Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Incorporating Culture into the Theory of Planned Behavior: Predicting Smoking Cessation Intentions among College Students

The validity of the theory of planned behavior is quite well established in the literature. Thus, the goals of this study were to apply the theory of planned behavior to college student smokers and to test the addition of self-construals to the theory of planned behavior (specifically in predicting perceived behavioral control and subjective norms). Current college-aged smokers were surveyed on the key predictive components of the theory of planned behavior and their self-construals. In support of the theory of planned behavior, perceived behavioral control and subjective norms were significantly related to intention to quit smoking. However, attitude toward quitting smoking failed to significantly predict intention to quit smoking. A good fit was found for a modified theory of planned behavior model with self-construals. Interdependent self-construal was linked to subjective norms, which predicted intention to quit smoking. Independent self-construal was linked to perceived behavioral control, which predicted intention to quit smoking. Further research delineating other cultural antecedents of variables identified in the theory of planned behavior is required, as well as investigation into the potential of the modified model used in this study as a culturally sensitive framework for intervention.
Productive Failure as strategy against the double curse of incompetence

Learners who lack knowledge often also lack the ability to assess their limited competence correctly. Due to the incorrect self-assessment, they are unlikely to apply strategies that would help them to acquire relevant knowledge. This effect is known as the double curse of incompetence. When students solve problems prior to being taught the canonical solution in a so-called Productive Failure setting (PF), they usually come up with solution ideas that are erroneous or incomplete. Due to this struggle with the problem at hand, they may become aware of the limitations of their knowledge. Demonstrating how typical student solutions fail to solve the problem during subsequent instruction may further help students to assess their competence correctly. Improved awareness of limited competence, in turn, may foster fruitful learning strategies when learning the canonical solution. Indeed, our empirical study showed that students in PF conditions have a more realistic perception of their own knowledge than students in so-called direct instruction conditions (DI), and that they also ultimately learn more. The same pattern was true for students who were confronted with limitations of typical student solutions during instruction.
Artemisia iwayomogi Extract Attenuates High-Fat Diet-Induced Obesity by Decreasing the Expression of Genes Associated with Adipogenesis in Mice

The objective of the present study was to determine whether Artemisia iwayomogi (AI) extract reduces visceral fat accumulation and obesity-related biomarkers in mice fed a high-fat diet (HFD), and if so, whether these effects are exerted by modulation of the expression of genes associated with adipogenesis and inflammation. AI extract supplementation for 11 weeks significantly prevented HFD-induced increments in body weight, visceral adiposity, adipocyte hypertrophy, and plasma levels of lipids and leptin. Additionally, AI extract supplementation resulted in downregulation of adipogenic transcription factors (PPARγ2 and C/EBPα) and their target genes (CD36, aP2, and FAS) in epididymal adipose tissue compared to the HFD alone. The AI extract effectively reversed the HFD-induced elevations in plasma glucose and insulin levels and the homeostasis model assessment of insulin resistance index. Furthermore, the extract significantly decreased gene expression of proinflammatory cytokines (TNFα, MCP1, IL-6, IFNα, and INFβ) in epididymal adipose tissue and reduced plasma levels of TNFα and MCP1 as compared to HFD alone. In conclusion, these results suggest that AI extract may prevent HFD-induced obesity and metabolic disorders, probably by downregulating the expression of genes related to adipogenesis and inflammation in visceral adipose tissue.
Receivers' Self-Acceptance and the Effectiveness of Two-Sided Messages

Abstract Previous results of studies on the persuasive effects of two- versus onesided advertisements are somewhat contradictory. It is proposed in the present study that the contradictions stem from the absence in those previous studies of mediator variables characterizing the recipients of the messages and from the failure to make clear the distinction between the affective versus the cognitive persuasion processes. A 2 × 2 (Products x Levels of Message Sidedness) factorial design was used with 434 students, to whom a questionnaire was administered measuring cognitive and affective attitudes toward advertising messages, as well as the Phillips (1951) Self-Acceptance Scale. The results indicated that two-sided messages enhance cognitive but not affective scores; however, highly self-accepting recipients scored two-sided messages higher on the affective scale than did other recipients. These results help reconcile and make clear the findings of previous studies on the effectiveness of message sidedness.
Semantic Priming: Perspectives from Memory and Word Recognition

Part 1: Introduction. What Is Semantic Priming and Why Should Anyone Care? Part 2: Models. Spreading Activation Models. Becker's Verification Model. Compound-cue Models. Distributed Network Models. The Interactive-activation Model. Other Models. Part 3: Major Issues and Findings. Baselines. Automatic Versus Strategic Priming. Associative Versus 'Pure' Semantic Priming. Mediated Versus Direct Priming. Effects of Lag. Forward Versus Backward Priming. Subliminal Priming. Prime-task Effect. List Context Effects. Word Frequency, Stimulus Quality, and Relatedness Proportion. Semantic Priming and N400. Part 4: Summary and Conclusions. What We Have Learned about Semantic Priming
FAST PALMPRINT AUTHENTICATION BY SOBEL CODE METHOD

The ideal real time personal authentication system should be fast and accurate to automatically identify a person’s identity. In this paper, we have proposed a palmprint based biometric authentication method with improvement in time and accuracy, so as to make it a real time palmprint authentication system. Several edge detection methods, wavelet transform, phase congruency etc. are available to extract line feature from the palmprint. In this paper, Multi-scale Sobel Code operators of different orientations (0, 45, 90, and 135) are applied to the palmprint to extract Sobel-Palmprint features in different directions. The Sobel-Palmprint features extracted are stored in SobelPalmprint feature vector and matched using sliding window with Hamming Distance similarity measurement method. The sliding window method is accurate but time taking process. In this paper, we have improved the sliding window method so that the matching time reduces. It is observed that there is 39.36% improvement in matching time. In addition, a Min Max Threshold Range (MMTR) method is proposed that helps in increasing overall system accuracy by reducing the False Acceptance Rate (FAR). Experimental results indicate that the MMTR method improves the False Acceptance Rate drastically and improvement in sliding window method reduces the comparison time. The accuracy improvement and matching time improvement leads to proposed real time authentication system.
Emotion in Social Relations: Cultural, Group, and Interpersonal Processes

Within psychology, emotion is often treated as something private and personal. In contrast, this book tries to understand emotion from the 'outside,' by examining the everyday social settings in which it operates. Three levels of social influence are considered in decreasing order of inclusiveness, starting with the surrounding culture and subculture, moving on to the more delimited organization or group, and finally focusing on the interpersonal setting.
Population-based study of breast cancer survival in Cote d'Or (France): prognostic factors and relative survival.

BACKGROUND Few population-based studies have reported jointly analyses of relative survival according to the following prognostic factors: tumour-node-metastasis (TNM) stage, age, number of examined and positive nodes, hormonal status, histological Scarff, Bloom and Richardson (SBR) grade, tumour extension, hormone receptor status and tumour multifocal status. PATIENTS AND METHODS Data on female invasive breast cancer were provided by the Cote d'Or breast cancer registry. The Kaplan-Meier method and log-rank test were used to estimate and compare the survival probability at 1, 5, 10 and 15 years. The effect of prognostic factors on survival was assessed with crude and relative multivariate survival analyses. RESULTS Crude survival seemed to be worse in patients aged >60 years compared with those aged 45-60 (P > 0.0001), whereas relative survival did not differ. TNM stage, histological SBR grade, progesterone receptor status, tumour multifocal status, locoregional extension and the period of diagnosis were independent prognostic factors of crude and relative survival. CONCLUSION Breast cancer is influenced by many factors. Despite the absence of any association between the number of examined nodes and overall survival in this study, the number of nodes removed, in conjunction with other prognostic factors, may be useful in selecting node-negative patients for systemic therapy.
The global spread and replacement of canine parvovirus strains.

Canine parvovirus type 2 (CPV-2) became widespread during 1978 and was reported in many countries during 1978 and 1979. Earlier studies showed that CPV-2 was replaced in the U.S.A. around 1980 by an antigenically and genetically variant virus (CPV-2a). Here we show that CPV-2 was present in the U.S.A. , Japan, Belgium and Australia prior to 1980, but that between 1979 and 1982 CPV-2 was replaced by CPV-2a in all of those countries as well as in France and Denmark. Examination of sera collected between 1979 and 1984 from wild coyotes (Canis latrans) in the U.S.A. by an agar gel precipitin assay indicated that the coyotes were originally infected by CPV-2, but that after 1980 the juvenile coyotes were being infected with CPV-2a. The natural global replacement of CPV-2 by CPV-2a over a period of 2 to 3 years indicates that CPV-2a has a strong epidemiological advantage over CPV-2, although the mechanism involved remains to be defined.
Variation of "The effect of caching on a model of content and access provider revenues in information-centric networks"

This is a variation of the two-sided market model of [10]: Demand D is concave in ~ D in (16) of [10]. So, in (5) of [10] and after Theorem 2, take the parametric case 0 < a 1. Thus, demand D is both decreasing and concave in price p, and so the utilities (U = pD) are also concave in price. Also, herein a simpler illustrative demandresponse model is used in Appendix A and B.
Understanding domain "relevance" in web search

This paper presents results of a study that analyses people’s behavior in accessing dierent domains (e.g., images, movies, blogs, etc.) in web search. Our results show that the information seeking process of web users involves accessing information from various domains, which suggests the need to provide results from various domains in an aggregated manner. This study also indicates the existence of associations between query categories and domains, which suggests that it is important (and possible) to select domains that are \relevant" to the query.
Improved Innate Immunity of Endotoxin-Tolerant Mice Increases Resistance to Salmonella enterica Serovar Typhimurium Infection despite Attenuated Cytokine Response

ABSTRACT During infection with gram-negative bacteria, exposure of immune cells to lipopolysaccharide (LPS) from the bacterial cell membrane induces a rapid cytokine response which is essential for the activation of host defenses against the invading pathogens. Administration of LPS to mice induces a state of hyporesponsiveness, or tolerance, characterized by reduced cytokine production upon subsequent LPS challenge. In the model of experimental Salmonella entericaserovar Typhimurium infection of mice, we assessed the question of whether complete LPS tolerance induced by repetitive doses of LPS interfered with cytokine production and host defense against gram-negative bacteria. Although production of various cytokines in response to serovar Typhimurium was attenuated by LPS pretreatment, LPS-tolerant mice showed improved antibacterial activity, evidenced by a prolongation of survival and a continuously lower bacterial load. We attribute this protective effect to three independent mechanisms. (i) Peritoneal accumulation of leukocytes in the course of LPS pretreatment accounted for enhanced defense against serovar Typhimurium during the first 6 h of infection but not for decreased bacterial load in late-stage infection. (ii) LPS-tolerant mice had an increased capacity to recruit neutrophilic granulocytes during infection. (iii) LPS-tolerant mice showed threefold-increased Kupffer cell numbers, enhanced phagocytic activity of the liver, and strongly improved clearance of blood-borne serovar Typhimurium. These results demonstrate that despite attenuated cytokine response, acquired LPS tolerance is associated with enhanced resistance to infections by gram-negative bacteria and that this effect is mainly mediated by improved effector functions of the innate immune system.
Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 preintegration complexes containing discontinuous plus strands are competent to integrate in vitro

Despite intensive study, the mechanism by which many retroviruses complete reverse transcription has remained unclear. Most retroviruses and all lentiviruses fail to synthesize a full-length second strand of the viral cDNA (plus strand) efficiently in infected cells. For human immunodeficiency virus type 1, we find in synchronous infection experiments that full-length plus strands are rare (< 1% of products) at times when integration is likely taking place. Subviral nucleoprotein complexes containing such discontinuous cDNA can be extracted from infected cells and used to generate integration products in vitro. Analysis of such integration products using two-dimensional gel electrophoresis revealed that the discontinuous viral DNA was efficiently integrated into an added target DNA. These data support a model in which the discontinuities in the plus strand need not be sealed until after integration, potentially by the enzymes that are already thought to repair DNA gaps at the junctions between host and viral DNA.
A Vaccine Approach for the Prevention of Infections by Multidrug-resistant Enterococcus faecium*

Background: E. faecium infections are increasingly refractory to antibiotics, encouraging vaccine approaches. Results: Structures of novel protective surface polysaccharides and a teichoic acid were identified from a multidrug-resistant strain. Conclusion: Detection of these antigens on diverse clinical strains predicts broad coverage for a potential multivalent vaccine. Significance: Results suggest the feasibility of a glycoconjugate vaccine to prevent E. faecium disease. The incidence of multidrug-resistant Enterococcus faecium hospital infections has been steadily increasing. With the goal of discovering new vaccine antigens, we systematically fractionated and purified four distinct surface carbohydrates from E. faecium endocarditis isolate Tx16, shown previously to be resistant to phagocytosis in the presence of human serum. The two most abundant polysaccharides consist of novel branched heteroglycan repeating units that include signature sugars altruronic acid and legionaminic acid, respectively. A minor high molecular weight polysaccharide component was recognized as the fructose homopolymer levan, and a glucosylated lipoteichoic acid (LTA) was identified in a micellar fraction. The polysaccharides were conjugated to the CRM197 carrier protein, and the resulting glycoconjugates were used to immunize rabbits. Rabbit immune sera were evaluated for their ability to kill Tx16 in opsonophagocytic assays and in a mouse passive protection infection model. Although antibodies raised against levan failed to mediate opsonophagocytic killing, the other glycoconjugates induced effective opsonic antibodies, with the altruronic acid-containing polysaccharide antisera showing the greatest opsonophagocytic assay activity. Antibodies directed against either novel heteroglycan or the LTA reduced bacterial load in mouse liver or kidney tissue. To assess antigen prevalence, we screened a diverse collection of blood isolates (n = 101) with antibodies to the polysaccharides. LTA was detected on the surface of 80% of the strains, and antigens recognized by antibodies to the two major heteroglycans were co-expressed on 63% of these clinical isolates. Collectively, these results represent the first steps toward identifying components of a glycoconjugate vaccine to prevent E. faecium infection.
Convex Relaxations of Latent Variable Training

We investigate a new, convex relaxation of an expectation-maximization (EM) variant that approximates a standard objective while eliminating local minima. First, a cautionary result is presented, showing that any convex relaxation of EM over hidden variables must give trivial results if any dependence on the missing values is retained. Although this appears to be a strong negative outcome, we then demonstrate how the problem can be bypassed by using equivalence relations instead of value assignments over hidden variables. In particular, we develop new algorithms for estimating exponential conditional models that only require equivalence relation information over the variable values. This reformulation leads to an exact expression for EM variants in a wide range of problems. We then develop a semidefinite relaxation that yields global training by eliminating local minima.
Yukawa cosmology and intersecting brane models

In string theory, stabilization of moduli fields and their cosmological implications have been discussed by many authors. In this paper we do not consider conventional modulus, nor relative distance between two branes. We focus our attention to a relative position of three branes and discuss its cosmological problem. In general, stabilization of the relative position of three intersecting branes is much more difficult than the stabilization of conventional moduli fields. We will show that the area of the corresponding triangle is not a free parameter. Effective potential is generated from loop corrections in the low energy effective theory, which involves Yukawa couplings. Any model of intersecting brane world that utilizes finely tuned relative position of three branes requires another mechanism that keeps triangles at their desirable value. We consider a simplest model and discuss how relative positions of intersecting three branes affect cosmology.
A teoria dos jogos como metodologia de investigação científica para a cooperação na perspectiva da psicologia evolucionista

Game Theory is a mathematical approach that analyses formally conflict and cooperation. It is a scientific approach applicable to the construction of knowledge in many different areas such as Economy, Politics, Biology, Psychology and Sociology. We present in this article its application to the study of cooperation from an evolutionary approach and we believe this methodology can help researchers to understand the mechanisms that lead us to collaborate or to cheat in our social interactions. A theoretical description and a a few examples of its application are presented.
Classical Transient Receptor Potential 1 and 6 Contribute to Hypoxic Pulmonary Hypertension Through Differential Regulation of Pulmonary Vascular Functions

Hypoxic pulmonary hypertension is characterized by increased vascular tone, altered vasoreactivity, and vascular remodeling, which are associated with alterations in Ca2+ homeostasis in pulmonary arterial smooth muscle cells. We have previously shown that classical transient receptor potential 1 and 6 (TRPC1 and TRPC6) are upregulated in pulmonary arteries (PAs) of chronic hypoxic rats, but it is unclear whether these channels are essential for the development of pulmonary hypertension. Here we found that pulmonary hypertension was suppressed in TRPC1 and TRPC6 knockout (Trpc1−/− and Trpc6−/−) mice compared with wild-type after exposure to 10% O2 for 1 and 3 weeks. Muscularization of pulmonary microvessels was inhibited, but rarefaction was unaltered in hypoxic Trpc1−/− and Trpc6−/− mice. Small PAs of normoxic wild-type mice exhibited vasomotor tone, which was significantly enhanced by chronic hypoxia. Similar vasomotor tone was found in normoxic Trpc1−/− PAs, but the hypoxia-induced enhancement was blunted. In contrast, there was minimal vascular tone in normoxic Trpc6−/− PAs, but the hypoxia-enhanced tone was preserved. Chronic hypoxia caused significant increase in serotonin-induced vasoconstriction; the augmented vasoreactivity was attenuated in Trpc1−/− and eliminated in Trpc6−/− PAs. Moreover, the effects of 3-week hypoxia on pulmonary arterial pressure, right ventricular hypertrophy, and muscularization of microvessels were further suppressed in TRPC1-TRPC6 double-knockout mice. Our results, therefore, provide clear evidence that TRPC1 and TRPC6 participate differentially in various pathophysiological processes, and that the presence of TRPC1 and TRPC6 is essential for the full development of hypoxic pulmonary hypertension in the mouse model.
Pseudorotation in Water Trimer Isotopomers Using Terahertz Laser Spectroscopy

We report the first observation of five water trimer isotopomers using terahertz laser spectroscopy coupled with a pulsed slit jet expansion technique. A single c-type vibration−rotation-tunneling (VRT) band has been observed for each isotopomer between 40 and 50 cm-1. By considering all the experimental data, including results from isotopic substitution experiments, analyses of bifurcation tunneling splittings, and rotational analyses of the VRT bands, it has been possible to determine unambiguously the isotopic composition and structure of each isotopomer. We have also extended the measurements of the 41.1 cm-1 band in (D2O)3, first reported by Suzuki and Blake [Suzuki, S. ; Blake, G. A. Chem. Phys. Lett. 1994, 229, 499]. All six VRT bands have been assigned to pseudorotational transitions, which principally involve flipping of the “free” hydrogen or deuterium atoms in the trimer from above to below the plane of the OOO ring. Interestingly, four of the six bands have been assigned to the same transition.