Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Developing a framework for investigating L2 listeners’ longitudinal development

Abstract In research conducted by this author examining the development of adult second language listeners, one key aspect of that study was to evaluate the learners’ growth in their listening strategy use. A search of the literature, however, found no reliable conception of listener growth to guide the evaluation. Consequently, this study sought to develop such a framework. To accomplish this, cross-sectional verbal report studies comparing the strategy use of proficient and less proficient listener groups were examined, and the strategies used frequently by the proficient listeners, but infrequently by the less-proficient listeners, served to indicate developmental trends. A second component of the study was then to order these strategies into the stages of Anderson’s (1985, Cognitive psychology and its implications, 2nd edn. New York: Freeman, 2010, Cognitive psychology and its implications, 7th edn. New York: Freeman) three-stage comprehension model, those of perception, parsing and utilization. This second part of the study was conducted to address apparent flaws in past research categorizing listening strategies based on this model.
The Range of Intrinsic Frequencies Represented by Medial Entorhinal Cortex Stellate Cells Extends with Age

In both humans and rodents, the external environment is encoded in the form of cognitive maps. Neurons in the medial entorhinal cortex (mEC) represent spatial locations in a sequence of grid-like patterns scaled along the dorsal–ventral axis. The grid spacing correlates with the intrinsic resonance frequencies of stellate cells in layer II of mEC. We investigated the development of frequency preferences in these cells from weaning to adulthood using patch-clamp and sharp microelectrode recordings. We found that the dorsal–ventral gradient of stellate cell properties and frequency preferences exists before animals are able to actively explore their environment. In the transition to adulthood, cells respond faster and become less excitable, and the range of intrinsic resonance frequencies in the population expands in the dorsal direction. This is likely to reflect both the growth of the brain and the expansion of the internal representation caused by new exploratory experience.
Debiasing time saving judgements by manipulation of speed display

The time saving bias predicts that when increasing speeding from a high speed (e.g. 100 kph) the time saved is overestimated and underestimated when increasing speed from a slow speed (e.g. 30 kph). An alternative meter indicating the inverted speed (min/km) was used to debias time saving judgements in an active driving task. The simulated driving task was to first drive a distance at a given speed and then drive the same distance again at the speed the driver judged was required in order to gain exactly three minutes in travel time compared to the first drive. A control group performed the same task with a speedometer and saved less than the targeted three minutes when increasing speed from a high speed and more than three minutes when increasing from a low speed, as predicted by the time saving bias. Participants in the alternative meter group were closer to the target. The study shows that biased intuitive judgements can be affected by changing information format.
Exploring Mobile Service Adoption: Customer Preferences

Mobile technologies are gaining more popularity and diffusing into every aspect of our lives. Value Added Services (VAS) have a huge impact on consumers' usage patterns. They are considered as a significant differentiator across the operators. This study explored the factors impacting the adoption of mobile services. Through a field study, product preference factors were studied. Service cost and speed were found to be the most critical factors.
Cognitive Abilities Explain Wording Effects in the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale

There is consensus that the 10 items of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) reflect wording effects resulting from positively and negatively keyed items. The present study examined the effects of cognitive abilities on the factor structure of the RSES with a novel, nonparametric latent variable technique called local structural equation models. In a nationally representative German large-scale assessment including 12,437 students competing measurement models for the RSES were compared: a bifactor model with a common factor and a specific factor for all negatively worded items had an optimal fit. Local structural equation models showed that the unidimensionality of the scale increased with higher levels of reading competence and reasoning, while the proportion of variance attributed to the negatively keyed items declined. Wording effects on the factor structure of the RSES seem to represent a response style artifact associated with cognitive abilities.
Design and Implementation of a P300-Based Brain-Computer Interface for Controlling an Internet Browser

An electroencephalographic (EEG) brain-computer interface (BCI) internet browser was designed and evaluated with 10 healthy volunteers and three individuals with advanced amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), all of whom were given tasks to execute on the internet using the browser. Participants with ALS achieved an average accuracy of 73% and a subsequent information transfer rate (ITR) of 8.6 bits/min and healthy participants with no prior BCI experience over 90% accuracy and an ITR of 14.4 bits/min. We define additional criteria for unrestricted internet access for evaluation of the presented and future internet browsers, and we provide a review of the existing browsers in the literature. The P300-based browser provides unrestricted access and enables free web surfing for individuals with paralysis.
Socially-Aware Network Design Games

In many scenarios network design is not enforced by a central authority, but arises from the interactions of several self-interested agents. This is the case of the Internet, where connectivity is due to Autonomous Systems' choices, but also of overlay networks, where each user client can decide the set of connections to establish. Recent works have used game theory, and in particular the concept of Nash Equilibrium, to characterize stable networks created by a set of selfish agents. The majority of these works assume that users are completely non-cooperative, leading, in most cases, to inefficient equilibria. To improve efficiency, in this paper we propose two novel socially-aware network design games. In the first game we incorporate a socially-aware component in the users' utility functions, while in the second game we use additionally a Stackelberg (leader-follower) approach, where a leader (e.g., the network administrator) architects the desired network buying an appropriate subset of network's links, driving in this way the users to overall efficient Nash equilibria. We provide bounds on the Price of Anarchy and other efficiency measures, and study the performance of the proposed schemes in several network scenarios, including realistic topologies where players build an overlay on top of real Internet Service Provider networks. Numerical results demonstrate that (1) introducing some incentives to make users more socially-aware is an effective solution to achieve stable and efficient networks in a distributed way, and (2) the proposed Stackelberg approach permits to achieve dramatic performance improvements, designing almost always the socially optimal network.
In Vitro-In Vivo Correlation for Intrinsic Clearance for Drugs Metabolized by Human Aldehyde Oxidase

The ability to predict in vivo clearance from in vitro intrinsic clearance for compounds metabolized by aldehyde oxidase has not been demonstrated. To date, there is no established scaling method for predicting aldehyde oxidase-mediated clearance using in vitro or animal data. This challenge is exacerbated by the fact that rats and dogs, two of the laboratory animal species commonly used to develop in vitro-in vivo correlations of clearance, differ from humans with regard to expression of aldehyde oxidase. The objective of this investigation was to develop an in vitro-in vivo correlation of intrinsic clearance for aldehyde oxidase, using 11 drugs known to be metabolized by this enzyme. The set consisted of methotrexate, XK-469, (±)-4-(4-cyanoanilino)-5,6-dihydro-7-hydroxy-7H-cyclopenta[d]pyrimidine (RS-8359), zaleplon, 6-deoxypenciclovir, zoniporide, O6-benzylguanine, N-[(2′-dimethylamino)ethyl]acridine-4-carboxamide (DACA), carbazeran, PF-4217903, and PF-945863. These compounds were assayed using two in vitro systems (pooled human liver cytosol and liver S-9 fractions) to calculate scaled unbound intrinsic clearance, and they were then compared with calculated in vivo unbound intrinsic clearance. The investigation provided a relative scale that can be used for in vitro-in vivo correlation of aldehyde oxidase clearance and suggests limits as to when a potential new drug candidate that is metabolized by this enzyme will possess acceptable human clearance, or when structural modification is required to reduce aldehyde oxidase catalyzed metabolism.
Elements Controlling the Expression and Induction of the Skin Hyperproliferation-associated Keratin K6 (*)

The suprabasal keratin 6 (K6) is remarkable among the keratins as, in addition to being constitutively expressed in different stratified epithelia, it is induced in epidermis under hyperproliferative conditions, such as benign or malignant tumors, psoriasis, and wound healing. In addition, this keratin is also induced in skin treated with 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate or retinoic acid (RA). These characteristics make the study of K6 regulatory elements an especially interesting issue, in particular because these elements could be useful in designing gene constructs for the therapy of skin diseases. We have analyzed by mobility shift and footprinting experiments the cell type-specific enhancer of the bovine K6β gene (Blessing, M., Jorcano, J. L., and Franke, W. W.(1989) EMBO J. 8, 117-126) and have identified an AP-2-like element, two AP-1 elements (one of them composite), and a retinoic acid-responsive element (RARE). Mutagenesis experiments and cotransfections with retinoic acid receptors show that the RARE mediates enhancer activation by RA. Chloramphenicol acetyltransferase assays show that under normal culture conditions, the AP-1 element retains most of the enhancer transcriptional activity, while the RARE and AP-2 are weakly active. However, following RA treatment, the AP-1 element is repressed and the RARE is activated, resulting in an overall stimulation of the enhancer by RA in the BMGE+H cells used in our study. These results explain in part the complex and sometimes contradictory response of keratin 6 to hyperproliferative stimuli.
Perceiving motherhood and fatherhood : Swedish working parents with young children

This book explores the way in which a group of parents of pre-school children construct the meaning of motherhood and fatherhood and cope with discourses that hold conflicting rules and value systems. Being a working parent today in Sweden entails moving between various domains. It involves integrating these domains, in order to create a reasonably satisfactory daily life for oneself and one's family members. Fieldwork at a multinational company, interviews with parents in two-earner families, and observations at a pre-school and at a child-health centre have been conducted over a period of two years. By combining interviews and observations at work and at home the author has explored the relationship between work and family life. The study shows that in contemporary Sweden there is a regeneration of conventional concepts of motherhood and fatherhood while at the same time these concepts are undergoing a redefinition. The discourses at the investigated workplace predominantly regenerate the conventional concepts. At the workplace, motherhood is associated with absenteeism and part-time work. Therefore, women encounter other expectations than men, which also gives them opportunities different from those of men. Modem parenting entails the work of co-ordinating and integrating clashing values, and this is reflected in both mothers' and fathers' stories. Cultural constructs from discourses at the workplace, the pre-school and the child-health centre exist parallel with each other. The informants' jobs, together with their own wishes and efforts to care well for their children, govern the mothers' and the fathers' daily lives. Particularly mothers are found to develop a skill in balancing between the different domains with their conflicting demands.
Elucidation of pharmacologically manipulated responding in the delay discounting task in high alcohol preferring mice

Halcomb, Meredith E. Ph.D., Purdue University, May 2015. Elucidation of Pharmacologically Manipulated Responding in the Delay Discounting Task in High Alcohol-preferring Mice Major Professor: Nicholas Grahame. Impulsive behavior is the hallmark of many psychopathologies. Uncovering the neurobiological mechanisms driving impulsivity is paramount in the development of through the delay discounting (DD) task in both human and animal models. The present study is an examination of the predictive validity of the two primary types of DD procedures in animals, the Adjusting Amounts (AA) and within session Increasing Delays (ID) tasks. Methods: Subjects were administered either1.25 mg/kg damphetamine (AMP), 1.5 g/kg ethanol (EtOH) or saline and tested in either the AA or ID method for 15 days to evaluate drug effects on impulsive behavior. Results: Stimulant administration resulted in a reduction of impulsivity in the AA group, but had no effect in the ID group. There was no effect on impulsivity of EtOH administration in AA or ID groups. Conclusion: Given the ability of stimulant administration to reduce impulsivity in clinical studies, the AA version of DD provides the best predictive validity for the animal
Superficial X‐ray therapy in the treatment of constitutional eczema of the hands

Twenty‐four patients with chronic symmetrical constitutional eczema of the hands were treated with a combination of topical therapy and conventional superficial X‐ray therapy. In a double‐blind fashion one hand was irradiated with 100 rad (1Gy) * at 50kV on three occasions at intervals of 21 days and the other hand was given a placebo treatment. Each hand received the same topical medication, which was adjusted as necessary at each visit. The patients were seen 6, 9 and 18 weeks after X‐ray therapy commenced. A significantly better therapeutic result, as assessed independently by both the patient and the observer, was recorded on the hand which had received active X‐ray treatment. The advantage bestowed by active X‐ray therapy was greatest 6 to 9 weeks after the start of treatment, but was still present after 18 weeks.
Trauma, Attentional Biases, and Revictimization Among Young Adults

Individuals with previous histories of trauma are at increased risk for subsequent victimization and the development of posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, and anxiety disorders. Attentional biases to threat-related stimuli are thought to impact one’s ability to recognize future risk in his or her environment and may explain high rates of revictimization. Although the literature has identified three possible types of attentional biases among victims of trauma (i.e., interference, facilitation, and avoidance), findings are mixed. The current study examined attentional biases to threats among a sample of men and women with no, some, and multiple incident interpersonal and non-interpersonal trauma histories. It was hypothesized that those with multiple incident interpersonal trauma histories would demonstrate an interference effect (i.e., slower response times to threat-related words). Participants (N = 309) were 18- to 29-year-old college students. Self-report measures assessed trauma history, posttraumatic stress, and other psychological sequelae. Attentional biases were assessed using a dot probe computer task. Contrary to hypotheses, no significant differences in response times in the presence of threat-related words or neutral words were found among groups. Results suggest that multiple traumatized individuals do not exhibit attentional bias to threats compared to individuals with some or no trauma.
Rise of the planet of the apps: a systematic study of the mobile app ecosystem

Mobile applications (apps) have been gaining rising popularity due to the advances in mobile technologies and the large increase in the number of mobile users. Consequently, several app distribution platforms, which provide a new way for developing, downloading, and updating software applications in modern mobile devices, have recently emerged. To better understand the download patterns, popularity trends, and development strategies in this rapidly evolving mobile app ecosystem, we systematically monitored and analyzed four popular third-party Android app marketplaces. Our study focuses on measuring, analyzing, and modeling the app popularity distribution, and explores how pricing and revenue strategies affect app popularity and developers' income. Our results indicate that unlike web and peer-to-peer file sharing workloads, the app popularity distribution deviates from commonly observed Zipf-like models. We verify that these deviations can be mainly attributed to a new download pattern, to which we refer as the clustering effect. We validate the existence of this effect by revealing a strong temporal affinity of user downloads to app categories. Based on these observations, we propose a new formal clustering model for the distribution of app downloads, and demonstrate that it closely fits measured data. Moreover, we observe that paid apps follow a different popularity distribution than free apps, and show how free apps with an ad-based revenue strategy may result in higher financial benefits than paid apps. We believe that this study can be useful to appstore designers for improving content delivery and recommendation systems, as well as to app developers for selecting proper pricing policies to increase their income.
Effects of chronic long-term therapy with calcium antagonists on cytogenetic damage in humans.

OBJECTIVE To assess whether chronic long-term calcium antagonist therapy may increase genotoxicity, the chromosome aberration test, a widely accepted genotoxic assay, was used ex vivo in peripheral human lymphocytes of patients with or without long-term exposure to calcium antagonist therapy. METHODS AND RESULTS In a case-control study design, we evaluated 30 ischaemic and/or hypertensive patients (22 males, eight females; age 59.4+/-1.5 years), under chronic calcium antagonist treatment (group I), for more than 3 years (4.4+/-0.34 years) and 30 age-matched subjects, without any previous exposure to calcium antagonists (group II). Venous blood samples were collected from the patients and cultures were set up for cytogenetic analysis by standard methods. For each subject, 100 metaphases were scored. The two groups showed similar values (mean +/- SEM) for percentage aberrant cells (group I 2.6+/-0.3 versus group II 2.5+/-0.3, not significant), percentage structural aberrations (group I 1.9+/-0.3 versus group II 1.8+/-0.2, not significant) and percentage numerical aberrations (group I 0.70+/-0.2 versus group II 0.73+/-0.2, not significant). CONCLUSIONS Long-term calcium antagonist therapy is not associated with an increased incidence of chromosomal indices of genotoxic damage in humans.
A Lightweight Pronoun Resolution Algorithm for French Corporate Texts

In this paper we present COREFF, a pronoun resolution algorithm implemented as a GATE plugin, composed of a small set of rules that follow from observations made on a corpus of French corporate texts, and requiring very little linguistic processing besides what is already available for GATE. We show that its performances are rather good for such a lightweight system, but that it shows, however, a strong dependency to the corpus it was developed for. We compare its results with the ones obtained by a similar algorithm for English on two different corpora, and give a brief description of the errors.
Development of intrinsic tone in isolated pulmonary arterioles

Liu, Qiang, and J. T. Sylvester. Development of intrinsic tone in isolated pulmonary arterioles. Am. J. Physiol. 276 (Lung Cell. Mol. Physiol. 20): L805–L813, 1999. —In isolated porcine pulmonary arterioles with endothelium, intraluminal diameter measured at a transmural pressure of 20 mmHg decreased spontaneously from 233 6 11 to 171 6 12 μm in 135 min. This intrinsic constriction was not prevented by indomethacin, tetraethylammonium, or superoxide dismutase. Indomethacin plus NG-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester caused initial constriction and BQ-123 or BQ-123 plus BQ-788 caused initial dilation, but these treatments did not prevent subsequent progressive constriction. In pulmonary arterioles with endothelium exposed to calcium-free conditions and pulmonary arterioles without endothelium, the intraluminal diameter measured at a transmural pressure of 20 mmHg was constant at 239 6 16 and 174 6 7 μm, respectively. Thus the spontaneous development of tone in isolated pulmonary arterioles required extracellular calcium and resulted from 1) time-independent smooth muscle contraction caused by mechanisms intrinsic to smooth muscle and 2) time-dependent contraction caused by decreasing activity of endotheliumderived relaxing factors other than nitric oxide, vasodilator prostaglandins, and hyperpolarizing factors acting on calciumdependent potassium channels or increasing activity of endothelium-derived contracting factors other than endothelin-1, vasoconstrictor prostaglandins, and superoxide anions. Further investigation is indicated to identify these unknown mechanisms and determine their role in pulmonary vasoreactivity.