Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Genetic Insights into Sporadic Parkinson's Disease Pathogenesis

Intensive research over the last 15 years has led to the identification of several autosomal recessive and dominant genes that cause familial Parkinson’s disease (PD). Importantly, the functional characterization of these genes has shed considerable insights into the molecular mechanisms underlying the etiology and pathogenesis of PD. Collectively; these studies implicate aberrant protein and mitochondrial homeostasis as key contributors to the development of PD, with oxidative stress likely acting as an important nexus between the two pathogenic events. Interestingly, recent genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have revealed variations in at least two of the identified familial PD genes (i.e. α-synuclein and LRRK2) as significant risk factors for the development of sporadic PD. At the same time, the studies also uncovered variability in novel alleles that is associated with increased risk for the disease. Additionally, in-silico meta-analyses of GWAS data have allowed major steps into the investigation of the roles of gene-gene and gene-environment interactions in sporadic PD. The emergent picture from the progress made thus far is that the etiology of sporadic PD is multi-factorial and presumably involves a complex interplay between a multitude of gene networks and the environment. Nonetheless, the biochemical pathways underlying familial and sporadic forms of PD are likely to be shared.
VISUAL IMAGES OF AMERICAN SOCIETY:

By examining the 5,413 illustrations provided in 33 introductory sociology textbooks published between 1982 and 1988, we explored the way textbook publishers in sociology pictorially construct images of gender and race. Individuals in a picture are coded for race and gender identity; each picture is coded for location in or outside the United States and for placement in 1 of 26 substantive topics. Although people of color were shown in numerically “fair” proportions, including Blacks seemed to be a way of “staging” equality in the United States, while including other minorities appeared to offer “cross-cultural” comparisons to American society. Women accounted for only 36 percent of the individuals portrayed in these books, regardless of racial and ethnic category. Race and gender seemed to be conceptualized as nonoverlapping categories; White women “have” gender, while women of color apparently “have” only race. White men and boys occupied the center stage in these images of society; not only were more White men and boys presented than any other gender or race category, but they also received more exclusive attention and visually dominated the crucial institutions of politics and the economy. Although authors and publishers may strive to be fair, the way that race and gender representation is constructed in introductory sociology textbooks tends to reflect rather than critique popular American stereotypes.
Empathy and Emotional Contagion as a Link Between Recognized and Felt Emotions in Music Listening

Previous studies have shown that there is a difference between recognized and induced emotion in music listening. In this study, empathy is tested as a possible moderator between recognition and induction that is, on its own, moderated via music preference evaluations and other individual and situational features. Preference was also tested to determine whether it had an effect on measures of emotion independently from emotional expression. A web-based experiment gathered from 3,164 music listeners emotion, empathy, and preference ratings in a between-subjects design embedded in a music-personality test. Stimuli were a sample of 23 musical excerpts (each 30 seconds long, five randomly assigned to each participant) from various musical styles chosen to represent different emotions and preferences. Listeners in the recognition rating condition rated measures of valence and arousal significantly differently than listeners in the felt rating condition. Empathy ratings were shown to modulate this relationship: when empathy was present, the difference between the two rating types was reduced. Furthermore, we confirmed preference as one major predictor of empathy ratings. Emotional contagion was tested and confirmed as an additional direct effect of emotional expression on induced emotions. This study is among the first to explicitly test empathy and emotional contagion during music listening, helping to explain the often-reported emotional response to music in everyday life.
No Evidence for Modulation of Evaluative Flavor–Flavor Associations in Humans

Abstract In four experiments using a human evaluative flavor–flavor association paradigm, we investigated whether the acquisition of stimulus valence may be subject to Pavlovian modulation or occasion setting. In all studies, subjects (Ss) were exposed to a feature-positive (FP) (XA+/A−) schedule (or a modified version of it), in which flavor A was reinforced by the aversive flavor Tween 20 if and only if it was accompanied by a feature stimulus X. It was expected that Ss would develop an X-dependent dislike for A. In Experiment 1, for half of the Ss a quasi-sequential FP schedule was used, whereby the color of the liquids functioned as X. The other half of the Ss were exposed to a positive-patterning (PP) (XA+/A−/X−) schedule, in which unreinforced color (X−) trials were added to the FP schedule. Both schedules resulted in an unmodulated dislike for flavor A. In Experiment 2, Ss were exposed to a modified FP schedule, in which flavor A was reinforced by Tween 20 when presented with color X, while A was reinforced with positive sugar when presented colorless. Ss again demonstrated an unmodulated dislike for A. Experiment 3, using a sequential FP (X → A+/A−) schedule in which a flavor functioned as X, also resulted in an unmodulated dislike for A. Finally, in Experiment 4, Ss were exposed to the modified FP schedule, in which flavor A was presented with Tween 20 when preceded by flavor X, while A was reinforced with Sugar when not preceded by X. For those Ss liking sugar, no valence shifts were observed, whereas for those not liking sugar, the standard unmodified dislike for A was obtained. Some suggestions are provided with respect to variables which might be related to the absence of modulation.
Psychological reactions to thermography and mammography

SUMMARY Psychological distress and illness attitudes were investigated in women undergoing thermography and mammography by means of two self-rating scales: the Symptom Questionnaire (SQ) and the Illness Attitude Scales (IAS). After receiving normal results from thermography, a significant decrease in anxiety, depression, somatic symptoms, hostility, worry about illness, concern about pain, and fear of dying took place. Women who, because of the thermography results, required mammography, displayed significantly less distress and fewer fears before mammography than before thermography. KEY WORDS-Thermography, mammography, psychological distress, thanatophobia, breast cancer.
Estimating correlation from high, low, opening and closing prices

In earlier studies, the estimation of the volatility of a stock using information on the daily opening, closing, high and low prices has been developed; the additional information in the high and low prices can be incorporated to produce unbiased (or near-unbiased) estimators with substantially lower variance than the simple open--close estimator. This paper tackles the more difficult task of estimating the correlation of two stocks based on the daily opening, closing, high and low prices of each. If we had access to the high and low values of some linear combination of the two log prices, then we could use the univariate results via polarization, but this is not data that is available. The actual problem is more challenging; we present an unbiased estimator which halves the variance.
Classical Conditioning of Consumer Attitudes: Four Experiments in an Advertising Context

We conducted four experiments to test various properties of classical conditioning in an advertising/consumer behavior context. Experiment 1 demonstrates attitude conditioning at each of four levels of conditioned stimulus-unconditioned stimulus pairing. In Experiment 2, latent inhibition due to subject preexposure to the conditioned stimulus is shown to retard conditioning for both 10-trial and 1-trial pairings of conditioned and unconditioned stimuli. Experiment 3 reveals that forward conditioning of attitudes is superior to backward conditioning. Experiment 4 extends the findings from the first three experiments and serves to counter some of their potential methodological problems. Collectively, these experiments provide an initial response to McSweeney and Bierley's (1984) call for more sophisticated classical conditioning research in consumer behavior.
Families Home Schooling in a Virtual Charter School System

ABSTRACT Contemporary educational options have increased in recent years as families have sought alternatives to traditional choices. Three of these, home schooling, charter schools, and virtual schools, provide the foundation for a new institution called the virtual charter school. This new alternative provides curriculum to home learners through advanced technologies within the charter school setting, allowing for innovation, freedom from traditional structure, and tuition-free education for students. The California Virtual Academies, a network of virtual charter schools, provided the opportunity to explore the phenomenon from the families' perspectives. The following questions were posed: What are the characteristics of families that are currently involved in home schooling through this innovative model? Why do families pursue this means of education? What are their experiences? How does it look in daily practice?
Fishkin and the deliberative opinion poll: Lessons from a study of the Granada 500 television program

James Fishkin advocates the use of the “deliberative opinion poll” as a means of improving the way in which contemporary democratic systems work and proposes a number of hypotheses about the effects of the deliberative process in such a setting. On the basis of a survey of participants in the Granada 500, a series of television programs screened during the 1992 general election in the United Kingdom that is specifically referred to by Fishkin as an example of a deliberative poll, doubts about the viability and effectiveness of deliberative opinion polls are raised.
Improving service employee work affect: the transformative potential of work design

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to employ Self-Determination Theory to explain the mediated impact of work design – empowerment and serial and investiture socialization – on employee work affect. The theory proposes fulfilment of three psychological needs – autonomy, competence, and relatedness – will mediate individuals' ability to achieve contextually relevant well-being. An empirical study tests this claim and exposes the structure of the mediating effects. Design/methodology/approach – Survey responses were collected from a sample of 239 front-line service employees using snowball data collection. SEM was used to test hypotheses. Findings – Findings suggest that empowerment and serial and investiture socialization are significantly differentially related to need fulfilment. Additionally, all forms of need fulfilment do not directly influence employee affect. Instead, there are both direct and interactive effects that work simultaneously to influence employees' positive work affect. Practical .
MATHEMATICAL ENGINEERING TECHNICAL REPORTS Second-Order Cone Programming with Warm Start for Elastoplastic Analysis with von Mises Yield Criterion

The incremental problem for quasistatic elastoplastic analysis with the von Mises yield criterion is treated within the framework of the second-order cone program (SOCP). We show that the classical flow rule under the von Mises yield criterion with the isotropic/kinematic hardening is equivalently written as a second-order cone complementarity problem. The minimization problems of the potential energy and the complementary energy for incremental analysis are then formulated as the primal-dual pair of SOCP problems, which are to be solved by using the primal-dual interior-point method. To enhance numerical performance in the course of tracing an equilibrium path, we propose a warm-start strategy for the interior-point method based on the primal-dual penalty method, in which the solution at the current loading step is found by solving a penalized SOCP problem from the initial point defined by using information of the solution at the previous loading step.
Experimental Protocols Alter Phototransduction: The Implications for Retinal Processing at Visual Threshold

Vision in dim light, when photons are scarce, requires reliable signaling of the arrival of single photons. Rod photoreceptors accomplish this task through the use of a G-protein-coupled transduction cascade that amplifies the activity of single active rhodopsin molecules. This process is one of the best understood signaling cascades in biology, yet quantitative measurements of the amplitude and kinetics of the rod's response in mice vary by a factor of ∼2 across studies. What accounts for these discrepancies? We used several experimental approaches to reconcile differences in published properties of rod responses. First, we used suction electrode recordings from single rods to compare measurements across a range of recording conditions. Second, we compared measurements of single-cell photocurrents to estimates of rod function from in vitro electroretinograms. Third, we assayed the health of the post-receptor retinal tissue in these different conditions. Several salient points emerge from these experiments: (1) recorded responses can be altered dramatically by how the retina is stored; (2) the kinetics of the recovery of responses to bright but not dim flashes are strongly sensitive to the extracellular concentration of magnesium; (3) experimental conditions that produce very different single-photon responses measured in single rods produce near identical derived rod responses from the electroretinogram. The dependence of rod responses on experimental conditions will be a key consideration in efforts to extract general principles of G-protein signaling from studies of phototransduction and to relate these signals to downstream mechanisms that facilitate visual sensitivity.
Molecular Encapsulation of Histamine H2-Receptor Antagonists by Cucurbit[7]Uril: An Experimental and Computational Study

The histamine H2-receptor antagonists cimetidine, famotidine and nizatidine are individually encapsulated by macrocyclic cucurbit[7]uril (CB[7]), with binding affinities of 6.57 (±0.19) × 103 M−1, 1.30 (±0.27) × 104 M−1 and 1.05 (±0.33) × 105 M−1, respectively. These 1:1 host-guest inclusion complexes have been experimentally examined by 1H-NMR, UV-visible spectroscopic titrations (including Job plots), electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS), and isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC), as well as theoretically by molecular dynamics (MD) computation. This study may provide important insights on the supramolecular formulation of H2-receptor antagonist drugs for potentially enhanced stability and controlled release based on different binding strengths of these host-guest complexes.
Dogmatism in relation to sub‐types of conservatism: Some Australian data

An examination of the relation between authoritarianism and conservatism is made using newly developed balanced forms of the ‘D’ and ‘F’ scales together with scales to measure political, social, moral and economic conservatism. Neither ‘BD’ nor ‘BF’ scales predicted voting preference. The ‘BD’ scale was significantly, positively related to the political, social and moral conservatism scales but was non-significantly, negatively related to economic conservatism. It was concluded that both the ‘BD’ and ‘BF’ scales are equally good measures of general authoritarianism among supporters of Australian political parties and that while it is in general true that dogmatic people tend to be ideologically conservative, an exception must be made for economic conservatism. This exception is seen to be inferable from the theory of ‘working class authoritarianism’ advanced by Lipset (1960).
June Pallot: from architect to accountant

June Pallot was a very warm, kind person with an infectious, bubbly laugh. We last spoke on 5th October 2004, one month before she passed away. I still remember her warm, friendly voice from that last conversation. Behind this warm persona, there was a first class mind, an outstanding intellect. We met the way many academics do – I was an anonymous reviewer of her work and I was impressed by its quality and the thoughtfulness of her responses to the issues raised. Subsequently, we met when June Pallot was on a visit to Scotland with her husband, Graeme Craigie, a New Zealander of Scottish descent. June Pallot visited me at Stirling, where I was then professor of accounting. We had a very detailed discussion of governmental accounting, in which her depth of knowledge was impressive. We became so engrossed in this discussion that June almost forgot that Graeme was waiting patiently for her in the car park.
Competencies in the 21st century

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to show that development of competencies needed to be effective managers and leaders requires program design and teaching methods focused on learning. This is the introductory essay to this special issue of JMD.Design/methodology/approach – Competencies are defined and an overview is provided for the eight papers that will follow with original research on competencies, their link to performance in various occupations, and their development.Findings – Emotional, social and cognitive intelligence competencies predict effectiveness in professional, management and leadership roles in many sectors of society. In addition, these competencies can be developed in adults.Research limitations/implications – As an introductory essay, this lays the foundation for the papers in this issue.Practical implications – Competencies needed to be effective can be developed.Originality/value – Despite widespread application, there are few published studies of the empirical link between co.
Biometry analysis of the black scorpionfish, Scorpaena porcus (Linnaeus, 1758) from the eastern Adriatic Sea

A sample of 450 specimens of the black scorpionfish, Scorpaena porcus (Linnaeus, 1758), from the middle and south Adriatic was biometrically analysed. The total length of all specimens ranged from 7.0 to 25.8 cm. Eighteen morphometric and eight meristic characteristics were determined. Sexual dimorphism was observed in seven morphometric measurements. There were no differences in meristic characters between sexes. Relative growth was studied by comparing changes in morphological characters with growth in standard and head length. The results obtained suggest the existence of one unique population of S. porcus in the Adriatic Sea.
Profitability and Institutional Constraints to the Adoption of Fertilizer Microdosing in Northwest Benin

Various agricultural techniques have been developed as components of food security interventions, but their effectiveness in addressing food insecurity in part depends upon the effectiveness of these techniques in fulfilling farmers’ objectives. This paper presents the results of research that examined the constraints that limit the adoption of microdosing by farmers in northwest Benin. The results of farmer field trials indicate that on average, microdosing produced lower yields and proved less profitable than recommended levels. In addition to reduced profitability, numerous institutional constraints were identified that further limit adoption. These constraints include poorly functioning input markets, inefficient distribution systems, limited affordability and credit constraints, liquidity constraints, and government policies that limit cross-border access to inputs as well as the prioritization of fertilizer for cotton production over food crops.
Reflections on Real Presence by a Virtual Person

I have lived in San Francisco while working as a full-time virtual faculty member for Michigan State University for nearly six years. Unlike most humans, I spend a larger proportion of every day as a virtual person than as a physical person. This article is adapted from a keynote speech I delivered at the Fourth International Workshop on Presence in Philadelphia in May of 2001. I use a personal narrative style to explore issues and to question some of the research community's prevailing assumptions about presence. Lombard and Ditton's (1997) frequently cited conceptualization defines presence as a perceptual illusion of nonmediation that occurs when a person fails to perceive or acknowledge the existence of a medium in his/her communication environment and responds as he/she would if the medium were not there. The underlying assumption is that, in the absence of technology, everyone experiences continuous presence at a constant intensity throughout their lives. Instead, this article suggests that presence is not a constant of everyday nonmediated experience. Careful consideration of unmediated (real) presence might help the conceptualization and study of mediated presence.
The influence of an Africentric worldview and demographic variables on drug knowledge, attitudes, and use among African American youth

Alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use are major problems in the inner cities, especially for African American youth. Africentric values may be a protective factor for negative drug outcomes. The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of Africentric values, spirituality, and demographic variables on drug knowledge, attitudes, and use. Participants were 189 4th- and 5th-graders attending public schools in Washington, DC, and Baltimore, Maryland. Measures of Africentric values (i.e., Collective Work/Responsibility, Cooperative Economics, and Self-Determination), spirituality, age, and whether or not the child resided in a two- or one-parent household were obtained. The results of regression analyses indicated that Collective Work/Responsibility and Cooperative Economics were significant predictors of attitudes toward drugs. Collective Work/Responsibility and spirituality were significant predictors of perceived drug harmfulness. Age and spirituality were significant predictors of drug usage. Age was the only significant predictor of drug knowledge. The Collective Work/Responsibility subscale was the strongest predictor of drug outcomes. The implications for using Africentric prevention approaches for decreasing risk factors and increasing protective factors for drug use among African American youth are discussed. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Instructed pragmatics at a glance: Where instructional studies were, are, and should be going

This paper brings together the research and developments of instructed pragmatics over the past three decades by reporting the synthesis findings of instructional intervention studies in interlanguage pragmatics. Two questions have guided this investigation: (1) is instruction effective in learning pragmatics? ; and (2) what methods are most effective in learning pragmatics? Exhaustive electronic bibliographical searches yielded a body of 58 instructional intervention studies for the review. Findings across these studies are compared and explored for common patterns and inconsistencies that emerge among them. The paper concludes with implications for future research based on the survey of the existing practice.