Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Influence of Social Culture on Decision-Making Manner: An Analysis with the Structural Equation Model

Abstract The aim of the present study is to determine the influence of social culture on decision-making behavior. The research is done with the questionnaire technique on 243 senior and midlevel managers who work in public and private sectors in Burdur. The influence of social culture on decision-making behavior has been examined with the Structural Equation Model by using the software known as AMOS. According to the findings obtained, it is observed that the social culture is influential on decision-making manner. It has been statistically determined that there are significant influences of individualism on dependent and tentative decision-making manners, risk avoidance on dependent decision-making manner, willingness to take risk on intuitive decision-making manner, and low-authority range on rational decision-making manner.
Policy and society related implications of automated driving: A review of literature and directions for future research

ABSTRACT In this paper, the potential effects of automated driving that are relevant to policy and society are explored, findings discussed in literature about those effects are reviewed and areas for future research are identified. The structure of our review is based on the ripple effect concept, which represents the implications of automated vehicles at three different stages: first-order (traffic, travel cost, and travel choices), second-order (vehicle ownership and sharing, location choices and land use, and transport infrastructure), and third-order (energy consumption, air pollution, safety, social equity, economy, and public health). Our review shows that first-order impacts on road capacity, fuel efficiency, emissions, and accidents risk are expected to be beneficial. The magnitude of these benefits will likely increase with the level of automation and cooperation and with the penetration rate of these systems. The synergistic effects between vehicle automation, sharing, and electrification can multiply these benefits. However, studies confirm that automated vehicles can induce additional travel demand because of more and longer vehicle trips. Potential land use changes have not been included in these estimations about excessive travel demand. Other third-order benefits on safety, economy, public health and social equity still remain unclear. Therefore, the balance between the short-term benefits and long-term impacts of vehicle automation remains an open question.
Expression of MMP-2, MMP-9, and MMP-1 and Their Endogenous Counterregulators TIMP-1 and TIMP-2 in Postmortem Brain Tissue of Parkinson's Disease

We investigated the levels and tissue localization of matrix metalloproteinase 2 (MMP-2) and matrix metalloproteinase 9 (MMP-9) in postmortem brain tissue from Parkinson's disease (PD) and age-matched control cases. Using zymography, we found reduced MMP-2 levels in PD cases in the substantia nigra as compared to controls; levels of MMP-2 were not significantly changed in the cortex and the hippocampus. MMP-9 levels were unchanged in the investigated brain regions. Immunohistochemically, MMP-2 was localized primarily in astrocytes and microglia cells, whereas MMP-9 was predominantly neuronal. Levels of TIMP-1, an endogenous tissue inhibitor of MMPs, were significantly elevated in the substantia nigra, but not in the cortex and hippocampus. TIMP-2 levels were unchanged in PD. To investigate whether increased TIMP-1 levels in the substantia nigra might be due to increased MMP-1 expression, we measured MMP-1 levels using Western blots. MMP-1 levels were unchanged in PD cases compared to controls. Together, these data show alterations of MMP-2 and TIMP-1 in the substantia nigra of PD, consistent with the possibility that alterations in MMPs/TIMPs may contribute to disease pathogenesis.
Feature integration across multimodel perception and action

One of the most remarkable aspects of multimodal perception is its coherence. Our conscious perception is unified at any given moment, although we acquire information from diverse channels with distinct transduction mechanisms, and process it in different cortical areas not necessarily at the same time and pace. The problem of how the brain integrates the different types of information, which are processed in distinct cortical regions to a unified event, is referred to in literature as the binding problem (Triesman, 1996). The current thesis reflects a gradual inquest in order to reveal different aspects of the binding mechanism across multimodal perception and action. The empirical evidence suggests that feature integration emerges in a graded manner through intra and inter connections within and across modalities and domains, employing general principles (such as temporal overlap of feature activation), which capture the role of attention, salience and dominance among the features and the domains. Also, control processes are important in handling retrieved traces for efficient use. Nevertheless, the binding mechanism does not require a conscious or unified perception and unified perception is not the outcome of feature binding.
Linear-Phase Delay Filters for Ultra-Low-Power Signal Processing in Neural Recording Implants

We present the design and implementation of linear-phase delay filters for ultra-low-power signal processing in neural recording implants. We use these filters as low-distortion delay elements along with an automatic biopotential detector to perform integral waveform extraction and efficient power management. The presented delay elements are realized employing continuous-time OTA-C filters featuring 9th-order equiripple transfer functions with constant group delay. Such analog delay enables processing neural waveforms with reduced overhead compared to a digital delay since it does not requires sampling and digitization. It uses an allpass transfer function for achieving wider constant-delay bandwidth than all-pole does. Two filters realizations are compared for implementing the delay element: the Cascaded structure and the Inverse follow-the-leader feedback filter. Their respective strengths and drawbacks are assessed by modeling parasitics and non-idealities of OTAs, and by transistor-level simulations. A budget of 200 nA is used in both filters. Experimental measurements with the chosen filter topology are presented and discussed.
Connexins and intercellular communication in arterial growth and remodeling

Gap junction functionality and intercellular exchange of chemical messengers and other biologically important cellular signals makes communication between adjacent cells possible and is essential for multicellular living systems. This intercellular communication is carried out through gap junction channels that are comprised of multimeric connexin (Cx) proteins and that provide physical linkages between neighboring cells. This Cx-specific gap junction intercellular communication (GJIC) helps perform numerous essential physiological functions in different organ systems. In vascular tissues, reciprocal GJIC between intimal vascular endothelial cells (VECs) and medial vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) helps to control blood flow and arterial pressures by signaling contraction or relaxation events. In the vascular system appropriate GJIC also regulates responses to circulating hormones and other vasoactive factors as well as growth during episodes of stimulated angiogenesis and/or vasculogenesis. Deleterious GJIC, however, serves as a contributing element in vascular pathologies and plays key roles in abnormal vascular cell proliferation, migration, and inflammation, foundational mechanisms of arterial remodeling and neointima development. In this review we discuss the critical roles of vascular gap junction Cx proteins and GJIC in regulating pathologic arterial remodeling.
THE COLOR-BLIND SUBJECT OF MYTH; Or, Where To Find Africa in the Nation

▪ Abstract African influence in a nation must be examined within the framework of the nation's formation of diversity, ethno-racial paradigm, and particular history. Based on the paradigmatic cases of Brazil and the United States, I contend here that racial attitudes and the position and role of African traditions in a nation are interrelated. Discerning racial conceptions, perceptions, and patterns of discrimination in a nation provides us with strong clues about the place and role assigned to the African presence in that context. Racisms may not differ much in intensity, but they do in the cognitive operations they imply, because they are grounded in encoded ethnic knowledge accumulated through specific historical experiences.
A study to evaluate safety and efficacy of mepolizumab in patients with moderate persistent asthma.

RATIONALE Accumulation of eosinophils in the bronchial mucosa of individuals with asthma is considered to be a central event in the pathogenesis of asthma. In animal models, airway eosinophil recruitment and airway hyperresponsiveness in response to allergen challenge are reduced by specific targeting of interleukin-5. A previous small dose-finding study found that mepolizumab, a humanized anti-interleukin-5 monoclonal antibody, had no effect on allergen challenge in humans. OBJECTIVES To investigate the effect of three intravenous infusions of mepolizumab, 250 or 750 mg at monthly intervals, on clinical outcome measures in 362 patients with asthma experiencing persistent symptoms despite inhaled corticosteroid therapy (400-1,000 mug of beclomethasone or equivalent). METHODS Multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study. MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS Morning peak expiratory flow, forced expiratory volume in 1 second, daily beta(2)-agonist use, symptom scores, exacerbation rates, and quality of life measures. Sputum eosinophil levels were also measured in a subgroup of 37 individuals. Mepolizumab was associated with a significant reduction in blood and sputum eosinophils in both treatment groups (blood, P < 0.001 for both doses; sputum, P = 0.006 for 250 mg and P = 0.004 for 750 mg). There were no statistically significant changes in any of the clinical end points measured. There was a nonsignificant trend for decrease in exacerbation rates in the mepolizumab 750-mg treatment group (P = 0.065). CONCLUSIONS Mepolizumab treatment does not appear to add significant clinical benefit in patients with asthma with persistent symptoms despite inhaled corticosteroid therapy. Further studies are needed to investigate the effect of mepolizumab on exacerbation rates, using protocols specifically tailored to patients with asthma with persistent airway eosinophilia.
Distributed Estimation in Large Wireless Sensor Networks via a Locally Optimum Approach

A wireless sensor network (WSN) engaged in a decentralized estimation problem is considered. The nonrandom unknown parameter lies in some small neighborhood of a nominal value and, exploiting this knowledge, a locally optimum estimator (LOE) is introduced. Under the LOE paradigm, the sensors of the network process their observations by means of a suitable nonlinearity (the score function), before delivering data to the fusion center that outputs the final estimate. Usually continuous-valued data cannot be reliably delivered from sensors to the fusion center, and some form of data compression is necessary. Accordingly, we design the scalar quantizers that must be used at the network's nodes in order to comply with the estimation problem at hand. Such a difficult multiterminal inference problem is shown to be asymptotically equivalent to the already solved problem of designing optimum quantizers for reconstruction (as opposed to inference) purposes.
Noncontingent Reinforcement and the Acquisition of Appropriate Behavior

Noncontingent reinforcement (NCR) continues to be a successful treatment option to reduce severe problem behavior exhibited by individuals with developmental disabilities. The approach has been demonstrated effective across behavioral function and there is a growing body of literature suggesting NCR can be effective in combination with response-dependent reinforcement schedules. The literature on NCR in combination with response-dependent reinforcement schedules suggests that NCR does not necessarily reduce the effectiveness of contingent reinforcers when acquisition of appropriate behavior is a clinical goal, depending on the density of the NCR schedule component.
p21Cip1 restrains pituitary tumor growth

As commonly encountered, pituitary adenomas are invariably benign. We therefore studied protective pituitary proliferative mechanisms. Pituitary tumor transforming gene (Pttg) deletion results in pituitary p21 induction and abrogates tumor development in Rb+/−Pttg−/− mice. p21 disruption restores attenuated Rb+/−Pttg−/− pituitary proliferation rates and enables high penetrance of pituitary, but not thyroid, tumor growth in triple mutant animals (88% of Rb+/− and 72% of Rb+/−Pttg−/−p21−/− vs. 30% of Rb+/−Pttg−/− mice developed pituitary tumors, P < 0.001). p21 deletion also accelerated S-phase entry and enhanced transformation rates in triple mutant MEFs. Intranuclear p21 accumulates in Pttg-null aneuploid GH-secreting cells, and GH3 rat pituitary tumor cells overexpressing PTTG also exhibited increased levels of mRNA for both p21 (18-fold, P < 0.01) and ATM (9-fold, P < 0.01). PTTG is abundantly expressed in human pituitary tumors, and in 23 of 26 GH-producing pituitary adenomas with high PTTG levels, senescence was evidenced by increased p21 and SA-β-galactosidase. Thus, either deletion or overexpression of Pttg promotes pituitary cell aneuploidy and p53/p21-dependent senescence, particularly in GH-secreting cells. Aneuploid pituitary cell p21 may constrain pituitary tumor growth, thus accounting for the very low incidence of pituitary carcinomas.
LIQUIDITY AND RETURNS: EVIDENCES FROM STOCK INDEXES AROUND THE WORLD

Using data from 16 developing countries and 10 developed countries between January 2000 and December 2013, this study examines the relationship between liquidity and stock index return. The empirical results show that the higher market liquidity (trading volume, turnover ratio, and turnover volatility), the higher stock index return in developing countries. Conversely, the market liquidity (trading volume, turnover ratio, turnover volatility) corresponds negatively with return in the developed countries. During the crisis, however, the relationship between market liquidity and return show mixed results. While trading volume and turnover stays positive, yet the other liquidity measures become insignificant. In particular, for developed countries, only Amihud significantly affects return. Our results are robust even after controlling dividend yield, exchange rate, and regional stock market beta.
Homocysteine, vitamin B12 and folate in vascular dementia and in Alzheimer disease

Abstract The association between elevated plasma levels of homocysteine (Hcy) and nutritional status has been shown in Alzheimer disease (AD) patients and also in vascular dementia (VaD). Moreover, a previous study provided evidence that the relation between a high Hcy level and low vitamin B12 and folate levels in AD patients is due to biochemical damage, rather than a nutritional deficit. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between plasma Hcy levels and vitamins involved in its metabolism in AD and VaD. Twenty-two VaD patients, 22 AD patients and 24 healthy subjects were studied for Hcy, vitamin B12, vitamin B6 and folate. All patients and control subjects were comparable for age, educational level, nutritional and socioeconomic status. None of them showed macrocytic anemia or impaired renal function. Hcy was significantly increased in VaD patients (26.0±6.58 µmol/l) as compared to controls (10.7±3.0 µmol/l) and AD patients (22.3±4.51 µmol/l; p<0.001); however, AD patients also showed increased levels of Hcy. Folates were significantly reduced in both VaD (10.8±2.81 nmol/l) and AD (10.0±2.72 nmol/l; p<0.001) patients, while vitamin B12 showed significantly reduced levels only in AD patients (392.1±65.32 pmol/l; p=0.02). Vitamin B6 was not significantly different in the three groups. Increased levels of Hcy associated with low vitamin B12 plasma levels were found only in AD patients. This observation led us to consider that vitamin B12 metabolism does not represent the direct consequence of the nutritional status and suggests that neuronal damage results in a functional vitamin B12 deficiency, as emphasized by recent reports. New therapeutic strategies are necessary, considering that available pharmaceutical forms of vitamin B12 are not utilized by neurons in oxidative stress conditions.
Concrete Operational Development in Three Cultures

Berry's (1971) model of ecological functionalism is extended to Piagetian developmental psychology. It is predicted that the rate of development of concrete operations may be partly determined by ecological and cultural factors. In particular, if three subsistence-economy populations are placed on an ecocultural scale, with low food-accumulating, nomadic, hunting groups at one extreme, and high food-accumulating, sedentary, agricultur-alist groups at the other extreme, the former are expected to develop spatial concepts more rapidly than will the latter, whereas the sedentary group is expected to attain concepts of conservation of quantity, weight, and volume more rapidly than nomadic groups will. The model is largely supported by the results of a study involving 190 children (aged six to fourteen from three cultural groups: Canadian Eskimos, Australian Aborigines, and Ebrie Africans. The discussion centers on ambiguous results obtained in the age range eight to eleven years for the conservation tasks.
Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems ( PACIS ) 2007 Determining University Students ’ Motivations for Using Computer-Mediated Communication Technologies

Motivated by the increasing popularity of computer-mediated communication (CMC) technologies in university students learning, this study will explore students’ motivations for using CMC technologies in their learning. By employing uses and gratifications (U&G) perspective, this paper aims to identify dimensions of motivation in students’ CMC technology use. It also proposes that students’ technology self-efficacy and communication apprehension influence their motivations for using technologies. A three-stage research design procedure is proposed. Finally, the paper concludes with a discussion of the implications for both IS researchers and higher education.
Fleeting images: rapid affect discrimination in the visual cortex

Converging electrophysiological and hemodynamic findings indicate sensory processing of emotional pictures is preferred to that of neutral pictures. Whereas neuroimaging studies of emotional picture perception have employed stimulus durations lasting several seconds, recent electrocortical investigations report early visual cortical discrimination between emotionally arousing and neutral picture processing. Here, we use a hybrid picture presentation paradigm covering a range of rapid presentation rates (0.75–6 Hz), while visual system activity is recorded with functional magnetic resonance imaging. Results demonstrate widespread sensitivity to emotional arousal in the secondary and inferior temporal visual cortex. Furthermore, activity in the lateral inferior occipital and medial inferior temporal visual cortex revealed equivalent emotion-sensitive activation across all presentation rates. Results further support the notion that attention and perceptual processing are in part directed by underlying motivational systems.
Coinductive subtyping for abstract compilation of object-oriented languages into Horn formulas

In recent work we have shown how it is possible to define very pr ecise type systems for objectoriented languages by abstractly compiling a program into a Horn formula f . Then type inference amounts to resolving a certain goal w.r. t. the coinductive ( that is, the greatest) Herbrand model of f . Type systems defined in this way are idealized, since in the mo st interesting instantiations both the terms of the coinductive Herbrand universe and goal derivations cannot be finitely represented. However, sound and quite expressive approximations can be implemented by considering only regular terms and derivations. In doing so, it is essential to int roduce a proper subtyping relation formalizing the notion of approximation between types. In this paper we study a subtyping relation on coinductive terms built on union and object type constructors. We define an interpretation of types as set of v alues induced by a quite intuitive relation of membership of values to types, and prove that the definitio n of subtyping is sound w.r. t. subset inclusion between type interpretations. The proof of soundness has allowed us to simplify the notion of contractive derivation and to discover that the previous ly given definition of subtyping did not cover all possible representations of the empty type.
Apathy, alienation and young people: the political engagement of British millennials

Conventional wisdom holds that today’s young people, often known as ‘the Millennials’, are a politically alienated generation. Their hostility towards political parties, association with protest movements, and low electoral turnout are all said to indicate their alienation from the processes and institutions of Western democracy. This conventional wisdom stands, however, on shaky ground. Previous research has given too little attention to the definition and measurement of political alienation, and has barely explored its causal relationship with political participation. The use of methods capable of exploring the generational distinctiveness of the Millennials has been limited, as have efforts to outline why the Millennials should be conceptualised as a distinct political generation in the first place, and what is gained from doing so. Focussing on the case of Britain, this study explores the extent to which the Millennials are a distinct political generation in terms of political participation, political apathy, and political alienation, and considers how their conceptualisation as a distinct generation improves our understanding of their political characteristics. Furthermore, it tests the theory that their alienation from, rather than their apathy towards, formal politics can explain their distinct political behaviour. Through critiquing and developing conceptualisations of the Millennials as a political generation, and of political apathy, alienation and participation, this thesis challenges the conventional wisdom. The Millennials are a distinct generation in terms of their political participation, apathy and alienation – but they are distinct for their lack of participation, their unusually high levels of apathy towards formal politics, and their unusually low levels ofalienation from it. The Millennials have the potential to be the most politically apathetic, and least politically alienated, generation to have entered the British electorate since World War Two. In addition, this research also shows that while generational differences are significant and often substantial, they make only a limited contribution to explaining variation in political apathy, alienation and participation. This research argues, therefore, that future studies into and policy responses to the political behaviour of young people must recognise their distinct levels of political apathy. At the same time, however, the focus on political generations should not be so intense as to obscure the role of more influential causes of differences in political participation.