Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Processing Swedish Word Accents - evidence from response and reaction times

The effects of Central Swedish word accents on morphological and semantic processing were investigated. It was found that Accent 2-inducing suffixes preceded by an Accent 1 tone were more difficult to process compared to Accent 1-inducing suffixes preceded by Accent 2. This effect was relatively task-independent, i.e. found both when participants judged the tense or number of the word and when they simply listened to the word and pushed a button at word offset. The effect was absent when de-lexicalised stimuli that lacked lexical information were presented. This suggests that there is a stronger association in the mental lexicon between suffixes and Accent 2 compared to Accent 1. Also, correct Accent 2 words took longer to process compared to correct Accent 1 words. It was suggested that this is due to the extra lexical information that is activated upon hearing the Accent 2 tone. When e.g. a suffix is heard, the competing lexical candidates need to be de-activated. In addition, correlation analyses showed that shorter auditory stimuli elicit longer response and reaction times. This will have important implications for improving future response/reaction time experiments.
Public Attitudes towards Prevention of Obesity

Objective To investigate obesity prevention support in the German general public and to assess determinants of general prevention support as well as support of specific prevention measures. Methods This study was a cross-sectional analysis of a telephone based representative German study (3,003 subjects (52.8% women, mean age 51.9, s.d. = 18.0, range 18–97 years). Likert scale-based questions on general prevention support and support of specific measures were used. Furthermore willingness to take part in preventive programs and willingness to pay were assessed. Stigmatizing attitudes were assessed with the Fat Phobia Scale (FPS). Causation of obesity was differentiated in three dimensions (internal, e.g. lack of exercise; external, e.g. social surroundings; and genetic factors). Results Obesity prevention was perceived as possible (98.2%), however, almost exclusively lifestyle changes were named. Participants with higher stigmatizing attitudes were less likely to believe obesity prevention is possible. The majority of participants would take part in preventive programs (59.6%) and pay at least partially themselves (86.9%). Factor analysis revealed three dimensions of preventive measures: promoting healthy eating, restrictive and financial, governmental prevention efforts. In regard to these, promoting healthy eating was the most supported measure. Higher age, female gender and external causation were associated with higher support for all three dimensions of preventive measures. Only for governmental regulation, higher age was associated with lower support. Conclusion Obesity prevention support in Germany is high. Structural prevention efforts are supported by the majority of the general public in Germany. The vast majority proclaims willingness to pay themselves for programs of weight gain prevention. This could be an indication of higher perceived self-responsibility in the German system but also for risen “fear of fat” in the population due to media coverage. For Germany, the government and communities ought to be encouraged by these results to start the implementation of structural obesity prevention.
ECOLOGY AND GEOGRAPHY OF HUMAN MONKEYPOX CASE OCCURRENCES ACROSS AFRICA

As ecologic niche modeling (ENM) evolves as a tool in spatial epidemiology and public health, selection of the most appropriate and informative environmental data sets becomes increasingly important. Here, we build on a previous ENM analysis of the potential distribution of human monkeypox in Africa by refining georeferencing criteria and using more-diverse environmental data to identify environmental parameters contributing to monkeypox distributional ecology. Significant environmental variables include annual precipitation, several temperature-related variables, primary productivity, evapotranspiration, soil moisture, and pH. The potential distribution identified with this set of variables was broader than that identified in previous analyses but does not include areas recently found to hold monkeypox in southern Sudan. Our results emphasize the importance of selecting the most appropriate and informative environmental data sets for ENM analyses in pathogen transmission mapping.
Not so bad: avoidance and aversive discounting modulate threat appraisal in anterior cingulate and medial prefrontal cortex

The dorsal anterior cingulate (adACC) and dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC) play a central role in the discrimination and appraisal of threatening stimuli. Yet, little is known about what specific features of threatening situations recruit these regions and how avoidance may modulate appraisal and activation through prevention of aversive events. In this investigation, 30 healthy adults underwent functional neuroimaging while completing an avoidance task in which responses to an Avoidable CS+ threat prevented delivery of an aversive stimulus, but not to an Unavoidable CS+ threat. Extinction testing was also completed where CSs were presented without aversive stimulus delivery and an opportunity to avoid. The Avoidable CS+ relative to the Unavoidable CS+ was associated with reductions in ratings of negative valence, fear, and US expectancy and activation. Greater regional activation was consistently observed to the Unavoidable CS+ during avoidance, which declined during extinction. Individuals exhibiting greater aversive discounting—that is, those more avoidant of immediate monetary loss compared to a larger delayed loss—also displayed greater activation to the Unavoidable CS+, highlighting aversive discounting as a significant individual difference variable. These are the first results linking adACC/dmPFC reactivity to avoidance-based reductions of aversive events and modulation of activation by individual differences in aversive discounting.
Effects of varenicline and bupropion sustained-release use plus intensive smoking cessation counseling on prolonged abstinence from smoking and on depression, negative affect, and other symptoms of nicotine withdrawal.

IMPORTANCE Given the actions of varenicline tartrate and bupropion hydrochloride sustained-release (SR) on neurobiological targets related to affect and reward, it is thought that the modulation of nicotine withdrawal symptoms may contribute to their effectiveness. OBJECTIVE To assess the relative efficacy of varenicline and bupropion SR plus intensive counseling on smoking cessation and emotional functioning. DESIGN AND SETTING Placebo-controlled randomized clinical trial at a university medical center. PARTICIPANTS In total, 294 community volunteers who wanted to quit smoking. INTERVENTIONS Twelve weeks of varenicline, bupropion SR, or placebo plus intensive smoking cessation counseling (10 sessions, for a total of approximately 240 minutes of counseling). MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Prolonged abstinence from smoking and weekly measures of depression, negative affect, and other symptoms of nicotine withdrawal. RESULTS Significant differences were found in abstinence at the end of treatment and through the 3-month postquit follow-up visit, favoring both active medications compared with placebo. At the 6-month postquit follow-up visit, only the varenicline vs placebo comparison remained significant. Varenicline use was also associated with a generalized suppression of depression and reduced smoking reward compared with the other treatments, while both active medications improved concentration, reduced craving, and decreased negative affect and sadness compared with placebo, while having little effect (increase or decrease) on anxiety and anger. No differences were noted in self-reported rates of neuropsychiatric adverse events. CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE In a community sample, varenicline exerts a robust and favorable effect on smoking cessation relative to placebo and may have a favorable (suppressive) effect on symptoms of depression and other affective measures, with no clear unfavorable effect on neuropsychiatric adverse events. TRIAL REGISTRATION clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT00507728.
Evidence for an inhibitory-control theory of the reasoning brain

In this article, we first describe our general inhibitory-control theory and, then, we describe how we have tested its specific hypotheses on reasoning with brain imaging techniques in adults and children. The innovative part of this perspective lies in its attempt to come up with a brain-based synthesis of Jean Piaget’s theory on logical algorithms and Daniel Kahneman’s theory on intuitive heuristics.
Spreading the word: Investigating antecedents of consumers’ positive word-of-mouth intentions and behaviors in a retailing context

Empirical studies investigating the antecedents of positive word of mouth (WOM) typically focus on the direct effects of consumers’ satisfaction and dissatisfaction with previous purchasing experiences. The authors develop and test a more comprehensive model of the antecedents of positive. WOM (both intentions and behaviors), including consumer identification and commitment. Specifically, they hypothesize and test commitment as a mediator and moderator of satisfaction on positive WOM and commitment as a mediator of identification on WOM. Using data obtained from customers of a retailer offering both products and services, they find support for all hypothesized relationships with WOM intentions and/or WOM behaviors as the dependent variable. The authors conclude with a discussion of their findings and implications for both marketing theory and practice.
Autoethnography and academic identity: glimpsing business school doppelgängers

Throughout our adult lives we have both been haunted by a certain sense of doubleness—a feeling of dislocation, of being in the wrong place, of playing a role. Inspired by Stevenson’s novel Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde we explore this doubleness through evocative, dual, autoethnographic accounts of academic conferences. By analysing our stories in an iterative process of writing, reading, rewriting and rereading, we seek to extend the reach of much recent autoethnographic research. Presenting ourselves as objects of research, we show how, for us, contemporary academic identity is problematic in that it necessarily involves being (at least) ‘both’ Jekyll and Hyde. In providing readings of our stories, we show how autoethnography can make two contributions to the study of identity in organizations. The first is that autoethnographic accounts may provide scholars with new forms of empirical material—case studies in identity work. The second contribution highlights the value of experimenting with unorthodox approaches—such as explicitly using novels and other literary sources to study identity.
On the Computational Complexity of Binary and Analog Symmetric Hopfield Nets

We investigate the computational properties of finite binary- and analog-state discrete-time symmetric Hopfield nets. For binary networks, we obtain a simulation of convergent asymmetric networks by symmetric networks with only a linear increase in network size and computation time. Then we analyze the convergence time of Hopfield nets in terms of the length of their bit representations. Here we construct an analog symmetric network whose convergence time exceeds the convergence time of any binary Hopfield net with the same representation length. Further, we prove that the MIN ENERGY problem for analog Hopfield nets is NP-hard and provide a polynomial time approximation algorithm for this problem in the case of binary nets. Finally, we show that symmetric analog nets with an external clock are computationally Turing universal.
Comparison of Fetal Nuchal Fold Thickness Measurements by Two- and Three-Dimensional Ultrasonography (3DXI Multislice View)

Purpose. To compare the measurements of fetal nuchal fold (NF) thickness by two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) ultrasonography using the three-dimensional extended imaging (3DXI). Methods. A cross-sectional study was performed with 60 healthy pregnant women with a gestational age between 16 and 20 weeks and 6 days. The 2D-NF measurements were made as the distance from the outer skull bone to the outer skin surface in the transverse axial image in the suboccipital-bregmatic plane of the head. For the 3D we employed the 3DXI multislice view software, in which 3 × 2 tomographic planes was displayed on the screen and the distance between the tomographic slices was 0.5 mm. Maximum, minimum, mean, and standard deviation were calculated for 2D and 3D ultrasonography, as well the maximum and minimum, mean, and standard deviation for the difference between both methods. The Wilcoxon signed-rank test was used to compare the two different techniques. Results. 2D-NF showed a mean of thickness of 3.52 ± 0.95 mm (1.69–7.14). The mean of 3D-NF was 3.90 ± 1.02 mm (2.13–7.72). The mean difference between the methods was 0.38 mm, with a maximum difference of 3.12 mm. Conclusion. The NF thickness measurements obtained by 3D ultrasonography were significantly larger than those detected with 2D ultrasonography.
Religion: a Solution or a Problem for the Legitimisation of the European Union?

Abstract Religion is not a competency of the European Union (EU), but has been more and more an issue on its agenda. The question is to know whether this plays in favour of the legitimisation of a supra- or transnational polity, or represents a further obstacle to it. The central hypothesis discussed here is that religion in itself is less a specific problem than a revelator of the EU difficulty in dealing with any normative reference. Several examples may be taken to illustrate this position, as a synthesis of different empirical researches. The ‘Christian heritage’ debate in the constitutional process has offered no key to solve the longstanding quest for a European memory. Through the institutionalisation of religions as privileged partners of European governance, the EU has tried to socialise religious actors and to make them comply with the rules of participative democracy (pluralism, mutual recognition …). Beyond the interactions of the policy game in Brussels, these rules do not always appear as generalised social norms. This is highlighted by the growing interventions of churches to defend their particularisms in the media or by the use of religious references – intimately linked with nationalist ones – to question European integration in old and new member states. However, these controversies on the new place of the sacred in public life tend to follow well-established patterns of political struggles, which is a reason to believe that, to a large extent, God is a ‘business as usual’ for the EU.
Seroprevalence of anti-HCV antibodies among blood donors of north India

Background & objectives: Transfusion of blood and blood products although considered as a life saving treatment modality, but may lead to certain infectious and non-infectious complications in the recipients. The purpose of this analysis was to monitor the seroprevalence of anti-HCV antibody in the blood donor population in a hospital based blood bank in north India, to evaluate the trends over the years (2001-2011). Methods: Relevant information of all the blood donors who donated whole blood at the department of Transfusion Medicine, Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals, New Delhi from the January 1, 2001 to December 31, 2011 was retrieved from the departmental records. The number of donors who were found reactive for anti-HCV anatibodies was calculated. Results: Of the 2,06,022 blood donors, 1,93,661 were males and 12,361 were females. The percentage of whole blood donors found seroreactive for anti-HCV antibodies was 0.39 per cent (n=795). The seroprevalence of anti-HCV in male blood donors was 0.38 per cent (n=750) and the respective seroprevalence in female blood donors was 0.36 per cent (n=45). No significant change in the trend of HCV seroprevalence was observed over the period under consideration. Maximum seroprevalence of anti-HCV was observed in the age group of 18 to 30 yr (0.41%) and the minimum in the age group of 51 to 60 yr (0.26%). Interpretation & conclusion: HCV seroprevalence in our study was 0.39 per cent and a decreasing trend with age was observed. No significant change in the trend of anti-HCV seroprevalence was seen over a decade. Since, no vaccine is presently available for immunization against HCV infection, transfusion transmitted HCV infection remains a potential threat to the safety of the blood supply.
Ghostwriting Research: Positioning the Researcher in the Interview Text

This article reviews the practice of interview-based research through the metaphor of researcher as ghostwriter. What is suggested is that research can be examined as a form of textual practice in which researchers create images of others and also enter those images. In such a practice, research can be understood as a dialogic process where researchers are never neutral in their attempts to write about the lives of other people. This then leads to a need for researchers to account for their textual choices and their role in producing accounts of the experience of others. The article concludes that the ghostwriter metaphor is a way of understanding research that enables researchers to acknowledge their role in the production of textual representations of their research participants.
Component-Aware Triggered Scenarios

Use-case scenarios, with notations such as UML sequence diagrams, are widely used to specify software system behavior. Although intuitive, these notations allow engineers to specify behaviors with unintended semantic side-effects. To address these inconsistencies, one class of languages targets triggered scenario specifications for expressing a system's reactive behaviors. However, these languages lack adequate facilities for modeling the intended behavior of the individual system components. This runs the risks of sacrificing the expressive power required to model component behaviors, misinterpreting the stakeholder intent, and misspecifying the component behaviors. The risks are particularly prominent when the requirements specification and software architecture specification are refined iteratively and in parallel. To remedy these problems, we propose component-aware Triggered Scenarios (caTS), an enhancement to triggered scenario languages that allows an engineer to define components' obligations within a scenario. We have formalized the syntax and semantics of ccaTSats, and have applied cats on a real-world case study, which suggests improved accuracy and conciseness of caTS in comparison to existing alternatives.
Chaos and Bifurcation Control of Torque-Stiffness-Controlled Dynamic Bipedal Walking

This paper focuses on chaos control of a seven-link torque-stiffness-controlled dynamic walking model, actuated by a bio-inspired control system. The biped consists of compliant hip, knee and ankle joints and flat feet. We employed Ott–Grebogi–Yorke and delayed feedback control methods, responsible for small errors around the equilibrium solution and large errors far away, respectively. In simulation, we study the stabilization of bifurcations and chaotic behaviors under diverse actuation parameters, and the convergence speed to 1-period gaits. The results of this paper may provide insights into motion control of dynamic walking robots and principles of human locomotion.
Promoting access to finance by empowering consumers - Financial literacy in developing countries

This paper is an effort to establish the financial sector in developing countries to promote financial literacy of their customers. This could have access to finance and savings, which in turn support livelihoods, economic growth, sound financial systems, and participate in the economy. The main objectives of this paper is to enhances a bank’s visibility in the communities it serves, empowering consumers to take action to improve their financial well-being, and enables consumers to make better-informed choices in the financial market is the ultimate goal. Financial literacy is critical for promoting access to finance by creating incentives and environments that promote desired financial behaviours such as saving, budgeting, or using credit wisely. Having access to savings products or insurance can greatly affect consumers’ financial future, and are also likely to represent a higher share of income and thus, have a significant impact on well-being. Key words: Banking knowledge, information and behaviour, financial future, rewards and risks
Instructed Second Language Acquisition A Literature Review

Opinions expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily coincide with those of the Ministry of Education Research reports are also available on the Ministry's website: www.minedu. govt.nz under the Research heading. Reports from Auckland UniServices Limited should only be used for the purposes for which they were commissioned. If it is proposed to use a report prepared by Auckland UniServices Limited for a different purpose or in a different context from that intended at the time of commissioning the work, then UniServices should be consulted to verify whether the report is being correctly interpreted. In particular it is requested that, where quoted, conclusions given in UniServices reports should be stated in full.
Chromosomal Evolution in Lower Vertebrates: Sex Chromosomes in Neotropical Fishes

Fishes exhibit the greatest diversity of species among vertebrates, offering a number of relevant models for genetic and evolutionary studies. The investigation of sex chromosome differentiation is a very active and striking research area of fish cytogenetics, as fishes represent one of the most vital model groups. Neotropical fish species show an amazing variety of sex chromosome systems, where different stages of differentiation can be found, ranging from homomorphic to highly differentiated sex chromosomes. Here, we draw attention on the impact of recent developments in molecular cytogenetic analyses that helped to elucidate many unknown questions about fish sex chromosome evolution, using excellent characiform models occurring in the Neotropical region, namely the Erythrinidae family and the Triportheus genus. While in Erythrinidae distinct XY and/or multiple XY-derived sex chromosome systems have independently evolved at least four different times, representatives of Triportheus show an opposite scenario, i.e., highly conserved ZZ/ZW system with a monophyletic origin. In both cases, recent molecular approaches, such as mapping of repetitive DNA classes, comparative genomic hybridization (CGH), and whole chromosome painting (WCP), allowed us to unmask several new features linked to the molecular composition and differentiation processes of sex chromosomes in fishes.