Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Negative Effects of Reward on Intrinsic Motivation—A Limited Phenomenon: Comment on Deci, Koestner, and Ryan (2001)

A major concern in educational settings is that the use of rewards and incentives may destroy students’ intrinsic motivation to perform activities. In collaboration with other researchers, the author conducted a meta-analysis of the literature that showed that negative effects of reward were limited and easily avoidable (Cameron & Pierce, 1994; Eisenberger & Cameron, 1996). Deci, Koestner, and Ryan (2001) suggest that our work was seriously flawed; they present a summary of their meta-analysis on the topic (Deci, Koestner, & Ryan, 1999a) and claim that rewards do substantially undermine intrinsic interest. In this comment, it is argued that there is no inherent negative property of reward. By organizing studies according to cognitive evaluation theory, Deci et al. (1999a) collapsed across distinct reward procedures and were able to obtain pervasive negative effects. When studies are organized according to the actual procedures used, however, negative effects are limited to a specific set of circumstances.
Identifying the Evaluative Impulse in Local Culture

Attention to cultural competence has significantly increased in the human services over the last two decades. Evaluators have long had similar concerns and have made a more concentrated effort in recent years to adapt evaluation methodology to varying cultural contexts. Little of this literature, however, has focused on the extent to which local cultures themselves already contain habits and patterns of evaluative thought that may serve as a basis for such work and for fuller stakeholder participation. This article explores the evaluative instincts expressed in West African proverbs against a background of related research. Consideration of the explicit message and latent meanings of a set of chosen proverbs suggests that the cultures in question are rich in evaluative perspectives. Directions for further research are proposed.
Narcissism and Empathy in Young Offenders and Non–Offenders

Understanding the individual factors that predispose persons to criminal behaviour is vital to reducing offending and rehabilitating those who have been sentenced to prison. This study examined the roles of narcissism (at both clinical and subclinical trait levels) and empathy, by comparing levels in young adult males currently serving a prison sentence to those with no history of criminal convictions. Prison participants had significantly higher levels of narcissism—in particular entitlement—than control participants, and this link was sequentially mediated by lower perspective–taking and subsequently lack of empathic concern. Trait narcissism showed stronger effects than narcissistic personality disorder symptoms. Narcissistic young men's feelings of entitlement and ensuing lack of empathy for others may account for their greater likelihood of criminal behaviour. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Perceived Negative Health Effect of Tanning

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between the perceived negative health effect of tanning (PNHET) and body-tanning attitudes and behaviors. A total of 333 college students with an average age of 19.8 years participated in the study. A majority of the participants were female (80.2%) and Caucasian (76.9%). Three body-tanning attitudes emerged from the data: pleasurable activity, physical attractiveness, and healthy behavior. The PNHET was negatively related to all three body-tanning attitudes and methods of tanning behaviors used (i.e., sunbathing, tanning beds, and sunless tanning product use). However, specific body-tanning attitudes independently influence the methods of body-tanning behaviors. Pleasurable activity was a significant attitude influencing indoor and outdoor tanning. College students seek tanning beds and tanning products, particularly when physical attractiveness is concerned. Healthy behavioral attitudes exist for outdoor tanning. Intervention strategies regarding body-tanning behaviors should focus on attitudinal changes, which specifically involve ultraviolet (UV) ray exposure. Educating the public about the negative health effects of tanning is still a very important intervention strategy to help individuals avoid excessive amount of harmful UV exposure and resultant skin cancer. Body-tanning behaviors, as a part of consumer culture, should change to minimize these unhealthy behaviors.
Changes in the Cognitive Complexity of English Instruction: The Moderating Effects of School and Classroom Characteristics

Background/Context A central aim of standards-based reform is to close achievement gaps by raising academic standards for all students. Rigorous standards coupled with aligned assessments will purportedly improve student opportunity to learn through high-quality, aligned instruction. After 10 years of No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the impact of standards-based reform on student achievement in English Language Arts (ELA) remains questionable. Improving ELA achievement has been a central focus of NCLB, so this study examines changes in the cognitive demand coverage of teachers’ ELA instruction over time during the NCLB era. Research Question Three research questions guide the analyses: (a) How have the cognitive demand levels of ELA instruction changed over time? (b) To what extent have changes in the cognitive demand level of ELA instruction differed across settings based on school and classroom characteristics? (c) How have cognitive demand levels changed as school composition has changed? Subjects The sample consists of 2,064 ELA teachers in grades K-12. The teachers come from 344 schools in 15 states; the majority are K-3 educators. Research Design This study relies on secondary data analysis of teachers’ responses to the Surveys of Enacted Curriculum (SEC). First, we used a within-teacher fixed-effects regression model to determine how cognitive demand coverage changed over time. Second, we examined how these changes varied by school and classroom characteristics (e.g., Title 1 status). Finally, we investigated how changes in cognitive demand coverage varied based on within-school changes in school and classroom characteristics. Findings Findings demonstrate that cognitive demand coverage has changed considerably over the study period, moving from higher and lower levels toward the middle. There were, however, notable variations between schools serving different populations of students. Schools in urban areas serving predominantly students from historically marginalized groups (e.g., racial/ethnic minorities) saw more of a shift toward lower levels of cognitive demand than was seen at schools serving whiter and wealthier students. Conclusions/Recommendations There have been different instructional responses to standards and assessments in different settings, with decreased cognitive demand in urban/ high-needs schools relative to suburban/lower-needs schools. These shifts seem to run contrary to the idea that all students should be held to the same high standards. We recommend that future research consider longitudinal data regarding teachers’ instruction. It is also important that policymakers, particularly those working on the Common Core State Standards, consider these differential responses to standards-based reform.
Pitfalls in the interpretation of multielectrode data: on the infeasibility of the neuronal current-source monopoles.

TO THE EDITOR: Riera et al. (2012) recently presented a comprehensive multielectrode study of the barrel field of anesthetized rat. Notably, they reported that the estimated instantaneous current source density (CSD) from the recorded extracellular potentials does not sum to zero over the volume of the barrel column, indicating the presence of cortical current source monopoles on a mesoscopic (cell population) scale. The authors concluded that current source monopoles must be included in the interpretation of electrophysiological recordings (including EEG). Together with an accompanying commentary (Destexhe and Bedard 2012), it was further speculated that the estimated current monopoles are real, i.e., that single neurons may act as true neuronal current monopoles, and that the traditional cable equation may be invalid for describing bioelectrical neuronal phenomena. However, these claims are in contradiction with well-established models of electrophysiology, including Hodgkin and Huxley’s mathematical description of axonal action potentials and the multicompartmental models of dendritic signal integration in neurons. In fact, the existence of current monopoles would be in direct violation of the Ampere-Maxwell’s law for macroscopic media (Griffiths 1999) H Jf D t (1) which relates the magnetic field H to the electric current density of free charges Jf and the change in the displacement field D. By applying the divergence operator to this equation, and noting that the divergence of a curl is zero, it follows that
Growth of central nervous system auditory and visual nuclei in the postnatal gerbil (Meriones unguiculatus)

The objective of the present study was, by using the Mongolian gerbil (Meriones unguiculatus) as an animal model, to provide data on the growth dynamics of central auditory and visual nuclei and to relate the growth of these structures to the growth of the entire brain. So far, no such systematic study has been performed in any mammalian species. The knowledge of the rates of development of central nervous sensory structures might be useful for understanding the contribution of the central nervous system to maturation of sensory processing.
Investment, Consumption and Hedging Under Incomplete Markets

Entrepreneurs often face undiversifiable idiosyncratic risks from their business investments. We extend the standard real options approach to an incomplete markets environment and analyze the joint decisions of business investments, consumption/savings, and portfolio selection. For a lump-sum investment payoff and an agent with a sufficiently strong precautionary savings motive, an increase in volatility can accelerate investment, contrary to the standard real options analysis. When the agent can trade the market portfolio to partially hedge against investment risk, the systematic volatility is compensated via the standard CAPM argument, and the idiosyncratic volatility generates a private equity premium. Finally, when the investment payoff is a series of flows, the agent's idiosyncratic risk exposure alters both the implied option value and the implied project value, causing a reversal of the results in the lump-sum payoff case.
Long-pulsed Nd:YAG laser on periorbital wrinkles in Asian patients: randomized split face study

Background and objective: This study evaluated clinical usefulness of long-pulsed Nd:YAG laser (LPNY) for periorbital wrinkles in Asian patients. Methods: Twenty seven Korean patients were treated with several passes of LPNY (5 mm spot size, fluence: 54.7–61.8 J/cm2, pulse duration: 56.5 microseconds). Three treatment sessions were conducted every 2 weeks on the half side of face that was randomly assigned. Outcome assessments included photography, global evaluation by two blinded independent dermatologists (using Fitzpatrick Wrinkle Classification System), and objective measurements of skin elasticity. Adverse events were documented. Patients reported their degree of satisfaction on a 6-point {0–5) visual analog scale (VAS). Results: All patients showed modest improvement. The mean wrinkle score on the treated side decreased by 34.9% (p < 0.05), while it did not change significantly on the control site. Skin elasticity (R2) increased significantly on the treated site. The average VAS score was 2.85 at 2 months but it dropped down to 1.05 at 6 months follow-up. No adverse effects were noted except 2 weeks lasting erythema in one patient. Conclusion: LPNY may be considered as a safe treatment option for periorbital wrinkles in Asian patients. However, three treatment sessions are not enough for maintaining optimal clinical outcome.
Work Pressure as a Determinant of Work Group Behavior

This study examines the relationship between newly emphasized production pressures and the internal dynamics of ongoing work groups. The focus is on cohesive group behavior and the role that supervisory management may play with respect to that behavior within a group-oriented high-pressure work environment. The data for this study were drawn from a major manufacturing company and collected at two different times; 1 year after a company imposed work pressure system began and I year after that. The results indicate that work pressures tend to disrupt work-group cohesive behavior per se but that the effect is not especially robust. Additionalfindings indicate that supervisory behavior can have a substantial effect on cohesive behavior and how members of work groups respond to pressures in terms of relevant internal dynamics. Especially relevant is the apparent effect of the supervision under especially high work pressure conditions.
Niching the CMA-ES via nearest-better clustering

We investigate how a niching based evolutionary algorithm fares on the BBOB function test set, knowing that most problems are not very well suited to this algorithm class. However, as the CMA-ES is included as basic local search algorithm, the niching approach still performs fairly well, with some potential to improve. Basin identification is done via the heuristic nearest-best clustering scheme.
One-Day Flies on StackOverflow - Why the Vast Majority of StackOverflow Users Only Posts Once

Stack Overflow (SO) is a popular question and answers (Q&A) platform related to software development. An interesting characteristic of SO is that about half of its users makes only one contribution to the platform in total. In this work, we study this group of users, which we call one-day flies, and we investigate why they do not continue to contribute to the platform. By achieving this understanding we can find ways to enable users to become more active.
Robust Text Classification for Sparsely Labelled Data Using Multi-level Embeddings

The conventional solution for handling sparsely labelled data is extensive feature engineering. This is time consuming and task and domain specific. We present a novel approach for learning embedded features that aims to alleviate this problem. Our approach jointly learns embeddings at different levels of granularity (word, sentence and document) along with the class labels. The intuition is that topic semantics represented by embeddings at multiple levels results in better classification. We evaluate this approach in unsupervised and semi-supervised settings on two sparsely labelled classification tasks, outperforming the handcrafted models and several embedding baselines.
Asymmetrical Generalization of Length in the Rat

Two groups of rats in Experiment 1 were required to escape from a square pool by swimming to 1 of 2 submerged platforms that were situated beside the centers of 2 opposite walls. To help rats find a platform, black panels of equal width were pasted to the middle of the walls that were adjacent to the platforms. The width of the 2 panels was 50 cm for Group 50, and 100 cm for Group 100. Test trials were then conducted in the same pool, but with the platforms removed and with a 50-cm panel on 1 wall and a 100-cm panel on the opposite wall. Group 50 expressed a stronger preference for the 100-cm than the 50-cm panel during the test, whereas Group 100 expressed a similar preference for both panels. Thus the degree of generalization from the short to the long panel was greater than from the long to the short panel. Experiments 2 and 3 pointed to the same conclusion. They were of a similar design to Experiment 1, except that the lengths of the panels for the 2 groups were 25 and 50 cm in Experiment 2, and 25 and 100 cm in Experiment 3. The results are explained by assuming the original training results in the walls without black panels entering into inhibitory associations. This inhibition is then assumed to generalize more to the short than the long test panels and thereby result in an asymmetry in the gradients of generalization between the different lengths.
Peripheral Red Blood Cell Split Chimerism as a Consequence of Intramedullary Selective Apoptosis of Recipient Red Blood Cells in a Case of Sickle Cell Disease

Allogeneic cellular gene therapy through hematopoietic stem cell transplantation is the only radical cure for congenital hemoglobinopathies like thalassemia and sickle cell anemia. Persistent mixed hematopoietic chimerism (PMC) has been described in thalassemia and sickle cell anemia. Here, we describe the clinical course of a 6-year-old girl who had received bone marrow transplant for sickle cell anemia. After the transplant, the patient showed 36% donor hematopoietic stem cells in the bone marrow, whereas in the peripheral blood there was evidence of 80% circulating donor red blood cells (RBC). The analysis of apoptosis at the Bone Marrow level suggests that Fas might contribute to the cell death of host erythroid precursors. The increase in NK cells and the regulatory T cell population observed in this patient suggests that these cells might contribute to the condition of mixed chimerism.
QUANTITATIVE ASPECTS OF TRANSMITTER RELEASE

The opener-stretcher motor neuron in crayfish makes 50 endings upon each of 1200 muscle fibers. We have calculated the quantal content of junctional potentials produced by individual terminals and by the whole cell at various physiological frequencies. The results show that when the motor neuron is active at 20 impulses/second, it releases 50 quanta/impulse per muscle fiber, or a total of 4.5 x 109 quanta/hr. These figures are similar to those for vertebrate muscles per fiber, but larger for the entire neuron because the opener motor unit is so large. On the basis that the quanta correspond to synaptic vesicles each containing 103–104 molecules of transmitter, the release rate must be around 10-11 mole/hr. This value is within an order of magnitude of the release figures obtained for mammalian neurons by collecting transmitter in perfusates, but it is far lower than the value reported for a crustacean inhibitory neuron. If the membrane materials surrounding each vesicle were lost in the release process, the replacement synthesis would involve 24 mm2 of membrane/hr. We conclude that the metabolic load in terms of transmitter synthesis is probably sustainable, but that the release mechanism must operate in such a way that vesicle membrane materials are neither lost nor incorporated into the terminal membrane.
Production of clinically useful positron emitter beams during carbon ion deceleration

In external beam radiation therapy, radioactive beams offer the best clinical solution to simultaneously treat and in vivo monitor the dose delivery and tumor response using PET or PET-CT imaging. However, difficulties mainly linked to the low production efficiency have so far limited their use. This study is devoted to the analysis of the production of high energy 11C fragments, preferably by projectile fragmentation of a stable monodirectional and monoenergetic primary 12C beam in different absorbing materials (decelerators) in order to identify the optimal elemental composition. The study was performed using the Monte Carlo code SHIELD-HIT07. The track length and fluence of generated secondary particles were scored in a uniform absorber of 300 cm length and 10 cm radius, divided into slices of 1 cm thickness. The 11C fluence build-up and mean energy variation with increasing decelerator depth are presented. Furthermore, the fluence of the secondary 11C beam was studied as a function of its mean energy and the corresponding remaining range in water. It is shown that the maximum 11C fluence build-up is high in compounds where the fraction by weight of hydrogen is high, being the highest in liquid hydrogen. Furthermore, a cost effective alternative solution to the single medium initially envisaged is presented: a two-media decelerator that comprises a first liquid hydrogen section followed by a second decelerating section made of a hydrogen-rich material, such as polyethylene (C2H4). The purpose of the first section is to achieve a fast initial 11C fluence build-up, while the second section is primarily designed to modulate the mean energy of the generated 11C beam in order to reach the tumor depth. Finally, it was demonstrated that, if the intensity of the primary 12C beam can be increased by an order of magnitude, a sufficient intensity of the secondary 11C beam is achieved for therapy and subsequent therapeutic PET imaging sessions. Such an increase in the intensity might be easily achieved with a superconducting cyclotron.
An Analysis of Strategies for Preventing Selfish Behavior in Mobile Delay Tolerant Networks

In mobile Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs), messages are routed in a mobility-assisted manner. Therefore, the willingness of nodes to relay messages for other nodes plays a significant role in the routing process. Moreover, since the resources in mobile devices are generally limited, carriers of mobile devices may be unwilling to relay messages for other nodes in order to conserve their scarce resources. Furthermore, recent studies on the impact of selfish behavior in DTNs show that the performance metrics (i.e., delivery ratio, delivery overhead, and delivery latency) are severely influenced if a major portion of the nodes is selfish. A number of strategies have been proposed to prevent the impact of selfish behavior. It is therefore necessary to give an overview of the representative strategies. In this paper, we first classify the different types of selfish behavior. The existing strategies for preventing selfish behavior are traditionally classified into three categories: barter-based, credit-based and reputation-based. We then survey some representative strategies in the literature belonging to each category. Finally, we conduct experiments to compare the performance of these strategies for preventing different types of selfish behavior.
A PROPOSED FORMULA FOR CALCULATING ENERGY NEEDS OF CHILDREN WITH CEREBRAL PALSY

This study compared two methods of calculating the energy needs of children with CP: the traditional method, using RDA for chronological age; and the Krick method, which calculates the BMR and includes factors for muscle tone, movement or level of activity, and energy requirements for normal and catch‐up growth. 30 tube‐fed children, aged between nine months and 18 years, who were inpatients for longer than one week at the Kennedy Institute, were reviewed. 14 were female. They were weighed at admission and discharge to evaluate the rate of growth; calorie prescriptions at discharge were based on the clinical course. The Krick method was found to be a more potent predictor of the discharge prescription than the RDA method.