AND METHODS Data were obtained from a MEDLINE literature search and from manual reviews of article bibliographies. Articles were selected that included results in patients with proved endometrial cancer and imaging-histopathologic correlation and that presented data that allowed calculation of contingency tables. Data for the imaging evaluation of myometrial and cervical invasion were abstracted independently by two authors. Data on year of publication, International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) stage distribution, and methodologic quality were also collected. A subgroup analysis was performed to compare contrast medium-enhanced MR imaging with nonenhanced MR imaging, US, and CT. RESULTS Six studies met the inclusion criteria for CT; 16, for US; and 25, for MR imaging. Summary receiver operating characteristic analysis showed no significant differences in the overall performance of CT, US, and MR imaging. In the assessment of myometrial invasion, however, contrast-enhanced MR imaging performed significantly better than did nonenhanced MR imaging or US (P < .002) and demonstrated a trend toward better results, as compared with CT. The lack of data on the assessment of cervical invasion at CT or US prevented meta-analytic comparison with data obtained at MR imaging. Results were not influenced by year of publication, FIGO stage distribution, or methodologic quality. CONCLUSION Although US, CT, or MR imaging can be used in the pretreatment evaluation of endometrial cancer, contrast-enhanced MR imaging offers "one-stop" examination with the highest efficacy.
Impact of the Environment on Behavioral and Psychological Symptoms of Dementia

The underlying causes of behavioral and psychological symptoms of dementia (BPSD) can be related to biologic factors, such as changes in brain morphology and neurotransmitter functions, and to personal factors, such as previous personality, psychological defenses, and coping strategies. We must also consider the extent to which environmental factors contribute to the etiology of BPSD.
CD47: A Cell Surface Glycoprotein Which Regulates Multiple Functions of Hematopoietic Cells in Health and Disease

Interactions between cells and their surroundings are important for proper function and homeostasis in a multicellular organism. These interactions can either be established between the cells and molecules in their extracellular milieu, but also involve interactions between cells. In all these situations, proteins in the plasma membranes are critically involved to relay information obtained from the exterior of the cell. The cell surface glycoprotein CD47 (integrin-associated protein (IAP)) was first identified as an important regulator of integrin function, but later also was shown to function in ways that do not necessarily involve integrins. Ligation of CD47 can induce intracellular signaling resulting in cell activation or cell death depending on the exact context. By binding to another cell surface glycoprotein, signal regulatory protein alpha (SIRPα), CD47 can regulate the function of cells in the monocyte/macrophage lineage. In this spotlight paper, several functions of CD47 will be reviewed, although some functions may be more briefly mentioned. Focus will be on the ways CD47 regulates hematopoietic cells and functions such as CD47 signaling, induction of apoptosis, and regulation of phagocytosis or cell-cell fusion.
Studies on the pattern of circulating steroids in the normal menstrual cycle. 6. Levels of oestrone sulphate and oestradiol sulphate.

: In an attempt to analyze the multiple changes and interactions in circulating steroid levels in the peri-ovulatory and peri-menstrual periods, the plasma levels of immunoreactive luteinizing hormone (LH), progesterone and unconjugated pregnenolone, dehydroepiandrosterone, testosterone, oestradiol and oestrone were assayed daily during a complete cycle in 17 normally menstruating women. In 14 of the 17 subjects studied androstenedione and unconjugated dihydrotestosterone were also estimated. The day of the LH-peak and the first day of menstruation, respectively, were used to synchronize the peri-ovulatory and peri-menstrual plasma levels of the various steroids. With the exception of dehydroepiandrosterone and dihydrotestosterone, the plasma levels of all steroids exhibited significant, but different changes during the cycle. Testosterone levels showed a slight but significant increase around the LH-peak, whereas the levels of pregnenolone and androstenedione were higher in the post-ovulatory than in the pre-ovulation periods. The levels of oestradiol and oestrone, as well as the ratios of oestradiol to oestrone gradually increased from the low values observed in the early proliferative phase to pre-ovulatory peak values. The relationship between peaks of oestradiol and oestrone and that of LH exhibited great individual variation. The same was true for the individual oestradiol to oestrone ratios. The combination of several steroidal signals did not improve the predictive value of the analyses. However, an increase of individual progesterone values by at least 0.35 ng/ml from the day preceding the LH-peak to the day of the LH-peak was observed in 13 of the 17 subjects. It is suggested that for the early detection of the LH surge and prediction of the subsequent ovulation daily assays of plasma progesterone are of more value than the assay of the other steroids investigated.
Testing in the field

It is widely acknowledged in the HCI community that much can be gained from bringing aspects from the field into the lab, and this principle is dominating within usability groups in Danish Industry. The paper describes three such Danish usability groups and their experiments with turning the tables by using aspects from the lab in the methods applied in the field during field work projects. The context of use plays an important role for a richer understanding of the usability of particular products. As such, implications of this is not surprising, neither theoretically nor empirically. What is interesting, however, is how findings of this type are instantiated in the particular cases; how the three usability groups have used the lab approaches to aid them in working in the field and how the new methods may enhance their existing methodological toolkit. The message of the paper is that there are a variety of ways in which the theoretically driven, pre-planned, and predirected may meet the situated and open minded, both when usability work is conducted in the field and in the lab.
Reasons for having and avoiding sex: Gender, sexual orientation, and relationship to sexual behavior

Traditional sex‐role stereotypes suggest that men and women engage in sex for different reasons. Previous studies have supported the notion that women are more motivated by emotional expression in having sex, and men are more concerned with physical gratification. In a survey of sexual behavior, heterosexual and homosexual respondents were asked to rate the importance of a variety of reasons for having sex and not having sex. The results showed that men and women differed in the importance attached to emotional and physical motives, with gender differences appearing in both heterosexuals and homosexuals. Certain practical motives (e.g., to reproduce, fear of AIDS, fear of pregnancy) differentiated between homosexuals and heterosexuals. Motivations predicting frequency of sexual behavior in the last month depended on the relationship status of the respondent. These findings, although suggesting that gender differences in motivations for sex persist in all kinds of relationships, point to many similarities .
High Dielectric Constant Materials for Primary Voltage Cable Terminations

Non-geometric high dielectric constant stress relef has been used successfully since the 1960' s for terminating shielded power cable primarily in tape form. Unique problems occurred when adapting the early tape form of this technology to formulate high dielectric constant elastomers which could be molded or extruded. Balancing material selections, and the synergism between materials is a complex compromise of chemical, electrical, and physical factors. The resultant work provides an economical elastomer for terminating primary voltage cable, and effective distribution of the electrical field along the termination surface.
Initial heritability analyses of endophenotypic measures for schizophrenia: the consortium on the genetics of schizophrenia.

CONTEXT Exploration of the genetic architecture of specific endophenotypes may be a powerful strategy for understanding the genetic basis of schizophrenia. OBJECTIVE To characterize the genetic architecture of some key endophenotypic measures selected for their reported heritabilities in schizophrenia. DESIGN Family-based heritability study. SETTING Seven sites across the United States. PARTICIPANTS At the time of these initial data analyses, the members of 183 nuclear families ascertained through probands with schizophrenia had been assessed for these endophenotypes. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Variance component models were used to assess the heritability of and the environmental and genetic correlations among the endophenotypes. The Consortium on the Genetics of Schizophrenia assesses the neurophysiologic measures of prepulse inhibition of acoustic startle, P50 event-related potential suppression, and the antisaccade task for eye movements and the neurocognitive measures of the Continuous Performance Test (Degraded Stimulus version), the California Verbal Learning Test, the Letter-Number Sequencing test, and 6 measures from the University of Pennsylvania Computerized Neurocognitive Battery. The heritabilities of these 12 measures are the focus of this article. RESULTS All of the endophenotypes and the University of Pennsylvania Computerized Neurocognitive Battery measures were found to be significantly heritable (P < or = .005), with heritabilities ranging from 24% to 55%. Significant environmental and genetic correlations were also observed between many of the endophenotypic measures. CONCLUSION This is the first large-scale, multisite, family-based heritability study of a collection of endophenotypes for schizophrenia and suggests that endophenotypes are important measures to consider in characterizing the genetic basis of schizophrenia.
Clustering objects with robots that do not compute

This paper has presented the simplest solution so far to the problem of clustering objects with a swarm of robots. The robots are memory-less and are unable to perform arithmetic computations. They are only able to detect the presence of an object or another robot in their line of sight. As they do not possess any distance information about a perceived object (nor any force sensors), they are unable to tell whether they are manipulating it. Despite these limitations, we identified a controller that is capable of consistently gathering the objects into a single cluster. Simulation results have shown that the ability of the robots to distinguish between objects and other robots is beneficial; indeed, if the robots can only perceive other robots as objects, the behavior does not scale well with increasing numbers of robots. Simulations have also shown that the controller is fairly robust with respect to sensory noise. The sensor/controller solution was implemented on a physical system of 5 e-puck robots, and favourable results have been obtained in systematic experiments with 20 objects, with 86.5% of the objects being gathered into one cluster after 10 minutes (average across 10 trials). In the future, we intend to implement a solution of the object clustering task with robots at the sub-millimeter scale.
Clinical features and an epidemiological study of Vibrio vulnificus infections.

Vibrio vulnificus, a recently described halophilic Vibrio species, has been isolated from the blood, wounds, and other skin lesions of patients with primary sepsis or wound infections. Because no study of risk factors for infections with V vulnificus has been reported, a case-control study was performed with the 30 patients from whom V vulnificus isolates were recently submitted to the Centers for Disease Control (Atlanta, Georgia). Patients with primary sepsis were more likely than controls to have eaten raw oysters recently (P less than .01) and to have a history of liver disease (P less than .02). Persons with liver disease should be warned that raw oysters are an important source of this life-threatening infection. Patients with wound infections were more likely than controls to have had recent exposure of the skin to salt water or shellfish (P less than .05). Physicians should therefore consider V vulnificus in the differential diagnosis of severe wound infections with these exposures.
Turning Two Uninvited Guests Into Prominent Speakers: Toward a Dynamic Culture Neuroscience

It is with assurance that we can state that LéviStrauss would have been more than satisfied by reading the target article by Chiao and colleagues (this issue). The authors review and outline the most recent advances in the burgeoning field of cultural neuroscience (CN). The article provides convincing evidence demonstrating the interplay between biology, behavior, and culture as a response to evolutionary and societal pressures. The human mind is no longer an uninvited guest; in fact, it is a prominent speaker. But Chiao et al. (this issue) move a step forward to right another injustice. If the human mind had been an uninvited guest to culture conferences, then culture was sitting outside of closed doors in neuroscience meetings. To be fair, one of the main reasons pertaining to the weakened recognition of the role of culture in neuroscience studies could be purely financial, as the cost of neuroimaging studies limited the possibilities for cross-cultural research. However, potentially following the psychological tradition, neuroscientists in general are quick to assign universality to their conclusions. Yet the present report demonstrates that there is a deep change in neuroscience circles. There is yet more light and truth. Here is what we think should be one of the principal considerations stemming from the rich conclusions offered by Chiao et al. (this issue): It is not only neuroscience helping us understand the cultural phenomenon but, critically, the tools provided by CN hold a matchless potential to understand the human mind, brain, and behavior, and their links to evolution. De jure, CN emerges as a potentially unique discipline that can offer a common platform for understanding and, possibly, testing the mechanisms through which the human mind, brain, and behavior dynamically integrate to adjust to a changing environment. In the next paragraphs, we explain our interpretation of Chiao et al.’s (this issue) message and offer our opinion on the directions that CN could take to boldly move on to answer more global questions. Specifically, we claim that research in CN would greatly benefit if the following concepts are integrated in the research rationale:
Children's preferences for gender-typed objects and colours: a commentary from gender research in Spain

The main aim of this review was to examine international research on children’s preferences regarding gender-typed objects and colours. Firstly, we provide the theoretical background on gender development to elucidate the ways in which individuals can learn gender stereotypes and develop gender-related preferences. Secondly, we review international research on gender-related preferences. Thirdly, we analyse empirical studies on gender stereotypes in children conducted in Spain and Latin American countries, and show that although gender is a priority research area in these countries, studies on gender development in childhood are lacking. Thus, our aim was to identify a set of issues that provide insights into the development of gender-typed preferences, and that also suggest new directions for researchers in Spanish-speaking countries who are interested in clarifying the relationship between gender and children’s preferences for objects and colours.