Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
From prediction error to incentive salience: mesolimbic computation of reward motivation

Reward contains separable psychological components of learning, incentive motivation and pleasure. Most computational models have focused only on the learning component of reward, but the motivational component is equally important in reward circuitry, and even more directly controls behavior. Modeling the motivational component requires recognition of additional control factors besides learning. Here I discuss how mesocorticolimbic mechanisms generate the motivation component of incentive salience. Incentive salience takes Pavlovian learning and memory as one input and as an equally important input takes neurobiological state factors (e.g. drug states, appetite states, satiety states) that can vary independently of learning. Neurobiological state changes can produce unlearned fluctuations or even reversals in the ability of a previously learned reward cue to trigger motivation. Such fluctuations in cue‐triggered motivation can dramatically depart from all previously learned values about the associated reward outcome. Thus, one consequence of the difference between incentive salience and learning can be to decouple cue‐triggered motivation of the moment from previously learned values of how good the associated reward has been in the past. Another consequence can be to produce irrationally strong motivation urges that are not justified by any memories of previous reward values (and without distorting associative predictions of future reward value). Such irrationally strong motivation may be especially problematic in addiction. To understand these phenomena, future models of mesocorticolimbic reward function should address the neurobiological state factors that participate to control generation of incentive salience.
Global attractors of pinched skew products

A class of skew products over irrational rotations of the circle is defined which contains some systems which have strange non-chaotic attractors. The global attractor of these systems is characterized: it lies between an upper semi-continuous curve and a lower semi-continuous curve. With additional assumptions on the class of maps considered more detail of the attractor can be given.
Nucleosome and transcription activator antagonism at human β-globin locus control region DNase I hypersensitive sites

Locus control regions are regulatory elements that activate distant genes and typically consist of several DNase I hypersensitive sites coincident with clusters of transcription activator binding sites. To what extent nucleosomes and activators occupy these sites together or exclusively has not been extensively studied in vivo. We analyzed the chromatin structure of human β-globin locus control region hypersensitive sites in erythroid cells expressing embryonic and fetal globin genes. Nucleosomes were variably depleted at hypersensitive sites HS1-HS4 and at HS5 which flanks the 5′ of the locus. In lieu of nucleosomes, activators were differentially associated with these sites. Erythroid–specific GATA-1 resided at HS1, HS2 and HS4 but the NF-E2 hetero-dimer was limited to HS2 where nucleosomes were most severely depleted. Histones H3 and H4 were hyperacetylated and H3 was di-methylated at K4 across the LCR, however, the H3 K4 MLL methyltransferase component Ash2L and histone acetyltransferases CBP and p300 occupied essentially only HS2 and the NF-E2 motif in HS2 was required for Ash2L recruitment. Our results indicate that each hypersensitive site in the human β-globin LCR has distinct structural features and suggest that HS2 plays a pivotal role in LCR organization at embryonic and fetal stages of globin gene expression.
Sharing, Subsistence, and Social Norms in Northern Siberia

T majority of families in Ust’-Avam in northern Siberia are dependent on subsistence hunting, fishing, and trapping and have been part of a vertically integrated industrial economy in a remote area of the former Soviet Union. Thus, the results from behavioral games conducted there in 2003—the dictator game (DG), the ultimatum game (UG), and the third-party punishment game (TPG)—lend themselves to comparison with other indigenous hunter-gatherers, as well as with working communities in other nation-states. My ethnographic research in the region beginning in 1992 helps to contextualize these results. The two indigenous ethnic minorities in the community (Dolgan and Nganasan) have differing linguistic, religious, and economic histories, and I took these differences into account in my analysis of the game results. Group characteristics did not result in different outcomes in the experiments, although individual and household characteristics did. The results show moderate levels of second-party punishment in the ultimatum game, along with relatively high offers and a notable concern for fairness in the dictator game. The chapter begins with a summary of the ethnographic material relevant to this community of indigenous hunter-fisher-trappers in northern Siberia. Next, results of player surveys and a descriptive analysis of the game results are presented. The chapter closes with a presentation and discussion of the multiple regressions of the game results.
Asking Nicely? The Effects of Mood on Responding to More or Less Polite Requests

Receiving requests presents people with complex strategic choices. How does mood influence reactions to more or less polite requests? Based on the affect infusion model (AIM), it was predicted and found that (a) reactions to requests show a significant mood-congruent bias that (b) is greater for impolite requests that recruit more substantive processing. In an unobtrusive procedure, library readers saw pictures or text eliciting positive or negative moods. Their subsequent responses to more or less polite unobtrusive requests showed that negative mood produced more critical reactions and less compliance than did positive mood, and this effect was accentuated for impolite, unconventional requests. Superior memory for impolite requests confirmed the more substantive processing of these messages. The results support the AIM and confirm that different processing strategies mediate mood effects on language use. The implications of the findings for interpersonal behavior and for contemporary theories of affect and cognition are considered.
Knowledge-based IMRT treatment planning for prostate cancer

PURPOSE To demonstrate the feasibility of using a knowledge base of prior treatment plans to generate new prostate intensity modulated radiation therapy (IMRT) plans. Each new case would be matched against others in the knowledge base. Once the best match is identified, that clinically approved plan is used to generate the new plan. METHODS A database of 100 prostate IMRT treatment plans was assembled into an information-theoretic system. An algorithm based on mutual information was implemented to identify similar patient cases by matching 2D beam's eye view projections of contours. Ten randomly selected query cases were each matched with the most similar case from the database of prior clinically approved plans. Treatment parameters from the matched case were used to develop new treatment plans. A comparison of the differences in the dose-volume histograms between the new and the original treatment plans were analyzed. RESULTS On average, the new knowledge-based plan is capable of achieving very comparable planning target volume coverage as the original plan, to within 2% as evaluated for D98, D95, and D1. Similarly, the dose to the rectum and dose to the bladder are also comparable to the original plan. For the rectum, the mean and standard deviation of the dose percentage differences for D20, D30, and D50 are 1.8% +/- 8.5%, -2.5% +/- 13.9%, and -13.9% +/- 23.6%, respectively. For the bladder, the mean and standard deviation of the dose percentage differences for D20, D30, and D50 are -5.9% +/- 10.8%, -12.2% +/- 14.6%, and -24.9% +/- 21.2%, respectively. A negative percentage difference indicates that the new plan has greater dose sparing as compared to the original plan. CONCLUSIONS The authors demonstrate a knowledge-based approach of using prior clinically approved treatment plans to generate clinically acceptable treatment plans of high quality. This semiautomated approach has the potential to improve the efficiency of the treatment planning process while ensuring that high quality plans are developed.
African American and European American Students’ Peer Groups During Early Adolescence: Structure, Status, and Academic Achievement

Focusing on a sample of 382 African American (206 female) and 264 European American (132 female) students in diverse fourth and fifth grade classrooms, this study investigated three questions concerning the connections between peer groups and academic achievement during early adolescence: (a) How is group structure (i.e., hierarchy and cohesion) associated with group centrality (i.e., status) in the classroom? (b) Does group structure predict academic achievement? and (c) Do peer-group status systems support or undermine academic achievement? Results were similar for African American and European American students. Group hierarchy was positively associated with group centrality but negatively associated with individual academic achievement. Individual status was positively associated with academic achievement. Discussion focuses on multifaceted peer-group influences on academic achievement and implications for educational practice.
Salient object detection via global contrast graph

In this paper, we propose an unsupervised bottom-up method which formulates salient object detection problem as finding salient vertices of a graph. Global contrast is extracted in a novel graph-based framework to determine localization of salient objects. Saliency values are assigned to regions in terms of nodes degrees on graph. The proposed method has been applied on SED2 dataset. The qualitative and quantitative evaluation of the proposed method show that it can detect the salient objects appropriately in comparison with 5 state-of-art saliency models.
Zebrin II: A polypeptide antigen expressed selectively by purkinje cells reveals compartments in rat and fish cerebellum

Monoclonal antibody mab‐zebrin II was generated against a crude homogenate of cerebellum and electrosensory lateral line lobe from the weakly electric fish Apteronotus leptorhynchus. On Western blots of fish cerebellar proteins, mab‐zebrin II recognizes a single polypeptide antigen of apparent molecular weight 36 kD. Immunocytochemistry of apteronotid brains reveals that zebrin II immunoreactivity is confined exclusively to Purkinje cells in the corpus cerebelli, lateral valvula cerebelli, and the eminentia granularis anterior. Other Purkinje cells, in the medial valvula cerebelli and eminentia granularis posterior, are not zebrin II immunoreactive. Immunoreactive Purkinje cells are stained completely, including dendrites, axons, and somata. The antigen seems to be absent only from the nucleus. A similar distribution is seen in catfish, goldfish, and a mormyrid fish. Zebrin II immunoreactivity is also found in the rat cerebellum. Western blotting of rat cerebellar proteins reveals a single immunoreactive polypeptide, with apparent, molecular weight 36 kD, as in the fish. Also as in the fish, staining in the adult rat cerebellum is confined to a subset of Purkinje cells. Peroxidase reaction product is deposited throughout the immunoreactive Purkinje cells with the exception of the nucleus. No other cells in the cerebellum express zebrin II. At higher antibody concentrations, a weak glial cross reactivity is seen in most other brain regions: we believe that this is probably nonspecific. Zebrin II+ Purkinje cells are clustered together to form roughly parasagittal bands interposed by similar non‐immunoreactive clusters. In all there are 7 zebrin II+ and 7 zebrin II− compartments in each hemicerebellum. One immunoreactive band is adjacent to the midline; two others are disposed laterally to each side in the vermis; there is a paravermal band; and finally three more bands are identified in each hemisphere. Both in number and position, these compartments correspond precisely to the bands revealed by using another antibody, mabQ113 (anti‐zebrin I). In both fish and rat the compartmentation revealed by zebrin II immunocytochemistry is related to the organization of cerebellar afferent and efferent projections and may provide clues as to the fundamental architecture of the vertebrate cerebellum.
Role of Friendship, Trust, and Love in Strong Latino Marriages

ABSTRACT This qualitative study focuses on the role that friendship, trust, and love play in the marriages of 25 Latino couples (50 individuals) who, through a semistructured interview, reported having strong marriages. Latino couples were interviewed using questions developed within the context of Latino culture. A model of how friendship, trust, and love contribute to strong marriages is proposed. Suggestions of how these findings can be used in marriage education are provided.
New‐born infants' perception of similarities and differences between two‐ and three‐dimensional stimuli

The new-born baby' ability to detect similarities and differences between three-dimensional stimuli and their two-dimensional representations is investigated in three experiments, using both visual preference and habituation procedures. In Expt 1 new-borns strongly preferred (looked more at) complex objects to their photographs. This preference was found with monocular viewing, and suggests that motion parallax is a salient cue in the detection of the differences between the two- and three-dimensional stimuli. The results from Expt 2 support the view that, for the new-born, the differences between objects and their two-dimensional representations are more detectable or salient than their similarities. These conclusions were further supported by the results from the last experiment, using simpler stimuli, although the preference was for the two- rather than the three-dimensional stimuli. The results suggest that studies which use only two-dimensional stimuli may provide only limited information about the course of perceptual development, at least in the first few months from birth.
Contracts for Information Acquisition

I develop a model of contracting for information acquisition under moral hazard. All Pareto optimal contracts pay a fraction of output together with a state fixed effect and a decision fixed effect. The fraction of output is increasing in the set of experiments available to the agent; the state fixed effect indexes contract payments to state-wide movements in output; and the decision fixed effect punishes the agent for taking decisions in which liability limits are likely to bind.
Police Use of Force

This research focuses on a seldom-studied police officer subgroup: detectives. Although detectives and patrol officers possess similar authority in terms of effecting arrests and using force in performing their duties, there are differences in operational responsibilities between these groups. These differences might contribute to variations in force use in encounters with the public. The data in this study are derived from an urban police department’s use of force reports for the year 2000. The frequency and types of force used and the resistance encountered by detectives are identified and then compared to patrol officers in this department. Although the results are mixed, some findings indicate that detectives use higher force levels than patrol officers, even though there is no significant difference in exposure to resistance levels. This result is unexpected and raises further questions about how role differences between detectives and patrol officers affect their respective applications of force.
Like the Good or Bad Guy—Empathy in Antisocial and Prosocial Games

Evidence suggests that violent media influence users’ cognitions, affect, and behavior in a negative way, whereas prosocial media have been shown to increase the probability of prosocial behavior. In the present study, it was tested whether empathy moderates these media effects. In two experiments (N 80 each), inducing empathy by means of a text (Study 1) or a video clip (Study 2) before playing a video game caused differential effects on cognitions and behavior depending on the nature of the subsequent video game: The induction had positive effects on participants’ behavior (i.e., decreasing antisocial and increasing prosocial behavior) after a prosocial game (Study 1), or when participants played a positive hero character in an antisocial game (Study 2). In contrast, empathy increased antisocial behavior and reduced prosocial behavior after playing a mean character in an antisocial game (Study 1 and 2). These findings call attention to the differential effects of empathy depending on game type and game character, thereby questioning the unconditional positive reputation of empathy in the context of video game research.
Does the Life Skills Training program reduce use of marijuana?

The Life Skills Training (LST) program is one of the most widely disseminated drug prevention programs developed during the past 30 years. It is estimated that 50,000 teachers and 3 million students in the USA have participated in the program since 1995, and the program has been used in more than 30 other countries worldwide. This article reviews the evaluation studies that have assessed the effects of the LST program on the use of marijuana. Evaluations conducted by both the program developer and other research teams are reviewed. Most of the available evidence, especially coming from the analysis of data from full samples and not subgroup analysis, indicates that the program is unlikely to reduce use or abuse of marijuana among adolescents. The reason that the program has come to be considered so efficacious in preventing marijuana use is that those who promote the program pay little attention to the preponderance of evidence which supports the null hypothesis of no effect.
Evaluation of the digital rectal examination as a screening test for prostate cancer. Rotterdam section of the European Randomized Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer.

BACKGROUND The utility of digital rectal examination (DRE) as a screening test for early detection of prostate cancer has not been established. Therefore, we evaluated the usefulness of DRE as a stand-alone screening test and in conjunction with measured serum prostate-specific antigen (PSA) levels of 0-3.9 ng/mL and transrectal ultrasonography (TRUS). METHODS Our study population consisted of 10,523 men aged 54-76 years who were randomly assigned to the screening arm of the Rotterdam, The Netherlands, section of the European Randomized Study of Screening for Prostate Cancer. The underlying prevalence of detectable prostate cancer was estimated by logistic regression analysis and used for calculating the sensitivity of DRE as a test. Pathologic characteristics of 105 radical prostatectomy specimens were used to determine the aggressiveness of the tumors diagnosed (and missed) by DRE. RESULTS The overall detection rate for prostate cancer in this population when serum PSA measurement, DRE, and TRUS were used was 4.5%, and the detection rate with DRE alone was 2.5%. The positive predictive value of DRE ranged from 4% to 11% in men with PSA levels of 0-2.9 ng/mL and from 33% to 83% in men with PSA levels of 3.0-9.9 ng/mL or more. Most tumors detected by DRE in men with PSA levels of less than 4.0 ng/mL were small (mean volumes = 0.24-0.83 mL), and most were well differentiated (Gleason scores of 6 or less). Minimal, moderate, and advanced cancers were seen in 42%, 42%, and 16% of men, respectively, with a PSA level of 4.0 ng/mL or less. DRE alone allowed detection of 264 (55.8%) of 473 cancers; 82 (17.3%) of the 473 cancers would have remained undetected by PSA-based screening alone (i.e., no follow-up procedures for PSA values of 0-3.9 ng/mL). CONCLUSIONS For PSA values of 0-3.9 ng/mL, the positive predictive value and sensitivity of DRE, tumor volume, and tumor grade were strongly dependent on PSA level. DRE has a poor performance in low PSA ranges.
Christian Right Horticulture: Grassroots Support in a Republican Primary Campaign

Abstract Seizing upon the opportunity afforded by a Republican primary contest in which a candidate backed by the Christian Right took on a candidate with connections to the party establishment, we examine the strength of the Christian right at the grassroots in Ohio. Using individual-level data compiled from an original survey instrument administered to over 1,000 Republican primary voters just after the May, 2006 primary, we present a more comprehensive model of both Christian Right support and the effect of Christian Right support on the vote choice. Instead of assuming a grassroots presence underpinning the movement, we assert and test the argument that natural elements of the social structure inhibit effective group access to collections of supporters. In doing so, we provide an explanation for the often observed gulf between movement identifiers and opinion-based supporters.
Estimating the prevalence of sensitive behaviour and cheating with a dual design for direct questioning and randomized response

Summary. Randomized response is a misclassification design to estimate the prevalence of sensitive behaviour. Respondents who do not follow the instructions of the design are considered to be cheating. A mixture model is proposed to estimate the prevalence of sensitive behaviour and cheating in the case of a dual sampling scheme with direct questioning and randomized response. The mixing weight is the probability of cheating, where cheating is modelled separately for direct questioning and randomized response. For Bayesian inference, Markov chain Monte Carlo sampling is applied to sample parameter values from the posterior. The model makes it possible to analyse dual sample scheme data in a unified way and to assess cheating for direct questions as well as for randomized response questions. The research is illustrated with randomized response data concerning violations of regulations for social benefit.
Perceived organizational support, career satisfaction, and the retention of older workers

Through two studies with diverse samples, we tested a conceptual model of the relationships between organizational and career factors and older workers' intention to remain with their organization. Perceived organizational support mediated the relationship between training and development practices, hierarchical, and job content plateauing and intention to remain. Career satisfaction mediated the relationship between perceived organizational support, job content plateauing, and intention to remain. We conclude that implementing training and development practices targeting older workers and tailored to their needs and providing interesting and challenging job assignments are important to perceptions of organizational support and career satisfaction and ultimately to the retention of older workers.
The Role of Transcription Factor B in Transcription Initiation and Promoter Clearance in the Archaeon Sulfolobus acidocaldarius *

Mechanisms of transcription initiation appear to be remarkably conserved between archaea and eucaryotes. For instance, there is homology between archaeal and eucaryotic basal transcription factors. Also, the archaeal RNA polymerase (RNAP) resembles eucaryotic nuclear RNAPs in subunit composition and at the amino acid sequence level. Here, we examine the role of transcription factor B, the archaeal homologue of eucaryotic transcription factor IIB, in transcription initiation. We show that the N-terminal region of transcription factor B is required for RNAP recruitment. Furthermore, we reveal that mutation of a conserved residue immediately C-terminal of the N-terminal zinc ribbon motif abrogates transcription on certain promoters. Finally, we identify the promoter sequences responsive to this mutation and demonstrate that the effect of the mutation is to block a late stage in transcription initiation, following formation of the promoter open complex.