Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Psychological pressure facilitates corticospinal excitability: Motor preparation processes and EMG activity in a choice reaction task

The effects of psychological pressure on corticospinal excitability and muscular activity were investigated in a two-choice reaction task that involved voluntary right index finger movements. In order to induce pressure, participants were given instructions that combined a performance-contingent cash reward, a penalty, and performance comparisons. Following practice, 11 participants performed 40 non-pressure and 40 pressure trials. Results showed successful stress induction, as indexed by significant increases in state anxiety, pulse rate, and galvanic skin response under pressure. Significant increases in the amplitude of the motor evoked potential of the right abductor pollicis brevis (APB) occurred under pressure. The maximum EMG amplitudes of APB and the first dorsal interosseous (FDI) muscle also increased significantly under pressure. These results suggest that descending excitatory volleys in the corticospinal motor tract during the motor preparation processes and peripheral motor unit activities in the reaction task are both separately excited by stress responses under pressure. Reaction times measured by EMG onset of the FDI were unchanged in accordance with corticospinal and EMG excitations under pressure, indicating generation of inefficient motor control energy for movement output.
Why do some students avoid asking for help? An examination of the interplay among students' academic efficacy, teachers' social–emotional role, and the classroom goal structure.

With hierarchical linear modeling, student reports of the avoidance of help seeking were related to student and classroom characteristics. Avoidance of help seeking was related negatively to students' academic efficacy. However, avoidance of help seeking was related less strongly to students' academic efficacy in classrooms in which teachers believed they should attend to their students' social and emotional needs. Average levels of avoidance of help seeking were related to students' perceptions of the classroom goal structure: A perceived emphasis on self-improvement was related to lower levels of help avoidance, whereas a perceived emphasis on relative ability was associated with higher levels. Teacher reports of their approaches to instruction (emphasizing self-improvement or emphasizing relative ability) were unrelated to students' avoidance of help seeking.
An Empirical Exploration of Recurrent Network Architectures

The Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) is an extremely powerful sequence model that is often difficult to train. The Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) is a specific RNN architecture whose design makes it much easier to train. While wildly successful in practice, the LSTM's architecture appears to be ad-hoc so it is not clear if it is optimal, and the significance of its individual components is unclear. In this work, we aim to determine whether the LSTM architecture is optimal or whether much better architectures exist. We conducted a thorough architecture search where we evaluated over ten thousand different RNN architectures, and identified an architecture that outperforms both the LSTM and the recently-introduced Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU) on some but not all tasks. We found that adding a bias of 1 to the LSTM's forget gate closes the gap between the LSTM and the GRU.
Malignancies in the rheumatoid arthritis abatacept clinical development programme: an epidemiological assessment

Objective: To provide context for the malignancy experience in the rheumatoid arthritis (RA) abatacept clinical development programme (CDP) by performing comparisons with similar RA patients and the general population. Methods: Malignancy outcomes included total malignancy (excluding non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC)), breast, colorectal, lung cancers and lymphoma. Comparisons were made between the observed incidence in patients within the abatacept CDP and RA patients on disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARD) identified from five data sources: the population-based British Columbia RA Cohort, the Norfolk Arthritis Register, the National Data Bank for Rheumatic Diseases, the Sweden Early RA Register and the General Practice Research Database. Age and sex-adjusted incidence rates (IR) and standardised incidence ratios (SIR) were used to compare events in the abatacept trials with the RA DMARD cohorts and the general population. Results: A total of 4134 RA patients treated with abatacept in seven trials and 41 529 DMARD-treated RA patients in the five observational cohorts was identified for study inclusion. In the abatacept-treated patients, the 51 malignancies (excluding NMSC), seven cases of breast, two cases of colorectal, 13 cases of lung cancer and five cases of lymphoma observed were not greater than the range of expected cases from the five RA cohorts. The SIR comparing RA patients with the general population were consistent with those reported in the literature. Conclusions: The IR of total malignancy (excluding NMSC), breast, colorectal, lung cancers and lymphoma in the abatacept CDP were consistent with those in a comparable RA population. These data suggest no new safety signals with respect to malignancies, which will continue to be monitored.
Can we manage teacher performance?

Recent legislation imposing ‘performance management’ on schools seems to assume that teachers apply learned skills to standard situations in pursuit of their goals. Yet if professional teaching is knowledge-based and value-driven, teachers will not manage their own practices in any straightforward sense. Teaching practices are slow-developing outputs from much thought and experience, not easily changed through direct intervention. It is the circumstances of teaching which are directly managed, allowing teachers to use their expertise freely in service of their pupils.
Ethical Judgments of Political Television Commercials as Predictors of Attitude toward the Ad

Abstract This study examines the impact of ethical judgments about televised political commercials on global attitude toward the ad. Findings from the quasi-experiment indicate that the “ethical” attribute belongs to a set of salient, “utilitarian” cognitions that influence how political commercials are evaluated. These findings suggest that ethical perceptions really matter. However, certain emotional “hedonic” cognitive responses, which voters say are nonsalient in their overall evaluations of political ads, in fact may circumvent the powerful impact of ethical—and other salient—cognitive elements. Implications for political advertising strategy and public policy are discussed.
Australian Research on Classroom Environment: State of the Art

International work involving the measurement and investigation of perceptions of psychosocial characteristics of school classrooms has firmly established classroom learning environment as a thriving field of study. Furthermore Australian educational researchers have made sizable and distinctive contributions to this research effort. This paper provides an overview of overseas work on the development and use of classroom environment instruments, reports normative and validation data from the use of new or modified scales among large Australian samples, and reviews the Australian research in the area. In particular, Australian research has involved predictive validity studies of outcome-environment relationships, use of environment perceptions as criterion variables, investigation of differences between student and teacher perceptions of actual and preferred environment, person-environment fit studies of relationships between student learning and actual-preferred congruence, and practical attempts to facilitate environmental change. Taken together, Australian studies provide much evidence which supports the validity of various classroom environment instruments, which attests to their usefulness as sources of both predictor and criterion variables for a variety of educational research purposes, and which suggests promising new directions for future research.
A Meta‐Analysis of Human Embryonic Stem Cells Transcriptome Integrated into a Web‐Based Expression Atlas

Microarray technology provides a unique opportunity to examine gene expression patterns in human embryonic stem cells (hESCs). We performed a meta‐analysis of 38 original studies reporting on the transcriptome of hESCs. We determined that 1,076 genes were found to be overexpressed in hESCs by at least three studies when compared to differentiated cell types, thus composing a “consensus hESC gene list. ” Only one gene was reported by all studies: the homeodomain transcription factor POU5F1/OCT3/4. The list comprised other genes critical for pluripotency such as the transcription factors NANOG and SOX2, and the growth factors TDGF1/CRIPTO and Galanin. We show that CD24 and SEMA6A, two cell surface protein‐coding genes from the top of the consensus hESC gene list, display a strong and specific membrane protein expression on hESCs. Moreover, CD24 labeling permits the purification by flow cytometry of hESCs cocultured on human fibroblasts. The consensus hESC gene list also included the FZD7 WNT receptor, the G protein‐coupled receptor GPR19, and the HELLS helicase, which could play an important role in hESCs biology. Conversely, we identified 783 genes downregulated in hESCs and reported in at least three studies. This “consensus differentiation gene list” included the IL6ST/GP130 LIF receptor. We created an online hESC expression atlas, http://amazonia.montp. inserm.fr, to provide an easy access to this public transcriptome dataset. Expression histograms comparing hESCs to a broad collection of fetal and adult tissues can be retrieved with this web tool for more than 15,000 genes.
Expression of Sex Steroid Hormone Receptors in Vagal Motor Neurons Innervating the Trachea and Esophagus in Mouse

The medullary vagal motor nuclei, the nucleus ambiguus (NA) and dorsal motor nucleus of the vagus (DMV), innervate the respiratory and gastrointestinal tracts. We conducted immunohistochemical analysis of expression of the androgen receptor (AR) and estrogen receptor α (ERα), in relation to innervation of the trachea and esophagus via vagal motor nuclei in mice. AR and ERα were expressed in the rostral NA and in part of the DMV. Tracing experiments using cholera toxin B subunit demonstrated that neurons of vagal motor nuclei that innervate the trachea and esophagus express AR and ERα. There was no difference in expression of sex steroid hormone receptors between trachea- and esophagus-innervating neurons. These results suggest that sex steroid hormones may act on vagal motor nuclei via their receptors, thereby regulating functions of the trachea and esophagus.
SOX2 Gene Amplification and Overexpression is Linked to HPV-positive Vulvar Carcinomas

SOX2 (SRY-related HMG-box 2) belongs to the SOX gene family of high-mobility transcription factors indispensably involved in gene regulation in pluripotent stem cells and neural differentiation. SOX2 copy number increases have been frequently reported in various types of squamous cell cancer. To better understand the effect of SOX2 aberrations on vulvar cancer phenotype and patient prognosis, we analyzed SOX2 copy number changes using fluorescence in situ hybridization and SOX2 expression by immunohistochemistry in 55 squamous cell carcinomas of the vulva. SOX2 amplification was found in 20.8% of tumors; 27.3% of vulvar carcinomas showed SOX2 protein overexpression. SOX2 amplification was correlated with SOX2 overexpression in our data set (P<0.01). Amplification of the SOX2 locus was associated with high tumor grade (P<0.05) and human papillomavirus (HPV) positivity (P<0.01). SOX2-amplified tumors showed more frequently a basaloid phenotype than nonamplified carcinomas. SOX2 protein overexpression was also correlated with basaloid phenotype and positive HPV status of vulvar carcinomas (P<0.05, each). SOX2 amplification and expression were not associated with patient overall survival. In conclusion, SOX2 copy number increases are detectable in a substantial proportion of high-grade HPV-positive vulvar carcinomas with basaloid differentiation. Our study provides further evidence for different molecular alterations in HPV-positive and HPV-negative vulvar carcinomas.
Control, trust, privacy, and security: evaluating location-based services

Location-based services (LBS) are those applications that utilize the position of an end-user, animal, or thing based on a given device (handheld, wearable, or implanted), for a particular purpose. This article uses scenario planning to identify the possible risks related to location-based services in the context of security and privacy. The original contribution of this article is that the dilemma has been related specifically to LBS, under the privacy-security dichotomy. Here, each side of the dichotomy is divided into three key components that combine to greatly magnify risk. Removing one or more components for each set decreases the privacy or security risk. Where more elements are present in conjunction, the risk is increased
The semantics of winning and losing

ABSTRACT Headlines reporting the outcomes of professional and college football games for an entire football season from two major newspapers were analyzed in an attempt to answer three questions: (1) What kind(s) of language do sportswriters use in attempting to be playful or humorous? (2) Is there a pattern to the number of ways winning and losing can be described? (3) What effects might creative use of language in such headlines have on the English language in general? Of the 930 headlines collected, there were 222 different transitive verbs (e.g., ambush, batter, burn, flog, maul, smash) and 81 intransitive verbs (e.g., breeze, cruise, lose, rally, win). On a descriptive linguistic level, most headlines (a) were in the form of subject–verb–object; (b) used alliteration and punning (Rice Burns Baylor); and (c) used almost any action verb to denote winning. On a psycholinguistic level, an argument is presented for semantic generativity, the ability of the context and the metaphorical possibilities of words to have almost any verb make sense in a headline. Finally, on a historical linguistic level, it is suggested that continued use of a verb for winning and losing (such as maul and pulverize) may lead to a change in their meaning. (Semantics, language change, language of sports)
Rank Advancement in Academic Careers: Sex Differences and the Effects of Productivity.

Advancement in rank is critically important to the career of an academic scientist, and the highly visible nature of the event makes it idealfor studying stratification in science. Concern with universalistic factors in promotion has prompted debates over two issues. First, why do female scientists advance more slowly than male scientists, and why do so few reach the rank offull professor? Second, is promotion driven by the sheer volume of published work as opposed to its quality? Event history analyses clearly indicate that quantity of publications is far more important than various measures of quality of publications in predicting rank advancement; and women are less likely to be promoted than men. About one-half of this sex difference is attributable to differences in levels of variables affecting promotion. Remaining differences are a result of differences in expected timing of promotion to associate professor and to the negative effects of department prestige on promotion to full professor for women.
Comparison of Kicking Motion Characteristics at Ball Impact between Female and Male Soccer Players

Kicking, and particularly foot–ball impact, is a fundamental soccer skill. To date, most studies of ball impact have examined only male players. However, gender differences among soccer players might affect kicking performance. The competitiveness of female players might therefore be enhanced by providing gender-specific training and coaching. Here we compared the technical characteristics of ball impact during instep and inside kicks between male and female players. Female players exhibited significantly lower ball velocity, foot velocity immediately before impact, striking mass, and average ball-to-foot velocity ratio than male players (p < 0.05). The ball-to-foot velocity ratio decreased as the distance of the impact point from the centre of gravity (CoG) of the foot increased. Our results suggested that training for female players should focus on making contact with the ball near the foot's CoG under various conditions.
Interpersonal Identity Achievement Accounts for the Link Between Action Control and Self-Informed Realization of the Implicit Affiliation-Intimacy Motive

This study examines the relationship between a specific form of self-regulation (i.e., action control) and the dispositional mode of realization of the implicit affiliation-intimacy motive. This mode can either be self-informed or driven by external incentives. It was hypothesized that interpersonal identity achievement mediates the relationship between action control and the self-informed mode of motive realization of the implicit need for affiliation-intimacy. The Operant Multimotive Test, a short version of the Action Control Scale, and the Interpersonal Identity Achievement scale of the Extended Objective Measure of Ego Identity Status were administered to 207 university students. A mediation analysis confirmed the hypothesis.
Metamemory ratings predict long-term changes in reactivated episodic memories

Reactivation of long-term memory can render the memory item temporarily labile, offering an opportunity to modify it via behavioral or pharmacological intervention. Declarative memory reactivation is accompanied by a metamemory ability to subjectively assess the knowledge available concerning the target item (Feeling of knowing, FOK). We set out to examine whether FOK can predict the extent of change of long-term episodic memories by post-retrieval manipulations. To this end, participants watched a short movie and were immediately thereafter tested on their memory for it. A day later, they were reminded of that movie, and either immediately or 1 day later, were presented with a second movie. The reminder phase consisted of memory cues to which participants were asked to judge their FOK regarding the original movie. The memory performance of participants to whom new information was presented immediately after reactivating the original episode corresponded to the degree of FOK ratings upon reactivation such that the lower their FOK, the less their memory declined. In contrast, no relation was found between FOK and memory strength for those who learned new information 1 day after the reminder phase. Our findings suggest that the subjective accessibility of reactivated memories may determine the extent to which new information might modify those memories.
Mental imagery of concrete proverbs: A developmental study of children, adolescents, and adults

ABSTRACT The development of mental imagery in relation to the comprehension of concrete proverbs (e.g., one rotten apple spoils the barrel) was examined in children, adolescents, and adults who were ages 11 to 29 years old (n = 210). The findings indicated that age-related changes occurred in mental imagery and in proverb comprehension during the years between late childhood and early adulthood, and that the two domains were associated in children and adults but not in adolescents. Children and adults were more likely to describe relevant mental imagery (age 11: “A big barrel of apples and a woman picks up one that is rotten and there are worms in it and the worms go to all the other apples”) when they also comprehended the proverb on a multiple-choice task. It was also found that participants' mental images became more metaphorical in relation to increasing age (age 21: “One bad comment can spoil the entire conversation”). The findings are consistent with dual coding theory, the view that nonverbal information (relevant visual imagery) in addition to verbal information (related words and phrases) supports language comprehension in the case of concrete meanings. The results also support the view that mental imagery reflects figurative understanding and the individual's tacit awareness of underlying metaphorical concepts.
Configural Processing in Memory Retrieval: Multiple Cues and Ensemble Representations

When retrieving information from memory, a number of contextual cues may interact to determine which ideas will be easily accessible. Even the simplest case in which joint cue action obtains (two cues) is very revealing of the principles of memory access and representation of compounds. Mechanisms by which dual cues interact to constrain retrieval from episodic memory are considered. A holistic mechanism of cue integration is contrasted with two nonholistic mechanisms: a multiplicative or intersection mechanism and an independent-contributions mechanism. Holistic- and intersection-cuing mechanisms are consistent with different variants of compound cue models of priming. The independent cuing mechanism is consistent with spreading activation models of priming. Data from four experiments which examined dual-cued recognition of items from (newly learned) triples demonstrated strongly configural, holistic, action of dual cues. The two cues and test item must form an encoded compound to yield cuing advantages. Two independent cues to the test item are ineffective if the two cues and test were not learned together as a triple; one valid and one invalid cue are also ineffective. This is so despite the availability of pairwise information for each cue-test relation, and despite the fact that these cues are effective when operating alone. A compound cue model which predicts precisely this surprising pattern of priming is developed. The compound cue model also predicts previously obtained configural priming of associative judgments, as well as the bias priming generally observed in item recognition and similar paradigms.
Systematic review methodology in higher education

Systematic review methodology can be distinguished from narrative reviews of the literature through its emphasis on transparent, structured and comprehensive approaches to searching the literature and its requirement for formal synthesis of research findings. There appears to be relatively little use of the systematic review methodology within the higher education sector. This paper outlines the systematic review methodology, including variations, explores debates regarding systematic reviews from the educational literature and describes particular issues for its application within higher education. We conclude that thoughtful use of the systematic review methodology may be of benefit to the sector.