Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Targets of Submilligram Carbonaceous Samples Using the High-Throughput Zn Reduction Method

The high-throughput Zn reduction method was developed and optimized for various biological/biomedical accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) applications of mg of C size samples. However, high levels of background carbon from the high-throughput Zn reduction method were not suitable for sub-mg of C size samples in environmental, geochronology, and biological/biomedical AMS applications. This study investigated the effect of background carbon mass (mc) and background 14C level (Fc) from the high-throughput Zn reduction method. Background mc was 0.011 mg of C and background Fc was 1.5445. Background subtraction, two-component mixing, and expanded formulas were used for background correction. All three formulas accurately corrected for backgrounds to 0.025 mg of C in the aerosol standard (NIST SRM 1648a). Only the background subtraction and the two-component mixing formulas accurately corrected for backgrounds to 0.1 mg of C in the IAEA-C6 and -C7 standards. After the background corrections, our high-throughput Zn reduction method was suitable for biological (diet)/biomedical (drug) and environmental (fine particulate matter) applications of sub-mg of C samples (≥ 0.1 mg of C) in keeping with a balance between throughput (270 samples/day/analyst) and sensitivity/accuracy/precision of AMS measurement. The development of a high-throughput method for examination of ≥ 0.1 mg of C size samples opens up a range of applications for 14C AMS studies. While other methods do exist for ≥ 0.1 mg of C size samples, the low throughput has made them cost prohibitive for many applications.
Affirmative Supportive Safe and Empowering Talk (ASSET): Leveraging the Strengths and Resiliencies of Sexual Minority Youth in School-Based Groups

School settings are often fraught with risks for sexual minority youth, yet the presence of targeted and supportive services within educational contexts is surprisingly rare. This article (a) describes the development of Affirmative Supportive Safe and Empowering Talk (ASSET), a gay-affirmative, school-based group counseling intervention created specifically to promote the resiliency of multiethnic sexual minority youth; (b) suggests group themes and approaches; and (c) discusses critical considerations for implementation. ASSET may be considered a promising intervention that provides opportunities to bridge the unique gaps in service for this vulnerable population.
The usefulness of ERP systems for effective management

Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems offer distinct advantages in this new business environment as they lower operating costs, reduce cycle times and (arguably) increase customer satisfaction. This paper examines, via a questionnaire, the underlying reasons why companies choose to adopt ERP systems, their impact on management process including implementation problems encountered. The empirical evidence confirms a number of benefits derived from ERP systems particularly for management process but also, problems encountered. Results provide the basis for future research on the potential of ERP systems, for more effective business integration.
Blood transfusions and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma is the fifth most frequently diagnosed cancer in the United States, with 53,900 new cases expected in 2002 (1). The incidence of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in the United States and western Europe has risen by at least 100 percent over the past five decades, with annual increases in incidence averaging 3–4 percent since the 1970s (2, 3). According to the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) cancer registry, the age-adjusted annual incidence rate from 1990 to 1997 in the United States was 15.5 per 100,000 population (4). This increase has involved all adult age groups, both sexes, and most geographic areas (2, 3, 5). Overall, incidence rates increase with age, are higher in men than in women, and are higher in Caucasians than in persons of other races/ethnicities (6). However, while incidence rates among Caucasians increased more slowly during the 1990s, they are still increasing rapidly among Blacks (6). In contrast, incidence rates of other immune system cancers such as Hodgkin’s disease, multiple myeloma, and lymphocytic leukemia have remained stable over the past 30 years (2, 3). Increases in non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma have also been seen globally. Overall, rates appear to be lowest in Asian nations and intermediate in Latin America as compared with the higher rates seen in western industrialized nations (7).
Research Policy and Review 13. Environment-Behaviour-Design Research Techniques: An Appraisal and Review of the Literature with Special Reference to Environmental and Planning-Related Information Needs in the Third World

Environment-behaviour-design research has contributed to the contextual understanding of man – environment interaction and promoted a more people-centred approach to environmental planning and design. Much of research, however, has concentrated on European and North American environments, and research techniques developed to date have not been fully assessed in the context of the Third World to stimulate an appropriate research focus and help provide much needed information on planning and designing Third World environments. In the present review, basic techniques in environmental research are explored to assess the various ways in which they may be best applied to provide a context for the growth of studies in the Third World. It is demonstrated that needed man – environment – behaviour – design information may be best derived by focusing on mundane analysis of environmental attitudes, values, and preferences of ordinary people, using a range of social survey and verbal interviews centred on surrogate stimuli environments.
L1 and L2 Reading: the Orthographic Effects of Japanese on Reading in English.

Transfer has been an important concept in research on second language (L2) learning. L2 reading research, for example, has considered aspects of learners' first language (L1) which appear to influence their L2 reading. Using psycholinguistic perspectives, this article focuses on the influence of L1 on L2 reading, specifically addressing the orthographic effects of Japanese (L1) on reading in English (L2). After providing background on the Japanese writing system and the systems of education in Japanese and English in Japan, an overview of key research on L1 orthographic effects on L2 word recognition leads into a discussion of how Japanese affects reading in English. In the conclusion, practical pedagogical questions are raised and the need for more research in this area is addressed.
Language Abilities After Left Hemisphere Brain Injury

This paper describes the language abilities of two twin pairs in which one twin (the experimental subject) suffered brain injury to the left cerebral hemisphere around the time of birth and one (the control) did not. One pair of twins was initially assessed at age 23 months, the other at about 30 months, and they were subsequently evaluated in their homes three times at about 6-month intervals. The results showed that subjects scored at or above the normal range on all formal tests. Their scores were similar to the controls' on the Bayley Scales of Infant Development, the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, and the receptive scale of the Sequenced Inventory of Communicative Development (SICD) but lower than the controls' on the Expressive One Word Test and the expressive scale of the SICD. Analysis of language samples revealed that the subject in one pair used a smaller vocabulary and shorter, less complex sentences than his twin, but progressed at a similar rate. In these cases the subtle differences in language abilities following perinatal left hemisphere brain injury were detected only through comparisons of brain-injured children to extremely well-matched controls. The relative difficulties experienced by one subject in syntactic skills were compatible with other studies on the sequelae of left hemispheric damage, but the difficulties in this case appeared to be a developmental delay, not deficit.
Greeks’ Identities in Smyrna, 19th - 20th Century Local and Global Parameters

In this research we pose an historic question about the Greek identities that have been grown and excelled in Smyrna, in the late of 19th-20th century. The basic elements for the construction of the Greek identity were the orthodox Christian religion, the language, the origins from ancient times, and the education. The awakening of the Greek national consciousness in the years of the Ottoman Rule relied mainly on the use of the Greek language, as it was grow, secretly or openly, by the church. The historical context refers to the 19th and the 20th century and we focus on the construction of the Greek Identities. The specific historic place is Smyra. The methodology that we use is the historic qualitative analysis of historic archives. We assume that the factors that compromise the Greek identity come from the religion, the education, the ethnicity, the culture, the citizenship, the locality and the relations with the other population they lived with.
Learning, Trust, and Technological Collaboration

Companies increasingly collaborate in their technological activities. Collaboration enables firms to learn about uncertain and turbulent technological change, and enhances their ability to deal with novelty. A number of studies reveal the importance for successful collaboration of high levels of inter-personal trust between scientists, engineers, and managers in the different partners. However, these individual relationships are vulnerable to labor turnover and inter-personal difficulties. Using two examples of highly successful technological collaborations, it is argued that the survival of such relationships in the face of these inevitable inter-personal problems requires the establishment of interorganizational trust. Such trust is characterized by community of interest, organizational cultures receptive to external inputs, and widespread and continually supplemented knowledge among employees of the status and purpose of the collaboration.
Is primary Sjögren’s syndrome a risk factor for malignancies different from lymphomas? What does the literature highlight about it?

Background Primary Sjögren’s syndrome (pSS) is a chronic systemic autoimmune disease with an elevated risk of developing lymphoproliferative malignancies (LM). Whether pSS is a risk factor or not for non-lymphoma malignancies (NLM) has been scarcely evaluated in the literature. Age is per se a risk factor for malignancies: patients over 70 years old have 4 times higher risk for cancers than adults. Even if the mean age of pSS onset usually is in the 4th and 5th decade, its onset in patients aged over 65 years (Elderly Onset pSS – EOpSS) is not uncommon. Material and methods To evaluate pSS as a risk factor for NLM we performed a systematic electronic search on PubMed in the period 2006–2016 to identify all the publications on this topic. The studies were eligible for inclusion if they reported specific Standardized Incidence Ratio (SIR) with 95% CI. Studies that did not report sufficient published and/or original data were excluded. Results Only 7 articles of 494 that we found in PubMed fulfilled the inclusion criterion. In the vast majority of these, SIR values were not statistically significant for NLM. The occurrence of NLM after LM was statistically significant in some studies and a NLM represented the most frequent cause of death. The possibility that NLM may represent a paraneoplastic syndrome seems much more frequent than LM, the risk of which increases with time after the diagnosis. Data regarding the neoplastic weight of EOpSS are mainly pointed out by case reports. Conclusions Primary Sjögren’s syndrome is not associated with an increased risk for NLM. However the possibility that NLM may appear after recovery from lymphoma should be carefully considered because it could be cause of the patient’s death. Similarly the possibility that NLM may represent a paraneoplastic syndrome must be highlighted. The relationship between EOpSS and SIRs for NLM should be deepened with studies on ad hoc cohorts.
On the flexibility of theoretical models for pattern recognition

This thesis is devoted to relaxing certain theoretical assumptions in pattern recognition models. In pattern recognition a predictor is trying to guess a discrete label of some object (usually a real vector), based on given examples of object-label pairs. Pattern recognition was developed to serve a growing number of practical applications; many of these applications still do not fit any theoretical model. The aim of this work is to make existing learning algorithms justifiably applicable to a wider range of practical tasks, by proving that certain theoretical assumptions can be relaxed without significant loss in performance. The first assumption this work aims to relax is that examples are independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.); this condition is traditionally imposed in the majority of works on pattern recognition, but is often violated in applications. It turns out that many results of pattern recognition theory carry over a weaker assumption. Namely, under the assumption that objects are conditionally independent and identically distributed given their labels, while the rate of occurrence of each label should be above some positive threshold. A broad class of predictors is found which retain their performance under the conditional i.i. d. assumption. The second assumption concerns the online scenario, according to which the recognition process consists of a sequence of trials: an object, a prediction, the correct label, another object, etc. While this scenario is convenient for theoretical studies, in reality the correct answers are usually not available
A Kohutian Theory of Narcissism

We organized this 2006 Summer School around a case approach and an engagement with eight cases, to illustrate psychotherapy with various forms of narcissism and as a forum for psychotherapists conducting such psychotherapy to share their experiences so that we can all learn from them. These cases not only reflect the diversity with which narcissism appears in clinical material, they also reveal the steady growth during the last decade in this country in the practice of long-term, intensive, psychoanalytically-oriented psychotherapy using a self-psychological approach. From consulting with you on most of these cases, and after witnessing your gaining of important understandings in working with these difficult clients, I thought it was time these experiences were shared with a wider clinical community. So these eight cases, which have a narcissistic “red thread” running through them, are the glue that holds this Summer School together. The importance of the contribution of our presenters and the persons described in these cases cannot be over-estimated.
A generalized transitive closure for relational queries

We augment relational algebra with a generalized transitive closure operator that allows for the efficient evaluation of a subclass of recursive queries. The operator is based on a composition operator which is as general as possible when the operator is required to be associative and when only relational algebra operators are used in its definition. The closure of such a composition can be computed using the well-known efficient algorithms designed for the computation of the usual transitive closure. Besides the case in which complete materialization of recursive relations are required, our strategy also yields an efficient solution in the case in which a selection is applied to the closure.
Disentangling the Complexity of Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinases and Reactive Oxygen Species Signaling

For about 2 million years, molecular oxygen arising from photosynthetic processes has become pivotal to almost all organisms. Reactive oxygen species (ROS), the partially reduced or activated derivatives of oxygen (hydrogen peroxide [H2O2], HO·, 1O2, O2−), are the highly reactive by-products of
ACTION! (Active Communication through Theatrical-based Intervention of Narratives) Designing a Language Curriculum

The purpose of this project was to create a language curriculum that improves upon three significant components of communication: (1) expressive language, (2) cognition, and (3) social skills in children with language impairment. The ACTION! curriculum was designed to enhance these three essential components by targeting narratives (fictional and personal), in an interactive way through three dramatic-play concepts: (1) scripts, (2) role-play, and (3) improvisation.
Immunodeficiency and immunotherapy in multiple myeloma

Multiple myeloma is a malignant tumour of plasma cells that remains incurable for the vast majority of patients, with a median survival of 2–3 years. It is characterized by the patchy accumulation of tumour cells within bone marrow leading to variable anaemia, bone destruction, hypercalcaemia, renal failure and infections. Immune dysfunction is an important feature of the disease and leads to infections that are both a major cause of morbidity and mortality and may promote tumour growth and resistance to chemotherapy. Numerous defects of the immune system have been described in multiple myeloma although the relative clinical importance of these remains elusive. There has been considerable interest in the identification of an autologous response against myeloma. Although T cells and humoral responses directed against myeloma‐associated antigens have been described, it is uncertain if the immune system plays a role in preventing or controlling myeloma cell growth. There is increasing interest in the potential role of immunotherapy but the success of these interventions is likely to be modified by the immunologically hostile environment associated with multiple myeloma. This review attempts to summarize the current knowledge relating to the immune defects found in multiple myeloma.
Pregnancy outcomes of US-born and foreign-born Japanese Americans.

OBJECTIVES This study investigated the birth outcomes of Japanese Americans, focusing on the role of the mother's place of birth. METHODS Single live births to US-resident Japanese American mothers (n = 37,941) were selected from the 1983 through 1987 US linked live birth-infant death files. RESULTS US-born mothers were more likely than foreign-born mothers to be less than 18 years old and not married, to start prenatal care early, and to more adequately use prenatal care. Infants of foreign-born Japanese Americans had a slightly lower risk of low birthweight.No significant differences were found between nativity groups for very low birthweight or neonatal, postneonatal, and infant mortality. The mortality rates of infants of US-born (6.2) and foreign-born (5.4) Japanese American women were below the US Year 2000 objective but still exceeded Japan's 1990 rate (4.6). However, low-birthweight percentages of the US-born group (5.7%) and the foreign-born group (5.0%) were similar to that of Japan (5.5%). CONCLUSIONS The infants of foreign-born Japanese-American women exhibited modestly better low-birthweight percentages than those of US-born Japanese Americans. This finding supports theories of the healthy immigrant.
Pixel-wise closed-loop registration in video-based augmented reality

In Augmented Reality (AR), visible misregistration can be caused by many inherent error sources, such as errors in tracking, calibration, and modeling. In this paper we present a novel pixel-wise closed-loop registration framework that can automatically detect and correct registration errors using a reference model comprised of the real scene model and the desired virtual augmentations. Registration errors are corrected in both global world space via camera pose refinement, and local screen space via pixel-wise corrections, resulting in spatially accurate and visually coherent registration. Specifically we present a registration-enforcing model-based tracking approach that weights important image regions while refining the camera pose estimates (from any conventional tracking method) to achieve better registration, even in the case of modeling errors. To deal with remaining errors, which can be rigid or non-rigid, we compute the optical flow between the camera image and the real model image rendered with the refined pose, enabling direct screen-space pixel-wise corrections to misregistration. The estimated flow field can be applied to improve registration in two distinct ways: (1) forward warping of modeled on-real-object-surface augmentations (e.g., object re-texturing) into the camera image, leading to surface details that are not present in the virtual object; and (2) backward warping of the camera image into the real scene model, preserving the full use of the dense geometry buffer (depth in particular) provided by the combined real-virtual model for registration, leading to pixel accurate real-virtual occlusion. We discuss the trade-offs between, and different use cases of, forward and backward warping with model-based tracking in terms of specific properties for registration. We demonstrate the efficacy of our approach with both simulated and real data.
A 60 GHz embedded SIW (substrate integrated waveguide) BPF Considering the Transition Effect

This paper presents embedded substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) BPF and microstrip line-to-embedded microstrip line transition based on LTCC for 60-GHz application. The embedded SIW BPF is placed in LTCC substrate for compact system and integrated passive and active device on the other layer. But embedded SIW BPF performance is changed by interconnection via and transition. In order to low-loss interconnection with embedded passive device, microstrip line-to-embedded microstrip line transition with compensation circuit using series and shut line is proposed and implemented. The insertion loss of fabricated transition with compensation circuit is approximately 1 dB and return loss is below 10 dB from 56 GHz to 69 GHz. The proposed embedded SIW BPF including transition with compensation circuit exhibits a total insertion loss 2 dB at 61.8 GHz and the return loss is better than 16.2 dB with a 3-dB fractional bandwidth of 11.7 % (7.23 GHz). The measured insertion loss is lower than those in previous works. The overall size of the fabricated filter is 8 mm × 2.7 mm× 0.3 mm.
Automatic Measures to Characterise Verbal Alignment in Human-Agent Interaction

This work aims at characterising verbal alignment processes for improving virtual agent communicative capabilities. We propose computationally inexpensive measures of verbal alignment based on expression repetition in dyadic textual dialogues. Using these measures, we present a contrastive study between Human-Human and Human-Agent dialogues on a negotiation task. We exhibit quantitative differences in the strength and orientation of verbal alignment showing the ability of our approach to characterise important aspects of verbal alignment.