Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Model of Televised Election Discussion: The Finnish Multi-Party System Perspective

Abstract The article presents a model of televised election discussion combining elements of communication, culture and the political situation, and the ways in which these elements influence the nature of political discussion.The main argument is that in the multi-party political system of Finland the televised election discussion is indeed a “discussion” rather than a “debate:” Key elements of interaction in discussion are not attacks and defences as in a debate but rather expressions of agreement and disagreement. Other important elements include political memory and discourse orientation toward past, future, or present situations.
Sex differences in vulnerability to undesirable life events.

Past research has shown that the emotional impact of undesirable life events is significantly greater among women than men. This finding has ted to speculation that women possess a deficit in coping capacity or in access to social support that renders them pervasively disadvantaged in responding emotionally to problematic situations. We present a different argument in this paper. We hypothesize and then document that women are not pervasively more vulnerable to the effects of undesirable events. A disaggregated analysis of life-event effects shows, further, that female vulnerability is largely conftned to "network" events: life events that do not occur to the focal respondent but to someone in his or her social network who is considered important. Further results are presented to argue that this greater vulnerability is due to the greater emotional involvement of women in the lives of those around them. It is demonstrated that this emotional cost of caring is responsible for a substantial part of the overall relationship between sex and distress. It is well documented that women in Western society have significantly higher rates of psychological distress than men (Al-Issa, 1982). In sociology, most discussions of this fact have revolved around the idea that women" s social roles are more stress provoking and less fulfilling than those occupied by men (Gove, 1978). This social-role explanation has fostered a substantial body of research on sex differences in chronic role-related stress. This work has typically been based on indirect measures of stress. Marital status, numbers and ages of children, and employment status have been used to make inferences about chronic stress (Gove, 1972; Radloff, 1975; Gove and Geerken, 1977; Aneshensel et al., 1981). For example, the sex-distress relationship has been shown to be more pronounced among the married than the previously married or never married (Gove, 1972; Fox, 1980). This specification has been interpreted as evidence that role-related stress and resources are responsi
Common radio resource management policy for multimedia traffic in beyond 3G heterogeneous wireless systems

Beyond 3G wireless systems will be composed of a variety of radio access technologies (RATs) with different, but also complementary, performance and technical characteristics. To exploit such diversity while guaranteeing the interoperability and efficient management of the different RATs, common radio resource management (CRRM) techniques need to be defined. This work proposes and evaluates a CRRM policy that simultaneously assigns to each user an adequate combination of RAT and number of radio resources within such RAT to guarantee its QoS requirements. The proposed CRRM technique is based on linear objective functions and programming tools.
Role of the Cytoskeleton in Calcium Signaling in NIH 3T3 Cells

Treatment of NIH 3T3 cells with cytochalasin D (10 μm, 1 h at 37 °C) disrupted the actin cytoskeleton and changed the cells from a planar, extended morphology, to a rounded shape. Calcium mobilization by ATP or by platelet-derived growth factor was abolished, while the ability of thapsigargin (2 μm) to empty calcium stores and activate calcium influx was unaffected. Similar experiments with nocodazole to depolymerize the tubulin network yielded identical results. Platelet-derived growth factor induced an increase in inositol phosphates, and this increase was undiminished in the presence of cytochalasin D. Therefore, the blockade of agonist responses by this drug does not result from decreased phospholipase C. Injection of inositol 1,4,5-trisphosphate (IP3) released calcium to the same extent in control and cytochalasin D-treated cells. Confocal microscopic studies revealed a significant rearrangement of the endoplasmic reticulum after cytochalasin D treatment. Thus, disruption of the cytoskeleton blocks agonist-elicited [Ca2+] i mobilization, but this effect does not result from a lower calcium storage capacity, impaired function of the IP3 receptor, or diminished phospholipase C activity. We suggest that cytoskeletal disruption alters the spatial relationship between phospholipase C and IP3 receptors, impairing phospholipase C-dependent calcium signaling. Capacitative calcium entry was not altered under these conditions, indicating that the coupling between depletion of intracellular calcium stores and calcium entry does not depend on a precise structural relationship between intracellular stores and plasma membrane calcium channels.
Role Conflict and Ambiguity in Complex Organizations.

The literature indicates that dysfunctional individual and organizational consequences result from the existence of role conflict and role ambiguity in complex organizations. Yet, systematic measurement and empirical testing of these role constructs is lacking. This study describes the development and testing of questionnaire measures of role conflict and ambiguity. Analyses of responses of managers show these two constructs to be factorially identifiable and independent. Derived measures of role conflict and ambiguity tend to correlate in two samples in expected directions with measures of organizational and managerial practices and leader behavior, and with member satisfaction, anxiety, and propensity to leave the organization.
Information versus persuasion : la controverse autour de l’impact de la publicité sur les préférences des consommateurs

La publicite reste un sujet majeur de discussion en economie, notamment du fait de son influence sur le comportement du consommateur et de son incidence sur la fonction de demande. Alors qu’une partie des economistes envisage la publicite sous un angle informatif, d’autres insistent davantage sur sa dimension persuasive. Cette opposition originelle fonde l’approche economique de la publicite sur un clivage dialectique fecond mais elle induit un biais normatif en matiere de regulation. Cette dialectisation originelle du debat theorique illustre la difficulte des economistes a comprendre : 1) la relation entre la publicite et l’evolution des preferences des consommateurs; 2) la fonction qui lui est reliee. Nous nous proposons d’analyser ce diptyque fondateur en questionnant sa portee et ses limites.
An Empirical Search for Stages of Widowhood

Developmental theory and clinical experience suggest that stages of adjustment to widowhood beyond the initial stages of grief may exist. Structured interviews with 193 widowed community residents over sixty-two were conducted as part of a needs assessment survey of the elderly in Wichita. One hundred fifty-one variables including eight psycho-social needs, the Philadelphia Geriatric Center Morale scale, age perception, future orientation, presence of or desire for a confidant, contact with children, and participation in work, volunteer, religious and organizational roles were assessed, as well as transportation, nutrition, health care, household and educational needs. The median was used to differentiate short-term from long-term widowhood. The two groups differed significantly on fewer than 5 per cent of the variables. This was true of both widows and widowers. Six categories of widowhood were then defined ranging from less than three years to over twenty years. Only about 6 per cent of the variables were related to the six “stages. ” The results provide further evidence that the stresses of widowhood persist for years after the spouse's death; they do not confirm the existence of separate stages of adaptation.
Myths and realities of computerphobia: A meta-analysis

Abstract Common beliefs about computerphobia were examined using meta-analytic techniques. Stringent screening criteria yielded 81 research reports with sample populations including college students, adults and business professionals, elementary/secondary students and teachers as well as postsecondary teachers. Results indicated that none of the six common beliefs characterizing the computerphobic represent reality. The computerphobic is equally likely to be a younger or older male or female. Although computerphobics tend to experience other types of anxiety (mathematics, test, state, trait), these anxieties account for little variance. Results indicated further that computer experience alone is not sufficient to eliminate computerphobia, but that psychological techniques have treated successfully these negative psychological reactions.
Occupationally-acquired noise-induced hearing loss: a senseless workplace hazard.

OBJECTIVES Occupational noise-induced hearing loss (ONIHL) describes an acquired hearing deficiency directly attributable to excessive workplace noise exposure. Data suggest that excessive noise attributes to approximately 37% of all adult causes of hearing loss and remains a significant contributor to employment-related morbidity internationally. Typically insidiously-acquired, often without frank progressive symptomatology, regional medical agencies continue to struggle with this potentially debilitating condition. The aim of the study was to provide a synopsis of the current understanding of ONIHL, its impact on individual workers and the wider international community, and to identify barriers to more uniform adoption of personal hearing protection. MATERIALS AND METHODS A review of the contemporary literature was performed using defined keyword searches and OVID, PubMed, and Google Scholar as primary electronic search engines. RESULTS A number of published works were identified, describing aspects of the relationship between workplace-related noise exposure and subsequent development of employee hearing impairment, which demonstrate an overwhelming gender imbalance, with up to 97% of affected individuals being male. Industry-specific associations (e.g., mining, manufacturing and heavy construction) were well documented, as were links to toxin-specific exposures, in the recognized development of hearing loss. However, evidence of integration of appraisal of the topically-current area of genetic susceptibility was often lacking. Much discordance still exists among international agencies in the prescriptive regulation and enforcement of "safe" exposure limits. CONCLUSIONS Despite a high level of public awareness regarding the importance of hearing preservation and increasingly stringent international occupational health, safety and welfare requirements mandating provision of safer work environments, ONIHL continues to be a significant occupational hazard. ONIHL is permanent and may cause significant disability, for which there currently exists no cure, but is largely overtly-preventable. The impact of ONIHL on the global transition toward dominant communication-rich white-collar employment roles is difficult to quantitate, but is likely to be substantive upon the afflicted individual. In the mainstream setting, exposure-avoidance strategies aimed to reduce the incidence of ONIHL remain the focus of public health and occupational medicine approaches.
Problematising intellectual capital research: ostensive versus performative IC

Purpose – This paper develops a problematisation of research about intellectual capital (IC) with a view to extending the types of questions that can be posed and explanations that can be given about the roles and effects of IC. The aim is to contribute to the debate on how it is possible and fruitful to study IC.Design/methodology/approach – The paper compares an ostensive and a performative approach to IC research and develops an analysis and critique of ideas in IC research on this basis.Findings – The paper concludes that it is possible and advisable to develop research that has an ambition to understand IC as a concept and not only as an application of a pre‐set idea. It suggests that a performative approach to IC will enhance possibilities of developing new and interesting propositions about how IC works and is involved in organisational and social transformation.Originality/value – The main implication of this paper is that research in IC can take up new forms of inquiry that will complement and ex.
The importance of being visible: On the role of attention in a mind viewed as an anarchic intelligence system i basic tenets

Abstract This paper describes an attempt to view attention from the perspective of a pluralistic concept of information processing in the mind. The mind is likened to an anarchic intelligence system. It is assumed to comprise of a set of processing entities called modules that may be active in parellel. Their activation is externally driven, and their operation is not controlled by any other module. Cooperating among modules is often required for achieving goals. Cooperation calls for communication. Attention is assumed to regulate only the communication among modules. It exerts attentional emphasis by making the output of a to-be-attended module available for a maximal number of other modules, while limiting the ability of de-emphasised modules to disseminate their output. This is achieved by a mechanism called decoupling that controls the connections between modules. The control of decoupling that is required for attentional emphasis is associated with an aversive phenomenal aspect that is usually calle.
Tree Kernel Engineering for Proposition Re-ranking

Recent work on the design of automatic systems for semantic role labeling has shown that such task is complex from both modeling and implementation point of views. Tree kernels alleviate such complexity as kernel functions generate features automatically and require less software development for data pre-processing. In this paper, we study several tree kernel approaches for boundary detection, argument classification and, most notably, proposition re-ranking. The comparative experiments on Support Vector Machines with such kernels on the CoNLL 2005 dataset show that very simple tree manipulations trigger automatic feature engineering that highly improves accuracy and efficiency in every SRL phase.
Determining a Successful Nasal Airway Surgery: Calculation of the Patient-Centered Minimum Important Difference

Objective Determine whether the patient-identified minimum important difference (MID) in Nasal Obstruction Symptom Evaluation (NOSE) score differs from a statistically calculated estimate of MID in patients with septal deviation undergoing nasal airway surgery. Study Design Prospective cohort. Setting Tertiary academic referral center. Subjects Patients with nasal obstruction due to septal deviation. Methods Patients completed the NOSE questionnaire preoperatively and indicated the change from their baseline score that they would consider the minimum improvement required to define the septoplasty with turbinate reduction as successful. A previously published distribution-based approach was used to estimate the MID based on baseline NOSE scores. Scores were reported both as a raw score and as a percentage of patients’ baseline scores. One-sample t test was used to compare the statistically estimated MID to the patient-reported MID. Results Seventy-six patients were included. The mean (SD) baseline NOSE score was 12.9 (4.03). The mean (SD) patient-identified MID was 5.3 (2.1), corresponding to a 41.1% change (95% confidence interval, 37.2-41.3) from baseline. The statistically estimated MID was 5.2 points (40.3% reduction from baseline scores). The estimated MID was not significantly different from the patient-identified MID (P = .4). Conclusion In patients with septal deviation, an improvement of approximately 40% in their nasal obstructive symptoms as assessed by the NOSE questionnaire is required to define a nasal airway surgery as successful. The patient-identified and the statistically calculated MIDs were similar. Furthermore, this MID can be used to guide research, improving the ability to use the NOSE score as a dichotomous scoring measure (treatment success/failure) and estimating sample size.
Relating the Surface Properties of Superparamagnetic Iron Oxide Nanoparticles (SPIONs) to Their Bactericidal Effect towards a Biofilm of Streptococcus mutans

This study was designed to determine the effects of superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) on the biological activity of a bacterial biofilm (Streptococcus mutans). Our hypothesis was that the diffusion of the SPIONs into biofilms would depend on their surface properties, which in turn would largely be determined by their surface functionality. Bare, positively charged and negatively charged SPIONs, with hydrodynamic diameters of 14.6 ± 1.4 nm, 20.4 ± 1.3 nm and 21.2 ± 1.6 nm were evaluated. Time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (TOF-SIMS) and electrophoretic mobility (EPM) measurements were used to confirm that carboxylic functional groups predominated on the negatively charged SPIONS, whereas amine functional groups predominated on the positively charged particles. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) showed the morphology and sizes of SPIONs. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and EPM measurements indicated that the surfaces of the SPIONs were covered with biomolecules following their incubation with the biofilm. Bare SPIONs killed bacteria less than the positively charged SPIONs at the highest exposure concentrations, but the toxicity of the bare and positively charged SPIONs was the same for lower SPION concentrations. The positively charged SPIONs were more effective in killing bacteria than the negatively charged ones. Nonetheless, electrophoretic mobilities of all three SPIONs (negative, bare and positively charged) became more negative following incubation with the (negatively-charged) biofilm. Therefore, while the surface charge of SPIONS was important in determining their biological activity, the initial surface charge was not constant in the presence of the biofilm, leading eventually to SPIONS with fairly similar surface charges in situ. The study nonetheless suggests that the surface characteristics of the SPIONS is an important parameter controlling the efficiency of antimicrobial agents. The analysis of the CFU/mL values shows that the SPIONs have the same toxicity on bacteria in solution in comparison with that on the biofilm.
Embracing the new paradigm of assessment in residency training: an assessment programme for first-year residency training in anaesthesiology

Assessment of clinical competence is facing a paradigm shift in more than one sense.The shift relates to test content, which increasingly covers a broader spectrum of competences than mere medical expertise, and to test methods, with an increasing focus on testing performance in realistic settings. Also there is a shift in the concept of assessment in that instruction and assessment are no longer seen as being separate in time and purpose, but as integral parts of the learning process. The nature of the new paradigm for assessment is well described but the challenge to programme directors is to specify the evaluation situations and develop appropriate methods.This paper describes the intrinsic rational validation process in outlining an assessment programme for first-year anaesthesiology residency training according to the new paradigm. The applicability to other residency programmes and higher-level training in anaesthesiology is discussed.
Responses of Human Auditory Association Cortex to the Omission of an Expected Acoustic Event

Unexpected auditory events initiate a complex set of event-related potentials (ERPs) that vary in their latency and anatomical localization. Such "mismatch" responses include active responses to the omission of an expected event or the omission of elements in expected stimulus composites. Here we describe intracranial recordings of middle-latency ERPs elicited by the omission of an auditory event. We first presented a sequence of tones at regular temporal intervals and the tone was omitted 20% of the time. In a second condition, we presented a sequence of tone pairs and the second tone of the pair was omitted 20% of the time. These two conditions are complementary in that the single tone conformed to the expectancy in one condition, but violated the expectancy in the other. All patients demonstrated localized cortical responses to missing tones that were topographically similar to the responses evoked by actual tones. Responses to both actual and omitted tones were observed bilaterally in the vicinity of the temporal--parietal junction, where we also obtained midlatency ERPs to a variety of other auditory stimuli. Responses that appeared to be selective for the nonoccurrence of expected tones were also observed in a number of subjects. We interpret these effects in terms of processes associated with the comparison of sensory inputs to the contents of a short-term auditory memory. Such a system could automatically detect deviant auditory events, and provide input to higher-level, task-dependent cognitive processes.
The teval experience, 1983–88: The impact of a student evaluation of teaching scheme on university teachers

ABSTRACT This paper presents the results of a study of 306 faculty members' experiences with teval, the student evaluation of teaching scheme run by the Tertiary Education Institute at the University of Queensland, after six years of operation of this scheme which is unique in Australian universities and which has been successfully marketed. Feedback on teaching effectiveness was the main purpose for which staff used the teval service. Although the quantitative parts of the questionnaire did provide such feedback, open-ended student comments were more highly valued by some staff because the information contained in such comments was more specific. Teachers also opted to use teval survey results as evidence in applications for promotion and for confirmation of probationary appointments. Over 80% of respondents were satisfied with the teval service. The majority of respondents felt that it was important to them to evaluate their teaching and they believed that students undertook evaluation of teaching serio.
Effects of Hint1 deficiency on emotional‐like behaviors in mice under chronic immobilization stress

Histidine triad nucleotide‐binding protein 1 (HINT1) is regarded as a haplo‐insufficient tumor suppressor and is closely associated with diverse neuropsychiatric diseases. Moreover, HINT1 is related to gender‐specific acute behavior changes in schizophrenia and in response to nicotine. Stress has a range of molecular effects in emotional disorders, which can cause a reduction in brain‐derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) expression in the hippocampus, resulting in hippocampal atrophy and neuronal cell loss.