Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Dissonance on the Road: Self-Esteem as a Moderator of Internal and External Self-Justification Strategies

Processes of self-justification were investigated in a field experiment among car drivers. High self-esteem was expected to reduce internal and external self-justification strategies. Dissonance was aroused by confronting respondents with the negative consequences of car driving either for others, that is, moral dissonance (e.g., environment, public health), or for themselves, that is, hedonistic dissonance (e.g., travel time). A third group served as a no-dissonance control group. Consistent with the predictions, no self-justification was found among high-self-esteem respondents. Low-self-esteem respondents displayed more external self-justification strategies in response to moral dissonance and internal self-justification strategies in response to hedonistic dissonance, although the latter effect was weaker. Results of Study 2 suggest that high-self-esteem respondents are less likely to engage in self-justification because they experience less discomfort after a self-threat. Together, the results illuminate the relation between self-esteem and self-justification and provide external validity for self-affirmation theory.
Induction of Protective Immunity againstStreptococcus mutans Colonization after Mucosal Immunization with Attenuated Salmonella enterica Serovar Typhimurium Expressing an S. mutans Adhesin under the Control of In Vivo-Inducible nirB Promoter

ABSTRACT The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the effectiveness of an attenuated Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium vaccine strain expressing the saliva-binding region (SBR) of theStreptococcus mutans antigen I/II adhesin, either alone or linked with the mucosal adjuvant cholera toxin A2 and B subunits (CTA2/B) and under the control of the anaerobically induciblenirB promoter, in inducing a protective immune response against S. mutans infection. BALB/c mice were immunized by either the intranasal or the intragastric route with a single dose of 109 or 1010Salmonella CFU, respectively. The Salmonella vaccine strain expressing an unrelated antigen (fragment C of tetanus toxin [TetC]) was also used for immunization as a control. Samples of serum and secretion (saliva and vaginal washes) were collected prior to and following immunization and assessed for antibody activity by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Anti-SBR antibodies were detected in the serum and saliva of experimental animals by week 3 after immunization. A booster immunization at week 17 after the initial immunization resulted in enhanced immune responses to the SBR. The serum immunoglobulin G subclass profiles were indicative of T helper type 1 responses against both the vector and the SBR antigen. To determine the effectiveness of these responses on the protection against S. mutansinfection, mice were challenged after the second immunization with a virulent strain of S. mutans which was resistant to tetracycline and erythromycin. Prior to the challenge, mice were treated for 5 days with tetracycline, erythromycin, and penicillin.S. mutans was initially recovered from all of the challenged mice. This bacterium persisted at high levels for at least 5 weeks in control TetC-immunized or nonimmunized mice despite the reappearance of indigenous oral organisms. However, mice immunized withSalmonella clones expressing SBR or SBR-CTA2/B demonstrated a significant reduction in the number of S. mutans present in plaque compared to the control groups. These results provide evidence for the effectiveness of the Salmonella vector in delivering the SBR antigen for the induction of mucosal and systemic immune responses to SBR. Furthermore, the induction of a salivary anti-SBR response corresponded with protection against S. mutans colonization of tooth surfaces.
Local Staging of Rectal Cancer: Assessment with Double-Contrast Multislice Computed Tomography and Transrectal Ultrasound

Objective: The aim of this study was to evaluate the accuracy of multislice computed tomography (MSCT) with double-contrast technique and transrectal ultrasound (TRUS) in staging of rectal carcinoma compared with histopathological confirmation. Methods: In a prospective study of 92 patients with rectal carcinoma, preoperative MSCT with negative rectal contrast (methylcellulose) and intravenous contrast was performed. Reconstructions in 3 planes were analyzed in a cine mode in picture archiving and communication (PAC) system. Analysis of rectal wall infiltration was performed preoperatively according to a modified tumor, nodes, metastases (TNM)-classfication system (≤T2/T3/T4, N0/N+, UICC/UICC I > I). MSCT imaging findings were compared with the results of TRUS and histopathology in all patients. Results: With interactive multiplanar image viewing, the results of MSCT of depth of rectal wall invasion (T-staging) were as follows: sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values, and accuracy rate were 85%, 87%, 88%, 84%, and 86% (54/63 patients) compared with 59%, 63%, 72%, 48%, and 60% (38/63 patients), respectively, for TRUS staging in the same patients. The sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictve values, and accuracy rate of MSCT for perirectal nodes evaluation was 75%, 85%, 75%, 85%, and 81% (51/63 patients) compared with 55%, 71%, 50%, 74%, and 65% (41/63 patients), respectively, for TRUS in detecting metastatic lymph nodes. Conclusions: Preoperative double-contrast MSCT accurately indicates the exact depth of tumor infiltration and improves lymph node staging. The new technical inovations of MSCT provide superior information for preoperative staging of rectal cancer and may compete with TRUS as the standard preoperative diagnostic method.
Correction: Methylation at Global LINE-1 Repeats in Human Blood Are Affected by Gender but Not by Age or Natural Hormone Cycles

Previously, we reported on inter-individual and gender specific variations of LINE-1 methylation in healthy individuals. In this study, we investigated whether this variability could be influenced by age or sex hormones in humans. To this end, we studied LINE-1 methylation in vivo in blood-derived DNA from individuals aged 18 to 64 years and from young healthy females at various hormone levels during the menstrual cycle. Our results show that no significant association with age was observed. However, the previously reported increase of LINE-1 methylation in males was reconfirmed. In females, although no correlation between LINE-1 or Alu methylation and hormone levels was observed, a significant stable individual specific level of methylation was noted. In vitro results largely confirmed these findings, as neither estrogen nor dihydrotestosterone affected LINE-1 or Alu methylation in Hek293T, HUVEC, or MDA-kb2 cell lines. In contrast, a decrease in methylation was observed in estrogen-treated T47-Kbluc cell lines strongly expressing estrogen receptor. The very low expression of estrogen receptor in blood cells could explain the observed insensitivity of methylation at LINE-1 to natural hormonal variations in females. In conclusion, neither natural cycle of hormones nor age has a detectable effect on the LINE-1 methylation in peripheral blood cells, while gender remains an important factor. Citation: El-Maarri O, Walier M, Behne F, van Üüm J, Singer H, et al. (2011) Methylation at Global LINE-1 Repeats in Human Blood Are Affected by Gender but Not by Age or Natural Hormone Cycles. PLoS ONE 6(1): e16252. doi:10.1371/journal.pone. 0016252 Editor: Dale Hedges, University of Miami, United States Received August 6, 2010; Accepted December 19, 2010; Published January 19, 2011 Copyright: 2011 El-Maarri et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: The study was supported by institutional fund of the Institute of Experimental Hematology and Transfusion Medicine, University Clinic of Bonn. Additionally the work in the lab of OEM is supported by a German Research Council grant (DFG EL 499/2-1). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. * E-mail: osman.elmaarri@ukb.uni-bonn.de . These authors contributed equally to this work.
State Dependence in Unemployment Incidence: Evidence for British Men Revisited

The issues of persistence in the observed labour market status of men are investigated using the British Household Panel Survey for the period 1991-97. The paper extends previous work in many directions. In particular, problems of endogenous initial conditions, and unobserved heterogeneity, are addressed within the context of different definitions of unemployment. In addition, allowance is also made to accommodate the ‘stayer’ phenomenon in the state of employment. All these were found to be very important in the estimation of the effect of scarring.
An Alternative to the Dichotomous Interpretation of Jung's Psychological Functions: Developing More Sensitive Measurement Technology

The Myers-Briggs Type Instrument (MBTI) which is commonly used to measure the psychological functions of Jung's personality theory, has been gaining a substantial following primarily in corporate America. However, it recently was critical for the limitations of its dichotomous measurement approach particularly for applications to complex processes like strategic problem formulation. This article develops a measurement instrument to enable the strength of each of the Jungian functions to be measured separately rather than dichotomized on two dimensions as measured by the MBTI. A measurement technology for measuring function strengths seems to fit Jung's notion of differentiation more clearly. The characteristics of the "modified" instrument are reported for both college students and executives. Evidence is provided showing that this measurement technology is more sensitive than the MBTI and thus may be more suitable for certain applications. Some implications of the results are made, and suggestions are pu.
Administration of an Anti-CD8 Monoclonal Antibody Interferes with the Clearance of Chimeric Simian/Human Immunodeficiency Virus during Primary Infections of Rhesus Macaques

ABSTRACT Parenteral administration of a mouse anti-human CD8 monoclonal antibody (MAb) to rhesus macaques resulted in a transient depletion of CD8+ cells in both the peripheral blood and lymphoid tissues. When administered during primary chimeric simian/human immunodeficiency virus infections, the CD8 MAb caused marked elevations of plasma and cell-associated virus levels in both the peripheral blood and lymphoid tissues and led to prolonged depletion of CD4 cells. Taken together, these results directly demonstrate that CD8+ T lymphocytes are actively involved in controlling the acute phase of primate lentivirus infections.
Women, fire, and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. George Lakoff . Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Pp. xvii + 614.

originally in 1985) discusses the role of intonation in computer speech understanding. The chapter covers three topics: the encoding of intonational information, empirical facts concerning the functions of intonation, and how a speech-understanding system might use this information. Although the coverage of encoding procedures is rather cursory, Longuet-Higgins does provide the reader with a list of some interesting facts concerning the functions of intonation. These uses include "identifying the actual words of an utterance and establishing the syntactic relations between them and its use in decoding that part of the speaker's message which is only implicit" (p. 289). More specifically, he notes that people use intonation to distinguish declaratives from interrogatives, to distinguish various meanings for compound nouns, and to contrast new with old information with the new information often carrying more stress. In discussing how a speech-understanding system might benefit from intonational information, Longuet-Higgins notes that if the words with the most conspicuous pitch changes are assumed to be the most important, they may be used as the "nuclei" for an "inside-out" recognition system. Such a recognition system could be deemed intelligent precisely because it utilizes these empirical facts. This is extremely important as the need for knowledge-based computer modeling is well documented by the recent generation of artificial-intelligence researchers. Longuet-Higgins and his coworkers have assembled a collection of articles, which, while impressive in their breadth, are lacking in depth. There are solutions to lots of microproblems; however, there is no attempt at integration. Since the authors have demonstrated a keen ability to uncover difficult problems, the book is most suitable to readers who are interested in learning a little about a lot of linguistic processes. Finally, the reader should expect the discussion to cover computational properties of mental processes that are abstracted away from the limited resources of the human processor.
Some Thoughts About Dissociative Identity Disorder as a Disorder of Attachment

249 S I READ BARTHOLOMEW’S COMPELLING PRESENTATION of her relationAship and work with her patient, S, two thoughts recur. First, I am grateful that possibilities for long-term intensive care remain in a “healthcare” climate that has all but eradicated such opportunities. I see S as a client who can especially benefit from such a setting for reasons that overlap with and also differ from those presented. The careful, thoughtful work occurring over time that has been her treatment is clearly invaluable. Second, I note how our psychoanalytic theories have become less developmental in focus. In particular I struggle with the strange absence of attachment theory in formulations of clients with severe early trauma and loss. Bartholomew’s protocol offers persuasive evidence for dissociative identity disorder (DID) (and possibly Dissociative Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified [DDNOS]) as an attachment disorder. The central theme is abandonment, but the central dynamic is attachment. In my comments, I will primarily be applying such a framework to my understanding of S and her relationship with Karen B. Before I go further, I’d like to remind the reader of the limitations of our format. It is, of course, impossible to know accurately what the therapeutic relationship is and what the therapeutic work has been
Work Organization Conditions and Prescribed Psychotropic Drug Use in Canada: The Moderating Role of Personality Traits

This study examined the moderating role of Canadian workers' personality traits between work organization conditions and prescribed psychotropic drug use. Longitudinal data were derived from Statistics Canada's National Population Health Survey. Controlling for several cofounding variables, the multilevel analysis revealed that self-esteem, internal locus of control, as well as sense of coherence decreased prescribed psychotropic drug use by 4%, 9%, and 3%, respectively. The results indicated that a worker's personality traits do not moderate the association between work organization conditions and prescribed psychotropic drug use.
International norms in the reform of Romanian higher education: a discursive analysis

Higher education systems in Central and Eastern Europe have faced numerous challenges in their transitions following the collapse of totalitarian regimes in 1989–1990. Romania, as a country that is representative of the specificities of this particular region, as well as a relatively new member of the European Union, is a privileged site for understanding how external pressures influenced policy changes in light of its openness to European reintegration. By focusing on three phases of policy change corresponding broadly to three major legal transformations, this paper will observe when, why and by whom the international influences were strategically used in Romanian public discourse on higher education reform. Finally, a balance sheet will be drawn across the two decades of higher education reforms in Romania, which is meant to provide insights into wider problematics of reform, Europeanization and internationalization in situations of transition and peripherality.
Multi-Scale Jump and Volatility Analysis for High-Frequency Financial Data

The wide availability of high-frequency data for many financial instruments stimulates an upsurge interest in statistical research on the estimation of volatility. Jump-diffusion processes observed with market microstructure noise are frequently used to model high-frequency financial data. Yet existing methods are developed for either noisy data from a continuous-diffusion price model or data from a jump-diffusion price model without noise. We propose methods to cope with both jumps in the price and market microstructure noise in the observed data. These methods allow us to estimate both integrated volatility and jump variation from the data sampled from jump-diffusion price processes, contaminated with the market microstructure noise. Our approach is to first remove jumps from the data and then apply noise-resistant methods to estimate the integrated volatility. The asymptotic analysis and the simulation study reveal that the proposed wavelet methods can successfully remove the jumps in the price processes and the integrated volatility can be estimated as accurately as in the case with no presence of jumps in the price processes. In addition, they have outstanding statistical efficiency. The methods are illustrated by applications to two high-frequency exchange rate data sets.
The Effects of Interrupting Behavior on Interpersonal Attitude and Engagement in Dyadic Interactions

Interruptions frequently occur in dyadic human interaction. In addition to serve as turn-taking mechanism, they may lead to different perceptions of both the interruptee and interrupter's interpersonal attitude, engagement and involvement. We present an empirical study to investigate whether different interruption types (i.e. amount of overlap between speakers and utterance completeness) and strategies (disruptive vs. cooperative) in agent-agent interaction have an impact on perceived agents' interpersonal attitude, engagement and involvement. We found that the interruption type has more influence on the perceived attitudes of both agents, whereas by using a cooperative strategy (as opposed to a disruptive one) an interrupter is perceived as more engaged and more involved in the interaction.
The Relationship Between Amphetamine Use, Crime and Psychiatric Disorder Among Prisoners in New South Wales

The study used data from a survey of the mental health of prisoners to examine possible links between amphetamine use, psychiatric disorder and the alleged offences for which the inmate was received to NSW prisons. Ethical approval was obtained to examine data from inmates received to NSW prisons in 2001. Prisoners had been interviewed using the CIDI-auto and several other structured questionnaires, using methodology similar to the National Mental Health Survey. Data analysis was carried out in the form of chi-square frequency tables and logistic regression. About a third of the inmates received to NSW prisons during the study period had been using amphetamines in the 12-month period before their arrest. The charges were more likely to be for robbery or property crimes (χ2 = 22.185, p = .014). Amphetamine users had more admissions to psychiatric hospitals (χ2 = 13.740, p < .001) than non-users and were more likely to report symptoms of psychotic illness (χ2 = 16.252, p < .001). The combination of amphetamine use and the reported presence of psychotic symptoms was associated with violent offending (OR = 1.86, p = .017). The results show that the charges laid against amphetamine users were similar to those for heroin users, but they suffered more psychiatric disorder. Those reporting psychotic symptoms were more likely to have allegedly committed violent offences.
Economics of intolerance and social conflict

An important consensus today is that intolerance and social conflict have a substantial economic dimension. This article models a person’s “returns” to acts of intolerance in terms of social approval or disapproval that this person’s peer-group may offer. It is found that high levels of intolerance may persist, that is, society is “in equilibrium,” even as this imposes economic costs.
Pharmacokinetics of Dietary Isoflavones

Dietary isoflavones are reported to have significant influences on human health. The beneficial effects reported include reduced risk of cancers, decreased menopausal symptoms, reduced osteoporosis etc. Most of these benefits have been deduced from epidemiological studies involving soy bean as the source of dietary isoflavones, since soy bean is an important food crop in several parts of the world. Over the last 30 years, considerable progress has been made in understanding the fate of dietary isoflavones in humans. Now we understand that the pharmacokinetics of dietary isoflavones is a complex phenomenon and involving multifaceted biological processes. The role of gut micro flora in deciding the bioavailability of isoflavones is quite significant. This review examines various pharmacokinetic aspects of dietary isoflavones and factors influencing the systemic bioavailability of isoflavones. This review also attempts to identify important factors which may contribute to the inter-person differences in the effects of isoflavones.
ERP Correlates of a Receptive Language-Switching Task

Previous research has shown large response time costs (in excess of 50 ms) when bilingual speakers switch predictably back and forth between naming items (a productive switching task) in their first (L1) and second languages (L2). A recent study using event-related potentials (ERPs) has shown that switching between languages is associated with activity over frontal (N2) and parietal (late positive complex) areas of cortex (Jackson, Swainson, Cunnington, & Jackson, 2001). Switching between naming in different languages requires a switch in both language representations and language-specific motor responses. The current study investigated a receptive (input) language-switching task with a common manual response. Number words were presented in L1 and L2, and participants were required to judge whether the words were odd or even (a parity judgement). Response costs were considerably reduced, and the frontal and parietal switch related activity reported in the productive switching task was absent. Receptive switching was associated with early switch-related activity over central sensors that were not language specific. These results are discussed in relation to the idea that there is no language-specific lexical selection mechanism. Instead the costs of receptive language switching may arise from outside the bilingual lexicon.
Collegial Entrepreneurialism

Abstract In recent decades, Australian universities have corporatized. Encouraged by government policies, universities adopted modernization practices that have been widely questioned. ‘Collegial entrepreneurialism’ is an approach that builds on collegial processes to protect academic values from the excesses of modernization. This paper examines the perceptions of business academics about the impacts of modernization in autonomous graduate schools of business. The research was undertaken prior to the most recent wave of higher education reform under which most of these schools disappeared. Their experience of three consequences of modernization, ‘hard’ managerialism, academic consumerism and fragmentation of work, provides insight into whether collegiality and academic values can exist within an entrepreneurial academic unit. Results indicate that overt manifestations of modernization are not threatening to ‘collegial entrepreneurialism’. However, in the absence of academic leadership, the more covert influences of consumerism and fragmentation pose a threat to the survival of ‘collegial entrepreneurialism’.