Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Contrasting motivational orientation and evaluative coding accounts: on the need to differentiate the effectors of approach/avoidance responses

Several emotion theorists suggest that valenced stimuli automatically trigger motivational orientations and thereby facilitate corresponding behavior. Positive stimuli were thought to activate approach motivational circuits which in turn primed approach-related behavioral tendencies whereas negative stimuli were supposed to activate avoidance motivational circuits so that avoidance-related behavioral tendencies were primed (motivational orientation account). However, recent research suggests that typically observed affective stimulus–response compatibility phenomena might be entirely explained in terms of theories accounting for mechanisms of general action control instead of assuming motivational orientations to mediate the effects (evaluative coding account). In what follows, we explore to what extent this notion is applicable. We present literature suggesting that evaluative coding mechanisms indeed influence a wide variety of affective stimulus–response compatibility phenomena. However, the evaluative coding account does not seem to be sufficient to explain affective S–R compatibility effects. Instead, several studies provide clear evidence in favor of the motivational orientation account that seems to operate independently of evaluative coding mechanisms. Implications for theoretical developments and future research designs are discussed.
STUDIES ON SOME PHYSICOCHEMICAL PROPERTIES OF A THYMUS HUMORAL FACTOR CONFERRING IMMUNOCOMPETENCE ON LYMPHOID CELLS

By means of an assay of graft-versus-host activity some properties of the thymic humoral factor which confers immunocompetence upon lymphoid cells in vitro have been studied. Allogeneic and xenogeneic thymic preparations were found to activate lymphoid cells from neonatally thymectomized mice, enabling initiation of a graft-versus-host response. Thus, this thymus factor is apparently neither strain nor species specific. The active principle of calf thymus extracts was found to be in the supernatant after prolonged ultracentrifugation. When exhaustive dialysis and ultrafiltration through Diaflo membranes were performed, the active thymus agent was found to pass through both the dialysis sac and Diaflo UM-2 membranes. The molecule which confers immunocompetence upon lymphoid cells thus seems to be of molecular weight of an order of magnitude of 1000 or less. Dialyzed thymus preparations injected into neonatally thymectomized mice also restored the capacity of spleen cells of these mice to induce graft-versus-host activity. When injected into intact mice, thymus extract also increased the proportion of competent cells in the spleens of these animals, probably by activation of target cells originating outside the spleen.
Efferent connections of the parvalbumin‐positive (PV1) nucleus in the lateral hypothalamus of rodents

A solitary cluster of parvalbumin‐positive neurons – the PV1 nucleus – has been observed in the lateral hypothalamus of rodents. In the present study, we mapped the efferent connections of the PV1 nucleus using nonspecific antero‐ and retrograde tracers in rats, and chemoselective, Cre‐dependent viral constructs in parvalbumin‐Cre mice. In both species, the PV1 nucleus was found to project mainly to the periaqueductal grey matter (PAG), predominantly ipsilaterally. Indirectly in rats and directly in mice, a discrete, longitudinally oriented cylindrical column of terminal fields (PV1‐CTF) was identified ventrolateral to the aqueduct on the edge of the PAG. The PV1‐CTF is particularly dense in the rostral portion, which is located in the supraoculomotor nucleus (Su3). It is spatially interrupted over a short stretch at the level of the trochlear nucleus and abuts caudally on a second parvalbumin‐positive (PV2) nucleus. The rostral and the caudal portions of the PV1‐CTF consist of axonal endings, which stem from neurons scattered throughout the PV1 nucleus. Topographically, the longitudinal orientation of the PV1‐CTF accords with that of the likewise longitudinally oriented functional modules of the PAG, but overlaps none of them. Minor terminal fields were identified in a crescentic column of the lateral PAG, as well as in the Edinger–Westphal, the lateral habenular, and the laterodorsal tegmental nuclei. So far, no obvious functions have been attributed to this small, circumscribed column ventrolateral to the aqueduct, the prime target of the PV1 nucleus.
Expected absolute value estimators for a spatially adapted regularization parameter choice rule in L1-TV-based image restoration

A total variation (TV) model with an L1-fidelity term and a spatially adapted regularization parameter is presented in order to reconstruct images contaminated by impulse noise. This model intends to preserve small details while homogeneous features still remain smooth. The regularization parameter is locally adapted according to a local expected absolute value estimator depending on the statistical characteristics of the noise. The numerical solution of the L1-TV minimization problem with a spatially adapted parameter is obtained by a superlinearly convergent algorithm based on Fenchel-duality and inexact semismooth Newton techniques, which is stable with respect to noise in the data. Numerical results justifying the advantage of such a regularization parameter choice rule are presented.
Unusual magnetic fields in the interacting spiral NGC 3627

By observing the interacting galaxy NGC 3627 in radio polarization we try to answer the question; to which degree does the magnetic eld follow the galactic gas flow. We obtained total power and polarized intensity maps at 8.46 GHz and 4.85 GHz using the VLA in its compact D-conguration. In order to overcome the zero-spacing problems, the interferometric data were combined with single-dish measurements obtained with the Eelsberg 100-m radio telescope. The observed magnetic eld structure in NGC 3627 suggests that two eld components are superposed. One component smoothly lls the interarm space and shows up also in the outermost disk regions, the other component follows a symmetric S-shaped structure. In the western disk the latter component is well aligned with an optical dust lane, following a bend which is possibly caused by external interactions. However, in the SE disk the magnetic eld crosses a heavy dust lane segment, apparently being insensitive to strong density-wave eects. We suggest that the magnetic eld is decoupled from the gas by high turbulent diusion, in agreement with the large H i line width in this region. We discuss in detail the possible influence of compression eects and non-axisymmetric gas flows on the general magnetic eld asymmetries in NGC 3627. On the basis of the Faraday rotation distribution we also suggest the existence of a large ionized halo around this galaxy.
Wikicorpus: A Word-Sense Disambiguated Multilingual Wikipedia Corpus

This article presents a new freely available trilingual corpus (Catalan, Spanish, English) that contains large portions of the Wikipedia and has been automatically enriched with linguistic information. To our knowledge, this is the largest such corpus that is freely available to the community: In its present version, it contains over 750 million words. The corpora have been annotated with lemma and part of speech information using the open source library FreeLing. Also, they have been sense annotated with the state of the art Word Sense Disambiguation algorithm UKB. As UKB assigns WordNet senses, and WordNet has been aligned across languages via the InterLingual Index, this sort of annotation opens the way to massive explorations in lexical semantics that were not possible before. We present a first attempt at creating a trilingual lexical resource from the sense-tagged Wikipedia corpora, namely, WikiNet. Moreover, we present two by-products of the project that are of use for the NLP community: An open source Java-based parser for Wikipedia pages developed for the construction of the corpus, and the integration of the WSD algorithm UKB in FreeLing.
Inclusion in Minnesota

In Minnesota we visited two elementary buildings, a primary school for Grades K-4 and an intermediate school for Grades 5 and 6. Two students with LD, one second grader and one sixth grader, were observed during reading, mathematics, and social studies classes. Interviews were conducted with the principal of the primary school, the assistant principal of the intermediate school, two special education teachers, four general education teachers, two students, and two sets of parents. Referral information, Individualized Education Program (IEP) goals, and achievement data were obtained through a review of school records of each student. The data were collected, reduced, and integrated into a description of the context for inclusion, the model of inclusion, the role of special education teachers, and the students' educational experiences.
Central limit theorem for hitting times of functionals of Markov jump processes

A sample of i.i. d. continuous time Markov chains being defined, the sum over each component of a real function of the state is considered. For this functional, a central limit theorem for the first hitting time of a prescribed level is proved. The result extends the classical central limit theorem for order statistics. Various reliability models are presented as examples of applications.
Identification of a Three-Biomarker Panel in Urine for Early Detection of Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma

Purpose: Noninvasive biomarkers for early detection of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) are currently not available. Here, we aimed to identify a set of urine proteins able to distinguish patients with early-stage PDAC from healthy individuals. Experimental design: Proteomes of 18 urine samples from healthy controls, chronic pancreatitis, and patients with PDAC (six/group) were assayed using GeLC/MS/MS analysis. The selected biomarkers were subsequently validated with ELISA assays using multiple logistic regression applied to a training dataset in a multicenter cohort comprising 488 urine samples. Results: LYVE-1, REG1A, and TFF1 were selected as candidate biomarkers. When comparing PDAC (n = 192) with healthy (n = 87) urine specimens, the resulting areas under the receiver-operating characteristic curves (AUC) of the panel were 0.89 [95% confidence interval (CI), 0.84–0.94] in the training (70% of the data) and 0.92 (95% CI, 0.86–0.98) in the validation (30% of the data) datasets. When comparing PDAC stage I–II (n = 71) with healthy urine specimens, the panel achieved AUCs of 0.90 (95% CI, 0.84–0.96) and 0.93 (95% CI, 0.84–1.00) in the training and validation datasets, respectively. In PDAC stage I–II and healthy samples with matching plasma CA19.9, the panel achieved a higher AUC of 0.97 (95% CI, 0.94–0.99) than CA19.9 (AUC = 0.88; 95% CI, 0.81–0.95, P = 0.005). Adding plasma CA19.9 to the panel increased the AUC from 0.97 (95% CI, 0.94–0.99) to 0.99 (95% CI, 0.97–1.00, P = 0.04), but did not improve the comparison of stage I–IIA PDAC (n = 17) with healthy urine. Conclusions: We have established a novel, three-protein biomarker panel that is able to detect patients with early-stage pancreatic cancer in urine specimens. Clin Cancer Res; 21(15); 3512–21. ©2015 AACR.
Adaptive Parameter Selection in Evolutionary Algorithms by Reinforcement Learning with Dynamic Discretization of Parameter Range

Online parameter controllers for evolutionary algorithms adjust values of parameters during the run. Recently, a new efficient parameter controller based on reinforcement learning was proposed by Karafotias et al. In this method parameter ranges are discretized into several intervals before the run. However, performing adaptive discretization during the run may increase efficiency of an evolutionary algorithm. Aleti et al. proposed another efficient controller with adaptive discretization. In this paper we propose a parameter controller based on reinforcement learning with adaptive discretization. The proposed controller is compared with the existing parameter adjusting methods on different configurations of an evolutionary algorithm. Results show that the new controller outperforms the other controllers on most of the considered test problems.
Deterministic Relativistic Quantum Bit Commitment

We describe new unconditionally secure bit commitment schemes whose security is based on Minkowski causality and the monogamy of quantum entanglement. We first describe an ideal scheme that is purely deterministic, in the sense that neither party needs to generate any secret randomness at any stage. We also describe a variant that allows the committer to proceed deterministically, requires only local randomness generation from the receiver, and allows the commitment to be verified in the neighbourhood of the unveiling point. We show that these schemes still offer near-perfect security in the presence of losses and errors, which can be made perfect if the committer uses an extra single random secret bit. We discuss scenarios where these advantages are significant.
Altered Error Processing following Vascular Thalamic Damage: Evidence from an Antisaccade Task

Event-related potentials (ERP) research has identified a negative deflection within about 100 to 150 ms after an erroneous response – the error-related negativity (ERN) - as a correlate of awareness-independent error processing. The short latency suggests an internal error monitoring system acting rapidly based on central information such as an efference copy signal. Studies on monkeys and humans have identified the thalamus as an important relay station for efference copy signals of ongoing saccades. The present study investigated error processing on an antisaccade task with ERPs in six patients with focal vascular damage to the thalamus and 28 control subjects. ERN amplitudes were significantly reduced in the patients, with the strongest ERN attenuation being observed in two patients with right mediodorsal and ventrolateral and bilateral ventrolateral damage, respectively. Although the number of errors was significantly higher in the thalamic lesion patients, the degree of ERN attenuation did not correlate with the error rate in the patients. The present data underline the role of the thalamus for the online monitoring of saccadic eye movements, albeit not providing unequivocal evidence in favour of an exclusive role of a particular thalamic site being involved in performance monitoring. By relaying saccade-related efference copy signals, the thalamus appears to enable fast error processing. Furthermore early error processing based on internal information may contribute to error awareness which was reduced in the patients.
Electronic Health Record Standards - A Brief Overview

Most medical information systems store clinical information about patients in proprietary format. To address the resulting interoperability problems, several electronic health record (EHR) standards that enable structured clinical content for the purpose of exchange are currently under development. In this article, we present a brief overview of the most relevant EHR standards, examine the level of interoperability they provide and assess their functionality in terms of content structure, access services, multimedia support and security.
Pyrosequencing quantified methylation level of BRCA1 promoter as prognostic factor for survival in breast cancer patient

BRCA1 promoter methylation is an essential epigenetic transcriptional silencing mechanism, related to breast cancer (BC) occurrence and progression. We quantified the methylation level of BRCA1 promoter and evaluated its significance as prognostic and predictive factor. BRCA1 promoter methylation level was quantified by pyrosequencing in surgical cancerous and adjacent normal specimens from 154 BC patients. A follow up of 98 months was conducted to assess the correlation between BRCA1-methylation level vs. overall survival (OS) and disease free survival (DFS). The mean methylation level in BC tissues was significantly higher (mean 32.6%; median 31.9%) than in adjacent normal samples (mean 16.2%; median 13.0%) (P < 0.0001). Tumor stage (R = 0.6165, P < 0.0001) and size (R = 0.7328, P < 0.0001) were significantly correlated with the methylation level. Patients with unmethylated BRCA1 had a better OS and DFS compared to the methylated group (each P < 0.0001). BRCA1 promoter methylation level has a statistically significance on survival in BC patients (HazR = 1.465, P = 0.000) and is an independent prognostic factor for OS in BC patients (HazR = 2.042, P = 0.000). Patients with ductal type, HER2 negative, lymph node negative stage 1+2 tumors had a better OS and DFS. Classification of grades and molecular subtypes did not show any prognostic significance. Pyrosequencing is a precise and efficient method to quantify BRCA1 promoter methylation level, with a high potential for future clinical implication, as it identifies subgroups of patients with poorer prognosis.
Game-Inspired Design

This paper describes research and development around two gameful courses that reimagined their assessment systems to better support student autonomy and promote engagement. We present results from an ongoing classroom-based research study that signals the success of these designs and, in so doing, explore key elements of what we call gameful design: the process of redesigning core elements of a learning environment to better support intrinsic motivation. We describe this process and discuss a set of promising practices for the design of gameful courses. Results from three studies indicate that gameful course design is positively related to students working harder and feeling more in control of their class performance.
Analysis of Motivational Factors in a Not-For-Profit Organisation

This paper is a contribution to effective remuneration policy in the third sector. The essential issue of the paper is an understanding of the influence of intrinsic and extrinsic rewards on the motivation of not-for-profit staff. The paper reports on a study, using discriminant analysis, undertaken in an organisation providing services for people with disabilities, and which is facing a changing funding model. The organisation is made up of two units, in one of which employees can earn a performance bonus. This situation allows for a clear assessment of how extrinsic rewards are perceived by staff as a source of motivation. The important findings of the study are that remuneration policy in the third sector should take account of the fact that intrinsic rewards play a significant role in motivation. Extrinsic rewards do motivate staff, but in combination with intrinsic rewards.
Government Policy and the Dynamics of Market Structure: Evidence from Critical Access Hospitals

This paper seeks to understand the impact of the Medicare Rural Hospital Flexibility (Flex) Program. The goal of this program is to maintain access to hospital care for rural residents. Like many other government policies, the Flex program targets the underlying supply infrastructure, in this case by providing more generous cost-plus reimbursement to rural hospitals in exchange for capacity and service limitations. The program created a new class of hospital, the Critical Access Hospital (CAH), to which rural hospitals can convert. We specify a dynamic oligopoly model of the rural hospital industry with hospital investment in capacity, exit and conversion to CAH status. We develop new methods that allow us to efficiently estimate the structural parameters and compute counterfactual equilibria. We use the methods to estimate the impact of eliminating and modifying the Flex program on access to hospitals and patient welfare.We find that without the Flex program 5% of currently operating hospitals would have closed. Although the minimum distance to a hospital is reduced by the program, the actual average distance traveled to receive care increased. We find that overall consumer surplus has decreased as a result of the Flex Program. Our methods may be more broadly useful in estimating and computing other dynamic oligopoly games with investment in capacity.
Smooth solutions for the dyadic model

We consider the dyadic model, which is a toy model to test issues of well-posedness and blow-up for the Navier–Stokes and Euler equations. We prove well-posedness of positive solutions of the viscous problem in the relevant scaling range which corresponds to Navier–Stokes. Likewise we prove well-posedness for the inviscid problem (in a suitable regularity class) when the parameter corresponds to the strongest transport effect of the nonlinearity.
LOCAL VS. LANDSCAPE CONTROLS ON PLANT SPECIES RICHNESS IN BEAVER MEADOWS

There is considerable interest in determining whether the species richness of communities is determined by forces controlling dispersal into patches that operate at the landscape scale, or forces controlling persistence that act at the local scale. Understanding the relative importance of these two classes of factors in controlling within-patch species richness is particularly important when patches are created via ecosystem engineering. In such cases, factors affecting the population dynamics or behavior of a single species could indirectly affect species richness if richness is controlled primarily by landscape-level factors. We used a combination of experimental mesocosms and field observations to determine whether species richness in beaver wetlands in the Adirondack Mountains (New York) is more strongly controlled by the position of the wetland in the landscape or by within-wetland hydrology. Drainage rate had a significant effect on both richness and composition in mesocosms, with well-drained treatments having significantly higher richness than poorly drained treatments. Seed germinated from the seed bank in sediments collected from different ponds showed relatively small differences in richness or community composition in mesocosms, suggesting a comparatively small effect of dispersal limitation on species richness. Experimental results were mirrored in a survey of 14 meadows over two years, which indicated that variability in water table depth was consistently a significant predictor of species richness, while meadow area and isolation showed little relation to richness. The survey also suggested that the number of years since beaver had abandoned a site was a significant predictor of the number of species found in beaver meadows. The results indicate that species richness in beaver meadows is strongly controlled by local factors, but that the population dynamics of beaver could also potentially affect species richness by altering the age distribution of meadows across the landscape.
Lightweight code-based cryptography: QC-MDPC McEliece encryption on reconfigurable devices

With the break of RSA and ECC cryptosystems in an era of quantum computing, asymmetric code-based cryptography is an established alternative that can be a potential replacement. A major drawback are large keys in the range between 50kByte to several MByte that prevented real-world applications of code-based cryptosystems so far. A recent proposal by Misoczki et al. showed that quasi-cyclic moderate density parity-check (QC-MDPC) codes can be used in McEliece encryption - reducing the public key to just 0.6 kByte to achieve a 80-bit security level. Despite of reasonably small key sizes that could also enable small designs, previous work only report highperformance implementations with high resource consumptions of more than 13,000 slices on a large Xilinx Virtex-6 FPGA for a combined en-/decryption unit. In this work we focus on lightweight implementations of code-based cryptography and demonstrate that McEliece encryption using QC-MDPC codes can be implemented with a significantly smaller resource footprint - still achieving reasonable performance sufficient for many applications, e.g., challenge-response protocols or hybrid firmware encryption. More precisely, our design requires just 68 slices for the encryption and around 150 slices for the decryption unit and is able to en-/decrypt an input block in 2.2ms and 13.4 ms, respectively.