Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Enhancing Retention Through Reconsolidation

When information is retrieved from memory, it enters a labile state rendering it amenable to change. This process of reconsolidation may explain, in part, the benefits that are observed in later retention following retrieval of information on an initial test. We examined whether the benefits of retrieval could be modulated by an emotional event occurring after retrieval. Participants studied Swahili-English vocabulary pairs. On a subsequent cued-recall test, each retrieval was followed by a blank screen, a neutral picture, or a picture inducing negative affect. Performance on a final cued-recall test was best for items whose initial retrieval was followed by negative pictures. This outcome occurred when a negative picture was presented immediately after (Experiment 1) or 2 s after (Experiment 2) successful retrieval, but not when it was presented after restudy of the vocabulary pair (Experiment 3). Postretrieval reconsolidation via emotional processing may enhance the usual positive effects of retrieval.
Indicators, Predictors, and Determinants of Conflict Escalation and De-escalation. A Review of the Psychological Literature

Abstract : This paper reviews psychological theories and quantitative research aimed at the explanation and prediction of decision-making by national and sub-national leaders. Inferences of the strategic intentions of leaders are based on the "assessment at a distance" of both their stable and changing cognitive, motivational, and emotional processes. The review evaluates profiling approaches, which develop a portrait of the subject's personality as the source of strategic predispositions, and dynamic approaches, which measure selected psychological variables activated in particular situations at specific times. Both approaches identify psychological factors correlated with tendencies toward competitive vs. cooperative behaviour in conflict situations; the dynamic approach in particular can be used to monitor real time changes that forecast the direction of the leader's decision-making. The outbreak of war, including surprise attacks, is reliably associated with reduced complexity in the structure of information processing, increased power motivation as compared to affiliation motivation, and the leader's self-perceived ability to successfully affect large-scale events. Recent research has begun to apply these approaches to the study of terrorism. The review evaluates the methodological problems of each approach and makes suggestions as to ways of improving the clarity, precision, and predictive power of these methods.
APPLICATION OF RAPD TECHNIQUE FOR THE CONSERVATION OF AN ISOLATED POPULATION OF Capparis decidua

Capparis decidua is a rangeland plant species growing in isolated regions in Saudi Arabia. The population in Rawdhat Khuraim was noticed to suffer from lack of new regeneration, in addition to excessive grazing which may reduce the size of the population and reduce the genetic variability. RAPD markers were used to study genetic diversity in this population and a control population. Two criterion were used to study the genetic diversity in population in Rawdhat Khuraim. The first was cluster analysis and genetic distance, and the second was the percentage of polymorphic alleles. Cluster analysis showed that coefficient of similarity within Rawdhat Khuraim population (84-93%) is a lot larger than between Rawdhat Khuraim and the control population (77%). In addition, the percentage of polymorphic alleles in population of Rawdhat Khuraim was 45.8, which is within the range of other endangered plant species. This indicates that the population in Rawdhat Khuraim is iso1ated, suffering from narrow genetic base and of a particular conservation concern.
Deformation-induced speckle-pattern evolution and feasibility of correlational speckle tracking in optical coherence elastography

Abstract. Feasibility of speckle tracking in optical coherence tomography (OCT) based on digital image correlation (DIC) is discussed in the context of elastography problems. Specifics of applying DIC methods to OCT, compared to processing of photographic images in mechanical engineering applications, are emphasized and main complications are pointed out. Analytical arguments are augmented by accurate numerical simulations of OCT speckle patterns. In contrast to DIC processing for displacement and strain estimation in photographic images, the accuracy of correlational speckle tracking in deformed OCT images is strongly affected by the coherent nature of speckles, for which strain-induced complications of speckle “blinking” and “boiling” are typical. The tracking accuracy is further compromised by the usually more pronounced pixelated structure of OCT scans compared with digital photographic images in classical DIC applications. Processing of complex-valued OCT data (comprising both amplitude and phase) compared to intensity-only scans mitigates these deleterious effects to some degree. Criteria of the attainable speckle tracking accuracy and its dependence on the key OCT system parameters are established.
Engagement Detection in Meetings

Group meetings are frequent business events aimed to develop and conduct project work, such as Big Room design and construction project meetings. To be effective in these meetings, participants need to have an engaged mental state. The mental state of participants however, is hidden from other participants, and thereby difficult to evaluate. Mental state is understood as an inner process of thinking and feeling, that is formed of a conglomerate of mental representations and propositional attitudes. There is a need to create transparency of these hidden states to understand, evaluate and influence them. Facilitators need to evaluate the meeting situation and adjust for higher engagement and productivity. This paper presents a framework that defines a spectrum of engagement states and an array of classifiers aimed to detect the engagement state of participants in real time. The Engagement Framework integrates multi-modal information from 2D and 3D imaging and sound. Engagement is detected and evaluated at participants and aggregated at group level. We use empirical data collected at the lab of Konica Minolta, Inc. to test initial applications of this framework. The paper presents examples of the tested engagement classifiers, which are based on research in psychology, communication, and human computer interaction. Their accuracy is illustrated in dyadic interaction for engagement detection. In closing we discuss the potential extension to complex group collaboration settings and future feedback implementations.
Proteasome‐dependent and ‐independent mechanisms for FosB destabilization: identification of FosB degron domains and implications for ΔFosB stability

The transcription factor ΔFosB (Delta FosB) accumulates in a region‐specific manner in the brain during chronic exposure to stress, drugs of abuse or other chronic stimuli. Once induced, ΔFosB persists in the brain for at least several weeks following cessation of the chronic stimulus. The biochemical basis of the persistent expression of ΔFosB has remained unknown. Here, we show that the FosB C‐terminus, absent in ΔFosB as a result of alternative splicing, contains two degron domains. Pulse‐chase experiments of C‐terminal truncation mutants of full‐length FosB indicate that removal of its most C‐terminal degron increases its half‐life ∼ fourfold, and prevents its proteasome‐mediated degradation and ubiquitylation, properties similar to ΔFosB. In addition, removal of a second degron domain, which generates ΔFosB, further stabilizes FosB ∼ twofold, but in a proteasome‐independent manner. These data indicate that alternative splicing specifically removes two destabilizing elements from FosB in order to generate a longer‐lived transcription factor, ΔFosB, in response to chronic perturbations to the brain.
Detection of activated platelets in whole blood using activation-dependent monoclonal antibodies and flow cytometry.

Platelets may become activated in a number of clinical disorders and participate in thrombus formation. We developed a direct test for activated platelets in whole blood using flow cytometry. Whole blood was incubated with either biotin-PAC1, a monoclonal antibody specific for the fibrinogen receptor on activated platelets, or biotin-S12, an antibody specific for an alpha-granule membrane protein that associates with the platelet surface during secretion. Platelet-bound antibodies were detected with streptavidin conjugated with fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC) or phycoerythrin (PE). Platelets were differentiated from the larger erythrocytes and WBCs by their light-scatter profile. Alternatively, platelets could be identified with FITC-AP1, an antibody specific for platelet membrane glycoprotein Ib, and analyzed further for PAC1 or S12 binding with PE-streptavidin. No centrifugation or washing steps were required. With gel-filtered platelets, there was a direct correlation between ADP-induced biotin-PAC1 binding and binding determined in a conventional 125I-PAC1 binding assay (r = .99; P less than .001). Furthermore, as few as 0.8% activated platelets could be detected by flow cytometry when activated platelets were mixed with unstimulated platelets. In whole blood, unstimulated platelets demonstrated no PAC1- or S12-specific fluorescence, indicating that they did not bind these antibodies. On stimulation with agonists, however, the platelets demonstrated a dose-dependent increase in fluorescence similar to that observed for platelets in plasma or buffer. Low concentrations of ADP and epinephrine, which induce fibrinogen receptors but little secretion, stimulated near-maximal PAC1 binding but little S12 binding. On the other hand, a concentration of phorbol myristate acetate (TPA) that evokes full platelet aggregation and secretion induced maximal PAC1 and S12 binding. Activated platelets could also be analyzed in whole blood samples that had been fixed with paraformaldehyde. These studies demonstrate that activated platelets can be reliably detected in whole blood using activation-dependent monoclonal antibodies and flow cytometry. This technique may be useful to assess the degree of platelet activation and the efficacy of antiplatelet therapy in clinical disorders.
Pre-Chemotherapy Differences in Visuospatial Working Memory in Breast Cancer Patients Compared to Controls: An fMRI Study

Introduction: Cognitive deficits are a side-effect of chemotherapy, however pre-treatment research is limited. This study examines neurofunctional differences during working memory between breast cancer (BC) patients and controls, prior to chemotherapy. Methods: Early stage BC females (23), scanned after surgery but before chemotherapy, were individually matched to non-cancer controls. Participants underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while performing a Visuospatial N-back task and data was analyzed by multiple group comparisons. fMRI task performance, neuropsychological tests, hospital records, and salivary biomarkers were also collected. Results: There were no significant group differences on neuropsychological tests, estrogen, or cortisol. Patients made significantly fewer commission errors but had less overall correct responses and were slower than controls during the task. Significant group differences were observed for the fMRI data, yet results depended on the type of analysis. BC patients presented with increased activations during working memory compared to controls in areas such as the inferior frontal gyrus, insula, thalamus, and midbrain. Individual group regressions revealed a reverse relationship between brain activity and commission errors. Conclusion: This is the first fMRI investigation to reveal neurophysiological differences during visuospatial working memory between BC patients pre-chemotherapy and controls. These results also increase the knowledge about the effects of BC and related factors on the working memory network. Significance: This highlights the need to better understand the pre-chemotherapy BC patient and the effects of associated confounding variables.
Evaluating the accuracy of data collection on mobile phones: A study of forms, SMS, and voice

While mobile phones have found broad application in reporting health, financial, and environmental data, there has been little study of the possible errors incurred during mobile data collection. This paper provides the first (to our knowledge) quantitative evaluation of data entry accuracy on mobile phones in a resource-poor setting. Via a study of 13 users in Gujarat, India, we evaluated three user interfaces: 1) electronic forms, containing numeric fields and multiple-choice menus, 2) SMS, where users enter delimited text messages according to printed cue cards, and 3) voice, where users call an operator and dictate the data in real-time. Our results indicate error rates (per datum entered) of 4.2% for electronic forms, 4.8% for SMS, and 0.45% for voice. These results caused us to migrate our own initiative (a tuberculosis treatment program in rural India) from electronic forms to voice, in order to avoid errors on critical health data. While our study has some limitations, including varied backgrounds and training of participants, it suggests that some care is needed in deploying electronic interfaces in resource-poor settings. Further, it raises the possibility of using voice as a low-tech, high-accuracy, and cost-effective interface for mobile data collection.
Antagonistically driven finger design for the anthropomorphic DLR Hand Arm System

The DLR Hand Arm System is a highly dynamic and fully integrated mechatronic system which uses an anthropomorphic design. It exhibits impressive robustness by using a complete variable stiffness actuation paradigm. It aims at reaching the human archetype in most of its performances and its design. The methodology consists in understanding the human archetype on a functional basis rather than to copy it. However, the design is driven by two antipodal concepts: On one hand, the design has to be simple, robust, and easy to maintain. On the other hand it must be anthropomorphic in shape and size but also, more importantly, in functionality. The paper presents a finger design that combines a reduced diversity of parts with the need to build five kinematically different fingers. The fingers are protected against overload by allowing subluxation of the joints. The tendon routing allows for an antagonistic actuation and is optimized to minimize friction and wear. The resulting combination of the link design and the antagonistic actuation is shown to be robust against impacts as well as highly dynamic. They achieve the targeted maximum fingertip force of 30 N in stretched out configuration. The use of antagonistic drives enables to tackle problems of tendon over-stretching and slackening that commonly encounter in tendon driven mechanisms. Due to the enhanced capabilities and, in especial, its robustness, the application developers can focus on the use of innovative grasping and manipulation strategies instead of worrying about the integrity of a costly robotic systems. The possibility of storing energy in the elastic elements of the drive opens new opportunities to perform dynamics based actions (e.g. snapping fingers).
Data aggregation in capillary networks for machine-to-machine communications

As machine-to-machine applications using cellular systems become pervasive, it is an important concern that their deployment does not jeopardize the performance of the cellular systems. Support for a massive number of machines brings technical challenges affecting the performance of the random access channel and efficiency of radio resource allocation. Capillary networks are considered as an extensions to the cellular systems for providing large-scale connectivity. This paper proposes an aggregation scheme for capillary networks connected to the LTE network to improve their communication efficiency. A gateway, an intermediate unit between machines and the base station, aggregates packets from the machines during a predefined time, and then delivers them to the LTE network. In addition, this paper analyzes the trade-offs between random access interaction, resource allocation, and communication latency. Results reveals that accepting the extra latency for accumulating packets can significantly reduce the random access requests and the required resources for the data transmissions.
Dynamically Configured ll l l -opt Heuristics for Bus Scheduling

There are two types of operational cost involved, th ese are layover (idle time) and dead running (relocating the bus between locations without passenger, this includes leaving and returning to the depot). The objective i s to minimise the operational cost and the number of buses. Given the nature of the pr oblem it is almost always impossible to reduce the layover and dead running cost t o zero. The complexity of the problem quickly increases as the number of the depo ts and the types of vehicle increases.
Just the right amount: extracting modules from ontologies

The ability to extract meaningful fragments from an ontology is key for ontology re-use. We propose a definition of a module that guarantees to completely capture the meaning of a given set of terms, i.e., to include all axioms relevant to the meaning of these terms, and study the problem of extracting minimal modules. We show that the problem of determining whether a subset of an ontology is a module for a given vocabulary is undecidable even for rather restricted sub-languages of OWL DL. Hence we propose two "approximations", i.e., alternative definitions of modules for a vocabulary that still provide the above guarantee, but that are possibly too strict, and that may thus result in larger modules: the first approximation is semantic and can be computed using existing DL reasoners; the second is syntactic, and can be computed in polynomial time. Finally, we report on an empirical evaluation of our syntactic approximation which demonstrates that the modules we extract are surprisingly small.
The role of a University curriculum design in intercultural sensitivity of students

This 3-year research project is about an extend, to what the perceived intercultural orientation of the teaching style, group work and the environment determine the intercultural sensitivity of university graduates. This paper reports on the second round of data collection. A surprising finding is shown there is no significant change in the level of intercultural sensitivity or its five scales between the two samples. Doing correlation and regressions analysis it showed the research model as 10.1% of the variance in the intercultural sensitivity of students. Perceived intercultural orientation of the teaching style and intercultural orientation of the environment had a minor significant positive relationship with intercultural sensitivity, where intercultural orientation of the group work had no significant correlation with intercultural sensitivity. Based on these findings, we dare to assume that active mixing students in cross-cultural project groups does not necessarily lead to a stronger intercultural sensitivity. Future research should explore and test other antecedents of intercultural sensitivity that can be brought about by the university curriculum design.
Power Evokes Reluctance for Group-Relevant Advocacy Among Marginalized Groups

Marginalized groups face difficulties voicing their interests. They are perceived as more selfinterested, biased, and excessive for advocacy relative to majority groups. While such accusations are intimidating in their own right, powerful members of marginalized groups may be especially sensitive to reprisals in response to advocacy. The present research highlights the ironic role of power on group-relevant advocacy among marginalized groups; identity-based pressures dissuade advocacy because it is personally costly. An Internet study and one lab study examined the effect of high and low power primes on women’s self-reported and actual willingness for group-relevant advocacy. Data support my hypothesis that psychological power evokes reluctance for group-relevant advocacy among marginalized women. Powerful women (but not men) reported less advocacy willingness and avoided opportunities to pursue advocacy when it was relevant to their gender group. These findings speak to the impediment of social progress, considering power within the context of identity threats. This thesis is approved for recommendation to the Graduate Council.
Predictors of Quality of Life in Acromegaly: No Consensus on Biochemical Parameters

Background Quality of life (QoL) in patients with acromegaly is reduced irrespective of disease state. The contributions of multifactorial determinants of QoL in several disease stages are presently not well known. Objective To systematically review predictors of QoL in acromegalic patients. Methods Main databases were systematically searched using predefined search terms for potentially relevant articles up to January 2017. Inclusion criteria included separate acromegaly cohort, non-hereditary acromegaly, QoL as study parameter with clearly described method of measurement and quantitative results, N ≥ 10 patients, article in English and adult patients only. Data extraction was performed by two independent reviewers; studies were included using the PRISMA flow diagram. Results We identified 1,162 studies; 51 studies met the inclusion criteria: 31 cross-sectional observational studies [mean AcroQoL score 62.7 (range 46.6–87.0, n = 1,597)], 9 had a longitudinal component [mean baseline AcroQoL score 61.4 (range 54.3–69.0, n = 386)], and 15 were intervention studies [mean baseline AcroQoL score 58.6 (range 52.2–75.3, n = 521)]. Disease-activity reflected by biochemical control measures yielded mixed, and therefore inconclusive results with respect to their effect on QoL. Addition of pegvisomant to somatostatin analogs and start of lanreotide autogel resulted in improvement in QoL. Data from intervention studies on other treatment modalities were too limited to draw conclusions on the effects of these modalities on QoL. Interestingly, higher BMI and greater degree of depression showed consistently negative associations with QoL. Hypopituitarism was not significantly correlated with QoL in acromegaly. Conclusion At present, there is insufficient published data to support that biochemical control, or treatment of acromegaly in general, is associated with improved QoL. Studies with somatostatin receptor ligand treatment, i.e., particularly lanreotide autogel and pegvisomant have shown improved QoL, but consensus on the correlation with biochemical control is missing. Longitudinal studies investigating predictors in treatment-naive patients and their follow-up after therapeutic interventions are lacking but are urgently needed. Other factors, i.e., depression and obesity were identified from cross-sectional cohort studies as consistent factors associated with poor QoL. Perhaps treatment strategies of acromegaly patients should not only focus on normalizing biochemical markers but emphasize improvement of QoL by alternative interventions such as psychosocial or weight lowering interventions.