Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evidence for Incomplete Neutralization in Chilean Spanish

Abstract Background/Aims: In Chilean Spanish, syllable- and word-final /s/ are frequently weakened to an [h]-like segment or completely deleted. In word-final position, /s/ serves as the plural morpheme, so its deletion renders a site for potential neutralization with singular items. Chilean scholars have previously described differences in the vowel preceding weakened or deleted /s/ distinguishing it from non-/s/-final words, but this putative incomplete neutralization has not yet been acoustically verified, nor have its conditioning factors been explored. The primary purpose of this study was to assess via phonetic analysis of spontaneous speech whether neutralization of final vowels in singular words and plural words in Chilean Spanish is indeed incomplete, as hypothesized by scholars during the 20th century. Additionally, these vowels were also compared to the vowels of monomorphemic /s/-final words in order to ensure that the attested singular-versus-plural differences were not simply indicative of closed syllable laxing processes. Methods: Vowels were extracted from the spontaneous speech of 20 Chilean Spanish speakers and acoustically analyzed via VoiceSauce. Results: The results revealed that final /a/ vowels of plural words were found to be breathier than singular vowels but less breathy than the final vowels of monomorphemic words, and that plural /o/ was significantly fronted. They also demonstrated increased breathiness on /e/ vowels closed by /s/, regardless of morphological status. Conclusion: These results provide the first account of incomplete neutralization of plural vowel correlates in spontaneous speech in Chilean Spanish, and they offer evidence for closed syllable processes in this particular dialect, in alignment with an exemplar-theoretic approach.
The Use of LMS AMESim in the Fault Diagnosis of a Commercial PEM Fuel Cell System

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T Article history: Received: 30 October, 2017 Accepted: 18 January, 2018 Online: 30 January, 2018 The world’s pollution rates have been increasing exponentially due to the many reckless lifestyle practices of human beings as well as their choices of contaminating power sources. Eventually, this lead to a worldwide awareness on the risks of those power sources, and in turn, a movement towards the exploration and deployment of several green technologies emerged. Proton Exchange Membrane Fuel cells (PEMFCs) are one of those green technologies. However, in order to be able to successfully and efficiently deploy PEMFC systems, a solid fault diagnosis scheme is needed. The development of accurate model based fault diagnosis schemes has been imposing a lot of challenge and difficulty on researchers due to the high complexity of the PEMFC system. Furthermore, confidentiality issues with the manufacturer can also impose further constraints on the model development of a commercial PEMFC system. In this work, an approach to develop an accurate PEMFC system model despite the lack of crucial system information is presented through the use of Siemens LMS AMESim software. The developed model is then used to develop a fault diagnosis scheme that is able to detect and isolate five system faults.
Sibling interaction as a facilitator for talent development in sport

While current research has begun to address parental influences on talent development in sport, sibling interaction remains relatively under-examined. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the underpinning mechanisms through which sibling interaction impacts on talent development. Retrospective phenomenological interviews were conducted with four sets of siblings (n = 9), where at least one sibling had competed to an elite level. Findings revealed several higher order themes that impacted positively on the talented athletes’ development: regularity of interaction in sport, emotional interpersonal skills, rivalry, resilience, co-operation and separation. Separation appeared as the athlete reached elite status, suggesting that these former mechanisms primarily impact during the development phase. Such findings support and extend the sibling, elite sport and talent development literature and provide valuable insight for both practitioners and academics. Importantly, coaches should consider a sibling’s role as an important mechanism outside of the formal coaching structure for talent development.
A review on the effects of extremely low frequency electromagnetic field (ELF-EMF) on cytokines of innate and adaptive immunity

ABSTRACT Extremely low frequency electromagnetic field (ELF-EMF) is produced extensively in modern technologies. Numerous in vitro and in vivo studies have shown that ELF-EMF has both stimulatory and inhibitory effects on the immune system response. This review was conducted on effects of ELF-EMF on cytokines of innate and adaptive immunity. Mechanisms of ELF-EMF, which may modulate immune cell responses, were also studied. Physical and biological parameters of ELF-EMF can interact with each other to create beneficial or harmful effect on the immune cell responses by interfering with the inflammatory or anti-inflammatory cytokines. According to the studies, it is supposed that short-term (2-24 h/d up to a week) exposure of ELF-EMF with strong density may increase innate immune response due to an increase of innate immunity cytokines. Furthermore, long-term (2-24 h/d up to 8 years) exposure to low-density ELF-EMF may cause a decrease in adaptive immune response, especially in Th1 subset.
Total circulating cell‐free miRNA in plasma as a predictive biomarker of the thyroid diseases

Thyroid cancer is a common endocrine cancer. Great progress has been made in resolving its molecular mechanisms in recent years. The molecular changes observed in thyroid cancer can be used as biomarkers for diagnostic, prognostic and therapeutic purposes. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are important components in biological and metabolic pathways, such as developmental stages, signal transduction, cell maintenance, and differentiation. Hence, their malfunctioning can expose humans to malignancies. miRNA expressions have been shown to be dysregulated in different tumor types, like thyroid cancer, and may cause tumor initiation and progression.
The Impacts of HIV/AIDS InterventionPractices and Associated Factors amongDebre Markos University Community

Background: Human Immunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome impact assessment is used for the way to mobilize responses to HIV/ AIDS in the education sector and to refine planning in responses to HIV/ AIDS. But the impact of HIV/AIDS intervention is not well known in Debre Markos university community and similar setting of the country. Objective: To assess the level of impact of HIV/AIDS intervention practices and associated factors among Debre Markos University community. Methods: Institution based cross-sectional survey was conducted on 739 study participants selected using multistage sampling techniques from students, academic staffs, and administrative staffs. Data were collected using structured self-administered questionnaire. The collected data were entered into EPI data and exported to SPSS 20 version for analysis. Logistic regression model was used to fit data in order to identify factors associated with the impact of HIV/AIDS intervention. Results: Majority, 535 (78.9%) of respondents were a 20-24 year with a mean age of 22.62 (± 3.58 SD) years. In this study 245 (36.1%) of participants had average and above score of impact information. Age of respondents found to have statistically significant association with the impact of HIV/AIDS intervention practice. The impact of HIV/AIDS intervention practice was 4.32 times more likely high among those respondents belongs to age group 15-19 years as compared to those belongs to age group 20-24 years [AOR=4.32; 95% CI (1.73, 10.77)]. Conclusion: The impact of HIV/AIDS intervention practices was low. Age group 15-19 years of respondents found to have a positive significant effect on the impact of HIV/AIDS intervention practice. HIV/AIDS intervention practices employing effective behavior change communication strategies are mandatory to bring further impact due intervention.
Ability of stress‐related volatiles to attract and induce attacks by Xylosandrus germanus and other ambrosia beetles

1 Xylosandrus germanus typically colonizes physiologically‐stressed deciduous hosts but it is increasingly being recognized as a key pest of ornamental nursery stock. We tested the attractiveness of common plant stress‐related volatiles to ambrosia beetles occupying the nursery agroecosystem, as well as their ability to induce attacks on selected trees. Experiments were conducted in Ohio, U.S.A. 2 Stress volatile attractiveness was first assessed by positioning traps baited with acetaldehyde, acetone, ethanol and methanol in ornamental nurseries. Cumulative trap counts confirmed that ethanol was the most attractive stress‐related volatile to X. germanus. Methanol‐baited traps were slightly attractive to X. germanus, whereas traps baited with acetaldehyde and acetone were not attractive to any ambrosia beetle. 3 A series of tree injection experiments were also conducted to determine the ability of these volatiles to induce attacks by ambrosia beetles under field conditions. Injection of ethanol into Magnolia virginiana induced the largest number of attacks, whereas injection of acetaldehyde induced more attacks than methanol or acetone. Xylosandrus germanus was the most predominant species emerging from M. virginiana injected with each of the stress‐related volatiles. No attacks by wood‐boring beetles were observed on water injected or uninjected control trees. 4 Solid‐phase microextraction–gas chromatography–mass spectrometry confirmed the emission of acetaldehyde, acetone, ethanol and methanol after their injection into M. virginiana. 5 Xylosandrus germanus has an efficient olfactory‐based mechanism for differentiating among host volatile cues. Injecting select trees with stress‐related volatiles, particularly ethanol, shows promise as a trap tree strategy for X. germanus and other ambrosia beetles.
Assessing medical student empathy in a family medicine clinical test: validity of the CARE measure

Introduction The Consultation and Relational Empathy (CARE) measure developed and validated in primary care settings and used for general practitioner appraisal is a 10-item instrument used by patients to assess doctors’ empathy. The aim of this study is to investigate the validity of the CARE measure in assessing medical students’ empathy during a formative family medicine clinical test. Method All 158 final-year medical students were assessed by trained simulated patients (SPs) – who completed the CARE measure, the Jefferson Scale of Patient Perceptions of Physician Empathy (JSPPPE), and a global rating score to assess students’ empathy and history-taking ability. Results Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis identified a unidimensional structure. The CARE measure strongly correlated with both convergent measures: global rating (ρ=0.79 and <0.001) and JSPPPE (ρ=0.77 and <0.001) and weakly correlated with the divergent measure: history-taking score (ρ=0.28 and <0.001). Internal consistency was excellent (Cronbach’s α=0.94). Conclusion The CARE measure had strong construct and internal reliability in a formative, undergraduate family medicine examination. Its role in higher stakes examinations and other educational settings should be explored.
Evaluation of improved ISDB-T by Turbo Codes using Brazilian Channels

This work intends to demonstrate the improvements applied in the Integrated System Digital Broadcasting-Terrestrial (ISDB-T). The use of turbo convolutional codes (TCCs) and single parity turbo product codes (SPTPCs) combined with soft decision demapping are proposed for reduction of signal to noise rate (SNR) threshold at reception. Turbo product codes are long codes constructed from lesser code words. Furthermore, a block helical interleaver (HB) lessens the computational effort and improve the performance in the turbo product decoding. Some simulations are done using degradations caused for noise AWGN and brazilian channels. Therefore, it is concluded that the proposed Turbo ISDB-T performance is better than the conventional ISDB-T in those cases.
Effect of Doping Manganese on Photocatalytic Performance of Titania in Degradation of Rose Bengal

In the present work, nanoparticles of pure TiO2 and manganese doped TiO2 were prepared by sol-gel method. As-prepared photocatalyst performance was evaluated by degradation of rose Bengal in synthetic waste water system under visible light. The degradation of dye was studied spectrophotometrically. Optimum conditions were achieved for degradation of dye by varying different rate affecting parameters like pH, concentration of dye, amount of photocatalyst, and light intensity and these were found to be 7.0, 0.90 × 10−5 M, 0.12 g, and 60.0 mWcm-2, respectively. The physicochemical properties of samples were characterized by XRD and SEM. The observations revealed that Mn doped TiO2 showed better photocatalytic performance than pure TiO2.
The Psychological Explanation of Asset Price Overreaction and Underreaction to New Information: Representativeness Heuristic and Conservatism Bias

In the model of an asset market with strategic interaction among traders, this paper proves that the occurrence of asset price overreaction and underreaction to new information depends on the proportion of conservatism traders, proportion of heuristic traders, degree of conservatism bias, degree of representativeness heuristic and the number of traders in the market. Specifically, the asset price overreacts to good news and underreacts to bad news when the total representativeness heuristic minus the total conservatism bias in the market is greater than zero but less than one; otherwise, the asset price underreacts to good news and overreacts to bad news.
The Double-Edged Sword Effects of Maternal Nutrition in the Developmental Programming of Hypertension

Hypertension is a growing global epidemic. Developmental programming resulting in hypertension can begin in early life. Maternal nutrition status has important implications as a double-edged sword in the developmental programming of hypertension. Imbalanced maternal nutrition causes offspring’s hypertension, while specific nutritional interventions during pregnancy and lactation may serve as reprogramming strategies to reverse programming processes and prevent the development of hypertension. In this review, we first summarize the human and animal data supporting the link between maternal nutrition and developmental programming of hypertension. This review also presents common mechanisms underlying nutritional programming-induced hypertension. This will be followed by studies documenting nutritional interventions as reprogramming strategies to protect against hypertension from developmental origins. The identification of ideal nutritional interventions for the prevention of hypertension development that begins early in life will have a lifelong impact, with profound savings in the global burden of hypertension.
Rapid Structural Remodeling of Thalamocortical Synapses Parallels Experience-Dependent Functional Plasticity in Mouse Primary Visual Cortex

Monocular lid closure (MC) causes a profound shift in the ocular dominance (OD) of neurons in primary visual cortex (V1). Anatomical studies in both cat and mouse V1 suggest that large-scale structural rearrangements of eye-specific thalamocortical (TC) axons in response to MC occur much more slowly than the shift in OD. Consequently, there has been considerable debate as to whether the plasticity of TC synapses, which transmit competing visual information from each eye to V1, contributes to the early functional consequences of MC or is simply a feature of long-term deprivation. Here, we used quantitative immuno-electron microscopy to examine the possibility that alterations of TC synapses occur rapidly enough to impact OD after brief MC. The effect of short-term deprivation on TC synaptic structure was examined in male C57BL/6 mice that underwent 3 and 7 d of MC or monocular retinal inactivation (MI) with tetrodotoxin. The data show that 3 d of MC is sufficient to induce substantial remodeling of TC synapses. In contrast, 3 d of MI, which alters TC activity but does not shift OD, does not significantly affect the structure of TC synapses. Our results support the hypothesis that the rapid plasticity of TC synapses is a key step in the sequence of events that shift OD in visual cortex.
Metabolic characterization and pathway analysis of berberine protects against prostate cancer

Recent explosion of biological data brings a great challenge for the traditional methods. With increasing scale of large data sets, much advanced tools are required for the depth interpretation problems. As a rapid-developing technology, metabolomics can provide a useful method to discover the pathogenesis of diseases. This study was explored the dynamic changes of metabolic profiling in cells model and Balb/C nude-mouse model of prostate cancer, to clarify the therapeutic mechanism of berberine, as a case study. Here, we report the findings of comprehensive metabolomic investigation of berberine on prostate cancer by high-throughput ultra performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry coupled with pattern recognition methods and network pathway analysis. A total of 30 metabolite biomarkers in blood and 14 metabolites in prostate cancer cell were found from large-scale biological data sets (serum and cell metabolome), respectively. We have constructed a comprehensive metabolic characterization network of berberine to protect against prostate cancer. Furthermore, the results showed that berberine could provide satisfactory effects on prostate cancer via regulating the perturbed pathway. Overall, these findings illustrated the power of the ultra performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry with the pattern recognition analysis for large-scale biological data sets may be promising to yield a valuable tool that insight into the drug action mechanisms and drug discovery as well as help guide testable predictions.
Physical Activities of Young Girls in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

Background: Physical education classes are non-existent in Saudi girls’ curriculum at all educational levels and physical activities are not permitted at public schools. The study aimed to assess physical activities for female students in intermediate and high schools. Methods: A questionnaire was completed by 1519 participants from 18 schools in Jeddah City. Activities at school and after school were reported. About 63% of the girls preferred to have physical education classes at school. Results: Girls thought that they were performing (43.2%) enough physical activities and (74%) rated themselves as performing an average level of physical activity in comparison with their peers. Only 32% linked the importance of physical activities to their health. Cars are the main transportation methods to and from school (87 %) and 8% walked to school. Some physical activities (59.2%) are performed at school [walking during break times (42%) or running (5.2%)]. Only 40% were involved in light activities after school while 54% participated in washing up or cleaning the house. Other activities outside school, e.g. walking, shopping, bowling, horse riding and table tennis was reported by 48% of the participants. Moderate activities such as swimming, cycling, dancing, or competitive running was reported by 70% of the respondents. Only 13% joining fitness centres. Conclusion: Results emphasized the central role and obligation of decision makers in protecting young consumers through providing a healthy environment in schools.
Complementary Feeding Practices in a Cohort of Italian Late Preterm Infants

Limited data are available on complementary feeding in preterm infants, who show increased nutritional needs and are at risk of altered postnatal growth. The aim of this study was to investigate the timing and content of complementary feeding in a cohort of late preterm infants. We conducted a prospective, observational study, including mothers who had given birth to infants admitted to level I or II of care with a gestational age between 34 and 36 weeks. Mothers were contacted at 3, 6 and 12 months after delivery by phone calls and were asked about their infant’s mode of feeding and the timing and schedule of the introduction of different solid foods types. A total of 49 mothers and 57 infants completed the study. The mean postnatal age of the introduction of complementary foods was 5.7 ± 0.7 months. Low energy and/or low protein-dense foods were first introduced in most infants. Fruit as the first type of complementary food in the infant’s diet was associated with a 1.6-month advance in initiating complementary feeding. The present findings provide further insight into complementary feeding practices in late preterm infants and underline the need for specific recommendations addressing this vulnerable population.
FlySmart - Automatic Take-Off and Landing of an EASA CS-23 Aircraft

This paper describes a low complexity controller framework for automatic landing and take-off for general aviation aircraft without using any ground based facilities. In addition an efficient on-board path planning algorithm that enables worldwide full automatic mission execution is presented. The lean implementation of the control laws allows to guide the aircraft in all configurations and within the whole flight envelope with a minimal amount of control modes to facilitate future certification. An entire flight including the take-off, a cruise section, a holding pattern, the approach with configuration changes and the landing sequence is demonstrated on a Diamond DA42.
A tyrosine kinase-STAT5-miR21-PDCD4 regulatory axis in chronic and acute myeloid leukemia cells

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are regulators of several key patho-physiological processes, including cell cycle and apoptosis. Using microarray-based miRNA profiling in K562 cells, a model of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML), we found that the oncoprotein BCR-ABL1 regulates the expression of miR-21, an “onco-microRNA”, found to be overexpressed in several cancers. This effect relies on the presence of two STAT binding sites on the promoter of miR-21, and on the phosphorylation status of STAT5, a transcription factor activated by the kinase activity of BCR-ABL1. Mir-21 regulates the expression of PDCD4 (programmed cell death protein 4), a tumor suppressor identified through a proteomics approach. The phosphoSTAT5 — miR-21 — PDCD4 pathway was active in CML primary CD34+ cells, but also in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) models like MV4.11 and MOLM13, where the constitutively active tyrosine kinase FLT3-ITD plays a similar role to BCR-ABL1 in the K562 cell line.