Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Toward an Implicit Cognition Account of Attribute Agenda Setting

We propose an implicit cognition account of attribute agenda setting (AAS). We draw a distinction between implicit AAS, which conceptualizes media effects on automatically activated object-attribute associations, and explicit AAS, which deals with their overt expression. Previous research has relied almost exclusively on explicit AAS. This is unfortunate, because people must have the motivation and the ability to report inner mental associations. We investigated AAS in the context of the 2014 European Union parliamentary elections using a content analysis and a two-wave panel survey. Exposure to the mediated attribute agenda elicited implicit AAS effects, but no impact on the explicit dimension could be discerned. Only by additionally taking into account implicit cognition were we able to reveal substantial AAS effects.
3 D Face Recognition Under Unconstrained Settings Using Low-Cost Sensors

Real-world face recognition systems face major challenges in unconstrained environments, due to variations in pose, illumination, facial expression an disguises. Due to these challenges the performance of the systems is limited, when using only RGB images. The integration of 3D information as a complement to RGB can improve the robustness of face recognition systems, diluting the performance losses in challenging environments. In this dissertation, a new face recognition framework is proposed, highly focused in 3Dlow-cost images. The developed system uses a combination of FHOG and PHOW for feature extraction, showing promising results in unconstrained environments. With the appearance of the Intel R © RealSenseTM depth sensors, a new dataset was created, the RealFace dataset, acquired with the Intel R © RealSenseTM R200 and F200 models, composed by images characterized by variations in pose, illumination facial expression and disguise are included. This dataset is designed for multimodal face-recognition systems performance assessment in unconstrained environments. The proposed 3D framework was extended to integrate other modalities IR and RGB using the features extracted from VGG-Face as descriptors for these modalities. The proposed framework has proven to be competitive with other state-of-the-art methodologies having good results in unconstrained environments. Finally, a prototype using Intel R © RealSenseTM F200 sensor was created for real-time face recognition in challenging scenes.
Amifostine Protects the White Cell Line Against Genotoxic Damage in Patients Undergoing Pelvic Radiotherapy

X-rays are widely used in the treatment of cancer. Nevertheless, radiation may induce damage to normal tissues, through free radical release and Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) damage. Amifostine is a broad spectrum cytoprotective agent with free radical scavenger and DNA repair activity that reduces toxicity during radiotherapy and chemotherapy. The aim of the present in vivo study was to investigate the cytoprotective efficacy of amifostine against chromosomal damage induced on peripheral blood lymphocytes in cancer patients under radiotherapy for pelvic tumors. The levels of genotoxicity, cytostaticity and cytotoxicity were quantitatively evaluated using the Sister Chromatid Exchange (SCE) methodology, the Proliferation Rate Index (PRI), the Mitotic Index (MI). PBMCs were collected at 0, 5 and 19 days from patients with pelvic tumors undergoing daily fractionated radiotherapy. Five patients received Radiotherapy (RT) alone (Group A) and 5 received RT supported with amifostine (1000 mg sc.) (Group B) before each RT fraction. A gradual increase of SCEs was noted in group A (p=0.03) and a rather stable score in group B by increasing the days of radiotherapy. At day 19 a significant increased SCE number characterized group A (p=0.005). The mitotic index was significantly reduced by increasing the days of radiotherapy in both groups A and B (p=0.02 and 0.01 respectively) and there was no difference between groups at the various time points. The proliferation rate index was not affected. Pelvic radiation induces a significant amount of SCEs in PBMCs and reduces the mitotic index, implying a potential leukemogenic and certainly cytotoxic activity. Amifostine daily administration although did not protect against cytotoxic damage it reduced the amount of SCEs suggestive of a protection against the stochastic effects of radiation.
Predictive and Statistical Properties of Insider Trading

CI NSIDERS" are officers, directors, and owners of ten per cent or more of the common stock of the companies listed on the New York and American Stock Exchanges. The Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC) requires that insiders keep the Commission informed regarding transactions in the common stock and convertible securities of the respective companies. The interest of the SEC in trading by insiders stems in part from the belief that insiders should not exploit their special opportunities to know about developments in their companies for personal profit through short-term trading. Further, the Commission feels that information on trading by insiders should be fully disclosed to the investing public because of light which such trading might cast upon the company's future prospects. There is also wide-spread interest in the investment community in trading by insiders because of the prevalent belief that insiders have valuable private information which bears upon their company's prospects and that knowledge of the trading by insiders will permit valid inferences regarding future movements in the prices of stocks. Because of the interest by the SEC and the investment community in insider trading, we have undertaken this study. The subject has been studied before in many ways, but none of the preceding studies has been definitive and the additional methods of analysis seemed promising. Opinions are somewhat polarized. Academic studies have found virtually no evidence of profitable exploitation by insiders of their special knowledge and no value to outsiders in data on trading by insiders. Others believe that insiders often make extraordinary profits and that knowledge of their trading is valuable. Both the SEC and investors should be interested in which opinion is correct. The methods and coverage of this study differ from those of earlier work, as do our conclusions. We show that proper and prompt analysis of data on insider trading can be profitable, although almost all earlier academic work has reached the contrary conclusion. The first
New Paradigms In The Design Of Engineering Curricula

This paper presents New Paradigms concerning the design of curricula for engineering degree courses. It sets up the philosophical bases of curriculum design and outlines the Learning Outcomes Theory considered essential for the development of a new consistent pedagogical approach. Some course structures, being so fragmented, are labelled as the cause of the difficulties faced by some engineering courses. An alternative course structure is presented, which allows for the new principles and concepts, and consequently might make advances in engineering education. The proposal is focused on the Systematic Planning Approach and brings an instrument a Knowledge Based System which embodies the new principles and concepts to pragmatically assist course designers in the development of their tasks. Some preliminary results from ongoing experiences are discussed.
Patient Satisfaction with Proton-pump Inhibitors in a Tertiary Care Teaching Hospital

The main objective of this study was to identify the safety, efficacy, cost of treatment and the overall patient satisfaction with proton-pump inhibitors. This prospective observational study was carried out for a period of 6 months in the In-patient Department of Gastroenterology. Using a validated treatment satisfaction questionnaire, patient satisfaction on the use of proton-pump inhibitors was assessed. The drug interactions, side effects and medication errors associated with proton-pump inhibitors were also detected. The collected data were statistically analyzed using SPSS 16.0 version software. Among 100 patients selected for the study, only 16 % of the patients were completely satisfied with the overall usage of proton-pump inhibitors. There was a significant difference between male and female in the satisfaction index. There were no drug interactions found. Cost was the major factor, which affected the patient satisfaction with proton-pump inhibitors. The study results confirmed that proton-pump inhibitors are safe and effective in the therapy of gastrointestinal disorders.
Imprecise reliability of cold standby systems

Most methods of reliability analysis of cold standby systems assume that the precise probability distributions of the component times to failure are available. However, this assumption may be unreasonable in a wide scope of cases (software, human‐machine systems). Therefore, the imprecise reliability models of cold standby systems are proposed in the paper. These models suppose that arbitrary probability distributions of the component time to failure are possible and they are restricted only by available information in the form of lower and upper probabilities of some events. It is shown how the reliability assessments may vary with a type of available information. The impact of the independence condition on reliability of systems is studied. Numerical examples illustrate the proposed models.
LABEL-FREE ANALYSIS OF CD8+ T CELL SUBSET PROTEOMES SUPPORTS A PROGRESSIVE DIFFERENTIATION MODEL OF VIRUS-SPECIFIC T CELLS IN HUMANS

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New Composition of Maleic-Anhydride-Grafted Poly(Lactic Acid)/Rice Husk with Methylenediphenyl Diisocyanate

Maleic-anhydride-grafted poly(lactic acid) (PLA-g-MAH) was prepared and blended with rice husk (RH). Methylenediphenyl diisocyanate (MDI) was used as the coupling agent for combining RH with PLA-g-MAH, which improved the poor interfacial adhesion between PLA and RH. Various PLA-g-MAH/RH blends, with and without MDI, were prepared by melt processing using a brabender. The effects that inclusion and distribution of MDI had on the mechanical properties and thermal behaviors of the composites were examined. The results showed that the PLA X RH Y MDI specimens had the optimum tensile properties compared with the PLA X RH Y , PLA-g-MAH X RH Y , and PLA-g-MAH X RH Y MDI specimens. The new method of combining MDI and MAH through grafting was expected to be an excellent strategy for mitigating the low functionality of commercial PLA. Possible reasons accounting for the interesting results on tensile strength and thermal properties of the specimens are proposed. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.5755/j01.ms.20.4. 6034
Model of a deterministic detector and dynamical decoherence (9 pages)

We discuss a deterministic model of detector coupled to a two-level system (a qubit). The detector is a quasiclassical object whose dynamics is described by the kicked rotator Hamiltonian. We show that in the regime of quantum chaos the detector acts as a chaotic bath and induces decoherence of the qubit. We discuss the dephasing and relaxation rates and demonstrate that the main features of single-qubit decoherence due to a heat bath can be reproduced by our fully deterministic dynamical model. Moreover, we show that, for strong enough qubit-detector coupling, the dephasing rate is given by the rate of exponential instability of the detector's dynamics, that is, by the Lyapunov exponent of classical motion. Finally, we discuss the measurement in the regimes of strong and weak qubit-detector coupling. For the case of strong coupling the detector performs a measurement of the up/down state of the qubit. In the case of weak coupling, due to chaos, the dynamical evolution of the detector is strongly sensitive to the state of the qubit. However, in this case it is unclear how to extract a signal from any measurement with a coarse-graining in the phase space on a size much larger than the Planckmore » cell. « less
Frankliniella occidentalis (Thysanoptera: Thripidae) population dynamics on cucumber crop.

Western flower thrips, Frankliniella occidentalis (Pergande) is an important crop pest and a vector of tomato spotted wilt virus (TSWV) in many areas of the world. Its feeding can cause scarring and deformations on leaves and fruit, with seedlings and soft tissue particularly prone to feeding damage. Cucumbers and other vegetable are susceptible to fruit scarring. Population dynamics of western flower thrips was monitored both in field and protected spaces throughout different methods and on different ornamental and vegetables hosts. In this paper results regarding population dynamic on cucumber greenhouse crop are presented. Studies were conducted throughout five weeks. Shaken method was used. Ten leaves from the bottom of the plant, ten from the middle, ten from the tip of the plant and ten flowers were weekly sampled. Mean temperature and treatments applications were recorded. The fallen larvae and adults were counted. Females and males were separately noted. Sex ratio influence and spatial distribution was also followed. Data analysis demonstrated that thrips preferred to feed on younger leaves situated on tip of the plant. There was a very low difference between sex ratio in leaves as compared with the one in flowers. Regarding population dynamics of thrips on whole study period the trend was of increasing, thus treatment application were less efficient and proves its high pesticide resistance character.
Profile of HIV infected couples in concordant and discordant heterosexual relationships â€“A clinical based study

Background: Heterosexuality is the most common route of human immunodeficiency virus transmission among married couples in India. The main objective is this study is to determine the HIV seroconcordance and serodiscordance among couples when one partner is confirmed as HIV positive. Materials and Methods: A retrospective study which included HIV positive married cohabiting cases was carried out at the department of skin and VD, Tertiary care teaching hospital, Tiruchirapalli. Detailed history of high risk sexual behaviour, blood transfusion and sexually transmitted infections (STIs) was collected. Spouses of these cases were tested for HIV to know the seroconcordance and serodiscordance. Results: A total of 236 HIV positive cases were subjected in this study which included 130 males and 106 females. Forty seven cases had seropositive spouses that consisted of 23 out of 130 HIV positive males and 24 out of 106 HIV positive females. Among the couples tested, 19 subjects were considered as concordant and 28 are discordant. Most of the concordance suggested that continued intramarrital transmission probably due to lack of spousal communication and late testing. Conclusion: In this study, the discordant couple rate is found to be high. Such cases are usually asymptomatic and hence tested late but continue to transmit HIV by unprotected sexual activity. Less acceptability of condom usage may be one of the factors responsible in transmission. Further studies are needed to explore other risk factors associated with HIV transmission in discordant couples.
A new method for detection of rhythmic signals in oscillatory systems

The study of biological rhythms is receiving a lot of attention in the literature in recent years. At the core of this research lies the methodological problem of how to detect rhythmic signals in measured data. Night and day, or dark and light patterns impact on human health in many different ways. For this reason, researchers are studying the effect of sleep on the circadian clock in human body during various stages of life. Important components of this clock are the circadian genes which have rhythmic expression overtime with phases suitably matching the night and day. Consequently, the identification of rhythmic signals is a problem of considerable interest for biologists. In this work, we develop a novel statistical procedure to detect rhythmic signals in oscillatory systems based on Order Restricted Inference (ORI). This methodology is tested both on simulations and on real data bases. Moreover the obtained results are compared with the most widely extended rhythmicity detection algorithms in literature.
Syntheseteksten leren schrijven in het voortgezet onderwijs; Het verband tussen schrijfaanpak en voorkeur voor leeractiviteiten

Schrijven is een ingewikkeld proces dat bij onervaren schrijvers kan leiden tot overbelasting van het werkgeheugen. Om overbelasting te voorkomen ontwikkelen veel schrijvers een eigen routine: een vaste aanpak die voor hen het beste werkt. Liselore van Ockenburg, Daphne van Weijen en Gert Rijlaarsdam onderzochten of schrijfaanpak samenhangt met de wijze waarop leerlingen syntheseteksten willen leren schrijven. (Een synthesetekst is een tekst die verschillende informatiebronnen integreert). Als een dergelijke relatie bestaat, ligt het voor de hand om in schrijfinstructies rekening te houden met schrijfaanpak. Aan vwo-3-leerlingen hebben ze twee vragenlijsten voorgelegd: een over hun schrijfaanpak en een over hun voorkeuren voor leeractiviteiten. De resultaten wijzen erop dat leerlingen verschillen in hun schrijfaanpak en dat die verschillen samenhangen met hun voorkeur voor bepaalde leeractiviteiten als zij syntheseteksten leren schrijven.
Estimation of volume, total and projected area of Scots pine needles from their regression on length

Breadth, thickness, perimeter and area of serial transverse sections (TS) of Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris L.) needles from non-fertilised (0) and combined NPK-fertilised (F) and irrigated fertilised (IL) trees of northern Swedish origin were measured by projection microscopy. The accuracy and precision of the method were analysed. Regressions of the above characters and of total (A,) and projected (A,) area and volume on the length of single needles were calculated, to make possible their non-destructive estimation from length. Needles were semi-fusiform, rather than semi-cylindrical, as is assumed for some conversion factors from projected to total area. The assumption of a semi-cylindrical form caused total needle area to be systematically overestimated. The mean basic dimensions of the longer (F, IL) needles exceeded those of (0) needles: breadth by 11%, thickness by 21%, TS area by 32% and perimeter by 9%. Regressions of A, and A, on length were linear over the range 15-70 mm; that of volume was curvilinear. Both (0) and (F, IL) needles lay on the same regression line. Joint regressions gave estimates of mean A, mean A and mean volume having 95% confidence limits of (2.3, (2 . 0 and (4.4%, respectively. Comparisons with published sources suggest that the regressions should be applicable outside the range of northern morphological types within Scandinavia, but that overestimates of area and volume may occur if they are applied to material of Central European origin.
Analysis of Video Quality Variation with Different Bit Rates of H.264 Compression

The study applied a charge-coupled device (CCD) camera to send video signals to 4 DaVinciTM development boards (TMS320DM6446) of Texas Instruments (TI) to carry out H.264 Baseline Profile video coding. One of the development boards coded in the Variable Bit Rate (VBR) mode, and the other three development boards coded in the Constant Bit Rate (CBR) mode. In addition, the constant rates are 2 Mbps, 1.5 Mbps and 1 Mbps respectively. The H.264 video compression files produced by the boards were analyzed via video analysis software (CodecVisa) in the study. This software can analyze and present the compression data characteristics of the video files under each video frame, i.e., bits/MB, QP, and PSNR. In this research, the characteristics of data of each frame under four different compression conditions were compared. Their differences were calculated and averaged, and the standard deviation was evaluated. It was further connected with the values of quality characteristics and the peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR) of each frame to analyze the relation among the frame quality, the compression rate of CBR, as well as the quantitative granularity. The preliminary conclusion of the study is that the compression behaviors of CBRs in different coding sources are adjusted in a specific proportion in order to cope with the change in frame complexity. The frame will be severely damaged by a critical value during the process of network transmission while the source rate is less than the value of the characteristic.
Ray tracing in graded-index medium

Ray path in graded-index medium is curved and can be solved numerically by using eikonal equation, which is the starting point of geometrical optics. In this report, derivation of eikonal equation, the relation between eikonal equation and Fermat’s principle is shown. Moreover, general ray equation for graded-index medium is derived from eikonal equation. Then, ray path can be realized more efficiently and accurately by solving the ray equation with Runge-Kutta method.
Identification of a Novel Mutation in Codon 31 of Kirstein Rat Sarcoma Viral Oncogene Homologue in Colon Cancer: Another Evidence of Non-Canonical Mutational Pathway

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a disease of the large intestine and regarded as a multistep process resulting from accumulation of different genetic alterations like activation of proto-oncogenes and inactivation of tumour suppressor genes. Kirstein rat sarcoma viral oncogene homologue (K ras) is a proto-oncogene and mutations in this gene are considered to be involved in the early transition from normal colonic epithelium to premalignant tissue. Mutations at codon 12, 13, and 61 are widely studied and considered to be responsible to account for most Ras- mediated carcinogenesis but some of the recent evidences have suggested that non canonical mutations (outside of codons 12, 13, and 61) may also contribute to the genetic aberrations leading to the Ras-associated oncogenesis. We have analyzed the whole coding region of the gene and report a non-canonical novel heterozyogous mutation at codon 31 in a colonic tumor. Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR)-Denaturing Gradient Gel Electrophoresis (DGGE), subsequent sequencing data revealed, G to A transition at first base of codon substituting glutamic acid (GAA) to lysine (AAA). Since this mutation has never been reported before in CRC, it is a novel variant in K ras.
Recent Progress in Genetic Transformation of Four Pinus spp.

Advances in conifer tissue culture and genetic transformation offer new opportunities in the field of genetic engineering. Genetic transformation is an important tool for breeders because it allows them to introduce valuable genes that might otherwise be difficult to integrate into elite genotypes. Combined with mass vegetative propagation, such as somatic embryogenesis, regeneration of transgenic conifers could result in accelerated tree improvement. Genetic transformation requires the development of an efficient gene delivery system. Extensive work has been done in Pinus spp. to improve transformation methods, either by DNA-coated particle bombardment or by co-culture with Agrobacterium tumefaciens. This review describes the most recent progress made in genetic transformation in the genus Pinus, with emphasis on four important forest and plantation species grown in Europe (P. pinaster), New Zealand, Australia and South America (P. radiata), and North America (P. taeda and P. strobus). The biosafety issues associated with potential deployment of transgenic pine varieties in commercial forestry are highlighted.