Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Linguistic accommodations to older adults in the community: The role of communication disorders and partner motivation

The purpose of this study was to explore the predictions of the Communication Predicament of Aging model in explaining linguistic accommodations to hypothetical partners differentiated by age (young/old) and impairment (none, hearing impairment, cognitive impairment). Forty-eight young adults recorded instructions on use of a universal remote control for a young partner, an older partner, a hearing-impaired older partner, and a cognitively-impaired older partner. Quantitative and qualitative language transcript analyses were used. There were no significant differences in linguistic measures based on hypothetical partner age or deficit. Perceptions of partner's ability to learn, comprehension, and familiarity with technology were measured. All were influenced by age/deficit attributes. Ratings of belief that tape-recorded instructions could help were correlated with a variety of linguistic measures. Implications for interpreting the Communication Predicament of Aging model and for designing training programs for health care providers are discussed. Implications for interventions in speech-language pathology and audiology are also highlighted, with particular focus on current aphasia intervention approaches (e.g., life participation, partner training).
Characterisation of Streptozotocin Induced Diabetes Mellitus in Swiss Albino Mice

2 Abstract: The present study was designed to investigate the characteristics of diabetes mellitus induced by different doses of Streptozotocin in mice as assessed by blood glucose concentration. Swiss albino mice of either sex were intraperitoneally administered single dose of Streptozotocin 180 mg/kg, or 100 mg/kg and multiple low dose of Streptozotocin 40 mg/kg/day. A single injection of Streptozotocin 180 mg/kg was found to produce Type 1 (insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus) and multiple low dose Streptozotocin 40 mg/kg Type 2 (non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus). However, Streptozotocin 100 mg/kg failed to produce diabetes mellitus except a sustained hyperglycemia. Blood glucose concentrations were measured at every week after Streptozotocin injection. Multiple low doses of STZ 40 mg/kg, i.p. to mice for five consecutive days have been found suitable model to study long term complications of diabetes.
The Development of Theory of Mind and Positive and Negative Reciprocity in Preschool Children

This study examined the relation between the acquisition of false-beliefs theory of mind (ToM) and reciprocity in preschoolers. Preschool-aged children completed a task assessing the understanding of false beliefs, and played an Ultimatum Game (UG) with another child in a face-to-face setting. Negative reciprocity was assessed by examining the rejection of unfair offers made by another child in the UG, while positive reciprocity was assessed by examining allocations made by participants in a Dictator Game (DG) following the UG. The results indicated that children who had passed a task assessing first-order false beliefs were more likely to make generous offers in a DG following a fair offer made by their partner in a proceeding UG, but that false beliefs ToM was unrelated to the rejection of unfair offers in the UG.
Do Specific Classroom Reading Activities Predict English Language Learners’ Later Reading Achievement?

ABSTRACT This study investigated the relationship between elementary classroom (N = 50) reading activities in Year 1 and reading performance (i.e., passage comprehension, letter-word identification, and word attack) 1 year later for English language learners (ELLs; N = 270). A cross-classification hierarchical model indicated that compared to other reading activities, grammar and spelling activities yielded the highest effect sizes (beta weights) in predictions of English passage comprehension. The analyses also showed that vocabulary and structural analysis instruction yielded the highest effect sizes in predictions of English letter-word identification and word attack. We discuss the results in the context of specific instructional activities that were predictive of ELL children’s later reading outcomes.
The Origin of the Winner's Curse: A Laboratory Study

The Winner's Curse (WC) is a robust and persistent deviation from theoretical predictions established in experimental economics and claimed to exist in field environments. Recent attempts to reconcile such deviation include "cursed equilibrium" and level-k reasoning. We design and implement a simplified version of the Acquiring-a-Company game that transformed the game to an individual-choice problem that still retains the adverse-selection problem. We further simplified the problem so that simple ordinal reasoning could replace both Bayesian updating and contingent thinking. Our results suggest that the WC reflects bounded rationality in that people have difficulties performing contingent reasoning on future events. (JEL D81, D82)(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)
Sexuality and Gender Role in Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Case Control Study

The ‘extreme male brain theory of autism’ describes an extreme male pattern of cognitive traits defined as strong systemising abilities paired with empathising weaknesses in autism spectrum disorder. However, beyond these cognitive traits, clinical observations have suggested an ambiguous gender-typed pattern regarding several sexually dimorphic traits. The aim of the present study was to investigate if patterns of non-cognitive sexually dimorphic traits differed between the autism spectrum disorder and control groups. Fifty adults with autism spectrum disorder and intelligence within the normal range, and 53 neurotypical controls responded to questions on gender role, self-perceived gender typicality and gender identity, as well as sexuality. Measures used were a Swedish modification of the Bem Sex Role Inventory and questions on sexuality and gender designed for the purpose of this study. Our results showed that one common gender role emerged in the autism spectrum disorder group. Masculinity (e.g. assertiveness, leadership and competitiveness) was weaker in the autism spectrum disorder group than in the controls, across men and women. Self-perceived gender typicality did not differ between the groups but tomboyism and bisexuality were overrepresented amongst women with autism spectrum disorder. Lower libido was reported amongst both male and female participants with autism spectrum disorder compared with controls. We conclude that the extreme male patterns of cognitive functions in the autistic brain do not seem to extend to gender role and sexuality. A gender-atypical pattern for these types of characteristics is suggested in autism spectrum disorder.
Recovering the intrinsic shape of early‐type galaxies

We investigate how well the intrinsic shape of early-type galaxies can be recovered when both photometric and two-dimensional stellar kinematic observations are available. We simulate these observations with galaxy models that are representative of observed oblate fast-rotator to triaxial slow-rotator early-type galaxies. By fitting realistic triaxial dynamical models to these simulated observations, we recover the intrinsic shape (and mass-to-light ratio), without making additional (ad hoc) assumptions on the orientation. For (near) axisymmetric galaxies, the dynamical modelling can strongly exclude triaxiality, but the regular kinematics do not further tighten the constraint on the intrinsic flattening significantly, so that the inclination is nearly unconstrained above the photometric lower limit even with two-dimensional stellar kinematics. Triaxial galaxies can have additional complexity in both the observed photometry and kinematics, such as twists and (central) kinematically decoupled components, which allows the intrinsic shape to be accurately recovered. For galaxies that are very round or show no significant rotation, recovery of the shape is degenerate, unless additional constraints such as from a thin disc are available.
NOBLE GAS ANOMALIES AND SYNTHESIS

There are two types of planetary noble gases. One containing isotopically " anomalous: argon ,krypton and xenon but isotopically " normal " helium and neon, was derived from outer stellar regions. The other, consisting almost entirely of isotopically " normal " argon, krypton and xenon with little or no helium or neon, was derived from inner stellar regions. Mixing of nucleosynthesis products from different regions of a supernova is responsible for the observed correlations between elemental and isotopic rations of planetary noble gases in different classes of meteorites. The solar system condensed directly frm the chemically and isotopically heterogeneous debris of a single supernova. There is no convincing evidence, however of separate nucleogenetic components in neon. Variations in the abundance pattern of planetary noble gases are primarily the result of stellar fusion reactions and physical adsorption, rather than gas solubility.
Inside the whale: the structure and dynamics of the isolated Cetus dwarf spheroidal

This paper presents a study of the Cetus dwarf, an isolated dwarf galaxy within the Local Group. A matched-filter analysis of the INT/WFC imaging of this system reveals no evidence for significant tidal debris that could have been torn off the galaxy, bolstering the hypothesis that Cetus has never significantly interacted with either the Milky Way or M31. Additionally, Keck/Deimos spectroscopic observations identify this galaxy as a distinct kinematic population possessing a systematic velocity of −87 ± 2 km s^(−1) and with a velocity dispersion of 17 ± 2 km s^(−1); while tentative, these data also suggest that Cetus possesses a moderate rotational velocity of ~8 km s^(−1). The population is confirmed to be relatively metal-poor, consistent with [Fe/H]~−1.9, and, assuming virial equilibrium, implies that the Cetus dwarf galaxy possesses a mass-to-light ratio of ~70. It appears, therefore, that Cetus may represent a primordial dwarf galaxy, retaining the kinematic and structural properties lost by other members of the dwarf population of the Local Group in their interactions with the large galaxies. An analysis of Cetus' orbit through the Local Group indicates that it is at apocentre; taken in conjunction with the general dwarf population, this shows the mass of the Local Group to be ≳ 2 × 10^(12) M_⊙.
Study of coagulation properties of Holstein cow's milk depending on the level of milk urea nitrogen in Macedonia dairy farms

In this paper an attempt has been made to obtain some investigations for coagulation properties of milk produced by Holstein-Friesian cows reared on local Pelagonia's farms in the R. Macedonia. Based on an initial screening in a herd of 60 Holstein-Friesians, the twenty five individual Holstein-Friesian cows were selected for good and poor chymosin - induced coagulation properties. These 25 selected cows were followed and re-sampled on several occasions to evaluate possible changes in coagulation properties according to the milk urea nitrogen level. We formed two groups of cow's milk amongst 25 cows, group with normal milk urea nitrogen level, ( 6.2 mile-mol/L) . In the follow-up study, the milk samples were analyzed for average values, such as DMY, MUN- milk urea nitrogen, (mile-mol/L), lactose, protein and fat content (%), SNF- solids non fat (%) somatic cell count, pH, titratable acidity (Soxhlet-Henkel acidity, 0 SH), as well as the rennet coagulation properties. The study describes the action of rennet on Holstein -Friesian breed cow's milk with normal and high milk urea nitrogen level, as well as the effect of pH and temperature on the coagulum development. Finally, the present investigations were undertaken to obtain a better insight into the problem of rennet coagulation properties of Holstein-Friesian cow's milk, based on the level of milk urea nitrogen content.
Wireless Energy Harvesting in Two-Way Network Coded Cooperative Communications: A Stochastic Approach for Large Scale Networks

In this letter, we study the performance of network coding (NC)-aided cooperative communications in large scale networks, where the relays are able to harvest energy emitted by wireless transmissions. In particular, we derive theoretical expressions for key network performance metrics, i.e., the probability of successful data exchange and the network lifetime gain. The proposed analytical expressions are verified via extensive Monte Carlo simulations, demonstrating the potential benefits of the energy harvested by the wireless transmissions.
Tariff Agent

Smart systems are becoming increasingly ubiquitous and consequently transforming our lives. The level of system autonomy plays a vital role in the development of smart systems as it profoundly affects how people and these systems interact with each other. However, to date, there are very few studies on human interaction with such systems. This paper presents findings from two field studies where two different prototypes for automating energy tariff-switching were developed and evaluated in the wild. Both prototypes offer flexible autonomy by which users can shift the system's level of autonomy among three options: suggestion-only, semi-autonomy, and full autonomy, whenever they like. Our findings based on thematic analysis show that flexible autonomy is a promising way to sustain users' engagement with smart systems, despite their occasional mistakes. The findings also suggest that users take responsibility for the undesired outcomes of automated actions when delegation of autonomy can be adjusted flexibly.
Nonsmooth optimization for optimal power flow over transmission networks

The optimal power flow (OPF) of a power transmission network is a NP-hard optimization problem with nonlinear equality and inequality constraints on the bus voltages. The existing nonlinear solvers often fail in yielding a feasible solution. Semi-definite relaxation (SDR) could provide an optimal solution only when the optimal solution of the relaxed semi-definite program (SDP) is of rank-one, which does not hold in general. Otherwise, the solution found by SDR is infeasible. Very recently, high-order semi-definite relaxation has been used to find the global optimal solution but such approach leads to an explosive growth of the variable dimension and so could be applied to test OPF with very small networks with 2, 3 and 5 buses, where there are only 2, 3 and 5 voltages variables. In this paper, we adapt our previously developed nonsmooth optimization algorithm to address this difficult OPF problem, which is an iterative process to generate a sequence of improved solution that converges to an optimal solution. Each its iteration calls a SDP of a moderate dimension. Preliminary simulations for difficult OPF problems of networks with a large number of buses are provided to show the efficiency of our approach.
Genome-wide effects of MELK-inhibitor in triple-negative breast cancer cells indicate context-dependent response with p53 as a key determinant

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an aggressive, highly recurrent breast cancer subtype, affecting approximately one-fifth of all breast cancer patients. Subpopulations of treatment-resistant cancer stem cells within the tumors are considered to contribute to disease recurrence. A potential druggable target for such cells is the maternal embryonic leucine-zipper kinase (MELK). MELK expression is upregulated in mammary stem cells and in undifferentiated cancers, where it correlates with poor prognosis and potentially mediates treatment resistance. Several MELK inhibitors have been developed, of which one, OTSSP167, is currently in clinical trials. In order to better understand how MELK and its inhibition influence TNBC, we verified its anti-proliferative and apoptotic effects in claudin-low TNBC cell lines MDA-MB-231 and SUM-159 using MTS assays and/or trypan blue viability assays together with analysis of PARP cleavage. Then, using microarrays, we explored which genes were affected by OTSSP167. We demonstrate that different sets of genes are regulated in MDA-MB-231 and SUM-159, but in both cell lines genes involved in cell cycle, mitosis and protein metabolism and folding were regulated. We identified p53 (TP53) as a potential upstream regulator of the regulated genes. Using western blot we found that OTSSP167 downregulates mutant p53 in all tested TNBC cell lines (MDA-MB-231, SUM-159, and BT-549), but upregulates wild-type p53 in the luminal A subtype MCF-7 cell line. We propose that OTSSP167 might have context-dependent or off-target effects, but that one consistent mechanism of action could involve the destabilization of mutant p53.
The Utility of Sentinel Lymph Node Biopsy in Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma with Occult Lymph Nodes

Background The sentinel lymph node (SLN) is defined as the first draining node from the primary lesion, and it has proven to be a good indicator of the metastatic status of regional lymph nodes in solid tumors. The aim of this study was to evaluate the clinical application of SLN biopsy (SLNB) in papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) with occult lymph nodes. Methods From April 2006 to October 2012, 212 consecutive PTC patients were treated with SLNB using carbon nanoparticle suspension (CNS). Then, the stained nodes defined as SLN were collected, and prophylactic central compartment neck dissection (CCND) followed by total thyroidectomy or subtotal thyroidectomy were performed. All the samples were sent for pathological examination. Results There were 78 (36.8%) SLN metastasis (SLNM)-positive cases and 134 (63.2%) SLNM-negative cases. The sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values, and false-positive and false-negative rates of SLNB were 78.8%, 100%, 100%, 84.3%, 0%, and 21.2%, respectively. The PTC patients with SLNM were more likely to be male (48.2% vs. 32.7%, p = 0.039) and exhibited multifocality (52.6% vs. 33.3%, p = 0.025) and extrathyroidal extension (56.7% vs. 33.5%, p = 0.015). A greater incidence of non-SLN metastases in the central compartment was found in patients with SLNM (41/78, 52.6%) than in those without SLNM (21/134, 15.7%; p < 0.05). However, the SLNM-negative PTC patients with non-SLN metastases were more likely to be male (37.9% vs. 9.5%, p < 0.05). Conclusions The application of SLNB using CNS is technically feasible, safe, and useful, especially for male patients with co-existing multifocality and extrathyroidal extension. However, the sensitivity of SLNB must be improved and its false-negative rate reduced before it can be a routine procedure and replace prophylactic CCND. More attention should be paid to PTC patients (especially males) without SLNM for signs of non-SLN metastases.
Training Constrained Deconvolutional Networks for Road Scene Semantic Segmentation

In this work we investigate the problem of road scene semantic segmentation using Deconvolutional Networks (DNs). Several constraints limit the practical performance of DNs in this context: firstly, the paucity of existing pixel-wise labelled training data, and secondly, the memory constraints of embedded hardware, which rule out the practical use of state-of-the-art DN architectures such as fully convolutional networks (FCN). To address the first constraint, we introduce a Multi-Domain Road Scene Semantic Segmentation (MDRS3) dataset, aggregating data from six existing densely and sparsely labelled datasets for training our models, and two existing, separate datasets for testing their generalisation performance. We show that, while MDRS3 offers a greater volume and variety of data, end-to-end training of a memory efficient DN does not yield satisfactory performance. We propose a new training strategy to overcome this, based on (i) the creation of a best-possible source network (S-Net) from the aggregated data, ignoring time and memory constraints; and (ii) the transfer of knowledge from S-Net to the memory-efficient target network (T-Net). We evaluate different techniques for S-Net creation and T-Net transferral, and demonstrate that training a constrained deconvolutional network in this manner can unlock better performance than existing training approaches. Specifically, we show that a target network can be trained to achieve improved accuracy versus an FCN despite using less than 1\% of the memory. We believe that our approach can be useful beyond automotive scenarios where labelled data is similarly scarce or fragmented and where practical constraints exist on the desired model size. We make available our network models and aggregated multi-domain dataset for reproducibility.
Creativity and Financial Incentives November 11 , 2014

Creativity is a complex and multi-dimensional phenomenon with tremendous economic importance. Yet, despite this importance, there is very little work on the topic in the economics literature. In this paper, we consider the effect of incentives on creativity. We present a first series of experiments on individual creativity where subjects face creativity tasks where, in one case, ex-ante goals and constraints are imposed on their answers, and in the other case no restrictions apply. The effects of financial incentives in stimulating creativity in both types of tasks is then tested, together with the impact of personal features like risk and ambiguity aversion. Our findings show that, in general, financial incentives affect “closed” (constrained) creativity, but do not facilitate “open” (unconstrained) creativity. However, in the latter case incentives do play a role for ambiguity-averse agents, who tend to be significantly less creative and seem to need extrinsic motivation to exert effort in a task whose odds of success they don’t know. The second set of experiments aims at exploring group creativity in contexts where the “corporate culture” is either cooperative or individualistic. Our results show that, in the case of closed tasks, financial incentives and collectivist attitudes foster creativity, but only with cooperative corporate culture.
Surveillance, freedom and the republic

Arbitrary state and corporate powers are helping to turn the Internet into a global surveillance dragnet. Responses to this novel form of power have been tepid and ineffective. Liberal critiques of surveillance are constrained by their focus on privacy, security and the underlying presupposition that freedom consists only of freedom from interference. By contrast, (post)Foucauldian critiques rejecting liberalism have been well rewarded analytically, but have proven incapable of addressing normative questions regarding the relationship between surveillance and freedom. Quite apart from these debates, neorepublicans have excavated a third concept of freedom, understood as non-domination. Could neorepublicanism overcome the limitations of liberal and (post)Foucauldian critiques of surveillance? We argue, positively, that neorepublicanism can accommodate much of the (post)Foucauldian analyses while also incorporating a normative critique of surveillance vis-à-vis freedom. We further argue, negatively, that surveillance power has outstripped the capacities of traditional republican institutional responses to domination. We conclude by considering ways in which neorepublicanism can be recalibrated to address the novelty of surveillance power while adhering to the ideal of non-domination. Two ways of addressing the problem are proposed: an offensive, dedicated surveillance antipower and a defensive republican amplification of privacy.
Hypercomputability of quantum adiabatic processes: Fact versus Prejudices

We give an overview of a quantum adiabatic algorithm for Hilbert's tenth problem, including some discussions on its fundamental aspects and the emphasis on the probabilistic correctness of its findings. For the purpose of illustration, the numerical simulation results of some simple Diophantine equations are presented. We also discuss some prejudicial misunderstandings as well as some plausible difficulties faced by the algorithm in its physical implementation.