Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Malleability of Behavioral Inhibition: A Study of Individual Developmental Functions

A longitudinal study of children's individual developmental functions in observed inhibited behavior toward strangers and in teacher judgments of inhibition in school showed that IQ and teacher judgments of social competence predicted a decrease in both measures of inhibition over a 6-year period from ages 4 through 10 years. These findings suggest that, with increasing age, more intelligent or socially competent children can overcome inhibition in laboratory and school settings better than less competent children. Over the last 30 years, children's inhibited behavior in unfamiliar situations has been the focus of continuing developmental research (Kagan & Moss, 1962; Kagan, Reznick, Clarke, Snidman, & Garcia-Coll, 1984; Thomas, Chess, Birch, Hertzig, & Korn, 1963). When children encounter a new environment, a stranger, or a novel object, they often show signs of an approach-avoidance conflict. Although they appear interested in the unfamiliar, they are hesitant to explore it. Inhibited motor activity, often resulting in a stiff body posture, prolonged looking at the novel person or object from a distance, and a long latency in first contact with the person or object, includes some of these overt indications of the approach-avoidance conflict (Asendorpf, 1990, 1991, 1992b; Coplan, Rubin, Fox, & Calkins, in press; Kagan, 1989; Kagan et al., 1984). There are large interindividual differences in the extent to
The Effects of Profanity in Violent Video Game Content on Players' Hostile Expectations, Accessibility of Aggressive Thoughts, Aggressive Feelings, and Other Responses

Although the effects of violent video games on aggression in users have been researched extensively and the resulting body of research shows that violent video games can increase aggressive behaviors, aggression-related feelings and thoughts, and physiological arousal, no empirical studies to date have examined whether there are similar and parallel effects of verbal aggression (e.g., profanity) in video game content. A 2 X 2 between-subjects factorial experiment (N = 321) tested the effects of profanity used by protagonists (protagonist profanity present versus absent) and antagonists (antagonist profanity present versus absent) on users‘ hostile expectations, accessibility of aggressive thoughts, aggressive feelings, perceived arousal, use of profanity, enjoyment, presence, and perceived performance while taking into account the potential moderating role of gender and controlling for several individual difference variables. The study‘s factors were manipulated via the creation of four versions of an original threedimensional ―first-person shooter‖ video game. Profanity used by both protagonist and antagonist characters was found to have significant effects on players‘ hostile expectations, an important higher-order aggressive outcome that is the most direct precursor to aggressive behaviors in the process described by the general aggression model. There was limited evidence for effects of profanity in game content on players‘ accessibility of aggressive thoughts, aggressive feelings, and perceived arousal. Additionally, profanity had little impact on how much players used profanity themselves, how much they enjoyed the game, feelings of presence, and how they rated their performance in the iii game. These trends were consistent across a range of demographic, personality, and video game experience dimensions that were measured, even though several of these individual difference variables were found to be related to some outcome variables and to each other. Therefore, while this study‘s findings did not necessarily indicate imitative modeling of profanity, they point to the possibility of more general effects regarding aggressive outcomes. This study‘s findings emphasize the need for future research investigating the effects of profanity in video games and other media.
Coexistence of Cycling and Dispersing Consumer Species: Armstrong and McGehee in Space

Two competing consumer species may coexist using a single homogeneous resource when the more efficient consumer—the one having the lowest equilibrium resource density—has a more nonlinear functional response that generates consumer‐resource cycles. We extend this model of nonequilibrium coexistence, as proposed by Armstrong and McGehee, by putting the interaction into a spatial context using two frameworks: a spatially explicit individual‐based model and a spatially implicit metapopulation model. We find that Armstrong and McGehee’s mechanism of coexistence can operate in a spatial context. However, individual‐based simulations suggest that decreased dispersal restricts coexistence in most cases, whereas differential equation models of metapopulations suggest that a low rate of dispersal between subpopulations often increases the coexistence region. This difference arises in part because of two potentially opposing effects on coexistence due to the asynchrony in the temporal dynamics at different locations. Asynchrony implies that the less efficient species is more likely to be favored in some spatial locations at any given time, which broadens the conditions for coexistence. On the other hand, asynchrony and dispersal can also reduce the amplitude of local population cycles, which restricts coexistence. The relative influence of these two effects depends on details of the population dynamics and the representation of space. Our results also demonstrate that coexistence via the Armstrong‐McGehee mechanism can occur even when there is little variation in the global densities of either the consumers or the resource, suggesting that empirical studies of the mechanisms should measure densities on several spatial scales.
Maximum likelihood estimation of ADC parameters from sine wave test data

The sine wave test is maybe the most important method for characterizing ADC’s. By this, the acquisition device is excited with a sinusoidal signal, and a long series of output values is measured. With the help of these observations, the parameters of the DUT can be determined. The general method to do this is the Least Squares (LS). In this paper, we present a similar method using the Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE). It is more robust than the LS method, which has nice properties only under special conditions. This maximum likelihood problem is solvable only numerically. For this, a numerical method is presented, and simulation results are given. The main message of this paper is how to handle the problems of the estimation in the best way in order to extract possibly the full information from the measured data, and obtain a robust, effective algorithm.
Stakeholder perspectives on handovers between hospital staff and general practitioners: an evaluation through the microsystems lens

Background Much of the research on improving patient handovers has focused on enhancing communication within the hospital system, but there have been relatively few efforts aimed at addressing the challenges at the interface between the hospital and the primary care setting. Methods A qualitative thematic analysis using a clinical microsystems lens applied to 28 semi-structured key stakeholder interviews in the Netherlands. Data were organised into seven ‘virtual’ clinical microsystem datasets composed of patients, hospital-based physicians, hospital-based nurses and community-based general practitioners. Results Five themes that contributed to effective or ineffective handovers emerged from our analysis: (1) lack of adequate information; (2) healthcare professionals’ availability and opportunity for personal contact; (3) feedback, teaching and protocols related to handovers; (4) information technology facilitated communication solutions; and (5) the role and responsibility of patients. Our analysis suggests that each healthcare professional attempted to provide the best care possible, but did this largely in isolation, and without the benefit of the knowledge and expertise of the other members of the microsystem. Conclusions The microsystem approach offers an innovative organisational construct and approach to assess the gaps in ‘hospital to community’ patient handovers, by viewing the hospital to the community interface as a clinical microsystem continuum. Our application of the microsystem approach confirms and extends earlier findings about the impact of barriers on the continuity and safety of patient transitions and their impact on the quality of patient care.
HIV Incidence Remains High in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa: Evidence from Three Districts

Background HIV prevalence and incidence among sexually active women in peri-urban areas of Ladysmith, Edendale, and Pinetown, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, were assessed between October 2007 and February 2010 in preparation for vaginal microbicide trials. Methodology/Principal Findings Sexually active women 18–35 years, not known to be HIV-positive or pregnant were tested cross-sectionally to determine HIV and pregnancy prevalence (798 in Ladysmith, 1,084 in Edendale, and 891 in Pinetown). Out of these, approximately 300 confirmed non-pregnant, HIV-negative women were subsequently enrolled at each clinical research center (CRC) in a 12-month cohort study with quarterly study visits. Women in the cohort studies were required to use a condom plus a hormonal contraceptive method. HIV prevalence rates in the baseline cross-sectional surveys were high: 42% in Ladysmith, 46% in Edendale and 41% in Pinetown. Around 90% of study participants at each CRC reported one sex partner in the last 3 months, but only 14–30% stated that they were sure that none of their sex partners were HIV-positive. HIV incidence rates based on seroconversions over 12 months were 14.8/100 person-years (PY) (95% CI 9.7, 19.8) in Ladysmith, 6.3/100 PY (95% CI 3.2, 9.4) in Edendale, and 7.2/100 PY (95% CI 3.7, 10.7) in Pinetown. The 12-month pregnancy incidence rates (in the context of high reported contraceptive use) were: 5.7/100 PY (95% CI 2.6, 8.7) in Ladysmith, 3.1/100 PY (95% CI 0.9, 5.2) in Edendale and 6.3/100 PY (95% CI 3.0, 9.6) in Pinetown. Conclusions/Significance HIV prevalence and incidence remain high in peri-urban areas of KwaZulu-Natal.
Cancer research by means of tissue engineering – is there a rationale?

Tissue engineering (TE) has evoked new hopes for the cure of organ failure and tissue loss by creating functional substitutes in the laboratory. Besides various innovations in the context of Regenerative Medicine (RM), TE also provided new technology platforms to study mechanisms of angiogenesis and tumour cell growth as well as potentially tumour cell spreading in cancer research. Recent advances in stem cell technology – including embryonic and adult stem cells and induced pluripotent stem cells – clearly show the need to better understand all relevant mechanisms to control cell growth when such techniques will be administered to patients. Such TE‐Cancer research models allow us to investigate the interactions that occur when replicating physiological and pathological conditions during the initial phases of replication, morphogenesis, differentiation and growth under variable given conditions. Tissue microenvironment has been extensively studied in many areas of TE and it plays a crucial role in cell signalling and regulation of normal and malignant cell functions. This article is intended to give an overview on some of the most recent developments and possible applications of TE and RM methods with regard to the improvement of cancer research with TE platforms. The synthesis of TE with innovative methods of molecular biology and stem‐cell technology may help investigate and potentially modulate principal phenomena of tumour growth and spreading, as well as tumour‐related angiogenesis. In the future, these models have the potential to investigate the optimal materials, culture conditions and material structure to propagate tumour growth.
The Risk Perceptions of Individual Investors

Risk perceptions of individual investors are studied by asking experimental questions to 2226 members of a consumer panel. Their responses are analyzed in order to find which risk measures they implicitly use. We find that most investors implicitly use more than one risk measure. For those investors who systematically perceive risk according to the same risk measure, semi-variance of returns is most popular. Semi-variance is similar to variance, but only negative deviations from the mean or another benchmark are taken into account. Stock investors implicitly choose for semi-variance as a risk measure, while bond investors favor probability of loss. Investors state that they consider the original investment to be the most important benchmark, followed by the risk-free rate of return, and the market return. However, their choices in the experimental questionnaire study reveal that the market return is the most important benchmark.
Cognitive Regulation during Decision Making Shifts Behavioral Control between Ventromedial and Dorsolateral Prefrontal Value Systems

Cognitive regulation is often used to influence behavioral outcomes. However, the computational and neurobiological mechanisms by which it affects behavior remain unknown. We studied this issue using an fMRI task in which human participants used cognitive regulation to upregulate and downregulate their cravings for foods at the time of choice. We found that activity in both ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) correlated with value. We also found evidence that two distinct regulatory mechanisms were at work: value modulation, which operates by changing the values assigned to foods in vmPFC and dlPFC at the time of choice, and behavioral control modulation, which operates by changing the relative influence of the vmPFC and dlPFC value signals on the action selection process used to make choices. In particular, during downregulation, activation decreased in the value-sensitive region of dlPFC (indicating value modulation) but not in vmPFC, and the relative contribution of the two value signals to behavior shifted toward the dlPFC (indicating behavioral control modulation). The opposite pattern was observed during upregulation: activation increased in vmPFC but not dlPFC, and the relative contribution to behavior shifted toward the vmPFC. Finally, ventrolateral PFC and posterior parietal cortex were more active during both upregulation and downregulation, and were functionally connected with vmPFC and dlPFC during cognitive regulation, which suggests that they help to implement the changes to the decision-making circuitry generated by cognitive regulation.
Modeling the Non-Substitutability of Multiword Expressions with Distributional Semantics and a Log-Linear Model

Non-substitutability is a property of Multiword Expressions (MWEs) that often causes lexical rigidity and is relevant for most types of MWEs. Efficient identification of this property can result in the efficient identification of MWEs. In this work we propose using distributional semantics, in the form of word embeddings, to identify candidate substitutions for a candidate MWE and model its substitutability. We use our models to rank MWEs based on their lexical rigidity and study their performance in comparison with association measures. We also study the interaction between our models and association measures. We show that one of our models can significantly improve over the association measure baselines, identifying collocations.
Creep Deformation Measurement of 316 H Stainless Steel Multi-pass Welded Joints using Digital Image

A high temperature measurement system for creep deformation based on the digital image correlation (DIC) technique is described. The new system is applied to study the behaviour of a multi-pass welded joint in a high temperature tensile test and a load controlled creep test at 545°C. Spatially resolved tensile properties and time dependent creep deformation properties across a thick section type 316 stainless steel multi-pass welded joint are presented and discussed. Significantly lower creep strain rates are observed in the HAZ than in the parent material which is attributed to the introduction of substantial plastic strain in the parent material on initial loading. The weld metal shows the fastest creep rates and a variation that appears to correlate with individual weld passes. The visual information provides not only the local creep strain distribution but also the reduction of area and true stress distribution based on strains measured in the transverse direction. The results demonstrate the capability of the DIC technique for full field measurement of displacement and strain at high temperature long term creep tests.
What (and Why) is Positive Psychology?

Positive psychology is the study of the conditions and processes that contribute to the flourishing or optimal functioning of people, groups, and institutions. In this brief introduction, the authors give examples of current work in positive psychology and try to explain why the positive psychology movement has grown so quickly in just 5 years. They suggest that it filled a need: It guided researchers to understudied phenomena. The authors close by addressing some criticisms and shortcomings of positive psychology, such as the relative lack of progress in studying positive institutions.
Relationships between facets of working memory and performance on a curriculum-based mathematics test in children

The involvement of different components of working memory in children’s mathematical reasoning was investigated by administering four memory span tasks and a curriculum-based test of mathematics to 9- to 10-year-old children. The mathematics test contained number, space and measurement sections, and the span tasks differed as to whether sequences comprised auditory-verbal or visual-spatial items and whether recall involved the entire sequence (fixed span), or a subset of items from the end of a supraspan sequence (running span). The running span tasks were expected to require updating, and therefore involve executive mechanisms in addition to systems specialised for retaining verbal and spatial information. Surprisingly, the two fixed span variables accounted for more variance than the two running span variables in mathematics test scores. Also, fixed spatial span generally accounted for more variance in mathematics performance than did fixed verbal span, although the latter did make significant unique contributions in predicting scores from two sections of the mathematics test. These outcomes were unchanged when a measure of single word reading was used as a control variable. Discussion centres on the involvement of spatial and verbal short-term memory in different forms of mathematical reasoning. It is argued that running memory tasks may invoke various executive processes depending on their precise structure, and some of these processes may not be critical to mathematical reasoning.
The Relationships between Urban Form and Travel Patterns. An International Review and Evaluation

There is a growing body of research concerned with the relationship between urban form and travel patterns. Studies originate from a diversity of sources, and encompass a variety of geographic scales and locations. To add to this diversity, many different characteristics of urban form to have been examined in these studies, and travel patterns have been measured in a number of different ways. This paper brings together in a systematic way the results of many recent studies on urban form and travel patterns over the last 20 years. As well as this systematic approach, other key aspects of this review paper include the identification of where research has been concentrated (and where there are gaps in research), and in the critique of the studies, which includes issues of data accuracy, reliability and quality, the applicability of research methods and data interpretation. The critique focuses in some detail on the interaction of socio-economic factors with urban form and travel patterns.
The Affective Consequences of Inhibition in Memory

THE AFFECTIVE CONSEQUENCES OF INHIBITION IN MEMORY David De Vito Advisor: University of Guelph, 2014 Professor M. J. Fenske Our brain has a limited processing capacity so we must prioritize the multitude of neural signals triggered by stimuli in our environment. This includes inhibiting task-irrelevant information, which has been shown to cause affective consequences (inhibitory devaluation effect). We assessed whether this effect, which has so far only been investigated using external sensory stimuli, also impacts evaluations of stimuli solely represented in memory. Experiments 1, 2, and 3 used an n-back task to manipulate the goal-relevance of stimuli in working memory. When working memory was loaded with stimuli that were part of the attention task, task-irrelevant stimuli were affectively devalued. Experiments 4 and 5 used a Think/No-Think task to manipulate the level of inhibition applied to stimuli in order to prevent memory retrieval. Both word and object-image stimuli were affectively devalued. This research provides evidence that cognitive inhibition also causes affective consequences for task-irrelevant stimuli solely represented in memory.
Insight into Zeta Potential Measurements in Biopolymer Film Preparation

Microand nano-particle charge is one of the main factors determining the physical stability of both emulsions and suspensions and can be quantified by measuring their so called “zeta potential”. When all the particles have a large either negative or positive zeta potential value, they will repel each other and, as a consequence, the suspension becomes stable. By contrast, whether the zeta potential is close to 0 mV, the tendency for flocculation increases. Zeta potential is, however, a feature of the particle in its environment and not of the particle itself. In fact, its net charge in solution affects the ion distribution surrounding the particle, thus resulting in an increase in the concentration of counter-ions. The region over which this influence extends is called “electrical double layer” (EDL) and EDL splits into two regions (Figure 1). In the first, called “stern layer”, the ions are of opposite charge with respect to the particles and, being strongly bound to them, move with them. The second layer, conversely, is a “diffuse layer” where the ions are less strongly attached and, inside it, there is a boundary line between the ions moving with the particles and the not moving ones. This region, called “slipping plane”, is known as the surface of hydrodynamic shear and the potential existing in the slipping plane is called zeta potential [1].