Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Individual differences in visual perception and memory

There is substantial variation in perception and memory in humans. There are individuals who cannot see red at all, and there are individuals who hear colors and taste words. What determines the differences and similarities between individuals' perception and memory? Can we characterize the neural and genetic bases as well as the environmental causes of variation in perception and memory? This thesis aimed to explore the range of variation in perception and memory, the neural basis of this variation and whether training can alter perception and memory, focusing on visual perception and memory. The overall conclusion from the research presented in this thesis is that individual differences in both visual perception and memory ability are reflected in brain function and structure in related networks to a certain degree. In addition, the results suggested that perceptual training paradigms have behavioral benefits and genes can influence the effect of perceptual training on brain function. To what extent differences in perception and memory abilities can be reliably predicted from brain function and structure at the individual level remains an open question for future research.
Do Low‐Risk Sexual Offenders Need Treatment?

The risk principle of offender rehabilitation states that the intensity of treatment should be proportional to the offender's risk. This article reviews the evidence base for the risk principle with sexual offenders, as well as identifying other arguments, in order to determine whether low‐risk sexual offenders need treatment, and of what type and magnitude. We conclude that low‐risk sexual offenders probably need no more than 100 hours of offence‐focused treatment given their very low reconviction rates. Low‐risk sexual offenders should be kept separate from higher‐risk offenders, and treatment should not interfere with other activities that will enable a non‐offending lifestyle.
Is hindsight better than blindsight?

Has there ever been the perfect experiment? If so many psychophysical experiments are flawed, why bother? One reason that motivates many of us to study behavior with imperfect designs is that our imperfections will usually differ from one set of experiments to another, thus allowing a convergence to the understanding of the common underlying mechanisms. Which explanation of a body of data should we pick the one that attributes all of the results to a variety of possible artifacts, or the one that helps us to formulate better our understanding of basic brain mechanisms? Of course scattered light can provide a cue to aid performance, as Campion et al. show. But do they prove that the use of this one cue is sufficient to explain away much of the data more parsimoniously than such a simple and helpful concept as the "two visual systems"? Certainly several commentators must have defended their results against stray-light criticism. It is hard for me (Richards 1973) to give a stray-light explanation for the improvement of stereopsis as one-half of a stereo pair moves further into the blind field (from % deg to lVfc deg); or for why dark bars presented against a bright surround are more effective than light bars against a gray surround or, perhaps more dramatically, for why simply altering the hand that pushes a button to trigger the "unseen" stereo flash should invert the stero response, causing convergent stimuli to appear divergent, or vice versa. Is it more revealing to interpret these strange results in terms of residual cortex and stray light, rather than in terms of a two visual system notion? I prefer the latter route not only because the stray-light hypothesis appears unnecessarily convoluted in these examples, but also because these psychophysical results fit into my understanding of midbrain vision and sensory-motor mappings. Such results help us to formulate better the differences between cortical and subcortical vision. They invite comparisons with inversions in visual sensitivity often seen when symmetric locations about the midline are explored (Poppel & Richards 1974; Richards & Poppel 1972; Sprague 1966). In sum, one set of experiments on humans or other animals demonstrating a behavior, whether it be to scattered light or to "unseen" flashes, usually proves little by itself. Rather, it is the evolving collection of experimental results that must be interpreted and evaluated. Eventually, a pattern becomes clear and the basic underlying mechanism emerges, as it has for the two visual systems. The problem is no longer to prove blindsight but rather to use it as a tool to understand vision.
Women Use Red in Order to Attract Mates

Among certain non-human primates, the red-colored genitalia of females are a sexual ornament and attract males. The preference for red clothes among women is at times explained as being a parallel. We used here a within-individual design to investigate the signaling role of the color red with a sample of Slovak participants. As expected, women preferred red clothing both in real-life and would-be situations more than men. The preference for red (but not for other colors) in mating game scenarios was only significant for women, but not for men. A preference for the color red was shown in particular for clothes on the upper parts of the participants’ bodies, irrespective of gender. Women who were actually involved in a romantic sexual relationship had a preference for red in would-be situations more than single women, although the menstrual cycle, the total number of lifetime sexual partners, and self-perceived attractiveness were not associated with the preference for the color red. Our results support the sexual signaling hypothesis which suggests that women use the color red to attract potential mates in a similar way as non-human primates.
Top-Level Agency Creatives Look at Advertising Creativity Then and Now

Abstract Influential writings suggest that today's advertising is not as creative as it used to be. To explore this suggestion, the authors asked top-level agency creatives whether they believe creativity has improved, declined, or remained unchanged since they entered the advertising business. Respondents' opinions then were grouped and compared by agreement / disagreement ratings on a series of statements associated with factors previously identified as responsible for advertising's presumed creative decline. From the perspective of the top-level agency creatives, creativity in today's advertising has not declined—in fact, the overwhelming majority view is that advertising is now more creative than it was when they entered the business, or at least as good. In their eyes, certain aspects of advertising creativity have changed, though not always in the direction predicted in previous writings. With one exception, agency creatives' opinions about advertising creativity then and now were unvarying, regardl.
Information-Theoretic Approaches for Measuring the Structural Similarity of Semistructured Documents

We propose and experimentally evaluate different approaches for measuring the structural similarity of semistructured documents based on informationtheoretic concepts. Common to all approaches is a twostep procedure: first we extract and linearize the structural information from documents and then we use similarity measures that are based on, respectively, Kolmogorov complexity and Shannon entropy to determine the distance between the documents. Compared to other approaches, we are able to achieve a linear run time complexity and demonstrate in an experimental evaluation that the results of our technique in terms of clustering quality are on a par with or even better than those of other, slower approaches.
Happiness and Students’ Performance in Quantitative Subjects – A Preliminary Study

This preliminary study examines undergraduates’ perceptions of happiness and quantitative subjects, as well as the relationship between the two. University students tend to be happier when they are satisfied with their studies, have good relationships with family and friends, possess good time management, active in extra-curricular activities, have good balance between work and play and are in good health. Despite the perceived difficulty, most students do not find quantitative courses as boring and tend to develop interest in those subjects depending on the teaching styles of their course instructors. While correlation analysis gave expected results on students’ insights, the regression estimates reveal a negative relationship between happiness and achievements in quantitative subjects.
Iron loading in HFE p.C282Y homozygotes found by population screening: relationships to HLA-type and T-lymphocyte subsets

Abstract Iron loading in p.C282Y homozygous HFE hemochromatosis subjects is highly variable, and it is unclear what factors cause this variability. Finding such factors could aid in predicting which patients are at highest risk and require closest follow-up. The degree of iron loading has previously been associated with certain HLA-types and with abnormally low CD8 + cell counts in peripheral blood. In 183 Norwegian, p.C282Y homozygotes (104 men, 79 women) originally found through population screening we determined HLA type and measured total T-lymphocytes, CD4 + and CD8 + cells, and compared this with data on iron loading. In p.C282Y homozygous men, but not in homozygous women, we found that the presence of two HLA-A*03 alleles increased the iron load on average by approximately 2-fold compared to p.C282Y homozygous men carrying zero or one A*03 allele. On the other hand, the presence of two HLA-A*01 alleles, in male subjects, apparently reduced the iron loading. In p.C282Y homozygous individuals, the iron loading was increased if the CD8 + cell number was below the 25 percentile or if the CD4 + cell number was above the 75 percentile. This effect appeared to be additive to the effect of the number of HLA-A*03 alleles. Our data indicate that homozygosity for the HLA-A*03 allele significantly increases the risk of excessive iron loading in Norwegian p.C282Y homozygous male patients. In addition, low CD8 + cell number or high CD4 + cell number further increases the risk of excessive iron loading.
Resting State fMRI Reveals Increased Subthalamic Nucleus and Sensorimotor Cortex Connectivity in Patients with Parkinson’s Disease under Medication

Functional connectivity (FC) between the subthalamic nucleus (STN) and the sensorimotor cortex is increased in off-medication patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD). However, the status of FC between STN and sensorimotor cortex in on-medication PD patients remains unclear. In this study, resting state functional magnetic resonance imaging was employed on 31 patients with PD under medication and 31 healthy controls. Two-sample t-test was used to study the change in FC pattern of the STN, the FC strength of the bilateral STN was correlated with overall motor symptoms, while unilateral STN was correlated with offside motor symptoms. Both bilateral and right STN showed increased FC with the right sensorimotor cortex, whereas only right STN FC was correlated with left-body rigidity scores in all PD patients. An additional subgroup analysis was performed according to the ratio of mean tremor scores and mean postural instability and gait difficulty (PIGD) scores, only the PIGD subgroup showed the increased FC between right STN and sensorimotor cortex under medication. Increased FC between the STN and the sensorimotor cortex was found, which was related to motor symptom severity in on-medication PD patients. Anti-PD drugs may influence the hyperdirect pathway to alleviate motor symptoms with the more effect on the tremor subtype.
Student Antisocial Compliance-Gaining as a Function of Instructor Aggressive Communication and Classroom Justice

This study investigated students’ perceptions of their instructors’ argumentativeness and verbal aggressiveness, classroom justice, and effectiveness of and likelihood of communicating student antisocial behavior alteration techniques (BATs). Results indicate that student perceptions of instructor argumentativeness were not related to their perceptions of the effectiveness of or likelihood of communicating antisocial BATs, or to their perceptions of classroom justice. In contrast, student perceptions of instructor verbal aggressiveness were positively related to their perceptions of the effectiveness and likelihood of communicating virtually all the antisocial BATs and negatively related to all three types of fairness. Finally, classroom justice mediated the relationships between instructor verbal aggressiveness and antisocial BAT effectiveness and likelihood of use, but did not mediate the relationship between instructor argumentativeness and antisocial BATs.
Endothelial cell differentiation of human breast tumour stem/progenitor cells

Breast tumour stem cells have been reported to differentiate in the epithelial lineage but a cross‐lineage potential has not been investigated. We aimed to evaluate whether breast tumour stem cells were able to differentiate also into the endothelial lineage. We isolated and cloned a population of breast tumour stem cells, cultured as mammospheres that expressed the stem markers nestin and Oct‐4 and not epithelial and endothelial differentiation markers, and formed serially transplantable tumours in SCID mice. When cultured in the presence of serum, mammosphere‐derived clones differentiated in the epithelial lineage. When cultured in the presence of VEGF, the same clones were also able to differentiate in the endothelial lineage acquiring endothelial markers and properties, such as the ability to organize in Matrigel into capillary‐like structures. In the transplanted tumours, originated from mammospheres, we demonstrate that some of the intratumour vessels were of human origin, suggesting an in vivo endothelial differentiation of mammosphere‐derived cells. Finally, endothelial cell clones originated from mammospheres were able, when implanted in Matrigel in SCID mice, to form after 7 days a human vessel network and, after 3–4 weeks, an epithelial tumour suggesting that in the endothelial‐differentiated cells a tumourigenic stem cell population is maintained. In conclusion, the results of the present study demonstrate that stem cells of breast cancer have the ability to differentiate not only in epithelial but also in endothelial lineage, further supporting the hypothesis that the tumour‐initiating population possesses stem cell characteristics relevant for tumour growth and vascularization.
Transfer of Spatial Knowledge to a Two-Level Shopping Mall in Older People, Following Virtual Exploration

Groups of older and younger participants explored a virtual shopping mall composed of more than 60 retail outlets on 2 levels. They were then compared with guessing controls for their understanding of the spatial layout of the real equivalent building. Experimental groups showed greater accuracy in making pointing judgments toward targets not visible from the pointing site, took shorter times to perform route tasks on foot, made better left-right directional judgments, and sketched better maps of the mall. Of the older participants, 2 out of 8 performed at chance throughout. Younger experimental participants remembered better than did older ones on which level targets were located. The study shows that many older people remain spatially competent and that age is not a barrier to the effective use of virtual environment technology, which may be used in the future to increase inclusion of older populations by encouraging their confident use of public buildings.
Helping Employees Deal With Dysfunctional Customers

While considerable research explores job stress interventions for employees dealing with legitimate customer complaint behavior, managerial interventions relating to illegitimate, unreasonably dysfunctional customer behavior have been largely overlooked. Drawing on justice theory and using survey and experimental data, this study investigates perceived justice as the underlying mechanism through which managerial interventions affect satisfaction and loyalty among employees exposed to dysfunctional customer behavior. In addition, this study explores the contingency factors that affect this relationship. The findings offer managerial insights into how to protect employees from detrimental consequences of highly negative interactions with dysfunctional customers. This research suggests that managers should continually reinforce employees’ perceptions of fairness through interventions such as social support, participation, empowerment, and reward. Results also indicate that managers particularly need to direct intervention efforts to employees who are exposed to frequent and seriously negative interactions with dysfunctional customers.
A TECHNOLOGY DIFFUSION APPROACH TO SOFT TECHNOLOGY : ITS DESIGN AND EFFECTS

In light of the current state in which existing studies on the technology acceptance model are examined predominately in the context of hard technology, this study set out to examine the applicability of these results to soft technology. Also, in response to a call for more intervention-type studies in TAM, a technology diffusion approach to one specific soft-technology (student questiongeneration learning strategy) was devised. Its impacts on learners’ perceived task value, learning approaches and their relationships were the focuses of this study. Results of t-tests and regression analyses indicated that learners in the diffusion group perceived the introduced learning strategy as having significantly higher value than did the non-diffusion group. Additionally, learners in the nondiffusion group were inclined to adopt the surface learning approach more frequently than the diffusion group. Last, the prediction effect of task value on learning approaches was supported for the deep learning approach for both groups but was not supported for the surface learning approach for either group. Empirical significance of the study as well as suggestions for instructional implementation and future studies are provided.
News and Elections

This article looks at how political reporting has changed over time in the Bild, Germany's most widely read newspaper. The authors content analyzed the political coverage during the seven weeks prior to the federal elections in 1990, 1994, 1998, and 2002. They found increasing emphasis on the campaign in the news from one election to the next, which can be explained by the fact that the elections themselves became more competitive and thus had more news value. They also find increasing negativity toward the two main parties between 1990 and 1998 and toward the SPD (Social Democratic Party) since 1998. The Bild's editorial decision to include more commentary pieces in 2002 is at least in part responsible for the strongly negative coverage of the SPD and the chancellor in that election, but the greater negativity was also due to the increased volume of other political news stories that also contained negative evaluations.
Effect of Al and Ca co-doping, in the presence of Te, in superconducting YBCO whiskers growth.

High-Tc superconducting cuprates (HTSC) such as YBa2Cu3O7 - x (YBCO) are promising candidates for solid-state THz applications based on stacks of intrinsic Josephson junctions (IJJs) with atomic thickness. In view of future exploitation of IJJs, high-quality superconducting YBCO tape-like single crystals (whiskers) have been synthesized from Ca-Al-doped precursors in the presence of Te. The main aim of this paper is to determine the importance of the simultaneous use of Al, Te and Ca in promoting YBCO whiskers growth with good superconducting properties (Tc = 79-84 K). Further, single-crystal X-ray diffraction (SC-XRD) refinements of tetragonal YBCO whiskers (P4/mmm) are reported to fill the literature lack of YBCO structure investigations. All the as-grown whiskers have also been investigated by means of X-ray powder diffraction (XRPD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS). Our results demonstrate that the interplay of Ca, Te and Al elements is clearly necessary in order to obtain superconducting YBCO whiskers. The data obtained from SC-XRD analyses confirm the highly crystalline nature of the whiskers grown. Ca and Al enter the structure by replacing the Y and the octahedral coordinated Cu1 site, respectively, as in other similar orthorhombic compounds, while Te does not enter the structure of whiskers but its presence in the precursor is essential to the growth of the crystals.
A Presumption of Academic Freedom

In the simplest terms, academic freedommeans unfettered scholarly inquiry, a scholar’s fundamental right of research, publication, and instruction free of institutional constraint. This indispensable principle of scholarship, handed down to us from the Enlightenment and before and developed systematically in the United States over the last ninety years, is the precious gift of independent intellectual judgment—an endowment of open inquiry, free investigation, speculation, imagination, reflexivity, interpretation, assessment, and informed opinion protected against inevitable accusations of political and religious heresy. It is the legitimizing concept of academic life and a right that exists within academic communities for the larger benefit of a free and open society consistent with the ethos of a progressive polity. Everyone benefits from a cornucopia of intellectual freedom that sustains critical thinking, fosters innovation, and invigorates social knowledge. Indeed, the ‘‘great community’’ envisioned by John Dewey cannot be achieved without the benefit of intellectual freedom. ‘‘An obvious requirement’’ for cultivating an articulate public, he observed, ‘‘is freedom of social inquiry and of distribution of its conclusions. ’’ Communicating the results of social inquiry to make them available for public testing and consumption is tantamount to ‘‘the formation of public opinion’’ and ‘‘the growth of political democracy,’’ Dewey insisted. The value of free and open inquiry should be apparent to a sensible and practical society, especially in America where pragmatism has been the nation’s creed and the moniker of its one true contribution to philosophy. Yet, scholarship is imperiled in the United States, the target of an assault by right-wing ideologues masquerading
Outdoor, indoor, and personal black carbon exposure from cookstoves burning solid fuels.

Black carbon (BC) emissions from solid fuel combustion are associated with increased morbidity and mortality and are important drivers of climate change. We studied BC measurements, approximated by particulate matter (PM2.5 ) absorbance, in rural Yunnan province, China, whose residents use a variety of solid fuels for cooking and heating including bituminous and anthracite coal, and wood. Measurements were taken over two consecutive 24-h periods from 163 households in 30 villages. PM2.5 absorbance (PMabs ) was measured using an EEL 043 Smoke Stain Reflectometer. PMabs measurements were higher in wood burning households (16.3 × 10(-5) /m) than bituminous and anthracite coal households (12 and 5.1 × 10(-5) /m, respectively). Among bituminous coal users, measurements varied by a factor of two depending on the coal source. Portable stoves (which are lit outdoors and brought indoors for use) were associated with reduced PMabs levels, but no other impact of stove design was observed. Outdoor measurements were positively correlated with and approximately half the level of indoor measurements (r = 0.49, P < 0.01). Measurements of BC (as approximated by PMabs ) in this population are modulated by fuel type and source. This provides valuable insight into potential morbidity, mortality, and climate change contributions of domestic usage of solid fuels.