Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Research news and Comment: A National Survey of AERA Members’ Perceptions of Statistical Significance Tests and Other Statistical Issues

Almost as soon as statistical significance tests were popularized near the turn of this century, critics emerged (Berkson, 1938; Boring, 1919). The criticism since then has been fairly continual (e.g., Carver, 1978; Meehl, 1978; Rozeboom, 1960), but recent commentary has been particularly striking (cf. Cohen, 1994; Kirk, 1996; Schmidt, 1996; Thompson, 1996,1999a). Of course, statistical tests also have support from some, though even most advocates concur that the tests are sometimes misused or misunderstood (e.g., Frick, 1996; Robinson & Levin, 1997). Particularly thoughtful advocacy for continued reliance on statistical testing has been offered by Abelson (1997) and Cortina and Dunlap (1997). A balanced and comprehensive treatment of the controversies is provided by Harlow, Mulaik, and Steiger (1997; for detailed reviews of this book, see Levin, 1998, and Thompson, 1998). Huberty (1987,1993) and Huberty and Pike (1999) provide the related historical perspective. However, as Try on (1998) recently lamented,
Treatment of sarcoidosis-associated pulmonary hypertension. A two-center experience.

BACKGROUND Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is a common complication of sarcoidosis that is associated with increased mortality. The pathogenesis of PH in sarcoidosis is uncertain, and the role of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH)-specific therapies remains to be determined. METHODS We conducted a retrospective study of patients with sarcoidosis and PH at two referral centers. New York Heart Association (NYHA) functional class, exercise capacity, hemodynamic data, pulmonary function tests, and survival were collected and analyzed. RESULTS Twenty-two sarcoidosis patients treated with PAH-specific therapies were identified. After a median of 11 months of follow-up, NYHA class was improved in nine subjects. Mean 6-min walk distance (n = 18) increased by 59 m (p = 0.032). Patients with a higher FVC experienced a greater increment in exercise capacity. Among 12 patients with follow-up hemodynamic data, mean pulmonary artery pressure was reduced from 48.5 +/- 4.3 to 39.4 +/- 2.8 mm Hg (p = 0.008). The 1- and 3-year transplant-free survival rates were 90% and 74%, respectively. CONCLUSIONS PAH-specific therapy may improve functional class, exercise capacity, and hemodynamics in PH associated with sarcoidosis. Prospective, controlled trials of PAH therapies for sarcoidosis are warranted to verify this apparent benefit. Mortality among the study population was high, highlighting the need for urgent evaluation at a lung transplant center.
Androgen Receptor Coregulator CTBP1-AS Is Associated With Polycystic Ovary Syndrome in Chinese Women

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is currently considered a predominantly hyperandrogenic syndrome. In theory, hyperandrogenism can be caused by high level of testosterone (T) as well as by enhanced androgen receptor (AR) activity. C-Terminal binding protein 1 antisense (CTBP1-AS) was a novel long noncoding RNA (lncRNA) to regulate AR activity. In this study, we found that expression level of CTBP1-AS in peripheral blood leukocytes was significantly higher in women with PCOS than that in controls after adjustment for age and body mass index (BMI). Individuals having higher expression of CTBP1-AS had significantly greater disease risk than those having lower expression. We also identified expression of CTBP1-AS as an independent risk factor for PCOS. A positive correlation was observed between the CTBP1-AS expression and the total T (TT) concentration either unadjusted or after adjusting for age, BMI, and homeostatic model assessment insulin resistance. Taken together, our current study presented the first evidence that the lncRNA CTBP1-AS, a novel AR modulator, is associated with PCOS in Chinese population and established the possibility that abnormal CTBP1-AS expression is a risk factor for PCOS and it is a predictor of variability in serum TT level in Chinese women with PCOS.
Understanding Physical Inactivity: Prediction of Four Sedentary Leisure Behaviors

An understanding of the motives underlying sedentary leisure behavior may guide interventions to decrease these behaviors. The purpose of this study was to apply the theory of planned behavior (TPB) to understand the motives underlying four common sedentary leisure activities: television viewing, computer use, reading/music, and socializing. A cross-sectional community sample of 206 adults and 174 undergraduate students completed measures of the TPB of these four leisure behaviors and self-reported behavior. Results using ordinary least squares regression provided evidence that sedentary behaviors may be intentional and planned with a primary attitude base but not related to perceived behavioral control. The findings provide information about sedentary behavior motivation and support the validity of the TPB for the prediction of these behaviors.
Phosphorylation of Amyloid Precursor Protein (APP) at Thr668 Regulates the Nuclear Translocation of the APP Intracellular Domain and Induces Neurodegeneration

ABSTRACT Amyloid precursor protein (APP) has eight potential phosphorylation sites in its cytoplasmic domain. Recently, it has demonstrated that the constitutive phosphorylation of APP at T668 (APP695 isoform numbering) was observed specifically in the brain. Neuron-specific phosphorylation of APP at T668 is thought to be important for neuronal functions of APP, although its exact physiological significance remains to be clarified. In this study, we show that the phosphorylation of the APP intracellular domain (AICD) at T668 is essential for its binding to Fe65 and its nuclear translocation and affects the resultant neurotoxicity, possibly mediated through the induction of glycogen synthase kinase 3β and tau phosphorylation by enhancing the formation of a ternary complex with Fe65 and CP2 transcription factor. Taken together, these results suggest that the phosphorylation of AICD at T668 contributes to the neuronal degeneration in Alzheimer's disease (AD) by regulating its translocation into the nucleus and then affects neurodegeneration; therefore, the specific inhibitor of T668 phosphorylation might be the target of AD therapy.
Strengthening the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning via Experimentation

In recent years, national policy experts have questioned the overall quality of educational research, and they have suggested that researchers strengthen their scientific methods by maximizing the use of experimental designs. To promote more rigorous methodology, we discuss several new and often-overlooked opportunities for incorporating experimentation into the scholarship of teaching and learning in psychology. Although experiments can be difficult to conduct in educational settings, our methodological suggestions are particularly well-suited for relatively small-scale studies, like those typically published in Teaching of Psychology.
A Fast Scheme for Detecting, Localizing and Grouping Similarly Looking Faces in Random Images

A scheme is presented for a preliminary detection of similar faces (or face fragments) in unknown images. Another objective of the scheme is to identify groups of images prospectively showing the same person. The scheme employs a standard technique of affine-invariant keypoint detection and matching. However, a novel keypoint descriptor is used which not only characterizes the keypoint itself, but additionally incorporates visual and geometric characteristics of keypoint neighborhoods. Therefore, a straightforward match between two keypoints usually indicates similar areas of significant sizes in compared images. The descriptor is quantized into small vocabularies independently representing photometry and geometry of keypoints. Therefore, a significant amount of visual and geometric distortions can be absorbed and recall of face retrieval is reasonably high. However, to keep precision at high level as well, we overlap results obtained by using two different detectors, i.e. Harris-Affine and Hessian-Affine. Altogether, the scheme’s performances are satisfactorily high (as shown on the test datasets) while its complexity is very low (allowing scalability to large datasets).
Storage performance virtualization via throughput and latency control

I/O consolidation is a growing trend in production environments due to the increasing complexity in tuning and managing storage systems. A consequence of this trend is the need to serve multiple users/workloads simultaneously. It is imperative to make sure that these users are insulated from each other by visualization in order to meet any service level objective (SLO). This paper presents a 2-level scheduling framework that can be built on top of an existing storage utility. This framework uses a low-level feedback-driven request scheduler, called AVATAR, that is intended to meet the latency bounds determined by the SLO. The load imposed on AVATAR is regulated by a high-level rate controller, called SARC, to insulate the users from each other. In addition, SARC is work-conserving and tries to fairly distribute any spare bandwidth in the storage system to the different users. This framework naturally decouples rate and latency allocation. Using extensive I/O traces and a detailed storage simulator, we demonstrate that this 2-level framework can simultaneously meet the latency and throughput requirements imposed by an SLO, without requiring extensive knowledge of the underlying storage system.
A programmatic study of short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy: Assessment, process, outcome, and training

Abstract The author reviews findings from his research program on short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy. A hybrid model of psychotherapy research is outlined that integrates efficacy and effectiveness methodology to examine interrelated issues regarding (a) psychological assessment, (b) psychotherapy process, (c) treatment outcome, and (d) training of graduate clinicians. The integration of applied clinical research initiatives into a doctoral training program, clinical implications, and directions for future research are also presented.
Affective Responses to Self-Defining Autobiographical Events

Five studies examined the role of the self in affective responses to memories of a person's own life events. Participants (total N = 237) included university students or community members from three countries (Ireland, UK, and USA). Participants described and then rated multiple autobiographical events (n>2600) via diary keeping and retrospective recall. Positive events retained affective intensity across the time lag from event occurrence to event recall, whereas negative events did not. Across all studies, the relationship between event valence and affect associated with events at recall occurred through the extent to which participants perceived their past events as self-defining. In Study 4, this indirect effect strengthened across five sessions that spanned 1 month. In Study 5, this indirect effect did not depend on self-concept clarity, but it did so in an alternative model. The findings illustrate the vital role the self plays in affective responses to personal event memories, and implicate self-enhancement/self-protection motives in the production of such responses. The self may facilitate a process of negative affect down-regulation for negative events, which is self-protective, and may facilitate a process of positive affect up-regulation for positive events, which is self-enhancing.
Measuring anxiety about aging across the adult lifespan

ABSTRACT Background: The development of instruments to measure aging attitudes is an essential part of research into the role of individual differences in the aging process, giving clarification to the relationship between attitudes and behavior across the lifespan. Here we test the structural validity of Lasher and Faulkender's (1993) Anxiety about Aging Scale (AAS), and explore measurement invariance across age and gender. Methods: A sample of 783 adults (42% females) age ranging from 20 to 97 years (M = 57.3, SD = 13.66) participated. Results: The first-order four-factor AAS model reflecting the original Lasher and Faulkender (1993) structure showed a better fit to the data than the second-order model. Measurement invariance for both gender and age groups (young adults 20–44 years; mid-aged adults 45–64 years, older adults 65+ years old) was found for three of the factors, but not for all items in the Fear of Losses factor. Structural covariance inequality between the Fear of Losses and Physical Appearance factors was shown between males and females. Conclusions: Findings indicate that the original AAS measures four distinct dimensions of anxiety about aging. These dimensions were shown to be generally comparable across age and gender, indicating that the AAS is a suitable measure for providing meaningful comparison of anxiety about aging across the lifespan. The exception is the Fear of Losses factor, where items may have differential meanings across groups based on cultural and social attitudes regarding aging and gender.
Wavelet Based Semi-blind Channel Estimation for Ultra Wideband OFDM Systems

Ultra wideband (UWB) communications involve very sparse channels, since the bandwidth increase results in a better time resolution. This property is used here to propose an efficient algorithm jointly estimating the channel and the transmitted symbols. More precisely, this paper introduces an expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm within a wavelet domain Bayesian framework for semi-blind channel estimation of multiband OFDM based UWB communications. A prior distribution is chosen for the wavelet coefficients of the unknown channel impulse response in order to model a sparseness property of t he wavelet representation. This prior yields, inmaximum a posteriori estimation, a thresholding rule within the EM algorithm. We particularly focus on reducing the number of estimated paramet ers by iteratively discarding “insignificant” wavelet coefficients from the estimation process. Simulation results using UWB chann els issued from both models and measurements show that under sparsity conditions, the proposed algorithm outperforms pilot based channel estimation in terms of mean square error and bit error rate. Moreover, the estimation accuracy is improved, while the computational complexity is reduced, when compar ed to traditional semi-blind methods.
KNOWLEDGE AND ATTITUDES OF HEALTHCARE PROVIDERS TOWARD SEXUALITY IN THE INSTITUTIONALIZED ELDERLY

This study examined the relationship between the knowledge and attitudes of nursing home caretakers toward elderly sexuality. The relationship of certain sociodemographic and institutional factors to knowledge and attitudes also were examined. The analysis revealed that the more knowledge the providers possessed, the more restrictive their attitudes were toward elderly sexuality. Education, religiosity, position, nursing education, time in current position, and continuing education were variables found to be significantly related to knowledge and/or attitudes.
Is it cool to go to school? An examination of the relationship between the Black-White achievement gap and hip hop music and culture

The purpose of this study was to describe the academic achievement and attitudes toward school of middle school students relative to the Black–White achievement gap and hip hop music and culture. Achievement data were collected from the Connecticut Mastery Test scores of one suburban district‘s middle school students. This mixed-method study collected qualitative and quantitative data from the 7thand 8th-grade students using an in-school survey that asked questions about school and hip hop music and culture. Students also completed a take-home log to record how long they participated in various after-school activities, including listening to music. There was not a significant amount of data collected concerning the amount of time students listen to hip hop music in order to determine if this could be a factor in lower achievement levels for hip hop listeners. The results of this study showed that students who listen to hip hop music did not meet goal on all three state standardized tests, and consequently, achieved at a lower level than their non-hip-hop-listening peers regardless of race. This research also examined how the negative lifestyles portrayed by hip hop artists influence the attitudes of students toward their school and learning. When asked to describe the term acting Black, most student responses were derived from negative images and concepts about African Americans that they are exposed to through listening to hip hop music and watching hip hop videos.
Emotions promote social interaction by synchronizing brain activity across individuals

Sharing others’ emotional states may facilitate understanding their intentions and actions. Here we show that networks of brain areas “tick together” in participants who are viewing similar emotional events in a movie. Participants’ brain activity was measured with functional MRI while they watched movies depicting unpleasant, neutral, and pleasant emotions. After scanning, participants watched the movies again and continuously rated their experience of pleasantness–unpleasantness (i.e., valence) and of arousal–calmness. Pearson’s correlation coefficient was used to derive multisubject voxelwise similarity measures [intersubject correlations (ISCs)] of functional MRI data. Valence and arousal time series were used to predict the moment-to-moment ISCs computed using a 17-s moving average. During movie viewing, participants' brain activity was synchronized in lower- and higher-order sensory areas and in corticolimbic emotion circuits. Negative valence was associated with increased ISC in the emotion-processing network (thalamus, ventral striatum, insula) and in the default-mode network (precuneus, temporoparietal junction, medial prefrontal cortex, posterior superior temporal sulcus). High arousal was associated with increased ISC in the somatosensory cortices and visual and dorsal attention networks comprising the visual cortex, bilateral intraparietal sulci, and frontal eye fields. Seed-voxel–based correlation analysis confirmed that these sets of regions constitute dissociable, functional networks. We propose that negative valence synchronizes individuals’ brain areas supporting emotional sensations and understanding of another’s actions, whereas high arousal directs individuals’ attention to similar features of the environment. By enhancing the synchrony of brain activity across individuals, emotions may promote social interaction and facilitate interpersonal understanding.
Restrictive Educational Settings: Exile or Haven?

This paper reviews the educational and emotional impact of restrictive (isolated) educational settings on children who are in the lowest quartile of achievement. The basic arguments for and against separation of slower students (both those classified as handicapped and those not so classified) are reviewed and some of the more prominent legal cases discussed. Various educational settings are defined and a position is developed as to how setting operates. The main body of the paper examines the results of studies in both special and compensatory education. As a result of the extensive review, it is asserted that the variables which are important for successful student outcomes can occur in most settings, and that for ethical reasons the least restrictive environment is preferred. In summary, it is the issue of effective practices, not the setting, that deserves the attention of educators.
GIFT: Towards Scalable 3D Shape Retrieval

Projective analysis is an important solution in three-dimensional (3D) shape retrieval, since human visual perceptions of 3D shapes rely on various 2D observations from different viewpoints. Although multiple informative and discriminative views are utilized, most projection-based retrieval systems suffer from heavy computational cost, and thus cannot satisfy the basic requirement of scalability for search engines. In the past three years, shape retrieval contest (SHREC) pays much attention to the scalability of 3D shape retrieval algorithms, and organizes several large scale tracks accordingly [1]– [3]. However, the experimental results indicate that conventional algorithms cannot be directly applied to large datasets. In this paper, we present a real-time 3D shape search engine based on the projective images of 3D shapes. The real-time property of our search engine results from the following aspects: 1) efficient projection and view feature extraction using GPU acceleration; 2) the first inverted file, called F-IF, is utilized to speed up the procedure of multiview matching; and 3) the second inverted file, which captures a local distribution of 3D shapes in the feature manifold, is adopted for efficient context-based reranking. As a result, for each query the retrieval task can be finished within one second despite the necessary cost of IO overhead. We name the proposed 3D shape search engine, which combines GPU acceleration and inverted file (t wice), as GIFT. Besides its high efficiency, GIFT also outperforms state-of-the-art methods significantly in retrieval accuracy on various shape benchmarks (ModelNet40 dataset, ModelNet10 dataset, PSB dataset, McGill dataset) and competitions (SHREC14LSGTB, ShapeNet Core55, WM-SHREC07).
Stressors, family environment and coping styles as predictors of educational and psychosocial adjustment in Palestinian children

This study investigated the contributions of child and parents’ sociodemographics, daily stressors, family environment, and coping strategies, to academic achievement, cognitive functioning and aggression in a sample of 600 children at the intermediate grade levels from Gaza Strip. Each of the predictor variables exhibited a different pattern of relations with the outcome domains. Although the study highlights the negative consequences of stress on children’s development, certain daily stressors had a positive effect. Optimal family relationships predicted better developmental outcomes. More emphasis on personal growth, control and organisation in the family predicted less optimal child development except for personal growth and achievement. More reliance on positive coping and less reliance on negative coping is associated with better academic achievement. The clinical and research implications of the findings are discussed.
Continuous Spontaneous Alternation and Turn Alternation in Artemia sp.

Author(s): Carkoglu, Can; Yilmaz, Meltem; Balci, Fuat | Abstract: Free-running spontaneous alternation refers to the animal’s tendency to prefer the least recently visited locations in successive spatial choices, which is attributed to the animals’ choice between stimuli based on prior experience. Turn alternation, which is observed in directional choices preceded by a forced turn in one direction, also reflects the animals’ tendency to alternate between directional choices but this tendency has been assumed to rely on other cues (e.g., proprioceptive cues) derived from the prior responses (e.g., forced turn in one direction). Based on previous studies, the turn alternation appears to rely on more primitive (lower-form) information features and to be a more frequently observed empirical phenomenon than the spontaneous alternation. We investigated these two behavioral alternation tendencies in Artemia sp. Experiment 1 tested the continuous spontaneous alternation (cSAB) performance of Artemia sp. in two different mazes: t-maze (three options) and plus maze (four options). Experiment 2 tested the turn alternation performance of Artemia sp. counter-balancing the direction of initial forced-turn between subjects. Our results showed that Artemia sp. had nearly chance level spontaneous alternation performance in the t-maze and plus maze whereas a higher than chance level turn alternation performance. These results support the ubiquity of turn alternation tendency across species and point at the lack of spontaneous alternation in Artemia sp.