Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Movement of Psychological Extras Into Ability Assessment

To circumvent some problems associated with traditional ability assessment, psychologists have searched for extra information during testing. In recent years, efforts have been developing to turn these "psychological extras" into more formal psychological assessment practice. These strategies include (a) learning-potential assessment, (b) paired-associate learning, (c) diagnostic teaching, and (d) child development observation. The current status of these proposed assessment strategies is reviewed, their advantages and disadvantages discussed, and some areas of future research are proposed. To answer the question of whether these procedures can serve a position of standard psychological practice, research must: (a) outline how such strategies contribute to greater sophistication in prescription, (b) determine what populations can best be assessed through these approaches, (c) demonstrate how the resulting diagnostic information will generalize across different tasks, situations, and individuals, and (d) develop a theoretical orientation through which systematic research efforts can be directed.
Potentiation of Taxol Efficacy by Discodermolide in Ovarian Carcinoma Xenograft-Bearing Mice

Purpose: To evaluate the drug combination of discodermolide and Taxol in human ovarian cancer cells and in an in vivo model of ovarian carcinoma. Experimental Design: The combination index method was used to evaluate the interaction of Taxol and discodermolide in human ovarian SKOV-3 carcinoma cells. Data were correlated with alterations in cell cycle distribution and caspase activation. In addition, SKOV-3 xenograft-bearing mice were treated with either Taxol, discodermolide, or a combination of both drugs given concurrently to evaluate the antitumor efficacy and toxicity of this combination. The Matrigel plug assay and CD31 immunohistochemistry were done to assess antiangiogenic effects. Results: Taxol and discodermolide interact synergistically over a range of concentrations and molar ratios that cause drug-induced aneuploidy in ovarian carcinoma cells. In SKOV-3 xenograft-bearing mice, the combination is significantly superior to either single agent, and induces tumor regressions without notable toxicities. Immunohistochemical analysis of CD31 and Matrigel plug analysis show decreased vessel formation in mice treated with the combination relative to either drug alone. Conclusions: The synergistic activity of Taxol and discodermolide in cells is most potent at drug concentrations that result in drug-induced aneuploidy rather than mitotic arrest. Moreover, in an animal model of ovarian carcinoma, this is a well-tolerated combination that induces tumor regressions and suppresses angiogenesis. These data confirm the potency of this combination and support the use of concurrent low doses of Taxol and discodermolide for potential use in cancer therapeutics.
A deconstruction of gambling task performance among HIV+ individuals: The differential contributions of problem solving and risk taking

This study sought to deconstruct gambling task (GT) performance among HIV+ individuals (N = 143) and is intended to capture other cognitive features of task performance (i.e., problem solving and strategy preference). Consistent with our hypotheses, cluster analysis identified three GT groups: a safe/advantageous (AS) strategy group, a risky/disadvantageous (RS) strategy group, and a novel third group who failed to develop a strategy (NS). The NS group performed worst on global neuropsychological performance, processing speed, and executive function. Our results support a novel measure of GT task performance and suggest that failure to develop/implement a strategy reflects cognitive dysfunction.
Auditory Perceptual Test Performance and the Reflection-Impulsivity Dimension

The relationship between auditory perceptual test performance and Kagan's Reflection-Impulsivity Dimension was explored with the influence of response-time-free verbal and nonverbal intelligence controlled statistically. Subjects were 44 white, middle-class, kindergarten children. Regardless of whether response-time-free verbal or nonverbal IQ was controlled, significant differences in favor of the reflective children were found on those auditory perceptual instruments manifesting definite response uncertainty. Significant differences between the reflective and impulsive groups were not obtained on the low response uncertainty instrument or on the slight-to-moderate response uncertainty instrument when nonverbal intelligence was held constant. On the whole, the findings support Kagan's theory of reflection-impulsivity which states that impulsive subjects will likely make more incorrect responses than their reflective peers in situations of response uncertainty.
A universal approximation of grain size from images of noncohesive sediment

[1] The two-dimensional spectral decomposition of an image of sediment provides a direct statistical estimate, grid-by-number style, of the mean of all intermediate axes of all single particles within the image. We develop and test this new method which, unlike existing techniques, requires neither image processing algorithms for detection and measurement of individual grains, nor calibration. The only information required of the operator is the spatial resolution of the image. The method is tested with images of bed sediment from nine different sedimentary environments (five beaches, three rivers, and one continental shelf), across the range 0.1 mm to 150 mm, taken in air and underwater. Each population was photographed using a different camera and lighting conditions. We term it a “universal approximation” because it has produced accurate estimates for all populations we have tested it with, without calibration. We use three approaches (theory, computational experiments, and physical experiments) to both understand and explore the sensitivities and limits of this new method. Based on 443 samples, the root-mean-squared (RMS) error between size estimates from the new method and known mean grain size (obtained from point counts on the image) was found to be ±≈16%, with a 95% probability of estimates within ±31% of the true mean grain size (measured in a linear scale). The RMS error reduces to ≈11%, with a 95% probability of estimates within ±20% of the true mean grain size if point counts from a few images are used to correct bias for a specific population of sediment images. It thus appears it is transferable between sedimentary populations with different grain size, but factors such as particle shape and packing may introduce bias which may need to be calibrated for. For the first time, an attempt has been made to mathematically relate the spatial distribution of pixel intensity within the image of sediment to the grain size.
Children's Interpretation of Focus Expressions in English and Mandarin

Children often produce nonadult responses to sentences with the focus operator only, such as Only the cat is holding a flag. For example, children often accept this sentence as a description of a situation in which a cat holds a flag and a duck holds both a flag and a balloon. One proposed analysis, by Paterson, Liversedge, Rowland & Filik (2003), contends that children disregard only in such sentences, yielding The cat is holding a flag. An alternative proposal by Crain, Ni & Conway (1994) maintains that children misassign only to the VP, yielding The cat is only holding a flag. The findings of experimental studies with two typologically distinct languages, English and Mandarin Chinese, support Crain et al.'s (1994) analysis. We propose, further, that children pass through a stage at which only is analyzed as a sentential adverb taking scope over both the subject NP and the VP. We address the questions of why children initially adopt this analysis, and how they converge on the adult grammars of these languages.
Are People Polite to Computers? Responses to Computer-Based Interviewing Systems1

The present studies were designed to test whether people are “polite” to computers. Among people, an interviewer who directly asks about him- or herself will receive more positive and less varied responses than if the same question is posed by a third party. Two studies were designed to determine if the same phenomenon occurs in human–computer interaction. In the first study (N= 30), participants performed a task with a text-based computer and were then interviewed about the performance of that computer on 1 of 3 loci: (a) the same computer, (b) a paper-and-pencil questionnaire, or (c) a different (but identical) text-based computer. Consistent with the politeness prediction, same-computer participants evaluated the computer more positively and more homogeneously than did either paper-and-pencil or different-computer participants. Study 2 (N= 30) replicated the results with voice-based computers. Implications for computer-based interviewing are discussed.
Assessment of Alcohol-related Memory Deficits: A Comparison between the Rivermead Behavioural Memory Test and the California Verbal Learning Test

Objectives: Neuropsychological assessment of memory disorders is an important prerequisite in the treatment of patients with alcohol-related cognitive disorders. Although many memory tests are available in clinical practice, a question remains regarding which test is most appropriate for this purpose. Our study's goal was to evaluate the discriminative power of indices of a standard memory test (the California Verbal Learning Test; CVLT) versus the subtests of an ecologically valid everyday memory test (the Rivermead Behavioural Memory Test; RBMT) in patients with alcohol-use disorder. Method: The patients included 136 with Korsakoff's syndrome (KS), 73 alcoholics with cognitive impairment (CI) not fulfilling the criteria for KS, and 24 cognitively unimpaired alcoholics (ALC). Results: KS patients performed significantly lower on all RBMT and CVLT variables than CI patients. ALC patients performed significantly better than CI patients on only one RBMT subtest, and had a significantly lower rate of forgetting and higher scores on free recall on CVLT. A combination of RBMT subtests and CVLT indices was able to discriminate KS patients from CI and ALC patients. The RBMT subtests could not significantly distinguish ALC from CI patients. Both rate of forgetting and a comparison between free and cued recall testing on the CVLT showed the largest between-group differences. Conclusion: Although the RBMT provides information about everyday memory performance, the CVLT indices are better able to distinguish between uncomplicated alcoholics and those with cognitive impairment or KS.
An analysis of the user occupational class through Twitter content

Social media content can be used as a complementary source to the traditional methods for extracting and studying collective social attributes. This study focuses on the prediction of the occupational class for a public user profile. Our analysis is conducted on a new annotated corpus of Twitter users, their respective job titles, posted textual content and platform-related attributes. We frame our task as classification using latent feature representations such as word clusters and embeddings. The employed linear and, especially, non-linear methods can predict a user’s occupational class with strong accuracy for the coarsest level of a standard occupation taxonomy which includes nine classes. Combined with a qualitative assessment, the derived results confirm the feasibility of our approach in inferring a new user attribute that can be embedded in a multitude of downstream applications.
Can student tutors act as examiners in an objective structured clinical examination?

Context The dissemination of objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs) is hampered by requirements for high levels of staffing and a significantly higher workload compared with multiple‐choice examinations. Senior medical students may be able to support faculty staff to assess their peers. The aim of this study is to assess the reliability of student tutors as OSCE examiners and their acceptance by their peers.
Pericardial Influences on Ventricular Filling in the Conscious Dog: An Analysis Based on Pericardial Pressure

Twenty-five dogs were chronically instrumented to investigate the effects of the normal pericardium on cardiac function. Pulse-transit ultrasonic transducers were implanted to measure multiple ventricular dimensions. The pericardium was incised transversely at the base of the heart and precisely reapproximated, so as to disturb its characteristics minimally. One week later, the dogs were studied in the conscious state, and left ventricular, right ventricular, pericardial, and pleural pressures were measured with matched micromanometers. Data were recorded before and after blood volume expansion. Absolute end-diastolic pericardial pressure varied directly with pleural pressure during the respiratory cycle. Tran pericardial pressure (pericardial-pleural pressure) varied little with respiration and was related directly to ventricular diameter during the cardiac cycle with peak transpericardial pressure uniformly occurring at end-diastole. With volume infusion, normalized end-diastolic minor axis diameter and left ventricular transmural pressure (left ventricular-pleural pressure) increased significantly from 0.14 ± 0.01 and 9.5 mm Hg ± 1.0 mm Hg, respectively, in the control state to 0.20 ± 0.01 and 19.3 mm Hg ± 1.2 mm Hg after volume loading. End-diastolic transpericardial pressure also increased significantly from 2.3 ± 0.5 mm Hg to 4.1 ± 0.3 mm Hg, and represented approximately 21% of transmural left ventricular pressure. When measurements were obtained sequentially after implantation, transpericardial pressure was initially high but decreased with time, presumably due to pericardial creep. After volume loading, right ventricular end-diastolic transmural pressure averaged 9.6 mm Hg, and pericardial pressure constituted 42% of right ventricular pressure. Thus, pericardial restraining effects may predominantly influence right ventricular filling and affect the left ventricle through series interaction. In the normal conscious dog, transpericardial pressure remains low over the entire physiological range, and the direct influence of the normal pericardium on diastolic filling of the left ventricle appears to be minimal.
Submitted to Ieee Transactions on Medical Imaging 3d Edge-preserving Image Enhancement for Computed Tomography

Computed tomography (CT) images exhibit a variable amount of noise and blur, depending on the physical characteristics of the apparatus and on the selected reconstruction method. Standard algorithms tend to favor reconstruction speed over resolution, thereby jeopardizing applications where accuracy is critical. In this paper, we propose to enhance CT images by applying half-quadratic edge-preserving image restoration (or deconvolution) to them. This approach may be used with virtually any CT scanner , provided the overall point spread function can be roughly estimated. In image restoration, Markov random fields (MRFs) have proven to be very flexible a priori models and to yield impressive results with edge-preserving penalization, but their implementation in clinical routine is limited because they are often viewed as complex and time consuming. For these practical reasons, we focused on numerical efficiency and developed a fast implementation based on a simple three dimensional MRF model with convex edge-preserving potentials. The resulting restoration method yields good recovery of sharp dis-continuities while using convex duality principles yields fairly simple implementation of the optimization. Further reduction of the computational load can be achieved if the point spread function is assumed to be separable. Synthetic and real data experiments indicate that the method provides significant improvements over standard reconstruction techniques and compares well with convex-potential, Markov-based reconstruction, while being more flexible and numerically efficient.
Geophysical Diffraction Tomography

Diffraction tomography is the generalization of X-ray tomography to applications such as seismic exploration where diffraction effects must be taken into account. In this paper, the foundations of diffraction tomography for offset vertical seismic profiling and well-to-well tomography are presented for weakly inhomogeneous formations for which the Born or Rytov approximations can be employed. Reconstruction algorithms are derived for approximately determining the acoustic or electromagnetic velocity profile of such formations from borehole measurements of acoustic or electromagnetic fields generated by sources located on the surface or in an adjacent borehole. Computer simulations are presented for the case of offset vertical seismic profiling.
Interracial Friendship and Structural Diversity: Trends for Greek, Religious, and Ethnic Student Organizations

This article examines how peer interactions in college organizations (Greek, ethnic, and religious) affect interracial friendships, including whether peer interaction in student organizations mediates the relationship between structural diversity and interracial friendship. Involvement in ethnic student organizations was non-significant; involvement in Greek or religious student organizations was a negative predictor. Greek involvement mediated the relationship between structural diversity and interracial friendship; greater structural diversity decreased the likelihood of students interacting with peers from Greek organizations, which had a positive effect on interracial friendship. Findings suggest that structural diversity acts as a buffer against the negative influence of Greek organizations on interracial friendship.
OCR accuracy improvement on document images through a novel pre-processing approach

Digital camera and mobile document image acquisition are new trends arising in the world of Optical Character Recognition and text detection. In some cases, such process integrates many distortions and produces poorly scanned text or text-photo images and natural images, leading to an unreliable OCR digitization. In this paper, we present a novel nonparametric and unsupervised method to compensate for undesirable document image distortions aiming to optimally improve OCR accuracy. Our approach relies on a very efficient stack of document image enhancing techniques to recover deformation of the entire document image. First, we propose a local brightness and contrast adjustment method to effectively handle lighting variations and the irregular distribution of image illumination. Second, we use an optimized greyscale conversion algorithm to transform our document image to greyscale level. Third, we sharpen the useful information in the resulting greyscale image using Un-sharp Masking method. Finally, an optimal global binarization approach is used to prepare the final document image to OCR recognition. The proposed approach can significantly improve text detection rate and optical character recognition accuracy. To demonstrate the efficiency of our approach, an exhaustive experimentation on a standard dataset is presented
Ieee Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Inteligence 1 Super Normal Vector for Human Activity Recognition with Depth Cameras

—The advent of cost-effectiveness and easy-operation depth cameras has facilitated a variety of visual recognition tasks including human activity recognition. This paper presents a novel framework for recognizing human activities from video sequences captured by depth cameras. We extend the surface normal to polynormal by assembling local neighboring hypersurface normals from a depth sequence to jointly characterize local motion and shape information. We then propose a general scheme of super normal vector (SNV) to aggregate the low-level polynormals into a discriminative representation, which can be viewed as a simplified version of the Fisher kernel representation. In order to globally capture the spatial layout and temporal order, an adaptive spatio-temporal pyramid is introduced to subdivide a depth video into a set of space-time cells. In the extensive experiments, the proposed approach achieves superior performance to the state-of-the-art methods on the four public benchmark datasets, i.e.
On the responsiveness of DNS-based network control

For the last few years, large Web content providers interested in improving their scalability and availability have increasingly turned to three techniques: mirroring, content distribution, and ISP multihoming. The Domain Name System (DNS) has gained a prominent role in the way each of these techniques directs client requests to achieve the goals of scalability and availability. The DNS is thought to offer the transparent and agile control necessary to react quickly to ISP link failures or phenomenon such as flash crowds. In this paper, we investigate this assumption with the objective of quantifying the degree of responsiveness that can be expected from DNS. We use a combination of Web and DNS access measurements from several busy Web sites, as well as a large content distribution network, to characterize the behavior of end-systems and local DNS servers in terms of their adherence to DNS-based controls. Our results suggest that DNS is at best a coarse-grained mechanism, and poorly suited for applications, such as route control, which require quick response to link failures or performance degradations. We then propose several proactive techniques that, when deployed in cooperation between large content providers and important clients, have the potential to improve the responsiveness of DNS-based control.
What are the sources of feelings of incompetence in experienced therapists?

Therapists’ subjective encounters with feelings of incompetence were explored to identify the origins of such experiences. Eight seasoned therapists were interviewed for approximately 90 minutes. The resulting transcripts were analyzed with a grounded theory approach. Therapist feelings of incompetence stemmed from four main sources: (a) permissible issues, (b) professional issues, (c) process issues, and (d) personal issues. Each of these categories, and the subcategories, are discussed in detail. Implications for therapist self-care as well as counsellor education are discussed.
Air Quality Prediction Using Artificial Neural Network

Over the last few years, the use of artificial neural networks (ANNs) has increased in many areas of engineering. Artificial neural network have been applied to many environmental engineering problems and have demonstrated some degree of success. The aim of study is to develop neural network air quality prediction model. In this study, a prediction method is developed using feed-forward neural network. Several parameters such as sulphur dioxide (SO2), carbon monoxide (CO), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), nitric oxide (NO), temperature, relative humidity and air velocity are considered in this study. The performance of the developed model was assessed through a measure of Mean Square Error (MSE) and value of R 2 . From the constructed networks, the best prediction performance was observed in a model with network structure 7-20-4 with R 2 value of 0.57 and MSE 0.062.