Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Manipulating the Contents of Consciousness: A Mechanistic-Manipulationist Perspective on Content-NCC Research

I argue for a manipulationist-mechanistic framework for content-NCC research in the case of visual consciousness (Bechtel 2008; Neisser 2012). Reference to mechanisms is common in the NCC research. Furthermore, recent developments in non-invasive brain stimulation techniques (NIBS) lend support to a manipulationist standpoint. The crucial question is to understand what is changed after manipulation of a brain mechanism. In the second part of the paper I review the literature on intentionalism, and argue that intervention on the neural mechanism is likely to change the intentional content of consciousness. This urges us to shift from content-NCC to what I call “intentional mechanisms”. Such mechanisms, it is argued, should be understood as neural prerequisites of conscious visual experience.
CDC73 mutational status and loss of parafibromin in the outcome of parathyroid cancer

Inactivating mutations of the CDC73 tumor suppressor gene have been reported in parathyroid carcinomas (PC), in association with the loss of nuclear expression of the encoded protein, parafibromin. The aim of this study was to further investigate the role of the CDC73 gene in PC and evaluate whether gene carrier status and/or the loss of parafibromin staining might have an effect on the outcome of the disease. We performed genetic and immunohistochemical studies in parathyroid tumor samples from 35 patients with sporadic PC. Nonsense or frameshift CDC73 mutations were detected in 13 samples suitable for DNA sequencing. Six of these mutations were germline. Loss of parafibromin expression was found in 17 samples. The presence of the CDC73 mutation as well as the loss of parafibromin predicted a high likelihood of subsequent recurrence and/or metastasis (92.3%, P=0.049 and 94.1%, P=0.0017 respectively), but only the latter was associated with a decreased overall 5- and 10-year survival rates (59%, P=0.107, and 23%, P=0.0026 respectively). The presence of both the CDC73 mutation and loss of parafibromin staining compared with their absence predicted a lower overall survival at 10- (18 vs 84%, P=0.016) but not at 5-year follow-up. In conclusion, loss of parafibromin staining, better than CDC73 mutation, predicts the clinical outcome and mortality rate. The added value of CDC73 mutational analysis is the possibility of identifying germline mutations, which will prompt the screening of other family members.
Detection of Power-Line Interference in ECG signals using frequency-domain analysis

ECG signals can be seriously distorted by Power-Line Interference (PLI), the electromagnetic interference of power-line cables. This contamination can lead to imprecise measurements of the ECG wave durations and amplitudes. Therefore, the accuracy of the ECG analysis can be significantly reduced. The aim of this study was to develop and test a PLI detection algorithm, including the automatic recognition of the correct frequency and evaluating their level of inference. This enables an appropriate filtering whenever needed.
An analysis of teachers’ self-reported competencies for teaching metacognition

Abstract For successful reading experiences in native and/or foreign/second language, individuals need to benefit from not only cognitive strategies but also metacognitive strategies. Although research found reading comprehension and performance increase following metacognitive trainings, such findings may not transfer into mainstream classrooms as easily for several reasons. This study, therefore, aimed to disseminate the phenomenon of teaching metacognition with an emphasis on teacher’s instrumental role during classroom learning. More specifically, it investigated language instructors’ metacognition and their self-reported competencies for teaching metacognition. It also examined whether and how self-reported competencies changed following a professional development (PD) module of teaching for metacognition. Utilising Metacognitive Awareness Inventory (MAI) and think aloud protocols for instructional planning, this study found most participants were either highly metacognitive or metacognitive individuals. It was also found that most participants were initially not knowledgeable about and/or competent in teaching metacognition. Following PD, highly metacognitive teachers developed authentic lesson plans manifesting metacognition instruction while metacognitive teachers adopted similar instructional designs presented during the PD. Besides, half of the participants appreciated teaching metacognitively following the PD. Finally, under the light of these findings, future research and policy adjustments were proposed.
Attribution Style and Depressive Symptoms Among African American Women

Attribution Style and Depressive Symptoms among Homeless African-American Women by Pamela Mischell Robinson M.Ed., University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 1992 B.A., University of North Carolina at Wilmington, 1985 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Clinical Psychology Walden University February 2017
Construction and Preclinical Characterization of Fc-mGITRL for the Immunotherapy of Cancer

Purpose: To provide proper costimulation required for effective cancer T-cell immunity, Fc-GITRL fusion proteins were generated for use in immunotherapy protocols. Experimental Design: Soluble fusion proteins consisting of the Fc fragment of immunoglobulin and the murine glucocorticoid-induced tumor necrosis factor–related receptor ligand (mGITRL) connected with different linkers were genetically engineered and tested for their potency in two BALB/c solid tumor models. Results:In vivo, construct #178-14 (−5aa, −linker) showed the best activity (>90% tumor reduction) at doses ranging from 5 to 25 μg and was found to be intact by gel electrophoresis. Similar doses used with construct #175-2 (-linker) produced good but not as high tumor regression. Construct #5-1 (+linker), which was found to be relatively unstable by SDS gel electrophoresis, produced <60% tumor regression and required a higher dose (100 μg) to produce optimal results. Survival curves showed that Fc-mGITRL treatment extended the life of 80% of tumor-bearing mice to >3 months compared with controls that died by day 40. T-cell depletion studies showed that CD8+ T cells play a major role in Fc-mGITRL immunotherapy, and tumors removed from Fc-mGITRL– and DTA-1–treated mice showed a significant influx of granzyme B+ lymphocytes compared with controls. Finally, T regulatory (Treg) cell assays showed that, unlike other Fc fusion proteins, all three Fc-mGITRL constructs profoundly suppressed Treg activity. Conclusions: These studies suggest that a stable, intact Fc-mGITRL fusion protein can provide missing costimulation for the immunotherapy of solid tumors. In addition, Fc-mGITRL may alter Treg activity to enhance its effectiveness for tumor immunotherapy.
A Critical Understanding and Transformation of an Introductory Statistics Course.

In this paper, we report on the impact of four activities and two interviews on the organization of an introductory statistics course attended by future mathematics teachers at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. The activities were designed to enhance students' learning and collaborative knowledge construction, based on Vygotsky's Socio-Historical Theory. Data were collected in the course through the activities and the interviews. Analysis of the data suggests that the course improved students' initiative, collaboration and intentional action, as well as their attitude as future mathematics teachers. Quantitative results comparing 2013 with earlier offerings of the course are also discussed. The transformation discussed here could be applied in other introductory statistics courses, and may lead to practical pedagogical improvements. In this paper, we examine the contexts created for students' learning and development in an introductory statistics course attended by mathematics education students at the Mathematics and Statistics Institute of the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil (USP). In Brazil, the teachers responsible for teaching statistical content to students at middle and high school levels usually have a degree in mathematics education which includes statistics courses in its curriculum. Since the 1990s, the Brazilian Federal Government has introduced guidelines for the basic education system through the National Curricular Parameters (NCP). These guidelines are not mandatory: they bring theoretical-practical suggestions to improve the teaching and learning processes of mathematics. These guidelines are divided into four content blocks at middle- school level and three at the high-school level. Combinatorics, probability and statistics are part of the 'Information Handling' and 'Data Analysis' blocks for middle and high-school levels, respectively. As mentioned in Campos et al. (2011), the implementation of the NCP guidelines faces important challenges, particularly in the area of initial and continuing teacher education. This paper focuses specifically on ways to enhance students' concept formation in statistics, the development of responsibility for their own and their colleagues' learning, and their professional formation as future teachers. The transformation of the course that is described was aimed to create collaborative contexts for intentional and active involvement of students in large classes, based on Vygotsky's discussion of Socio-Historical Theory. This theoretical frame will support our discussions of the results revealed, among others alternatives, by content analysis of videotaped data from interviews and of classroom moments. The paper is organized as follows: Section 2 presents the theoretical background; Section 3, the methodological frame; Section 4, the analysis; Section 5, the results and final remarks.
Teacher/Student Interpersonal Engagement And Customer Service Principles: A Phenomenological Study

The importance of understanding the effects of teacher and student engagement in online learning is especially pertinent to the online teacher and the online student as well as the college as a whole. This qualitative phenomenological study involved discovering if interpersonal online engagement between teacher and student involved those principles used in business customer service. The focus of this phenomenological study is on the lived experience of online students relative to interpersonal engagement – it is about the students’ stories. Accordingly, the questions asked what the participants felt when their teachers were engaged and if the engagement was augmented with customer service principles and, if not, what the participant felt when their instructors did not engage with them using customer service principles. Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used to understand and interpret findings. The study involved 10 Associate Degree nurses who were in the RN to Bachelor of Science nursing program. The data was analyzed using NVivo11 by QSR to discover the most emergent themes or patterns in the transcripts. From the collected data, four advantageous themes emerged: personalized professionalism, valued feeling, effective feedback, and good-natured humor. Additionally, there was one disadvantageous theme that emerged: lack of instructor personal approach. The importance of this study lies in the potential for transformation of the online learning environment and community.
Analysis of the eye developmental pathway in Drosophila using DNA microarrays

Pax-6 genes encode evolutionarily conserved transcription factors capable of activating the gene-expression program required to build an eye. When ectopically expressed in Drosophila imaginal discs, Pax-6 genes induce the eye formation on the corresponding appendages of the adult fly. We used two different Drosophila full-genome DNA microarrays to compare gene expression in wild-type leg discs versus leg discs where eyeless, one of the two Drosophila Pax-6 genes, was ectopically expressed. We validated these data by analyzing the endogenous expression of selected genes in eye discs and identified 371 genes that are expressed in the eye imaginal discs and up-regulated when an eye morphogenetic field is ectopically induced in the leg discs. These genes mainly encode transcription factors involved in photoreceptor specification, signal transducers, cell adhesion molecules, and proteins involved in cell division. As expected, genes already known to act downstream of eyeless during eye development were identified, together with a group of genes that were not yet associated with eye formation.
Race, ethnicity, and prison disciplinary misconduct

ABSTRACT It is well known that racial and ethnic minorities (both male and female) have felt the effect of increased incarceration more than Whites, and a large amount of prior research has investigated the factors that influence higher levels of inmate misconduct, including the influence of race/ethnicity. This body of research has produced mixed results. Using recent data from one of the largest state prison systems, this study sought to determine the level of racial and ethnic disparity in the commission of inmate misconduct. Results indicate that Black inmates were significantly more likely than other inmates to commit general rule violations, serious rule violations, and assaultive rule violations. Correlates of inmate misconduct and policy implications stemming from the findings are discussed.
Investigating Climate Change and Reproduction: Experimental Tools from Evolutionary Biology

It is now generally acknowledged that climate change has wide-ranging biological consequences, potentially leading to impacts on biodiversity. Environmental factors can have diverse and often strong effects on reproduction, with obvious ramifications for population fitness. Nevertheless, reproductive traits are often neglected in conservation considerations. Focusing on animals, recent progress in sexual selection and sexual conflict research suggests that reproductive costs may pose an underestimated hurdle during rapid climate change, potentially lowering adaptive potential and increasing extinction risk of certain populations. Nevertheless, regime shifts may have both negative and positive effects on reproduction, so it is important to acquire detailed experimental data. We hence present an overview of the literature reporting short-term reproductive consequences of exposure to different environmental factors. From the enormous diversity of findings, we conclude that climate change research could benefit greatly from more coordinated efforts incorporating evolutionary approaches in order to obtain cross-comparable data on how individual and population reproductive fitness respond in the long term. Therefore, we propose ideas and methods concerning future efforts dealing with reproductive consequences of climate change, in particular by highlighting the advantages of multi-generational experimental evolution experiments.
Student and Instructor Experiences with Types of Teaching and Learning in a Computer Course

Research has shown that active classroom engagement increases the learning performance of students in higher education (Cross, 2000; Reese, 2013). This study sought to examine the experiences of students and instructor in a computer applications course in which the pedagogy was changed to encourage additional interaction among students and between students and the instructor. The goal of the study was to generate useful, practical knowledge (Reason & Bradbury, 2001) to help the instructor better understand her pedagogy with the intention of improving both her teaching practice and student learning outcomes, as well as to contribute to related literature in adult education, collaborative learning, and research on effective pedagogies in higher education. Peters and Armstrong’s (1998) typology of teaching and learning served as the framework for introduction of two additional types of pedagogies (discussion groups and collaborative learning) into a course traditionally taught utilizing predominately only one type of pedagogy (lecture). Students were interviewed immediately after the course ended and asked to describe their experiences in the course. Results showed that what stood out for students were the positive learning atmosphere, time spent getting to know one another, increased interactions among students and between students and the instructor, attention to process, and awareness of applications of course-related knowledge and skills to work environments. Instructor notes and observations were used as additional data sources to capture her experiences. She reported that she grew as an instructor and a person by forging ahead into new territory, despite anxieties, and practiced new teaching and learning types with her students. Because of the experience, she reported being more confident and a better instructor and facilitator of her own and others’ learning. Results led to the incorporation of discussion groups and collaborative learning into the instructor’s course in spreadsheet applications. Implications for future research were identified,
Memory decay and susceptibility to amnesia dissociate punishment- from relief-learning

Painful events shape future behaviour in two ways: stimuli associated with pain onset subsequently support learned avoidance (i.e. punishment-learning) because they signal future, upcoming pain. Stimuli associated with pain offset in turn signal relief and later on support learned approach (i.e. relief-learning). The relative strengths of such punishment- and relief-learning can be crucial for the adaptive organization of behaviour in the aftermath of painful events. Using Drosophila, we compare punishment- and relief-memories in terms of their temporal decay and sensitivity to retrograde amnesia. During the first 75 min following training, relief-memory is stable, whereas punishment-memory decays to half of the initial score. By 24 h after training, however, relief-memory is lost, whereas a third of punishment-memory scores still remain. In accordance with such rapid temporal decay from 75 min on, retrograde amnesia erases relief-memory but leaves a half of punishment-memory scores intact. These findings suggest differential mechanistic bases for punishment- and relief-memory, thus offering possibilities for separately interfering with either of them.
Generalized Benson–Carlson Duality

1.1. Background. This paper deals with the landmark results of Benson and Carlson's Projective resolutions and Poincar e duality complexes [6]. Our goal is to provide some necessary background for that work, and to prove some of the results of [6] in a more general setting. In particular, we analyze what happens when we replace Benson and Carlson's complex C (in the notation of [6]) with an arbitrary Yoneda extension representing . Let be a nite-dimensional cocommutative Hopf algebra over an algebraically closed eld k. Because is cocommutative, H ( ; k) is a graded-commutative kalgebra (i.e., xy = ( 1)yx for homogeneous x; y). Throughout this paper we will also assume that has the following niteness property in cohomology: Ext (k; k) is a nitely generated k-algebra, and for any -modules M and N , Ext (M;N) is nitely generated as an Ext (k; k)-module. (By -module we always mean nitely generated left -module.) The second condition is equivalent to requiring H ( ;M) to be nitely generated over H ( ; k) for any -module M , because of the isomorphism Ext (M;N) = H ( ;Homk(M;N)). If is the group algebra of a nite group then certainly has the niteness property in cohomology, by a theorem of Evens (cf. [7, Theorem 7.4.1]). The niteness property also holds if is a nite-dimensional cocommutative connected Hopf algebra, e.g. the restricted enveloping algebra of a p-restricted Lie algebra (Bajer and Sadofsky [1, Lemma 6.2], Wilkerson [10]). In fact, at present we know of no example of a nite-dimensional Hopf algebra without this property. It is known that any nitedimensional Hopf algebra is a Frobenius algebra (Larson and Sweedler [9]), which implies that a -module is projective if and only if it is injective, and this property is fundamental for the proofs given here.
Classical and quantum production of cornucopions at energies below 10(1)8 GeV.

We argue that the paradoxes associated with infinitely degenerate states, which plague relic particle scenarios for the end point or black hole evaporation, may be absent when the relics are horned particles. Most or our arguments are based on simple observations about the classical geometry or extremal dilaton black holes, but at a crucial point we are forced to speculate abou t classical solutions to string theory in which the ifite coupling singularity or the extremal dilaton solution is shielded by a condensate or massless modes propagating in its infinite horn. We use the nonsingular c=1 solution or (1+1)dimensional string theory as a crude model for the properties of the condensate
In Vivo Activity of Combined PI3K/mTOR and MEK Inhibition in a KrasG12D;Pten Deletion Mouse Model of Ovarian Cancer

The phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K)/Akt pathway is commonly dysregulated in human cancer, making it an attractive target for novel anticancer therapeutics. We have used a mouse model of ovarian cancer generated by KrasG12D activation and Pten deletion in the ovarian surface epithelium for the preclinical assessment of a novel PI3K/mTOR inhibitor PF-04691502. To enable higher throughput studies, we developed an orthotopic primary transplant model from these mice and evaluated therapeutic response to PF-04691502 using small-animal ultrasound and FDG-PET imaging. PF-04691502 inhibited tumor growth at 7 days by 72% ± 9. FDG-PET imaging revealed that PF-04691502 reduced glucose metabolism dramatically, suggesting FDG-PET may be exploited as an imaging biomarker of target inhibition by PF-04691502. Tissue biomarkers of PI3K/mTOR pathway activity, p-AKT (S473), and p-RPS6 (S240/244), were also dramatically inhibited following PF-04691502 treatment. However, as a single agent, PF-04691502 did not induce tumor regression and the long-term efficacy was limited, with tumor proliferation continuing in the presence of drug treatment. We hypothesized that tumor progression was because of concomitant activation of the mitogen-activated protein kinase pathway downstream of KrasG12D expression promoting cell survival and that the therapeutic effect of PF-04691502 would be enhanced by combinatory inhibition of MEK using PD-0325901. This combination induced striking tumor regression, apoptosis associated with upregulation of Bim and downregulation of Mcl-1, and greatly improved duration of survival. These data suggest that contemporaneous MEK inhibition enhances the cytotoxicity associated with abrogation of PI3K/mTOR signaling, converting tumor growth inhibition to tumor regression in a mouse model of ovarian cancer driven by PTEN loss and mutant K-Ras. Mol Cancer Ther; 10(8); 1440–9. ©2011 AACR.
Controlling for endogeneity with instrumental variables in strategic management research

This article offers a framework to understand how endogeneity arises and how to control for it with instrumental variables to estimate causal relations with observational data. It builds on the state-of-the-art research in applied and theoretical econometrics to highlight the importance of endogeneity and review the methods that can be used to address it with instrumental variables.The article also discusses when the Heckman two-step procedure can be used, as well as the tests, methods and assumptions that researchers should check when using instrumental variables.To ease implementation of the instrumental variables techniques, the author offers the STATA commands of the exposed tests and methods. Further, an empirical example is provided along with the utilized STATA codes. In the end, this article serves as a`toolkit' allowing scholars not only to understand whether endogeneity is present in their empirical setting, but also to assess the empirical validity of their work when using instrumental variables.