Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Revisiting the Evidence for Collapsing Boundaries and Urgency Signals in Perceptual Decision-Making

For nearly 50 years, the dominant account of decision-making holds that noisy information is accumulated until a fixed threshold is crossed. This account has been tested extensively against behavioral and neurophysiological data for decisions about consumer goods, perceptual stimuli, eyewitness testimony, memories, and dozens of other paradigms, with no systematic misfit between model and data. Recently, the standard model has been challenged by alternative accounts that assume that less evidence is required to trigger a decision as time passes. Such “collapsing boundaries” or “urgency signals” have gained popularity in some theoretical accounts of neurophysiology. Nevertheless, evidence in favor of these models is mixed, with support coming from only a narrow range of decision paradigms compared with a long history of support from dozens of paradigms for the standard theory. We conducted the first large-scale analysis of data from humans and nonhuman primates across three distinct paradigms using powerful model-selection methods to compare evidence for fixed versus collapsing bounds. Overall, we identified evidence in favor of the standard model with fixed decision boundaries. We further found that evidence for static or dynamic response boundaries may depend on specific paradigms or procedures, such as the extent of task practice. We conclude that the difficulty of selecting between collapsing and fixed bounds models has received insufficient attention in previous research, calling into question some previous results.
Promotion to middle management: some practitioners’ perceptions

This paper reports findings from a small-scale pilot study undertaken at the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) exploring teacher perspectives on the advantages and disadvantages of seeking promotion to middle management posts and the factors that would encourage or discourage teachers from seeking promotion. A series of interviews was undertaken in six schools across two local education authorities. Data revealed a group of teachers who were highly committed to teaching and working with pupils and were only interested in promotion, in so far as it enhanced their professional practice, and neither removed them from the classroom nor interfered with the quality of their family life.
A Unified Account of Gaze Following

Gaze following, the ability to redirect one's visual attention to look at what another person is seeing, is foundational for imitation, word learning, and theory-of-mind. Previous theories have suggested that the development of gaze following in human infants is the product of a basic gaze following mechanism, plus the gradual incorporation of several distinct new mechanisms that improve the skill, such as spatial inference, and the ability to use eye direction information as well as head direction. In this paper, we offer an alternative explanation based on a single learning mechanism. From a starting state with no knowledge of the implications of another organism's gaze direction, our model learns to follow gaze by being placed in a simulated environment where an adult caregiver looks around at objects. Our infant model matches the development of gaze following in human infants as measured in key experiments that we replicate and analyze in detail.
Individualism Versus Collectivism: A Comparison of Kenyan and American Self-Concepts

We predicted that individuals from traditional, collectivist Kenyan cultures would have self-concepts with more social components than would those from individuated American culture and that the self-concepts of urbanized and educated Kenyans would be less social than those of traditional Kenyans. Consistent with predictions, the proportion of social category responses to the Twenty Statements Test was 12% for American college students, 17% for Kenyan university students in Nairobi, 58% for Kenyans employed in Nairobi, 80% for Maasai Kenyans, and 84% for Samburu Kenyans. American and Kenyan university students responded primarily with nonsocial categories of psychological and interpersonal style, whereas traditional Kenyans responded with social categories of occupational and kinship roles. Sociocultural factors of urbanization, education, and Westernization appear to correlate with individuated (nonsocial) self-conceptions.
The Vertebrate GLFG Nucleoporin, Nup98, Is an Essential Component of Multiple RNA Export Pathways

The 97-kD O-linked glycoprotein, Nup98, is a component of the Xenopus laevis nuclear pore complex and the only vertebrate GLFG nucleoporin identified (Powers, M.A., C. Macauley, F. Masiarz, and D.J. Forbes. 1995. J. Cell Biol. 128:721–736). We have investigated possible roles of xNup98 in the nucleocytoplasmic transport of proteins and RNAs by analyzing the consequences of injecting monospecific polyclonal antibodies to xNup98 into X. laevis oocytes. We show here that nuclear injection of anti-xNup98 inhibited the export of multiple classes of RNAs, including snRNAs, 5S RNA, large ribosomal RNAs, and mRNA. In contrast, the export of tRNA was unaffected. Injection of antixNup98 into the oocyte cytoplasm had no effect on export of any of the RNAs. Significantly, nuclear injection of anti-xNup98 antibodies did not inhibit import of either karyophilic proteins or snRNPs. This latter result is in agreement with our previous finding that Nup98 is not an essential element of the protein import pathway. Thus, Nup98 plays a role specifically in RNA export from the nucleus, and it appears to be an essential component of multiple RNA export pathways.
Banana Blossom (Musa acuminate Colla) Incorporated Experimental Diets Modulate Serum Cholesterol and Serum Glucose Level in Wistar Rats Fed with Cholesterol

Hypocholesterolaemic and hypoglycaemic effect of banana blossom were studied in high-cholesterol fed rats. Experimental groups were fed for 4 weeks, with casein as the basal diet (CN), in comparison with two diets containing 0.5% cholesterol (CD) and 0.5% cholesterol + 21% banana blossom powder (CDB). Serum total cholesterol, non-HDL-cholesterol level, and serum glucose concentrations were lower in CDB fed group compared with CD fed group. Lower serum cholesterol and glucose level (P < 0.05) in CDB fed group were followed by higher faecal weight, caecal weight, caecal Lactobacilli, and Bifidobacteria population in CDB fed group compared to CD diet fed group. Lower serum AST level in banana blossom fed rats showed the reduction in oxidative stress induced by high cholesterol diet. Based on these data, it could be speculated that banana blossom incorporated experimental diets may modulate the hypocholesterolaemic and hypoglycaemic responses in Wistar rats.
Could Neonatal Hypernatremia Dehydration Influence Hearing Status?

Introduction: Neonatal hypernatremia dehydration (NHD) is a dangerous condition in neonates, which is accompanied by acute complications (renal failure, cerebral edema, and cerebral hemorrhage) and chronic complications (developmental delay). Children begin learning language from birth, and hearing impairment interferes with this process. We assessed the hearing status of infants with hypernatremia dehydration. Materials and Methods: In a case-control study in 110 infants presenting at the Ghaem Hospital (Mashhad, Iran) between 2007 and 2011, we examined the incidence of hearing impairment in infants suffering from hypernatremia dehydration (serum sodium >150 mEq/L) in comparison with infants with normal sodium level (serum sodium ≤150 mEq/L). Results: Three of 110 cases examined in the study group showed a transient hearing impairment. A mean serum sodium level of 173mg/dl was reported among hearing-impaired infants. Conclusion: Transient hearing impairment was higher in infants with hypernatremia; although this difference was not significant (P>0.05). Hearing impairment was observed in cases of severe hypernatremia.
Beliefs about parental authority, parenting styles, and parent-adolescent conflict among Iranian mothers of middle adolescents

Associations among parenting styles, parental authority beliefs, and adolescent—parent conflict were examined in 426 mothers of middle adolescents from 3 cities in Iran. Consistent with past research, mothers judged parental authority as less legitimate for personal than for conventional or prudential issues. Poorer, less educated mothers were more authoritarian in their parenting, and more authoritarian and less authoritative parenting and poorer maternal mental health were uniquely associated with more frequent and more intense conflicts. Conflicts were more frequent among mothers who evaluated parental authority as less legitimate for prudential issues and more legitimate for personal issues, particularly among mothers of boys. Despite broad variation in mothers’ education and social class, conflicts reflected concerns about drawing boundaries between mothers’ legitimate authority and adolescents’ personal jurisdiction.
Celebrity in the ‘Twitterverse’: history, authenticity and the multiplicity of stardom Situating the ‘newness’ of Twitter

Analyses within celebrity studies of the increasing use of Twitter as an effective tool of communication by stars and their fans emphasise shifts in the parameters of stardom. The convergence, connection and the potential for interactive address between star and audience that the online platform creates appears to position the concept of stardom in the twenty-first century as something new. This article argues that while Twitter may represent a deviation from older models of stardom, there remain important continuities and contexts between ‘old’ and ‘new’ celebrity behaviours and media forms. It argues that Twitter exposes, rather than creates, the multiple ways in which stardom and celebrity status can exist and be analysed, and that many online practices characterised as new have clear antecedents in wider histories of stardom. It suggests that much of the value of exploring celebrity Twitter accounts lies in how the site, its usage and its content, renders historical negotiations around the construction and presentation of stardom visible. In order to do this, it draws upon a range of examples –with a particular focus on the Twitter account of John Cusack – examining how the management of online behaviour and identity illustrates significant debates around the subject of authenticity within celebrity culture.
Noise Adaptive Training for Robust Automatic Speech Recognition

In traditional methods for noise robust automatic speech recognition, the acoustic models are typically trained using clean speech or using multi-condition data that is processed by the same feature enhancement algorithm expected to be used in decoding. In this paper, we propose a noise adaptive training (NAT) algorithm that can be applied to all training data that normalizes the environmental distortion as part of the model training. In contrast to feature enhancement methods, NAT estimates the underlying “pseudo-clean” model parameters directly without relying on point estimates of the clean speech features as an intermediate step. The pseudo-clean model parameters learned with NAT are later used with vector Taylor series (VTS) model adaptation for decoding noisy utterances at test time. Experiments performed on the Aurora 2 and Aurora 3 tasks demonstrate that the proposed NAT method obtain relative improvements of 18.83% and 32.02%, respectively, over VTS model adaptation.
Politics and the Glass Cliff: Evidence that Women are Preferentially Selected to Contest Hard-to-Win Seats

Recent archival and experimental research has revealed that women are more likely than men to be appointed to leadership positions when an organization is in crisis. As a result, women often confront a “glass cliff” in which their position as leader is precarious. Our first archival study examined the 2005 UK general election and found that, in the Conservative party, women contested harder to win seats than did men. Our second study experimentally investigated the selection of a candidate by 80 undergraduates in a British political science class to contest a by-election in a seat that was either safe (held by own party with a large margin) or risky (held by an opposition party with a large margin). Results indicated that a male candidate was more likely than a woman to be selected to contest a safe seat, but there was a strong preference for a female rather than a male appointment when the seat was described as hard to win. Implications for women's participation in politics are discussed.
How words can and cannot be learned by observation

Three experiments explored how words are learned from hearing them across contexts. Adults watched 40-s videotaped vignettes of parents uttering target words (in sentences) to their infants. Videos were muted except for a beep or nonsense word inserted where each “mystery word” was uttered. Participants were to identify the word. Exp. 1 demonstrated that most (90%) of these natural learning instances are quite uninformative, whereas a small minority (7%) are highly informative, as indexed by participants’ identification accuracy. Preschoolers showed similar information sensitivity in a shorter experimental version. Two further experiments explored how cross-situational information helps, by manipulating the serial ordering of highly informative vignettes in five contexts. Response patterns revealed a learning procedure in which only a single meaning is hypothesized and retained across learning instances, unless disconfirmed. Neither alternative hypothesized meanings nor details of past learning situations were retained. These findings challenge current models of cross-situational learning which assert that multiple meaning hypotheses are stored and cross-tabulated via statistical procedures. Learners appear to use a one-trial “fast-mapping” procedure, even under conditions of referential uncertainty.
NARROW GRASS HEDGE EFFECTS ON NUTRIENT TRANSPORT FOLLOWING SWINE SLURRY APPLICATION

The effectiveness of a narrow grass hedge in reducing runoff nutrient loads following swine slurry application was examined. Slurry was applied to 0.75 m wide by 4.0 m long plots established on an Aksarben silty clay loam soil located in southeast Nebraska. Manure treatments consisted of no manure application and manure application to meet the 1, 2, or 3 year nitrogen (N) requirements for corn. Runoff water quality was measured during three 30 min simulated rainfall events. The grass hedge did not significantly reduce runoff nutrient transport after the swine slurry, which contained relatively small amounts of manure, was applied. Increasing the N application rate from a 1 year to a 3 year corn N requirement also did not result in a significant increase in N or phosphorus (P) loads in runoff. The grass hedge significantly reduced electrical conductivity (EC) measurements from 0.78 to 0.73 dS m -1 and pH values from 8.16 to 7.85. The rates of transport of dissolved P, particulate P, and total P were each influenced by runoff rate and increased in a linear fashion from 7 to 25, 65 to 357, and 72 to 382 g ha -1 min -1 , respectively. Runoff rate significantly affected rates of transport of NO3-N, NH4-N, and total nitrogen, which increased in a linear fashion from 273 to 1204, 30 to 47, and 323 to 1490 g ha -1 min -1 , respectively. Runoff rate is an important variable that should be considered when estimating nutrient
RETINAL VESSEL CLASSIFICATION BASED ON MAXIMIZATION OF SQUARED-LOSS MUTUAL INFORMATION

The classification of retinal vessels into arterioles and venules is important for any automated system for the detection of vascular changes in the retina and for the discovery of biomarkers associated with systemic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, and cardiovascular disease. We introduce Squared-loss Mutual Information clustering (SMIC) for classifying arterioles and venules in retinal images for the first time (to the best of our knowledge). We classified vessels from 70 fundus camera images using only 4 colour features in zone B (802 vessels) and in an extended zone (1,207 vessels). We achieved an accuracy of 90.67% and 87.66% in zone B and the extended zone, respectively. We further validated our algorithm by classifying vessels in zone B from two publically available datasets INSPIREAVR (483 vessels from 40 images) and DRIVE (171 vessels from 20 test images). The classification rates obtained on INSPIRE-AVR and DRIVE dataset were 87.6% and 86.2%, respectively. We also present a technique to sort the unclassified vessels which remained unlabeled by the SMIC algorithm.
Pathomechanisms of inflammatory myopathies: recent advances and implications for diagnosis and therapies.

IMPORTANCE OF THE FIELD The main subtypes of inflammatory myopathies include dermatomyositis (DM), polymyositis (PM), necrotising myopathy (NM) and sporadic inclusion body myositis (sIBM). Recent observations have helped us to understand better the unique pathomechanisms of each subset. Advances in the pathogenesis of these disorders have led to a more precise diagnosis and specific therapeutic strategies. AREAS COVERED IN THIS REVIEW A critical review regarding tissue biomarkers for the diagnosis of DM, PM, NM and sIBM is provided and an outline for more effective treatment strategies is discussed, particularly in sIBM, for which there is no effective therapy. WHAT THE READER WILL GAIN The reader will gain an objective overview of the different pathomechanisms of the major forms of myositis, the best means of arriving at the correct diagnosis, and a critical outline of the present and future therapeutic strategies. TAKE HOME MESSAGE Whereas DM is mainly mediated by humoral mechanisms, a T-cell-mediated cytotoxicity is operational in PM and sIBM. NM is multifactorial, but a subset is autoimmune, mediated by macrophages and possibly antibodies. Accumulation of aberrant molecules contributes to the pathology of sIBM. Muscle biopsy is required for the correct diagnosis of each entity. Standard immunotherapy is effective in DM and PM, but not usually in sIBM, for which new treatment strategies are discussed.
Somewhere under the rainbow: Exploring the identities and experiences of trans persons

The literature on transgender/transsexual-spectrum persons is limited. Most studies are based on the assumption that trans persons are best understood within rigid and binary definitions of gender and sexuality and tend to focus on diagnostics, medical management and risk factors. Researchers and clinicians may also assume that people who challenge cultural norms of gender and sexuality can be grouped together. Such assumptions about the specific experiences of trans persons can be harmfully incorrect. The goals of the present study were to explore the gender and sexual identities of trans persons, to investigate group differences, and to examine factors that predict better psychological and physical well-being. Participants took part in an online study and provided information about their gender and sexual identity, social support, relationship quality, and mental/physical health. Results depicted diverse gender identities and sexual orientations among trans persons and emphasized that while many challenges faced by sexual and gender minorities are similar, trans persons report unique mental and physical health outcomes. Also, greater social support and relationship quality predicted mental, but not physical, health among trans persons. These results highlight the importance of acknowledging the complexity of trans identities and the key role of social and personal support.
Insulator-Metal Transition on the Triangular Lattice

Mott insulators with a half-filled band of electrons on the triangular lattice have been recently studied in a variety of organic compounds. All of these compounds undergo transitions to metallic and/or superconducting states under moderate hydrostatic pressure. We describe the Mott insulator using its hypothetical proximity to a ${Z}_{2}$ spin liquid of bosonic spinons. This spin liquid has quantum phase transitions to descendant confining states with N\'eel or valence bond solid order, and the insulator can be on either side of one of these transitions. We present a theory of fermionic charged excitations in these states and describe the route to metallic states with Fermi surfaces. We argue that an excitonic condensate can form near this insulator-metal transition due to the formation of charge neutral pairs of charge $+e$ and charge $\ensuremath{-}e$ fermions. This condensate breaks the lattice space group symmetry, and we propose its onset as an explanation of a low temperature anomaly in $\ensuremath{\kappa}\text{\ensuremath{-}}{(\mathrm{ET})}_{2}{\mathrm{Cu}}_{2}{(\mathrm{C}\mathrm{N})}_{3}$. We also describe the separate BCS instability of the metallic states to the pairing of like-charge fermions and the onset of superconductivity.
PCR-based Diagnosis of Toxoplasma Parasite in Ocular Infections Having Clinical Indications of Toxoplasmosis

Background: The diagnosis of ocular toxoplasmosis is mainly based on clinical features. However, ocular fluid testing by PCR may be very helpful for approval or rejection of this etiology. In this study, we utilized a nested-PCR technique, targeting the B1 partial sequence to analyze the aqueous and vitreous samples for evaluating the presence of the Toxoplasma DNA. Methods: Fifty aqueous or vitreous humor samples were obtained from patients with clinical features of ocular toxoplasmosis admitted to ophthalmology hospitals and clinics in Iran, within 2014. The samples were subsequently subjected to DNA extraction and purification. For nested amplification of the Toxoplasma B1 gene, two primer pairs were used. The outer and inner primers are expected to produce a 193 bp and a 96 bp fragments, respectively. Results: The first-round PCR resulted in the detection of T. gondii in 58% of samples by amplification of the expected 193bp DNA fragment. The nested-PCR using the inner primers, detected 15 additional samples from those with negative amplicons in the first round PCR (overall positivity of 88%). In addition, vitreous samples showed relatively more positive cases than aqueous humor in detection of the infection. Conclusion: The nested-PCR protocol using the B1 gene, with the high detection power, could be a useful complimentary method to clinical diagnose of ocular toxoplasmosis.
Attentional Determinants of Success at Detecting Deception and Truth

Subjects, 22 males and 22 females, observed a videotape of 6 males and 6females who were sometimes lying and sometimes telling the truth. Subjects were instructed to pay special attention to the tone of voice, the words, or the visual cues of the senders, or were given no special attentional instructions (control condition). Subjects told to pay particular attention to the tone of voice were significantly more successful at distinguishing truth from deception than subjects in the control condition. Further analyses showed that the instructions to subjects to attend to tone significantly increased the degree to which they rated the truthful messages as truthful, but it did not increase the degree to which the;' rated the deceptive messages as deceptive. It was suggested that tone of voice cues may be particularly informative to perceivers making judgments of truthfulness, and that perceivers do not always take full advantage of the cues that are available to them.