Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Basal ganglia involvement in memory‐guided movement sequencing

The basal ganglia (BG) are thought to play a critical role in motor planning and movement sequencing. While electrophysiological and imaging studies have shown that the dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is involved in working memory (WM), the involvement of the BG in this process is not well understood. We used a motor sequencing task to investigate the differential role of BG nuclei in memory-guided movement. Significant activation was observed in the DLPFC and posterior putamen and globus pallidus (GP), with a trend in the caudate and no differences in the anterior putamen. We then investigated the effect of BG outflow on thalamic activation using functional connectivity analysis. Activation in the posterior putamen + GP was found to be correlated with thalamic activation only in the hemisphere contralateral to movement. These results provide the first fMRI evidence that the BG may modulate activity in the thalamus during working memory-guided movement sequencing. Our findings suggest that the BG activation may reflect increased motor sequencing demands during the memory-guided movement condition and, specifically, that the posterior putamen and GP may play a role in maintenance of representations in WM in a manner that contributes to planning and temporal organization of motor sequencing.
Usefulness and Self-Expressiveness: Extending TAM to Explain the Adoption of a Mobile Parking Service

Research on the adoption of mobile services in everyday life contexts have shown how important entertainment and self-expressiveness are to the users’ adoption of these services. However, as illustrated by the variables of the much applied TAM model, utilitarian motivations are still focused in ICT-adoption research. Mobile parking services may be used as a “crucial test” of the importance of utilitarian versus nonutilitarian motivations in the adoption of mobile services. In a field study, 459 trial users of mobile parking services were studied using a TAM model extended with the motivational influence of self-expressiveness. The results show that even if mobile parking services have been designed to meet the functional needs of the parking car driver, both the derived motivations of self-expressiveness and the extrinsic motivations of usefulness are important in explaining trial users’ adoption of these services.
Incomplete Continuous-Time Securities Markets with Stochastic Income Volatility

In an incomplete continuous-time securities market with uncertainty generated by Brownian motions, we derive closed-form solutions for the equilibrium interest rate and market price of risk processes. The economy has a finite number of heterogeneous exponential utility investors, who receive partially unspanned income and can trade continuously on a finite time-interval in a money market account and a single risky security. Besides establishing the existence of an equilibrium, our main result shows that if the investors' unspanned income has stochastic countercyclical volatility, the resulting equilibrium can display both lower interest rates and higher risk premia compared to the Pareto efficient equilibrium in an otherwise identical complete market.
Development of a millimeter-wave ferrite-filled antisymmetrically biased rectangular waveguide phase shifter embedded in low-temperature cofired ceramic

The theory of a new ferrite-filled rectangular waveguide phase shifter is presented, showing that the device offers more than twice the maximum phase shift of a classical dual-slab ferrite-loaded waveguide phase shifter. The complete analytical field derivation of the new phase shifter is presented. The prototype 36-GHz phase shifter has been completely embedded in an uncharacterized experimental low-temperature cofired ferrite ceramic material, essentially becoming an integral part of a chip package. The fabricated prototype is only 3.5-cm long, 5-mm wide, and 1-mm high. Preliminary measurements of the nonoptimized prototype reveal a controllable, nonreciprocal phase shift of 52.8/spl deg/ at 36 GHz for a bias current of 500 mA, and an insertion loss of approximately 3.6 dB, including transition loss. This paper marks the first time that a ferrite waveguide phase shifter has been realized as a lightweight, compact, and rugged module that can be easily mass produced at low cost. Since it is embedded in a package, the phase shifter can be readily integrated with other active and passive system components that would ideally be contained within the same package.
Playfulness in adults: an examination of play and playfulness and their implications for coaching

ABSTRACT Play and playfulness have been seminal to human culture for millennia. Twentieth-century scientific enquiry was largely concerned with their evolutionary benefits, though humanistic psychology, and later positive psychology came to view them as attached to greater human values and meaning creation. Due to their myriad forms and manifestations, play and playfulness have been difficult to define and measure. This paper will explore the nature of these problematics. It will also highlight the most salient research concerning the benefits of play and playfulness, and the subsequent implications for coaching. Based on the latest literature, a definition of play and playfulness apposite to the coaching framework is offered, along with suggestions for future research directions.
The Communication Requirements of E¢cient Allocations and Supporting Lindahl Prices¤

We show that any communication . nding a Pareto e¢cient allocation in a private-information economy must also discover supporting Lindahl prices. In particular, e¢cient allocation of L indivisible objects requires naming a price for each of the 2Li1 bundles. Furthermore, exponential communication in L is needed just to ensure a higher share of surplus than that realized by auctioning all items as a bundle, or even a higher expected surplus (for some probability distribution over valuations). When the valuations are submodular, e¢ciency still requires exponential communication (and fully polynomial approximation is impossible). When the objects are homogeneous, arbitrarily good approximation is obtained using exponentially less communication than that needed for exact e¢ciency. ¤This paper supersedes our working paper “The Communication Complexity of E¢cient Allocation Problems. ” We are grateful to Paul Milgrom, Luis Rayo, Yoav Shoham, Steve Tadelis, Moshe Tenneholtz, and participants of seminars at Harvard-MIT, Princeton, Stanford, Toronto, and the DIMACSWorkshop on Computational Issues in Game Theory and Mechanism Design for useful comments. The . rst author was supported by a grant from the Israeli Academy of Sciences. The second author was supported by the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Science Foundation, and was hosted by the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton during his work on the project. yInstitute of Computer Science, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel, email: noam@cs.huji. ac.il zDepartment of Economics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305; email: ilya.segal@stanford.edu
Comparing Mortgage Credit Risk Policies: An Options-Based Approach

Buckley, Karaguishiyeva,Van Order, and Vecvagare analyze the structure of approaches to mortgage credit risk that are now being used in a number of OECD and transition economies. The authors' basic approach is to show how option pricing models can help measure and evaluate the risks of various schemes. They find that mortgage default insurance can be a cost-effective tool for both improving housing affordability and efficiently addressing some of the rationing that characterizes this market. When correctly structured, as it is in a number of transition and market countries, this kind of program can be expected to reduce nonprice rationing at an actuarially fair price. At the same time, considerable care must be exercised in the development of such instruments. Geographical risk diversification, particularly across borders, can play a major role in the success of these programs. Such diversification could be important not only in smaller transition economies but in EU countries as well.
WR 143: a Wolf-Rayet binary

Near-infrared spectroscopy and photometry of the Wolf‐Rayet star WR 143 (HD 195177) were obtained in the JHK photometric bands. High-resolution spectra observed in the J and H bands exhibit a narrow 1.083-µ mH eI line and the H I Paβ and Brackett series lines in emission superposed on the broad emission-line spectrum of the Wolf‐Rayet star, giving strong indications of the presence of a companion. From the narrow emission lines observed, the companion is identified to be an early-type Be star. The photometric magnitudes exhibit variations in the JHK bands, which are probably due to the variability of the companion star. The flux density distribution is too steep for a Wolf‐Rayet atmosphere. This is identified to be mainly due to the increasing contribution from the early-type companion star towards shorter wavelengths. Ke yw ords: binaries: spectroscopic ‐ stars: emission-line, Be ‐ stars: individual: WR 143 ‐ stars: winds, outflows ‐ stars: Wolf‐Rayet.
Optimizing The Teaching of English Suprasegmentals

Research in the teaching of English pronunciation as a second and foreign language (ESL/EFL) over the last decade or so has made evident the significance of suprasegmental features (i.e., stress, rhythm and intonation) in the comprehension and production of the language (Anderson-Hsieh et al 1992; Anderson 1993; Brazil et al 1980; de Bot & Mailfert 1982, Munro and Derwing 1995). Furthermore, from a pedagogical point of view, it has also been found (Derwing, Munro, & Wieber 1998) that speakers who had had instruction emphasizing suprasegmental features could apparently transfer their learning to a spontaneous production more effectively than those who received instruction with only segmental content (i.e., vowels and consonants). However, the teaching of English suprasegmentals is not a priority in most EFL/ESL programs or in commercial materials for instruction; there is, generally speaking, more emphasis placed on segmental aspects of the language.
The cost of vaccination throughout life: A western European overview

ABSTRACT Despite the interest of policy makers, the actual investment in vaccination is poorly documented. Our study assessed the costs of vaccination throughout life for a fully immunized Western European citizen. National vaccination calendars for England, France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain and Sweden were retrieved. We differentiated men from women and healthy individuals from those suffering from underlying conditions who require specific additional vaccinations. Vaccine costs and administration fees were retrieved from official national source and calculated from the national healthcare perspective. Vaccinating an individual against up to 17 diseases throughout his entire life and in full compliance with national vaccination calendars cost between €328 and €2,352 (vaccines costs only) and between €443 and €3,395 (administration costs included), the lowest range corresponds to a healthy man in Sweden and the highest to a woman with underlying conditions in England. Vaccination costs varied among countries due to heterogeneous national vaccination calendars and organization. In all countries, adults (18–64 y) and elderly (≥65 y) accounted for the lowest vaccines costs compared with infants (0–24 m) and children/adolescents (2–17 y). In comparison, other mass secondary preventive therapies may be at least 3 times more costly. Vaccination requires a relatively low level of investment per individual. Our estimates should be considered to be the maximum potential costs due to our 100% compliance assumption. Increasing coverage rates would bring additional public health benefits for a relatively low incremental cost. A life-course approach of vaccination should also be encouraged because some missed opportunities remain in senior vaccinations.
Estimating the prevalence of deception in online review communities

Consumers' purchase decisions are increasingly influenced by user-generated online reviews. Accordingly, there has been growing concern about the potential for posting deceptive opinion spam---fictitious reviews that have been deliberately written to sound authentic, to deceive the reader. But while this practice has received considerable public attention and concern, relatively little is known about the actual prevalence, or rate, of deception in online review communities, and less still about the factors that influence it. We propose a generative model of deception which, in conjunction with a deception classifier, we use to explore the prevalence of deception in six popular online review communities: Expedia, Hotels.com, Orbitz, Priceline, TripAdvisor, and Yelp. We additionally propose a theoretical model of online reviews based on economic signaling theory, in which consumer reviews diminish the inherent information asymmetry between consumers and producers, by acting as a signal to a product's true, unknown quality. We find that deceptive opinion spam is a growing problem overall, but with different growth rates across communities. These rates, we argue, are driven by the different signaling costs associated with deception for each review community, e.g., posting requirements. When measures are taken to increase signaling cost, e.g., filtering reviews written by first-time reviewers, deception prevalence is effectively reduced.
Precarious lives and resistant possibilities: the labour of people with learning disabilities in times of austerity

Abstract This paper draws on feminist and queer philosophers? discussions of precarity and employment, too often absent from disability studies, to explore the working lives of people with learning disabilities in England in a time of austerity. Recent policy shifts from welfare to work welcome more disabled people into the job market. The reality is that disabled people remain under-represented in labour statistics and are conspicuously absent in cultures of work. We live in neoliberal-able times where we all find ourselves precarious. But, people with learning disabilities experience high levels of uncertainty in every aspect of their lives, including work, relationships and community living. Our research reveals an important analytical finding: that when people with learning disabilities are supported in imaginative and novel ways they are able to work effectively and cohesively participate in their local communities (even in a time of cuts to welfare). We conclude by acknowledging that we are witnessing a global politics of precarity and austerity. Our urgent task is to redress the unequal spread of precaritization across our society that risks leaving people with learning disabilities experiencing disproportionately perilous lives. One of our key recommendations is that it makes no economic sense (never mind moral sense) to pull funding from organisations that support people with intellectual disabilities to work.
The relation between math anxiety and basic numerical and spatial processing

Math anxiety refers to the negative reaction that many people experience when placed in situations that require mathematical problem solving (Richardson & Suinn, 1972). This reaction can range from seemingly minor frustration to overwhelming emotional and physiological disruption (Ashcraft & Moore, 2009). In fact, it has been argued that math anxiety can be considered as a genuine phobia given that it is a state anxiety reaction, shows elevated cognitive and physiological arousal, and is a stimulus-learned fear (Faust, 1992). Math anxiety has been associated with many negative consequences, the most pertinent of which is poor achievement in math. This negative consequence is of central importance in today’s society as people’s mathematical abilities have been shown to strongly influence their employability, productivity, and earnings (Bishop, 1989; Bossiere, Knight, Sabot, 1985; Riviera-Batiz, 1992) A large literature exists demonstrating a negative relation between math anxiety and performance on complex math. That said, there is currently no published research (outside of that presented in this thesis) which investigates whether math anxiety is also related to the basic processes that serve as the foundations for that complex math. In this thesis I examine the relation between math anxiety and three of these basic processes that support complex mathematical problem solving. Specifically, in a series of experiments, I demonstrate that, in addition to their difficulties with complex math, high math anxious adults perform more poorly than their low math anxious peers on measures of counting (Experiments 1 and 2), numerical comparison (Experiment 3 and 4), and spatial processing (Experiment 5 and 6). My findings are then discussed with respect to their implications for our understanding of math anxiety and for potential remediation programs.
Association between Frequency of Chromosomal Aberrations and Cancer Risk Is Not Influenced by Genetic Polymorphisms in GSTM1 and GSTT1

Background The frequency of chromosomal aberrations (CA) in peripheral blood lymphocytes of healthy individuals has been associated with cancer risk. It is presently unclear whether this association is influenced by individual susceptibility factors such as genetic polymorphisms of xenobiotic-metabolizing enzymes. Objectives To evaluate the role of polymorphisms in glutathione S-transferase (GST) M1 (GSTM1) and theta 1 (GSTT1) as effect modifiers of the association between CA and cancer risk. Methods A case–control study was performed pooling data from cytogenetic studies carried out in 1974–1995 in three laboratories in Italy, Norway, and Denmark. A total of 107 cancer cases were retrieved from national registries and matched to 291 controls. The subjects were classified as low, medium, and high by tertile of CA frequency. The data were analyzed by setting up a Bayesian model that included prior information about cancer risk by CA frequency. Results The association between CA frequency and cancer risk was confirmed [ORmedium (odds ratio)medium = 1.5, 95% credibility interval (CrI), 0.9–2.5; ORhigh = 2.8, 95% CrI, 1.6–4.6], whereas no effect of the genetic polymorphism was observed. A much stronger association was seen in the Italian subset (ORhigh= 9.4, 95% CrI, 2.6–28.0), which was characterized by a lower technical variability of the cytogenetic analysis. CA level was particularly associated with cancer of the respiratory tract (ORhigh= 6.2, 95% CrI, 1.5–20.0), the genitourinary tract (ORhigh = 4.0, 95% CrI, 1.4–10.0), and the digestive tract (ORhigh = 2.8, 95% CrI, 1.2–5.8). Conclusions Despite the small size of the study groups, our results substantiate the cancer risk predictivity of CA frequency, ruling against a strong modifying effect of GSTM1 and GSTT1 polymorphisms.
Ego Identity Development as a Mediator Between Negative Affectivity and Wellness of College Students

For emerging adults, the college experience is a time for new experience that create excitement, lifelong memories, spiritual enrichment, cultural development, and success. Yet for many, the college experience presents with a series of physical, emotional, and psychological challenges, and for some even failure. It is expected that many of these students will experience such stressors, given the complexity of the stage of development, as they move away from adolescence and into adulthood. As college students move away from parental figures and develop more independence, a prominent time for identity development to thrive is created. There is a great deal of scholarly literature on the college experience, especially the stressors that students face and how college counselors can support their overall wellness. Additionally, there has been a large body of research over the past several decades on identity development of emerging adults. Yet there is scant research that explores how identity development shapes the overall wellness of college students. This research studied the relationships between negative affectivity (i.e., depression, anxiety, and stress), ego identity development, and wellness of traditionally-aged undergraduate college students. It also tested if ego identity development mediates the relationship between negative affectivity and wellness. Despite significant relationships between the constructs, the results were surprising, indicating that ego identity development has less of an impact, if any, on negative affectivity and wellness as predicted. However, the results did suggest there is much more to wellness than mental health. Therefore, this study served as a foundation for a new direction in wellness research, as well as provided new ways for college counselors to engage students in supporting their overall wellness and helping them developing resiliency and the skills they need to thrive. EGO IDENTITY DEVELOPMENT AS A MEDIATOR BETWEEN NEGATIVE AFFECTIVITY AND WELLNESS OF COLLEGE STUDENTS. By Sarah F. Spiegelhoff B.A., The Pennsylvania State University, 2003 M.A., Rider University, 2006 Ed.S. , Rider University, 2008
Current trends in business negotiation research

This is a report about business negotiation research. It has three purposes and consists of three parts. Firstly, it provides a general overview of business negotiation research published 1996-2005. A total of 263 articles with some form of the word negotiate* in their title were identified in academic journals and were classified according to the research they present and the business context they study. It was found that empirically-based studies dominate, although nearly one-third of the articles were conceptual in nature. Most empirical work (63%) was based on simulations or experiments, nearly all of which used students as research subjects. There were also a number of survey-based studies (26%), most of which used managers (or similar) as respondents. Statistical analysis was the dominant form of data analysis. Most articles focused on commercial negotiations, while more than one-third were focused around national cultures rather than being " culture neutral ". Secondly, the report provides an overview of findings regarding business negotiations. A model was created to structure these discussions. The model consists of four major groups of constructs, including the negotiation context, the negotiating parties, the negotiation process, and negotiation outcomes. The empirical studies encountered were sorted according to the model, and each group of constructs was discussed. Aspects of the negotiation context in focus in current research include the medium of negotiation, the negotiation setting, various aspects of time, the negotiation issue(s), and the cultural context of the negotiation. Variables relating to the negotiating parties focus on the organisation (such as organisational climate and the team), the individual negotiator (e.g. experience and skills, motives and aims, personality, negotiation style, negotiation training and demographic variables), and the relationship between the negotiation parties (focusing on aspects such as prior experience and outcomes, knowledge and understanding of each other, power relations and status, and composition of the negotiation dyad). Variables relating to the negotiation process include stages in the process, preparations for negotiations, making offers, negotiation tactics and strategy, negotiation behaviours, and communication and sharing of information. Negotiation outcomes centre around objective outcomes such as mathematical and economic definitions and deal or impasse, but also on perceived outcomes. Further, many studies relate to the issue of integrative and distributive negotiations. In some studies, these constructs are considered as characterising the process. In other studies they are considered as negotiation outcomes. Third, based on the two previous parts, the report also discusses some avenues …