Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Coding of multisensory temporal patterns in human superior temporal sulcus

Philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists have long been interested in how the temporal aspects of perception are represented in the brain. In the present study, we investigated the neural basis of the temporal perception of synchrony/asynchrony for audiovisual speech stimuli using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Subjects judged the temporal relation of (a)synchronous audiovisual speech streams, and indicated any changes in their perception of the stimuli over time. Differential hemodynamic responses for synchronous versus asynchronous stimuli were observed in the multisensory superior temporal sulcus complex (mSTS-c) and prefrontal cortex. Within mSTS-c we found adjacent regions expressing an enhanced BOLD-response to the different physical (a)synchrony conditions. These regions were further modulated by the subjects' perceptual state. By calculating the distances between the modulated regions within mSTS-c in single-subjects we demonstrate that the “auditory leading (AL)” and “visual leading (VL) areas” lie closer to “synchrony areas” than to each other. Moreover, analysis of interregional connectivity indicates a stronger functional connection between multisensory prefrontal cortex and mSTS-c during the perception of asynchrony. Taken together, these results therefore suggest the presence of distinct sub-regions within the human STS-c for the maintenance of temporal relations for audiovisual speech stimuli plus differential functional connectivity with prefrontal regions. The respective local activity in mSTS-c is dependent both upon the physical properties of the stimuli presented and upon the subjects' perception of (a)synchrony.
Recent Advances and Emerging Applications of the Boundary Element Method

Sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation, a workshop on the boundary element method (BEM) was held on the campus of the University of Akron during September 1–3, 2010 (NSF, 2010, “Workshop on the Emerging Applications and Future Directions of the Boundary Element Method,” University of Akron, Ohio, September 1–3). This paper was prepared after this workshop by the organizers and participants based on the presentations and discussions at the workshop. The paper aims to review the major research achievements in the last decade, the current status, and the future directions of the BEM in the next decade. The review starts with a brief introduction to the BEM. Then, new developments in Green's functions, symmetric Galerkin formulations, boundary meshfree methods, and variationally based BEM formulations are reviewed. Next, fast solution methods for efficiently solving the BEM systems of equations, namely, the fast multipole method, the pre-corrected fast Fourier transformation method, and the adaptive cross approximation method are presented. Emerging applications of the BEM in solving microelectromechanical systems, composites, functionally graded materials, fracture mechanics, acoustic, elastic and electromagnetic waves, time-domain problems, and coupled methods are reviewed. Finally, future directions of the BEM as envisioned by the authors for the next five to ten years are discussed. This paper is intended for students, researchers, and engineers who are new in BEM research and wish to have an overview of the field. Technical details of the BEM and related approaches discussed in the review can be found in the Reference section with more than 400 papers cited in this review.
Hardiness and sense of coherence and their relation to negative affect

This study attempted to determine the degree to which measures of health proneness and measures of negative affect represent two distinct, although related, constructs. In addition, it examined the relation between Antonovsky's salutogenic construct of sense of coherence (SOC) and Kobasa's health proneness construct of hardiness. Five health proneness and three negative affect measures were filled out by 164 male patients with coronary heart disease. The pattern of correlations between these measures and confirmatory factor analysis indicated that although the measures of health proneness are negatively related to measures of negative affect, these two sets of measures and the constructs to which they are related can be differentiated from each other. However, SOC was found to be less independent of negative affect than was hardiness.
Carrying Babies and Groceries: The Effect of Moral and Social Weight on Caring

Two carrying tasks were used to assess the effects of physical, social, and moral weight on the care with which actions are taken. In Experiment 1, observers rated point-light walkers traversing uneven terrain carrying 3 unseen objects: a child, a bag of equally weighted groceries, and a bag of equally weighted trash. Kinematics of walkers carrying children were rated as more careful. In Experiment 2, perceived and actual maximum stepping height (MSH) were determined while carrying a child, a bag of groceries, and an empty bag. Perceived MSH was reduced by greater physical and moral weight, but actual MSH was equal with groceries and child, suggesting a difference between individual judgment and joint action. Implications for caring, carrying, values, social perception, and the relation of judgment and action are considered.
Understanding Users' Willingness to Report Online Harassment on Social Networking sites: the Role of Efficacy

Online harassment is an emerging global societal problem, with its pervasiveness and persistence creating long-lasting adverse psychological consequences to victims. While many social networking sites (SNSs) have started launching online reporting systems to combat online harassment, surprisingly, little empirical research has examined users’ willingness to use the system for reporting online harassment. In this study, we propose a research model explaining the role of efficacy in using the online reporting system of SNSs to report online harassment. We expect that the results of this study make significant contributions to research and practice
Drug normalisation and Australian youth: group differences in the social accommodation of drug use

According to the ‘normalisation thesis’, drug use has become an ‘unremarkable’ feature of contemporary life for young people. Previous quantitative research, however, neglects to assess the extent of variation in young people's social accommodation of drug use. This paper uses data from a purposive survey of young people who frequently attended clubs in a major night-time entertainment district in Brisbane, Australia to assess group differences in attitudes towards drug use. Using social interaction models, we find evidence of significant variation in views about drug use even among the sample of frequent club goers. We also demonstrate an endogenous – or social interaction – effect where young people's views are associated with the views of others who prefer to attend the same clubs. Overall, our results support the recent calls for a differentiated understanding of drug normalisation. We conclude that locations and social processes are important for understanding group differences in the social accommodation of drug use.
Work and Life Balance Support of Female Midlevel Noninstructional Staff at Community Colleges

Two-year public institutions are known for their nurturing academic environments that support students from diverse backgrounds and experiences. One would assume that these nurturing and supportive environments would also go beyond the students to include employees. Family-friendly working environments support the needs of employees to balance work and life obligations without affecting career advancement opportunities. To decide whether two-year public institutions are family-friendly working environments, this quantitative study explored the perceptions of female midlevel noninstructional professional staff in various administrative positions at 215 two-year public institutions. A survey designed to obtain participant perceptions of their working environments and institutional policies pertaining to work and life balances was completed by 590 respondents. By understanding the perceptions of midlevel noninstructional professional staff, institutions can address the areas of concern by establishing formal policies that support the needs of working adults to help them balance work and life obligations without affecting future career advancement opportunities.
Teaching Young Students Strategies for Planning and Drafting Stories: The Impact of Self-Regulated Strategy Development

In the present study, participants were 127 3rd-grade students, to 64 of whom (33 boys, 31 girls) the authors taught a general strategy and a genre-specific strategy for planning and writing stories; procedures for regulating the use of these strategies, the writing process, and their writing behaviors; and knowledge about the basic purpose and characteristics of good stories. The other 63 3rd-grade students (30 boys, 33 girls) formed the comparison group and received traditional-skills writing instruction (mostly on spelling, grammar, and so forth). Strategy-instructed students wrote stories that were longer, schematically stronger, and qualitatively better. Strategy-instructed students maintained over a short period of time the gains that they had made from pretest to posttest. In addition, the impact of story-writing strategy instruction transferred to writing a similar but untaught genre, that of a narrative about a personal experience. Strategy-instructed students wrote longer, schematically stronger, and qualitatively better personal narratives than did children in the control condition.
Cross-cultural comparisons of the perceived importance of conversational constraints

This study investigates how cultural groups may differ in their perceptions about preferred communication behavior. It focuses on the importance attached to “conversational constraints” in conversation. For the primary goal of requesting, the following five conversational constraints are identified: (a) concern for clarity, (b) concern for avoiding hurting the hearer's feelings, (c) concern for nonimposition, (d) concern for avoiding negative evaluation by the hearer, and (e) concern for effectiveness. Five hypotheses are formulated regarding the relationships between individualistic-collectivistic orientation (an important dimension of“culture”) and these five conversational constraints. Data were collected from 892 participants (undergraduates studying in Korea, Hawaii, and the mainland United States). After being presented at random with one of the six request situations, participants rated the perceived importance of each conversational constraint in that situation. The results indicate that the perceived importance of clarity was higher in the more individualistic cultures. On the other hand, the perceived importance of avoiding hurting the hearer's feelings and of minimizing imposition were higher in the more collectivistic cultures. The perceived importance of effectiveness and of avoiding negative evaluation by the hearer, on the other hand, did not significantly differ across the three cultural groups. Theoretical as well as practical implications are discussed.
Modelling the influence of central and peripheral information on saccade biases in gaze-contingent scene viewing

Human saccades during scene viewing show systematic patterns in amplitude and direction. By using a gaze-contingent display, it is possible to manipulate the features available for planning these saccades by masking the peripheral visual field. Here, we propose several variations of a computational model for predicting the saccade statistics observed empirically during viewing with different gaze-contingent displays. In each case, saccade targets are generated by randomly sampling from a distribution computed according to either the features available at fixation, the intact information in the periphery, or combinations of the two. The results suggest that saccade generation in complex images results from a balance of these computations, and the model provides a simple but rigorous framework for testing hypotheses and making novel predictions about the spatial characteristics of eye movements.
Modeling and Simulation of Electromagnetic Conducted Emission Due to Power Electronics Converters

Electromagnetic interference (EMI) refers to the undesired generation of radiated or conducted energy in electrical systems. High-speed semiconductors are applied in power electronics converters to improve efficiency. But high frequency switching leads to generation of interference over a wide range of frequency. EMI is an inevitable problem in modern power electronic circuits. Electromagnetic compatibility (EMC), which has recently gained a high importance, is the solution against electromagnetic interference. The first step of EMC evaluation is modeling and simulation of EMI to help power electronics designers to have an estimation of EMC status in their designs. Modeling and simulation of different typical samples of power electronics converters are studied in this paper in point of view of EMC. Simulation results demonstrated noncompliance behavior of most common power electronic converters in terms of EMC.
A parameterized polyhedra approach for explicit constrained predictive control

The elaboration of an explicit description for the constrained model based predictive control laws is a useful alternative to the usually time-consuming on-line optimization methods. The paper presents a geometrical approach in this direction based on parameterized polyhedra. Subdomains in the parameters space and the correspondent linear affine laws are defined based on the parameterized vertices and their validity domains. The theoretical insight for the overall control law is brought through a double description (constraints-generators) of the feasible domain. The gain in computational effort is due to a hierarchic organization of the piecewise affine controllers.
Book Review: Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era

whether this verbal intimacy is accompanied by physical expressions of intimacy is beyond the purview of Deep Secrets and could profitably be studied by someone as attuned as Way to evidence of cultural resistance. It is not only physical expressions of affection that are absent in this book; also missing, as objects of separate study, are the guys for whom physical involvement with other males eventually becomes a marker of sexual identity. Deep Secrets is a gender book, about being a boy and becoming a man; sexual orientation enters the picture mostly as an eventual object of fear, a sensation from which gay men, of course, are not themselves immune. While the realities of actually being gay are not explicitly part of her book’s focus, Way does, however, record vast differences, linked to race and class as well as age, in what behaviors get coded, and hence often avoided, as gay. The resourceful, heartening resistance that Way uncovers among boys does not, she openly laments, last even through a young man’s teens. Late in adolescence, the defensive ‘‘no homo’’ mantra that boys learn early in their lives begins to be taken much more seriously, Way found, making the late-teen years for many ‘‘a time of disconnection and loneliness’’ (p. 184). When boys reach their late teens, she maintains, the notions of ‘‘progress’’ and ‘‘development’’ that are her own profession’s stock in trade are inappropriate for describing what happens to many young men. Healthy emotional development, she believes, is inextricably bound to feelings of connection with others; that becoming a man so often means learning to disconnect from other males, to sever the ties that had so recently meant so much, commonly makes the late teens ‘‘a period of profound loss,’’ a time when a male’s development actually ceases (p. 184). Despite that somber declaration, there is something profoundly hopeful about Deep Secrets, something that indeed sets Way’s work apart from the other examinations of the contemporary American boy. Deep Secrets introduces some boys whose large numbers, indeed whose very existence, have gone largely unnoticed. Way’s abundant evidence of young men’s verbal tenderness with and about each other strips the notion of male emotional constriction of its aura of inevitability. This is a book about eventual loss, but also about the possibility of rediscovery.
Autism and theory of mind in everyday life

The theory of mind account of autism suggests that the key social, communicative and imaginative impairments which characterise this disorder result from an inability to represent mental states. While this account has been largely confirmed by experimental work, there has, as yet, been little examination of autistic children's theory of mind outside the laboratory. The present study used the Vineland Adaptive Behavior Scales to measure real life social adaptation, through the report of care-givers. In particular, we were interested to find out more about the real life competence of those few autistic subjects who do pass tests of theory of mind. Autistic, mentally handicapped and normally developing children were tested with two standard theory of mind tasks. Groups of subjects who passed or failed these tasks were contrasted. We supplemented the Vineland Scales with items designed to distinguish social behaviour which necessitates theory of mind (termed Interactive) and social behaviour which could be learned (Active). We also asked about maladaptive behaviour of two sorts: Bizarre behaviour typical of autism, and Antisocial behaviour at least some of which would appear to require consideration of beliefs (e.g. deception). We found that the normally developing and mentally handicapped children showed a great deal of evidence of “mind-reading” in their everyday lives, regardless of theory of mind task performance. By contrast, in the autistic group, only those individuals who passed the false belief tasks showed insightful Interactive and Antisocial behaviour. These passers also had better verbal and communication abilities. The autistic subjects who failed the laboratory tasks showed little or no evidence of understanding mental states in their everyday lives, but many did show a high degree of simple Active sociability. Closer analysis showed that only some of the passers showed good evidence of theory of mind in their real life behaviour, and that even these were somewhat impaired relative to their age and developmental level. Implications for the theory of mind account of autism are discussed.
Autoethnography and Therapy Writing on the Move

In this article, migration as a major life “transition” is examined using autoethnographic vignettes. The methodological dominance of objectivist and positivist approaches to research in counseling and psychotherapy is critiqued alongside “stages” theories of the experience of transition and loss. Claims for expressive and reflective writing as an active and creative form of therapy, akin to music, art, and drama therapy, are examined within a feminist tradition of “confessional writing. ”
Factors affecting ambulatory blood pressure reproducibility. Results of the HARVEST Trial. Hypertension and Ambulatory Recording Venetia Study.

To assess the reproducibility of ambulatory blood pressure, we recorded 24-hour blood pressure twice 3 months apart in 508 hypertensive subjects participating in the HARVEST trial using a noninvasive technique. Blood pressure was measured every 10 minutes during the daytime and 30 minutes during the nighttime. Reproducibility was better for ambulatory than for office blood pressure. It was greater for 24-hour than for daytime blood pressure and lowest for nighttime blood pressure. The reproducibility of blood pressure variability (standard deviation) was poorer than that of the average values. A small but significant decrease in average daytime blood pressure (-0.8/-1.0 mm Hg) and virtually no change in nighttime blood pressure (+0.5/+0.1 mm Hg) were observed at repeat recording. Reducing the sampling rate by 50% caused only a small impairment of the reproducibility indexes of both the average values and variability. Blood pressure reduction was greater during the first and last hours of the recordings, indicating an effect of the hospital environment on the between-monitoring difference. Changes in body weight (-0.7 kg, P = .006, at repeat recording) were related to those of 24-hour diastolic blood pressure (P < .05). In conclusion, patient reaction to medical environment and changes of body weight seem to account for most of the change in 24-hour blood pressure that occurs over a 3-month period.
Quality of Cancer Survivorship Care in the Military Health System (TRICARE)

PurposeFollowing the acute phase of treatment, national guidelines recommend cancer survivors have routine contact with health care providers and undergo basic ancillary testing while avoiding high-cost imaging (HCI). We conducted this study to determine how frequently breast, prostate, and colorectal cancer survivors received recommended follow-up care and HCI tests during the survivorship period. MethodsUsing administrative data from TRICARE beneficiaries, we identified a cohort of patients who were treated for breast, prostate, or colorectal cancer between October 2005 and March 2007. These patients were then followed through September 2010. During the 3 years after initial treatment, we determined how frequently survivors received all minimum recommended survivorship care as defined by national guidelines and underwent HCI tests and if these outcomes varied by geographic region. ResultsOverall, 3148 patients underwent treatment for breast (n = 1630), prostate (n = 1173), or colorectal (n = 345) cancer. Sixty-five percent received all minimum recommended care over 3 years (breast = 74.1%, prostate = 65.3%, colorectal = 25.5%). During the 3-year period, 74.1% of breast cancer survivors received a mammogram each year, whereas 69.1% of colorectal cancer survivors had at least 1 colonoscopy. Sixty-four percent had at least 1 HCI study during the 3-year period (positron emission tomography = 10.9%, computer tomography = 48.8%, magnetic resonance imaging = 36.6%) at a cost of $3.5 million. Substantial state-level variation was noted for both outcomes. DiscussionSome cancer survivors do not receive recommended care following initial treatment while frequently undergoing HCI. The existing geographic variation in quality and imaging utilization suggests that improvements to cancer survivorship care are possible.
Socioeconomic Influences on Fertility in the Mexican Borderlands Region

This paper examined effects of various socioeconomic variables on fertility for selected samples of municipios in the border region of Mexico. A theoretical model of Mexican borderlands fertility is mostly confirmed by regression analysis of 1980 census data. An improved model is suggested. The major results indicate that literacy is a major factor influencing the reduction in fertility male and female labor force participation have significant and opposite effects on fertility and unemployment generally lowers fertility. (SUMMARY IN SPA) (EXCERPT)