Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Protective Role of Autonomous Motivation Against the Effects of the “Muscular Ideal” on Men’s Self-Objectification, Appearance Schema Activation, and Cognitive Performance

ABSTRACT The objective of this 3-study research program was to identify and understand whether self-objectification (i.e., mediator) and motivation orientation (i.e., autonomous versus controlled; moderators) influenced men’s cognitive functioning following exposure to advertisements portraying the male muscular ideal. Overall, we aimed to (a) test an original moderated mediation model to further understand the complexities of men’s body image outcomes and (b) assess the moderating roles of autonomous and controlled motivation to understand its potential relationship with men’s body image. Using objectification theory and self-determination theory as frameworks to situate our models, we explored whether the muscular ideal, compared to the neutral video group, negatively affected men’s cognitive functioning using 3 different cognitive tasks intended to measure appearance schema activation (Study 1), visual-spatial processing (Study 2), and processing proficiency (Study 3). Results showed that the muscular ideal induced a state of self-objectification among men, which in turn, mediated viewer’s levels of appearance schema activation. Findings also revealed that autonomous motivation moderated the effects. High levels of autonomous motivation played a protective role on viewer’s cognitive performance on all three mental tasks, whereas controlled motivation did not predict any relationships. Implications and future directions are discussed.
Common Infections in Patients Prescribed Systemic Glucocorticoids in Primary Care: A Population-Based Cohort Study

Background Little is known about the relative risk of common bacterial, viral, fungal, and parasitic infections in the general population of individuals exposed to systemic glucocorticoids, or about the impact of glucocorticoid exposure duration and predisposing factors on this risk. Methods and Findings The hazard ratios of various common infections were assessed in 275,072 adults prescribed glucocorticoids orally for ≥15 d (women: 57.8%, median age: 63 [interquartile range 48–73] y) in comparison to those not prescribed glucocorticoids. For each infection, incidence rate ratios were calculated for five durations of exposure (ranging from 15–30 d to >12 mo), and risk factors were assessed. Data were extracted from The Health Improvement Network (THIN) primary care database. When compared to those with the same underlying disease but not exposed to glucocorticoids, the adjusted hazard ratios for infections with significantly higher risk in the glucocorticoid-exposed population ranged from 2.01 (95% CI 1.83–2.19; p < 0.001) for cutaneous cellulitis to 5.84 (95% CI 5.61–6.08; p < 0.001) for lower respiratory tract infection (LRTI). There was no difference in the risk of scabies, dermatophytosis and varicella. The relative increase in risk was stable over the durations of exposure, except for LRTI and local candidiasis, for which it was much higher during the first weeks of exposure. The risks of infection increased with age and were higher in those with diabetes, in those prescribed higher glucocorticoid doses, and in those with lower plasma albumin level. Most associations were also dependent on the underlying disease. A sensitivity analysis conducted on all individuals except those with asthma or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease produced similar results. Another sensitivity analysis assessing the impact of potential unmeasured confounders such as disease severity or concomitant prescription of chemotherapy suggested that it was unlikely that adjusting for these potential confounders would have radically changed the findings. Limitations of our study include the use of electronic medical records, which could have resulted in some degree of misclassification of the infectious outcomes; a possible reporting bias, as general practitioners could be more prone to record an infection in those exposed to glucocorticoids; and a low number of events for some outcomes such as scabies or varicella, which may have led to limited statistical power. Conclusions The relative risk of LRTI and local candidiasis is very high during the first weeks of glucocorticoid exposure. Further studies are needed to assess whether low albumin level is a risk factor for infection by itself (e.g., by being associated with a higher free glucocorticoid fraction) or whether it reflects other underlying causes of general debilitation.
Usefulness of Nonverbal Cues from Participants in Usability Testing Sessions

We investigated the effect nonverbal cues have on the ability of usability experts to detect usability problems within a stimulus set. The pilot study included nine voluntary participants who completed five tasks using the Internet Movie Database website. These sessions were recorded using TechSmith Morae software, where there were two types of recordings produced: one included video of the screen, user audio, and picture-in-picture (PIP) of user video (PIP group) and the other included just video of the screen and user audio (no-PIP group). Usability experts identified usability problems by watching video clips of users performing five tasks with a web-based program. In a formal experimental study, 24 human factors students were trained in usability evaluation and shown one of the video clips from the pilot study. These students identified usability problems based on a standard training presentation they all received. Results for the experimental study showed slightly higher agreement on identifying usability problems for the no-PIP group as compared to the PIP group. Agreement for both groups was rated as “fair” using the kappa statistic, indicating a low amount of agreement in identifying usability problems for both groups.
Warming of the World Ocean

We quantify the interannual-to-decadal variability of the heat content (mean temperature) of the world ocean from the surface through 3000-meter depth for the period 1948 to 1998. The heat content of the world ocean increased by ∼2 × 10 23 joules between the mid-1950s and mid-1990s, representing a volume mean warming of 0.06°C. This corresponds to a warming rate of 0.3 watt per meter squared (per unit area of Earth9s surface). Substantial changes in heat content occurred in the 300- to 1000-meter layers of each ocean and in depths greater than 1000 meters of the North Atlantic. The global volume mean temperature increase for the 0- to 300-meter layer was 0.31°C, corresponding to an increase in heat content for this layer of ∼10 23 joules between the mid-1950s and mid-1990s. The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans have undergone a net warming since the 1950s and the Indian Ocean has warmed since the mid-1960s, although the warming is not monotonic.
My Tablet Is Moving Around, Can I Touch It?

Touch displays moving autonomously, i.e., being self-actuated, are starting to be part of system prototypes reported in the literature. In the future, user interactions with such prototypes may take place while the display is moving. However, since current prototypes do not yet require this type of interaction, there is a lack of empirical evidence reporting issues related to touch input in such conditions. This leads us to propose two basic questions: Can we request users to deliver touch gestures during the actuation? Which aspects should we take into account when having touch input in these moving devices? In order to start to answer these questions, we report in this paper a first study to get an insight into how people perform and feel it when they have to carry out touch input on a self-actuated tablet. The preliminary results show that the self-actuated tablet does not necessarily need to be still during touch interaction, and that single-touch gestures based on drag or tap are preferable over others. Furthermore, the results also revealed an issue with tap gestures because of the movement of the tablet.
Linguistic knowledge and automatic semantic representation of emotions and feelings

In this paper, the FEELING-G system for extracting and building semantic representations of emotions, feelings and psychological states expressed in texts is presented, as well as the linguistic knowledge used by the system. Semantic representations are described by means of a set of feature structures. Letters to the Editor is taken as a domain for the evaluation of this work.
A Genetic Switch for Epilepsy in Adult Mice

Premature death from seizures afflicts gene-targeted mice expressing the Q/R site-unedited glutamate receptor subunit GluR-B(Q) of AMPA receptors in central neurons. Early seizure-related death has now been circumvented by a genetic switch that restricts GluR-B(Q) expression to forebrain principal neurons from postnatal stages onward, prominently in hippocampus and striatum and less so in cortex and amygdala. When switched on, functional receptor incorporation of GluR-B(Q) could be demonstrated by imaging evoked AMPA channel-mediated spinous Ca2+ transients in CA1 pyramidal cells. Sustained GluR-B(Q) expression in adult mice led to smaller excitatory postsynaptic responses in the CA1 region with unchanged presynaptic fiber excitability. Notably, despite the smaller excitatory response, the CA1 cells exhibited a reduced population spike threshold, which might underlie the spontaneous manifestations of epilepsy, including myocloni and generalized seizures with limbic components, observed by synchronous video monitoring and electroencephalographic recordings. No neuropathological symptoms developed when GluR-B(Q) expression was restricted to only hippocampal neurons. Our results show that seizure susceptibility is triggered by GluR-B(Q) expression also in the adult brain and that circuit hyperexcitability is not an immediate consequence of GluR-B(Q) but requires yet unknown downstream events, likely to be induced by non-Hebbian plasticity from Ca2+-permeable AMPA channels in principal neurons.
Stimulus polarity effects on individual components of speech-evoked frequency following response

In literatures of auditory frequency following response (FFR), it has been suggested that adding the frequency following responses evoked by opposite stimulus polarities can be used to emphasize neural activities related to the stimulus envelope, while subtracting the responses can enhance the activities related to fine structure such as the formants in speech stimuli. To assess the effectiveness of the additive and subtractive technique, our study focused on the effects of stimulus polarity on individual harmonic frequency components of FFR. Specifically, the effects of stimulus polarity on the amplitude and phase of individual component were analyzed by comparing FFRs to two stimulus polarities. In addition, individual component was also compared between addition FFR and subtraction FFR, to figure out the effects caused by the additive and subtractive technique. Results showed no significant effects of stimulus polarity on the amplitudes of individual components in FFR, as well as the phase of the component at the fundamental frequency. However, significant change on the phase of component at the first formant frequency was observed due to stimulus polarity inversion. According to amplitude analysis, the addition FFR did emphasized the F0 component, while the subtraction FFR enhanced F1 component. The present study supported the hypotheses that the additive and subtractive technique was effective in emphasizing the envelope-related responses and fine-structure-related responses, respectively. The proposed method of analyzing the amplitude and phase of individual component in FFR was useful for testing the additive and subtractive technique directly.
VoIP traffic support in mobile ad hoc networks

Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) are temporary networks which are formed for a specific purpose. They are infrastructureless, autonomous and entirely distributed systems where different wireless mobile nodes are capable of arbitrary movement and power switching without breaking the network connectivity since it is physically possible. In these networks, nodes must operate both as hosts and as routers. Their use is suited when it is impossible or undesirable to use fixed infrastructures. The flexibility offered by ad hoc mobile networks drive researchers to investigate the possibilities of allowing real-time multimedia applications on such networks. However, support for such demanding applications requires quality of service (QoS) guarantees especially regarding latency and losses while those networks are very constrained and poor comparing to conventional networks. Accordingly, this work aims at investigating MANETs performance with VoIP applications through simulation (ns2) in an IEEE 802.11/802.11b based network. We also show through it the important optimization that can be obtained from early dropping of expiring packets in the network. We choose VoIP for our tests as a real-time multimedia application which is having a big growth these last years.
Transgenic Expression of the Activating Natural Killer Receptor Ly49H Confers Resistance to Cytomegalovirus in Genetically Susceptible Mice

Natural resistance to infection with mouse cytomegalovirus (MCMV) is controlled by a dominant locus, Cmv1. Cmv1 is linked to the Ly49 family of natural killer receptors on distal chromosome 6. While some studies localized Cmv1 as distal to the Ly49 gene cluster, genetic and functional analysis identified Ly49h as a pivotal factor in resistance to MCMV. The role of these two independent genomic domains in MCMV resistance was evaluated by functional complementation using transgenesis of bacterial artificial chromosomes (BAC) in genetically susceptible mice. Phenotypic and genetic characterization of the transgenic animals traced the resistance gene to a single region spanning the Ly49h gene. The appearance of the Ly49H protein in NK cells of transgenic mice coincided with the emergence of MCMV resistance, and there was a threshold Ly49H protein level associated with full recovery. Finally, transgenic expression of Ly49H in the context of either of the two independent susceptibility alleles, Cmv1 sBALB or Cmv1 sFVB, conferred resistance to MCMV infection. These results demonstrate that Ly49h is necessary and sufficient to confer MCMV resistance, and formally demonstrate allelism between Cmv1 and Ly49h. This panel of transgenic animals provides a unique resource to study possible pleiotropic effect of Cmv1.
Characterization of an Adhesion Molecule that Mediates Leukocyte Rolling on 24 h Cytokine- or Lipopolysaccharide-stimulated Bovine Endothelial Cells under Flow Conditions

Bovine γ/δ T cells and neutrophils roll on 24 h cytokine- or lipopolysaccharide-stimulated bovine fetal umbilical cord endothelial cells in assays done under physiological flow. An antibody directed against E- and L-selectin has minimal blocking effect on this rolling interaction. mAbs were raised against the stimulated bovine endothelial cells and screened for inhibition of γ/δ T cell rolling. One mAb (GR113) was identified that recognizes an antigen (GR antigen) selectively expressed by stimulated bovine endothelial cells isolated from fetal umbilical cord, mesenteric lymph nodes, and aorta. GR113 blocked bovine γ/δ T cell as well as neutrophil rolling on the 24 h-activated endothelial cells. The GR antigen was constitutively expressed at low levels on the cell surface of platelets and its expression was not upregulated after stimulation of these cells with thrombin or phorbol myristate acetate. However, stimulated platelets released a soluble, functionally active form of the molecule that selectively bound in solution to γ/δ T cells in a mixed lymphocyte preparation. GR113 mAb blocked the binding of the soluble platelet molecule to the γ/δ T cells. Soluble GR antigen also bound a subset of human lymphocytes. Cutaneous lymphocyte-associated antigen (CLA) bright human lymphocytes exhibited the greatest capacity to bind the GR antigen, though CLA was not required for binding. Subsets of both human CD4 and CD8 T cells bound the GR antigen. Immunoprecipitation experiments showed the GR antigen to be 110-120 kD M r. The binding of soluble GR antigen was inhibited by EDTA and O-sialoglycoprotease, but not neuraminidase treatment of the target cells.
Instrumenting an SMT Solver to Solve Hybrid Network Reachability Problems

PDDL+ planning has its semantics rooted in hybrid automata (HA) and recent work has shown that it can be modeled as a network of HAs. Addressing the complexity of nonlinear PDDL+ planning as HAs requires both space and time efficient reasoning. Unfortunately, existing solvers either do not address nonlinear dynamics or do not natively support networks of automata. We present a new algorithm, called HNSolve, which guides the variable selection of the dReal Satisfiability Modulo Theories (SMT) solver while reasoning about network encodings of nonlinear PDDL+ planning as HAs. HNSolve tightly integrates with dReal by solving a discrete abstraction of the HA network. HNSolve finds composite runs on the HA network that ignore continuous variables, but respect mode jumps and synchronization labels. HNSolve admissibly detects dead-ends in the discrete abstraction, and posts conflict clauses that prune the SMT solver's search. We evaluate the benefits of our HNSolve algorithm on PDDL+ benchmark problems and demonstrate its performance with respect to prior work.
Compliant control for soft robots: Emergent behavior of a tendon driven anthropomorphic arm

With the accelerated development of robot technologies, optimal control becomes one of the central themes of research. In traditional approaches, the controller, by its internal functionality, finds appropriate actions on the basis of the history of sensor values, guided by the goals, intentions, objectives, learning schemes, and so forth. While very successful with classical robots, these methods run into severe difficulties when applied to soft robots, a new field of robotics with large interest for human-robot interaction. We claim that a novel controller paradigm opens new perspective for this field. This paper applies a recently developed neuro controller with differential extrinsic synaptic plasticity to a muscle-tendon driven arm-shoulder system from the Myorobotics toolkit. In the experiments, we observe a vast variety of self-organized behavior patterns: when left alone, the arm realizes pseudo-random sequences of different poses. By applying physical forces, the system can be entrained into definite motion patterns like wiping a table. Most interestingly, after attaching an object, the controller gets in a functional resonance with the object's internal dynamics, starting to shake spontaneously bottles half-filled with water or sensitively driving an attached pendulum into a circular mode. When attached to the crank of a wheel the neural system independently develops to rotate it. In this way, the robot discovers affordances of objects its body is interacting with.
TRPV6 Determines the Effect of Vitamin D3 on Prostate Cancer Cell Growth

Despite remarkable advances in the therapy and prevention of prostate cancer it is still the second cause of death from cancer in industrialized countries. Many therapies initially shown to be beneficial for the patients were abandoned due to the high drug resistance and the evolution rate of the tumors. One of the prospective therapeutical agents even used in the first stage clinical trials, 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3, was shown to be either unpredictable or inefficient in many cases. We have already shown that TRPV6 calcium channel, which is the direct target of 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 receptor, positively controls prostate cancer proliferation and apoptosis resistance (Lehen'kyi et al., Oncogene, 2007). However, how the known 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 antiproliferative effects may be compatible with the upregulation of pro-oncogenic TRPV6 channel remains a mystery. Here we demonstrate that in low steroid conditions 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 upregulates the expression of TRPV6, enchances the proliferation by increasing the number of cells entering into S-phase. We show that these pro-proliferative effects of 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 are directly mediated via the overexpression of TRPV6 channel which increases calcium uptake into LNCaP cells. The apoptosis resistance of androgen-dependent LNCaP cells conferred by TRPV6 channel is drastically inversed when 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 effects were combined with the successful TRPV6 knockdown. In addition, the use of androgen-deficient DU-145 and androgen-insensitive LNCaP C4-2 cell lines allowed to suggest that the ability of 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3 to induce the expression of TRPV6 channel is a crucial determinant of the success or failure of 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3-based therapies.
System design for distributed adaptive observation systems

Currently, there is no clear-cut approach or design methodology available for designing distributed adaptive observation systems, partly due to the necessity to combine elements and approaches from several technological and scientific communities. Recently, an effort was made addressing this issue in an integrated manner, resulting in the definition of a model for Networked Adaptive Interactive Hybrid Systems, or NAIHS. However, so far its use was only demonstrated to a limited extent. This paper presents the application of the NAIHS model to design and implement four different prototypical fusion systems to show the applicability and relevance of the model's concepts.
Ecological Specialization to Fluctuating Resources Prevents Long-Distance Migratory Raptors from Becoming Sedentary on Islands

Background The adaptive transition between behavioral strategies, such as the shift from migratoriness to sedentariness, remains an outstanding question in evolutionary ecology. Density-dependent variation in the age of first breeding has been proposed as a feasible mechanism through which long-lived migratory birds with deferred sexual maturity should become sedentary to persist on islands. Although this pattern seems to hold for most raptors and herons, a few exceptions have been identified. One of these exceptions is the Eleonora’s falcon, a long-distance migratory bird, which shows one of the most peculiar adaptations in the timing of reproduction and food requirements among raptors. Methodology/Principal Findings Here, we compiled data concerning demography, banding recoveries and satellite tracking of Eleonora’s falcons to discuss likely explanations for the exceptional behavior of this insular long-distance migratory species. Conclusions/Significance New data reveal that Eleonora’s falcons do return to the natal colonies in their first year and young birds are able to breed. However, in contrast to previous hypothesis, the highly specialized strategy of this and other ecologically similar species, as well as the virtual lack of food during winter at breeding areas prevent them from becoming sedentary on islands. Although the ultimate mechanisms underlying the process of sedentarization remain poorly understood, the evidence provided reveal the existence of important trade-offs associated with ecological specialization that may become particularly relevant in the present context of global change.