Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Developing Payments for Ecosystem Services Approaches to Carnivore Conservation

Carnivores throughout the world are widely declining as a result of persecution by local human communities, a process that is driven by the costs that carnivores impose on people. Although many species of large carnivores are valued at global and national scales, the concentration of these species' costs at the local level creates a “market failure” underlying carnivore declines. A fundamental challenge to conserving large carnivores throughout the world is overcoming this market failure and creating viable local incentives for conserving carnivores. The widespread emergence of new conservation models termed “payments for ecosystem services” provides a potentially important framework for the wider development of incentive-based approaches to carnivore conservation. Under such payment schemes, local landholders are compensated based on tangible performance criteria related to conserving carnivores. Creative and adaptive experimentation is needed to overcome the technical, institutional, and financial challenges involved in applying these approaches to carnivore conservation.
Multi-band with contaminated training data

In this paper, we present a new approach for improving the robustness of automatic speech recognition systems to additive noise. This approach lies in the use of a particular training procedure (based on data contamination) in a particular architecture (the multi-band paradigm). With this framework, we expect to remove the drawbacks of both the corpus contamination approach which is the dependency to noise spectral characteristics, and the multi-band architecture which is its relative inefficiency in the case of wideband noise. This method has been tested on the AURORA 2 continuous digits task and compared to other robust methods such as spectral subtraction, J-RASTA filtering and missing data compensation. It yields very good performance on different kinds of additive noise, without any a priori knowledge of the noise power spectrum.
Smoothing techniques for solving semidefinite programs with many constraints

We use smoothing techniques to solve approximately mildly structured semidefinite programs with many constraints. As smoothing techniques require a specific problem format, we introduce an alternative problem formulation that fulfills the structural assumptions. The resulting algorithm has a complexity that depends linearly both on the number of constraints and on the inverse of the accuracy. Some numerical experiments show that smoothing techniques compares favorably with interior-point methods for very large-scale instances.
Presentation factors affecting reading behaviour in readers of newspaper media: an eye-tracking perspective

This paper examines reading behaviour in readers of printed and online newspaper media. The aim is to identify how much reading behaviour is dependent on various presentation factors, and how this dependence and its magnitude are related to output media. The work is based on review and analysis of empirical studies, primarily those employing methods using eye-tracking. The results show that some factors, such as text-based elements, size and placement, are an important guide to salience in both media. Images, on the other hand, have mostly been found not to elicit major visual attention online, affecting, for example, how ads are perceived. Reading behaviour is, however, a complicated process, and eye-tracking research does not consistently point in one direction.
Reduced saccadic resilience and impaired saccadic adaptation due to cerebellar disease

The term short‐term saccadic adaptation (STSA) captures our ability to unconsciously move the endpoint of a saccade to the final position of a visual target that has jumped to a new location during the saccade. STSA depends on the integrity of the cerebellar vermis. We tested the hypothesis that STSA reflects the working of a cerebellar mechanism needed to avoid ‘fatigue’, a gradual drop in saccade amplitude during a long series of stereotypic saccades. To this end we compared the kinematics of saccades of 14 patients suffering from different forms of cerebellar disease with those of controls in two tests of STSA and a test of saccadic resilience. Controls showed an increase in saccade amplitude (SA) for outward adaptation, prompted by outward target shifts, due to an increase in saccade duration (SD) in the face of constant peak velocity (PV). The decrease in SA due to inward adaptation was, contrariwise, accompanied by a drop in PV and SD. Whereas patients with intact vermis did not differ from controls, those with vermal pathology lacked outward adaptation: SD remained constant, as did SA and PV. In contrast, vermal patients demonstrated a significant decrease in SA, paralleled by a decrease in PV but mostly unaltered SD in the inward adaptation experiment as well as in the resilience test. These findings support the notion that inward adaptation is at least partially based on uncompensated fatigue. On the other hand, outward adaptation reflects an active mechanism for the compensation of fatigue, residing in the cerebellum.
Mood crossover and relational reciprocity

Purpose – Building on reciprocity and crossover theory, this paper aims to examine how mood crossover from one partner in a relational dyad influences the likelihood of reciprocal mood crossover from the other partner.Design/methodology/approach – Using a survey sample of 180 dual‐career married couples, the paper explores this phenomenon for both positive and negative mood crossover from husbands to wives and wives to husbands.Findings – The data supported the paper's four hypotheses. Mood crossover was found to operate in a similar fashion for both husbands and wives after controlling for negative and positive affectivity, work and home demands, work autonomy, and support from the organization, non‐work friends, and spouse. Specifically, when wives (husbands) reported positive (negative) mood crossover from their husbands (wives), their husbands (wives) also reported positive (negative) mood crossover from them.Research implications/limitations – The findings suggest positive and negative mood crossover.
A transductive framework of distance metric learning by spectral dimensionality reduction

Distance metric learning and nonlinear dimensionality reduction are two interesting and active topics in recent years. However, the connection between them is not thoroughly studied yet. In this paper, a transductive framework of distance metric learning is proposed and its close connection with many nonlinear spectral dimensionality reduction methods is elaborated. Furthermore, we prove a representer theorem for our framework, linking it with function estimation in an RKHS, and making it possible for generalization to unseen test samples. In our framework, it suffices to solve a sparse eigenvalue problem, thus datasets with 105 samples can be handled. Finally, experiment results on synthetic data, several UCI databases and the MNIST handwritten digit database are shown.
Clinical experience with insulin detemir, biphasic insulin aspart and insulin aspart in people with type 2 diabetes: Results from the Kerala cohort of the A1chieve study

Background: The A1chieve, a multicentric (28 countries), 24-week, non-interventional study evaluated the safety and effectiveness of insulin detemir, biphasic insulin aspart and insulin aspart in people with T2DM (n = 66,726) in routine clinical care across four continents. Materials and Methods: Data was collected at baseline, at 12 weeks and at 24 weeks. This short communication presents the results for patients enrolled from Kerala, India. Results: A total of 1732 patients were enrolled in the study. Four different insulin analogue regimens were used in the study. Patients had started on or were switched to biphasic insulin aspart (n = 1203), insulin detemir (n = 212), insulin aspart (n = 312), basal insulin plus insulin aspart (n = 1) and other insulin combinations (n = 1). At baseline glycaemic control was poor for both insulin naïve (mean HbA1c: 10.0%) and insulin user (mean HbA1c: 8.3%) groups. After 24 weeks of treatment, both the groups showed improvement in HbA1c (insulin naïve: −2.4%, insulin users: −0.5%). SADRs including major hypoglycaemic events or episodes did not occur in any of the study patients. Conclusion: Starting or switching to insulin analogues was associated with improvement in glycaemic control with a low rate of hypoglycaemia.
Content Domain, Measurement, and Validity of the Red Tape Concept

Red tape, generally defined as burdensome rules and procedures, is a relatively new construct unique to the public management literature. Like many public management constructs, red tape has received scant measurement attention. This study uses second-order confirmatory factor analysis to test two varying theoretical perspectives, one that treats red tape as a formative index, derived from inflexibility in various management subsystems (e.g., budgeting, personnel), and the other as a reflective scale where political accountability and other external influences drive red tape. Results for 16 items designated across five subdimensions suggest better support for the reflective scale perspective. Implications for red tape research are discussed.
An improved return-mapping scheme for nonsmooth yield surfaces : PART Ithe Haigh-Westergaard coordinates

The paper is devoted to the numerical solution of elastoplastic constitutive initial value problems. An improved form of the implicit return-mapping scheme for nonsmooth yield surfaces is proposed that systematically builds on a subdifferential formulation of the flow rule. The main advantage of this approach is that the treatment of singular points, such as apices or edges at which the flow direction is multivalued involves only a uniquely defined set of non-linear equations, similarly to smooth yield surfaces. This paper (PART I) is focused on isotropic models containing: a) yield surfaces with one or two apices (singular points) laying on the hydrostatic axis; b) plastic pseudo-potentials that are independent of the Lode angle; c) nonlinear isotropic hardening (optionally). It is shown that for some models the improved integration scheme also enables to a priori decide about a type of the return and investigate existence, uniqueness and semismoothness of discretized constitutive operators in implicit form. Further, the semismooth Newton method is introduced to solve incremental boundary-value problems. The paper also contains numerical examples related to slope stability with available Matlab implementation.
Coordinated Expression of Dopamine Receptors in Neostriatal Medium Spiny Neurons

In recent years, the distribution of dopamine receptor subtypes among the principal neurons of the neostriatum has been the subject of debate. Conventional anatomical and physiological approaches have yielded starkly different estimates of the extent to which D1 and D2 class dopamine receptors are colocalized. One plausible explanation for the discrepancy is that some dopamine receptors are present in physiologically significant numbers, but the mRNA for these receptors is not detectable with conventional techniques. To test this hypothesis, we examined the expression of DA receptors in individual neostriatal neurons by patch-clamp and RT-PCR techniques. Because of the strong correlation between peptide expression and projection site, medium spiny neurons were divided into three groups on the basis of expression of mRNA for enkephalin (ENK) and substance P (SP). Neurons expressing detectable levels of SP but not ENK had abundant mRNA for the D1a receptor. A subset of these cells (∼50%) coexpressed D3 or D4receptor mRNA. Neurons expressing detectable levels of ENK but not SP had abundant mRNA for D2 receptor isoforms (short and long). A subset (10–25%) of these neurons coexpressed D1aor D1b mRNAs. Neurons coexpressing ENK and SP mRNAs consistently coexpressed D1a and D2 mRNAs in relatively high abundance. Functional analysis of neurons expressing lower abundance mRNAs revealed clear physiological consequences that could be attributed to these receptors. These results suggest that, although colocalization of D1a and D2 receptors is limited, functional D1 and D2 class receptors are colocalized in nearly one-half of all medium spiny projection neurons.
Faculty Development for Simulation Programs: Five Issues for the Future of Debriefing Training.

STATEMENT Debriefing is widely recognized as a critically important element of simulation-based education. Simulation educators obtain and/or seek debriefing training from various sources, including workshops at conferences, simulation educator courses, formal fellowships in debriefings, or through advanced degrees. Although there are many options available for debriefing training, little is known about how faculty development opportunities should be structured to maintain and enhance the quality of debriefing within simulation programs. In this article, we discuss 5 key issues to help shape the future of debriefing training for simulation educators, specifically the following: (1) Are we teaching the appropriate debriefing methods? (2) Are we using the appropriate methods to teach debriefing skills? (3) How can we best assess debriefing effectiveness? (4) How can peer feedback of debriefing be used to improve debriefing quality within programs? (5) How can we individualize debriefing training opportunities to the learning needs of our educators?
Development of Nano-Structured HTSC for Application in Medicine

Microscopy is very important in scientific research, particularly in the development of new materials for several engineering applications including medicine. The recently developed high-Tc superconducting materials and their performance at higher magnetic fields and higher temperatures are crucial important for real applications. The performance properties are mainly controlled by nanostructures within the materials. The experimental results clarified that the demand to operate at the economical liquid nitrogen temperature and in high magnetic fields (> 15 T, H//c-axis) is only possible by controlling and tailoring the nanostructures during the growth process. The scanning tunneling microscope (STM), transmission electron microscope (TEM), and dynamic force microscopy (DFM) analysis enabled to optimize the material performance by a thorough analysis of the nanostructures. As a result, the newly developed LRE-123 bulk material were observed to have an extraordinary performance up to the liquid oxygen temperature. Further, calculated trapped field values using experimental Jc-B data and numerical simulation for NEG-123 with 30 mol% Gd-211 (70 nm particles) clarified that nanostructures are the key to improve the performance of the materials around liquid nitrogen temperature. The present results indicate that the melt-processed high-Tc superconductor material will enable to construct superconducting super-magnets for several industrial uses including medical applications.
Mortality in adult congenital heart disease.

AIMS Mortality in adults with congenital heart disease is known to be increased, yet its extent and the major mortality risks are unclear. METHODS AND RESULTS The Dutch CONCOR national registry for adult congenital heart disease was linked to the national mortality registry. Cox's regression was used to assess mortality predictors. Of 6933 patients, 197 (2.8%) died during a follow-up of 24 865 patient-years. Compared with the general national population, there was excess mortality, particularly in the young. Median age at death was 48.8 years. Of all deaths, 77% had a cardiovascular origin; 45% were due to chronic heart failure (26%, age 51.0 years) or sudden death (19%, age 39.1 years). Age predicted mortality, as did gender, severity of defect, number of interventions, and number of complications [hazard ratio (HR) range 1.1-5.9, P < 0.05]. Several complications predicted all-cause mortality beyond the effects of age, gender, and congenital heart disease severity, i.e. endocarditis, supraventricular arrhythmias, ventricular arrhythmias, conduction disturbances, myocardial infarction, and pulmonary hypertension (HR range 1.4-3.1, P < 0.05). These risks were similar in patients above and below 40 years of age. Almost all complications predicted death due to heart failure (HR range 2.0-5.1, P < 0.05); conduction disturbances and pulmonary hypertension predicted sudden death (HR range 2.0-4.7, P < 0.05). CONCLUSION Mortality is increased in adults with congenital heart disease, particularly in the young. The vast majority die from cardiovascular causes. Mortality risk, particularly by heart failure, is increased by virtually all complications. Complications are equally hazardous in younger as in older patients.
Feature learning during the acquisition of perceptual expertise

Does feature evolution stop once we have acquired sufficient features to perform a recognition task? With extended practice, novices may develop a more sophisticated feature space that allows them to perform more accurately or quickly. Our work on perceptual expertise indicates that feature learning and reorganization can continue even after an initial set of features is available to represent a novel class of objects.
Voice Disorders in the General Population: Prevalence, Risk Factors, and Occupational Impact

Objectives: Epidemiologic studies of the prevalence and risk factors of voice disorders in the general adult population are rare. The purpose of this investigation was to 1) determine the prevalence of voice disorders, 2) identify variables associated with increased risk of voice disorders, and 3) establish the functional impact of voice disorders on the general population.
THE EFFECTS OF A TRYPTOPHAN-HISTIDINE DEFICIENCY IN A MUTANT OF ESCHERICHIA COLI

Cells placed in a favorable environment are capable of duplicating themselves indefinitely. This implies that the over-all reaction rates of each of the synthetic systems must be balanced as every component of the cell is duplicated in the same timeinterval. It is evident that the various systems must be somehow coupled together since completely independent systems could not maintain these balanced rates in various environmental conditions. Thus, a coupling between the carbohydrate metabolism and synthetic activities is demonstrated by the decrease in oxygen uptake when nitrogen is removed from the medium. At the same time there is a degree of independence among the various metabolic systems. For example, carbohydrate metabolism proceeds at a reduced rate even though growth is stopped by lack of nitrogen. Also, certain ion deficiencies have more pronounced effects on some synthetic activities than on others. We have attempted to examine the degree of coupling among the various systems by observing the metabolism of mutant cells of Escherichia coli which were prevented from duplicating by the lack of one or more required amino acids. This deficiency would be expected to block protein synthesis, but the immediate effect on other systems, in particular nucleic acid synthesis, could not be predicted. Radioactive carbon, sulfur, and phosphorus were utilized as indicators of synthesis; growth and respiration were observed by the usual techniques. On completing these experiments it became apparent that the method utilized in this work might also be of value in determining the mode of action of various rtoisons and antibiotics.
Deficits in phonology and past tense morphology

Neuropsychological dissociations between regular and irregular past tense verb processing have been explained in two ways: (a) separate mechanisms of a rule-governed process for regular verbs and a lexical-associative process for irregular verbs; (b) a single system drawing on phonological and semantic knowledge. The latter account invokes phonological impairment as the basis of poorer performance for regular than irregular past tense forms, due to greater phonological complexity of the regular past. In 10 nonfluent aphasic patients, the apparent disadvantage for the production of regular past tense forms disappeared when phonological complexity was controlled. In a same-different judgment task on spoken words, all patients were impaired at judging regular stem and past-tense verbs like man/manned to be different, but equally poor at phonologically matched non-morphological discriminations like men/mend. These results indicate a central phonological deficit that is not limited to speech output nor to morphological processing; under such a deficit, distinctions lacking phonological salience, as typified by regular past tense English verbs, become especially vulnerable.
Community computer environment supports a COP, CBR approach to solve difficulties

This paper presents a Community Computer Environment (CCE), which supports a Community of Practice (CoP). This community brings together teachers users of a teaching method allowing their students to learn and acquire professional knowledge and know-how. This method uses an approach based on a group per project pedagogy. During its use in a classroom, teachers can find difficulties to apply the method. We detail the layer of the environment that permits to assist teachers in solving their problems. This layer is based on Case-Based Reasoning (CBR).
Serotonin and Carbachol Induced Suppression of Synaptic Excitability in Rat CA1 Hippocampal Area: Effects of Corticosteroid Receptor Activation

Serotonin (5HT) and the cholinergic analogue carbachol (CCh) act on neurons in the hippocampal CA1 area through pre‐ and post‐synaptic receptors. Previously, it was shown that post‐synaptic actions of 5HT and CCh are affected by corticosteroids: predominant activation of high affinity mineralocorticoid receptors resulted in small hyperpolarizing responses to 5HT and small depolarizing responses to CCh; additional activation of low affinity glucocorticoid receptors led to increased 5HT and CCh responses. In the present study, we examined the consequences of steroid modulation of these post‐synaptic membrane effects and/or possible pre‐synaptic effects by 5HT and CCh for the excitability in the CA1 area, using extracellular field potential or intracellular recordings from individual pyramidal neurons. Steroid treatment by itself did not affect the amplitude or paired pulse properties of synaptic responses. In slices from adrenally intact rats, both 5HT (3–30 μM) and CCh (1–10 μM) induced a dose‐dependent suppression of the synaptic field responses evoked in the CA1 area by stimulation of the Schaffer collaterals. No changes in these transmitter effects were observed after adrenalectomy. The 5HT induced suppression of the population spike amplitude was, however, reduced after selective occupation of mineralocorticoid receptors. Intracellularly, no significant steroid dependent modulation of (pre‐synaptic) 5HT evoked changes in synaptic responses was observed. These data suggest that the steroids modulate post‐synaptic but not pre‐synaptic 5HT effects and that this modulation is reflected in the excitability of the CA1 region. The CCh induced suppression of the population spike was not affected by corticosteroid receptor activation, indicating that the previously found steroid modulation of post‐synaptic CCh effects has no clear consequences for the CA1 excitability.