Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A novel method for assessing the development of speech motor function in toddlers with autism spectrum disorders

There is increasing evidence to show that indicators other than socio-cognitive abilities might predict communicative function in Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). A potential area of research is the development of speech motor function in toddlers. Utilizing a novel measure called “articulatory features,” we assess the abilities of toddlers to produce sounds at different timescales as a metric of their speech motor skills. In the current study, we examined (1) whether speech motor function differed between toddlers with ASD, developmental delay (DD), and typical development (TD); and (2) whether differences in speech motor function are correlated with standard measures of language in toddlers with ASD. Our results revealed significant differences between a subgroup of the ASD population with poor verbal skills, and the other groups, for the articulatory features associated with the shortest-timescale, namely place of articulation (POA), (p < 0.05). We also found significant correlations between articulatory features and language and motor ability as assessed by the Mullen and the Vineland scales for the ASD group. Our findings suggest that articulatory features may be an additional measure of speech motor function that could potentially be useful as an early risk indicator of ASD.
Market discipline in the banking industry: evidence from spread dispersion

Do bond investors price hidden information? To address this question, we use a heteroscedastic regression model to empirically examine the factors affecting the spread dispersion unexplained by easy-to-observe issue characteristics (such as credit ratings, size, maturity, etc.). Two main results emerge from the empirical analysis. First, variables that accurately predict the spread of the typical bond lose their explanatory power for worse-rated, subordinated bonds with longer maturity and smaller face value. This result suggests that investors price hidden information. Secondly, unexplained spread dispersion increases for open-priced offers and decreases with the number of banks involved in the syndicate, indicating that primary market characteristics affect the investors’ ability to uncover hidden information.
Stem Formation in French Verbs: Structure, Rules, and Allomorphy

Stem processing is an essential phase in word recognition. Most modern Romance languages, such as Catalan, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, and Spanish, have three theme vowels that define verbal classes and stem formation. However, French verbal classes are not traditionally described in terms of theme vowels. In this work, stem formation from theme vowel and allomorphic processes was investigated in French verbs. Our aim was to define the verbal stem formation structure processed during mental lexicon access in French. We conducted a cross-modal experiment and a masked priming experiment on different French stem formation processes from the first and third classes. We compared morphology-related priming effects to full priming obtained through identity priming, as well as to no priming obtained through a control condition. Stems from the first and third classes with a theme vowel presented full priming, whereas stems from the third class with allomorphy presented partial priming in both experiments. Our results suggest root-based stem formation for French. Verbs are recognized through word decomposition into stem and inflectional suffixes, and stem processing is based on root, theme vowel, and allomorphic processes. These results support a single-mechanism model with full decomposition and pre-lexical access defined by morphological rules.
Downside financial risk is misunderstood

The mathematics of downside financial risk can be difficult to understand: For example a 50% loss requires a subsequent 100% gain to break-even. A given percentage loss always requires a greater percentage gain to break-even. Instead, many non-expert investors may assume for example that a 50% gain is sufficient to offset a 50% loss. Over 3,498 participants and five experiments, the widespread illusion that a sequence of equal percentage gains and losses produces a zero overall return was demonstrated. Participants continued to err frequently, even with percentage returns of +/-100%, or when financially incentivized. Financial literacy, numeracy, and deliberation were all shown to independently contribute to accurate performance. These results have implications for promoting the understanding of downside financial risk.
Model‐Based fMRI and Its Application to Reward Learning and Decision Making

Abstract: In model‐based functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), signals derived from a computational model for a specific cognitive process are correlated against fMRI data from subjects performing a relevant task to determine brain regions showing a response profile consistent with that model. A key advantage of this technique over more conventional neuroimaging approaches is that model‐based fMRI can provide insights into how a particular cognitive process is implemented in a specific brain area as opposed to merely identifying where a particular process is located. This review will briefly summarize the approach of model‐based fMRI, with reference to the field of reward learning and decision making, where computational models have been used to probe the neural mechanisms underlying learning of reward associations, modifying action choice to obtain reward, as well as in encoding expected value signals that reflect the abstract structure of a decision problem. Finally, some of the limitations of this approach will be discussed.
Relation of Absolute or Relative Adiposity to Insulin Resistance, Retinol Binding Protein-4, Leptin, and Adiponectin in Type 2 Diabetes

Background Central fat mass (CFM) correlates with insulin resistance and increases the risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular complications; however, peripheral fat mass (PFM) is associated with insulin sensitivity. The aim of this study was to investigate the relation of absolute and relative regional adiposity to insulin resistance index and adipokines in type 2 diabetes. Methods Total of 83 overweighted-Korean women with type 2 diabetes were enrolled, and rate constants for plasma glucose disappearance (KITT) and serum adipokines, such as retinol binding protein-4 (RBP4), leptin, and adiponectin, were measured. Using dual X-ray absorptiometry, trunk fat mass (in kilograms) was defined as CFM, sum of fat mass on the lower extremities (in kilograms) as PFM, and sum of CFM and PFM as total fat mass (TFM). PFM/TFM ratio, CFM/TFM ratio, and PFM/CFM ratio were defined as relative adiposity. Results Median age was 55.9 years, mean body mass index 27.2 kg/m2, and mean HbA1c level 7.12±0.84%. KITT was positively associated with PMF/TFM ratio, PMF/CFM ratio, and negatively with CFM/TFM ratio, but was not associated with TFM, PFM, or CFM. RBP4 levels also had a significant relationship with PMF/TFM ratio and PMF/CFM ratio. Adiponectin, leptin, and apolipoprotein A levels were related to absolute adiposity, while only adiponectin to relative adiposity. In correlation analysis, KITT in type 2 diabetes was positively related with HbA1c, fasting glucose, RBP4, and free fatty acid. Conclusion These results suggest that increased relative amount of peripheral fat mass may aggravate insulin resistance in type 2 diabetes.
Does Dispositional Mindfulness Predict the Development of Grit?

Grit, that is, perseverance and passion for long-term goals, is a novel construct that has gained attention in recent years (Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, & Kelly, 2007). To date, little research has been performed with the goal of identifying the antecedents of grit. Thus, in order to fill this gap in the literature, self-report data were collected to examine whether mindfulness, a mindset of being-in-the-present in a nonjudgmental way, plays a role in fostering grittiness. Three hundred and forty-three undergraduate students completed an online survey once in a cross-sectional study, and of these, 74 students completed the survey again 4.5 months later. Although the cross-sectional analyses identified a number of positive associations between mindfulness and grit, the longitudinal analysis revealed that the mindfulness facets of acting with awareness and non-judging were the most important positive predictors of grit 4.5 months later. This set of findings offers implications for future grit interventions.
Cardiovascular disease and bone metabolism 355 Preosteoclasts Active osteoclasts Mononuclear cells Preosteoblasts Osteoblasts Osteocytes MineralizationFormationReverse phase Resorption Bone surface at rest Adipokines OCOPG

Different epidemiological studies show the relationship between osteoporosis, car-diovascular disease, and cardiovascular-related mortality. Previously considered as age-related but independent diseases, this review reports emerging data showing the common mechanism of both conditions. The relationship between bone-related proteins such as osteocalcin and osteoprotegerin and vascular disease is of special interest. In addition, recent data suggest the influence of bone metabolism on energy balance which may be relevant for cardiovascular disease. tener implicaciones en la patología cardiovascular.
Evaluation of Hierarchical Interestingness Measures for Mining Pairwise Generalized Association Rules

In the literature about association analysis, many interestingness measures have been proposed to assess the quality of obtained association rules in order to select a small set of the most interesting among them. In the particular case of hierarchically organized items and generalized association rules connecting them, a measure that dealt appropriately with the hierarchy would be advantageous. Here we present the further developments of a new class of such hierarchical interestingness measures and compare them with a large set of conventional measures and with three hierarchical pruning methods from the literature. The aim is to find interesting pairwise generalized association rules connecting the concepts of multiple ontologies. Interested in the broad empirical evaluation of interestingness measures, we compared the rules obtained by 37 methods on four real world data sets against predefined ground truth sets of associations. To this end, we adopted a framework of instance-based ontology matching and extended the set of performance measures by two novel measures: relation learning recall and precision which take into account hierarchical relationships.
Visual and Haptic Discrimination of Symmetry in Unfamiliar Displays Extended in the z-Axis

We investigated, in two experiments, the discrimination of bilateral symmetry in vision and touch using four sets of unfamiliar displays. They varied in complexity from 3 to 30 turns. Two sets were 2-D flat forms (raised-line shapes and raised surfaces) while the other two were 3-D objects constructed by extending the 2-D shapes in height (short and tall objects). Experiment 1 showed that visual accuracy was excellent but latencies increased for raised-line shapes compared with 3-D objects. Experiment 2 showed that unimanual exploration was more accurate for asymmetric than for symmetric judgments, but only for 2-D shapes and short objects. Bimanual exploration at the body midline facilitated the discrimination of symmetric shapes without changing performance with asymmetric ones. Accuracy for haptically explored symmetric stimuli improved as the stimuli were extended in the third dimension, while no such a trend appeared for asymmetric stimuli. Unlike vision, haptic response latency decreased for 2-D shapes compared with 3-D objects. The present results are relevant to the understanding of symmetry discrimination in vision and touch.
Cerebral Activations Related to Ballistic, Stepwise Interrupted and Gradually Modulated Movements in Parkinson Patients

Patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) experience impaired initiation and inhibition of movements such as difficulty to start/stop walking. At single-joint level this is accompanied by reduced inhibition of antagonist muscle activity. While normal basal ganglia (BG) contributions to motor control include selecting appropriate muscles by inhibiting others, it is unclear how PD-related changes in BG function cause impaired movement initiation and inhibition at single-joint level. To further elucidate these changes we studied 4 right-hand movement tasks with fMRI, by dissociating activations related to abrupt movement initiation, inhibition and gradual movement modulation. Initiation and inhibition were inferred from ballistic and stepwise interrupted movement, respectively, while smooth wrist circumduction enabled the assessment of gradually modulated movement. Task-related activations were compared between PD patients (N = 12) and healthy subjects (N = 18). In healthy subjects, movement initiation was characterized by antero-ventral striatum, substantia nigra (SN) and premotor activations while inhibition was dominated by subthalamic nucleus (STN) and pallidal activations, in line with the known role of these areas in simple movement. Gradual movement mainly involved antero-dorsal putamen and pallidum. Compared to healthy subjects, patients showed reduced striatal/SN and increased pallidal activation for initiation, whereas for inhibition STN activation was reduced and striatal-thalamo-cortical activation increased. For gradual movement patients showed reduced pallidal and increased thalamo-cortical activation. We conclude that PD-related changes during movement initiation fit the (rather static) model of alterations in direct and indirect BG pathways. Reduced STN activation and regional cortical increased activation in PD during inhibition and gradual movement modulation are better explained by a dynamic model that also takes into account enhanced responsiveness to external stimuli in this disease and the effects of hyper-fluctuating cortical inputs to the striatum and STN in particular.
Global stability of a class of discrete-time recurrent neural networks

This paper presents several analytical results on global asymptotic stability (GAS) and global exponential stability (GES) for the equilibrium states of a general class of discrete-time recurrent neural networks (DTRNNS) with asymmetric connection weight matrices and globally Lipschitz continuous and monotone nondecreasing activation functions. A necessary and sufficient condition is formulated to guarantee the existence and uniqueness of equilibria of such DTRNNS. The obtained results are less restrictive, different from, and improve upon the existing ones on GAS and GES of neural networks with special classes of activation functions.
The Utility of Scoring Systems in Predicting Early and Late Mortality in Alcoholic Hepatitis: Whose Score Is It Anyway?

Background. Alcoholic hepatitis (AH) is a distinct clinical entity in the spectrum of alcoholic liver disease with a high short-term mortality. Several scoring systems are being used to assess the severity of AH but the ability of these scores to predict long-term survival in these patients is largely unknown. Aims. We aim to assess the utility of five different scoring systems Child Pugh (CP), model for end-stage liver disease (MELD), Maddrey's discriminant function (mDF), Glasgow AH score (GAHS), and age-bilirubin-INR-creatinine (ABIC) score in predicting shot-term and long-term survival in patients with AH. Methods. Patients with histological evidence of AH were identified from our database. The clinical and biochemical parameters were used to calculate the 5 different scores. The prognostic utility of these scores was determined by generating an ROC curve for survival at 30 days, 90 days, 6 months, and 1 year. Results and Conclusions. All 5 scores with the exception of CP score have a similar accuracy in predicting the short-term prognosis. However, they are uniformly poor in predicting longer-term survival with AUROC not exceeding 0.74. CP score is a very poor predictor of survival in both short and long term. Abstinence from alcohol was significantly (P < 0.05) associated with survival at 1 year.
The job-seeking experiences of resourceful female immigrants and the impact on their self-efficacy beliefs

ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to examine how resourceful, job-seeking immigrant women in Norway perceive that the competences and education they acquired from their home country are received in Norway and how their job-seeking experiences influence their work-related self-efficacy and identity. The study is based on 26 in-depth interviews with female immigrants aged 25–67 years from 21 different countries, mostly non-Western. They have lived in Norway for an average of six years. They have clear career ambitions, have deliberately acted to achieve their goal, and are highly active in job seeking, and most of them obtained higher education in their home country. The interviewees exert considerable effort in seeking work, but their efforts are not fruitful. They experience a downgrading of their education, as well as their competences, from their home country. Because their active efforts have not led to work, they have nearly given up trying to gain entry into the Norwegian workforce, and their self-efficacy beliefs and identity regarding having a professional career are weakened. Their affiliation and position conflict with both what they expected to achieve and workfare in Norwegian society; their competences from their home countries are not perceived as valuable in terms of Norwegian expertise and employee qualities.
Fusion Rates of Instrumented Lumbar Spinal Arthrodesis according to Surgical Approach: A Systematic Review of Randomized Trials

Background Lumbar spine fusion rates can vary according to the surgical technique. Although many studies on spinal fusion have been conducted and reported, the heterogeneity of the study designs and data handling make it difficult to identify which approach yields the highest fusion rate. This paper reviews studies that compared the lumbosacral fusion rates achieved with different surgical techniques. Methods Relevant randomized trials comparing the fusion rates of different surgical approaches for instrumented lumbosacral spinal fusion surgery were identified through highly sensitive and targeted keyword search strategies. A methodological quality assessment was performed according to the checklist suggested by the Cochrane Collaboration Back Review Group. Qualitative analysis was performed. Results A literature search identified six randomized controlled trials (RCTs) comparing the fusion rates of different surgical approaches. One trial compared anterior lumbar interbody fusion (ALIF) plus adjunctive posterior transpedicular instrumentation with circumferential fusion and posterolateral fusion (PLF) with posterior lumbar interbody fusion (PLIF). Three studies compared PLF with circumferential fusion. One study compared three fusion approaches: PLF, PLIF and circumferential fusion. Conclusions One low quality RCT reported no difference in fusion rate between ALIF with posterior transpedicular instrumentation and circumferential fusion, and PLIF and circumferential fusion. There is moderate evidence suggesting no difference in fusion rate between PLF and PLIF. The evidence on the fusion rate of circumferential fusion compared to PLF from qualitative analysis was conflicting. However, no general conclusion could be made due to the scarcity of data, heterogeneity of the trials included, and some methodological defects of the six studies reviewed.
The Host Galaxy and Environment of the z = 1.195 Quasar 3C 190

We present deep imaging and spectroscopic observations of the z = 1.195 quasar 3C 190 and its immediate environment. The quasar is surrounded by an asymmetric, low surface brightness envelope in which there are also several galaxies with characteristic dimensions of 3-5 kpc. Some of these form a linear structure some 50 kpc long in projection, offset from the quasar and almost perpendicular to the radio axis. Spectroscopy of this feature indicates the presence of a starburst component, as well as stars a few hundred million years old. Velocities of the emission-line gas associated with H II regions in the linear feature are difficult to reconcile with any reasonable model that is also consistent with the observed morphology. One possible scenario is an edge-on disk in an extremely massive (~1012 M☉) halo; another is two independent chain galaxies, with the apparent alignment being fortuitous. Taking into account all of the types of extended material we find in the vicinity of 3C 190, we appear to be witnessing a relatively brief phase in the development of a spheroidal galaxy, in which merging is proceeding nearly simultaneously in a variety of different regimes. This system may be one of the clearest examples yet found for the mechanism by which many elliptical galaxies and bulges of early-type spirals form in the early universe.
Infant Sleep Location: Bed Sharing, Room Sharing and Solitary Sleepingat 6 and 12 Weeks Postpartum

Objectives: Parents may have their infant sleep with them in the same bed (bed sharing [BS]), in the same room, but a separate bed (room sharing [RS]), or a separate room in a separate bed (solitary sleeping [SS]); prevalence estimates of these choices are limited. Little is known regarding the effects of infant sleep location (ISL) on infant or maternal sleep or other health outcomes. Methods: Healthy first-time mothers (n=246) in an RCT of a sleep intervention provided information regarding planned and actual ISL at 6 and 12 weeks postpartum when maternal and infant sleep were measured using actigraphy. Other outcomes included subjective maternal sleep disturbance, breastfeeding exclusivity, fatigue, and depressive symptomatology. Results: Most women (65%) planned RS with their infant; the next most common plan was to use both BS and RS (22%). The most common usual ISL was RS, with 46% of infants RS at 6 weeks and 39% at 12 weeks. Usual BS was common; at 6 weeks 17% of families were usually BS and 12% at 12 weeks. BS to any extent was quite common at 6 (51%) and 12 weeks (41%) postpartum. At 6 weeks, usually BS mothers had shorter stretches of sleep than those usually SS (130 mins vs 156 mins ; p=0.03) and more awakenings than those usually RS and SS (11.2 vs 8.9 vs 8.3; p=0.001). At 12 weeks, mothers who were usually RS had shorter stretches of sleep than those usually SS (164 mins vs 192 mins; p=0.04). There were no significant differences between ISL groups on any other outcomes. Conclusion: There is variation in ISL choice, and ISL changes across the first three months postpartum. Given our findings that ISL has effects on objective maternal sleep outcomes, further prospective, longitudinal research on the effects of ISL on a broad range of health outcomes for infant, mother and partner across the first postpartum year is needed.
The attitude of health care professionals towards accreditation: A systematic review of the literature

Accreditation is usually a voluntary program, in which authorized external peer reviewers evaluate the compliance of a health care organization with pre-established performance standards. The aim of this study was to systematically review the literature of the attitude of health care professionals towards professional accreditation. A systematic search of four databases including Medline, Embase, Healthstar, and Cinhal presented seventeen studies that had evaluated the attitudes of health care professionals towards accreditation. Health care professionals had a skeptical attitude towards accreditation. Owners of hospitals indicated that accreditation had the potential of being used as a marketing tool. Health care professionals viewed accreditation programs as bureaucratic and demanding. There was consistent concern, especially in developing countries, about the cost of accreditation programs and their impact on the quality of health care services.