Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Interspecies Differences in the Life Span Distribution: Humans versus Invertebrates

Life span varies considerably among species. Investigation of reasons for interspecies differences in the length of life deepens our fundamental understanding of senescence and longevity. A statistic frequently used for interspecies comparison of life span is the longest length of life ever documented reliably for each species (Carey and Judge 2000; Comfort 1979). Measures of the typical length of life such as the mean, median, and modal ages at death are also compared among populations of different species. Information on the maximum length and typical length of life should be used carefully, however, taking into account the distribution of life span in the population. In some species, life spans may concentrate in a relatively narrow age range, while in others life spans may spread widely. In some species, the maximum length may not appear too far from the typical length, while in others the longest record may be an extreme exception. To study the life span distribution in detail, data are needed on deaths by age in a large-size cohort of several thousand or more individuals. Until around 1990, survival data on large-size cohorts were rare except for humans. Thanks to the development of biodemography, however, survival data on large cohorts were obtained for several animal species in the 1990s (Vaupel et al. 1998) and such work is continuing. These data sets provide valuable opportunities for interspecies comparison of life span distribution. The data were collected for laboratory animals, which live in protected environments. Such animals are substantially more protected from predators, infections, food shortages, climate changes, toxic materials, and accidental injuries than animals in the natural world. Also, modern humans usually live in more protected environments than our ancestors in prehistoric eras. The majority of deaths of adult individuals in protected environ-
The genomic landscape of retinoblastoma: a review

Retinoblastoma is a paediatric ocular tumour that continues to reveal much about the genetic basis of cancer development. Study of genomic aberrations in retinoblastoma tumours has exposed important mechanisms of cancer development and identified oncogenes and tumour suppressors that offer potential points of therapeutic intervention. The recent development of next‐generation genomic technologies has allowed further refinement of the genomic landscape of retinoblastoma at high resolution. In a relatively short period of time, a wealth of genetic and epigenetic data has emerged on a small number of tumour samples. These data highlight the inherent molecular complexity of this cancer despite the fact that most retinoblastomas are initiated by the inactivation of a single tumour suppressor gene. This review outlines the current understanding of the genomic, genetic and epigenetic changes in retinoblastoma, highlighting recent genome‐wide analyses that have identified exciting candidate genes worthy of further validation as potential prognostic and therapeutic targets.
Male-like behavioral patterns and physiological alterations induced by androgenic gland implantation in female crayfish

SUMMARY The androgenic gland (AG) has been shown to regulate male sexual differentiation and secondary male characteristics in Crustacea. This study presents for the first time in crustaceans evidence for masculinization effects of the AG on reproductive behavior, in addition to morpho-anatomical and physiological effects. AG implantation into immature female red claw crayfish Cherax quadricarinatus inhibited secondary vitellogenesis and development of the ovaries, as well as morphological traits that facilitate maternal egg brooding; it also caused the appearance of secondary male characteristics. However, primary male characteristics and a masculine reproductive system were not developed. In pair encounters, aggression was substantially lower in interactions between AG-implanted and intact females than in interactions within AG-implanted or intact pairs. Moreover, elements of mating behavior, i.e. male courtship displays and false copulations, were exhibited by AG-implanted females in several encounters with intact females. In addition to known morpho-anatomical and physiological effects of the AG in crustaceans, the present study suggests that the AG has novel effects on the neural network that generates social behavior.
Dynamic Encoding of Acoustic Features in Neural Responses to Continuous Speech

Humans are unique in their ability to communicate using spoken language. However, it remains unclear how the speech signal is transformed and represented in the brain at different stages of the auditory pathway. In this study, we characterized electroencephalography responses to continuous speech by obtaining the time-locked responses to phoneme instances (phoneme-related potential). We showed that responses to different phoneme categories are organized by phonetic features. We found that each instance of a phoneme in continuous speech produces multiple distinguishable neural responses occurring as early as 50 ms and as late as 400 ms after the phoneme onset. Comparing the patterns of phoneme similarity in the neural responses and the acoustic signals confirms a repetitive appearance of acoustic distinctions of phonemes in the neural data. Analysis of the phonetic and speaker information in neural activations revealed that different time intervals jointly encode the acoustic similarity of both phonetic and speaker categories. These findings provide evidence for a dynamic neural transformation of low-level speech features as they propagate along the auditory pathway, and form an empirical framework to study the representational changes in learning, attention, and speech disorders. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT We characterized the properties of evoked neural responses to phoneme instances in continuous speech. We show that each instance of a phoneme in continuous speech produces several observable neural responses at different times occurring as early as 50 ms and as late as 400 ms after the phoneme onset. Each temporal event explicitly encodes the acoustic similarity of phonemes, and linguistic and nonlinguistic information are best represented at different time intervals. Finally, we show a joint encoding of phonetic and speaker information, where the neural representation of speakers is dependent on phoneme category. These findings provide compelling new evidence for dynamic processing of speech sounds in the auditory pathway.
Incurred sample reanalysis comparison of dried blood spots and plasma samples on the measurement of lopinavir in clinical samples.

BACKGROUND Undoubtedly, incurred sample reanalysis (ISR) will become an integral part of regulated bioanalysis of dried blood spot (DBS) samples. In this article, we report results from an ISR study on DBS specimen and their corresponding plasma samples. Incurred samples were reanalyzed on their concentration of the antiretroviral drug lopinavir (LPV). RESULTS Bland-Altman comparison plots showed a high degree of agreement between the measurements; 94.7% of observed LPV concentrations were within bias ±2 SD. Moreover, 73.7% of obtained LPV concentrations from DBS ISR were in good compliance with general acceptance criteria (4-6-20 rule) on ISR testing, while plasma ISR failed on these acceptance criteria due to the low compliance of 10.5%. CONCLUSION It was demonstrated that plasma ISR testing failed on acceptance criteria while corresponding incurred DBS specimens passed. Furthermore, the current article demonstrates that the stability of the antiretroviral drug LPV was significantly different in both biological matrices.
Vitamin C intake and susceptibility to the common cold

Although the role of vitamin C in common cold incidence had been studied extensively, the level of vitamin C intake has not been unequivocally shown to affect the incidence of colds. In the present study the six largest vitamin C supplementation (≥ 1 g/d) studies, including over 5000 episodes in all, have been analysed, and it is shown that common cold incidence is not reduced in the vitamin C-supplemented groups compared with the placebo groups (pooled rate ratio (RR) 0·99; 95% CI 0·93, 1·04). Consequently these six major studies give no evidence that high-dose vitamin C supplementation decreases common cold incidence in ordinary people. Nevertheless, the analysis was continued with the hypothesis that vitamin C intake may affect common cold susceptibility in specific groups of people. It was assumed that the potential effect of supplementation might be most conspicuous in subjects with low dietary vitamin C intake. The average vitamin C intake has been rather low in the UK and plasma vitamin C concentrations are in general lower in males than in females. In four studies with British females vitamin C supplementation had no marked effect on common cold incidence (pooled RR 0·95; 95% CI 0·86, 1·04). However, in four studies with British male schoolchildren and students a statistically highly significant reduction in common cold incidence was found in groups supplemented with vitamin C (pooled RR 0·70; 95% CI 0·60, 0·81). Thus, these studies with British males indicate that vitamin C intake has physiological effects on susceptibility to common cold infections, although the effect seems quantitatively meaningful only in limited groups of people and is not very large.
Microplate motions in the hotspot reference frame

We have computed motions of the major plates (seven large plates and seven medium‐sized plates) and 38 microplates relative to the hotspot reference frame, and present velocities of these 52 plates. Moreover, using updated plate boundaries for the present, we have computed new geometrical factors for plates and microplates, useful for kinematic calculations and to obtain the net‐rotation of the lithosphere and plate velocities in the mean‐lithosphere reference frame. Instead of a continuum or gradational distribution of the plates by size, the plates clearly partition into three groups each having their own characteristics. For the seven large plates, rotation poles generally lie in high latitudes; the seven medium‐sized plates have rotation poles in a restricted equatorial area; the 38 small plates show the greatest scatter. Moreover subsets of the 52 plates reveal differing fractal behaviour: the large, middle and small groupings each have a characteristic fractal dimension, suggestive of microplate clustering. The highest angular velocities occur for some of the smallest plates, with the location of their rotation poles closeby.
Teaching students to solve insight problems: Evidence for domain specificity in creativity training

Abstract: The purpose of this research was to investigate whether insight problem solving depends on domain‐specific or domain‐general problem‐solving skills, that is, whether people think in terms of conceptually different types of insight problems. In Study 1, participants sorted insight problems into categories. A cluster analysis revealed 4 main categories of insight problems: verbal, mathematical, spatial, and a combination of verbal or spatial. In Studies 2 and 3, participants received training in how to solve verbal, spatial, or mathematical problems, or all 3 types. They were taught that solutions to verbal insight problems lie in defining and analyzing the terms in the problem, solutions to mathematical insight problems lie in a novel approach to numbers, or solutions to spatial insight problems lie in removing a self‐imposed constraint. In both studies, the spatial trained group performed better than the verbal trained group on spatial problems but not on other types of problems. These findings are consistent with the idea that people mentally separate insight problems into distinct types. Implications for instruction in insight problem solving are discussed.
Hybrid of PSO and SOM neural network for immittance spectral frequency quantization in AMR-WB speech codecs

Adaptive multi-rate wideband (AMR-WB) speech coding algorithm is standardized by 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) and third generation/wideband code division multiple access (WCDMA 3G) system and has several applications in mobile communication systems, audio and video teleconferencing, and digital radio broadcasting. To reduce the bit rate in AMR-WB, vector quantization (VQ) technique is used. In this paper, a self-organizing map (SOM) neural network is used instead of traditional VQ method proposed in ITU-T G.722. 2 recommendation for AMR-WB speech coding. As another contribution of this study, the SOM is trained using a modified supervised training algorithm whose training parameters are optimized by particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. The total number of operations in the proposed method is reduced as compared to split vector quantizer (S-SVQ) and split multistage vector quantizer (S-MSVQ) with no significant spectral distortion.
Estimation of Full-Body Poses Using Only Five Inertial Sensors: An Eager or Lazy Learning Approach?

Human movement analysis has become easier with the wide availability of motion capture systems. Inertial sensing has made it possible to capture human motion without external infrastructure, therefore allowing measurements in any environment. As high-quality motion capture data is available in large quantities, this creates possibilities to further simplify hardware setups, by use of data-driven methods to decrease the number of body-worn sensors. In this work, we contribute to this field by analyzing the capabilities of using either artificial neural networks (eager learning) or nearest neighbor search (lazy learning) for such a problem. Sparse orientation features, resulting from sensor fusion of only five inertial measurement units with magnetometers, are mapped to full-body poses. Both eager and lazy learning algorithms are shown to be capable of constructing this mapping. The full-body output poses are visually plausible with an average joint position error of approximately 7 cm, and average joint angle error of 7∘. Additionally, the effects of magnetic disturbances typical in orientation tracking on the estimation of full-body poses was also investigated, where nearest neighbor search showed better performance for such disturbances.
Is "Count" and "Mass" Information Available When the Noun Is Not? An Investigation of Tip of the Tongue States and Anomia

To use a word in a sentence requires speakers to access information such as the meaning of the word, its use in a sentence (i.e., its syntax), and its sound form. In this study we examine whether when speakers cannot retrieve the sound form of a word, they are nevertheless able to indicate its syntactic properties. More specifically, we investigated whether English speakers in a tip of the tongue state, and a brain-damaged speaker in an anomic state, could correctly guess whether target words are either “count nouns” (e.g.,an opinion) or “mass nouns” (e.g.,some knowledge) when they could not say them. Results showed that speakers can correctly guess syntactic features such as count and mass, extending previous results concerning grammatical gender in Italian. We discuss the implications for models of language production in which lexical retrieval includes two steps. The first step involves retrieval of a word's abstract representation, specifying meaning and syntax. The second step involves the retrieval of the sound pattern of the word. Additional evidence from slips of the tongue in Italian, Spanish, and German showing syntactic constraints on phonological errors is also presented.
A current-mode CMOS dual-channel 3.5-Gb/s/ch optical receiver array

This paper presents a dual-channel current-mode optical receiver array which exploits the modified current-mirror(CM) transimpedance amplifiers and the gain-scaling limiting amplifiers. Each modified CM-TIA consists of a CM input configuration with a local feedback, a single-to-differential conversion circuit, a differential amplifier stage, and a 50Ω output buffer. Since the modified CM input effectively isolates the photodiode capacitance from the bandwidth determination, it provides considerable bandwidth enhancement. Also, the gain-scaling limiting amplifiers employ the Cherry-Hooper topology and the capacitive source-degeneration technique to maintain wide bandwidth. Test chips were fabricated by using a standard 0.18-μm CMOS technology, demonstrating 3.5Gb/s operation speed per channel even with 0.52pF total input parasitic capacitance (including 0.32pF photodiode capacitance), and 87mW power dissipation (including output buffer) in total from a single 1.8V supply.
LATENCY‐AGED CHILDREN'S VIEWS OF AGING

This study investigated the contents of children's attitudes toward the elderly and compared these attitudes with the children's attitudes toward young people. The Children's Views on Aging (CVOA) questionnaire was administered to 256 latency‐aged (8‐10 year‐old) children. The children were white and black, male and female, and came from both rural and urban backgrounds. The children's responses to the CVOA were analyzed quantitatively using chi‐square and t‐tests. The results showed that children had some negative perceptions of the aging process, but positive views of the older person. Comparison of the children's attitudes toward older people and young people showed that the children's attitudes were more negative toward older people in the potency dimension of attitude but more positive toward older people in the evaluative dimension. The findings suggest that children's attitudes toward aging are complex and diverse. Important implications for educational practice are discussed. This study formed par.
The vicissitudes of mother–infant relationships between birth and six years

This study examined contributions of maternal sensitivity and maternal representation of childhood experiences to differences in attachment strategies in a cohort of infants from birth to six years. Antenatal maternal attachment representation was assessed with the Adult Attachment Interview. Maternal sensitivity was assessed with the Child–Adult Relationship Experimental Index at 15 months. The child’s attachment strategy was classified with the Strange Situation for preschool children at 24–30 months and with a new representational measure at six years. Results indicate that mothers with a secure representation of the attachment system are more sensitive to their infants, and their children tend to develop secure attachment patterns. Changes in patterns of insecurity over time are discussed along with limitations of the study.
Hot crises and media reassurance : a comparison of emerging diseases and Ebola Zaire

Drawing on the sociology of moral panic, this paper argues that the media will shift from alarming to reassuring coverage when a 'hot crisis' portends a possible grass root panic. To determine whether this moderation effect follows from dread-inspiring events that are developing in unpredictable and potentially threatening ways, the paper compares newspaper and magazine coverage of emerging diseases with their coverage of Ebola Zaire. The results reveal that the mutation-contagion package, with its frightful account of emerging diseases, was quickly abandoned and subverted during the Ebola epidemic. In its place, the media fashion a containment package that uses a strategy of 'othering' to allay the fear. The conclusion discusses the flexibility in the tool kits used by the media to frame events
The motivational benefits of specific versus general optimism

This study addresses the question whether a specific, work-related form of optimistic thinking has motivational consequences in terms of work engagement above and beyond general optimism over time. A specific form of optimistic thinking is focus on opportunities. Focus on opportunities is a future-oriented belief that describes how many plans, goals, and possibilities people expect to have in their future at work. Based on a cross-lagged panel design with a two-year time lag and data from a sample of 124 German business owners, results of structural equation modeling showed that focus on opportunities positively predicted changes in work engagement over time, even when controlling for general optimism. This finding supports propositions of social cognition and self-regulation theories that emphasize the importance of a specific form of optimism that has motivating potential by referring to future work goals and opportunities.
A Platform for Individualized Campaigning? Social Media and Parliamentary Candidates in the 2009 Norwegian Election Campaign

It is often argued that new technology will increase centralization of political parties but Internet-based technologies, especially the social media, provide individual candidates with opportunities to run campaigns more independently of the central party. This article argues that the effect of new technology depends on the contextual characteristics of the campaign, most importantly the nomination process and the electoral system. It investigates the effect of online social media on individual candidate campaigning through a study of parliamentary candidates' use of social media in the 2009 Norwegian election campaign, a campaign environment with few incentives for candidates to undertake individualized campaigning, using the 2009 Norwegian Candidate Study. Findings reveal that online social media are much appreciated by candidates and are used to a great extent. The technological effect on individual campaigning appears small as candidates who consider social media important do not focus on their own candidacy to a greater extent than other candidates. However, candidates with an individualized candidate focus are more inclined to use Facebook and consider social media important for their campaign communication. Consequently, although social media in the short run are not likely to increase individualized campaigning as such, candidates with a candidate focus have been offered a new channel for self-promotion.
Multilingual training of deep neural networks

We investigate multilingual modeling in the context of a deep neural network (DNN) - hidden Markov model (HMM) hybrid, where the DNN outputs are used as the HMM state likelihoods. By viewing neural networks as a cascade of feature extractors followed by a logistic regression classifier, we hypothesise that the hidden layers, which act as feature extractors, will be transferable between languages. As a corollary, we propose that training the hidden layers on multiple languages makes them more suitable for such cross-lingual transfer. We experimentally confirm these hypotheses on the GlobalPhone corpus using seven languages from three different language families: Germanic, Romance, and Slavic. The experiments demonstrate substantial improvements over a monolingual DNN-HMM hybrid baseline, and hint at avenues of further exploration.