Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Volume 1: Risk factors for aggression in childhood and adolescence.Volume 2: Selective attention to emotional facial expressions in aggressive adolescent males

This thesis consists of two volumes. The first is a literature review exploring the development of aggression in adolescent males with a summary of research that outlines a complex multi-factor trajectory across the lifespan towards aggression in males. The literature review focuses on how flawed social cognitive processes act as a proximal mechanism that facilitates aggressive and violent responses during social interactions and how a social information processing model has been proposed to explain aggression in adolescent males. The second paper presents findings for an empirical study of adolescent males with either high or low levels of aggression who completed a visual probe task with emotive facial image stimuli. The paper represents the first study employing a visual probe design with a sample of adolescent males identified with high levels of aggression. Findings revealed evidence of reduced attentional bias to angry expressions (angry) in those with high levels of aggression compared to non-aggressive controls. Implications for social information processing theory are discussed.
The Role of Radiation Therapy in the Management of Brain Metastases

The occurrence of brain metastases in oncology has become an increasing frequency event. Their management is complex and aims to control the symptoms and avoid neurological degradation. Radiotherapy retains a prominent place in any therapeutic approach. However, their prognosis remains bleak. We report our experience in the management of these metastases. Retrospective study of 129 patients with cerebral metastases treated between January 2011 and December 2016 at the Oncology Department of the Mohammed VI University Hospital Center in Marrakech, Morocco. The mean age was 47.34 years (range 19 and 78 years). The sex ratio was 1.04. Clinical symptomatology was dominated by intracranial hypertension (95.65%), signs of focus (30%) and convulsive seizures (23.91%). Metastasis was indicative of the disease in 13% of cases. The primary focus was bronchial (37.3%), mammary (35.8%), digestive (10.2%), gynecological (6.6%), dermatological (4.3), urological (2.9%) and undetermined in 2.9% cases. The predominant histological types were infiltrating ductal carcinoma and bronchial adenocarcinoma. The lesions were multiple in 76.08% of the cases. Excision surgery was performed in 8.69% of cases. All patients were treated with brain radiotherapy according to two protocols; 30Gy in 10 sessions (78.26% of cases) and 20Gy in 5 sessions (21.73% of the cases). With an average follow-up of 7.3 months (between 1 month and 15 months), symptom improvement was observed in 63.04% of cases and neurocognitive disorders in 8.16% of cases. Radiotherapy retains a pivotal role in the treatment of brain metastases, although the optimal associations of systemic and local treatments remain to be defined.
Prevalence and risk factors for trachoma in Sarlahi district, Nepal.

AIMS: To estimate the prevalence of trachoma in preschool children in Sarlahi district, Nepal, and to identify risk factors for the disease. METHODS: A stratified random sample of 40 wards was selected for participation in a trachoma survey. Within each ward, a systematic 20% sample of children 24-76 months of age was chosen to determine the presence and severity of trachoma using the World Health Organisation grading system. RESULTS: A total of 891 children were selected and 836 (93.8%) were examined for trachoma from December 1990 to March 1991. The prevalence of active trachoma was 23.6% (21.9% follicular and 1.7% intense inflammatory). Cicatricial trachoma was not seen in this age group. The prevalence of trachoma ranged from 0 to 50% across wards with certain communities at much higher risk for trachoma than others. Three year old children had the highest prevalence of follicular (25.5%) and intense inflammatory trachoma (4.3%). Males and females had similar prevalence rates. Wards without any tube wells were at higher risk than those with one or more tube wells. Lower rates of trachoma were seen in families who lived in cement houses, had fewer people per room, more servants, more household goods, animals, and land. Hence, less access to water, crowding and lower socioeconomic status were risk factors for trachoma. CONCLUSIONS: Although follicular trachoma is prevalent, intense inflammatory trachoma is relatively rare and scarring was not observed in this preschool population. Hence, this population may not be at high risk for repeat infections leading to blindness in adulthood.
SAT Techniques for Modal and Description Logics

In the last two decades, modal and description logics have provided a theoretical framework for important applications in many areas of computer science. For this reason, the problem of automated reasoning in modal and description logics has been thoroughly investigated. In this chapter we show how efficient Boolean reasoning techniques have been imported, used and integrated into reasoning tools for modal and description logics. To this extent, we focus on modal logics, and in particular mainly on K(m). In particular, we provide some background in modal logics; we describe a basic theoretical framework and we present and analyze the basic tableau-based and DPLL-based techniques; we describe optimizations and extensions of the DPLL-based procedures; we introduce the automata-theoretic/OBDD-based approach; finally, we present the eager approach.
A Proposal for an Economic Attendance Management System

This paper proposes an attendance management system (AMS) after reviewing existing AMSs. The proposed AMS uses smartphones carried by students and the wireless access points that are installed to allow Wi-Fi compliant devices such as smartphones to access to the local area network. There is almost no university campus where the local area network is not available. Since the proposed AMS does not use any other devices except the smartphones and access points, it is easy and economical to be installed. The proposed system recognizes all students in the class as attendees as long as every student carries a smartphone that is registered to the AMS. The proposed system recognizes all students who are not in the classroom as absentees. During the preparation stage, each access point is assigned a unique dynamic Internet Protocol (IP) address allocation range
Does Relationship Matter? Buyer-Supplier Relationship and the Association between Supplier Concentration and Cost Structure

We examine the association between supplier concentration and cost structure and how such association varies with the nature of buyer-supplier relationship. We predict a positive association between supplier concentration and cost elasticity. Furthermore, we predict that the positive association is less pronounced when there is a more cooperative buyer-supplier relation. We test our predictions with hand-collected data from the supplier information disclosed by Chinese listed firms. Using three proxies for buyer-supplier relationship: buyer firm ownership structure (state-owned enterprises vs. non-state-owned enterprises), the length of buyer-supplier relationship, and enterprise trustworthiness, we find results consistent with our predictions. Our study contributes to the cost management literature and interfirm relationship literature by showing that the relation between supplier concentration and cost structure varies with the nature of buyer-supplier relationship.
Comparing Operating Systems Scalability on Multicore Processors by Microbenchmarking

SUMMARY Multicore processor architectures have become ubiquitous in today’s computing platforms, especially in parallel computing installations, with their power and cost advantages. While the technology trend continues towards having hundreds of cores on a chip in the foreseeable future, an urgent question posed to system designers as well as application users is whether applications can receive su ﬃ cient support on today’s operating systems for them to scale to many cores. To this end, people need to understand the strengths and weaknesses on their support on scalability and to identify major bottlenecks limiting the scalability, if any. As open-source operating systems are of particular interests in the research and industry communities, in this paper we choose three operating systems (Linux, Solaris and FreeBSD) to systematically evaluate and compare their scalability by using a set of highly-focused microbenchmarks for broad and detailed understanding their scalability on an AMD 32-core system. We use system proﬁling tools and analyze kernel source codes to ﬁnd out the root cause of each observed scalability bottleneck. Our results reveal that there is no single operating system among the three standing out on all system aspects, though some system(s) can prevail on some of the sys-tem aspects. For example, Linux outperforms Solaris and FreeBSD significantly for ﬁle-descriptor-and process-intensive operations. For applications with intensive sockets creation and deletion operations, Solaris leads FreeBSD, which scales better than Linux. With the help of performance tools and source code instrumentation and analysis, we ﬁnd that synchronization primitives protecting shared data structures in the kernels are the major bottleneck limiting system scalability.
Employee experience of workplace supervisor contact and support during long-term sickness absence

Abstract Purpose: Workplace support is an important factor in promoting successful return to work. The purpose of this article is to examine relationships between supervisor contact, perceived workplace support and demographic variables among employees on long-term sickness absence. Materials and method: Data were collected from 204 public employees at a municipality in Sweden who had been on long term sickness absence (60 days or more) using a 23 question survey instrument that collected information on demographic variables, supervisor contact and perceived workplace support. Results: Most injured employees (97%) reported having contact with their supervisors during their sickness absence, with a majority (56%) reporting high levels of support, including early (58.6%) and multiple (70.7%) contacts. Most were pleased with amount of contact (68.9%) and the majority had discussed workplace accommodations (68.1%). Employees who self-initiated contact, felt the amount of contact was appropriate, had a personal meeting with their supervisors and discussed workplace adjustments reported experiencing higher levels of support from supervisors. Conclusions: Employees on long-term sickness absence appreciate contact from their supervisors and this is associated with perceived workplace support. However, the amount and employee experience of this contact is important. It needs to be perceived by employees as supportive, which includes a focus on strategies (e.g., work adjustment) to facilitate a return to work. Supervisor training is required in this area to support the return to work process. Implications for Rehabilitation Contact and support from workplace supervisors is important to workers on long-term sickness absence. Employees appreciate frequent contact from supervisors during long-terms sickness absence. Employees appreciate a personal meeting with supervisors and the opportunity to discuss issues related to return to work such as work adjustment. Employers should provide training to supervisors on how to communicate and assist employees on long-term sickness absence.
Distributed and parallel random coordinate descent methods for huge convex programming over networks

In this paper we develop parallel random coordinate gradient descent methods for minimizing huge linearly constrained separable convex problems over networks. Since we have coupled constraints in the problem, we devise a family of algorithms that updates in parallel τ ≥ 2 (block) components per iteration. Moreover, the algorithms are adequate for distributed and parallel computations and their complexity per iteration is cheaper than of the full gradient method when the number of nodes N in the network is huge. We prove that for these methods we obtain in expectation an o-accurate solution in at most O(N over τε) iterations and thus the convergence rate depends linearly on the number of (block) components to be updated. We also describe several applications that fit in our framework, in particular the convex feasibility problem. Numerically, we show that the parallel coordinate descent method with τ > 2 accelerates on its basic counterpart corresponding to τ = 2.
Free Cash Flow as a Reliable Proxy for Predicting Stock Returns

Bad faith and corruption within financial reporting and inconsistent representation of corporate earnings questions the quality of earnings as an available means of measuring firm performance, and furthermore, predicting stock returns. Using direct method cash flows provides a clear picture of a firm’s health and sustainability and enables an understanding of the economic reality of a firm’s operations beyond the bottom line. This paper tests the explanatory power of free cash flows for the cross-section of stock returns alongside those of earnings. The extension of the Fama-French 3 Factor model with a “Clean” Free Cash Flow (CFCF) factor and a “Bottom-line” (BL) Earnings (Net income) factor reveals that both factors are significant in predicting annualized stock returns. Across a sample of various firm sizes, further data re-construction shows that free cash flows are an important measure in stock selection. This paper will contrast and reflect upon other empirical work supporting earnings or other methods for stock yield estimators.
The Prognostic Value of 18F-Fluorodeoxyglucose Uptake by Using Serial Positron Emission Tomography and Computed Tomography in Patients With Stage III Nonsmall Cell Lung Cancer

Objectives:To determine the prognostic value of standardized uptake value (SUV) of 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose by serial positron emission tomography and computed tomography (PET/CT) in nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Methods:Forty-seven patients (37 male, 10 female) with NSCLC in stage III were enrolled. All patients had at least 2 serial 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose PET/CT scans, both before and after therapy, and the maximum standardized uptake value (SUVmax) of the primary lung lesion was calculated. The value changes of SUVmax before and after treatment were calculated according to the following equation: &Dgr;SUV = (SUVbefore − SUVafter) × 100%/SUVbefore. Results:Of the 47 eligible patients, after a median follow-up of 23.5 months (range, 13–34 months), 26 patients had local and regional recurrence or metastasis and 21 remained disease-free. Significant differences in SUVmax were observed either before (P1 = 0.003) or after (P2 = 0.002) treatment between the 2 groups. However, the percent change of SUVmax before and after therapy were not significantly different (P = 0.054). Conclusions:SUV from 2 serial PET/CT scans, before and after concurrent chemoradiotherapy were significant predictors for local and regional recurrence or metastasis. SUV is a significant predictor for local and regional recurrence or metastasis in patients of NSCLC.
Informed Trading in Option Markets around Accelerated Share Repurchase Announcements

We find that the informed trading measures “abnormal O/S ratio”, “abnormal option volume” and “abnormal implied volatility skew” are negatively related to event period abnormal returns for accelerated share repurchases (ASRs) announcements. This effect is stronger for call options and with more liquid options. The abnormal implied volatility spread has information content only for firms with the more liquid options. Further, we show that abnormal returns are positively (negatively) related to the abnormal call (put) volatility surface for options with longer terms to maturity. Overall, our study provides strong evidence of informed trading around ASR announcements.
The Novel Anticonvulsant Drug, Gabapentin (Neurontin), Binds to the Subunit of a Calcium Channel (*)

Gabapentin (1-(aminomethyl)cyclohexane acetic acid; Neurontin) is a novel anticonvulsant drug, with a mechanism of action apparently dissimilar to that of other antiepileptic agents. We report here the isolation and characterization of a [3H]gabapentin-binding protein from pig cerebral cortex membranes. The detergent-solubilized binding protein was purified 1022-fold, in a six-step column-chromatographic procedure, with a yield of 3.9%. The purified protein had an apparent subunit M of 130,000, and was heavily glycosylated. The partial N-terminal amino acid sequence of the M 130,000 polypeptide, EPFPSAVTIK, was identical to that reported for the α subunit of the L-type Ca channel from rabbit skeletal muscle (Hamilton, S. L., Hawkes, M. J., Brush, K., Cook, R., Chang, R. J., and Smilowitz, H. M.(1989) Biochemistry 28, 7820-7828). High levels of [3H]gabapentin binding sites were found in membranes prepared from rat brain, heart and skeletal muscle. Binding of [3H]gabapentin to COS-7 cells transfected with α cDNA was elevated >10-fold over controls, consistent with the expression of α protein, as measured by Western blotting. Finally, purified L-type Ca channel complexes were fractionated, under dissociating conditions, on an ion-exchange column; [3H]gabapentin binding activity closely followed the elution of the α subunit. [3H]Gabapentin is the first pharmacological agent described that interacts with an α subunit of a voltage-dependent Ca channel.
Proceedings of the eleventh international joint conference on Measurement and modeling of computer systems

It is our great pleasure to welcome you to SIGMETRICS/Performance 2009. SIGMETRICS is the flagship conference of the ACM special interest group for the computer systems performance evaluation community. Performance is the flagship conference of the IFIP working group on performance modeling and analysis. Every three years, the two conferences are held jointly, and this is the eleventh joint conference. This year, we will continue with several of the innovations introduced at last year's SIGMETRICS program. The main conference will again be a full three days, featuring 27 papers, 21 posters, and three invited talks from computer science luminaries, both academic and industrial. We will also reprise the demo competition and student thesis panel that were so well received last year. We are introducing an industrial information seminar, to provide an opportunity for students and academics to hear from representatives in industrial research about performance-related projects and their impact on deployed products and services. Supplementing the main conference are four interesting workshops, ranging from the venerable to the avant-garde. The workshop on MAthematical performance Modeling and Analysis (MAMA) continues its eleventh year as a forum for talks on early research in the more mathematical areas of computer performance analysis. The workshop on Hot Topics in Metrics (HotMetrics), which had a stellar inauguration last year, will reprise its role in helping to identify "big" and "hard" problems in performance evaluation and to develop innovative approaches to solving them. We also introduce two new workshops this year: GreenMetrics will explore how improvements to or new uses of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can contribute towards efforts to minimize global climate change, a problem of increasing importance in modern society. The Learning for Networking workshop will investigate the use of machine learning techniques to tackle the increasingly complex architecture and control features in telecommunications and computer networks. This year also features a splendid series of tutorials, on topics ranging from social networks to data-center networks, from data-flow programming to packet-flow configuration, and from internet measurement to internet service construction.
A review - intestinal spirochaetal infections of pigs: an overview with an Australian perspective.

Intestinal spirochaetes have become recognized over the last 25 years as an important group of enteric pathogens. These bacteria cause disease in a variety of animal species, especially pigs, poultry, dogs and human beings (Hampson and Stanton, 1996). In pigs, the bacteria cause two well-recognized conditions, swine dysentery (SD), and intestinal spirochaetosis (IS) (Taylor et al., 1980; Hampson, 1991). A third condition, referred to here as spirochaetal colitis (SC), is less clearly defined, but is associated with certain weakly beta-haemolytic spirochaetes other than those causing IS. Swine dysentery is one of the most significant production-limiting diseases of pigs and is a common problem throughout the world. The significance of IS and SC in reducing production is less clear; certainly, clinical manifestations of the conditions are much less severe than with SD. The prevalence of the diseases is not known, but the authors' observations suggest that IS occurs commonly in pigs in Australia and North America, whilst cases of IS and SC also have been reported in Europe (Taylor, 1992).
Turnover Determinants of New Employees in International Hotels

The high turnover rates of new employees in the first career year usually forces hotel human resource managers to face difficult dilemmas. This work presents a modified Delphi method and an analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method to objectively select international hotels based on the results of interviews with experts in the field. Analysis results indi-cate that the experts select the international hotels with the potential highest turnover risk based on the following rank: internal contentment, external contentment, and organization proffer. Moreover, sensitivity analysis surveys weight of the degree of influence with an alternative hierarchy.
Deaths and Hospital Injuries Due to the 1999 Taiwan Earthquake

To assess risk factors associated with deaths and injuries in a major earthquake area. First, we used the official data including 824 seismic deaths, 271 serious injuries, and 302 moderate injuries to elucidate and compare the demographic, structural, and injury characteristics among the three groups. Secondly, a population based case-control study was conducted to examine how structural factors, medical assistance, personal characteristic, and behavior and preparedness contributed to injury. The age-specific proportions of the three groups were similar and higher in the elderly population. Severity of injuries was proportional to the proportion of completely collapsed houses. Fracture was the most frequently observed among the serious injuries and moderate injuries. Head injury was the major body site caused by the collapsed houses for the seismic deaths. In a case-control study, people who were trapped (adjusted OR = 12.31, 95% CI: 6.29 - 24.28) had the greatest risk of serious injuries, followed by those who were illiterate, in completely collapsed houses, and experienced unprepared flares. This study reveals that improvement in anti-seismic construction, head protect, and literacy education could decrease the effect of disaster. Further, using a flashlight to see in the dark, and moving slowly rather than running should be rigorously recommended as common-sense responses.
A comparison of different models for collection of WEEE in Europe

This work studies the two Reverse Logistics models used in European countries for collection of Waste of Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), compares their advantages and disadvantages and proposes a framework that helps the decision making process. The paper is articulated as follows. First, a literature review has been carried out regarding the two systems of WEEE Collection in the European Union: i.e. National Collective Scheme and Clearing House Model. Second, an integrated framework is proposed for managing Reverse Logistics in the disposal of electrical and electronic products and their components at the end of their lifetime. The proposed model may help in the decision making process of which collection system better fits the specific characteristics of a country. 