Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Accuracy monitoring and task demand evaluation in aphasia

Abstract This study investigated possible underlying sources of resource allocation deficits in aphasia. The ability to rate one's own accuracy, as well as to evaluate task difficulty, were examined in aphasic individuals and normal, control subjects as they performed a lexical decision listening task alone and in competition with two distractor tasks. The aphasic subjects were as precise as control subjects in monitoring the accuracy of their lexical decisions. Despite greater error rates and slower reaction times, aphasic individuals' perceptions of task difficulty did not differ significantly from those of the control subjects. Therefore, resource allocation deficits in aphasia may reflect inadequate evaluation of task demands rather than poor self-monitoring of accuracy.
Scientists and the Selection Task

Contrary to some recent findings reported in this journal by Tweney and Yachanin, the results for twenty scientists on the selection task reflected little understanding of the power of disconfirmatory data in assessing conditionals. In agreement with previous studies by Mahoney and Kimper, and by Kern, Mirels and Hinshaw, confirmatory data were sought more often. The results indicate that scientists' performance is similar to that of undergraduates, mainly influenced by the problem content, and do not support Tweney and Yachanin's claim of scientists' competence on the selection task. Memory-cueing plus reasoning-by-analogy is offered as an alternative explanation.
The Psychological Reality of OCP-Place in Arabic

The psychological reality of an abstract consonant dissimilation constraint is demonstrated in an experiment with native speakers of Jordanian Arabic. In this experiment, novel verbs containing constraint violations and those without violations were presented orthographically for judgments of well-formedness. Native speaker well-formedness judgments reflected knowledge of the phonotactic constraint. Systematic gaps were rated much less wordlike than accidental gaps that were equivalent in their lexical characteristics. Judgments for novel verbs containing constraint violations were also gradiently influenced by consonant pair similarity. The experimental study supports previous dictionary-based phonotactic analyses that propose that the native speaker's knowledge of consonant cooccurrence constraints in Arabic is based on emergent generalizations over the lexical items in an abstract root lexicon.
Learning the Past Tense of English Verbs: The Symbolic Pattern Associator vs. Connectionist Models

Learning the past tense of English verbs - a seemingly minor aspect of language acquisition - has generated heated debates since 1986, and has become a landmark task for testing the adequacy of cognitive modeling. Several artificial neural networks (ANNs) have been implemented, and a challenge for better symbolic models has been posed. In this paper, we present a general-purpose Symbolic Pattern Associator (SPA) based upon the decision-tree learning algorithm ID3. We conduct extensive head-to-head comparisons on the generalization ability between ANN models and the SPA under different representations. We conclude that the SPA generalizes the past tense of unseen verbs better than ANN models by a wide margin, and we offer insights as to why this should be the case. We also discuss a new default strategy for decision-tree learning algorithms.
On the capacity of multiaccess fading channels with full channel state information at low power regime

We study the throughput capacity region of the Gaussian multiaccess (MAC) fading channel with perfect channel state information (CSI) at the receiver (CSI-R) and at the transmitters (CSI-T), at low power regime. We show that it has a multidimensional rectangle structure and thus is simply characterized by single user capacity points. More specifically, we show that at low power regime, the boundary surface of the capacity region shrinks to a single point corresponding to the sum rate maximizer and that the coordinates of this point coincide with single user capacity bounds. Inspired from this result, we propose an on-off scheme, compute its achievable rate, and provide a necessary condition on the fading channels under which this scheme achieves single user capacity bounds of the MAC channel at asymptotically low power regime. We argue that this necessary condition characterizes a class of fading that encompasses all known wireless channels, where the capacity region of the MAC channel has a simple expression in terms of users' average power constraints only.
Reconstructing images from their most singular fractal manifold

Real-world images are complex objects, difficult to describe but at the same time possessing a high degree of redundancy. A very recent study on the statistical properties of natural images reveals that natural images can be viewed through different partitions which are essentially fractal in nature. One particular fractal component, related to the most singular (sharpest)transitions in the image, seems to be highly informative about the whole scene. In this paper we will show how to decompose the image into their fractal components.We will see that the most singular component is related to (but not coincident with) the edges of the objects present in the scenes. We will propose a new, simple method to reconstruct the image with information contained in that most informative component.We will see that the quality of the reconstruction is strongly dependent on the capability to extract the relevant edges in the determination of the most singular set. We will discuss the results from the perspective of coding, proposing this method as a starting point for future developments.
Tsotsitaal, global culture and local style: identity and recontextualisation in twenty‐first century South African townships

Tsotsitaal is a linguistic phenomenon which is inseparable from a style adopted by many youth living in urban townships in South Africa. The style is signalled by the unique and innovative lexicon of Tsotsitaal, and additionally indicated by clothing and other identity markers. Features of the style are ‘urban‐ness’, consumerism (in terms of brand names) and cultural iconography, such as music and sports. While many of these items are influenced by, or even drawn from, global cultures (particularly in the diaspora), they are transformed into uniquely South African cultural currency by a process of recontextualisation in township spaces and between individuals. There has been a dialogue between the Tsotsitaal style and the global since at least the 1940s, which should put to rest fears that increased global influence since the end of apartheid will diminish the integrity of local South African cultures.
ROLE OF HYPERBARIC OXYGEN EXPOSURE IN REDUCTION OF LIPID PEROXIDATION AND IN MULTIPLE ORGAN FAILURE INDUCED BY ZYMOSAN ADMINISTRATION IN THE RAT

ABSTRACT The aim of the present study was to evaluate the effects of hyperbaric oxygen (HBO) therapy on multiple organ failure induced by zymosan. Administration of zymosan (500 mg/kg) in the rat induced neutrophil infiltration in the lung, liver, and intestine as evaluated by increase in myeloperoxidase (MPO) activity. Therefore, lipid peroxidation was significantly increased in zymosan‐treated rats. This inflammatory process coincided with the damage of lung, liver, and small intestine. Immunohistochemical examination demonstrated a marked increase in the immunoreactivity to nitrotyrosine in the lung, liver, and small intestine of zymosan‐shocked rats. HBO (2 absolute Atmosphere) exposure attenuates the increase in the tissue levels of MPO and malondialdehyde (MDA) caused by zymosan in the lung, liver, and intestine. In addition, HBO (2 absolute Atmosphere) was effective in preventing the development of lung, liver, and intestine injury. Taken together, the present results demonstrate that HBO may also be an efficacious treatment in multiple organ failure induced by zymosan.
Endoperoxide 4 receptors play a role in evoking the exercise pressor reflex in rats with simulated peripheral artery disease

• In decerebrated rats, the exercise pressor reflex arising from a hindlimb whose femoral artery was occluded for 72 h was significantly higher than that arising from a hindlimb whose femoral artery was freely perfused. • Blockade of endoperoxide 4 receptors, but not blockade of endoperoxide 3 receptors, prevented the exaggerated exercise pressor reflex in rats with ligated femoral arteries. • Blockade of endoperoxide 3 or 4 receptors in rats with freely perfused femoral arteries had no effect on the exercise pressor reflex. • Western immunoblots showed that ligation of the femoral artery for 72 h increased the endoperoxide 4 receptor protein in the L4 and L5 dorsal root ganglia over their freely perfused counterparts by 24% (P < 0.05).
Validation of the Cambridge Prospective Memory Test (Hong Kong Chinese version) for people with stroke

This study aimed to develop and evaluate a Hong Kong Chinese version of the Cambridge Prospective Memory Test (CAMPROMPT-HKCV). Thirty-three subjects at least one year post-stroke participated in the study. They were simultaneously rated on version A of the CAMPROMPT-HKCV by two testers to establish its internal consistency and inter-rater reliability. Raters used the parallel versions of the test (A and B), in rating 10 patients within 2 weeks to establish the parallel form reliability. Another 10 were also assessed on the same day using both version A of the CAMPROMPT-HKCV and the Rivermead Behavioural Memory Test–Chinese version (RBMT-CV) to establish concurrent validity. A new group of 40 stroke patients and 44 healthy controls was recruited to establish its sensitivity and specificity. Results indicated that test–retest reliability on time-based, event-based and total scores, and inter-rater reliability for versions A and B of the test were high. Cronbach's alpha of the event-based score was higher than that of the time-based score. The reliability and concurrent validity of the parallel forms were established. There was a significant difference in performance on CAMPROMPT-HKCV (version A) between the stroke group and the healthy control group. ROC analysis showed that the ability of the cut-off CAMPROMPT-HKCV (total score) to differentiate PM problems was 20.5 (out of 36) with sensitivity at 95.5% and specificity at 55.9%. Further study in developing stratified norms across different age groups in Chinese-speaking stroke patients is recommended.
Learning probabilistic networks of condition-specific response : Digging deep in yeast stationary phase

Condition-specific networks are functional networks of genes describing molecular behavior under different conditions such as environmental stresses, cell types, or tissues. These networks frequently comprise parts that are unique to each condition, and parts that are shared among related conditions. Existing approaches for learning condition-specific networks typically identify either only differences or similarities across conditions. Most of these approaches first learn networks per condition independently, and then identify similarities and differences in a postlearning step. Such approaches have not exploited the shared information across conditions during network learning. We describe an approach for learning condition-specific networks that simultaneously identifies the shared and unique subgraphs during network learning, rather than as a post-processing step. Our approach learns networks across condition sets, shares data from conditions, and leads to high quality networks capturing biologically meaningful information. On simulated data from two conditions, our approach outperformed an existing approach of learning networks per condition independently, especially on small training datasets. We further applied our approach to microarray data from two yeast stationary-phase cell populations, quiescent and non-quiescent. Our approach identified several functional interactions that suggest respiration-related processes are shared across the two conditions. We also identified interactions specific to each population including regulation of epigenetic expression in the quiescent population, consistent with known characteristics of these cells. Finally, we found several high confidence cases of combinatorial interaction among single gene deletions that can be experimentally tested using double gene knock-outs, and contribute to our understanding of differentiated cell populations in yeast stationary phase.
Governance and Dissidence in Online Culture in China: The Case of Anti-CNN and Online Gaming

The article explores two different articulations of the attitudes of young Chinese netizens towards the state: the neo-nationalist web community, ‘Anti-CNN.com’/‘April Youth’, and the online ‘machinema’ film, ‘Online Gaming Addicts’ War’. Both of these online practices are associated with the post-’80 s generation, which I argue is a key constituency in contemporary Chinese internet discourse. Through these case studies, the article explores the viability of recent attempts to apply Foucauldian theories of governmentality to the case of China. It identifies a determining factor here in the recurring tendency of the Party-state, whilst generally attempting to embrace more sophisticated forms of governance, to default towards crude techniques and technologies of prohibition in its regulatory stance towards the internet. Whilst this stance is likely to be unsustainable in view of the dynamics of global media culture, the article argues that this does not undermine claims over the existence of a distinctive Chinese form of governmentality. Rather, the Chinese case should strengthen doubts over the view of some that governmentality is incompatible with the state’s deployment of violence.
Dyslexia in Greek Higher Education: A Study of Incidence, Policy and Provision.

Dyslexia is defined as a disability that primarily affects reading and writing. Internationally, the number of dyslexic students entering higher education is on the rise. It is estimated that students with dyslexia represent a small but significant minority. Many English-speaking countries have developed support services and teaching practices to accommodate dyslexic students’ educational needs. In Greece, research on dyslexia is very limited. The purpose of this study is to define the incidence of dyslexia among the Greek student population and to examine dyslexic students’ age, gender and major field of study. Data were collected from a total of 406 departments at all Greek public institutions of higher education (n = 32). The existing practices for identifying and provisions for supporting dyslexic students were also examined. The incidence of dyslexia in Greek higher education was estimated to be 0.16%, which is far below the estimated incidence in the general population. Interesting results were yielded regarding the variability of higher education institutions’ responses to dyslexia. In almost all Greek institutions, provision takes place in the form of oral examinations and generic counseling. technological education institutions (TEIs) seem to be more aware of the educational needs of dyslexic students, possibly because they have three times more dyslexic students than higher education institutions (HEIs). All Greek universities deal with the needs of dyslexic students on an individual basis, making provision reactive rather than proactive. The results of the present study are discussed in the light of inclusive education and equality of opportunity for students who learn in a different way but do not differ from their counterparts in terms of intelligence or general abilities.
The Small GTP-Binding Protein Rho Potentiates AP-1 Transcription in T Cells

ABSTRACT The Rho family of small GTP-binding proteins is involved in the regulation of cytoskeletal structure, gene transcription, specific cell fate development, and transformation. We demonstrate in this report that overexpression of an activated form of Rho enhances AP-1 activity in Jurkat T cells in the presence of phorbol myristate acetate (PMA), but activated Rho (V14Rho) has little or no effect on NFAT, Oct-1, and NF-κB enhancer element activities under similar conditions. Overexpression of a V14Rho construct incapable of membrane localization (CAAX deleted) abolishes PMA-induced AP-1 transcriptional activation. The effect of Rho on AP-1 is independent of the mitogen-activated protein kinase pathway, as a dominant-negative MEK and a MEK inhibitor (PD98059) did not affect Rho-induced AP-1 activity. V14Rho binds strongly to protein kinase Cα (PKCα) in vivo; however, deletion of the CAAX site on V14Rho severely diminished this association. Evidence for a role for PKCα as an effector of Rho was obtained by the observation that coexpression of the N-terminal domain of PKCα blocked the effects of activated Rho plus PMA on AP-1 transcriptional activity. These data suggest that Rho potentiates AP-1 transcription during T-cell activation.
Discovery Learning and the Computational Experiment in Higher Mathematics and Science Education: A Combined Approach

In this article we present our research for Discovery learning in relation to the computational experiment for the instruction of Mathematics and Science university courses, using the approach of the computational experiment through electronic worksheets. The approach is based on the principles of Discovery learning expanded with the principles of constructivist, socioâ? cultural and adult learning theories, the concept of computer based cognitive tools and the aspects on which the computational experiment is founded. Applications are presented using the software Mathematica and electronic worksheets for selected domains of Physics. We also present a case study, concerning the application of the computational experiment through electronic worksheets in the School of Pedagogical and Technological Education (ASPETE) during the spring semester of the academic year 2008â? 2009. Research results concerning the impact of the above mentioned issues on studentsâ? beliefs and learning performance are presented.
FPGA implementations of fast fourier transforms for real-time signal and image processing

Applications based on Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) such as signal and image processing require high computational power, plus the ability to experiment with algorithms. Reconfigurable hardware devices in the form of Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) have been proposed as a way of obtaining high performance at an economical price. At present, however, users must program FPGAs at a very low level and have a detailed knowledge of the architecture of the device being used. To try to reconcile the dual requirements of high performance and ease of development, this paper reports on the design and realisation of a High Level framework for the implementation of 1-D and 2-D FFTs for real-time applications. Results show that the parallel implementation of 2-D FFT achieves virtually linear speed-up and real-time performance for large matrix sizes. Finally, an FPGA-based parametrisable environment based on the developed parallel 2-D FFT architecture is presented as a solution for frequency-domain image filtering application.
Parenting and social capital: Accessing help and support from informal social networks

This paper explores the resources and support that parents in the UK are able to access through their social networks, and analyses how these networks are organized and sustained. Concern over a perceived demise in community relations and trust have driven many recent UK family policy initiatives and have underpinned proposals to increase parenting support services. However drawing on data from the project "Resources in Parenting: Access to Capitals" it will be suggested that parents remain tightly connected to a social network from which they derive help, advice and reassurance. Based on data from 35 in-depth interviews with parents from 24 households across a range of social backgrounds, the paper will provide an insight into the levels of practical, financial and emotional help received by mothers and fathers from family members, friends and acquaintances. Particular attention will be given to significance of gender and class in enabling and delimiting access to various kinds of assistance. In contrast to commonly voiced claims about the fracturing of traditional support systems it will be argued that parenting is characterized by resourceful engagement with a variety of personal and social relationships.
Oseltamivir-resistant influenza A(H1N1)pdm2009 strains found in Brazil are endowed with permissive mutations, which compensate the loss of fitness imposed by antiviral resistance

The 2009 pandemic influenza A virus outbreak led to the systematic use of the neuraminidase (NA) inhibitor oseltamivir (OST). Consequently, OST-resistant strains, carrying the mutation H275Y, emerged in the years after the pandemics, with a prevalence of 1-2%. Currently, OST-resistant strains have been found in community settings, in untreated individuals. To spread in community settings, H275Y mutants must contain additional mutations, collectively called permissive mutations. We display the permissive mutations in NA of OST-resistant A(H1N1)pdm09 virus found in Brazilian community settings. The NAs from 2013 are phylogenetically distinct from those of 2012, indicating a tendency of positive selection of NAs with better fitness. Some previously predicted permissive mutations, such as V241I and N369K, found in different countries, were also detected in Brazil. Importantly, the change D344N, also predicted to compensate loss of fitness imposed by H275Y mutation, was found in Brazil, but not in other countries in 2013. Our results reinforce the notion that OST-resistant A(H1N1)pdm09 strains with compensatory mutations may arise in an independent fashion, with samples being identified in different states of Brazil and in different countries. Systematic circulation of these viral strains may jeopardise the use of the first line of anti-influenza drugs in the future.
VTCMOS characteristics and its optimum conditions predicted by a compact analytical model

A very compact analytical model of variable threshold voltage CMOS (VTCMOS) is proposed to study the active on-current, linking it with the stand-by off-current characteristics. Comparisons of modeled results to numerical simulations and experimental data are made with an excellent agreement. It is clearly demonstrated using the model that speed degradation due to low supply voltage can be compensated by the VTCMOS scheme with even smaller power. Influence of the short channel effect (SCE) on the performance of VTCMOS is investigated in terms of a new parameter, dS/d/spl gamma/, both qualitatively and quantitatively. It is found that the SCE degrades the VTCMOS performance. Issues on the optimum conditions of VTCMOS are discussed.