Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A field study of social comparison processes in ability evaluation

First-year psychology students (N = 213) recorded details of spontaneous comparison with peers two weeks prior to submission and one week after return of their laboratory reports, for three successive assignments. Results showed that students did make comparisons, particularly after receiving feedback about their performance, but that a sizable minority did not compare at all despite numerous opportunities to do so. Over the three reports, the frequency of comparison prior to evaluation decreased; comparisons after feedback were more frequent, and increased over reports. While comparison with others similar in ability was the most frequent choice, comparison with dissimilar, better others was also common, particularly after objective feedback had been received. The impact of comparison was not generally as predicted by social comparison theory. Although certainty in predicting grades increased over time, it was not as a function of comparison; nor did accuracy increase with increased comparison. Satisfaction with grades varied directly with level of performance. There was a marked lack of interest in downward comparison; regardless of ability level, subjects expressed a desire for additional comparison with better others. The study highlights the importance of longitudinal studies of spontaneous comparison to test the relationship between initial uncertainty, choice of comparison others, and their impact on ability assessments.
A meta-analysis of risk factors that predict psychopathology following accidental trauma.

PURPOSE This meta-analysis aimed to explore the risk factors that place a child at risk of psychopathology following accidental trauma. DESIGN AND METHODS The predictive power of 8 factors was examined via transforming and combining the effect sizes to yield a weighted average effect size for each factor. RESULTS The results indicated that the majority of effect sizes, although significant, were inconsistent across the studies, yielding little conclusive evidence. However, pretrauma psychopathology and threat to life were strong and consistent predictors. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS Information gathered from such meta-analyses could be used in the identification of at-risk children and the development of screening tools. However, further widespread and comprehensive reviews of the potential risk factors and their relationships to psychopathology need to be investigated.
Some comments on the inability of sociology of science to explain science

The ongoing debates among philosophers, sociologists and historians of science (Collins, 1985; Woolgar, 1988) as to what science is really about have produced useful data and some plausible generalizations. Starting from Bloor (1991), perhaps the most acceptable generalization is that science is indeed a socially developed practice and, as such, can be studied by social science methods as are other institutional arrangements. Thus, for instance, Fuchs (1992) in his perceptive analysis has made a credible case that science can be studied in terms of
Exploring Occupation and its Meaning among Homeless Men

Few studies have been conducted that address homelessness from the perspective of those who have experienced it. Studies tend to focus on services for homeless people, with little description of occupational engagement and the experiences of the homeless people themselves. This qualitative study, conducted within a phenomenological tradition, explored the lived experiences of adult men living in an inner-city shelter. Eight individual, unstructured interviews were carried out. In addition, three visual notebooks were compiled by the men, using photographs and text that illustrated the occupational realities of their life-world. Inductive, narrative analysis revealed four themes: keeping busy; street-life environment; loss; and revelation and sharing of self. The findings provide insight into the lives of homeless men. They therefore help to inform occupational therapy within a shelter environment in order to facilitate the homeless men moving forward to increased and more meaningful engagement in occupation and independent lives.
Comparative genomic and transcriptomic analyses unveil novel features of azole resistance and adaptation to the human host in Candida glabrata

The frequent emergence of azole resistance among Candida glabrata strains contributes to increase the incidence of infections caused by this species. Whole-genome sequencing of a fluconazole and voriconazole-resistant clinical isolate (FFUL887) and subsequent comparison with the genome of the susceptible strain CBS138 revealed prominent differences in several genes documented to promote azole resistance in C. glabrata. Among these was the transcriptional regulator CgPdr1. The CgPdr1 FFUL887 allele included a K274Q modification not documented in other azole-resistant strains. Transcriptomic profiling evidenced the upregulation of 92 documented targets of CgPdr1 in the FFUL887 strain, supporting the idea that the K274Q substitution originates a CgPdr1 gain-of-function mutant. The expression of CgPDR1K274Q in the FFUL887 background sensitised the cells against high concentrations of organic acids at a low pH (4.5), but had no detectable effect in tolerance towards other environmental stressors. Comparison of the genome of FFUL887 and CBS138 also revealed prominent differences in the sequence of adhesin-encoding genes, while comparison of the transcriptome of the two strains showed a significant remodelling of the expression of genes involved in metabolism of carbohydrates, nitrogen and sulphur in the FFUL887 strain; these responses likely reflecting adaptive responses evolved by the clinical strain during colonisation of the host.
Process quality and collaboration quality on B2B e-commerce

Purpose – The purpose of this study is to propose two additions to the existing IS success model to influence usefulness and satisfaction, and ultimately customer loyalty. This study posits that process quality and collaboration quality will significantly influence perceptions on satisfaction, since both considerations are expected to improve interactions between the organization and its customers.Design/methodology/approach – The developed research model was tested in the context of B2B e‐commerce users, employing structural equation modelling‐partial least square to analyze and test the research hypotheses.Findings – Results show that adding process and collaboration quality to the model affects the way system, information, and service quality influences usefulness and satisfaction, suggesting a shift in perspectives and priorities when it comes to B2B e‐commerce transactions. Furthermore, results show that process and collaboration quality have significant effects on usefulness and satisfaction, reinfo.
FPGA implementation of LMS self correcting adaptive filter (SCAF) and hardware analysis

The hardware implementation of adaptive filters is a challenging issue in real-time practical noise cancellation, echo cancellation, prediction and system identification applications. In general-purpose applications the hardware utilization and maximum frequency are two important designing criteria. This paper presents hardware implementing of adaptive least mean square (LMS) filter considering fixed step size and self correcting adaptive filter (SCAF) architectures on a spartan3 XC3S400 Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) chip. The performance of both approaches is compared in terms of convergence speed, hardware utilization and maximum frequency. A CS4334 digital to analog converter (DAC) is considered between FPGA processing board and computer audio card and practical results are monitored by MATLAB SIMULINK using FROM AUDIO DEVICE block.
Consumer Learning: Advertising and the Ambiguity of Product Experience

This paper examines the influence of advertising on how and what consumers learn from product experience. A hypothesis-testing framework is adopted where consumers treat advertisements as tentative hypotheses that can be tested through product experience. Two experiments were conducted using product categories that provided either ambiguous or unambiguous evidence about product quality. The first experiment showed that when consumers have access to unambiguous evidence, judgments of product quality are dependent only on the objective physical evidence and unaffected by advertising. However, advertising had dramatic effects on perceptions of quality when consumers saw ambiguous evidence; judgments and product inspection behavior protocols showed that advertising induced consumers to engage in confirmatory hypothesis testing and search. The second experiment showed that advertising influenced quality judgments by affecting the encoding of the physical evidence; retrieval of ad-consistent evidence also appeared to occur, though to a lesser degree.
Male Infertility: Integrating an Old Psychoanalytic Story with the Research Literature

Male infertility, different from female infertility, is characterized by anxiety about sexual adequacy, potency, and manliness. This assault on a man's sense of self revives feelings of competition, castration, and experiences of developmental trauma. In this article we review the literature on male factor infertility and its relationship to psychogenic impotence and to psychological fertility in the larger sense. We also discuss spermatogenesis, sperm donation, and the emotional implications for men of the new reproductive technologies. Finally, we consider the effect on the couple relationship and the value of psychological treatment.
Intratextual Fundamentalism and the Desire for Simple Cognitive Structure: The Moderating Effect of the Ability to Achieve Cognitive Structure

Religious fundamentalism has been suspected as a product of simple cognitive structuring. On the other hand, recent publications have shown that cognitive structure formation is not as simple as was previously thought. The concept of the Ability to Achieve Cognitive Structure (AACS) revealed that not everyone was able to form simple cognitive structure. This study employed a total of 187 Indonesian university students as participants. By the mean of Structural Equation Modeling, this study treated the desire for simple cognitive structure as a “new” latent variable and examined its relation with intratextual fundamentalism using AACS as moderator. The desire for simple structure was reflected by the Need for Cognitive Structure (NCS), the Dogmatism, and the RWA. The fundamentalism was reflected by the Intratextual Fundamentalism Scale (IFS). The result showed that fundamentalism, among other things, was a product of desire for simple cognitive structure. This study also showed that AACS moderated the relation in which high AACS would lead to higher fundamentalism while low AACS would not. Implications of the findings for social psychology and cross-cultural understanding of religious fundamentalism were discussed.
The effect of high [K+]o on spontaneous Ca2+ waves in freshly isolated interstitial cells of Cajal from the rabbit urethra

Interstitial cells of Cajal (ICC) act as putative pacemaker cells in the rabbit urethra. Pacemaker activity in ICC results from spontaneous global Ca2+ waves that can be increased in frequency by raising external [K+]. The purpose of this study was to elucidate the mechanism of this response. Intracellular [Ca2+] was measured in fluo‐4‐loaded smooth muscle cells (SMCs) and ICC using a Nipkow spinning disk confocal microscope. Increasing [K+]o to 60 mmol/L caused an increase in [Ca2+]i accompanied by contraction in SMCs. Raising [K+]o did not cause contraction in ICC, but the frequency of firing of spontaneous calcium waves increased. Reducing [Ca2+]o to 0 mmol/L abolished the response in both cell types. Nifedipine of 1 μmol/L blocked the response of SMC to high [K+]o, but did not affect the increase in firing in ICC. This latter effect was blocked by 30 μmol/L NiCl2 but not by the T‐type Ca2+ channel blocker mibefradil (300 nmol/L). However, inhibition of Ca2+ influx via reverse‐mode sodium/calcium exchange (NCX) using either 1 μmol/L SEA0400 or 5 μmol/L KB‐R7943 did block the effect of high [K+]o on ICC. These data suggest that high K+ solution increases the frequency of calcium waves in ICC by increasing Ca2+ influx through reverse‐mode NCX.
LiRa: A New Likelihood-Based Similarity Score for Collaborative Filtering

Author(s): Strnadova-Neeley, Veronika; Buluc, Aydin; Gilbert, John R; Oliker, Leonid; Ouyang, Weimin | Abstract: Recommender system data presents unique challenges to the data mining, machine learning, and algorithms communities. The high missing data rate, in combination with the large scale and high dimensionality that is typical of recommender systems data, requires new tools and methods for efficient data analysis. Here, we address the challenge of evaluating similarity between two users in a recommender system, where for each user only a small set of ratings is available. We present a new similarity score, that we call LiRa, based on a statistical model of user similarity, for large-scale, discrete valued data with many missing values. We show that this score, based on a ratio of likelihoods, is more effective at identifying similar users than traditional similarity scores in user-based collaborative filtering, such as the Pearson correlation coefficient. We argue that our approach has significant potential to improve both accuracy and scalability in collaborative filtering.
Particulate Matter Concentrations, Sandstorms and Respiratory Hospital Admissions in Israel.

BACKGROUND Exposure to air pollution in the form of particulate matter smaller than 10 μm in diameter (PM10) has been associated with increased morbidity and mortality. However, since air pollution is correlated with confounding factors that might otherwise affect health, identifying the causal link has proven challenging. OBJECTIVES To identify the effect of PM10 on hospital admissions due to respiratory illnesses. METHODS We used the Instrumental Variable (IV) methodology to control for confounding factors affecting hospital admissions. Exploiting the timing of sandstorms as an instrumental variable allows for a better estimate of the relationship between PM10 and hospital admissions. Data on PM10 concentrations and hospital admissions were compiled for Israel's two largest cities, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, for 2007-2009. We compared our IV estimates to those derived from a Poisson regression, which is commonly used in the literature. RESULTS Sandstorms led to an increase of 307 μg/m3 of PM10 concentrations. A 10 μg/m3 increase in PM10 is associated with a 0.8% increase in hospital admissions due to respiratory conditions, using IV methodology. The same finding was noted using the Poisson regression. CONCLUSIONS The association between PM10 and hospital admission reflects a primarily causal relationship. Instrumental variable methodology could be applied to analyze the effect of air pollution on hospital admissions.
Convenience matters: A qualitative study on the impact of use of social media and collaboration technologies on learning experience and performance in higher education

Social media and collaboration technologies are viewed as valuable tools for creating a new reality of collaborative learning, particularly in higher education facing millennials growing up with various technologies in their daily lives. Using the example of an undergraduate course taught on-campus, this study examines how millennial students in higher education use social media and other collaboration technologies in their collaborative learning activities to co-create new knowledge through the application of existing knowledge and the sharing of ideas. A semi-structured survey-based qualitative research method is used to reveal the primary decision factors driving students’ technology choice for use in their collaborative learning tasks and to assess the impact of the use of such technologies on their learning experience and performance. The analysis reveals convenience as an important decision factor impacting millennial students’ choice of social media and collaborative technologies to use in their team-based collaborative learning interactions. In particular, the three salient types of convenience emerge that matter to millennial students: convenient to everybody in the team, convenient to access and use, and convenient to collaborate with each other privately within the team. The analysis suggests that the use of social media and collaboration technologies chosen by students in their collaborative learning activities is more likely to result in students with positive collaborative learning experience than otherwise. In addition, a moderately strong correlation (r = 0.425, p< 0.01) is found between students’ learning performance and their perception on the impact of the use of the technologies of their choice on learning experience. Based on the analysis, this study proposes a student-engaged, technology-choice-and-impact framework that captures the relationship between millennial students’ convenience-driven technology choice and its impact on collative learning experience and performance. Further efforts should focus on investigating pedagogic designs that engage students in technology choice for improved collaborative learning experience and performance. The results of this study can inform educators and education technology providers in tailoring their approaches to incorporating technologies with learners in mind, thus turning their engagement into improved learning experience and performance.
A review of clinical and technical considerations for fixed and removable implant prostheses in the edentulous mandible.

PURPOSE The aim of the present article is to review some of the technical treatment options for implant prostheses restoring the edentulous mandible, mainly based on the Brånemark system. MATERIALS AND METHODS Clinical and technical aspects are discussed for the three established concepts: (1) implant-supported fixed prosthesis, (2) removable implant-supported overdenture, and (3) combined implant-retained and soft tissue-supported overdenture prosthesis. RESULTS The framework of an implant-supported fixed screw-retained prosthesis can be processed in gold, Co-Cr alloy, or titanium with casting, laser-welding, or milling techniques. To improve the stability and retention of a conventional complete denture, one to four implants are indicated, and unsplinted (single attachments) or splinted designs (bar systems) can be applied. The design of the overdenture prosthesis must be carefully planned according to the requirements to ensure adequate stability and optimal form, contour, and esthetics, and the patient's best comfort. CONCLUSION A large variety of different treatment modalities exist for both the fixed and removable mandibular implant prosthesis. Clinical and technical aspects should be considered at the beginning of the treatment to: (1) select the optimal implant position, (2) establish an adequate number of functional units, (3) select the appropriate retainers, and (4) apply the best technique for framework processing and veneering.
Effects of Agency on Movement Interference During Observation of a Moving Dot Stimulus

Human movement performance is subject to interference if the performer simultaneously observes an incongruent action. It has been proposed that this phenomenon is due to motor contagion during simultaneous movement performance–observation, with coactivation of shared action performance and action observation circuitry in the premotor cortex. The present experiments compared the interference effect during observation of a moving person with observation of moving dot stimuli: The dot display followed either a biologically plausible or implausible velocity profile. Interference effects due to dot observation were present for both biological and nonbiological velocity profiles when the participants were informed that they were observing prerecorded human movement and were absent when the dot motion was described as computer generated. These results suggest that the observer's belief regarding the origin of the dot motion (human–computer generated) modulates the processing of the dot movement stimuli on their later integration within the motor system, such that the belief regarding their biological origin is a more important determinant of interference effects than the stimulus kinematics.
Dental caries prevalence and dental health behaviour in HIV infected children.

OBJECTIVES To determine dental caries prevalence in a group of HIV positive children and their reported dental health behaviour. DESIGN Standardized epidemiological dental examination and structured interview. SETTING Paediatric HIV outpatient department in a South London hospital. STUDY POPULATION HIV-positive children attending the above outpatient clinic over a 6-month period (30 subjects) and parents (20 informants). METHODS Epidemiological examination of children was undertaken by one trained and calibrated examiner to determine caries prevalence using dmft/DMFT. Parents were interviewed to obtain information on their children's dental health behaviour: toothbrushing, diet, fluoride; oral medication and dental attendance were explored. RESULTS Sixty-three per cent (n = 19) of children had dental caries experience, much of it untreated. Mean dmft/DMFT was 4.4. Sixty per cent (n = 18) of all children presented with active or untreated caries and the care index for those at/under age 5 years was low (10%). Unfavourable dental health behaviour included: consumption of nonmilk extrinsic sugars at night, use of sugar-based medications, low fluoride intake, late commencement of toothbrushing and poor dental attendance. Dental health was not considered a priority for many of these children. Parents did not necessarily disclose their child's HIV status on dental attendance. CONCLUSION Caries prevalence was high, much of the disease untreated, and unfavourable dental health behaviour, including the use of sugar-based medicines was common. HIV infected children should be considered a high caries risk and receive appropriate dental care, in terms of both treatment and preventive services, following confirmation of seropositivity.
Reconnecting Skills for Sustainable Communities with Everyday Life

In this paper we review the current policy approach to skills and knowledge for sustainable communities. The aspatial and target-led nature of these approaches around the attainment of fixed skill sets is discussed and then contrasted with educationalist literatures which provide an alternative pedagogical approach to learning. That is, one that places a much greater emphasis on ‘learners’ as individuals and ‘learning’ as achieved through experience. The role and influence of people in place are implicit within these ‘learner-centred’ models. This reflects an understanding of the need to approach learning strategies in a way that relates to people's everyday lives. Drawing on ongoing empirical research conducted in the English town of Stroud (Gloucestershire, UK), we demonstrate some of the insights which can be gained from understanding skills and knowledge for sustainable communities in the context of these more experiential and process-orientated approaches. We do so by looking at the accounts and practices not of professionals, but of community members who are actively engaged with sustainable communities initiatives. We explore the relationships between their knowledge and understandings of sustainability and how they have sought to encompass and actively develop principles of sustainable communities as part of their everyday lives.