Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Eye-Movement Latency as a Function of Age, Stimulus Uncertainty, and Position in the Visual Field

Records of eye-movement latencies were obtained from 8-yr. -olds and college undergraduates during a task requiring S to fixate a light appearing at different positions on a screen before him. All Ss were given 2 experimental conditions; in 1 (SLK) Ss were told the location of the stimulus appearing on the trial before the stimulus onset, while in the second (SLU) no information about stimulus location was given. Results indicated that younger Ss, in addition to having generally longer response latencies, were more influenced by the position of the target in the display and showed more variable performance across trial blocks than adults.
Correlating Epidemiologic Trends with the Genotypes Causing Meningococcal Disease, Maryland

Epidemic meningococcal infection is generally caused by single clones; whether nonepidemic increases in infection are clonal is unknown. We studied the molecular epidemiology of meningococcal infection during a period that the incidence increased in two age groups. Serogroup C and Y meningococcal isolates were analyzed by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis and multilocus sequence typing. From 1992 to 1999, 96.4% (27/28) of serogroup C isolates from persons 15–24 years of age were in clonal group 1, compared with 65.6% (21/32) of isolates from persons ≤14 years, and 64.3% (9/14) of isolates from adults ≥25 years (p ≤ 0.01). The proportion of clonal group 2 serogroup Y strains increased from 7.7% (1/13) in 1992 to 1993 to 52.0% (13/25) in 1998 to 1999 (p < 0.01). The nonepidemic age-specific increases in serogroup C meningococcal infection in Maryland were clonal in nature and the changes in serogroup Y incidence were associated with a shift in the genotypes of strains causing invasive disease.
Periodontal systemic associations: review of the evidence.

AIM To critically appraise recent research into associations between periodontal disease and systemic diseases and conditions specifically respiratory disease, chronic kidney disease, rheumatoid arthritis, cognitive impairment, obesity, metabolic syndrome and cancer. METHODS A MEDLINE literature search of papers published between 2002 and April 2012 was conducted. Studies that included periodontitis as an exposure were identified. Cross-sectional epidemiological investigations on large samples, prospective studies and systematic reviews formed the basis of the narrative review. A threshold set for the identification of periodontitis was used to identify those studies that contributed to the conclusions of the review. RESULTS Many of the investigations were cross-sectional secondary analyses of existing data sets in particular the NHANES studies. There were a small number of systematic reviews and prospective studies. There was substantial variability in the definitions of exposure to periodontitis. A small number of studies met the threshold set for periodontitis and supported associations; however, in some of the chronic diseases there were no such studies. There was strong evidence from randomized controlled trials that interventions, which improve oral hygiene have positive effects on the prevention of nosocomial pneumonias. CONCLUSIONS There was substantial heterogeneity in the definitions used to identify periodontitis and very few studies met a stringent threshold for periodontitis. Published evidence supports modest associations between periodontitis and some, although not all, of the diseases and conditions reviewed. There is a need to reach a consensus on what constitutes periodontitis for future studies of putative associations with systemic diseases.
The performance and scalability of parallel systems

In this thesis we develop an analytical performance model for parallel computer systems. This model is built on three abstract performance elements; loading intensity, contention, and delay. These elements correspond to performance measures that are the outcome of features of both software and hardware components of a computing system. The profile of these components can in turn be derived from an analysis of the performance-related behaviour of the individual processes that constitute a complete system. We show how such models of particular systems can be used for performance prediction. They can be used to predict the performance of a specified number of processors, derive the maximum expectation in terms of performance, as the number of processors increases, and predict the amount of latency hiding required to achieve a particular performance profile. We illustrate the use of the model with a particular concrete application. The interaction between the three performance elements is examined, with particular attention being paid to the relationship between loading intensity and delay in certain classes of parallel system. We examine the consequences that this relationship has on the ability to measure certain types of performance data. In examining the relationship between delay and performance elements we also look at the effect of allocating many processes to each processor. As a consequence of using this modelling technique on a particular parallel system, individual behaviour characteristics of the real system may need to be approximated. We examine the effects of this approximation, looking at the particular circumstances under which our model may not give appropriate quantitative results for the individual system.
Late Holocene Indigenous Economies of the Tropical Australian Coast: An Archaeological Study of the Darwin Region

This thesis presents an archaeological study of indigenous occupation in the Darwin region during the Late Holocene. The research period precedes by some 500 years the European settlement of Palmerston, or Darwin as it is now called, in the country of a group of non-Pama-Nyungan language speakers, the Larrakia. In this thesis I put forward a portrayal of the Late Holocene subsistence and settlement patterns of the indigenous inhabitants of the Darwin region. The research is based on three years of fieldwork, carried out over three dry seasons in 1995, 1996 and 1997, through surveys followed by excavations and reports on the results of test-excavations of eight open archaeological sites. In this thesis I explore the ways that changes in settlement patterns and resource procurement can be identified in the archaeological record. This is achieved through an investigation of the environmental context and taphonomic processes that shaped the remains left behind by the local people to their present day form. I draw attention to the way that these natural processes impinge on the archaeological record and on interpretation. Since the patterns observed from the archaeological data in this study appear to fit criteria supporting the currently topical hypothesis of Late Holocene intensification, they are compared with other explanations for similar patterns as indices of intensity of occupation. Through analogy with historic and ethnographic information, I explore the question of why people built mounds of shell and why they stopped. I suggest that the answer lies with the intimate, human/environment interaction, played out according to the particular historical cultural behaviour and to perceptions of the cumulative environmental and social changes occurring in the period prior to and following Macassan contact on the north Australian coast.
The Modified Abbreviated Math Anxiety Scale: A Valid and Reliable Instrument for Use with Children

Mathematics anxiety (MA) can be observed in children from primary school age into the teenage years and adulthood, but many MA rating scales are only suitable for use with adults or older adolescents. We have adapted one such rating scale, the Abbreviated Math Anxiety Scale (AMAS), to be used with British children aged 8–13. In this study, we assess the scale's reliability, factor structure, and divergent validity. The modified AMAS (mAMAS) was administered to a very large (n = 1746) cohort of British children and adolescents. This large sample size meant that as well as conducting confirmatory factor analysis on the scale itself, we were also able to split the sample to conduct exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis of items from the mAMAS alongside items from child test anxiety and general anxiety rating scales. Factor analysis of the mAMAS confirmed that it has the same underlying factor structure as the original AMAS, with subscales measuring anxiety about Learning and Evaluation in math. Furthermore, both exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis of the mAMAS alongside scales measuring test anxiety and general anxiety showed that mAMAS items cluster onto one factor (perceived to represent MA). The mAMAS provides a valid and reliable scale for measuring MA in children and adolescents, from a younger age than is possible with the original AMAS. Results from this study also suggest that MA is truly a unique construct, separate from both test anxiety and general anxiety, even in childhood.
Prions, proteinase K and infectivity

It has been described that the breakdown of β-sheets in PrPSc by denaturation results in loss of infectivity and PK-sensitivity, suggesting a relationship between the structure and PK-resistance. It is also known that an important fraction of total PrPSc is PK-sensitive and can be isolated by the method we already described. Consequently, we decided to employ the PK-sensitive fraction of PrPSc as a potential and useful tool for structural studies. Thus, two essential questions were addressed in our recent article. First, the difference in the infectivity between the sensitive and resistant fractions and second, whether sensitive and resistant PrPSc shared the same conformation or were only different size multimers with the same basic conformation. Here we discuss our latest data in light of recent infectivity studies and their possible implications on the conformation of the prion.
Adaptive Support For Student Learning in Educational Games

Educational games can be highly entertaining, but studies have shown that they are not always effective for learning. To enhance the effectiveness of educational games, we propose intelligent pedagogical agents that can provide individualized instruction that is integrated with the entertaining nature of these systems. We embedded one such animated pedagogical agent into the electronic educational game Prime Climb. To allow the agent to provide individualized help to students, we built a probabilistic student model that performs on-line assessment of student knowledge. To perform knowledge assessment, the student model accesses a student's game actions. By representing the probabilistic relations between these actions and the corresponding student's knowledge in a Bayesian Network, the student model assesses the evolution of this knowledge during game playing. We performed an empirical study to test the effectiveness of both the student model and the pedagogical agent. The results of the study strongly support the effectiveness of our approach.
New materialisms : ontology, agency, and politics

Book synopsis: New Materialisms brings into focus and explains the significance of the innovative materialist critiques that are emerging across the social sciences and humanities. By gathering essays that exemplify the new thinking about matter and processes of materialization, this important collection shows how scholars are reworking older materialist traditions, contemporary theoretical debates, and advances in scientific knowledge to address pressing ethical and political challenges. In the introduction, Diana Coole and Samantha Frost highlight common themes among the distinctive critical projects that comprise the new materialisms. The continuities they discern include a posthumanist conception of matter as lively or exhibiting agency, and a reengagement with both the material realities of everyday life and broader geopolitical and socioeconomic structures. Coole and Frost argue that contemporary economic, environmental, geopolitical, and technological developments demand new accounts of nature, agency, and social and political relationships; modes of inquiry that privilege consciousness and subjectivity are not adequate to the task. New materialist philosophies are needed to do justice to the complexities of twenty-first-century biopolitics and political economy, because they raise fundamental questions about the place of embodied humans in a material world and the ways that we produce, reproduce, and consume our material environment.
Effects of medication on neuroimaging findings in bipolar disorder: an updated review

Hafeman DM, Chang KD, Garrett AS, Sanders EM, Phillips ML. Effects of medication on neuroimaging findings in bipolar disorder: an updated review. Bipolar Disord 2012: 14: 375–410. © 2012 The Authors. Journal compilation © 2012 John Wiley & Sons A/S.
Risk markers for SLI: a study of young language-learning children.

BACKGROUND Adequate assessment of 'normal variation' versus 'abnormal status' is particularly difficult for clinicians working with young children who are under 5 years of age and who present with slow language development. There is therefore clinical motivation to identify possible key difficulties (or 'risk markers') that may distinguish children who are likely to have specific language impairment (SLI) from the variation observed in younger, normally developing children. AIMS The issue of 'risk markers' for SLI was explored. It is well known that the issue of markers is controversial. The view presented here is that a risk marker represents a symptom with no assumption about whether the symptom reflects a single cause or that this symptom alone identifies the disorder. METHODS AND PROCEDURES The performance of 32 children with SLI was compared with that of 32 younger normal language-learning children on four potential risk marker tasks: non-word repetition, digit recall, past tense provision and plural marking. OUTCOMES AND RESULTS The findings suggest that processing markers, particularly non-word repetition, have the potential for indicating SLI risk. In particular, children who fall in the bottom quarter of the normal distribution in non-word repetition (performance below the 25th centile) appear to be at risk of SLI. CONCLUSIONS Although these results need to be interpreted cautiously, the evidence is thought to warrant the use of non-word repetition tasks in clinical practice.
Pharmacological Induction of Heme Oxygenase-1 by a Triterpenoid Protects Neurons Against Ischemic Injury

Background and Purpose— Heme oxygenase-1 (HO-1) is an inducible Phase 2 enzyme that degrades toxic heme; its role in cerebral ischemia is not fully understood. We hypothesize that chemically induced HO-1 upregulation with the novel triterpenoid CDDO-Im (2-cyano-3,12 dioxooleana-1,9 dien-28-oyl imidazoline), a robust inducer of Phase 2 genes, protects neurons against ischemic injury. Methods— Using 3 different models of ischemia, including oxygen–glucose deprivation in neuronal cultures, global ischemia in rats, and focal ischemia in mice, we determined (1) whether CDDO-Im induces HO-1 expression and protects against ischemic injury; and (2) whether HO-1 inhibition disrupts the neuroprotective effect of CDDO-Im. Results— CDDO-Im treatment (50–300 nmol/L) resulted in 8-fold HO-1 upregulation in cultured neurons and protected against oxygen–glucose deprivation. The protection was abolished when the cultures were transfected with nuclear factor (erythroid-derived 2) like-2–shRNA or coincubated with tin protoporphyrin IX, a specific HO-1 inhibitor. In the rat model of global ischemia, intracerebroventricular infusion of CDDO-Im (0.5–1.5 &mgr;g) augmented HO-1 expression in hippocampal neurons and resulted in significant increases in CA1 neuronal survival after global ischemia. To further strengthen the clinical relevance of the CDDO-Im treatment, we tested its effects in the mouse model of temporary focal ischemia (60 minutes). Postischemic intraperitoneal injection of CDDO-Im (10–100 &mgr;g) enhanced HO-1 expression and significantly reduced neurological dysfunction and infarct volume. Intracerebroventricular infusion of tin protoporphyrin IX reduced the neuroprotective effect of CDDO-Im against global and focal ischemia. Conclusions— CDDO-Im confers neuroprotection against ischemic injury by upregulating HO-1, suggesting that enhance of HO-1 expression may be a legitimate strategy for therapeutic intervention of stroke.
Bricks or mortar: which parts of the input does a second language listener rely on?

There is considerable evidence from psycholinguistics that first language listeners handle function words differently from content words. This makes intuitive sense because content words require the listener to access a lexical meaning representation whereas function words do not. A separate channel of processing for functors would enable them to be detected faster. The question is of importance to our understanding of second language (L2) listening. Because what is extracted from the input by L2 listeners is generally less than complete, it is useful for the instructor to know which parts of the signal they are likely to recognize, and which parts are likely to be lost to them. On the one hand, L2 listeners might rely heavily on function words because high frequency renders them familiar. On the other, they might have difficulty identifying function words confidently within a piece of connected speech because functors in English are usually brief and of low perceptual prominence. The current study investigated intake by intermediatelevel L2 listeners to establish whether function or content words are processed more accurately and reported more frequently. It found that the recognition of functors fell significantly behind that of lexical words. The finding was remarkably robust across first languages and across levels of proficiency, suggesting that it may reflect the way in which L2 listeners choose to distribute their attention. /^ rammarians have long found it useful to identify two categories of V-Tlexical unit. The distinction is often expressed in terms of a closed class (of prepositions, determiners, auxiliary verbs, etc.) to which new items are very rarely added, and an open class (consisting mainly of nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs of manner) which is constantly being expanded as new items are coined (Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, & Svartvik, 1985, pp. 67-68). A more traditional way of denning the categories is by distinguishing items which fulfil a largely syntactic function (function words) from those which bear lexical meaning (content words). This dis
Curcumin, the Golden Spice From Indian Saffron, Is a Chemosensitizer and Radiosensitizer for Tumors and Chemoprotector and Radioprotector for Normal Organs

Curcumin (diferuloylmethane), the yellow pigment in Indian saffron (Curcuma longa; also called turmeric, haldi, or haridara in the East and curry powder in the West), has been consumed by people for centuries as a dietary component and for a variety of proinflammatory ailments. Extensive research within the last decade in cell culture and in rodents has revealed that curcumin can sensitize tumors to different chemotherapeutic agents including doxorubicin, 5-FU, paclitaxel, vincristine, melphalan, butyrate, cisplatin, celecoxib, vinorelbine, gemcitabine, oxaliplatin, etoposide, sulfinosine, thalidomide, and bortezomib. Chemosensitization has been observed in cancers of the breast, colon, pancreas, gastric, liver, blood, lung, prostate, bladder, cervix, ovary, head and neck, and brain and in multiple myeloma, leukemia, and lymphoma. Similar studies have also revealed that this agent can sensitize a variety of tumors to gamma radiation including glioma, neuroblastoma, cervical carcinoma, epidermal carcinoma, prostate cancer, and colon cancer. How curcumin acts as a chemosensitizer and radiosensitizer has also been studied extensively. For example, it downregulates various growth regulatory pathways and specific genetic targets including genes for NF-κB, STAT3, COX2, Akt, antiapoptotic proteins, growth factor receptors, and multidrug-resistance proteins. Although it acts as a chemosensitizer and radiosensitizer for tumors in some cases, curcumin has also been shown to protect normal organs such as liver, kidney, oral mucosa, and heart from chemotherapy and radiotherapy-induced toxicity. The protective effects of curcumin appear to be mediated through its ability to induce the activation of NRF2 and induce the expression of antioxidant enzymes (e.g., hemeoxygenase-1, glutathione peroxidase, modulatory subunit of gamma-glutamyl-cysteine ligase, and NAD(P)H:quinone oxidoreductase 1, increase glutathione (a product of the modulatory subunit of gamma-glutamyl-cysteine ligase), directly quench free radicals, and inhibit p300 HAT activity. These preclinical studies are expected to lead to clinical trials to prove the potential of this age-old golden spice for treating cancer patients.
Spherical and Hyperbolic Embeddings of Data

Many computer vision and pattern recognition problems may be posed as the analysis of a set of dissimilarities between objects. For many types of data, these dissimilarities are not euclidean (i.e., they do not represent the distances between points in a euclidean space), and therefore cannot be isometrically embedded in a euclidean space. Examples include shape-dissimilarities, graph distances and mesh geodesic distances. In this paper, we provide a means of embedding such non-euclidean data onto surfaces of constant curvature. We aim to embed the data on a space whose radius of curvature is determined by the dissimilarity data. The space can be either of positive curvature (spherical) or of negative curvature (hyperbolic). We give an efficient method for solving the spherical and hyperbolic embedding problems on symmetric dissimilarity data. Our approach gives the radius of curvature and a method for approximating the objects as points on a hyperspherical manifold without optimisation. For objects which do not reside exactly on the manifold, we develop a optimisation-based procedure for approximate embedding on a hyperspherical manifold. We use the exponential map between the manifold and its local tangent space to solve the optimisation problem locally in the euclidean tangent space. This process is efficient enough to allow us to embed data sets of several thousand objects. We apply our method to a variety of data including time warping functions, shape similarities, graph similarity and gesture similarity data. In each case the embedding maintains the local structure of the data while placing the points in a metric space.
Team swimming in ant spermatozoa

In species where females mate promiscuously, competition between ejaculates from different males to fertilize the ova is an important selective force shaping many aspects of male reproductive traits, such as sperm number, sperm length and sperm–sperm interactions. In eusocial Hymenoptera (bees, wasps and ants), males die shortly after mating and their reproductive success is ultimately limited by the amount of sperm stored in the queen's spermatheca. Multiple mating by queens is expected to impose intense selective pressure on males to optimize the transfer of sperm to the storage organ. Here, we report a remarkable case of cooperation between spermatozoa in the desert ant Cataglyphis savignyi. Males ejaculate bundles of 50–100 spermatozoa. Sperm bundles swim on average 51% faster than solitary sperm cells. Team swimming is expected to increase the amount of sperm stored in the queen spermatheca and, ultimately, enhance male posthumous fitness.