Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Visual Attention and the Role of Normalization

Visual perception can be improved by the intentional allocation of attention to specific visual components. This “top-down” attention can improve perception of specific locations in space, or of specific visual features at all locations in space. Both spatial and feature attention are thought to involve the feedback of attention signals from higher cortical areas to visual cortex, where it modulates the firing rates of specific sensory neurons. However, the mechanisms that determine how top-down attention signals modulate the firing rates of visual neurons are not fully understood. Recently, a sensory mechanism called normalization has been implicated in mediating neuronal modulations by attention. Normalization is a form of gain control that adjusts the dynamic range of neuronal responses, particularly when more than one stimulus lies within a neuron's receptive field. Models of attention propose that this sensory mechanism affects how attention signals modulate the firing rates of sensory neurons, but it remains unclear exactly how normalization is related to the different forms of top-down attention. Here we use single unit electrophysiological recordings from the middle temporal area (MT) of rhesus monkeys to measure the firing rates of sensory neurons. We ask the monkeys to perform a behavioral task that directs their attention to a particular location or
Cartography, territory, property: postcolonial reflections on indigenous counter-mapping in Nicaragua and Belize

The attention given to indigenous peoples' use of maps to make claims to land and rights of self-government raises the question: what exactly it is that these maps do? This paper outlines an analytic for examining indigenous mapping projects, drawing upon two prominent instances — by the Maya of Belize and the Mayangna community of Awas Tingni in Nicaragua — where human rights lawsuits have been woven together with participatory mapping. In each case, map-making was intricately linked to the formulation of legal claims, resulting in a pair of much-celebrated maps and legal precedents regarding the recognition of indigenous land rights. We argue that these strategies do not reverse colonial social relations so much as they rework them. Notwithstanding the creativity expressed through these projects, they remain oriented by the spatial configuration of modern politics: territory and property rights. This spatial configuration both accounts for and limits the power of indigenous cartography. This impasse is not a contradiction that can be resolved; rather, it constitutes an aporia for which there is no easy or clear solution. Nonetheless, it must be confronted.
Tuberculin response in BCG vaccinated schoolchildren and the estimation of annual risk of infection in Hong Kong

Background: In Hong Kong there has been nearly universal neonatal BCG vaccination coverage since 1980. Method: 21 113 schoolchildren aged 6–9 years were skin tested with one unit of tuberculin (PPD RT-23) using the intradermal technique during a routine BCG revaccination programme. Information on sex, date of birth, date of tuberculin testing, and tuberculin reaction size at 72 hours was retrieved. The annual risk of tuberculous infection (ARTI) was estimated by three different approaches. Results: Significantly higher tuberculin positive rates were found in girls and with increasing age at all commonly used cut-off points (5, 10, and 15 mm). Using a cut-off point of ⩾10 mm and the formula 1− (1 – tuberculin positive rate)1/age, the ARTI was estimated to be 1.93% (95% CI 1.84 to 2.03) for girls and 1.41% (95% CI 1.33 to 1.50) for boys. Using the differences in the tuberculin positive rate between the 6–7 year and 8–9 year age groups, the ARTI became 1.90% (95% CI 1.09 to 2.70) and 1.84% (95% CI 1.15 to 2.54) for girls and boys, respectively. When the prevalence of infection was estimated by locating a secondary peak of the tuberculin reaction distribution curve at 15 mm and assuming a symmetrical distribution of reaction sizes among those infected around this peak, the corresponding ARTI was much lower at 0.52% (95% CI 0.46 to 0.59) and 0.43% (95% CI 0.37 to 0.49) for girls and boys, similar to that estimated indirectly from the prevalence of disease. Conclusion: The ARTI as estimated by conventional methods was unexpectedly high among BCG vaccinated children and did not agree with that anticipated from the annual incidence of active disease. Further studies are needed to address the discrepancies, including the possible interaction between BCG and other environmental stimuli.
Epstein‐Barr Virus Is Infrequently Identified in Non‐Hodgkin's Lymphomas Associated with Hodgkin's Disease

Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) was identified in a subset of cases of Hodgkin's disease (HD) and in some non-Hodgkin's lymphomas (NHLs), particularly those associated with immunodeficiency. Because patients with HD have associated immune system defects, we hypothesized that EBV might be involved in NHLs associated with HD. Using fixed paraffin sections and in situ hybridization for EBV EBER1 RNA, we studied 12 cases of composite NHL + HD, two patients with NHL who simultaneously also had HD involving a different site (simultaneous HD and NHL), 14 NHLs arising in patients who previously had HD, and seven NHLs from patients who subsequently developed HD. Epstein-Barr virus was identified most frequently in composite NHL + HD. Five (42%) cases of composite NHL + HD contained EBV in Reed-Sternberg and Hodgkin cells, four of which also had EBV-positive NHLs, diffuse mixed or large-cell type, with 10 to more than 50 EBV-positive cells per x400 microscopic field. These results suggest that in this subset of four cases, both the NHL and HD components may have arisen from the same EBV-infected progenitor cell. We did not find EBV in two cases of simultaneous NHL and HD or in seven NHLs preceding development of HD. We identified EBV in only two of 14 NHLs following HD, one small noncleaved cell lymphoma and one plasmacytoma, both containing more than 50 EBV-positive cells per x400 microscopic field. These results suggest that EBV plays a minimal role in NHLs associated with HD, with the exception of composite NHL +HD. Hodgkin's disease-associated immune defects may be involved in the pathogenesis of a subset of NHLs following HD, but the exact pathogenesis of most NHLs associated with HD remains uncertain. Parallels with the high-grade Burkitt-like lymphomas associated with human immunodeficiency virus infection are noted.
Matched controls in a case-control study. Does matching by doctor's list mean matching by relative deprivation?

In case-control studies it is important that controls selected are representative of the population from which the cases came, to give an unbiased estimate of population exposure. This is difficult to achieve, but one method to select controls has been to use the patient lists of the general practitioners with whom the cases are registered. Using data from a case-control study of heart attacks in young women; this article explores whether this method of selecting controls resulted in an unrepresentative distribution of deprivation levels in controls. The controls did not reflect the high levels of deprivation seen in the cases, although they came from the same neighbourhoods (general practice catchment areas). Such controls are often referred to as neighbourhood controls, but this is misleading. General practice controls are more likely to represent the general distribution of the population than the relative affluence or otherwise of the cases.
Daily Clothing Selection: Interrelationships Among Motivating Factors

The purpose of this investigation was to test the interrelationships among motivating factors that influence an individual's daily selection of clothes. The motivating factors were classified in two ways. First, they were broken into temporal clothing functions (weather, social activity, practicality, mood, and physical self), and constant factors such as clothing orientation and personality dimensions. Instruments for temporal clothing functions and clothing orientation were developed by the experimentor. Four sub-scales of Shostrom's Personality Orientation Inventory (POI) (Spontaneity, Self-Actualization, Self Regard, and Feeling Reactivity) were adopted for the instrument of personality dimensions. These motivating factors were also classified into exogenous factors (weather, social activity, practicality, and physical self) and endogenous factors (mood, clothing orientation, and personality dimensions). The final survey, consisting of three major sections, was administered to 105 female students in a midwestern university. Multiple regression analysis, analysis of variance, and Spearman's correlation were used for the statistical analyses. The results of the statistical analyses indicated that there was a varying degree of correlation between the five temporal clothing functions and the clothing orientation factors. The multiple regression results of the five temporal clothing functions and the four sub-scales of the POI indicated that the coefficients of the "spontaneity" sub-scale were significant for the weather and social activity functions, but not significant for the other temporal clothing functions. Three other sub-scales of the POI showed no bearing on any of the five temporal clothing functions. The multiple regression analysis to test the relationships between exogenous and endogenous factors indicated that mood function (representative of endogenous factors) was significantly influenced (affected) by the weather and physical self functions. The findings in general concur with the presupposition that motivation for clothing selection was multidimensional in its characteristics and the factors were all interdependent.
Crohn's disease in one mixed-race population in Brazil.

AIM To evaluate the classification and severity of Crohn's disease in different racial groups. METHODS Patients with Crohn's disease from the outpatient clinic of the University Hospital Prof. Edgard Santos were enrolled in the study. This hospital is a reference centre for inflammatory bowel disease. Race was determined using self-identification. The Vienna's classification was applied for all subjects. The severity of Crohn's disease was determined according to the number of surgical procedures, hospital admissions in the last year and treatment with steroids and immunosuppressors. Statistical analysis was calculated using t test for means, chi2 or F for proportions. A P value < 0.05 was considered to be significant. RESULTS Sixty-five patients were enrolled. Non-white patients were more frequently diagnosed with Crohn's disease in the age less than 40 years than white patients. The behaviour of disease was similar in both groups with a high frequency of the penetrating form. There was a tendency for non-white patients to have a greater frequency of hospital admissions in the last year compared to white subjects. Non-whites also had a higher rate of colonic and upper gastrointestinal involvement, and were also more frequently on treatment with immunossupressors than white patients although this difference was not statistically significant. CONCLUSION Non-white patients with Crohn's disease had an earlier diagnosis and appeared to have had a more severe disease presentation than white patients.
Complementary or Substitutive Effects? Corporate Governance Mechanisms and Poison Pill Repeal

A significant amount of research has examined firms’ decisions to adopt poison pills; however, firms today are increasingly repealing or allowing poison pills to expire. Based on agency theory, the authors examine competing perspectives of governance mechanisms as having complementary or substitutive effects within the context of poison pill repeal. They test whether firms repeal poison pills when governance is strong (complementary effects) or allow for other governance mechanisms to compensate for potential agency costs associated with poison pill renewal (substitutive effects). Using a sample of 288 firms who made decisions to terminate or renew poison pills, the authors find that firms with CEO duality, fewer directors nominated by the CEO, and higher levels of outside director ownership and pressure-resistant institutional shareholdings are more likely to repeal poison pills. A curvilinear relationship between managerial ownership and poison pill repeal is also found. The results provide greater support for the notion that firms use governance mechanisms as complements rather than substitutes.
Cleavage of precursors by the mitochondrial processing peptidase requires a compatible mature protein or an intermediate octapeptide

Many precursors of mitochondrial proteins are processed in two successive steps by independent matrix peptidases (MPP and MIP), whereas others are cleaved in a single step by MPP alone. To explain this dichotomy, we have constructed deletions of all or part of the octapeptide characteristic of a twice cleaved precursor (human ornithine transcarbamylase [pOTC]), have exchanged leader peptide sequences between once-cleaved (human methylmalonyl-CoA mutase [pMUT]; yeast F1ATPase beta-subunit [pF1 beta]) and twice-cleaved (pOTC; rat malate dehydrogenase (pMDH); Neurospora ubiquinol-cytochrome c reductase iron-sulfur subunit [pFe/S]) precursors, and have incubated these proteins with purified MPP and MIP. When the octapeptide of pOTC was deleted, or when the entire leader peptide of a once-cleaved precursor (pMUT or pF1 beta) was joined to the mature amino terminus of a twice-cleaved precursor (pOTC or pFe/S), no cleavage was produced by either protease. Cleavage of these constructs by MPP was restored by re- inserting as few as two amino-terminal residues of the octapeptide or of the mature amino terminus of a once-cleaved precursor. We conclude that the mature amino terminus of a twice-cleaved precursor is structurally incompatible with cleavage by MPP; such proteins have evolved octapeptides cleaved by MIP to overcome this incompatibility.
Forwarding capacity of an infinite wireless network

We study the maximal forwarding capacity of a massively dense wireless multi-hop network where a typical path consists of a vast number of hops. In such a network, the macroscopic level, corresponding to the scale of an end-to-end path, and the microscopic level, corresponding to the scale of a single hop, can be separated. At the macroscopic level the task is that of routing, while at the microscopic level the packets are forwarded based on the information received from the macroscopic level. We give a formulation for the forwarding problem and devise simulation algorithms based on an augmentation of the max-flow min-cut theorem for obtaining upper bounds for the maximal forwarding capacity. We compare the upper bounds with feasible forwarding methods and find out that the tightest bound is about three times the highest achieved performance.
The criminal career profile : a measure of criminal careers

The term criminal career is used to describe the course or progress of criminal activity: its onset, duration, termination, severity, and change in severity. Such a term has important implications, given that significant criminal justice, social, and health policies such as crime control, parole, and correctional treatment and management are predicated on achieving the reduction of criminal careers of serious, repeat offenders. Despite its conceptual simplicity, however, criminal career is often treated as having no depth or scope, for example, merely as the number of crimes or length of prison sentence. These indices often give no or little consideration to criminal career parameters and tend to account for only a small portion of the construct of criminal careers. Ideally, a simple metric to measure the onset, duration, termination, severity, and change in severity of a pattern of criminal activities is needed to facilitate the description and measurement of criminal careers of offenders. The Criminal Career Profile (CCP), which uses commonly available criminological information and requires minimal professional skills to execute, can be considered a simple and precise measure of criminal careers. The CCP is a chronological representation on a Cartesian plane of the time in years an offender has spent in prison (y-axis) plotted against the time in years spent out of prison (x-axis) of all incarcerations and time spent in the community. Given that the CCP is a step function, a regression line can be generated. Serious crimes are generally given longer sentences, and more time in than out of prison would generate a steeper regression line. Shallower regression lines result from less time in than out of prison. As such, the CCP regression line can be considered an indication of the seriousness of offending, and the
Fractured transitions: Disadvantaged young people, drug taking and risk

This article explores drug taking amongst a particularly disadvantaged group of young people in Britain. It argues that as these young people make their way to adulthood, they are confronted with risks at many levels, and that these risks are further compounded by their drug use as well as by the inability of services to effectively respond to the complex needs they present. The article argues that while to some extent drug use may be understood as a consequence of, or response to, the disadvantages these young people have experienced in their lives, it can at the same time be seen to further entrench those disadvantages.
What Enables Self-Control? A Test of Glucose, Fructose, and Vagus Nerve Activation as Possible Factors

This study replicated the study by Miller, Bourrasseau, and Blampain (2013) on the effects of fructose and glucose on self-control. It also investigated these authors' suggestion that self-control may be under the influence of the vagus nerve, which can be activated by forceful exhalation in the Valsalva manoeuvre. The participants (N = 101) were assigned to one of five conditions: three groups that received a solution of either glucose, fructose, or a placebo sweetener (solution condition); and two groups that underwent the Valsalva manoeuvre (VM and VM-control). Participants in the solution condition groups ingested one of the three sweeteners, whereas those in the VM and VM-control conditions were required to blow or not blow into a manometer for 15 seconds, respectively. The number of anagrams that participants subsequently completed was used to assess their level of self-control. In contrast to the results obtained by Miller et al. (2013), it was found that fructose, glucose, and VM did not increase the participants' levels of self-control compared to control subjects. These negative results concur with several recent studies which document the difficulty of replicating published findings in psychology.
Circadian rhythms are not involved in the regulation of circannual reproductive cycles in a sub-tropical bird, the spotted munia

Circannual rhythms regulate seasonal reproduction in many vertebrates. The present study investigated whether circannual reproductive phenotypes (rhythms in growth of gonads and molt) were generated independently of the circadian clocks in the subtropical non-photoperiodic spotted munia (Lonchura punctulata). Birds were subjected to light:dark (LD) cycles with identical light but varying dark hours, such that the period of LD cycle (T) equaled 16 h (T16; 12 h L:4 h D), 21 h (T21; 12 h L:9 h D), 24 h (T24; 12 h L:12 h D) and 27 h (T27; 12 h L:15 h D), or to continuous light (LL, 24 h L:0 h D) at ~18°C. During the ~21 month exposure, munia underwent at least two cycles of gonadal development and molt; changes in body mass were not rhythmic. This was similar to the occurrence of annual cycles in reproduction and molt observed in wild birds. A greater asynchrony between circannual cycles of gonad development and molt indicated their independent regulation. Females showed reproductive rhythms with similar circannual periods, whilst in males, circannual periods measured between peak gonadal size were longer in T21 and T24 than in T16 or T27. This suggested a sex-dependent timing of annual reproduction in the spotted munia. Also, food availability periods may not influence the circannual timing of reproduction, as shown by the results on the rhythm in gonadal growth and regression in munia under T-photocycles and LL that provided differential light (feeding) hours. Further, a short-term experiment revealed that activity–rest patterns in munia were synchronized with T-photocycles, but were arrhythmic under LL. We conclude that circadian rhythms are not involved in the timing of the annual reproductive cycle in the spotted munia.
Categorias Sintáticas Vazias e Retração de Acento em Português Brasileiro

Este artigo trata da interface fonologia-sintaxe no que diz respeito as regras ritmicas, mais precisamente do papel que as categorias vazias tem na aplicacao de regras ritmicas (cf. Lightfoot 1976, Postal & Pullum 1978, Andrews 1978, Jaeggli 1980, Freidin & Lasnik 1981). Sao examinadas sentencas em que ha a possibilidade de um encontro acentual do tipo [V cv Adv], em que V e um verbo com acento final, cv e uma categoria vazia e Adv e um adverbio com acento na primeira silaba. Defendemos que o encontro acentual com esta configuracao sintatica pode ser resolvido via retracao do primeiro acento para a silaba anterior se a categoria vazia e um vestigio de movimento, mas nao se e um pronome nulo (pro).
Constructing the Green Manager

This article applies a social constructionist approach to senior managers' `green' selves and roles. In a qualitative, empirical study of the UK automotive industry, the social/political contexts of managers' organizational lives are explored as they interact with, and define, the green corporate agenda. Ethical dimensions of environmentalism are stressed – particularly the distinctions and tensions between private moral positions, enacted morality, and the conventional morality as disseminated by the corporation. The study reveals the way different stakeholders are construed, and how `green' territories are contested. The implications for organizational change and strategic formulation are discussed, especially the strengths and limitations of approaching corporate greening from enacted/normative moralities, or from a vision of a substantive transformation of values.