Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Neuronal mechanisms of auditory backward recognition masking in macaque auditory cortex

THE sensation of a single sound event can be altered by subsequent sounds. This study searched for neural mechanisms of such retroactive effects in macaque auditory cortex by comparing neural responses to single tones with responses to two consecutive tones. Retroactive influences were found to affect late parts of the response to a tone, which comprised 53/134 of the recordings of action potentials and 88/131 of the recordings of field potentials performed in primary, caudal, and medial auditory fields. If before or during the occurrence of the late response to the first tone a second tone was presented the late response was suppressed. Suppression of late cortical responses parallels perceptual phenomena like backward recognition masking, suggesting that suppression of late responses provides a neural correlate of auditory backward effects.
Factor structure and psychometric properties of the Fertility Problem Inventory–Short Form

The study analyses factor structure and psychometric properties of the Italian version of the Fertility Problem Inventory–Short Form. A sample of 206 infertile couples completed the Italian version of Fertility Problem Inventory (46 items) with demographics, State Anxiety Scale of State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (Form Y), Edinburgh Depression Scale and Dyadic Adjustment Scale, used to assess convergent and discriminant validity. Confirmatory factor analysis was unsatisfactory (comparative fit index = 0.87; Tucker-Lewis Index = 0.83; root mean square error of approximation = 0.17), and Cronbach’s α (0.95) revealed a redundancy of items. Exploratory factor analysis was carried out deleting cross-loading items, and Mokken scale analysis was applied to verify the items homogeneity within the reduced subscales of the questionnaire. The Fertility Problem Inventory–Short Form consists of 27 items, tapping four meaningful and reliable factors. Convergent and discriminant validity were confirmed. Findings indicated that the Fertility Problem Inventory–Short Form is a valid and reliable measure to assess infertility-related stress dimensions.
Superintendent Leadership during Economic Austerity: A Multiple Case Study

In contrast with recent decades of economic growth and stability, today's education funding landscape appears to be entrenched in a pattern of diminishing financial resources that may persist for a number of years. This is occurring also amid unprecedented efforts by lawmakers and public officials to intervene in school reform work. School leaders, specifically superintendents of the public school districts, are expected to make difficult leadership decisions in cutting back and downsizing the district organization while still maintaining an innovative and positive environment in schools. The effective leader must be well informed of best practices in positively influencing critical determinants of the district's organization in these critical times. Researchers have stressed that there is a need to examine dynamic, evolutionary processes within organizations and populations of organizations (Cameron & Whetten, 1981; Kimberly & Quinn, 1984; Tushman and Anderson, 1986). A universally accepted concept from the biological sciences is the idea of organizations taking on a "life" that can be compared to living organisms. Management researchers have developed various models to depict the life cycle of organizations, including phases or stages of birth, growth, decline, renewal (or revival) and death (Dodge, Fullerton, & Robbins, 1994; Greiner, 1972; Hanks, Watson, Jansen, & Chandler, 1993; Miller & Friesen, 1983). Among the early studies of economic life cycles is the seminal work of Danny Miller and Peter Friesen (1984). They identified primary factors or determinants to an organization's phase in the life cycle: situation, structure, decision-making style, and strategy. Every organization exhibits organizational life cycle characteristics and can be affected by contextual factors and leadership choices from these four determinants. However, while this research was initially prevalent in business and public organization models, a lack of research interest in the public realm has persisted. Public education leaders, especially superintendents, need to demonstrate significant leadership during times of economic decline. Better information, including a synthesis of the literature from empirical and statistical studies in this area, is needed. Furthermore, a study of superintendents in their "natural setting" through qualitative research and thematic analysis is needed to explain their experiences in leading schools through years of economic austerity. The outcome of this research was the development of a leadership framework that informs public school superintendents who deal with seasons of economic austerity, and a contribution to the research and knowledge base of best practices for managing organizational decline.
Assessing contract policy work: overseeing Canadian policy consultants

Most of the interest in assessment of policy consulting in recent years has been related to financial and budgetary matters. This narrow focus has not dealt adequately with other important issues such as the impact of increased external consulting on the range and quality of advice and services provided to government. As such, important dimensions of this kind of contracting behaviour have been missed. This paper supplements new government contract data with the findings of a 2012–13 survey of approximately 160 Canadian federal government policy managers to investigate the oversight of contracts for policy work in Canada. Inefficiencies generated by a generalized lack of shared data and knowledge gained through the employment of external consultants is a major characteristic of this activity, which existing financially-based control systems fail to manage effectively.
Detection of human polyomaviruses and papillomaviruses in prostatic tissue reveals the prostate as a habitat for multiple viral infections

To determine whether human polyomavirus (hPy) genomes are present in prostate tissues, we have carried out a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) screening in two sets of prostate samples, archival and fresh frozen, as well as performing in situ hybridization (ISH). The frozen prostate samples as well as the urine from the same patients were also screened for human papillomavirus (HPV) sequences.
Student feedback

Conduct thoughtful and accurate patient assessments Demonstrate knowledge of pharmacology, pathology, & therapeutics Propose appropriate diagnosis & tx plan in discussions with preceptor Place appropriate emphasis on patient education & disease prevention Skillfully manage pain, anxiety, & patient behavior Select treatment to be provided according to patient’s needs rather than student’s convenience Recognize & accurately self-assess clinical procedure outcomes Clearly communicate PRE-procedure information to patients Clearly communicate POST-procedure information to patients
Clinical course and determination of brainstem death in a children's hospital

Aim: To study the aetiology and clinical course of children with brainstem death in a paediatric intensive care unit (ICU) and to determine whether current the practices that are used to declare brainstem death conform to accepted criteria. Methods: A retrospective review chart of all patients with brainstem death (n= 31) admitted to the paediatric ICU between January 1995 and December 1998 was drawn up. Results: Mean age of the patients was 51.9 ± 54.5 mo with the main diagnoses being head trauma in 11 children, anoxic encephalopathy in 7, brain tumour in 5, drowning in 4, CNS haemorrhage in 3 and CNS infection in 1 child; 32.3% of the children were given pre‐ICU admission cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The average time from insult to suspected brainstem death was 27 h and suspected brainstem death to confirmation was 25 h, with an average of 1.6 examinations performed. EEG was done in 14 patients, with electrocerebral silence in 8 after the first examination and in a further 5 after repeat testing. Cerebral blood‐flow scans were done in 3 children and evoked potentials in 1 child.
Who buys newspapers in Spain? An analysis of the determinants of the probability to buy newspapers and of the amount spent

In this paper, we examine the determinants of household consumption of newspapers and the amount spent on their purchase by considering several explanatory variables related to household characteristics and the main household wage earner. Results show that the variables have quite similar effects on both the relative probability of buying newspapers and the amount spent. The key variables are the age and occupational status of the main wage earner, the number of household members, income and having to pay for the house, as well as a number of geographical variables. However, certain differences are also observed. The most important is the education of the main wage earner: while its effect on buying newspapers is very small (only those who did not complete primary education are less likely to buy), its effect on the amount spent increases with the level of education. As other studies of cultural goods and services consumption have suggested, education and occupational status are more relevant determinants than income.
Musical Futures in Victoria

Musical Futures is a music learning program that was established in the United Kingdom in 2003. It aims to make secondary classroom music more relevant to young people through engaging them in the informal learning practices of real world musicians, recognising that the way in which popular musicians learn is quite different from the pedagogy of the traditional music classroom. This article reports on research that investigated the impact of the Musical Futures approach on music teachers and students in ten pilot government schools in Victoria, Australia (including a primary school). The research replicated aspects of the Hallam, Creech and McQueen (2010) UK research and data was collected through a survey of the teachers and two case study schools where the teachers and students were interviewed. After only two terms of implementation, the impact of the program on both the teachers and the students has been quite profound.
Cluster‐Based Technology Policy—The German Experience

The German Federal Government has undertaken a series of particularly interesting policy experiments in the field of technology policy in recent years, a major policy innovation being the explicit recognition of regional clustering aspects in federal support programmes. The paper provides a categorization and assessment of these policy experiments and tries to shed some new light on two fundamental policy questions that are important beyond the German context: (i) can clusters be built by national government policy action? and (ii) is regionalization of technology policy a suitable means of achieving goals at the national level? We find that utilizing the regional level to boost national innovation and competitiveness can—under certain conditions explicated in the paper—indeed be seen as a promising means of achieving national goals. More specifically, we find that InnoRegio type programmes might be particularly useful in regions with distinctive structural problems such as the Central and Eastern European countries, whereas BioRegio type models might be a suitable means of policy‐making at the level of the European Union.
Why is Your Team More Creative than Mine? The Influence of Shared Mental Models on Intra‐Group Conflict, Team Creativity and Effectiveness

In competitive and dynamic contexts team members need to be creative to ensure that teams achieve high levels of performance and feel satisfied with their work. At the same time, team members need to have a shared understanding regarding relevant aspects related to task accomplishment and team interaction. In this study we investigate the mediating mechanisms of intra‐group conflict and creativity in the relationship between shared mental models and team effectiveness (team performance and satisfaction). We tested our model in a sample of 161 teams (735 individuals) performing in a management simulation. We collected data at three time points. Our results suggest that high shared mental models are related to low levels of intra‐group conflict, foster creativity, and in turn improve team performance and satisfaction. These findings contribute to a scarce thematic – the relationship between shared mental models and creativity – emphasizing the importance of a shared understanding for creativity and team effectiveness.
e-Government in the Philippines: Benchmarking Against Global Best Practices

International ICT Benchmarks verify the Philippine government’s overall capacity to enhance citizen’s access to government service and increase bureaucratic productivity. The Network Readiness Index (NRI) measure a country’s potential in a networked world. A similar undertaking, the ASEAN e-readiness survey, compartmentalizes the ASEAN Nations into four levels of e-development: emerging, evolving, embedding, and extending. The Philippines is currently in the evolving stage in terms of e-government readiness. The World Market Research Center and the Brown University Survey discovered that e-government practices around the globe are falling short of their real potential. The internet’s interactive capacities are not maximized due to incoherent economic, social, political infrastructure among nations. Overall, e-government in the Philippines can be enhanced by the presence of ICT champions, technological empowerment of the people, adequate IT resources to local governments, reinvigoration of crucial frontline government services and continuous information education for the public.
Image artefacts in swept-source optical coherence tomography angiography

Purpose To describe optical coherence tomography angiography (OCTA) image artefacts in eyes with and without ocular pathologies. Methods The OCTA images of healthy subjects and patients with age-related macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy and retinal vascular occlusions were retrospectively reviewed. All OCTA images were obtained using a swept-source OCTA instrument (Triton, Topcon). The frequency of various image artefacts including segmentation, banding, motion, projection, masking, unmasking, doubling of the retinal vessels, blink, stretching, out-of-window and crisscross artefacts was assessed. The impact of the artefact on the grading of the images for the foveal avascular zone in deep and superficial retinal layers, capillary non-perfusion and choroidal neovascularisation (CNV) was evaluated. Results OCTA images of 57 eyes of 48 subjects including 23 eyes (40.3%) with CNV, 13 eyes (22.8%) with dry age-related macular degeneration, 9 eyes (15.7%) with cystoid macular oedema due to diabetic retinopathy or retinal vein occlusion and 12 normal eyes (21.1%) were available for evaluation. At least one type of artefact was present in the images from 51 eyes (89.4%). Banding artefact, segmentation, motion, unmasking, blink, vessel doubling, masking and out-of-window artefacts were found in 51 (89.4%), 35 (61.4%), 28 (49.1%), 9 (15.8%), 5 (8.8%), 1 (1.7%), 1 eye (1.7%) and 1 eye (1.7%), respectively. Projection artefact, stretch artefact or crisscross artefact was not observed. Banding, motion and segmentation artefacts were statistically significantly more frequent in eyes with ocular pathology compared with control eyes (all p<0.001). Eyes with choroidal diseases had significantly higher rate of segmentation error in the choriocapillaris slab compared with eyes with only retinal disease (p=0.02). In nine eyes (17.6%), the artefacts were deemed severe enough by the graders to preclude accurate grading of the image. Conclusions Image artefacts occur frequently in OCTA images. The artefacts are more frequent in eyes with pathology.
A SURVEY OF THE GLOBAL ECONOMIC COSTS OF CONFLICT

This paper defines the global economic costs of conflict and suggests two key criteria, namely comprehensiveness and consistency, which are necessary for a valid calculation of such costs. A critical review of the literature reveals that most studies focus on national income losses, using counterfactual regression models, finding a negative impact on growth both for conflict countries themselves and for their neighbors. However, the debate is quite fragmented and the literature fails to combine these insights in a comprehensive and consistent manner. Furthermore, there is little work thus far on integrating aggregate and micro‐level estimates of the costs of conflict.
ATXOP: an adaptive TXOP based on the data rate to guarantee fairness for IEEE 802.11e wireless LANs

The IEEE 802.11e is an extension of the IEEE 802.11 to provide quality of service (QoS) to applications requiring real time services. However, when the IEEE 802.11e WLANs are used with the multi-rate scheme, they suffer an unfairness problem. In this paper, we propose a scheme called adaptive transmission opportunity (ATXOP) to solve the unfairness problem in the IEEE 802.11e networks adopting the multi-rate scheme. Our simulation results show that the proposed ATXOP scheme provides better fairness.
A Small Printed Quasi-Self-Complementary Antenna for Ultrawideband Systems

A novel and simple ultrawideband (UWB) printed quasi-self-complementary antenna is presented. The proposed antenna, which is fed by a microstrip line, has been demonstrated to provide an ultrawide 10-dB impedance bandwidth with satisfactory radiation properties. It also features both physically and electrically small dimensions, 16 mm times 25 mm in a physical size and 0.24lambda in an electrical size, respectively. The key parameters that affect the performance of the antenna are investigated. A good agreement is achieved between the simulation and the measurement.
Political marketing communications planning in the UK and Taiwan: Comparative insights from leading practitioners

Purpose – This study sets out to make in‐depth comparisons between major political campaigns in the UK and Taiwan, and generate contemporary insights into the creative development process, the working relationships between campaign managers and professional agencies, and the “spin doctor” phenomenon, all through the eyes of very senior professionals.Design/methodology/approach – Material gathered in “elite interviews” was subjected to interpretive analysis and synthesised with secondary data and the findings of an extensive literature review.Findings – The putative Americanization of political marketing has not been as complete as some authors suggest, but one of its features was an important element in campaign development in both countries: the centrality of the party leader's persona in an image‐building strategy. The culture and history of the party were an important determinant of the style of the campaigns examined. It was generally agreed that political marketing and advertising have been strongly .
Current Practice in the Management of Open Fractures Among Orthopaedic Trauma Surgeons. Part A: Initial Management. A Survey of Orthopaedic Trauma Surgeons

Objectives: Open fractures are one of the injuries with the highest rate of infection that orthopaedic trauma surgeons treat. The main purpose of this survey was to determine current practice and practice variation among Orthopaedic Trauma Association (OTA) members and make treatment recommendations based on previously published resources. Design: Survey. Setting: Web-based survey. Participants: Three hundred seventy-nine orthopaedic trauma surgeons. Methods: A 15-item questionnaire-based study titled “OTA Open Fracture Survey” was constructed. The survey was delivered to all OTA membership categories. Different components of the data charts were used to analyze numerous aspects of open fracture management, focusing on parameters of initial and definitive treatment. Results: Eighty-six percent of participants responded that a period of time of less than 1 hour is the optimal time to antibiotic administration after identification of open fracture. Despite concerns with nephrotoxicity, 24.0%–76.3% of respondents reported the use of aminoglycosides in management of open fractures. A little over half of survey respondents continue antibiotics until next debridement in wounds that were not definitively closed after initial debridement and stabilization. Conclusions: Rapid administration of antibiotics in open fracture management is important. Aminoglycoside use is still prevalent despite evidence questioning efficacy and toxicity concerns. Time to debridement of open fractures is controversial among OTA members. Antibiotic administration is commonly continued >48 hours despite concerns raised by Surgical Infection Society and The Eastern Association of the Surgery of Trauma. Regarding study logistics, survey participation reminders should be used when conducting this type of study as it can increase data accrual by 50%. Level of Evidence: Therapeutic Level V. See Instructions for Authors for a complete description of levels of evidence.
Optimal monetary policy under heterogeneous beliefs of the central bank and the public

If the central bank and the public have different beliefs concerning the structure of the economy, we argue that the central bank should form its policy in a two-stage process: (1) it should model the expectations formation of the public; (2) it should combine the public's model along with its own structural model and only then derive the optimal policy rule. Using Monte-Carlo simulations, we show that this approach improves welfare significantly compared with a case in which the central bank reacts to the public's expectations but ignores the expectations formation mechanism.