Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Developmental View of Children's Singing

Research into children's singing has gradually gained momentum since the beginning of this century. These studies have principally concentrated on the identification of children's ‘comfortable’ singing ranges, and the identification and treatment of children who sing out-of-tune, usually termed ‘uncertain singers’ or ‘poor pitch singers’ (p.p.s.). Several investigators have commented that out-of-tune singing appears in different forms (for reviews, see Phillips 1984; Welch 1979a, b, 1985b). The aim of the present article is to discuss these findings and to suggest that children's singing has an underlying developmental process.
Structurally Distinct Recognition Motifs in Lymphotoxin-β Receptor and CD40 for Tumor Necrosis Factor Receptor-associated Factor (TRAF)-mediated Signaling*

Lymphotoxin-β receptor (LTβR) and CD40 are members of the tumor necrosis factor family of signaling receptors that regulate cell survival or death through activation of NF-κB. These receptors transmit signals through downstream adaptor proteins called tumor necrosis factor receptor-associated factors (TRAFs). In this study, the crystal structure of a region of the cytoplasmic domain of LTβR bound to TRAF3 has revealed an unexpected new recognition motif, 388IPEEGD393, for TRAF3 binding. Although this motif is distinct in sequence and structure from the PVQET motif in CD40 and PIQCT in the regulator TRAF-associated NF-κB activator (TANK), recognition is mediated in the same binding crevice on the surface of TRAF3. The results reveal structurally adaptive “hot spots” in the TRAF3-binding crevice that promote molecular interactions driving specific signaling after contact with LTβR, CD40, or the downstream regulator TANK.
As facções cariocas em perspectiva comparativa

It has become a commonplace that Rio de Janeiros guerra do trafico is entirely unique within Brazil. In fact, this is inaccurate. Drug trafficking organizations that in many respects resemble Rios faccoes do exist in other urban contexts. What differentiates them is less the ability to establish a local monopoly on the drug trade than the resilience of their internal structure, and consequently the duration of their existence and domination. During field research in nine peripheral communities in three cities, I observed not only high variation in the degree of concentration between local drug markets, but also variation over time within single communities. In this light, the stability of Rios highly concentrated drug market can be seen as a unique equilibrium in which the fragmentary forces at work in other cities are neutralized by specific traits of Rios factions. These traits, I argue, stem from the dominion these factions have exerted over the states prison system since before the period of their original expansion into the drug trade.
Lip prints: The barcode of skeletal malocclusion

Introduction: In orthodontics, apart from essential diagnostic aids, there are so many soft tissue analyses in which lips are major part of concern. However, lip prints have never been used in orthodontics as diagnostic aid or forensic tool. Therefore, this study was designed to explore the possible association of lip prints with skeletal malocclusion. Materials and Methods: A sample of 114 subjects in the age group of 18-30 years, from North Indian adult population were selected on the basis of skeletal class I, class II and class III malocclusion, each comprising of 38 subjects with equal number of males and females. Lip prints of all the individuals were recorded and digital soft copies of lateral cephalograms were taken. Lip prints were compared between different skeletal malocclusions. Results: It was found that branched lip pattern was most common in North Indian adult population with no sexual dimorphism. The Z-test for proportion showed that the prevalence of vertical lip pattern was significantly higher in subjects having skeletal class III malocclusion. Conclusion: A definite co-relation of vertical lip patterns with skeletal class III malocclusion was revealed.
Declarative knowledge and professional vision in teacher education: effect of courses in teaching and learning.

BACKGROUND Teachers' professional vision includes the ability to apply general pedagogical knowledge about components of effective teaching and learning to reason about significant features of classroom practice. It requires teachers to (a) describe, (b) explain, and (c) predict classroom situations. Although the acquisition of underling knowledge can be considered as a key element of university-based teacher education programmes, to date, there has been little empirical research on teacher candidates' development of professional vision. AIMS This study aims to improve understanding of how different university-based courses in teaching and learning impact the development of professional vision. SAMPLE Participants were teacher candidates (N= 53) attending the same teacher education programme at a German university. They were enrolled in one of three different compulsory courses in teaching and learning, lasting one semester. METHODS In a pre-test-post-test design, participants' declarative knowledge about teaching and learning was measured with a test, professional vision with the online tool Observer. Analysis of covariance and multivariate analysis of variance were conducted. RESULTS Teacher candidates in all three courses showed significant gains both in declarative knowledge and professional vision. Patterns of results differed depending on the course attended. A video-based course with a focus on effective teaching resulted in highest gains in prediction of the consequences of observed events for student learning processes, which is the highest level of knowledge transfer. CONCLUSION The development of professional vision is a strongly knowledge-guided process. In line with their content and aims, university-based courses can enhance teaching-relevant knowledge for teacher candidates.
Mathematical Self-Efficacy Gender Differences In Gifted/Talented Adolescents

Gifted/talented high school students completed the Mathematical Self-Efficacy Scale, an instrument developed by Betz and Hackett (1983). Items in the scale asked the students to indicate their degree of confidence regarding successful completion of everyday mathematics tasks, number sequences, mathematics-based college courses, and mathematics problems. The mean self-efficacy ratings given on the items were analyzed for significant gender differences. Results indicated that mates had stronger self-efficacy expectations than females on more than one fourth of the items, whereas females reported stronger self-efficacy expectations on only a few items that involved stereotypical female activities. Implications of the findings for the process of educational decision making are discussed.
Image segmentation in Twenty Questions

Consider the following scenario between a human user and the computer. Given an image, the user thinks of an object to be segmented within this picture, but is only allowed to provide binary inputs to the computer (yes or no). In these conditions, can the computer guess this hidden segmentation by asking well-chosen questions to the user? We introduce a strategy for the computer to increase the accuracy of its guess in a minimal number of questions. At each turn, the current belief about the answer is encoded in a Bayesian fashion via a probability distribution over the set of all possible segmentations. To efficiently handle this huge space, the distribution is approximated by sampling representative segmentations using an adapted version of the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm, whose proposal moves build on a geodesic distance transform segmentation method. Following a dichotomic search, the question halving the weighted set of samples is finally picked, and the provided answer is used to update the belief for the upcoming rounds. The performance of this strategy is assessed on three publicly available datasets with diverse visual properties. Our approach shows to be a tractable and very adaptive solution to this problem.
Electrophysiological properties of thalamic, subthalamic and nigral neurons during the anti‐parkinsonian placebo response

Placebo administration to Parkinson patients is known to induce dopamine release in the striatum and to affect the activity of subthalamic nucleus (STN) neurons. By using intraoperative single‐neuron recording techniques in awake patients, here we extend our previous study on STN recording, and characterize part of the neuronal circuit which is affected by placebos. In those patients who showed a clinical placebo response, there was a decrease in firing rate in STN neurons that was associated with a decrease in the substantia nigra pars reticulata (SNr) and an increase in the ventral anterior (VA) and anterior ventral lateral (VLa) thalamus. These data show that placebo decreases STN and SNr activity whereas it increases VA/VLa activity. By contrast, placebo non‐responders showed either a lack of changes in this circuit or partial changes in the STN only. Thus, changes in activity in the whole basal ganglia–VA/VLa circuit appear to be important in order to observe a clinical placebo improvement, although the involvement of other circuits, such as the direct pathway bypassing the STN, cannot be ruled out. The circuit we describe in the present study is likely to be a part of a more complex circuitry, including the striatum and the internal globus pallidus (GPi), that is modified by placebo administration. These findings indicate that a placebo treatment, which is basically characterized by verbal suggestions of benefit, can reverse the malfunction of a complex neuronal circuit, although these placebo‐associated neuronal changes are short‐lasting and occur only in some patients but not in others.
An Investigation of the Relationship between Television Broadcasting and Game Attendance

This study investigated the relationship between whether a major conference NCAA Division I men's college basketball game was televised and game attendance during the 2003–2004 and 2004–2005 seasons. Multiple regression analysis was used to examine this relationship while controlling for 19 other potentially confounding variables. A significant regression model was created (F = 111.586, p < 0.001), explaining 77.6% of the variance in game attendance. The model estimated that men's basketball game attendance increased by 564 spectators when a game was broadcast on television, ceteris paribus, representing a 6.3% increase over the mean game attendance of 8892. These findings support practitioners broadcasting home men's basketball games on television, as television broadcasting was found to be significantly related to a substantial increase in game attendance in the population studied.
Test impact revisited: washback effect over time

In countries with centralized educational systems national tests are used as primary devices through which changes in the educational system are introduced. This article examines the impact over time of two national tests which have been in operation for a number of years: one in Arabic as a second language (ASL) and one in English as a foreign language (EFL) through questionnaires, interviews and document analysis from a sample of teachers, students and language inspectors. Results showed different washback patterns for the two tests. Slight modifications in the ASL test created no effect in classroom activities, test preparation, or the status and prestige of the subject tested, yet, the inspectors expressed satisfaction and wished to continue the administration of the test as they feared that without the tests proficiency levels would drop. Slight modifications in the EFL test, on the other hand, created major impact in terms of teaching activities, time devoted for test preparation, production of new teaching material, etc. Although negative attitudes were expressed by teachers regarding the quality of the test, they would like it to continue. Inspectors believe that the test creates a meaningful change and is powerful enough to trigger changes without a need to provide training and a new curriculum. The study shows that washback varies over time, owing to many factors such as the status of the language and the uses of the test.
Distress Tolerance

In this article we present the theoretical and empirical bases of distress tolerance research. Although distress tolerance offers a promising lens through which to better understand various psychological symptoms and disorders, further theoretical development and empirical inquiry is needed to promote our understanding of the construct. Overall, a number of questions regarding its theoretical conceptualization and measurement, associations with related constructs and psychopathology, and role(s) in therapeutic change and intervention remain unanswered. Directions for future research are discussed to stimulate further empirical study on this theoretically and clinically promising topic.
Yes-Associated Protein 65 (YAP) Expands Neural Progenitors and Regulates Pax3 Expression in the Neural Plate Border Zone

Yes-associated protein 65 (YAP) contains multiple protein-protein interaction domains and functions as both a transcriptional co-activator and as a scaffolding protein. Mouse embryos lacking YAP did not survive past embryonic day 8.5 and showed signs of defective yolk sac vasculogenesis, chorioallantoic fusion, and anterior-posterior (A-P) axis elongation. Given that the YAP knockout mouse defects might be due in part to nutritional deficiencies, we sought to better characterize a role for YAP during early development using embryos that develop externally. YAP morpholino (MO)-mediated loss-of-function in both frog and fish resulted in incomplete epiboly at gastrulation and impaired axis formation, similar to the mouse phenotype. In frog, germ layer specific genes were expressed, but they were temporally delayed. YAP MO-mediated partial knockdown in frog allowed a shortened axis to form. YAP gain-of-function in Xenopus expanded the progenitor populations in the neural plate (sox2+) and neural plate border zone (pax3+), while inhibiting the expression of later markers of tissues derived from the neural plate border zone (neural crest, pre-placodal ectoderm, hatching gland), as well as epidermis and somitic muscle. YAP directly regulates pax3 expression via association with TEAD1 (N-TEF) at a highly conserved, previously undescribed, TEAD-binding site within the 5′ regulatory region of pax3. Structure/function analyses revealed that the PDZ-binding motif of YAP contributes to the inhibition of epidermal and somitic muscle differentiation, but a complete, intact YAP protein is required for expansion of the neural plate and neural plate border zone progenitor pools. These results provide a thorough analysis of YAP mediated gene expression changes in loss- and gain-of-function experiments. Furthermore, this is the first report to use YAP structure-function analyzes to determine which portion of YAP is involved in specific gene expression changes and the first to show direct in vivo evidence of YAP's role in regulating pax3 neural crest expression.
Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Methodologies in Research on Teachers’ Lives, Work, and Effectiveness: From Integration to Synergy

The authors of this article discuss how a mixed-methods research team designed and conducted a 4-year study (Variations in Teachers’ Work and Lives and Their Effects on Pupils) that tracked 300 teachers in 100 schools in England over a 3-year fieldwork period. The authors discuss processes that led to new knowledge. Although mixed methods are becoming more popular, few published accounts describe in detail how researchers have moved beyond the use and integration of mixed methods to arrive at more synergistic understandings. The advantage of synergistic approaches is their consideration and combination of a greater range of data, resulting in more nuanced, authentic accounts and explanations of complex realities.
Comparative Compressibilities of Silicate Spinels: Anomalous Behavior of (Mg,Fe)2SiO4

Compressibilities of five silicate spinels, including γ-Mg2SiO4, γ-Fe2SiO4, Ni2SiO4 and two ferromagnesian compositions, were determined on crystals positioned in the same high-pressure mount. Subjection of all crystals simultaneously to the same pressure revealed differences in compressibility that resulted from compositional differences. Ferromagnesian silicate spinels showed an anomalous 13 percent increase in bulk modulus with increasing iron content, from Mg2SiO4 (184 gigapascals) to Fe2SiO4 (207 gigapascals). This result suggests that ferrous iron and magnesium, which behave similarly under crustal conditions, are chemically more distinct at high pressures characteristic of the transition zone and lower mantle.
Meditation practices for health: state of the research.

OBJECTIVES To review and synthesize the state of research on a variety of meditation practices, including: the specific meditation practices examined; the research designs employed and the conditions and outcomes examined; the efficacy and effectiveness of different meditation practices for the three most studied conditions; the role of effect modifiers on outcomes; and the effects of meditation on physiological and neuropsychological outcomes. DATA SOURCES Comprehensive searches were conducted in 17 electronic databases of medical and psychological literature up to September 2005. Other sources of potentially relevant studies included hand searches, reference tracking, contact with experts, and gray literature searches. REVIEW METHODS A Delphi method was used to develop a set of parameters to describe meditation practices. Included studies were comparative, on any meditation practice, had more than 10 adult participants, provided quantitative data on health-related outcomes, and published in English. Two independent reviewers assessed study relevance, extracted the data and assessed the methodological quality of the studies. RESULTS Five broad categories of meditation practices were identified (Mantra meditation, Mindfulness meditation, Yoga, Tai Chi, and Qi Gong). Characterization of the universal or supplemental components of meditation practices was precluded by the theoretical and terminological heterogeneity among practices. Evidence on the state of research in meditation practices was provided in 813 predominantly poor-quality studies. The three most studied conditions were hypertension, other cardiovascular diseases, and substance abuse. Sixty-five intervention studies examined the therapeutic effect of meditation practices for these conditions. Meta-analyses based on low-quality studies and small numbers of hypertensive participants showed that TM(R), Qi Gong and Zen Buddhist meditation significantly reduced blood pressure. Yoga helped reduce stress. Yoga was no better than Mindfulness-based Stress Reduction at reducing anxiety in patients with cardiovascular diseases. No results from substance abuse studies could be combined. The role of effect modifiers in meditation practices has been neglected in the scientific literature. The physiological and neuropsychological effects of meditation practices have been evaluated in 312 poor-quality studies. Meta-analyses of results from 55 studies indicated that some meditation practices produced significant changes in healthy participants. CONCLUSIONS Many uncertainties surround the practice of meditation. Scientific research on meditation practices does not appear to have a common theoretical perspective and is characterized by poor methodological quality. Firm conclusions on the effects of meditation practices in healthcare cannot be drawn based on the available evidence. Future research on meditation practices must be more rigorous in the design and execution of studies and in the analysis and reporting of results.
Higher Education and Employability of Graduates: Will Bologna Make a Difference?

This article focuses on the relationship between higher education, employability of graduates and students' satisfaction with their studies, drawing on European statistics, as well as on data collected at national and/or institutional level in Portugal and Sweden. Employability has been understood as a measure of higher education quality and one of the issues at stake within the Bologna process. Having this in mind, the authors try to answer three main questions: What was the baseline situation in the two countries concerning higher education systems, enrolment in higher education and graduate employability before 2007? Were students satisfied with their studies and professional job situation before 2007? Which trends is it possible to envisage — tendencies of enrolment, mobility, employment — after 2007? Data analysed allows these questions to be answered and provides an important comparison due to the fact that both countries started to implement the Bologna structure in 2007 and have quite different educational systems. The authors discuss if ‘Bologna’ makes a difference regarding graduate employability and students' satisfaction with their studies, and how the differences between the countries can be understood.
Do beliefs about aggression predict physical aggression to partners

Three hypotheses concerning the association between instrumental (I) and expressive (E) beliefs about aggression and physical aggression were assessed among a sample comprising students (n=40), women from a domestic violence shelter (n=29), and male prisoners (n=46), all of whom had committed at least one act of physical aggression to a partner. Participants completed an adapted version of the EXPAGG [Archer and Haigh (1997a): British Journal of Social Psychology 35:1–23] to measure I and E beliefs about aggression, the Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS) [Straus (1979): Journal of Marriage and the Family 41:75–88] for themselves and their partner, and measures of fear and injuries resulting from partner violence. I beliefs predicted self-reported physical aggression to the partner, most CTS acts of physical aggression, and injuries to the partner, with only minor and limited associations for E beliefs. Correlations for the student and prisoner samples, and for men and women, showed different strengths. The findings supported a general link between I beliefs and aggression but offered no support for the predictions that the link would be restricted to men or to men who showed a persistent pattern of violence to their partners. Aggr. Behav. 29:41–54, 2003. © 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc.