Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Moody experts — How mood and expertise influence judgmental anchoring

Anchoring effects, the assimilation of numerical estimates to previously considered standards, are highly robust. Two studies examined whether mood and expertise jointly moderate the magnitude of anchoring. Previous research has demonstrated that happy mood induces judges to process information in a less thorough manner than sad mood, which means that happy judges tend to be more susceptible to unwanted influences. However, this may not be true for anchoring effects. Because anchoring results from an elaborate process of selective knowledge activation, more thorough processing should lead to more anchoring; as a result, sad judges should show stronger anchoring effects than happy judges and happy judges may even remain uninfluenced by the given anchors. Because information processing of experts may be relatively independent of their mood, however, mood may influence anchoring only in non-experts. Results of two studies on legal decision-making (Study 1) and numeric estimates (Study 2) are consistent with these expectations. These findings suggest that, at least for non-experts, positive mood may eliminate the otherwise robust anchoring effect.
Perception of Pre-service Science Teachers on the Classes for the Gifted in Science

This study examined how pre-service science teachers, who observed classes for the gifted in science, perceive the gifted in science and the education they are getting, and explored what needs to be improved in the classes for the gifted in science. Based on the results of this study, first, pre-service science teachers were negative about the giftedness of the gifted in science. Second, they recognized that various types of classes were not provided. Especially, while theoretical lectures were mostly offered, they recognized that it had a negative influence in developing the potential giftedness of the gifted in science. Third, they were negative about the absence of programs for improving creativity and thinking skills and teaching materials for the gifted in science; however, they were positive about self-directed learning. Fourth, they had a negative opinion on educational facilities and the number of students in classes. Fifth, they recognized that potential giftedness would be developed the most when the lecturer is a professor majoring in the subject. For improvements in the classes for the gifted in science, they referred to revising the distinction focusing on preceding learning, reinforcing teaching methods to improve creative thinking, constructing creative contents regardless of specific grades and curriculum, securing learning materials for the gifted, and the necessity of lecturers specialized in the education for the gifted. Eventually, pre-service science teachers have negative cognitions for the classes for the gifted in science offered by universities, and it was known that they mentioned the necessity of creative educational courses and professional lecturers, not pre-learning for improvements.
Exploring an individual's experience of becoming bicultural

A second generation South Asian can be faced with contrasting and conflicting cultures which can impact the formation of a healthy ethnic identity. The present study investigated what facilitated and hindered a South Asian's adolescent experience of becoming bicultural. Flanagan's (1954) Critical Incident Technique was used in interviewing 8 adult participants, including 5 females and 3 males, aged 20 to 26 years of age. The results identified 88 critical incidents, forming 10 helping categories and 4 hindering categories. The 10 Helping categories were: (1) Cross Cultural Friendships, (2) Speaking both Punjabi and English, (3) Personal Attributes, (4) Shared Experiences with Peers in the 'Same Boat', (5) Family Support and Influence, (6) Involvement in Recreational, Cultural and Religious Community Activities, (7) Visiting India, (8) High School Experience, (9) University Education and (10) Acceptance of Parent's and / or Grandparent's Views. The Hindering Categories were: (1) Parental and / or Familial Expectations, (2) Media Influence / Societal Expectations, (3) Personal Conflict of Cultural Values and (4) Experiencing Racism. The categories were found to be reliable and valid through procedures such as exhaustiveness, independent raters, co-researcher's cross checking, participation rate and theoretical agreement. The resulting categories provide a list of comprehensive factors that can facilitate and hinder an individual's process towards developing a bicultural identity. The findings are discussed in relation to implications for counselling theory and practice, and future research.
Variable Selection via Nonconcave Penalized Likelihood and its Oracle Properties

Variable selection is fundamental to high-dimensional statistical modeling, including nonparametric regression. Many approaches in use are stepwise selection procedures, which can be computationally expensive and ignore stochastic errors in the variable selection process. In this article, penalized likelihood approaches are proposed to handle these kinds of problems. The proposed methods select variables and estimate coefficients simultaneously. Hence they enable us to construct confidence intervals for estimated parameters. The proposed approaches are distinguished from others in that the penalty functions are symmetric, nonconcave on (0, ∞), and have singularities at the origin to produce sparse solutions. Furthermore, the penalty functions should be bounded by a constant to reduce bias and satisfy certain conditions to yield continuous solutions. A new algorithm is proposed for optimizing penalized likelihood functions. The proposed ideas are widely applicable. They are readily applied to a variety of parametric models such as generalized linear models and robust regression models. They can also be applied easily to nonparametric modeling by using wavelets and splines. Rates of convergence of the proposed penalized likelihood estimators are established. Furthermore, with proper choice of regularization parameters, we show that the proposed estimators perform as well as the oracle procedure in variable selection; namely, they work as well as if the correct submodel were known. Our simulation shows that the newly proposed methods compare favorably with other variable selection techniques. Furthermore, the standard error formulas are tested to be accurate enough for practical applications.
In vivo comparison of conventional and cone beam CT synthesized cephalograms.

OBJECTIVE To compare measurements from synthesized cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT) lateral cephalograms using orthogonal and perspective projections with those from conventional cephalometric radiographs. MATERIALS AND METHODS Thirty-one patients were imaged using CBCT and conventional cephalometry. CBCT volume data were imported in Dolphin 3D. Orthogonal and perspective lateral cephalometric radiographs were created from three-dimensional (3D) virtual models. Twelve linear and five angular measurements were made on synthesized and conventional cephalograms in a randomized fashion. Conventional image measurements were corrected for known magnification. Linear and angular measurements were compared between image modalities using repeated measures analysis of variance. Statistical significance was defined as an alpha level of . 01. RESULTS With the exception of the Frankfort-mandibular plane angle (P < .0001), angular measurements were not statistically different for any modality (P > .01). Linear measurements, whether based on soft or hard tissue landmarks, were not statistically different (P > .01). CONCLUSIONS Measurements from in vivo CBCT synthesized cephalograms are similar to those based on conventional radiographic images. Thus, additional conventional imaging may generally be avoided when CBCT scans are acquired for orthodontic diagnosis.
The Birth of High-Mass Stars: Accretion and/or Mergers?

The observational consequences of the merger scenario for massive star formation are explored and contrasted with the gradual accumulation of mass by accretion. In high-density protostar clusters, envelopes and disks provide a viscous medium that can dissipate the kinetic energy of passing stars, greatly enhancing the probability of capture. Protostellar mergers may produce high-luminosity infrared flares lasting years to centuries followed by a luminosity decline on the Kelvin-Helmholtz timescale of the merger product. Mergers may be surrounded by thick tori of expanding debris, impulsive wide-angle outflows, and shock-induced maser and radio continuum emission. Collision products are expected to have fast stellar rotation and a large multiplicity fraction. Close encounters or mergers will produce circumstellar debris disks with an orientation that differs from that of a preexisting disk. Thus, massive stars growing by a series of mergers may produce eruptive outflows with random orientations; the walls of the resulting outflow cavities may be observable as filaments of dense gas and dust pointing away from the massive star. The extremely rare merger of two stars close to the upper-mass end of the initial mass function may be a possible pathway to hypernova-generated gamma-ray bursts. In contrast with the violence of merging, the gradual growth of massive stars by accretion is likely to produce less infrared variability, relatively thin circumstellar accretion disks that maintain their orientation, and collimated bipolar outflows that are scaled-up versions of those produced by low-mass young stellar objects. While such accretional growth can lead to the formation of massive stars in isolation or in loose clusters, mergers can only occur in high-density cluster environments. It is proposed that the outflow emerging from the OMC-1 core in the Orion molecular cloud was produced by a protostellar merger that released between 1048 and 1049 ergs less than a thousand years ago.
Phylogenetic Relationships among NE Atlantic Plocamionida Topsent (1927) (Porifera, Poecilosclerida): Under-Estimated Diversity in Reef Ecosystems

Background Small and cryptic sponges associated with cold-water coral reefs are particularly numerous and challenging to identify, but their ecological and biochemical importance is likely to compete with megabenthic specimens. Methodology/Principal Findings Here we use a combination of the standard M1M6 and I3M11 partitions of the COI fragment, partial rDNA 28S sequences and morphology to delineate small encrusting Plocamionida species. In total, 46 specimens were retrieved from seven shallow to deep-water coral locations, crossing 3,000 km along the European margins. Our work provides evidence that the Plocamionida ambigua f. tylotata and f. grandichelata can be considered valid species, whereas Plocamionida ambigua f. tornata corresponds to the species P. ambigua. Within the monophyletic group of Plocamionida, P. microcionides is shown as really divergent from the other taxa, and four putative new Plocamionida species are suggested. Conclusions/Significance This study shows that the use of molecular and morphological information in an integrative approach is a powerful tool for the identification of sponge species, and suggests that an under-estimated biodiversity of sponges occurs in cold-water coral reefs.
Serum Prolactin Levels in Psoriasis Vulgaris

Background. Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory skin disease affecting approximately 1–3% of Caucasians. Prolactin has proliferative effects on human keratinocytes, a dominant feature of psoriasis, and it is thought that this hormone may play a role in the pathogenesis of the disease. This study was conducted to confirm or refute these findings in order to better understand the disease pathogenesis. Methods. The subjects were 90 individuals aged between 15 and 47 years. They were divided into three groups of 30 individuals each: psoriatic patients, atopic dermatitis patients, and control group. A questionnaire was filled regarding their demographic and medical history. All of the study subjects underwent venous blood sampling (5 mL), and serum TSH and prolactin levels were checked. Subjects with abnormal TSH were omitted. Results. None of the patients in the study had raised prolactin, and there was no significant difference in the serum prolactin level between patients with psoriasis and atopic dermatitis and the control group. There was no relationship between the severity of psoriasis and serum levels of prolactin. Conclusion. Prolactin does not seem to play a role in the pathogenesis of psoriasis as its serum levels are comparable with atopic dermatitis patients and that of the normal population.
Prevalence of non-Lipschitz Anosov foliations

We give sharp regularity results for the invariant subbundles of hyperbolic dynamical systems in terms of contraction and expansion rates and prove optimality in a strong sense: we construct open dense sets of codimension one systems where this regularity is not exceeded. Furthermore, we exhibit open dense sets of symplectic, geodesic, and codimension one systems where the analogous regularity results of [PSW] are optimal. As our main result we produce open sets of symplectic Anosov diffeomorphisms and flows with low transverse Hölder regularity of the invariant foliations almost everywhere. Prevalence of low regularity of conjugacies is a corollary. We also establish a new connection between the transverse regularity of foliations and their tangent subbundles.
Mutations in Hepatitis C Virus E2 Located outside the CD81 Binding Sites Lead to Escape from Broadly Neutralizing Antibodies but Compromise Virus Infectivity

ABSTRACT Broadly neutralizing antibodies are commonly present in the sera of patients with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. To elucidate possible mechanisms of virus escape from these antibodies, retrovirus particles pseudotyped with HCV glycoproteins (HCVpp) isolated from sequential samples collected over a 26-year period from a chronically infected patient, H, were used to characterize the neutralization potential and binding affinity of a panel of anti-HCV E2 human monoclonal antibodies (HMAbs). Moreover, AP33, a neutralizing murine monoclonal antibody (MAb) to a linear epitope in E2, was also tested against selected variants. The HMAbs used were previously shown to broadly neutralize HCV and to recognize a cluster of highly immunogenic overlapping epitopes, designated domain B, containing residues that are also critical for binding of viral E2 glycoprotein to CD81, a receptor essential for virus entry. Escape variants were observed at different time points with some of the HMAbs. Other HMAbs neutralized all variants except for the isolate 02.E10, obtained in 2002, which was also resistant to MAb AP33. The 02.E10 HCVpp that have reduced binding affinities for all antibodies and for CD81 also showed reduced infectivity. Comparison of the 02.E10 nucleotide sequence with that of the strain H-derived consensus variant, H77c, revealed the former to have two mutations in E2, S501N and V506A, located outside the known CD81 binding sites. Substitution A506V in 02.E10 HCVpp restored binding to CD81, but its antibody neutralization sensitivity was only partially restored. Double substitutions comprising N501S and A506V synergistically restored 02.E10 HCVpp infectivity. Other mutations that are not part of the antibody binding epitope in the context of N501S and A506V were able to completely restore neutralization sensitivity. These findings showed that some nonlinear overlapping epitopes are more essential than others for viral fitness and consequently are more invariant during earlier years of chronic infection. Further, the ability of the 02.E10 consensus variant to escape neutralization by the tested antibodies could be a new mechanism of virus escape from immune containment. Mutations that are outside receptor binding sites resulted in structural changes leading to complete escape from domain B neutralizing antibodies, while simultaneously compromising viral fitness by reducing binding to CD81.
An Empirical Bayes Em-Wavelet Unification for Simultaneous Denoising, Interpolation, and/Or Demosaicing

We present a unified framework for coupling the EM algorithm with the Bayesian hierarchical modeling of neighboring wavelet coefficients of image signals. Within this framework, problems with missing pixels or pixel components, and hence unobservable wavelet coefficients, are handled simultaneously with denoising. The hyper-parameters of the model are estimated via the marginal likelihood by the EM algorithm, and a part of the output of its E-step automatically provide optimal estimates, given the specified Bayesian model, of the noise-free image. This unified empirical-Bayes based framework, therefore, offers a statistically principled and extremely flexible approach to a wide range of pixel estimation problems including image denoising, image interpolation, demosaicing, or any combinations of them.
Immunobiological Outcomes of Repeated Chlamydial Infection from Two Models of Within-Host Population Dynamics

Background Chlamydia trachomatis is a common human pathogen that mediates disease processes capable of inflicting serious complications on reproduction. Aggressive inflammatory immune responses are thought to not only direct a person's level of immunity but also the potential for immunopathology. With human immunobiology being debated as a cause of prevailing epidemiological trends, we examined some fundamental issues regarding susceptibility to multiple chlamydial infections that could have implications for infection spread. We argue that, compared to less-frequent exposure, frequent exposure to chlamydia may well produce unique immunobiological characteristics that likely to have important clinical and epidemiological implications. Methods and Results As a novel tool for studying chlamydia, we applied principles of modeling within-host pathogen dynamics to enable an understanding of some fundamental characteristics of an individual's immunobiology during multiple chlamydial infections. While the models were able to reproduce shorter-term infection kinetics of primary and secondary infections previously observed in animal models, it was also observed that longer periods between initial and second infection may increase an individual's chlamydial load and lengthen their duration of infectiousness. The cessation of short-term repeated exposure did not allow for the formation of long-lasting immunity. However, frequent re-exposure non-intuitively linked the formation of protective immunity, persistent infection, and the potential for immunopathology. Conclusions Overall, these results provide interesting insights that should be verified with continued study. Nevertheless, these results appear to raise challenges for current evidence of the development of long-lasting immunity against chlamydia, and suggest the existence of a previously unidentified mechanism for the formation of persistent infection. The obvious next goal is to investigate the qualitative impact of these results on the spread of chlamydia.
Comparison of Very Low Energy Diet Products Available in Australia and How to Tailor Them to Optimise Protein Content for Younger and Older Adult Men and Women

Very low energy diets (VLED) are efficacious in inducing rapid weight loss but may not contain adequate macronutrients or micronutrients for individuals with varying nutritional requirements. Adequate protein intake during weight loss appears particularly important to help preserve fat free mass and control appetite, and low energy and carbohydrate content also contributes to appetite control. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to compare the nutritional content (with a focus on protein), nutritional adequacy and cost of all commercially-available VLED brands in Australia. Nutritional content and cost were extracted and compared between brands and to the Recommended Dietary Intake (RDI) or adequate intake (AI) of macronutrients and micronutrients for men and women aged 19–70 years or >70 years. There was wide variability in the nutritional content, nutritional adequacy and cost of VLED brands. Most notably, even brands with the highest daily protein content, based on consuming three products/day (KicStart™ and Optislim®, ~60 g/day), only met estimated protein requirements of the smallest and youngest women for whom a VLED would be indicated. Considering multiple options to optimise protein content, we propose that adding pure powdered protein is the most suitable option because it minimizes additional energy, carbohydrate and cost of VLEDs.
RXTE monitoring of Centaurus A

We report on the analysis from 110 ks of X-ray observations of Centaurus A carried out with the Proportional Counter Array (PCA) and the High Energy X-ray Timing Experiment (HEXTE) instruments on Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer (RXTE) during three monitoring campaigns over the last 4 years (10 ks in 1996, 74 ks in 1998, and 25 ks in 2000). The joint PCA/HEXTE X-ray spectrum can be well described by a heavily absorbed power law with photon index 1.8 and a narrow iron line due to fluorescence of cold matter. The measured column depth decreased by about 30% between 1996 and 2000, while the detected 2{10 keV continuum flux remained constant between 1996 and 1998, but increased by 60% in 2000. Since in all three observations the iron line flux did not vary, a corresponding decrease in equivalent width was noted. No appreciable evidence for a reflection continuum in the spectrum was detected. We present the interpretation of the iron line strength through Monte Carlo computations of various geometries. No signicant temporal variability was found in Cen A at time scales from days to tens of minutes.
Evaluation & comparison of ranging using Universal Access Transceiver (UAT) and 1090 MHz Mode S Extended Squitter (Mode S ES)

The FAA Alternative Position Navigation and Timing effort is developing technologies to provide navigation service capable of sustaining operations in the event of the loss of Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS). APNT will utilize existing ground infrastructure to support this capability. One effort is to examine the use of the Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B) ground infrastructure for ranging. This paper examines the use the two transmitted ADS-B signals: 1) 1090 MHz Mode S Extended Squitter (Mode ES) and Universal Access Transceiver (UAT). It uses the transmitted, on-air signal to examine multipath, ranging and timing performance.
The information economy model applied to biological similarity judgment

One way cognitive anthropologists discover how cognition is socially shared is through examining how the product of cognition, knowledge, comes to have a patterned social distribution. The strategy is to study the process by examining its consequences. The process of socially shared cognition comprises the collective struggles of individuals to learn, interpret, and understand their world. In building their representations of the world, individuals learn both from what they directly experience and from what others teach them. Because they vary in their experiences and in their goals in interpreting experience, indtviduals vary in their understandings. Thus the consequence of the process of socially shared cognition is a patterned distribution of cultural knowledge through a community. We can use this pattern to make inferences about how people learn. The task is like that of economics: Instead of charting the pattern of the production, distribution, and consumption