Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Oxytocin and cooperation: Cooperation with non-kin associated with mechanisms for affiliation.

Animal models have shown oxytocin to be causally associated with parental and alloparental investment, and effects of administered oxytocin in humans suggest it is also associated with cooperative behaviors directed at adult non-kin. Oxytocin appears to mediate cooperative behaviors by acting on the HPA axis to reduce anxiety, allowing for the expression of approach and helping behaviors. An observational study of 44 young adult males in St. Petersburg, Russia, found no association between circulating basal endocrine measures (oxytocin, cortisol, and testosterone) and prosocial behaviors measured by self-report altruism and empathy scales. Frequency of helping behavior and emotional empathy scores were significantly correlated. The study did find emotional empathy significantly associated with fatherhood, and helping behavior significantly associated with marital status, suggesting that affiliative and helping behaviors are expressed through similar pathways. Testosterone varied significantly between ethnic and non-ethnic Russians, but did not vary with marital status or presence of children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) (journal abstract)
Regularizing Neural Networks by Penalizing Confident Output Distributions

We systematically explore regularizing neural networks by penalizing low entropy output distributions. We show that penalizing low entropy output distributions, which has been shown to improve exploration in reinforcement learning, acts as a strong regularizer in supervised learning. Furthermore, we connect a maximum entropy based confidence penalty to label smoothing through the direction of the KL divergence. We exhaustively evaluate the proposed confidence penalty and label smoothing on 6 common benchmarks: image classification (MNIST and Cifar-10), language modeling (Penn Treebank), machine translation (WMT'14 English-to-German), and speech recognition (TIMIT and WSJ). We find that both label smoothing and the confidence penalty improve state-of-the-art models across benchmarks without modifying existing hyperparameters, suggesting the wide applicability of these regularizers.
Using sound‐field systems to teach phonemic awareness to pre‐schoolers

There has been increasing interest in improving academic test scores of American students, and specifically reading scores. The percentage of fourth-grade students reading at or above Proficient, the level identified by the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB) as the goal for all students, has increased slightly from 29% in 1992, to 32% in 2000.1 However, these data still mean that only about a third of fourth graders in the United States who took the fourth-grade proficiency tests could read at their grade level. Moreover, while scores for the nation’s highest performing students have improved over the years, scores of the lowest performing students have declined.1 Therefore, educators are under mounting pressure to improve literacy skills. It is known that skills that are prerequisites to reading development begin in infancy. Indeed, reading aloud to infants and young children—allowing them to hear books—is highly associated with these children’s developing literacy later on.2 The question logically arises, is there some intervention that can be provided at the pre-school level to reduce the number of students who are at risk for reading failure—in essence to build better readers?
Swing up control of the Acrobot

Investigates the problem of swing up control of the Acrobot, a two-link, underactuated robot that is a useful vehicle to study problems in nonlinear control. The author develops a swing up strategy based on partial feedback linearization. The algorithm works by creating "unstable zero dynamics" which drives the first link of the Acrobot away from its open loop stable equilibrium toward the inverted position. Control is switched to a linear controller, designed to balance the arm about the inverted configuration, whenever the swing up controller moves the Acrobot into the near vertical position. Simulation results are presented showing the performance of the system. <<ETX>>
Cultural adaptation models among US ethnic consumers: cluster formation and validation

Based on the results of a national mail survey targeting two ethnic minority groups in the US (Hispanics and Asians), this study empirically confirms the existence of five cultural adaptation patterns (Overshooting, Assimilation, Ethnic Affirmation, Dual Culture, and Cultural Unadaptation). Description and validation of the five models of cultural adaptation is provided. The patterns of cultural adaptation affect ethnic consumers' responses to ethnically accommodating ads. Dual Culture and Cultural Unadaptation groups showed the most positive attitudes toward and highest purchase intentions for ethnically customized ads. Advertising and marketing implications are discussed.
Root surface colonization of non-cereal crop plants by pleomorphic Azospirillum brasilense Cd

Root surface colonization by Azospirillum brasilense Cd of tomato, pepper and cotton plants under normal growth conditions and soybean plants under normal and water-stress conditions was monitored by scanning electron microscopy and bacterial counts. A. brasilense Cd was capable of efficiently colonizing the elongation and roothair zones of all four plant species tested. In these zones, the bacteria mainly colonized the root surface (tomato, soybean), root-hairs (pepper), or both (cotton), by single cells (tomato, soybean), micro-aggregates (pepper), or a combination of the two (cotton). All inoculated plants demonstrated (i) larger amounts of mucigel-like substance on the root surface than non-inoculated plants and (ii) fibrillar material which anchored the bacterial cells to the root surface and established connections between cells within bacterial aggregates. On non-water-stressed soybean plants, most A. brasilense Cd cells in the rhizosphere occurred as vibroid forms whereas those on water-stressed plants (wilting) were cyst-like. A lower rhizosphere bacterial population was observed on water-stressed plants. When water-stress conditions were eliminated, the bacterial cells reverted to the vibroid form and a concomitant increase in the bacterial population was observed. It is suggested that cyst-like formation is a natural response for A. brasilense Cd in the rhizosphere of water-stressed plants.
Client Similarities and Differences in Two Childhood Anxiety Disorders Research Clinics

Some evidence suggests that research and service clinics differ on treatment-relevant dimensions, but no study has examined whether research clinics (RCs) themselves differ. We compared 2 samples of children and adolescents (ages 7 to 17 years) with anxiety disorders treated in 2 different university-based child anxiety RCs, one in Philadelphia (n = 184) and one in Miami (n = 64), on child symptom and diagnostic measures, family characteristics (e.g., income), and level of maternal depression. The samples were not significantly different on any youth symptom and diagnostic measures except 1 (parent-reported diagnoses); further, the 2 samples were statistically equivalent on 3 of 6 youth symptom measures. Although the Miami sample had significantly more parent-reported diagnoses than the Philadelphia sample, the effect size was small (Cohen's d = .44). Statistically significant differences between the samples in ethnic background and family income were observed, though the former was not significant after controlling for population differences. Findings are discussed in terms of the implications of homogeneity of RCs for treatments tested there.
Volunteer Behavior: A Hierarchical Model Approach for Investigating Its Trait and Functional Motive Antecedents

We investigated the antecedents of volunteer behavior within a hierarchical model of motivation and personality. In Study 1, we developed measures of altruism and volunteer orientation and combined them with three additional traits to predict a set of volunteer behaviors. In Studies 2 and 3, we added six functional motives for volunteering identified by Clary et al. (1998) to the model. Across the 3 studies, the traits of altruism, the need for activity, and the need for learning were consistent predictors of volunteer orientation. In Studies 2 and 3, the measure of volunteer orientation was a significant predictor of the functional motives and of volunteer behaviors. Furthermore, the motive to help others was positively related to volunteering behaviors, and the motive of self-enhancement was negatively related to them. Overall, the results support the proposal that functional motives act like motivated reasons for acting and reside at the surface level in a hierarchical model of personality.
Shape selection of twist-nematic-elastomer ribbons

How microscopic chirality is reflected in macroscopic scale to form various chiral shapes, such as straight helicoids and spiral ribbons, and how the degree of macroscopic chirality can be controlled are a focus of studies on the shape formation of many biomaterials and supramolecular systems. This article investigates both experimentally and theoretically how the chiral arrangement of liquid crystal mesogens in twist-nematic-elastomer films induces the formation of helicoids and spiral ribbons because of the coupling between the liquid crystalline order and the elasticity. It is also shown that the pitch of the formed ribbons can be tuned by temperature variation. The results of this study will facilitate the understanding of physics for the shape formation of chiral materials and the designing of new structures on basis of microscopic chirality.
Effects of reserpine and chlorpromazine on 5-hydroxytryptamine uptake of platelets from migrainous and control subjects

Platelet aggregation experiments confirm differences between the 5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT) receptors of migrainous and control platelets. However, no differences have been found in 5-HT uptake, in the presence of reserpine or chlorpromazine, into migrainous and control platelets. The results support the hypothesis that receptors for 5-HT induced platelet aggregation provide a model for vascular receptors causing constriction and are distinct from those transferring 5-HT through the platelet membrane.
Scarless Fetal Wounds Are Associated with an Increased Matrix Metalloproteinase–to–Tissue-Derived Inhibitor of Metalloproteinase Ratio

In contrast to adult cutaneous wounds, early fetal wounds heal scarlessly. Fetal rat skin transitions from scarless repair to healing, with scar formation between days 16.5 (E16) and 18.5 (E18) of gestation. Term gestation is 21.5 days. The composition of the extracellular matrix in fetal skin and wounds differs from that of the adult. Matrix metalloproteinases (MMPs) and their tissue-derived inhibitors (TIMPs) determine the architecture of the extracellular matrix. The authors hypothesized that differential expression of MMPs and TIMPs occurs during the ontogenetic transition to scar-forming repair in fetal skin and wounds. Full-thickness, excisional wounds (2 mm) were created on the dorsum of E16 (n = 42 fetuses) and E19 fetal rats (n = 42 fetuses). Wounds were harvested at 24, 48, and 72 hours. Nonwounded skin from littermates was also harvested as controls. Six E16 and E19 wounds were fixed 72 hours after injury, stained with hematoxylin and eosin, and examined by light microscopy. RNA was isolated from the remaining wounds and skin, and a reduced-cycle, primer-specific, reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction was performed to semiquantitatively determine relative gene expression of MMP-1, MMP-2, MMP-7, MMP-9, and MMP-14 and of TIMP-1, TIMP-2, and TIMP-3. Significance was determined by unpaired two-tailed t test (p < 0.05) and analysis of variance. In both E16 and E19 wounds, reepithelialization was complete by 72 hours. E16 wounds healed scarlessly, whereas E19 wounds healed with scar. During late gestation, skin expression of MMP-1 and MMP-14 (membrane type-1 MMP) doubled, whereas MMP-2 expression increased nearly 50-fold. Levels of MMP-7 and MMP-9 were unchanged in developing skin. As for the TIMPs, skin expression of TIMP-2 increased more than four-fold, whereas TIMP-1 and TIMP-3 expression was unchanged. In both scarless and scarring wounds, up-regulation of MMP-1 and MMP-9 occurred. However, the maximal increase in MMP-1 and MMP-9 expression occurred much more rapidly and was much greater in the scarless E16 wounds (28-fold versus 23-fold for MMP-1 and 18-fold versus nine-fold for MMP-9). Unchanged in scarless wounds, MMP-2 levels decreased more than three-fold in scarring wounds. MMP-14 (membrane type-1 MMP) expression increased three-fold in scarless wounds but was unchanged in scarring wounds. In contrast, TIMP-1 and TIMP-3 expression in E19 scarring wounds increased six-fold and four-fold, respectively. MMP-7 and TIMP-2 expression did not change in response to injury. E16 scarless wounds have greater MMP relative to TIMP expression than E19 scarring wounds. This favors extracellular matrix turnover, facilitates migration of fetal cells, and promotes scarless repair.
Emotion Regulation and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: A Prospective Investigation

Current conceptualizations suggest that individuals with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) over-utilize relatively ineffective emotion regulation strategies such as expressive suppression, and under-utilize relatively effective emotion regulation strategies such as cognitive reappraisal. In the first prospective investigation of the association between emotion regulation use and PTSD symptom severity among military veterans in residential treatment for PTSD, we found that: (1) at both treatment intake and discharge, use of expressive suppression was associated with more severe PTSD symptoms and use of cognitive reappraisal was associated with less severe PTSD symptoms; (2) from treatment intake to discharge, use of expressive suppression decreased and use of cognitive reappraisal increased; and (3) change in expressive suppression, but not cognitive reappraisal, from treatment intake to discharge was significantly and incrementally predictive of PTSD symptom severity at treatment discharge after accoun.
Ischemia detection with a self-organizing map supplemented by supervised learning

The problem of maximizing the performance of the detection of ischemia episodes is a difficult pattern classification problem. The motivation for developing the supervising network self-organizing map (sNet-SOM) model is to exploit this fact for designing computationally effective solutions both for the particular ischemic detection problem and for other applications that share similar characteristics. Specifically, the sNet-SOM utilizes unsupervised learning for the "simple" regions and supervised for the "difficult" ones in a two stage learning process. The unsupervised learning approach extends and adapts the self-organizing map (SOM) algorithm of Kohonen. The basic SOM is modified with a dynamic expansion process controlled with an entropy based criterion that allows the adaptive formation of the proper SOM structure. This extension proceeds until the total number of training patterns that are mapped to neurons with high entropy reduces to a size manageable numerically with a capable supervised model. The second learning phase has the objective of constructing better decision boundaries at the ambiguous regions. At this phase, a special supervised network is trained for the computationally reduced task of performing the classification at the ambiguous regions only. The utilization of sNet-SOM with supervised learning based on the radial basis functions and support vector machines has resulted in an improved accuracy of ischemia detection especially in the last case. The highly disciplined design of the generalization performance of the support vector machine allows designing the proper model for the number of patterns transferred to the supervised expert.
Are Finnish Police Racists? A Critical Analysis of Police Cadets' Attitudes towards African Immigrants in Finland

Although studies on police attitudes in Finland are quite scarce, the attempt to understand police cadets' attitudes has received even less empirical attention. It is generally assumed that police and ethnic minorities' relations brim with mutual suspicions. The empirical research literature supports this assumption that this relationship is filled with mutual misconceptions. Using a questionnaire, we tried to test these hypotheses through the responses of police cadets who had spent the mandatory 2.5 years of police cadet training in the Finnish Police School. This was in addition to a voluntary in-depth interview on a one-to-one basis. The questionnaire was introduced to two sets of graduating police cadet students in their classrooms. The questionnaire used contained a set of questions, which were used to extract information from the respondents in order to gain a broader understanding of police cadet attitudes towards their contacts with African immigrants in Finland. Using SPSS statistical analysis, the results suggest that there has been little contact between police cadets and African immigrants in Finland and, as a result, mutual suspicion is rife. In addition, the relationship between the police cadets and African immigrants is quite different across age, gender, education, and language skills of police cadets. In other words these variables operated in unexpected ways, which run directly counter to well-accepted assumptions regarding the police and African immigrants in Finland. These police cadets' views could offer us an important insight into the larger police force
The source, the resource and the collaborator: The role of citizen journalism in local UK newspapers

The rise of citizen journalism and widespread use of multimedia technology via Web 2.0 is a growing field of research. Yet the impact on local newspapers in the UK has received limited attention from scholars. At the time of this study, Northcliffe Media’s flagship newspaper the Leicester Mercury was piloting a project with community reporter network Citizens’ Eye to incorporate reader content into the newspaper and its website. This article explores the nature of this experimental relationship and the economic motivations behind it. It identifies that citizen journalists have a variety of fluid roles which flow between source, resource and collaborator. However, the key to the success of the project is the creation of distinctive boundaries between low level reporting carried out by community reporters and investigative journalism carried out by employed, trained staff. The research was conducted via a case study incorporating interviews and observation.
Glomerular filtration rate (GFR) during and after STEMI: a single-centre, methodological study comparing estimated and measured GFR

Objectives To validate the performance of the most commonly used formulas for estimation of glomerular filtration rate (GFR) against measured GFR during the index hospitalisation for ST-elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI). Setting Single centre, methodological study. Participants 40 patients with percutaneous coronary intervention-treated STEMI were included between November 2011 and February 2013. Patients on dialysis, cardiogenic shock or known allergy to iodine were excluded. Outcome measures Creatinine and cystatin C were determined at admission and before discharge in 40 patients with STEMI. Clearance of iohexol was measured (mGFR) before discharge. We evaluated and compared the Cockcroft-Gault (CG), the Modification of Diet in Renal Disease (MDRD-IDMS), the Chronic Kidney Disease Epidemiology (CKD-EPI) and the Grubb relative cystatin C (rG-CystC) with GFR regarding correlation, bias, precision and accuracy (P30). Agreement between eGFR and mGFR to discriminate CKD was assessed by Cohen's κ statistics. Results MDRD-IDMS and CKD-EPI demonstrated good performance to estimate GFR (correlation 0.78 vs 0.81%, bias −1.3% vs 1.5%, precision 17.9 vs 17.1 mL/min 1.73 m2 and P30 82.5% vs 82.5% for MDRD-IDMS vs CKD-EPI). CKD was best classified by CKD-EPI (κ 0.83). CG showed the worst performance (correlation 0.73%, bias −1% to 3%, precision 22.5 mL/min 1.73 m2 and P30 75%). The rG-CystC formula had a marked bias of −17.8% and significantly underestimated mGFR (p=0.03). At arrival, CKD-EPI and rG-CystC had almost perfect agreement in CKD classification (κ=0.87), whereas at discharge agreement was substantially lower (κ=0.59) and showed a significant discrepancy in CKD classification (p=0.02). Median cystatin C concentration increased by 19%. Conclusions In acute STEMI, CKD-EPI showed the best CKD-classification ability followed by MDRD-IDMS, whereas CG performed the worst. STEMI altered the performance of the cystatin C equation during the acute phase, suggesting that other factors might be involved in the rise of cystatin C.
Uncertainty, performance, and model dependency in approximate adaptive nonlinear control

We consider systems satisfying a matching condition which are functionally known up to a L/sup 2/ measure of uncertainty. A modified L/sup 2/ performance measure is given, and the performance of a class of model based adaptive controllers is studied. An upper performance bound is derived in terms of the uncertainty measure and measures of the approximation error of the model. Asymptotic analyses of the bounds under increasing model size are undertaken, and sufficient conditions are given on the model that ensure the performance bounds are bounded independent of the model size.
Adaptive repetitive control design of nonlinearly parameterized systems

In this paper, an adaptive repetitive control scheme is presented for a class of nonlinearly parameterized systems based on fuzzy basis function networks (FBFNs). The parameters of the fuzzy rules are tuned with adaptive schemes. To attenuate chattering effectively, the discontinuous control term is approximated by an adaptive PI control structure. The bound of the discontinuous control term is assumed to be unknown and estimated by an adaptive mechanism. The adaptive repetitive control law is derived by using Lyapunov synthesis method to guarantee the closed-loop stability and the tracking performance. By means of FBFNs, the controller singularity problem is solved as it avoids the nonlinear parameterization from entering into the adaptive control and repetitive control. The proposed approach has the added advantage that it does not require an exact structure of the system dynamics. The proposed controller is applied to control a model of permanent-magnet linear synchronous motor (PMLSM) subject to significant disturbances and parameter uncertainties. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in terms of significant reduction in chattering while maintaining asymptotic convergence.
Social Class Differences in the Uses of Leisure

Study of a random sample of families in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, shows that the uses of leisure are conditioned by social class and to some extent by age and sex. The upper middle class selects libraries, home diversions, and lecture-study groups more often than other classes, whereas the two lowest classes use parks and playgrounds, community chest agencies, church, museums, and commercial entertainment relatively more often.