Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Unilateral Tinnitus: Changes in Connectivity and Response Lateralization Measured with fMRI

Tinnitus is a percept of sound that is not related to an acoustic source outside the body. For many forms of tinnitus, mechanisms in the central nervous system are believed to play a role in the pathology. In this work we specifically assessed possible neural correlates of unilateral tinnitus. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to investigate differences in sound-evoked neural activity between controls, subjects with left-sided tinnitus, and subjects with right-sided tinnitus. We assessed connectivity patterns between auditory nuclei and the lateralization of the sound-evoked responses. Interestingly, these response characteristics did not relate to the laterality of tinnitus. The lateralization for left- or right ear stimuli, as expressed in a lateralization index, was considerably smaller in subjects with tinnitus compared to that in controls, reaching significance in the right primary auditory cortex (PAC) and the right inferior colliculus (IC). Reduced functional connectivity between the brainstem and the cortex was observed in subjects with tinnitus. These differences are consistent with two existing models that relate tinnitus to i) changes in the corticothalamic feedback loops or ii) reduced inhibitory effectiveness between the limbic system and the thalamus. The vermis of the cerebellum also responded to monaural sound in subjects with unilateral tinnitus. In contrast, no cerebellar response was observed in control subjects. This suggests the involvement of the vermis of the cerebellum in unilateral tinnitus.
Mapping a creative symbiosis between the composer and the performer

Creative symbiosis is embodied in the artistic relationship between composers and performers regardless of the degree of collaboration. Since obligate symbiosis may refer to the whole community of composers and performers contributing to the existence of a musical composition fulfilling its life-cycle from the conception through to the performance, facultative symbiosis may exemplify those artists who willingly choose to connect and engage in a collaborative process. This research unfolds an informative examination of such facultative relationships where collaboration has been used as a persuasive tool for creativity. To unveil and understand the experience of usually hidden artistic processes (both creative and re-creative), an intervention of conceptual and cognitive tools has been applied. Effectively, each collaboration concludes in producing a physical evidence of a score and a recording; however, these elements only derive the outcome and do not determine the processes. The elaboration in a form of exegesis (Volume 2) containing the author’s retrospective view, working schedules, communication extracts and subjective commentary assists in further understanding of such interactions. It has been shown that central elements for examination of symbiotic relationship such as work-in-progress, a composer’s intentions and a performer’s expectations can affect the process of crystallisation of scores and performances. Furthermore, the roles of composer and performer have been factored to identify the exclusive creative aspects which also highlighted the common features and the ability to transit both contexts by a single individual. The methods employed in this research remain within those of qualitative inquiry including autoethnographical reflexive approach and action research. Those methods supported by partial analysis of scores and recordings, commentaries and interview transcripts assist in revealing of symbiotic circles, including the impact favourable environment and the importance of communication on multiple levels. A condensation of aspects, procedures and actions offers a systematic approach to self-observation which is transferable onto other collaborative cases.
THE LOW MOTIVATED FACTORS IN EXTENSIVE READING ACHIEVEMENT

The purpose of this study is to explain what are low motivated factors in extensive reading achievement. It is based on the problems that some students had a low motivation in extensive reading, and they had a problem with their motivation. The bad effect of that problems the students are lazy to read in or out of the classroom. To achieve the purpose of study, the writer used case study with the design descriptive case study. The research participants took from the students from the second semester who took the extensive reading class at English Department University of Wiralodra Indramayu. To get the data, the writer used questionnaire, observation and interview. The findings showed that there was an equal percentage 21 % who said that reading ability and attitudes toward reading as the factors made them low motivated in extensive reading. In line the findings, Day and Bamford (1998: 29) revealed that low level reading abilities would normally lower expectations of success and thus lower motivation to read. And then,26 % of students said that sociocultural environment made them low motivate in extensive reading. The last, the highest percentage was 32 % who said that materials made the students low motivated in extensive reading. Regarding the research findings, the lecturer should create an interesting and meaningful materials to increase students motivation and achievement in extensive reading.
Financial Distress Comparison Across Three Global Regions

Globalization has precipitated movement of output and employment between regions. We examine factors related to corporate financial distress across three continents. Using a multidimensional definition of financial distress we test three hypotheses to explain financial distress using historical financial data. A null hypothesis of a single global model was rejected in favor of a fully relaxed model which created individual financial distress models for each region. This result suggests that despite other indications of worldwide convergence, international differences in accounting rules, lending practices, managements skill levels, and legal requirements among others has kept corporate decline from becoming commoditized.
A BAC-Based Transgenic Mouse Specifically Expresses an Inducible Cre in the Urothelium

Cre-loxp mediated conditional knockout strategy has played critical roles for revealing functions of many genes essential for development, as well as the causal relationships between gene mutations and diseases in the postnatal adult mice. One key factor of this strategy is the availability of mice with tissue- or cell type-specific Cre expression. However, the success of the traditional molecular cloning approach to generate mice with tissue specific Cre expression often depends on luck. Here we provide a better alternative by using bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC)-based recombineering to insert iCreERT2 cDNA at the ATG start of the Upk2 gene. The BAC-based transgenic mice express the inducible Cre specifically in the urothelium as demonstrated by mRNA expression and staining for LacZ expression after crossing with a Rosa26 reporter mouse. Taking into consideration the size of the gene of interest and neighboring genes included in a BAC, this method should be widely applicable for generation of mice with tissue specific gene expression or deletions in a more specific manner than previously reported.
UNIBA: Distributional Semantics for Textual Similarity

We report the results of UNIBA participation in the first SemEval-2012 Semantic Textual Similarity task. Our systems rely on distributional models of words automatically inferred from a large corpus. We exploit three different semantic word spaces: Random Indexing (RI), Latent Semantic Analysis (LSA) over RI, and vector permutations in RI. Runs based on these spaces consistently outperform the baseline on the proposed datasets.
Investigating the motivation for enterprise education: a CaRBS based exposition

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate student motivation for undertaking an entrepreneurship education programme and their ultimate employment aspirations through a novel data mining technique. The study considered what relationship certain motivation characteristics have to students’ aspirations, specifically in terms of their intention to be self-employed or employed. Design/methodology/approach – The study examined enrolment data of 720 students on an entrepreneurial education programme, with work statuses of full-time, part-time or unemployed and have known aspirations to either employment or self-employment. The Classification and Ranking Belief Simplex (CaRBS) technique is employed in the classification analyses undertaken, which offers an uncertain reasoning based visual approach to the exposition of findings. Findings – The classification findings demonstrate the level of contribution of the different motivations to the discernment of students with self-employed and employed aspirations. The most contributing aspirations were Start-Up, Interests and Qualifications. For these aspirations, further understanding is provided with respect to gender and student age (in terms of the association with aspirations towards self-employed or employed). For example, with respect to Start-Up, the older the unemployed student, the increasing association with employment rather than self-employment career aspirations. Research limitations/implications – The study identifies candidate motivation and the demographic profile for student's undertaking an entrepreneurial education programme. Knowing applicant aspirations should inform course design, pedagogy and its inherent flexibility and recognise the specific needs of certain student groups. Originality/value – The study contributes to the literature examining motivations for undertaking entrepreneurship education and categorising motivating factors. These findings will be of value to both education providers and researchers.
Comparing design cognition of undergraduate engineering students and high school pre-engineering students

This paper presents the results of design cognition studies of two groups of students: high school juniors and seniors who have taken pre-engineering courses and sophomore university students in a mechanical engineering department. Both groups carried out design sessions designing for the same design challenge. Data were collected using the protocol analysis technique through video and audio recordings of design sessions. The students' design cognition was measured by segmenting and coding the transcribed videos using the Function-Behavior-Structure (FBS) ontologically-based design issues and design processes coding scheme that provides a uniform basis for analyzing design protocols. Differences in design cognition were found and tentative explanations provided to account for them.
Patterns of ERP Adoption and Implementation in China and Some Implications

Against a background of rapid change, this paper looks at recent experiences of adopting and implementing ERP. Of particular interest is the growing presence of domestic suppliers and, in this context, the implementation experiences of firms using domestic systems as well as the established international systems such as SAP. The research uses a combination of 20 mini-cases and a single in-depth case study and interprets these through a critical success factor perspective. The outcome confirms previous literature but contributes further by establishing the changing dynamic between international and domestic suppliers, the particular importance of training and employee retention, and the role of context in determining implementation factors.
Stage of development, governance and performance of inter-firm innovation cooperation: a conceptual model and propositions

This paper presents a framework for the dyadic study of inter-firm innovation cooperation, beyond the boundaries of collaborative innovation projects. In order to understand how two firms can maximize the performance of their relationship, we performed a literature review combined with interviews with practitioners. The result of this study is a model associated with propositions on the interactions between its different elements, which are (i) the governance of the relationship, (ii) its performance, (iii) its level of development and (iv) the degree of innovation of the collaborative projects. This paper concludes by suggesting future researches and stating implications for managers.
FuncICA for Time Series Pattern Discovery

We introduce FuncICA, a new independent component analysis method for pattern discovery in inherently functional data, such as time series data. We show how applying the dual of temporal ICA to temporal data, and likewise applying the dual of spatiotemporal ICA to spatiotemporal data, enables independent component regularization not afforded by the primal forms applied to their original domains. We call this family of regularized dual ICA algorithms FuncICA. FuncICA can be considered an analog to functional principal component analysis, where instead of extracting components to minimize L2 reconstruction error, we maximize independence of the components over the functional observations. In this work, we develop an algorithm for extracting independent component curves, derive a method for optimally smoothing the curves, and validate this method on both synthetic and real datasets. Results for synthetic, gene expression, and electroencephalographic event-related potential data indicate that FuncICA can recover well-known scientific phenomena and improve classification accuracy, highlighting its utility for unsupervised learning in continuous data. We conclude this work with a forward-looking, novel framework for fMRI data analysis by making use of the functional dual of spatiotemporal ICA.
Moving Toward “Impact-Adjusted” Financial Returns

This forum was developed in the spirit of building bridges between evaluation and impact measurement so that the two fields can learn from each other. In these concluding remarks, we aim to highlight and critique the main points exposed by the other contributors. In doing so, we include reflections from our own experience of working on impact measurement in a European and Global context and are thereby able to either validate or provide a better informed critique of the contributions. Finally, we provide a vision for the impact investment field where the professionalization of impact measurement and evaluation offer the necessary tools to assess social impact–adjusted financial returns. Reisman, Olazabal, and Hoffman’s contribution challenges the impact-investing sector to take measuring and managing impact seriously. Impact investing is a relatively recent phenomenon that has gained traction with the inflow of capital from foundations and high net-worth individuals and more recently from institutional investors and public administration. It is likely that impact investing continues to gain in importance, with over 40% of family offices planning to increase their allocations to impact investments in the next year (UBS & Campden Wealth, 2017). As with any new sector, efforts to collect data on its evolution and results have developed from sporadic to more systematic. However, academic studies are still lacking in both quantity and quality (Daggers & Nicholls, 2016), and industry surveys, although commendable attempts to increase transparency in this emergent sector have focused mostly on financial return data (Cambridge Associates & GIIN, 2015; Gray, Ashburn, Douglas, & Jeffers, 2016) as well as on the practices underlying the work (Boiardi & Gianoncelli, 2016). The authors highlight the need for studies that include both financial return and social impact data. Indeed, if impact investors are serious about impact (and not just investment), they need to work harder on measuring impact and collecting and reporting impact data. Reports that show financial data decoupled from social impact (and risk) fail to take into account the double-bottom line, complex reality of impact investors. Some of the pioneers of the impact investment sector, including Sir Ronald Cohen, have called for a new paradigm for investment that takes into consideration risk, return, and impact. Collaboration
The Transmission of Energy-Saving Behaviors in the Family: A Multilevel Approach to the Assessment of Aggregated and Single Energy-Saving Actions of Parents and Adolescents

The present article examines the transmission of energy-saving behaviors in the family on two levels. We investigated the extent to which energy-saving performance differed between adolescents in relation to parental behavior on an aggregated level but also across single behaviors within adolescents. Furthermore, we investigated whether social context (e.g., private areas in a household) interfered with one of the basic mechanisms assumed for this transmission (observation). Correlations between 13 self-reported single energy-saving behaviors from 264 adolescents and their respective parents (N = 554) were analyzed by combining a path analysis with a multilevel approach. There were strong significant correlations between parents’ and adolescents’ energy-saving behaviors, mediated by adolescents’ perceptions of their parents’ behavior. The congruence between parents’ self-reports and adolescents’ perceptions was lower in private contexts than in shared social contexts in the household. This indicates that differentiated investigations with single behaviors and a focus on the social context (e.g., observability) are needed in transmission research.
Simple cosmological model with relativistic gas

We construct simple and useful approximation for the relativistic gas of massive particles. The equation of state is given by an elementary function and admits analytic solution of the Friedmann equation, including more complex cases when the relativistic gas of massive particles is considered together with radiation or with dominating cosmological constant. The model of relativistic gas may be interesting for the description of primordial Universe, especially as a candidate for the role of a Dark Matter.
Dynamic Changes in Pancreatic Endocrine Cell Abundance, Distribution, and Function in Antigen-Induced and Spontaneous Autoimmune Diabetes

OBJECTIVE Insulin deficiency in type 1 diabetes and in rodent autoimmune diabetes models is caused by β-cell–specific killing by autoreactive T-cells. Less is known about β-cell numbers and phenotype remaining at diabetes onset and the fate of other pancreatic endocrine cellular constituents. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS We applied multicolor flow cytometry, confocal microscopy, and immunohistochemistry, supported by quantitative RT-PCR, to simultaneously track pancreatic endocrine cell frequencies and phenotypes during a T-cell–mediated β-cell–destructive process using two independent autoimmune diabetes models, an inducible autoantigen-specific model and the spontaneously diabetic NOD mouse. RESULTS The proportion of pancreatic insulin-positive β-cells to glucagon-positive α-cells was about 4:1 in nondiabetic mice. Islets isolated from newly diabetic mice exhibited the expected severe β-cell depletion accompanied by phenotypic β-cell changes (i.e., hypertrophy and degranulation), but they also revealed a substantial loss of α-cells, which was further confirmed by quantitative immunohistochemisty. While maintaining normal randomly timed serum glucagon levels, newly diabetic mice displayed an impaired glucagon secretory response to non–insulin-induced hypoglycemia. CONCLUSIONS Systematically applying multicolor flow cytometry and immunohistochemistry to track declining β-cell numbers in recently diabetic mice revealed an altered endocrine cell composition that is consistent with a prominent and unexpected islet α-cell loss. These alterations were observed in induced and spontaneous autoimmune diabetes models, became apparent at diabetes onset, and differed markedly within islets compared with sub–islet-sized endocrine cell clusters and among pancreatic lobes. We propose that these changes are adaptive in nature, possibly fueled by worsening glycemia and regenerative processes.
Binaural beats enhance alpha wave activity, memory, and *attention in healthy-aging seniors

Binaural Beats Enhance Alpha Wave Aetivity, M emory, and Attention in Healthy Aging Seniors by Janice Colleen McMurray Dr. Karen A. Kemtes, Examination Committee Chair Professor o f Psyehology University o f Nevada, Las Vegas Human aging will be one o f the biggest ehallenges we face during this century and optimizing health for the rapidly growing older population is imperative to avoid end o f life suffering. Uneovering stimuli and methods that may enhance memory and attentional focus in the aging brain has become a priority. Current research demonstrates a conneetion between neurocognitive decline in seniors over 65 years and deficits in alpha frequency brainwave aetivity. Studies indieate that specific auditory tones have a signifieant effect on our brainwaves and provide a positive influenee. These tones have been defined as alpha-harmonic sound patterns and they are called binaural beats. When tones o f two different frequencies are presented separately to each ear, the superior olivary nuclei within the medulla o f the brainstem synthesize the two sounds into a single, pereeived, low frequency tone, the hinaural beat. The binaural beat pulses with the overall frequency o f the difference between the two original tones. If the difference matches a particular brainwave state, such as 7-11 Hertz (Hz), the alpha
On the Complexity of Sphere Decoding for Differential Detection

Multiple-symbol differential detection (MSDD) for multiple-input-multiple-output Rayleigh-fading channels is considered. MSDD, which jointly processes blocks of N received symbols to detect N-1 data symbols, allows for power-efficient transmission without requiring channel state information at the receiver. In previous work, the authors showed that computational efficient sphere decoding algorithms can be used to accomplish MSDD. In this correspondence, the computational complexity of this sphere-decoding based MSDD is analyzed. In particular, it is proven by means of a lower bound that the complexity of the Fincke-Pohst multiple-symbol differential sphere decoder (FP-MSDSD), while being very low over wide ranges of N and signal-to-noise ratios, is exponential in N in principle. Furthermore, both exact and simple approximate expressions for the complexity of FP-MSDSD are derived, which allow for quick assessment of ranges of useful window sizes N of FP-MSDSD and show that the exponential rate of growth of the complexity of FP-MSDSD is asymptotically equal to that of brute-force MSDD
Examining psychological capital of optimism, self-efficacy and self-monitoring as predictors of attitude towards organizational change

This study ascertains whether three positive organizational behaviour capacities (optimism, self-efficacy and self-monitoring) predict attitude towards organizational change. Design of this study was cross-sectional, and data were collected with self-report measure. One hundred sixty-nine employees were drawn from 21 organizations in Delta State, Nigeria. The participants were made of 108 (64%) females and 61 (36%) males, with the mean age of 40.21 years (SD, 9.13). Simple regression analysis revealed that optimism, self-efficacy, and self-monitoring, positively and significantly predicted attitude towards organizational change. While multiple regression analysis revealed that only self-efficacy positively and significantly contributed to attitude towards organizational change. It was concluded that the predictors influence employees’ attitude towards organizational change with self-efficacy contributing the highest influence to organizational change attitude. It was recommended that for successful employees change acceptance, optimism, self-efficacy and self-monitoring should be structured into policies and strategies for organizational implementation.