Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Acute and non-acute effects of cannabis in adolescents and adults

Preclinical research demonstrates that cannabinoids have differing effects in adolescent and adult animals, and human epidemiological research suggests that adolescent cannabis use has greater potential for harm than adult use. In chapters 1 and 2, I review this literature, describing the acute and non-acute effects of cannabis on memory, response inhibition and psychotic-like symptoms, with a focus on findings relating to adolescent populations and age of cannabis use onset. In chapter 3, I describe associations between adolescent cannabis use, IQ and educational performance, demonstrating that adjustment for potential confounders – most notably cigarette use – leaves cannabis use not associated with lower performance. In chapter 4, I describe the first study to compare the acute effects of cannabis in human adolescent (n=20; 16-17 years old) and adult (n=20; 24-28 years old) male cannabis users, in a placebo-controlled, double-blind cross-over design. After inhaling vaporised active or placebo cannabis, participants completed tasks assessing memory, inhibition, alongside physiological measures and subjective drug effects (e.g. “stoned”). Results showed contrasting profiles of adolescent resilience (blunted subjective, physiological and memory effects) and vulnerability (lack of satiety, impaired inhibitory processes). In chapter 5, in the same sample, I describe the acute psychotic-like effects of cannabis. Cannabis increased psychotic-like symptoms and the incidence of speech illusions in both adolescents and adults, though some self-rated effects were heightened in adults. In chapter 6, in a reduced sample, I describe the acute effects of cannabis on anhedonia (as indexed by reward responsivity, hedonic capacity and self-rated anhedonia) in adolescents (n=13) and adults (n=13). Cannabis did not affect reward responsivity or hedonic capacity in either group, though adults but not adolescents reported self-rated increases in anhedonia. In chapter 7, I integrate my findings, discuss their implications, consider limitations and suggest directions for future research into the effects of cannabis use in adolescence.
Humanization in a Hospital

Concern with humanization in hospitals has been an increasingly common feature in debates related to healthcare, public policies and hospital management. However, in most Brazilian hospitals, humanization has not gone beyond the stage of ‘politically correct’ discourse and has not resulted in substantive changes in organizational behaviour. These changes mean a greater challenge especially in hospital organizations, as these are renowned for their complexity, pluralism and knowledge-based work. From an ethnographic experience guided by intervention in the implementation of a humanization programme at a hospital, we analyzed the resulting cultural change, highlighting the obstacles that were encountered and the main actions taken to overcome them. The results of this initiative reveals important lessons: (i) it represents an organizational commitment to the continuous improvement of health services by focusing on one of the most critical elements: human beings; (ii) to implement the initiative, it was necessary to develop social actions such as relationships with the government, market and society; (iii) it was necessary to hold a scientific, albeit incipient, debate concerning the role and relevance of clinical psychology in hospitals. Results were grouped as individual, social and organizational dimensions reflecting substantive aspects of the change process in complex setting.
Relationship between test anxiety and restrained eating using estimates of the calorie content of food

The relationship between test anxiety and restrained eating, as assessed by estimates of the calorie content of food was investigated. Female undergraduate students （ N ＝ 169 ） participated in the study. They were shown two “ healthy ” （ fruits ） and four “ unhealthy ” foods （ chocolate, potato chips, etc. ） , and were asked to estimate the calorie content of each food item. Participants also completed questionnaires assessing their test anxiety, as well as the Revised Restrained Scale. Results indicated that restrained eaters were more likely than unrestrained eaters to un-derestimate the calorie content of healthy food, regardless of their anxiety status. This finding suggested that restrained eaters, who are concerned with managing their weight, believe that healthy foods do not affect poten-tial weight gain, which supported the health halo effect. Moreover, restrained eaters with low anxiety overestimated calories in sweets, which are unhealthy food, whereas restrained eaters with high anxiety underesti-mated their calories. These biases suggest that lower calorie estimation of unhealthy foods allowed restrained eaters to feel fewer cognitive conflicts associated with eating as an emotion regulation strategy.
Acquisition Planning and Language Acquisition by Indonesian Four-year Old Children

This study aims at describing of acquisition planning and language acquisition by four - year old children. The objectives of this study were to find out the characteristics of Indonesian language acquisition of four - year old children who study at kindergar t en and who do not ones and acquisition planning in the kindergarten. To achieve the objectives, this study was conducted by applying qualitative research. It is a kind of multi-case study. The subjects of this study were the children who study in the kindergarten and who do not ones. And the objects of this research were the utterances which contained characteristics of language acquisition uttered by the children and the implementation of acquisition planning in a kindergarten. The data were collected by using content analysis technique. The data were analyzed based on the theory of characteristics of language acquisition and the interview was conducted to get the answer of how the kindergarten school implements the acquisition planning. Based on the results of this study, the children’s utterances that study in kindergarten is better than children who don’t study, in their language development and have more vocabulary and can use them more appropriately compared to the chidren who only stayed at home as the effect of the acquisition planning applied in the kindergarten .
A scalable framework for markerless camera-based smartphone interaction with large public displays

The camera-based control of large markerless displays through smartphones in real-time is an appealing novel interaction technique in urban environments and opens a wide range of new use cases. While recent research has focused on investigating respective user aspects using simplified lab prototypes, this paper addresses the question how such services can be technically enabled for a large network of screens. We present our efforts towards a suitable distributed framework for enabling such smartphone-based screen services at a large scale and introduce a prototypical implementation. To illustrate its features we present two concrete interactive services we realized on top of the framework.
Recent oppositely directed trends in solar climate forcings and the global mean surface air temperature

Abstract There is considerable evidence for solar influence on the Earth's pre-industrial climate and the Sun may well have been a factor in post-industrial climate change in the first half of the last century. Here we show that over the past 20 years, all the trends in the Sun that could have had an influence on the Earth's climate have been in the opposite direction to that required to explain the observed rise in global mean temperatures.
SEQUENTIAL COLONIZATION AND DIVERSIFICATION OF GALÁPAGOS ENDEMIC LAND SNAIL GENUS BULIMULUS (GASTROPODA, STYLOMMATOPHORA)

Abstract Species richness on island or islandlike systems is a function of colonization, within-island speciation, and extinction. Here we evaluate the relative importance of the first two of these processes as a function of the biogeographical and ecological attributes of islands using the Galápagos endemic land snails of the genus Bulimulus, the most species-rich radiation of these islands. Species in this clade have colonized almost all major islands and are found in five of the six described vegetation zones. We use molecular phylogenetics (based on COI and ITS1 sequence data) to infer the diversification patterns of extant species of Bulimulus, and multiple regression to investigate the causes of variation among islands in species richness. Maximum-likelihood, Bayesian, and maximum-parsimony analyses yield well-resolved trees with similar topologies. The phylogeny obtained supports the progression rule hypothesis, with species found on older emerged islands connecting at deeper nodes. For all but two island species assemblages we find support for only one or two colonization events, indicating that within-island speciation has an important role in the formation of species on these islands. Even though speciation through colonization is not common, island insularity (distance to nearest major island) is a significant predictor of species richness resulting from interisland colonization alone. However, island insularity has no effect on the overall bulimulid species richness per island. Habitat diversity (measured as plant species diversity), island elevation, and island area, all of which are indirect measures of niche space, are strong predictors of overall bulimulid land snail species richness. Island age is also an important independent predictor of overall species richness, with older islands harboring more species than younger islands. Taken together, our results demonstrate that the diversification of Galápagos bulimulid land snails has been driven by a combination of geographic factors (island age, size, and location), which affect colonization patterns, and ecological factors, such as plant species diversity, that foster within-island speciation.
Hierarchical Bayesian reservoir memory

In a quest for modeling human brain, we are going to introduce a brain model based on a general framework for brain called Memory-Prediction Framework. The model is a hierarchical Bayesian structure that uses Reservoir Computing methods as the state-of-the-art and the most biological plausible Temporal Sequence Processing method for online and unsupervised learning. So, the model is called Hierarchical Bayesian Reservoir Memory (HBRM). HBRM uses a simple stochastic gradient descent learning algorithm to learn and organize common multi-scale spatio-temporal patterns/features of the input signals in a hierarchical structure in an unsupervised manner to provide robust and real-time prediction of future inputs. We suggest HBRM as a real-time high-dimensional stream processing model for the basic brain computations. In this paper we will describe the model and assess its prediction accuracy in a simulated real-world environment.
Proteomic Analysis in the Neurosciences*

Proteomics is a field of study directed toward providing a comprehensive view of the characteristics and activity of every cellular protein. Rapid innovations in the core technologies required to characterize proteins on a global scale are poised to bring about a comprehensive understanding of how dynamic changes in protein expression, post-translational modification, and function affect complex signaling and regulatory networks. These advances have significant implications for understanding the multitude of pathways that govern behavior and cognition and the response of the nervous system to injury and disease.
Re-establishing an occupational identity after stroke – a theoretical model based on survivor experience

Introduction Annually, approximately five million people worldwide are left with a permanent disability following a stroke, often with ongoing occupational issues. A deeper understanding of the emerging picture of occupational disruption and identity reconstruction after stroke is needed to inform client-centred practice. Method In-depth interviews using constructivist grounded theory methodology were conducted with six Queensland (Australia) adult stroke survivors. Data analysis identified themes which were woven into an overarching theory about the process of reintegration back into the community and living a meaningful life. Findings The central process of adjustment for all participants was reconstruction of an occupational identity, facilitated through connections within and across three domains – self, others and reality. Connecting with self involved emotional management; motivation; confidence; occupational engagement; and seizing control. Connecting with others included being understood; belonging; receiving help; and interactions. Connecting with reality meant confronting the impact on daily life and one's unfolding life story according to three realities: past reality, the reality of the stroke and future reality. Conclusion Exploring how stroke survivors form and maintain connections across the domains of self, reality and others provides a framework to ground occupational therapy services in the reality of individual needs from an occupational perspective.
Reward Dependent Invigoration Relates to Theta Oscillations and Is Predicted by Dopaminergic Midbrain Integrity in Healthy Elderly

Motivation can have invigorating effects on behavior via dopaminergic neuromodulation. While this relationship has mainly been established in theoretical models and studies in younger subjects, the impact of structural declines of the dopaminergic system during healthy aging remains unclear. To investigate this issue, we used electroencephalography (EEG) in healthy young and elderly humans in a reward-learning paradigm. Specifically, scene images were initially encoded by combining them with cues predicting monetary reward (high vs. low reward). Subsequently, recognition memory for the scenes was tested. As a main finding, we can show that response times (RTs) during encoding were faster for high reward predicting images in the young but not elderly participants. This pattern was resembled in power changes in the theta-band (4–7 Hz). Importantly, analyses of structural MRI data revealed that individual reward-related differences in the elderlies’ response time could be predicted by the structural integrity of the dopaminergic substantia nigra (SN; as measured by magnetization transfer (MT)). These findings suggest a close relationship between reward-based invigoration, theta oscillations and age-dependent changes of the dopaminergic system.
Supporting continuous consistency in multiplayer online games

Multiplayer online games have become very popular in recent years. However, they generally suffer from network latency problem. If a player changes its states, it will take some time before the changes are reflected to other concurrent players. This significantly affects the interactivity of the game. Sometimes, it may even cause disputes among the players. In this paper, we present a continuous consistency control mechanism to support collaborative game applications. Specifically, we propose a relaxed consistency control model for continuous events. Based on this model, we have developed a method to provide a global-wise continuous synchronization on the states of dynamic game objects presented among concurrent game players. We show the performance of the proposed method through some experiments.
Analysis of Design Principles and Requirements for Procedural Rigging of Bipeds and Quadrupeds Characters with Custom Manipulators for Animation

Character rigging is a process of endowing a character with a set of custom manipulators and controls making it easy to animate by an animators. These controls consists of simple joints, handles, or even separate character selection window. This research paper presents an automated rigging system for quadruped characters with custom controls and manipulators for animation. The full character rigging mechanism is procedurally driven based on various principles and requirements used by the riggers and animators. The automation is achieved initially by creating widgets according to the character type. These widgets then can be customized by the rigger according to the character shape, height and proportion. Then joint locations for each body parts are calculated and widgets are replaced programmatically. Finally a complete and fully operational procedurally generated character control rig is created and attached with the underlying skeletal joints. The functionality and feasibility of the rig was analyzed from various sources of actual character motion and a requirements criterion was met. The final rigged character provides an efficient and easy to manipulate control rig with no lagging and at high frame rate.
Knapsack Problems

Since no competitive online algorithms exist for general knapsack problems, we consider online variants of knapsack problems with two assumptions: (i) the weight of each item is very small compared to the knapsack capacity; (ii) the value-to-weight ratio of each item is lower and upper bounded by two positive constants L and U . We design a deterministic threshold-based algorithm for the online knapsack problem achieving a provably optimal competitive ratio ln(U/L) + 1. We also extend the online algorithm to variations of knapsack problems, include the multiple knapsack problem, the multiple-choice knapsack problem, and the generalized assignment problem, and discuss about their applications to sponsored search auctions.
Saliva composition and functions: a comprehensive review.

AIM The aim of this study was to perform a literature review about the composition and functions of saliva as well as describe the factors that influence salivary flow (SF) and its biochemical composition. BACKGROUND Saliva represents an increasingly useful auxiliary means of diagnosis. Sialometry and sialochemistry are used to diagnose systemic illnesses, monitoring general health, and as an indicator of risk for diseases creating a close relation between oral and systemic health. REVIEW This review provides fundamental information about the salivary system in terms of normal values for SF and composition and a comprehensive review of the factors that affect this important system. CONCLUSION Since several factors can influence salivary secretion and composition, a strictly standardized collection must be made so the above-mentioned exams are able to reflect the real functioning of the salivary glands and serve as efficient means for monitoring health. CLINICAL SIGNIFICANCE Since many oral and systemic conditions manifest themselves as changes in the flow and composition of saliva the dental practitioner is advised to remain up-to-date with the current literature on the subject.
Comparing two local methods for community detection in social networks

One of the most obvious features of social networks is their community structure. Several types of methods were developed for discovering communities in the networks, either from the global perspective or based on local information only. Local methods are appropriate when working with large and dynamic networks or when real-time results are expected. In this paper we explore two such methods and compare the results obtained on the sample of a co-authorship network. We study how much may detected communities vary according to the method used for computation.
Scalable middleware for context-aware ubiquitous computing

In ubiquitous computing systems it is important for applications to obtain context information and adapt their behavior according to context information. For a ubiquitous application to obtain and use context information, it is necessary to provide basic services to discover proper context providers and exchange/store/infer from context information. Moreover, when providing such services, non-functional issues such as scalability, security, heterogeneity, etc. should also be considered. In this paper we introduce the architecture for a middleware providing basic services. This middleware makes it easier for ubiquitous applications to obtain context information and for sensor networks to provide context information. We also explain how the proposed middleware addresses the non-functional issues.
Honeypot based unauthorized data access detection in MapReduce systems

The data processing capabilities of MapReduce systems pioneered with the on-demand scalability of cloud computing have enabled the Big Data revolution. However, the data controllers/owners worried about the privacy and accountability impact of storing their data in the cloud infrastructures as the existing cloud computing solutions provide very limited control on the underlying systems. The intuitive approach - encrypting data before uploading to the cloud - is not applicable to MapReduce computation as the data analytics tasks are ad-hoc defined in the MapReduce environment using general programming languages (e.g, Java) and homomorphic encryption methods that can scale to big data do not exist. In this paper, we address the challenges of determining and detecting unauthorized access to data stored in MapReduce based cloud environments. To this end, we introduce alarm raising honeypots distributed over the data that are not accessed by the authorized MapReduce jobs, but only by the attackers and/or unauthorized users. Our analysis shows that unauthorized data accesses can be detected with reasonable performance in MapReduce based cloud environments.
A novel multi-focus image fusion algorithm using edge information and K-mean segmentation

In this paper we introduce a new algorithm for multi-focus image fusion based on edge information of the source images and K-mean segmentation. The basic idea is to extract the edge information of the source images, divide the images into blocks and then select the blocks with higher edge information to construct the resultant fused image. The pixels in the unallocated blocks of the fused image are then selected from the source images by recursive K-mean segmentation and comparison of the corresponding segments of the source images. The major achievement of this algorithm is its excellent sharpness, clarity, superior edge preservation with minimum fusion artifacts.
Quorum-Sensing Control of Antibiotic Synthesis in Burkholderia thailandensis

ABSTRACT The genome of Burkholderia thailandensis codes for several LuxR-LuxI quorum-sensing systems. We used B. thailandensis quorum-sensing deletion mutants and recombinant Escherichia coli to determine the nature of the signals produced by one of the systems, BtaR2-BtaI2, and to show that this system controls genes required for the synthesis of an antibiotic. BtaI2 is an acyl-homoserine lactone (acyl-HSL) synthase that produces two hydroxylated acyl-HSLs, N-3-hydroxy-decanoyl-HSL (3OHC10-HSL) and N-3-hydroxy-octanoyl-HSL (3OHC8-HSL). The btaI2 gene is positively regulated by BtaR2 in response to either 3OHC10-HSL or 3OHC8-HSL. The btaR2-btaI2 genes are located within clusters of genes with annotations that suggest they are involved in the synthesis of polyketide or peptide antibiotics. Stationary-phase cultures of wild-type B. thailandensis, but not a btaR2 mutant or a strain deficient in acyl-HSL synthesis, produced an antibiotic effective against gram-positive bacteria. Two of the putative antibiotic synthesis gene clusters require BtaR2 and either 3OHC10-HSL or 3OHC8-HSL for activation. This represents another example where antibiotic synthesis is controlled by quorum sensing, and it has implications for the evolutionary divergence of B. thailandensis and its close relatives Burkholderia pseudomallei and Burkholderia mallei.