Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The effect of zinc and manganese source in the diet for laying hens on eggshell and bones quality

The study was conducted to evaluate the effect of zinc and manganese source (inorganic vs. organic) in the diet for hens on laying performance, eggshell quality and chosen parameters of bones. Experiment was carried out on 84 Hy Line Brown hens, from 25 to 70 weeks of age, allocated to seven experimental groups, each contain - ing 12 hens individually caged on wire-mesh floor. All layers were fed the same basal diet contained in 1 kg 52 mg Zn and 30 mg Mn. In experimental treatments basal diet was supplemented with 30 mg Zn/kg and 50 mg Mn/kg and inorganic forms of Zn (ZnO) and Mn (MnO) were gradually replaced (in 0, 50 or 100%) with their organic sources (amino acid complexes). Egg production, egg weight, feed intake and feed efficiency were not affected by dietary treatments. Substitution of Zn and Mn oxides with amino acid complexes of microelements had also no effect on physical and geometrical parameters of tibia, ash content in tibia and in toes, eggshell percent, eggshell thickness and eggshell density, but improved ( P < 0.05) eggshell breaking strength in late phase of laying cycle (at 62 and 70 weeks of age). Obtained results indicate that use of organic complexes of Zn and Mn could alleviate the negative effect of hen age on eggshell breaking strength.
Physical performance in middle age and old age: good news for our sedentary and aging society.

BACKGROUND Physical performance often declines in middle age, but it is unclear to what extent this is due to biological aging. It can be difficult to determine whether such physical changes are truly age-related, as they might alternatively be explained as the negative consequences of a sedentary lifestyle. METHODS We assessed the endurance of a physically active subgroup of the population by performing an age- and sex-stratified analysis of over 900,000 running times of marathon and half-marathon participants aged 20 to 79. We also analyzed the responses of 13,171 marathon and half-marathon runners to a questionnaire about sports, lifestyle, and health. RESULTS No significant age-related decline in performance appears before age 55. Moreover, only a moderate decline is seen thereafter; in fact, 25% of the 65- to 69-year-old runners were faster than 50% of the 20- to 54-year-old runners. Our survey also revealed that more than 25% of the 50- to 69-year-old runners had started their marathon training only in the past 5 years. CONCLUSION Performance losses in middle age are mainly due to a sedentary lifestyle, rather than biological aging. The large contingent of older "newcomers" among marathon runners demonstrates that, even at an advanced age, non-athletes can achieve high levels of performance through regular training.
EFFECTS OF STAFF TRAINING ON STAFF KNOWLEDGE AND ATTITUDES ABOUT SEXUALITY

Residents of long-term care facilities continue to have the need for sexual expression and intimacy. Staff of these facilities often have insufficient knowledge about elderly sexuality and frequently have negative attitudes toward expression of sexuality by the elderly. Importantly, they do not understand their role in helping the residents express sexuality and meet their intimacy needs. This study evaluated staff training materials designed to improve staff knowledge and attitudes. A pilot test of each of the four modules was conducted to test the short-term effects of the programs. The study participants were 109 staff from four settings who completed one or more of the four modules. Program effects were measured by completing the Knowledge and Attitudes Toward Elderly Sexuality (KATES) as a pretest and posttest. Pretest scores were significantly related to gender (men as a group had higher scores than women) and ethnicity (whites had a higher mean score than African Americans). Results indicated significant gains in knowledge for each of the four modules.
Pathways from fertility history to later life health: results from analyses of the English study of ageing

Background: Previous research shows associations between fertility histories and later life health. The childless, those with large families, and those with a young age at entry to parenthood generally have higher mortality and worse health than parents of two or three children. These associations are hypothesised to reflect a range of biosocial influences but underlying mechanisms are poorly understood. Objectives: To identify pathways from fertility histories to later life health by examining mediation through health related behaviours, social support and strain, and wealth. Additionally to examine mediation through allostatic load –an indicator of multisystem physical dysregulation hypothesised to be an outcome of chronic stress. Methods: Associations between fertility histories, mediators and outcomes were analysed using path models. Data were drawn from the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. Outcomes studied were a measure of allostatic load based on 9 biomarkers and self-reported long-term illness which limited activities. Results: Early parenthood (<20 for women, <23 for men) was positively associated with higher (worse) allostatic load and long-term illness. These associations were partly mediated through wealth, smoking, and physical activity. Wealth, smoking, physical activity and and social strain also mediated associations between larger family size, itself associated with early parenthood, and health outcomes. We found no significant associations between childlessness and allostatic load or long-term illness except for an assocaition between childlessness and long-term illness among women in models adjusted only for age. Conclusions: In England early parenthood and larger family size are associated with less wealth and poorer health behaviours and this accounts for much of the association with health. At least part of this operates through stress related physiological dysfunction (allostatic load).
Visual cortex plasticity in the mouse: The role of Notch1 and proteomic analysis of new regulatory mechanisms

How the visual cortex responds to specific stimuli is strongly influenced by visual experience during development. Monocular deprivation, for example, changes the likelihood of neurons in the visual cortex to respond to input from the deprived eye and reduces its visual acuity. As these functional changes are accompanied by extensive reorganization of neurite morphology and dendritic spine turnover, genes regulating neuronal morphology are likely to be involved in visual plasticity. In recent years Notch1 has been shown to mediate contact inhibition of neurite outgrowth in postmitotic neurons and implicated in the pathogenesis of various degenerative diseases of the CNS. Here, we provide the first evidence for the involvement of neuronal Notch1 signalling in synaptic morphology and plasticity in the visual cortex. By making use of the Cre/Lox system we expressed an active form of Notch1 in cortical pyramidal neurons several weeks after birth. We show that neuronal Notch1 signals reduce dendritic spineand filopodia densities in a cell-autonomous fashion and limit long-term potentiation in the visual cortex. Upon monocular deprivation, these effects of Notch1 activity predominantly affect responses to visual stimuli with higher spatial frequencies. This results in an enhanced effect of monocular deprivation on visual acuity.
Unfairness, Anger, and Spite: Emotional Rejections of Ultimatum Offers

This paper addresses an anomaly in experimental economics, the rejection of ultimatum offers, and uses a psychological explanation for this essentially economic event. The wounded pride/spite model predicts that informed, knowledgeable respondents may react to small ultimatum offers by perceiving them as unfair, feeling anger, and acting spitefully. Results of a large scale experiment support the model, showing that rejections were most frequent when respondents could evaluate the fairness of their offers and attribute responsibility to offerers. In addition, anger was a better explanation of the rejections than perceptions that the offers were unfair. The discussion addresses the rarely studied but frequently observed emotions that negotiations provoke.
An Examination of Moderator Effects in the Four-Stage Loyalty Model

Oliver’s 1997 four-stage loyalty model proposes that loyalty consists of belief, affect, intention, and action. Although this loyalty model has recently been subject to empirical examination, the issue of moderator variables has been largely neglected. This article fills that void by analyzing the moderating effects of selected personal and situational characteristics, using a sample of 888 customers of a large do-it-yourself retailer. The results of multi-group causal analysis suggest that these moderators exert an influence on the development of the different stages of the loyalty sequence. Specifically, age, income, education and expertise, price orientation, critical incident recovery, and loyalty card membership are found to be important moderators of the links in the four-stage loyalty model. Limitations of the study are outlined, and implications for both research and managerial practice are discussed.
Let's add some psychology (and maybe even some evolution) to the mix

Henrich et al.'s nice cross-cultural experiments would benefit from models that specify the decision rules that humans use and the specific developmental pathways that allow cooperative norms to be internalized. Such models could help researchers to design further experiments to examine human social adaptations. We must also test whether the “same” experiments measure similar constructs in each culture, using additional methods and measures.
Iquitos Virus: A Novel Reassortant Orthobunyavirus Associated with Human Illness in Peru

Oropouche (ORO) virus, a member of the Simbu serogroup, is one of the few human pathogens in the Orthobunyavirus genus in the family Bunyaviridae. Genetic analyses of ORO-like strains from Iquitos, Peru, identified a novel reassortant containing the S and L segments of ORO virus and the M segment of a novel Simbu serogroup virus. This new pathogen, which we named Iquitos (IQT) virus, was first isolated during 1999 from a febrile patient in Iquitos, an Amazonian city in Peru. Subsequently, the virus was identified as the cause of outbreaks of “Oropouche fever” during 2005 and 2006 in Iquitos. In addition to the identification of 17 isolates of IQT virus between 1999 and 2006, surveys for neutralizing antibody among Iquitos residents revealed prevalence rates of 14.9% for ORO virus and 15.4% for IQT virus. Limited studies indicate that prior infection with ORO virus does not seem to protect against disease caused with the IQT virus infection. Identification of a new Orthobunyavirus human pathogen in the Amazon region of Peru highlights the need for strengthening surveillance activities and laboratory capabilities, and investigating the emergence of new pathogens in tropical regions of South America.
Examining the Communication Audit

The authors discuss criticisms of the ICA Communication Audit and present a modified version of the survey instrument, retitled Survey of Organizational Communication (SOC). The researchers present the descriptive statistics on 1,500 subjects from 17 regional organizations using the ICA Communication Audit instruments. Reliability tests and factor analyses suggest revisions in the instruments. Reliabilities on this regional sample are higher than the national data bank. T-tests between the old and new data bank suggest that the data is significantly different. The researchers suggest the use of centrally controlled data collection procedures and regional data banks. Results are discussed and new procedures for administering the audit and developing recommendations are included.
Perspectives on Discourse: The State of the Art

There are few areas in the study of language and literature that are more exciting than discourse analysis. This is because discourse has been variously defined as language, as message, as cognitive process and social action by the individual engaged in verbal interaction, as social process between individuals in verbal interaction, and as culture and ideology. Discourse is an extremely rich field of enquiry that lies at the centre of the humanities and social sciences. Indeed, the question arises whether discourse analysis in all of its manifestations can properly qualify as an area of linguistics. Discourse analysis borders on and overlaps with linguistics ‘proper’, with psycholinguistics and psychology, and with sociolinguistics, sociology and anthropology. Therefore it may be more usefully regarded as a field of research in the social sciences that requires the interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary co-operation between linguistics, psychology, sociology, and anthropology, to mention the most obvious contributing disciplines; and let us not forget poetics, which has certainly been important for the development of a view of discourse as language, as message and as individual cognition (or interpretation). The need for interaction between diverging disciplines is precisely the reason why discourse analysis constitutes such an exciting challenge. By the same token, there are few areas of research that are potentially more confusing. Discourse analysis accommodates linguists who address literature, linguists who talk about mental processing and social interaction, psychologists who focus on language as joint social action, and sociologists who are mainly interested in individual cognitive inferencing. All of these involve crossdisciplinary or interdisciplinary investigation, which requires a good deal of expertise in more than one discipline. This is the risky part. To zoom in for one moment on the linguistic view of discourse, discourse analysts focusing on language do not just address language structure and process in use, they can also make connections with all other aspects of discourse in order to explain what they see. They can examine discourse as language with special attention to the encoding of a message, or as a reflection of, or stimulus for, individual cognition and action, or as a reflection of or contribution to social interaction, or as the expression of a symbol in a culture. They can even invoke more of these perspectives at the same time, and this involves a considerable balancing act. A good example is Sylvie Dubois and David Sankoff’s contribution to the new Handbook of Discourse Analysis, edited by Deborah Schiffrin et al. Dubois and Sankoff examine the structural properties of enumerations, a phenomenon lying at the juncture between discourse as language and as message (p. 287). They relate
Performance modeling of message dissemination in vehicular ad hoc networks

In this paper, we present an analytical study for the performance of message dissemination in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) at the steady state. First, we find the probability that a receiving node is exposed to collisions and hidden terminal activities in a multi-hop VANET using a novel approach. Based on this result, we then derive the distribution of the number of concurrent transmissions in the system at the steady-state, through a birth-death process analysis. The distribution has a simple product form solution. Numerical results are provided, along with simulation results that confirm the accuracy of the analysis. In particular, it is shown that the distribution of the number of concurrent transmissions has a bell-shape curve. Results also show that the probability that a receiving node is exposed to interference increases as a function of the transmission range, an increase which becomes faster for networks with higher node densities.
Developmental College Student Self-Regulation: Results from Two Measures

This study compared 34 lower-achieving (developmental) first-time college students' self-reported self-regulation strategies from a Likert scale to those they reported in structured interviews. Likert scales have offered convenient administration and evaluation and have been used to identify what and how learners study. The reported study activity of regular admission college students' has predicted their subsequent college achievement; in the same study, responses did not support concurrent validity for the lower-achieving students (Nist, Mealey, Simpson, & Kroc, 1990). College students who failed to meet regular admission requirements enrolled in 2 sections of a college study skills course reported significantly different strategy use between their Likert and interview responses on five of the fifteen strategies classified by each of the measures.
What would a socially just education system look like?: saving the minnows from the pike

This paper first draws on the political philosophy of R.H. Tawney to outline some universal principles for the provision of socially just education. It then moves onto a more pragmatic approach, analysing where the injustices lie in contemporary British education and outlining policies and practices that are socially just, not in an instrumental neoliberal sense but in terms of more egalitarian social democratic and socialist traditions. The final section of the paper focuses on Finland as the closest example of a socially just education system, before arguing for a rethinking and reworking of Tawney’s educational thinking for the twenty-first century.
An Efficient Algorithm for Estimating State Sequences in Imprecise Hidden Markov Models

We present an efficient exact algorithm for estimating state sequences from outputs or observations in imprecise hidden Markov models (iHMMs). The uncertainty linking one state to the next, and that linking a state to its output, is represented by a set of probability mass functions instead of a single such mass function. We consider as best estimates for state sequences the maximal sequences for the posterior joint state model conditioned on the observed output sequence, associated with a gain function that is the indicator of the state sequence. This corresponds to and generalises finding the state sequence with the highest posterior probability in (precise-probabilistic) HMMs, thereby making our algorithm a generalisation of the one by Viterbi. We argue that the computational complexity of our algorithm is at worst quadratic in the length of the iHMM, cubic in the number of states, and essentially linear in the number of maximal state sequences. An important feature of our imprecise approach is that there may be more than one maximal sequence, typically in those instances where its precise-probabilistic counterpart is sensitive to the choice of prior. For binary iHMMs, we investigate experimentally how the number of maximal state sequences depends on the model parameters. We also present an application in optical character recognition, demonstrating that our algorithm can be usefully applied to robustify the inferences made by its precise-probabilistic counterpart.
Experience with a New Architecture Review Process Using a Globally Distributed Architecture Review Team

We present in this paper our experience with applying a new architecture review process that uses a globally distributed review team to assess architecture risk of a complex mission critical system. The new architecture review process uses aspects of the checklist-based architecture review process and the operational scenario-based architecture review process. We present the architecture review process approach, a summary of the architecture under review and the detailed analysis of the most important operational scenarios. We conclude by presenting a summary of the lessons we learned using the new process.
Effects of second-generation antipsychotic medication on smooth pursuit performance in antipsychotic-naive schizophrenia.

CONTEXT Analyses of smooth pursuit eye movement parameters in patients with schizophrenia provide information about the integrity of neural networks mediating motion perception, sensorimotor transformation, and cognitive processes such as prediction. Although pursuit eye tracking deficits have been widely reported in schizophrenia, the integrity of discrete components of pursuit responses and the effect of second-generation antipsychotic medication on them are not well established. OBJECTIVE To examine different components of smooth pursuit performance in antipsychotic-naive patients with schizophrenia before and after treatment with second-generation antipsychotic medication. DESIGN, SETTING, AND PARTICIPANTS Thirty-three antipsychotic-naive patients with schizophrenia performed 3 different smooth pursuit paradigms designed to evaluate specific components of the pursuit response. All of the patients were retested after 6 weeks of treatment with risperidone or olanzapine. Testing was also performed with 39 matched healthy individuals. Thirteen patients and 21 healthy participants were retested after 26 and 52 weeks. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Pursuit initiation, maintenance gain (ratio of eye velocity over target velocity), and frequency of catch-up saccades during pursuit maintenance. RESULTS Prior to treatment, pursuit gain when tracking less predictable ramp targets tended to be reduced, latency of pursuit initiation was speeded, and catch-up saccade frequency was increased during predictive pursuit. After antipsychotic treatment initiation, pursuit gain decreased with ramp targets, indicating treatment-emergent impairments in sensorimotor processing. No changes were observed for predictive pursuit. Exploratory analyses in the subgroup with follow-up to 1 year revealed that these effects continued through long-term follow-up with some partial normalization at 1 year. Deficits were unrelated to drug dosage and clinical ratings. CONCLUSIONS Impaired sensorimotor function was observed after initiation of second-generation antipsychotic medications, which may be explained by their serotonergic antagonism of brainstem sensorimotor systems. Predictive mechanisms supported by frontostriatal-cerebellar circuitry were not affected by treatment initiation and appear able to compensate for treatment-emergent sensorimotor impairments during predictive tracking.
Optimal Service Ordering in Decentralized Queries Over Web Services

The problem of ordering expensive predicates (or filter ordering) has recently received renewed attention due to emerging computing paradigms such as processing engines for queries over remote Web Services, and cloud and grid computing. The optimization of pipelined plans over services differs from traditional optimization significantly, since execution takes place in parallel and thus the query response time is determined by the slowest node in the plan, which is called the bottleneck node. Although polynomial algorithms have been proposed for several variants of optimization problems in this setting, the fact that communication links are typically heterogeneous in wide-area environments has been largely overlooked. The authors propose an attempt to optimize linear orderings of services when the services communicate directly with each other and the communication links are heterogeneous. The authors propose a novel optimal algorithm to solve this problem efficiently. The evaluation of the proposal shows that it can result in significant reductions of the response time.