Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Social Inhibition of return: Causes and properties

The present thesis was dedicated to examining individuals’ performance on a low-level reaching task conducted under social-interactive conditions. In this paradigm named Social Inhibition of Return (social IOR) two individuals, sitting opposite each other take turns to respond to targets appearing on either side of a visual display. Typical results reveal that reaction times are longer when responses are directed to where the co-actor just responded. Despite being fairly simple, this task is intriguing to examine as it potentially incorporates features of both an inhibition of return (IOR) effect and, a joint-action phenomenon, due to its interactive nature. Indeed, the results of the standard social IOR paradigm where participants sit opposite are consistent with both explanations as the potential involvement of attentional inhibition and/or action co-representation cannot be disentangled. The present work examined the causes and properties of this intriguing effect over the course of four empirical chapters. First, Chapter 2 revealed that social IOR possesses a number of properties, characteristic of traditional IOR. Second, Chapter 3 convincingly demonstrated that action co-representation does not seem to contribute to the phenomenon. Furthermore, Chapter 4 confirmed these findings by revealing that social IOR does not depend on the socialness of the co-actor. Finally, Chapter 5 showed that it could even bias a range of free choice decisions which revealed another novel property of the effect. Taken together these findings were interpreted as mostly consistent with a low-level inhibitory account as opposed to a theory, advocating an involvement of action imitation/co-representation in the effect. The present work had a number of theoretical and methodological implications for the better understanding of social IOR. In more general terms, it also contributed to the quickly developing, alternative literature to the action co-representation account, advocating a bottom-up basis of some joint-action effects.
Development of the Human Pancreas From Foregut to Endocrine Commitment

Knowledge of human pancreas development underpins our interpretation and exploitation of human pluripotent stem cell (PSC) differentiation toward a β-cell fate. However, almost no information exists on the early events of human pancreatic specification in the distal foregut, bud formation, and early development. Here, we have studied the expression profiles of key lineage-specific markers to understand differentiation and morphogenetic events during human pancreas development. The notochord was adjacent to the dorsal foregut endoderm during the fourth week of development before pancreatic duodenal homeobox-1 detection. In contrast to the published data from mouse embryos, during human pancreas development, we detected only a single-phase of Neurogenin 3 (NEUROG3) expression and endocrine differentiation from approximately 8 weeks, before which Nirenberg and Kim homeobox 2.2 (NKX2.2) was not observed in the pancreatic progenitor cell population. In addition to revealing a number of disparities in timing between human and mouse development, these data, directly assembled from human tissue, allow combinations of transcription factors to define sequential stages and differentiating pancreatic cell types. The data are anticipated to provide a useful reference point for stem cell researchers looking to differentiate human PSCs in vitro toward the pancreatic β-cell so as to model human development or enable drug discovery and potential cell therapy.
A Novel Naive Bayes Voting Strategy for Combining Classifiers

Classifier combination methods have proved to be an effective tool for increasing the performance in pattern recognition applications. The rationale of this approach follows from the observation that appropriately diverse classifiers make uncorrelated errors. Unfortunately, this theoretical assumption is not easy to satisfy in practical cases, thus reducing the performance obtainable with any combination strategy. In this paper we propose a new weighted majority vote rule which try to solve this problem by jointly analyzing the responses provided by all the experts, in order to capture their collective behavior when classifying a sample. Our rule associates a weight to each class rather than to each expert and computes such weights by estimating the joint probability distribution of each class with the set of responses provided by all the experts in the combining pool. The probability distribution has been computed by using the naive Bayes probabilistic model. Despite its simplicity, this model has been successfully used in many practical applications, often competing with much more sophisticated techniques. The experimental results, performed by using three standard databases of handwritten digits, confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Uniformly normal structure and uniformly generalized Lipschitzian semigroups

In this work, we introduce some condition on one-parameter semigroup of self-mappings it is called kuniformly generalized Lipschitzian. The condition is weaker than Lipschitzian type conditions. Also, we show that a k-generalized Lipschitzian semigroup of nonlinear self-mappings of a nonempty closed convex subset C of real Banach space X admits a common fixed point if the semigroup has a bounded orbit and if k > 0. Our results extending the results due to L.C. Ceng, H. K. Xu and J.C. Yao [5]
The AP-2 complex has a specialized clathrin-independent role in apical endocytosis and polar growth in fungi

Filamentous fungi provide excellent systems for investigating the role of the AP-2 complex in polar growth. Using Aspergillus nidulans, we show that AP-2 has a clathrin-independent essential role in polarity maintenance and growth. This is in line with a sequence analysis showing that the AP-2 β subunit (β2) of higher fungi lacks a clathrin-binding domain, and experiments showing that AP-2 does not co-localize with clathrin. We provide genetic and cellular evidence that AP-2 interacts with endocytic markers SlaBEnd4 and SagAEnd3 and the lipid flippases DnfA and DnfB in the sub-apical collar region of hyphae. The role of AP-2 in the maintenance of proper apical membrane lipid and cell wall composition is further supported by its functional interaction with BasA (sphingolipid biosynthesis) and StoA (apical sterol-rich membrane domains), and its essentiality in polar deposition of chitin. Our findings support that the AP-2 complex of dikarya has acquired, in the course of evolution, a specialized clathrin-independent function necessary for fungal polar growth. DOI: http://dx.doi. org/10.7554/eLife.20083. 001
‘Everything's fine, so why does it happen?’ A qualitative investigation of patients' perceptions of noncardiac chest pain

Aims and objectives To examine patients' perceptions and experiences of noncardiac chest pain, within the framework of the common sense model. Background Patients with noncardiac chest pain have good physical prognosis, but frequently suffer prolonged pain and psychological distress. The common sense model may provide a good framework for examining outcomes in patients with noncardiac chest pain. Design Qualitative thematic analysis with semi‐structured interviews. Methods In 2010, participants recruited from an emergency department (N = 7) with persistent noncardiac chest pain and distress were interviewed using a semi‐structured schedule, and data were analysed using thematic analysis. Results Seven themes were identified; six of which mapped onto core dimensions of the common sense model (identity, cause, timeline, consequences, personal control, treatment control). Contrary to previous research on medically unexplained symptoms, most participants perceived psychological factors to play a causal role in their chest pain. Participants' perceptions largely mapped onto the common sense model, although there was a lack of coherence across dimensions, particularly with regard to cause. Conclusion Patients with noncardiac chest pain lack understanding with regard to their condition and may be accepting of psychological causes of their pain. Relevance to clinical practice Brief psychological interventions aimed at improving understanding of the causes of noncardiac chest pain and providing techniques for managing pain and stress may be useful for patients with noncardiac chest pain.
Variation in the Diagnosis of Aspiration Pneumonia and Association with Hospital Pneumonia Outcomes

Rationale: National efforts to compare hospital outcomes for patients with pneumonia may be biased by hospital differences in diagnosis and coding of aspiration pneumonia, a condition that has traditionally been excluded from pneumonia outcome measures. Objectives: To evaluate the rationale and impact of including patients with aspiration pneumonia in hospital mortality and readmission measures. Methods: Using Medicare fee‐for‐service claims for patients 65 years and older from July 2012 to June 2015, we characterized the proportion of hospitals’ patients with pneumonia diagnosed with aspiration pneumonia, calculated hospital‐specific risk‐standardized rates of 30‐day mortality and readmission for patients with pneumonia, analyzed the association between aspiration pneumonia coding frequency and these rates, and recalculated these rates including patients with aspiration pneumonia. Results: A total of 1,101,892 patients from 4,263 hospitals were included in the mortality measure analysis, including 192,814 with aspiration pneumonia. The median proportion of hospitals’ patients with pneumonia diagnosed with aspiration pneumonia was 13.6% (10th‐90th percentile, 4.2‐26%). Hospitals with a higher proportion of patients with aspiration pneumonia had lower risk‐standardized mortality rates in the traditional pneumonia measure (12.0% in the lowest coding and 11.0% in the highest coding quintiles) and were far more likely to be categorized as performing better than the national mortality rate; expanding the measure to include patients with aspiration pneumonia attenuated the association between aspiration pneumonia coding rate and hospital mortality. These findings were less pronounced for hospital readmission rates. Conclusions: Expanding the pneumonia cohorts to include patients with a principal diagnosis of aspiration pneumonia can overcome bias related to variation in hospital coding.
Role of Temperament, Parenting Behaviors, and Stress on Turkish Preschoolers’ Internalizing Symptoms

Child- and family-related factors that predict internalizing symptoms are understudied in preschool years and have a negative influence on children's functioning. We examined observational assessments of preschoolers' temperamental fearfulness and exuberance, mother reports of negative control, warmth, and parenting stress in a sample of 109 Turkish preschoolers. High temperamental fearfulness and low joyful/exuberant positive affectivity in addition to low warmth and high parenting stress had significant effects on internalizing symptoms. Parenting stress had both direct and indirect relations to internalizing symptoms via lower maternal warmth. When comorbid elevations in externalizing symptoms were controlled, the results were consistent with the interpretation that poor parenting practices and stress associated with the parenting role predict maladaptation in general but that the specific form of maladaptation may be best predicted by individual differences in children's temperamental characteristics. This study contributes to our understanding of risk and protective factors that predict preschoolers' internalizing symptoms with a sample from a non-Western population. These findings can guide early prevention and intervention programs to address internalizing problems in a culturally-sensitive way.
UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Behavioral and neuroimaging evidence for overreliance on habit learning in alcohol-dependent patients

Substance dependence is characterized by compulsive drug-taking despite negative consequences. Animal research suggests an underlying imbalance between goal-directed and habitual action control with chronic drug use. However, this imbalance, and its associated neurophysiological mechanisms, has not yet been experimentally investigated in human drug abusers. The aim of the present study therefore was to assess the balance between goal-directed and habit-based learning and its neural correlates in abstinent alcohol-dependent (AD) patients. A total of 31 AD patients and 19 age, gender and education matched healthy controls (HC) underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during completion of an instrumental learning task designed to study the balance between goal-directed and habit learning. Task performance and task-related blood oxygen level-dependent activations in the brain were compared between AD patients and healthy matched controls. Findings were additionally associated with duration and severity of alcohol dependence. The results of this study provide evidence for an overreliance on stimulus-response habit learning in AD compared with HC, which was accompanied by decreased engagement of brain areas implicated in goal-directed action (ventromedial prefrontal cortex and anterior putamen) and increased recruitment of brain areas implicated in habit learning (posterior putamen) in AD patients. In conclusion, this is the ﬁ rst human study to provide experimental evidence for a disturbed balance between goal-directed and habitual control by use of an instrumental learning task, and to directly implicate cortical dysfunction to overreliance on in ﬂ exible habits in AD patients.
Flow at Low Water Contents: A Simple Approach for Inverse Estimation of van Genuchten-Mualem Soil Hydraulic Parameters

The unsaturated soil hydraulic properties (the soil water characteristic and relative permeability curves) are key hydrodynamic parameters in the fields of soil science and civil engineering. Because of the strong dependency of these properties on water content, their determination is subject to considerable experimental and numerical problems. Difficulties increase when the soil approaches oven-dry conditions, a situation often encountered in arid and semi-arid areas. Moreover, computational costs of estimating the hydrodynamic properties can be relatively high also. After a short review of alternative modeling approaches for the hydraulic functions from saturation to oven-dryness, we present a theoreticalnumerical approach, along with a relatively simple, robust and inexpensive experimental method for inverse determination of van Genuchten/Mualem soil hydraulic parameters. For gravimetric water contents greater than 0.04, numeral results agreed well with experimental data, while some discrepancies were observed at very low water contents.
Nutritional assessment and therapy in COPD: a European Respiratory Society statement

Nutrition and metabolism have been the topic of extensive scientific research in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) but clinical awareness of the impact dietary habits, nutritional status and nutritional interventions may have on COPD incidence, progression and outcome is limited. A multidisciplinary Task Force was created by the European Respiratory Society to deliver a summary of the evidence and description of current practice in nutritional assessment and therapy in COPD, and to provide directions for future research. Task Force members conducted focused reviews of the literature on relevant topics, advised by a methodologist. It is well established that nutritional status, and in particular abnormal body composition, is an important independent determinant of COPD outcome. The Task Force identified different metabolic phenotypes of COPD as a basis for nutritional risk profile assessment that is useful in clinical trial design and patient counselling. Nutritional intervention is probably effective in undernourished patients and probably most when combined with an exercise programme. Providing evidence of cost-effectiveness of nutritional intervention is required to support reimbursement and thus increase access to nutritional intervention. Overall, the evidence indicates that a well-balanced diet is beneficial to all COPD patients, not only for its potential pulmonary benefits, but also for its proven benefits in metabolic and cardiovascular risk. Metabolism and nutrition: shifting paradigms in COPD management http://ow.ly/As0xh
Scoring Divergent Thinking Tests by Computer With a Semantics-Based Algorithm

Divergent thinking (DT) tests are useful for the assessment of creative potentials. This article reports the semantics-based algorithmic (SBA) method for assessing DT. This algorithm is fully automated: Examinees receive DT questions on a computer or mobile device and their ideas are immediately compared with norms and semantic networks. This investigation compared the scores generated by the SBA method with the traditional methods of scoring DT (i.e., fluency, originality, and flexibility). Data were collected from 250 examinees using the “Many Uses Test” of DT. The most important finding involved the flexibility scores from both scoring methods. This was critical because semantic networks are based on conceptual structures, and thus a high SBA score should be highly correlated with the traditional flexibility score from DT tests. Results confirmed this correlation (r = .74). This supports the use of algorithmic scoring of DT. The nearly-immediate computation time required by SBA method may make it the method of choice, especially when it comes to moderate- and large-scale DT assessment investigations. Correlations between SBA scores and GPA were insignificant, providing evidence of the discriminant and construct validity of SBA scores. Limitations of the present study and directions for future research are offered.
Effects of Tumor Necrosis Factor-β (TNF-β) 252A>G Polymorphism on the Development of Migraine: A Meta-Analysis

Background and Objective Genetic factors including TNF-β have been considered as important components in the aetiology of migraine. Many studies have investigated the association between TNF-β 252A>G polymorphism and migraine risk, with debatable results. This study was designed to examine whether the TNF-β 252A>G polymorphism confers genetic susceptibility to migraine in diverse populations. Method Studies eligible for this meta-analysis were searched in the PubMed, Embase, and CNKI by using the keywords “tumor necrosis factor”, “TNF”, “252A>G”, “rs909253”, “polymorphism”, “polymorphisms”, “variant”, “SNP”, combined with “migraine” or “migraine with aura (MA)” or “migraine without aura (MO)”. Pooled ORs and 95% CI were appropriately calculated using the fixed-effect model. Results We finally included a total of seven studies, providing 5 557 migraineurs and 20 543 unrelated healthy controls. Meta-analysis results showed no statistical evidence of a significant association between TNF-β 252A>G polymorphism and overall migraine risk. Stratified analyses by type of migraine and gender revealed similar results. Interestingly, an OR with 95% CI representing an increased migraine risk was indicated in Asians under the recessive model (GG vs. AG + AA: OR, 1.38; 95%CI, 1.04–1.84; P for heterogeneity, 0.665). Conclusions Our findings appear to support the hypothesis that genetic variability of 252A>G polymorphism in TNF region may modulate risk of migraine in the population of Asian ancestry.
The promotion of critical thinking skills through argument mapping

Argument mapping is a method of visually diagramming arguments using a 'box and; arrow' format with the aim of simplifying the reading of an argument structure and; facilitating the assimilation of core statements and relations. The current chapter presents; the findings of a controlled trial in which argument mapping training was compared with; hierarchical outline training as techniques for teaching critical thinking skills. Eighty-one; undergraduate psychology students were allocated to one of three groups: an argument; mapping group, an outlining group, or a control group and were tested on critical thinking; before and after an 8-week intervention period. Results revealed that students in the; argument mapping group scored higher than the control group at post-test on the critical; thinking skills of evaluation and inductive reasoning. Students in the outlining group; scored significantly higher than those in the control group on tests of analysis and; inductive reasoning. There were no significant performance differences at post-test; between those in the argument mapping group and those in the hierarchical summary; group. Results are discussed in light of research and theory on best practice in the; cultivation of critical thinking.
Chapter 10 Information Behaviour Development in Early Childhood

This chapter explores new and emerging dimensions in our understanding of how information behaviour develops in early childhood. Spink (2010) proposed that information behaviour — when we engage in behaviours to make sense of, seek, avoid, forage, use and organise information — is (1) shaped by both instinctive and environmental dimensions that are as essential to the lives of our prehistoric ancestors as they are for people today and (2) emerges in early childhood. This chapter explores what we currently know about the development of cognitive, language, social and information behaviour abilities in early childhood. Drawing on research from cognitive and developmental psychology, and findings from two studies of different aspects of young children's information behaviours, including Web searching (Spink, et al., 2010) and library information categorisation (Cooper, 2004), the chapter discusses information behaviour development in early childhood. The connection between general cognitive development and information behaviour are discussed, and further research suggested.
Investigation of neuronal autoantibodies in two different focal epilepsy syndromes

Neuronal antibodies have been identified in patients with seizures as the main or sole symptom. Our aim was to investigate the prevalence of these autoantibodies in patients with focal epilepsy of unknown cause (FEoUC) and in the group having mesial temporal lobe epilepsy with hippocampal sclerosis (MTLE‐HS).
Dysregulation of mTOR Signaling in Fragile X Syndrome

Fragile X syndrome, the most common form of inherited mental retardation and leading genetic cause of autism, is caused by transcriptional silencing of the Fmr1 gene. The fragile X mental retardation protein (FMRP), the gene product of Fmr1, is an RNA binding protein that negatively regulates translation in neurons. The Fmr1 knock-out mouse, a model of fragile X syndrome, exhibits cognitive deficits and exaggerated metabotropic glutamate receptor (mGluR)-dependent long-term depression at CA1 synapses. However, the molecular mechanisms that link loss of function of FMRP to aberrant synaptic plasticity remain unclear. The mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) signaling cascade controls initiation of cap-dependent translation and is under control of mGluRs. Here we show that mTOR phosphorylation and activity are elevated in hippocampus of juvenile Fmr1 knock-out mice by four functional readouts: (1) association of mTOR with regulatory associated protein of mTOR; (2) mTOR kinase activity; (3) phosphorylation of mTOR downstream targets S6 kinase and 4E-binding protein; and (4) formation of eukaryotic initiation factor complex 4F, a critical first step in cap-dependent translation. Consistent with this, mGluR long-term depression at CA1 synapses of FMRP-deficient mice is exaggerated and rapamycin insensitive. We further show that the p110 subunit of the upstream kinase phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) and its upstream activator PI3K enhancer PIKE, predicted targets of FMRP, are upregulated in knock-out mice. Elevated mTOR signaling may provide a functional link between overactivation of group I mGluRs and aberrant synaptic plasticity in the fragile X mouse, mechanisms relevant to impaired cognition in fragile X syndrome.