Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Social cognition and interpersonal relationships in individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)

Social cognition is an area of growing interest in mental health research. Impairments in social cognition have been found in a variety of conditions. Impairments in these processes can lead to relationship difficulties; relationships are instrumental in the management and recovery from difficulties. Few studies have focused on emotional recognition in a PTSD population, this study aimed to expand on the current literature by looking at the associations between emotional recognition and interpersonal relationships. Twenty-seven individuals were recruited to participate, along with age and gender matched healthy controls. They completed two emotional recognition tasks (auditory and facial) and self-report questionnaires measuring views on interpersonal relationships and social support. Those with PTSD were found to have generalised impairments in facial recognition when compared to controls and specific impairments in auditory recognition. The emotions of fear, sadness and disgust were consistently recognised with less accuracy across tasks. No gender differences in accuracy on tasks were found in the PTSD group performance. Comparisons between trauma groups (childhood or adulthood traumas) found no differences in accuracy rates. Significant differences were found between the clinical and control groups on the interpersonal relationship questionnaires, with the PTSD group reporting greater difficulties. Partial associations were found between lower accuracy scores on recognition tasks and reported difficulties in interpersonal relationships. The emotion of sadness on the auditory recognition task mediated the relationship between trauma and interpersonal difficulties. These findings support the view that interventions should also target interpersonal difficulties in PTSD.
Supermassive Black Holes in Bulges

We present spatially extended gas kinematics at parsec-scale resolution for the nuclear regions of four nearby disk galaxies and model them as rotation of a gas disk in the joint potential of the stellar bulge and a putative central black hole. The targets were selected from a larger set of long-slit spectra obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope as part of the Survey of Nearby Nuclei with STIS. They represent the four galaxies (of 24) that display symmetric gas velocity curves consistent with a rotating disk. We derive the stellar mass distribution from the STIS acquisition images adopting the stellar mass-to-light ratio normalized to match ground-based velocity dispersion measurements over a large aperture. Subsequently, we constrain the mass of a putative black hole by matching the gas rotation curve, following two distinct approaches. In the most general case we explore all the possible disk orientations; alternatively, we constrain the gas disk orientation from the dust-lane morphology at similar radii. In the latter case the kinematic data indicate the presence of a central black hole for three of the four objects, with masses of 107-108 M☉, representing up to ~0.025% of the host bulge mass. For one object (NGC 2787) the kinematic data alone provide clear evidence for the presence of a central black hole even without external constraints on the disk orientation. These results illustrate directly the need to determine black hole masses by differing methods for a large number of objects, demonstrate that the variance in black hole/bulge mass is much larger than previously claimed, and reinforce the recent finding that the black hole mass is tightly correlated with the bulge stellar velocity dispersion σ.
The Timing of Divorce

The National Survey of Families and Households was used to assess the effects of marital status on contact with adult children (N = 1,929). Respondents were 55 years of age or older, had been married at least once, and had a biological child aged 19 years or older from the first marriage, who was not residing in the home. As hypothesized, divorce had a negative effect on interaction with adult children, and this effect is much greater for men than for women. In particular, those men who divorced when their children were younger had the lowest rates of interaction. These data suggest that the long-term effects of divorce for men are particularly deleterious in terms of interaction with their children.
Status of electrical tomography in industrial applications

The paper surveys the status of electrical tomography for industrial applications. For the present purposes this is considered to include “low” excitation frequencies, up to about 1 MHz, comprising Resistance (ERT), Capacitance (ECT), Inductance (EMT) and Impedance (EIT) modalities. Introductory background material is followed by comparisons between the instruments that have emerged. Data processing is considered with emphasis on the trade-offs that are necessary in implementing algorithms for reconstructing images. Recent applications are tabulated and case studies are presented for six contrasting areas that illustrate significant progress towards industrial benefit. Some comparison is made with applications to medical tomography and a number of issues are identified for future research.
Early Neural Correlates of Conscious Somatosensory Perception

The cortical processing of consciously perceived and unperceived somatosensory stimuli is thought to be identical during the first 100-120 ms after stimulus onset. Thereafter, the electrophysiological correlates of conscious perception have been shown to be reflected in the N1 component of the evoked response as well as in later (>200 ms) nonstimulus-locked γ-band (28-50 Hz) oscillatory activity. To evaluate more specifically the time course and correlation of neuronal oscillations with conscious perception, we recorded neuromagnetic responses to threshold-intensity somatosensory stimuli. We show here that cortical broadband activities phase locked to the subsequently perceived stimuli in somatosensory, frontal, and parietal regions as early as 30-70 ms from stimulus onset, whereas the phase locking to the unperceived stimuli was weak and primarily restricted to somatosensory regions. Such stimulus locking also preceded the perceived stimuli, indicating that the phase of ongoing cortical activities biases subsequent perception. Furthermore, the data show that the stimulus locking was present in the θ- (4-8 Hz), α- (8-14 Hz), β- (14-28 Hz), and γ- (28-40 Hz) frequency bands, of which the widespread α-band component was dominant for the consciously perceived stimuli but virtually unobservable for the unperceived stimuli. Our results show that the neural correlates of conscious perception are already found during the earliest stages of cortical processing from 30 to 150 ms after stimulus onset and suggest that α-frequency-band oscillations have a role in the neural mechanisms of sensory awareness.
Old Bachelor Acceptance: A New Class of Non-Monotone Threshold Accepting Methods

Stochastic hill-climbing algorithms, particularly simulated annealing (SA) and threshold acceptance (TA), have become very popular for global optimization applications. Typical implementations of SA or TA use monotone temperature or threshold schedules, and are not formulated to accommodate practical time limits. We present a new threshold acceptance strategy called Old Bachelor Acceptance (OBA), which has three distinguishing features: (i) it is specifically motivated by the practical requirement of optimization within a prescribed time bound, (ii) the threshold schedule is self-tuning, and (iii) the threshold schedule is non-monotone, with threshold values even allowed to become negative. The standard implementation of the TA method of Dueck and Scheuer is a special case of OBA. Experiments using several classes of symmetric traveling salesman problem instances show that OBA can outperform previous hill-climbing methods for time-critical optimizations. A number of directions for future work are suggeste.
National principal mentoring: does it achieve its purpose?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the perceived efficacy of a US-based national principal mentor training program. Design/methodology/approach – A sample of 370 proteges who received services from principal mentors in a national mentor internship program were invited to complete an electronic survey. Responses were obtained from 54 proteges. Findings – The 54 respondents rated the mentor program highly, indicating that mentors were well prepared, good listeners, and instrumental in strengthening their instructional leadership. Research limitations/implications – This study provides preliminary information on the perceived efficacy of the program. To more fully understand the needs of new principals and the value of varying mentor approaches, follow-up interviews, a research design that provides for data to be disaggregated by specific mentor trainers and dates/locations of training sessions, and comparative data from proteges supported by mentors prepared by other programs are needed. Prac.
Differing mechanisms of cAMP‐ versus seawater‐induced oocyte maturation in marine nemertean worms I. The roles of serine/threonine kinases and phosphatases

Unlike in most animals, oocytes of marine nemertean worms initiate maturation (=germinal vesicle breakdown, GVBD) following an increase, rather than a decrease, in intraoocytic cAMP. To analyze how serine/threonine (Ser/Thr) kinase cascades involving mitogen‐activated protein kinase (MAPK), maturation‐promoting factor (MPF), cAMP‐dependent protein kinase (PKA), and phosphatidylinositol 3‐kinase (PI3K) regulate nemertean GVBD, oocytes of Cerebratulus sp. were treated with pharmacological modulators and stimulated with cAMP‐elevating drugs or seawater (SW) alone. Both cAMP elevators and SW triggered GVBD while activating MAPK, its target p90Rsk, and MPF. Similarly, neither cAMP‐ nor SW‐induced GVBD was affected by several Ser/Thr phosphatase inhibitors, and both stimuli apparently accelerated GVBD via a MAPK‐independent, PI3K‐dependent mechanism. However, inhibitors of Raf‐1, a kinase that activates MAPK kinase, blocked GVBD and MAPK activation during SW‐, but not cAMP‐induced maturation. In addition, MPF blockers more effectively reduced GVBD and MAPK activity in SW versus in cAMP‐elevating treatments. Moreover, the two maturation‐inducing stimuli yielded disparate patterns of PKA‐related MAPK activations and phosphorylations of putative PKA substrates. Collectively, such findings suggest that in maturing oocytes of Cerebratulus sp. , Ser/Thr kinase cascades differ during cAMP‐ versus SW‐induced GVBD in several ways, including MAPK activation modes, MPF‐feedback loops, and PKA‐related signaling pathways. Additional differences in cAMP‐ versus SW‐induced oocyte maturation are also described in the accompanying study that deals with the roles of tyrosine kinase signaling during GVBD. Mol. Reprod. Dev. 73: 1578–1590, 2006. © 2006 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Religious attitudes and prosocial behavior: a systematic review of published research

One of the most profound questions in the scientific study of religion is whether or not religion evolved because of its ability to stimulate cooperation, in the sense of in-group mutual help. Historical evidence bearing on this fundamental question is scarce and inconclusive. Relevant empirical and experimental studies have often shown an association between religious variables and the promotion of collaborative attitudes, and sometimes a causal link from religion to cooperation. This study evaluates the quality of the evidence gathered to date. After reviewing previously published theoretical, empirical non-experimental, experimental, experimental-priming, meta-analytic, and hybrid studies, I identify difficulties with current research methodologies, including the lack of standard procedures. I conclude by drawing such conclusions as the existing literature permits regarding the link between religion and prosociality, arguing that religion needs to be understood not as needing to produce prosociality to appear, survive, and develop; but as emerging, surviving, and developing in a complex partnership with moral attitudes and behaviors.
Gut Reactions to Matters of the Heart: Reflections on Rationality, Irrationality and Sexuality

The aim of this paper is to analyse tensions between the concepts of rationality and irrationality as they are deployed in modern discourses around heterosexuality. These discourses, we argue, are profoundly gendered and often contradictory. On the one hand, the pursuit of sexual pleasure is seen as a rational life goal, to be integrated into consciously constructed and commodified lifestyles and identity choices. On the other, sexuality is still seen as ‘special’ and spontaneous – an intractable inner drive which is not amenable to rational management. We seek to trace the genealogy of these discourses, arguing that heterosexual relations have been subject to increased rationalisation from the nineteenth century onwards: a process we call ‘the Taylorisation of sex’. In the process, rational sex has been defined largely in masculine terms. We consider whether this has changed and whether there has been a shift to ‘post-Fordist’ forms of sexuality permitting greater diversity and flexibility. We conclude, however, that there has been no radical break, but rather an intensification of pre-existing trends in which sex, and increasingly emotions as well, continue to be subject to rational management while always threatening to exceed the bounds of manageability.
Changes on the Caco-2 Secretome through Differentiation Analyzed by 2-D Differential In-Gel Electrophoresis (DIGE)

Colorectal cancer is still a major health burden worldwide, and its diagnosis has not improved in recent years due to a lack of appropriate diagnostic serum markers. Aiming to find new diagnostic proteins, we applied the proteomic DIGE technology to analyze changes in the secretome before/after differentiation of the colon adenocarcinoma Caco-2 cell line, an accepted in vitro model to study colorectal tumorigenesis. When the secretomes from undifferentiated (tumor-like) and differentiated cells (resembling healthy enterocytes) were compared, we found 96 spots differentially expressed. After MS/MS analysis, 22 spots corresponding to 15 different proteins were identified. Principal component analysis demonstrated these 22 spots could serve as a discriminatory panel between the tumor-like and normal-like cells. Among the identified proteins, the translationally-controlled tumor protein (TCTP), the transforming growth factor-beta-induced protein ig-h3 (TGFβIp), and the Niemann-Pick disease type C2 protein (NPC2) are interesting candidates for future studies focused on their utility as serum biomarkers of colorectal cancer.
Demographic inference through approximate-Bayesian-computation skyline plots

The skyline plot is a graphical representation of estimated past effective population size as a function of time. Its inference is based on models without an a priori assumption on a mathematical function determining the shape of the demographic change, typically a constant piecewise model. Because of this, it is considered to achieve a more realistic description of the complex demographies occurring in natural populations. Currently, there are implementations of the skyline plot based on coalescent samplers and a composite likelihood approach. In the present work we provide an equivalent implementation within the Approximate Bayesian Computation (ABC) framework and provide an assessment of its performance for microsatellite data. The method correctly retrieves the signal of contracting, constant and expanding populations, although the graphical shape of the plot is not always an accurate representation of true demographic trajectory. Because of the flexibility of ABC, similar approaches can be extended to other type of data, to models with multiple populations, or to other parameters that could change through time, such as the migration rate.
NID-SLAM: Robust Monocular SLAM Using Normalised Information Distance

We propose a direct monocular SLAM algorithm based on the Normalised Information Distance (NID) metric. In contrast to current state-of-the-art direct methods based on photometric error minimisation, our information-theoretic NID metric provides robustness to appearance variation due to lighting, weather and structural changes in the scene. We demonstrate successful localisation and mapping across changes in lighting with a synthetic indoor scene, and across changes in weather (direct sun, rain, snow) using real-world data collected from a vehicle-mounted camera. Our approach runs in real-time on a consumer GPU using OpenGL, and provides comparable localisation accuracy to state-of-the-art photometric methods but significantly outperforms both direct and feature-based methods in robustness to appearance changes.
How Effective Are Active Videogames Among the Young and the Old? Adding Meta-analyses to Two Recent Systematic Reviews.

OBJECTIVE Two recent systematic reviews have surveyed the existing evidence for the effectiveness of active videogames in children/adolescents and in elderly people. In the present study, effect sizes were added to these systematic reviews, and meta-analyses were performed. MATERIALS AND METHODS All reviewed studies were considered for inclusion in the meta-analyses, but only studies were included that investigated the effectiveness of active videogames, used an experimental design, and used actual health outcomes as the outcome measures (body mass index for children/adolescents [k=5] and functional balance for the elderly [k=6]). RESULTS The average effect of active videogames in children and adolescents was small and nonsignificant: Hedges' g=0.20 (95 percent confidence interval, -0.08 to 0.48). Limited heterogeneity was observed, and no moderator analyses were performed. For the effect of active videogames on functional balance in the elderly, the analyses revealed a medium-sized and significant effect of g=0.68 (95 percent confidence interval, 0.13-1.24). For the elderly studies, substantial heterogeneity was observed. Moderator analyses showed that there were no significant effects of using a no-treatment control group versus an alternative treatment control group or of using games that were especially created for health-promotion purposes versus off-the-shelf games. Also, intervention duration and frequency, sample size, study quality, and dropout did not significantly moderate the effect of active videogames. CONCLUSIONS The results of these meta-analyses provide preliminary evidence that active videogames can have positive effects on relevant outcome measures in children/adolescents and elderly individuals.
The effect of speech and audio compression on speech recognition performance

This paper proposes an in-depth look at the influence of different speech and audio codecs on the performance of our continuous speech recognition engine. GSM full rate, G711, G723.1 and MPEG coders are investigated. It is shown that MPEG transcoding degrades the speech recognition performance for low bitrates whereas performance remains acceptable for specialized speech coders like GSM or G711. A new strategy is proposed to cope with degradation due to low bitrate coding. The acoustic models of the speech recognition system are trained with transcoded speech (one acoustic model for each speech/audio codec). First results show that this strategy allows one to recover acceptable performance.
Analysis of Multiple Technology Preference Behaviour in Using Social Networking Site

This study employed the Model of Technology Preference (MTP) to examine the relationships of variables as antecedents of behaviour intention to adopt Social Networking Site (SNS) for communication especially after considering preference factors. Self-administered questionnaires were distributed to working adults that leads to obtaining 523 valid responses. The data were analysed using Structural Equation Model (SEM) to measure model fit and to conduct structural modelling. Both measurement and structural model showed relatively good fitness indices. The results support the hypotheses that Perceived Enjoyment and Social Presence as Attribute Based Preference significantly affect Attitude Based Preference that also mediates that effect with Behaviour Intention of using SNS. Attitude Based Preference does not have significant effect on Attitude towards using SNS. Then Attitude Based Preference mediates the relationship between Perceived Enjoyment and Social Presence as Attribute Based Preference towards Behaviour Intention. Limitations of this study include the results are not generalizable and it involved only two medium of communication which are Face-to-face (FtF) and SNS. People engaging on SNS development should pay attention in providing SNS features that ensure enjoyment and social presence for communication.
Beginning teachers' perceptions of school human resource practices

Human resource (HR) management is defined as the sum of activities employed by an organization to attract, develop, and retain people with the appropriate knowledge and skills for effectively and efficiently achieving organizational goals. An understanding of the HR practices in schools is important, as the assembly of a team of qualified and committed teachers, directly or indirectly, affects the quality of instruction in general and in particular in Hong Kong, where a high wastage rate of new teachers has been recorded. The literature has emphasized the importance of each HR element in school and yet not much work has been done that attempts to link the various HR elements together, even though the complementarities and interdependencies among these practices have been acknowledged. The present study aims to provide a general picture of the HR practices in schools from the perspective of beginning teachers, using a quantitative methodology. In addition, the link between these practices and the beginning teachers' commitment was also examined. The findings confirm the complexity and diversity of HR practices in Hong Kong schools and suggest that the practices in the areas of Training and Development and Working Conditions warrant special attention as they are linked to the affective commitment of new teachers to schools.