Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Grammar and social agency: The pragmatics of impersonal deontic statements

Abstract: Sentence and construction types generally have more than one pragmatic function. Impersonal deontic declaratives such as ‘it is necessary to X’ assert the existence of an obligation or necessity without tying it to any particular individual. This family of statements can accomplish a range of functions, including getting another person to act, explaining or justifying the speaker’s own behavior as he or she undertakes to do something, or even justifying the speaker’s behavior while simultaneously getting another person to help. How is an impersonal deontic declarative fit for these different functions? And how do people know which function it has in a given context? We address these questions using video recordings of everyday interactions among speakers of Italian and Polish. Our analysis results in two findings. The first is that the pragmatics of impersonal deontic declaratives is systematically shaped by (i) the relative responsibility of participants for the necessary task and (ii) the speaker’s nonverbal conduct at the time of the statement. These two factors influence whether the task in question will be dealt with by another person or by the speaker, often giving the statement the force of a request or, alternatively, of an account of the speaker’s behavior. The second finding is that, although these factors systematically influence their function, impersonal deontic declaratives maintain the potential to generate more complex interactions that go beyond a simple opposition between requests and accounts, where participation in the necessary task may be shared, negotiated, or avoided. This versatility of impersonal deontic declaratives derives from their grammatical makeup: by being deontic and impersonal, they can both mobilize or legitimize an act by different participants in the speech event, while their declarative form does not constrain how they should be responded to. These features make impersonal deontic declaratives a special tool for the management of social agency.
Effects of sense of control on aggression among low-status Chinese undergraduate students

We examined whether a sense of control affects the relationship between low status and aggression among Chinese undergraduate students. A sample of 195 undergraduates in Study 1 completed anonymous questionnaires regarding their sense of control and trait aggression. Results showed that a greater sense of control was associated with less trait aggression among low-status participants, whereas no significant relationship was observed between sense of control and trait aggression among high-status participants. In Study 2, we further tested the effect of predictive control on aggression among low-status undergraduates using an experimental manipulation of predictive control, and found that low-status participants in a condition that fostered predictive control behaved less aggressively than did low-status participants in a condition that did not foster predictive control. Our findings indicate that when low-status people perceive a greater sense of control, their inclination to behave aggressively is decreased to some extent.
An outline of the physical limnology of Lake Malawi (Lake Nyasa)

Lake Malawi, in tropical central Africa, is 560 by 75 km and consists of a single basin, maximum depth 695 m. Below 250 m the lake is homothermal at about 22.5°C and is anoxic. Above this level there is a seasonal cycle with the development of a marked thcrmocline. By May the upper 60 m is homothermal at about 27°C. During the dry, windy cool season the epilimnion cools but only in exceptional years approaches a homothermal condition. Complete mixing has never been observed. In the shallower southeast arm the surface temperature may fall to 21.0°C as the result of inshore chilling; this cool water flows northward as a profile-bound density current and appears to maintain the stability of the stratification. Large-scale oscillations of the level of the thermocline, apparently the result of internal waves and of wind-induced upwelling, cause advections of water from the metalimnion into the southeast arm, site of the major fishery in the lake.
Pre-Service Social Studies Teachers’ Perception of Global Citizenship

Due to contuniuing developments in science, technology, and communication, definition of citizenship and what is expected from a citizen as well as political, social and economical changes around the world. In order for students to adapt to the new developments and changes, educators need to provide students with various skills such as respecting differences, using multiple perspectives in discusions, being sensitive to the environmental problems, and being effective in decision making. Social studies teachers, as one of important components of educational system, play a key role to meet these expectations. Therefore it is crucial to for social studies teachers to improve their knowledge, skills, and values regarding global citizenship. This study aims to understand how pre-service social studies teachers perceives global citizenship, how they define the concept of global citizenship and related concepts, and how they explain to what extend global citizenship is employed in social studies education. The study employed phenomenology in order to gather the data. The data obtained as a result of the interviews were analysed through in NVivo 10 package program. Findings obtained as a result of this phenomenological study, only some of the pre-service social studies teachers made explanatory statements about the concept of global citizenship, whereas other participants emphasized on the characteristics that a global citizen should have instead of explaining purely the concept. Another finding was that the participants believed that being a global citizen was a necessity; however, one should have the some characteristics, in other words requirements to be considered as a global citizen and without meeting these requirements he/she cannot be counted as a global citizen. In addition, the findings also included that the pre-service teachers did not take any course directly related to global citizenship during their undergraduate education, it was partly mentioned only in two courses therefore they learned about global citizenship mostly through the media, social media, friends, and various non-governmental organizations rather than in-class.
Arousal and attention re-orienting in autism spectrum disorders: evidence from auditory event-related potentials

The extended phenotype of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) includes a combination of arousal regulation problems, sensory modulation difficulties, and attention re-orienting deficit. A slow and inefficient re-orienting to stimuli that appear outside of the attended sensory stream is thought to be especially detrimental for social functioning. Event-related potentials (ERPs) and magnetic fields (ERFs) may help to reveal which processing stages underlying brain response to unattended but salient sensory event are affected in individuals with ASD. Previous research focusing on two sequential stages of the brain response—automatic detection of physical changes in auditory stream, indexed by mismatch negativity (MMN), and evaluation of stimulus novelty, indexed by P3a component,—found in individuals with ASD either increased, decreased, or normal processing of deviance and novelty. The review examines these apparently conflicting results, notes gaps in previous findings, and suggests a potentially unifying hypothesis relating the dampened responses to unattended sensory events to the deficit in rapid arousal process. Specifically, “sensory gating” studies focused on pre-attentive arousal consistently demonstrated that brain response to unattended and temporally novel sound in ASD is already affected at around 100 ms after stimulus onset. We hypothesize that abnormalities in nicotinic cholinergic arousal pathways, previously reported in individuals with ASD, may contribute to these ERP/ERF aberrations and result in attention re-orienting deficit. Such cholinergic dysfunction may be present in individuals with ASD early in life and can influence both sensory processing and attention re-orienting behavior. Identification of early neurophysiological biomarkers for cholinergic deficit would help to detect infants “at risk” who can potentially benefit from particular types of therapies or interventions.
The Andromeda project - I. Deep HST-WFPC2 V, I photometry of 16 fields toward the disk and the halo of the M 31 galaxy. Probing the stellar content and metallicity distribution

We have obtained HST-WFPC2 F555W and F814W photometry for 16 fields in the vicinity of the luminous nearby spiral galaxy M 31, sampling the stellar content of the disk and the halo at different distances from the center, from ~20 to ~150 arcmin (i.e. ~4.5 to 35 kpc), down to limiting V and I magnitudes of ~27. The Color–Magnitude Diagrams (CMD) obtained for each field show the presence of complex stellar populations, including an intermediate age/young population and older populations with a wide range of metallicity. Those fields superposed on the disk of M 31 generally show a blue plume of stars which we identify with main sequence members. According to this interpretation, we find that the star formation rate over the last 0.5 Gyr has varied dramatically with location in the disk. The most evident feature of all the CMDs is a prominent Red Giant Branch (RGB) with a descending tip in the V band, characteristic of metallicity higher than 1/10 Solar. A red clump is clearly detected in all of the fields, and a weak blue horizontal branch is frequently present. The metallicity distributions, obtained by comparison of the RGB stars with globular cluster templates, all show a long, albeit scantly populated, metal-poor tail and a main component peaking at $\rm [Fe/H] \sim - \,0.6$. The most noteworthy characteristic of the abundance distributions is their overall similarity in all the sampled fields, covering a wide range of environments and galactocentric distances. Nevertheless, a few interesting differences and trends emerge from the general uniformity of the metallicity distributions. For example, the median [Fe/H] shows a slight decrease with distance along the minor axis ( Y ) up to $Y\simeq 20 \arcmin$, but the metallicity gradient completely disappears beyond this limit. Also, in some fields a very metal-rich ($\rm [Fe/H] \ge -0.2$) component is clearly present. Whereas the fraction of metal-poor stars seems to be approximately constant (within few percent) in all fields, the fraction of metal-rich and, especially, very-metal-rich stars varies with position and seems to be more prominent in those fields superposed on the disk and/or with the presence of streams or substructures (e.g. Ibata et al. 2001). This might indicate and possibly trace interaction effects with some companion, e.g. M 32.
Comparative genomics of the environmental stress response in ascomycete fungi

Unicellular fungi thrive in diverse niches around the world, and many of these niches present unique and stressful challenges that must be contended with by their inhabitants. Numerous studies have investigated the genomic expression responses to environmental stress in ‘model’ ascomycete fungi, including Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Candida albicans and Schizosaccharomyces pombe. This review presents a comparative‐genomics perspective on the environmental stress response, a common response to diverse stresses. Implications for the role of this response, based on its presence or absence in fungi from disparate ecological niches, are discussed. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Birth Order and Sibling Gender Ratio of a Clinical Sample Barkley's Parent Training Program, Working Memory Training and Their Combination for Children with Adhd: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder

Objective: The aim of the current study was to examine the effectiveness of Barkley's parent training program, working memory training and the combination of these two interventions for children with Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Methods: In this study, 36 participants with ADHD (aged 6 to 12 years) were selected by convenience sampling. Revision of the Swanson, Nolan and Pelham (SNAP) questionnaire (SNAP–IV), Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) and clinical interviews were employed to diagnose ADHD. Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Fourth Edition was also implemented. The participants were randomly assigned to the three intervention groups of Barkley's parent training program, working memory training and the combined group. SNAP-IV and CBCL were used as pre-tests and post-tests across all three groups. Data were analyzed using MANCOVA (SPSS version18). Results: There was a significant difference (p< 0.05) in the decline of attention deficit and hyperactivity /impulsivity symptoms between the combined treatment group and working memory training group and also between the combined treatment group and the parent training group in SNAP. In terms of attention problems (experience-based subscales) of CBCL, there was a significant difference (p< 0.001) between the combined treatment group and working memory training group. Furthermore, compared to the working memory training and parent training groups, the combined group demonstrated a significant decline (p< 0.01) in clinical symptoms of ADHD (based on DSM). Conclusion: It was revealed that combined treatment in comparison with the other two methods suppressed the clinical symptoms of ADHD more significantly. Attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neuropsychiatric disorder of childhood which is associated with inattention, impulsivity and hyperactivity (1-4). It is estimated that 3 to 7 percent of school-aged children are affected by ADHD (2). Symptoms of ADHD tend to impact various aspects of the individual's functioning and development (5, 6). Indeed, children with ADHD might have various behavioural impairments, low self-confidence, aggression and learning problems (3, 4, 7). Furthermore, most children are also affected by other comorbid disorders (7, 8). High prevalence of ADHD, its behavioural outcomes and common occurrence with comorbid disorders greatly complicate the treatment of children with ADHD (2, 9). Various Methods of treatment have been proposed so far to reduce ADHD symptoms. These methods are globally classified as medical and psychosocial treatments (10-12). One of the treatment methods in psychosocial domain involves parent training which is currently considered as an indispensible component of medical interventions (3, 13, 14). It is due …
TULAA: A Minimally Invasive Appendicectomy Technique for the Paediatric Patient

TULAA or Transumbilical Laparoscopic Assisted Appendicectomy is a minimally invasive technique described by Pelosi in 1992 for the removal of the inflamed appendix. Its main advantage is the possibility of exploring the peritoneal cavity and performing a simple and safe extracorporeal appendicectomy. Since its first description, different authors reported their experience with such technique. The aim of this review is to summarise the surgical outcomes currently reported in the literature for this minimally invasive surgical approach and compare it with standard open and laparoscopic appendicectomy.
Exploring sarcasm detection in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis using ecologically valid measures

Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a rapidly progressive condition involving degeneration of both upper and lower motor neurons. Recent research suggests that a proportion of persons with ALS show a profile similar to that of frontotemporal dementia (FTD), with this group of ALS patients exhibiting social cognitive deficits. Although social cognitive deficits have been partially explored in ALS, research has yet to investigate such changes using ecologically valid measures. Therefore, this study aimed to further characterize the scope of social cognitive and emotion recognition deficits in non-demented ALS patients using an ecologically valid measure of social cognition. A sample of 35 ALS patients and 30 age-and-education matched controls were assessed using the Addenbrooke's Cognitive Examination, the Brixton Spatial Anticipation Test, and The Awareness of Social Inference Test, where participants were required to discriminate between various emotions and decipher socially challenging scenarios enacted in video vignettes. Participants with ALS showed significant difficulties in recognizing both sarcastic and paradoxical sarcastic statements, but not sincere statements, when compared to controls. After controlling for executive difficulties, ALS patients still displayed significant difficulties on tasks that assessed their comprehension of both sarcastic and paradoxical sarcastic statements. The inability to read social cues and make social inferences has the potential to place significant strain on familial/interpersonal relationships in ALS. The findings of this study highlight the importance of employing a broader range of neuropsychological assessment tools to aid in early detection of frontal lobe impairment in non-demented ALS patients.
The Effect of Dependency and Plausibility on Attitude Change

The purpose of this research was to study the relationship between dependency and attitude change and to test the theory formulated by William McGuire (1968). McGuire postulates that attitude_ change results from a series of behavioral steps which include a reception and yielding factor. When a given personality variable is differentially related to reception and yielding, the result is often complex and non-monotonic, with maximum opinion change occurring at intermediate levels of the personality variable. In this study, it was hypothesized that dependency is differentially related and that maximum attitude change would occur in high dependent §. s for a highly plausible message and in low dependent §. s for a low plausible message. It was also hypothesized that low dependent §. s would score higher on the comprehension measure than high dependent . §s. A 2 x 2 factorial design was used, varying dependency by encouraging or not encouraging requests for help on a difficult task, and the yielding factor by presenting high or low plausible arguments against the use of penicillin. Two samples of su~jects were used. One was a group of eighty alcoholic men in a residential treatment center; the other was forty undergraduate college students. Subjects ·were given an initial opinion survey in some health issues and a personality measure (Cattell's 16 P-F for the alcoholics and the Edwards PPS for the college students). Subjects then had a 15-minute puzzle-solving session during which they either asked for help or did not. Subjects were then given a plausible or implausible argument against the use of penicillin, followed by a second opinion survey and a comprehension test on the contents of the message. Neither hypothesis was confirmed for either sample. There was, however, ·a significant interaction on the comprehension measure for the alcoholics, which suggests that differences in attitude shifts might be mediated at the reception level. There was also a significant negative correlation between the Deference Scale of the EPPS and the number of requests for help on the puzzle. The results indicate the need for refined measures of dependent behavior in adults and tasks which will more easily elicit such behavior. Discussion includes suggestions for such design improvements.
A PROPOSAL FOR THE USE OF ORGANIZATIONAL SELF DESIGN TO COORDINATE MULTIAGENT SYSTEMS by Sachin Kamboj

Multiagent systems are increasingly being used to solve a wide variety of problems in a range of applications such as distributed sensing, information retrieval, workflow and business process management, air traffic control and spacecraft control, amongst others. Each of these systems have to be designed at two levels: the micro-architecture level, which involves the design of the individual agents and the macro-architecture level which involves the design of the agents’ organizational structure. In this research, we are primarily concerned with the agents’ macro-architecture. At the macro-architecture level, the multiagent designer is concerned with issues such as the number of agents needed to solve the problem, the assignment of tasks to the agents and the coordination mechanisms being used. The design of the agents’ macroarchitecture is complicated by the fact that there is no best way to organize and all ways of organizing are not equally effective. Instead the optimal organizational structure depends on the problem at hand and the environmental conditions under which the problem needs to be solved. In some cases, the environmental conditions may not be known a priori, at design time, in which case the multi-agent designer does not know how to come up with the optimal organizational structure. In other cases, the environmental conditions may change requiring a redesign of the agents’ macro-architecture. These are just a few of the hurdles confronting the macro-architecture designer. In my research, I intend to simplify the macro-architectural design by passing on some of the macro-architectural design responsibilities to the agents themselves. That is, instead of manually designing the macro-architecture of a multiagent system at design time, I intend to allow the agents to come up with their own organizational structure at run time. This approach is known as Organizational Self Design (OSD) and it allows the agents to adapt their organizational structure to changing environmental conditions and differences in the problems being solved. Most of the current work on OSD has focused on task-oriented domains. In my research, I extend OSD to apply to worth-oriented domains, the hardest class of problems. My research focuses on developing algorithms and mechanisms that allow (a) the generation of agents as an artifact of the system; and (b) the generation of different organizational structures that make different quality/cost tradeoffs based on the organizational design constraints specified and the performance criteria being optimized. Such tradeoffs are not possible in task-oriented and state-oriented domains.
The Association of LINE-1 Hypomethylation with Age and Centromere Positive Micronuclei in Human Lymphocytes

Global hypomethylation in white blood cell (WBC) DNA has recently been proposed as a potential biomarker for determining cancer risk through genomic instability. However, the amplitude of the changes associated with age and the impacts of environmental factors on DNA methylation are unclear. In this study, we investigated the association of genomic hypomethylation with age, cigarette use, drinking status and the presence of centromere positive micronuclei (MNC+)—a biomarker for age-dependent genomic instability. Genomic hypomethylation of the repetitive element LINE-1 was measured in WBC DNA from 32 healthy male volunteers using the pyrosequencing assay. We also measured MNC+ with the micronucleus-centromere assay using a pan-centromeric probe. Possibly due to the small sample size and resulting low statistical power, smoking and drinking status had no significant effect on LINE-1 hypomethylation or the occurrence of MNC+. Consequently, we did not include them in further analyses. In contrast, LINE-1 hypomethylation and age significantly predicted MNC+; therefore, we examined whether LINE-1 hypomethylation plays a role in MNC+ formation by age, since genomic hypomethylation is associated with genomic instability. However, LINE-1 hypomethylation did not significantly mediate the effect of age on MNC+. Our data indicate that the repetitive element LINE-1 is demethylated with age and increasing MNC+ frequency, but additional studies are needed to fully understand the relation between genomic DNA hypomethylation, age and genomic instability.