Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Direct and indirect measures of contextual information: Older versus young adult subjects

Abstract Several reports in the literature suggest that older adults have impaired memory for contextual information. Support for this approach was derived from studies that tested different aspects of contextual information by direct measures of memory (i.e., recall or recognition). the purpose of the present study is twofold: first, to test the possibility that contextual information, although inaccessible via direct measures, may be evident via indirect measures of memory; and second, to evaluate the contribution of duration of exposure to direct and indirect memory measures of contextual information. Two groups of subjects participated in the present study, 35 younger and 30 older subjects. Duration of exposure was not found to have a differential effect on the groups, in either direct or indirect memory tasks. As predicted, age-related differences emerged when direct, but not indirect, measures of contextual memory were tested. These findings argue against the context-memory deficit hypothesis in eld.
Firm-Specific Productivity Risk Over the Business Cycle: Facts and Aggregate Implications

Is time-varying firm-level uncertainty a major cause or amplifier of the business cycle? This paper investigates this question in the context of a heterogeneous-firm RBC model with persistent firm-level productivity shocks and lumpy capital adjustment, where cyclical changes in uncertainty correspond naturally to cyclical changes in the cross-sectional dispersion of firm-specific Solow residual innovations. We use a German firm-level data set to investigate the extent to which firm-level uncertainty varies over the cycle. This allows us to put empirical discipline on our numerical simulations. We find that, while firm-level uncertainty is indeed countercyclical, it does not fluctuate enough to significantly alter the dynamics of an RBC model with only first moment shocks. The mild changes we do find are mainly caused by a bad news effect: higher uncertainty today predicts lower aggregate Solowresiduals tomorrow. This effect dominates the real option value effect of time-varying uncertainty, highlighted in the literature.
The Moderating Role of Updating Climate Perceptions in the Relationship Between Goal Orientation, Self-Efficacy, and Job Performance

This field study examined the moderating role of employees' climate for updating perceptions in the relationship between goal orientation and job performance. Results are based on a sample of 163 information systems professionals employed by a large information technology (IT) firm. After controlling for the effect of previous performance ratings, learning-goal orientation was positively related to learning self-efficacy and performance-goal orientation was negatively related to efficacy beliefs, which in turn were positively related to job-performance ratings. Most important, the relationship between learning-goal orientation and overall job-performance ratings, mediated by learning self-efficacy, was stronger for individuals who perceived a supportive organizational climate for updating than for those with low updating climate perceptions. The results of this study advance our understanding of goal orientation, self-efficacy, and performance relationships not only because they are based on adults working in a dynamic field setting, but also because they demonstrate the moderating influence of employees' updating climate perceptions.
Willingness to Pay for Community Health Insurance and Its Determinants Among Household Heads in Rural Communities in North-Central Nigeria

Willingness to pay data are rarely collected or used as part of designing health insurance schemes in developing countries. The objective of this study was to assess household heads’ willingness to pay for community health insurance and its determinants. It was a descriptive cross-sectional study with sample size of 360 determined using Fishers formula. Multistage sampling technique was used to select respondents. Questionnaire was semi structured OA Babatunde et al. 134 interviewer administered and data analysis was done using Epi-info version 3.4. 1. Frequency tables and cross-tabulations were generated with a statistical significance p-value predetermined at less than 0.05. The mean amount respondents were willing to pay was 522.0 + 266.3 Naira per annum per household member (3.26 + 1.66 US Dollars). Those willing to pay were 313(87.0%) and the allowable range for fixing premium is between 250 Naira and 1,200 Naira (1.56 + 7.50 US Dollars) per annum per household member. The factors that affect Willingness to pay were age, sex, educational attainment, income, household size, and past health expenditure of household heads. Premium that should be fixed for Community Health Insurance in these rural communities should range between 250 Naira to 1,200 Naira (1.56 + 7.50 US Dollars) per annum per household member.
Optimism Facilitates the Utilisation of Prior Cues

It has been shown that optimists tend to rely more on their prior expectations than sensory input when making decisions of an intense nature (Geers & Lassiter, 2002). We investigated the degree to which this tendency persists over a range of discrepancies between prior cues and actual stimuli. Eighty–seven participants were shown a subset of happy, sad and fearful pictures drawn from the Ekman facial expressions of emotion (Ekman & Oster, 1979). Each picture was preceded by a verbal cue indicating the impending emotional expression and intensity. The displayed pictures were either in agreement, slightly discrepant or very discrepant with the cue. Participants rated the extent to which they agreed/disagreed with the expectation cue. Probit signal detection models were used to produce acquiescence for each subject at each level of discrepancy. Correlation analysis was performed on acquiescence and dispositional optimism scores. There was a significant correlation between all acquiescence scores for levels of discrepancies and dispositional optimism. Optimism appears to be a trait associated with acquiescence. The apparent tendency of optimists to comply may be due to a cognitive style that relies on expectations, such that it takes them longer to recognise the extent of discrepancy between expectations and incoming information. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bio-guided Isolation of Antioxidant Compounds from Chrysophyllum perpulchrum, a Plant Used in the Ivory Coast Pharmacopeia

Chrysophyllum perpulchrum (Sapotaceae) is used in the traditional Ivory Coast pharmacopeia to cure fevers. The extract of C. perpulchrum used for this study was the powdered form obtained from the maceration of the dried plant bark in 96% methanol, followed by evaporation to dryness. In the present study, the antioxidative and radical-scavenging activities of the methanolic extract were studied with three standard biological tests: DPPH reduction, ferric thiocyanate (FTC) lipidic peroxidation inhibition and thiobarbituric acid reacting substances (TBARS). Gallic acid and quercetin were used as references. The total amount of phenolic compounds in the extract was determined by ultraviolet (UV) spectrometry and calculated as gallic acid equivalents. Catechin and two dimeric procyanidins were found to be the compounds responsible for the activities. They were chemically dereplicated in the extract by LC-MS. For quantitation purposes, they were isolated by successive chromatographic methods and characterized by mass spectrometry (MS) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrometry. The quantities of these compounds in C. perpulchrum were 5.4% for catechin (P1), and 5.6 and 9.2% for dimers (compounds 2 (P2) and 3 (P3)), respectively. They displayed antioxidant activity with IC50 values of 2.50 ± 0.15 µg/mL (P1), 2.10 ± 0.2 µg/mL (P2) and 2.10 ± 0.1 µg/mL (P3). The total extract, the active fractions and the pure compounds inhibited the lipid peroxidation by the FTC method and the TBARS method in the range of 60%. These values were comparable to those seen for quercetin.
Transradial approach for coronary angioplasty in the setting of acute myocardial infarction: A dual‐center registry

Although transradial angioplasty has been shown to have no major entry site–related complications, its clinical applicability for balloon angioplasty and stenting in acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is unclear. In order to assess the feasibility, safety, and clinical outcome of transradial access for coronary angioplasty (PTCA) and stenting during AMI, transradial angioplasty for AMI was registered on a prospective database at two European sites (A and B) with experience in the radial approach (RA); 6 Fr catheters with an inner lumen of at least 0.064″ and low‐profile rapid‐exchange balloons were used. Primary success rates and procedural complications of 6 Fr RA were determined and compared to 6 Fr femoral approach (FA) procedures. A total of 1,224 AMI patients entered the registry. Study site A enrolled 185 RA patients (13.6% AMI) and study site B 92 RA patients (63.4%). Patient baseline demographics were similar in both study centers and showed no differences between RA and FA patients, except a more frequent use of abciximab in study site B compared to A. PTCA was successful in > 95% of both RA and FA patients. Total procedural time did not differ between RA and FA patients. Severe access site–related bleeding complications, however, were observed in FA patients only: study site A used closure devices routinely and found 2% severe bleedings; study site B used no closure device for FA patients and observed 7% severe bleedings. In selected patients and in experienced hands, transradial PTCA in AMI has a high success rate, is clinically safe, and could become an attractive alternative access site for patients being at high or even low risk for bleeding complications. Cathet Cardiovasc Intervent 2002;55:206–211. © 2002 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
The Role(s) of Student Voice in 14-19 Education Policy Reform: Reflections on Consultation and Participation.

Certain policy areas with considerable impact on young people’s educational experiences and achievements, notably assessment and qualiﬁcations, do not involve consultation with young people to any meaningful extent. Findings from a national study, which included focus groups with 243 students in the 14–19 phase, are presented with respect to student consultation and participation in such policy areas. A lack of meaningful consultation regarding what students see as ‘higher level’ policy agendas was found (such as qualiﬁcations provision, choice or structure). Students are therefore ‘voiceless’ in relation to major qualiﬁcations reforms.
The sky is the limit: 1 Global warming as global governmentality

The concept of governmentality has gained significant influence among scholars of International Relations. Recently, however, there is a growing literature engaging critically with the notion of a global governmentality. This article seeks to inform this debate with insights from global climate change politics as a paradigmatic case for applying governmentality to global politics. Drawing on an analysis of the Clean Development Mechanism, it makes three arguments, which seek to refine the global governmentality concept. First, governmentality does not necessarily centre on the notion of the ‘population’, but can also function as a governmentality of other ‘technological zones’. Second, the seeming failure of a governmentality in its own terms is better understood within a ‘post-foundational’ framework of depoliticization. Third, governmentality and sovereignty are not mutually exclusive. Instead, the former allows the latter to ‘govern at a distance’. The Clean Development Mechanism illustrates these points perfectly. Although it is based on a global ‘carbon governmentality’, it is able to conduct individual conduct directly. Its apparent failure in terms of carbon emission reductions is in fact a success of depoliticizing climate politics, excluding fundamental social structures. And although it is based on an international treaty, it establishes an advanced liberal government of the climate.
TWITTERING THE NEWS

This paper examines new para-journalism forms such as micro-blogging as “awareness systems” that provide journalists with more complex ways of understanding and reporting on the subtleties of public communication. Traditional journalism defines fact as information and quotes from official sources, which have been identified as forming the vast majority of news and information content. This model of news is in flux, however, as new social media technologies such as Twitter facilitate the instant, online dissemination of short fragments of information from a variety of official and unofficial sources. This paper draws from computer science literature to suggest that these broad, asynchronous, lightweight and always-on systems are enabling citizens to maintain a mental model of news and events around them, giving rise to awareness systems that the paper describes as ambient journalism. The emergence of ambient journalism brought about by the use of these new digital delivery systems and evolving communications protocols raises significant research questions for journalism scholars and professionals. This research offers an initial exploration of the impact of awareness systems on journalism norms and practices. It suggests that one of the future directions for journalism may be to develop approaches and systems that help the public negotiate and regulate the flow of awareness information, facilitating the collection and transmission of news.
Visual acuity outcomes among sham vs no-treatment controls from randomized trials.

OBJECTIVE To compare 2-year visual acuity outcomes between similar participants assigned to sham and no-treatment control arms in randomized clinical trials. METHODS We retrospectively matched sham controls from 2 randomized trials to no-treatment controls (no sham or placebo) from 3 trials on 8 baseline prognostic criteria (full matches) or on 4 to 7 criteria (partial matches). Outcomes were compared using data from those who had 2-year visual acuity measurements and also using the last observation carried forward method to impute missing 2-year measurements. RESULTS A full match to a no-treatment control was identified for 72 of 321 sham controls (22%); a partial match was identified for another 93 sham controls (29%). Among the fully matched pairs, no important difference in 2-year visual acuity outcomes was observed. However, 2-year outcomes differed somewhat between sham and no-treatment controls within the partially matched pairs. CONCLUSIONS Findings from fully matched pairs suggest that sham treatment to mask participants in clinical trials may be unnecessary when visual acuity is the outcome of interest. However, findings from the partially matched pairs do not fully support this conclusion. This analysis challenges the necessity for sham (placebo) controls in randomized clinical trials in ophthalmology when visual acuity is the primary outcome of interest.
The impact of negative experiences, dissatisfaction and attachment on first year undergraduate withdrawal

This paper reports the results of a telephone survey of 151 undergraduates who withdrew in their first year of study at a post‐1992 institution. It focuses on the negative experiences which they reported during their time at the university and the ultimate reasons for leaving, exploring in particular issues around choice of course, academic experience, socialization and financial support. From these data and from demographic information held by the university, distinct groupings of similar cases emerge, going some way to illuminating which students leave, when and why. The paper concludes with a discussion around the relationship between dissatisfaction, attachment and student retention, proposing that negative stimuli only go part of the way to explaining withdrawal decisions.
Hierarchy and Expansiveness in Two-Dimensional Subshifts of Finite Type

Using a deterministic version of the self-similar (or hierarchical, or fixed-point ) method for constructing 2-dimensional subshifts of finite type (SFTs), we construct aperiodic 2D SFTs with a unique direction of non-expansiveness and prove that the emptiness problem of SFTs is undecidable even in this restricted case. As an additional application of our method, we characterize the sets of directions that can be the set of non-expansive directions of 2D SFTs.
Regulation of cytochrome P450 in a primary culture of rainbow trout hepatocytes

SummaryPrimary cultures of fish hepatocytes have been used as a convenient model for studies on cytochrome expression. Here we have further examined the regulation of CYP enzymes in this model. A transient increase in CYP1A1 messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA) and 7-ethoxyresorufin-O-deethylase (EROD) activity occurred within h after medium change. This event implies that either an exogenous, quickly metabolized CYP1A1 inducer was introduced to the hepatocytes with the fresh medium, or that the mechanical act of changing the medium disrupts the cell homeostasis, which in turn activates CYP1A1 transcription or alternatively stabilizes CYP1A1 mRNA. CYP1A1 has been shown to be highly inducible in primary cultures of rainbow trout hepatocytes by 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) via an aryl hydrocarbon (Ah) receptor-mediated activation of gene transcription. In the present study, CYP1A1 was strongly induced by TCDD, whereas CYP2K1, a constitutively expressed cytochrome P450 (CYP), was refractory to the same treatment. Cycloheximide efficiently blocked protein synthesis in the cell culture, and thus the apparent half-life of CYP1A1 (measured as EROD activity) could be estimated. In cells treated with TCDD for 24 h the CYP1A1 apparent half-life was estimated to be 15.9 h. When ethoxycoumarin-O-deethylase activity was used as an indicator of CYP levels, a considerably longer half-life of 27.1 h was estimated. The level of CYP2K1 remained constant throughout the study and was not sensitive to cycloheximide exposure (30 h), indicating a considerably longer half-life of this protein in cell culture.
Non-standard Dialect in the Formal Speech of 15-year-olds on Tyneside

This paper reports a study of the use of non-standard English in the formal speech of 15- year-olds of both genders and of varying attainment levels. The pupils were drawn from two schools on Tyneside which take pupils from catchment areas of markedly different socioeconomic status. Differences were found in the incidence of non-standard lexis and grammar in terms of the variables studied: girls used fewer non-standard forms than boys, lower attaining pupils used more than their higher attaining peers and pupils of lower socioeconomic status used more than those of higher socioeconomic status. However, some complex interactions between the variables are reported. Even among the groups with a comparatively high incidence of non-standard forms, features specific to Tyneside English were relatively infrequent and the significance of this finding for teachers is discussed both via a critique of the treatment of standard English in the National Curriculum and through a proposed model for curriculum development which places use of non-standard dialect in the context of a much wider understanding of language variation
Qualitative methods in sport: a concise overview for guiding social scientific sport research

This paper offers a concise overview of qualitative methods in sport and the social sciences. A broad definition of qualitative research is first offered, after which various qualitative traditions – ethnography, grounded theory, narrative inquiry and critical inquiry – are described. After describing these traditions, the paper highlights several ways in which social scientific sport researchers might collect data for their investigations. These are interviewing, participant observation, visual methods and the Internet. Next, the paper describes a type of analysis that qualitative sport researchers might use to make sense of the data they collect. Finally, generalizability and validity are discussed in relation to qualitative sport research in the social sciences.
Memory Processes in Classification Learning: An Investigation of Amnesic Performance in Categorization of Dot Patterns and Artistic Styles

The role of conscious memory retrieval in category learning was investigated, using amnesic patients and matched control subjects on two classification tasks. Subjects attempted to learn to categorize both dot patterns and the paintings of three Italian Renaissance artists. The amnesic patients were capable of normal classification performance on the dot-pattern stimuli, but were severely impaired at learning to categorize the paintings. On tests of recognition of the classification stimuli, the control subjects were very accurate on the paintings, and only moderately accurate on the dot patterns; the amnesic patients were poorer than the control subjects on both item types, though they were above chance in their recognition of the paintings. These data suggest that amnesic patients are capable of simple, perceptually based category learning, but that richer, more complex stimuli may demand memory retrieval processes that they lack.
Detection of an Escherichia coli Sequence Type 167 Strain with Two Tandem Copies of blaNDM-1 in the Chromosome

ABSTRACT New Delhi metallo-β-lactamase-1 (NDM-1)-producing Enterobacteriaceae has disseminated rapidly throughout the world and poses an urgent threat to public health. Previous studies confirmed that the blaNDM-1 gene is typically carried in plasmids but rarely in chromosome. We discovered a multidrug-resistant Escherichia coli strain Y5, originating from a urine sample and containing the blaNDM-1 gene, which did not transfer by either conjugation or electrotransformation. We confirmed the possibility of its chromosome location by S1-pulsed-field gel electrophoresis (PFGE) and XbaI-PFGE, followed by Southern blotting. To determine the genomic background of blaNDM-1, the genome of Y5 was completely sequenced and compared to other reference genomes. The results of our study revealed that this isolate consists of a 4.8-Mbp chromosome and three plasmids, it is an epidemic clone of sequence type (ST) 167, and it shows 99% identity with Escherichia coli 6409 (GenBank accession no. CP010371 ), which lacks the same blaNDM-1 gene-surrounding structure as Y5. The blaNDM-1 gene is embedded in the chromosome along with two tandem copies of an insertion sequence common region 1 (ISCR1) element (sul1-ARR-3-cat-blaNDM-1-bleo-ISCR1), which appears intact in the plasmid from Proteus mirabilis (GenBank accession no. KP662515 ). The genomic context indicates that the ISCR1 element mediated the blaNDM-1 transposition from a single source plasmid to the chromosome. Our study is the first report of an Enterobacteriaceae strain harboring a chromosomally integrated blaNDM-1, which directly reveals the vertical spreading pattern of the gene. Close surveillance is urgently needed to monitor the emergence and potential spread of ST167 strains that harbor blaNDM-1.
Linking BPMN, ArchiMate, and BWW: Perfect Match for Complete and Lawful Business Process Models?

Enterprise architecture (EA) models are helpful for describing elements that are necessary for modelling business processes at different architectural layers of the enterprise. Business process models are used to describe detailed enterprise processes in order to analyse and improve them. Business process logic provided in the business layer of EA is very abstract comparing with business process models. Therefore EA models and business process models must be linked to address in detail both structural and behavioural aspects of the information system. However linked EA and business process models do not imply that the models provide complete and lawful descriptions of the information system. The paper uses a theoretical foundation of Bunge-Wand-Weber system’s model and evaluates how industry standards BPMN and ArchiMate contribute to creation of complete and lawful business process models.