Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Good vibrations, bad vibrations: Oscillatory brain activity in the attentional blink

The attentional blink (AB) is a deficit in reporting the second (T2) of two targets (T1, T2) when presented in close temporal succession and within a stream of distractor stimuli. The AB has received a great deal of attention in the past two decades because it allows to study the mechanisms that influence the rate and depth of information processing in various setups and therefore provides an elegant way to study correlates of conscious perception in supra-threshold stimuli. Recently evidence has accumulated suggesting that oscillatory signals play a significant role in temporally coordinating information between brain areas. This review focuses on studies looking into oscillatory brain activity in the AB. The results of these studies indicate that the AB is related to modulations in oscillatory brain activity in the theta, alpha, beta, and gamma frequency bands. These modulations are sometimes restricted to a circumscribed brain area but more frequently include several brain regions. They occur before targets are presented as well as after the presentation of the targets. We will argue that the complexity of the findings supports the idea that the AB is not the result of a processing impairment in one particular process or brain area, but the consequence of a dynamic interplay between several processes and/or parts of a neural network.
Intergroup Differences and Its Impact on Professional Exchanges

Intergroup Differences and Its Impact on Professional Exchanges. (August 2012) Eddie Muzquiz Rodriguez, B.S., St. Mary’s University; M.Ed., Our Lady of the Lake University Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. Jean Madsen The purpose of this study was to examine how misperceptions of intergroup differences affect the working and professional relationships among Hispanic teachers, European American (White) teachers, and European American (White) administrators in urban schools. As this was an exploratory study to examine the professional exchanges among racio-ethnically diverse groups of teachers and administrators, a qualitative case study methodology was used to collect and report the data for the study. This case study approach was helpful in examining administrators’ and teachers’ perceptions of intergroup conflict and how these cultural differences affected their exchanges. The data were collected through interviews and through observations made while attending various school functions, such as faculty meetings. The study took place in two urban public schools in South Central Texas, each with a European American administrator, Hispanic teachers, and European American teachers. Included in this study were 14 teachers, 7 European American and 7 Hispanic, two principals, and four assistant principals who participated in two focus groups to validate the teachers’ responses.
Professional learning communities: building skills, reinvigorating the passion, and nurturing teacher wellbeing and “flourishing” within significantly innovative schooling contexts

Student-driven “deep learning”, teachers as “coaches” and “activators of learning” and positive student–teacher relationships are all part of the changing and significantly innovative educational landscape which requires considerable pedagogical change in teaching and learning processes. Teacher professional learning communities (PLCs) have been recognised as highly effective in supporting teachers in changing their beliefs and practices. There is considerable agreement about the characteristics of PLCs and there seem to be links with positive psychology’s wellbeing and “flourishing” key concepts although there has been little research undertaken about this. The current research aims to explore these connections using case studies of three significantly innovative schools, with research methods including document study, surveys, interviews and focus groups. Research findings and data analysis undertaken highlight the PLC characteristics and positive psychology connections. The paper concludes by highlighting the benefits for schools and education systems of developing a greater understanding of PLCs, through using the lens of positive psychology. Through positive psychology elements such as nurturing positive emotion and a greater sense of purpose for teachers within PLCs, there are benefits for teacher professional learning but also potentially for student learning and wellbeing.
Attention bias to threat in maltreated children: implications for vulnerability to stress-related psychopathology.

OBJECTIVE Previous research in adults implicates attention bias in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). To study attention bias in children, the authors used picture-based versions of the visual-probe attention bias task previously used with adults. They tested the hypothesis that attention bias to threatening facial photographs is associated with maltreatment and PTSD. METHOD A visual-probe task that manipulated threat levels was used to test 34 children who had been maltreated and 21 children who had not been maltreated. The visual-probe task involved showing photographs of actors with faces depicting neutral, angry/threatening, or happy expressions for 500 msec each. RESULTS Attention bias away from threat was associated with severity of physical abuse and diagnosis of PTSD. This association reflected the tendency for high levels of abuse or PTSD to predict attention avoidance of threatening faces. CONCLUSIONS Previous studies examined the engagement of specific brain regions associated with attention orientation to angry/threatening faces. The current study used similar methods to document associations between attention bias and maltreatment in children. This sets the stage for studies examining relationships in children among perturbed brain function, psychopathology, attention bias, and maltreatment.
THE STRUCTURE OF GOSSIP: OPPORTUNITIES AND CONSTRAINTS ON COLLECTIVE EXPRESSION AMONG ADOLESCENTS*

Previous studies of gossip among adolescents have found a strong tendency toward consensus and negative evaluation in gossip episodes. However, few attempts have been made to examine the actual structure of this common speech activity. We recorded and analyzed 16 gossip episodes that occurred in adolescent conversations in a middle school setting. We used a combination of ETHNO and sociolinguistic analysis to examine the overall ordering of acts in the gossip episodes. Ourfindings reveal a gossip structure among adolescents that promotes the expression of negative evaluations - there are many opportunities to express support and limited opportunities to challenge a negative evaluation. We alsofind that gossip has a flexible structure but that the ordering of acts is critical. In particular, the first response to an initial evaluation strongly influenced subsequent responses. These findings highlight the importance of examining how evaluations develop in gossip and encourages a broader approach to the study of power in discourse which includes the power inherent in responses.
Visual and eye movement functions of the posterior parietal cortex.

Lesions of the posterior parietal area in humans produce interesting spatial-perceptual and spatial-behavioral deficits. Among the more important deficits observed are loss of spatial memories, problems representing spatial relations in models or drawings, disturbances in the spatial distribution of attention, and the inability to localize visual targets. Posterior parietal lesions in nonhuman primates also produce visual spatial deficits not unlike those found in humans. Mountcastle and his colleagues were the first to explore this area, using single cell recording techniques in behaving monkeys over 13 years ago. Subsequent work by Mountcastle, Lynch and colleagues, Hyvarinen and colleagues, Robinson, Goldberg & Stanton, and Sakata and colleagues during the period of the late 1970s and early 1980s provided an informational and conceptual foundation for exploration of this fascinating area of the brain. Four new directions of research that are presently being explored from this foundation are reviewed in this article. 1. The anatomical and functional organization of the inferior parietal lobule is presently being investigated with neuroanatomical tracing and single cell recording techniques. This area is now known to be comprised of at least four separate cortical fields. 2. Neural mechanisms for spatial constancy are being explored. In area 7a information about eye position is found to be integrated with visual inputs to produce representations of visual space that are head-centered (the meaning of a head-centered coordinate system is explained on p. 13). 3. The role of the posterior parietal cortex, and the pathways projecting into this region, in processing information about motion in the visual world is under investigation. Visual areas within the posterior parietal cortex may play a role in extracting higher level motion information including the perception of structure-from-motion. 4. A previously unexplored area within the intraparietal sulcus has been found whose cells hold a representation in memory of planned eye movements. Special experimental protocols have shown that these cells code the direction and amplitude of intended movements in motor coordinates and suggest that this area plays a role in motor planning.
Statistics Notes: Diagnostic tests 2: predictive values

The whole point of a diagnostic test is to use it to make a diagnosis, so we need to know the probability that the test will give the correct diagnosis. The sensitivity and specificity1 do not give us this information. Instead we must approach the data from the direction of the test results, using predictive values. Positive predictive value is the proportion of patients with positive test results who are correctly diagnosed. Negative predictive value is the proportion of patients with negative test results who are correctly diagnosed. Using the same data as in the previous note,1 we know that 231 of 263 patients with abnormal liver scans had abnormal pathology, giving the proportion of correct diagnoses as 231/263 = 0.88. …
Physical characterization of SCP1, a giant linear plasmid from Streptomyces coelicolor

SCP1, coding for the methylenomycin biosynthesis genes in Streptomyces coelicolor, was shown to be a giant linear plasmid of 350 kb with a copy number of about four by analysis with pulsed-field gel electrophoresis. A detailed physical map of SCP1 was constructed by extensive digestion with six restriction endonucleases, by DNA hybridization experiments, and finally by cloning experiments. SCP1 has unusually long terminal inverted repeats of 80 kb on both ends and an insertion sequence at the end of the right terminal inverted repeat. Analysis by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis in agarose containing sodium dodecyl sulfate revealed that a protein is bound to the terminal 4.1-kb SpeI fragments derived from both ends of SCP1. Treatment with lambda exonuclease or exonuclease III and SpeI digestion also indicated that the 5' ends of SCP1 are attached to a protein.
Using Yelp to Find Romance in the City: A Case of Restaurants in Four Cities

Romantic relationships are an understudied aspect of cities and the built environment. Yet, restaurants continue to attract couples and augment the landscape with visible signs of affection at a table for two---or more. User-generated content (UGC) of restaurant reviews from online review site Yelp (http://yelp.com) provide text on romantic keywords such as "date", "love", "boyfriend", "wife", "anniversary", "family" by geolocated restaurants. We use these to distinguish restaurants and discover features of restaurants associated with various romantic keywords. These features include restaurant ratings and location, as well as comments about the ambiance, food, service, etc. Using data from the Yelp Dataset Challenge in U.S. cities Charlotte, NC, Las Vegas, NM, Phoenix, AZ, and Pittsburgh, PA, we employ different data mining and correlation tools as well as GIS modeling to learn more about what types of romantic relationships use which parts of the city, and how their choices of restaurants differ by relationship stage. We find that families prefer restaurants that are outside of the central business district (CBD), have good service and high-rated food, while couples---married or dating---prefer hot spots with great ambiance for nightlife. We also find that inexpensive food is not associated with romantic dates, and the quality of service also plays a secondary role to a "classy" and "cozy" atmosphere.
Egress Online: Towards Leveraging Massively, Multiplayer Environments for Evacuation Studies

Large datasets of real human behaviors are of huge benefit across numerous domains, including evacuation safety, urban planning, marketing, and ergonomics. However, because large-scale experiments involving real human subjects are expensive and prohibitively difficult to organize, such datasets are scarce. Thus in this paper, we propose the use of massively multiplayer online (MMO) communities as an inexpensive and innovative way to capture datasets of large numbers of people under different conditions. We describe our implementation of an online data collection system, based on games, inside the popular massively multiplayer, online environment of Second Life. We evaluate the use of this system for performing evacuation experiments using a mix of Second Life residents and players recruited on campus. Our system was able to draw online participants, support data collection needs, and provide potential insights into high-level evacuation behaviors such as the choices of exit, effects of building debris, and the use-patterns of a building. Through experiments performed using our system, we found that Second Life residents found the game controls and environment to be significantly more compelling than lab participants; that players unfamiliar with our office building tended to evacuate primiraily via the front entrance; and that in-game debris significantly increased the numbers of participants who failed to exit a building safely. 1alinen@seas.upenn. edu 2drake@seas.upenn. edu
The effects of glucose and lipids in steatotic and non‐steatotic livers in conditions of partial hepatectomy under ischaemia‐reperfusion

Steatosis is a risk factor in partial hepatectomy (PH) under ischaemia‐reperfusion (I/R), which is commonly applied in clinical practice to reduce bleeding. Nutritional support strategies, as well as the role of peripheral adipose tissue as energy source for liver regeneration, remain poorly investigated.
MYCN-amplified stage 2/3 neuroblastoma: excellent survival in the era of anti-GD2 immunotherapy

High-risk neuroblastoma (HR-NB) includes MYCN-amplified stage 2/3, but reports covering anti-GD2 immunotherapy, which recently became standard for HR-NB, do not provide details on this subset. We now report on all 20 MYCN-amplified stage 2/3 patients who received induction chemotherapy at our center during the era of consolidation with anti-GD2 antibody 3F8/ granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) (2000-2015). Early in this period, consolidation included autologous stem-cell transplantation (ASCT). Event-free survival (EFS) and overall survival (OS) were estimated using Kaplan-Meier analyses. With induction, 19/20 (95%) patients achieved complete/very good partial remission (CR/VGPR) but one had progressive disease with early death. One responder did not receive consolidation and died of relapse. Five-year post-diagnosis EFS/OS rates for all 20 patients were 72%/84%. The 18 CR/VGPR patients who received consolidation had EFS/OS 81%/94% at five years from starting 3F8/GM-CSF: 4/4 ASCT patients remained relapse-free, while 11/14 non-ASCT patients remained relapse-free and two of the three relapsed patients achieved 2nd CR (consolidated by retreatment with 3F8/GM-CSF) and remained in 2nd CR at 36+ and 95+ months post-relapse. The 14 non-ASCT patients had EFS/OS 73.5%/93% at five years from starting 3F8/GM-CSF. This subset appears to have a good prognosis with contemporary multi-modality therapy, possibly even without ASCT.
Phase I and pharmacokinetic study of paclitaxel in combination with biricodar, a novel agent that reverses multidrug resistance conferred by overexpression of both MDR1 and MRP.

PURPOSE To evaluate the feasibility of administering biricodar (VX-710; Incel, Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc, Cambridge, MA), an agent that modulates multidrug resistance (MDR) conferred by overexpression of both the multidrug resistance gene product (MDR1) P-glycoprotein and the MDR-associated protein (MRP) in vitro, in combination with paclitaxel. The study also sought to determine the maximum-tolerated dose (MTD) of paclitaxel that could be administered with biologically relevant concentrations of VX-710 and characterize the toxicologic and pharmacologic profiles of the VX-710/ paclitaxel regimen. PATIENTS AND METHODS Patients with solid malignancies were initially treated with VX-710 as a 24-hour infusion at doses that ranged from 10 to 120 mg/m2 per hour. After a 2-day washout period, patients were re-treated with VX-710 on an identical dose schedule followed 8 hours later by paclitaxel as a 3-hour infusion at doses that ranged from 20 to 80 mg/m2. The pharmacokinetics of both VX-710 and paclitaxel were studied during treatment with VX-710 alone and VX-710 and paclitaxel. Thereafter, patients received VX-710 and paclitaxel every 3 weeks. RESULTS VX-710 alone produced minimal toxicity. The toxicologic profile of the VX-710/paclitaxel regimen was similar to that reported with paclitaxel alone; neutropenia that was noncumulative was the principal dose-limiting toxicity (DLT). The MTD levels of VX-710/ paclitaxel were 120 mg/m2 per hour and 60 mg/m2, respectively, in heavily pretreated patients and 120/60 to 80 mg/m2 per hour in less heavily pretreated patients. At these dose levels, VX-710 steady-state plasma concentrations (Css) ranged from 2.68 to 4.89 microg/mL, which exceeded optimal VX-710 concentrations required for MDR reversal in vitro. The pharmacokinetics of VX-710 were dose independent and not influenced by paclitaxel. In contrast, VX-710 reduced paclitaxel clearance. At the two highest dose levels, which consisted of VX-710 120 mg/m2 per hour and paclitaxel 60 and 80 mg/m2, pertinent pharacokinetic determinants of paclitaxel effect were similar to those achieved with paclitaxel as a 3-hour infusion at doses of 135 and 175 mg/m2, respectively. CONCLUSION VX-710 alone is associated with minimal toxicity. In combination with paclitaxel, biologically relevant VX-710 plasma concentrations are achieved and sustained for 24 hours, which simulates optimal pharmacologic conditions required for MDR reversal in vitro. The acceptable toxicity profile of the VX-710/ paclitaxel combination and the demonstration that optimal pharmacologic conditions for MDR reversal are achievable support a rationale for further trials of VX710/paclitaxel in patients with malignancies that are associated with de novo or acquired resistance to paclitaxel caused by overexpression of MDR1 and/or MRP.
Leveraging the linkedin social network data for extracting content-based user profiles

In the last years, hundreds of social networks sites have been launched with both professional (e.g., LinkedIn) and non-professional (e.g., MySpace, Facebook) orientations. This resulted in a renewed information overload problem, but it also provided a new and unforeseen way of gathering useful, accurate and constantly updated information about user interests and tastes. Content-based recommender systems can leverage the wealth of data emerging by social networks for building user profiles in which representations of the user interests are maintained. The idea proposed in this paper is to extract content-based user profiles from the data available in the LinkedIn social network, to have an image of the users' interests that can be used to recommend interesting academic research papers. A preliminary experiment provided interesting results which deserve further attention.
Urea-phenol-formaldehyde micro capsules containing linseed oil for self-healing anti corrosive coating applications

Novel self-repairing Urea-Phenol-Formaldehyde (UPF) microcapsules containing linseed oil were prepared via in-situ polymerization in an oil-in-water emulsion. The main purpose of encapsulation is to control the release of linseed oil, when external conditions such as mechanical stress or energy cause microcapsules to break. These controlled release mechanisms of linseed oil make them suitable for application in self-healing coatings. Chemical structure analyses of microcapsules were studied by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), optical microscopy and scanning electron microscopy for their structural & morphological illustrations. Controllable particle sizes were determined under optical microscope and as well using particle size analyzer. To determine the healing efficiency, the microcapsules, were incorporated in the epoxy coatings in varying proportions. The effects of the same on anti-corrosion performance was carried out in 5% NaCl aqueous solution (ASTM B117) and Decreasing trend of pencil hardness, scratch hardness, Impact resistance with the increase in concentration of microcapsules was observed. Chemical resistance could also be attributed to the presence of aromatic structures in epoxy which impart chemical stability. Secondary hydroxyl moiety in epoxy chain forms hydrogen bonding with the metal substrate that would contribute to good adhesive forces. Epoxy coatings incorporated with microcapsules showed better corrosion resistance than neat epoxy coating, where neat epoxy coating showed rust and spreading of rust observed on tested panel. Mechanical properties decreased on incorporating microcapsules into epoxy matrix, hence development of mechanical properties without effecting the corrosion properties shall be studied further. Copyright © 2016 VBRI Press.
Risk factors for acquisition of multidrug-resistant Escherichia coli and development of community-acquired urinary tract infections

SUMMARY We examined risk factors associated with the intestinal acquisition of antimicrobial-resistant extraintestinal pathogenic Escherichia coli (ExPEC) and development of community-acquired urinary tract infection (UTI) in a case-control study of young women across Canada. A total of 399 women were recruited; 164 women had a UTI caused by E. coli resistant to ⩾1 antimicrobial classes and 98 had a UTI caused by E. coli resistant to ⩾3 antimicrobial classes. After adjustment for age, student health service (region of Canada) and either prior antibiotic use or UTI history, consumption of processed or ground chicken, cooked or raw shellfish, street foods and any organic fruit; as well as, contact with chickens, dogs and pet treats; and travel to Asia, were associated with an increased risk of UTI caused by antimicrobial resistant E. coli. A decreased risk of antimicrobial resistant UTI was associated with consumption of apples, nectarines, peppers, fresh herbs, peanuts and cooked beef. Drug-resistant UTI linked to foodborne and environmental exposures may be a significant public health concern and understanding the risk factors for intestinal acquisition of existing or newly emerging lineages of drug-resistant ExPEC is important for epidemiology, antimicrobial stewardship and prevention efforts.