Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Counterfactual thinking: From what might have been to what may be.

Consideration of counterfactual alternatives to negative outcomes, particularly when the counterfactuals change those outcomes, has repeatedly been shown to intensify regret and judgments of blame. Two studies examined the influence of the relevance of the counterfactual to future behavior on Ss' judgments of regret and self-blame after a negative outcome. Results indicated that a dispositional tendency to consider the future consequences of current behavior can ameliorate the negative affect caused by thinking about how a negative outcome could have been avoided. Results also suggested that this amelioration is particularly likely to occur when Ss are induced to focus on the future
Mechanisms of Granule Membrane Recapture following Exocytosis in Intact Mast Cells*

Background: When vesicles undergo exocytosis, the vesicle membrane must be retrieved by endocytosis to maintain a constant cell surface area. Results: Exocytosis in intact mast cells is followed by endocytosis. Conclusion: Mechanisms of granule membrane recapture in intact mast cells include kiss-and-run and “compound endocytosis. ” Significance: Compound endocytosis may be a novel mechanism for efficiently compensating for the membrane excess caused by exocytosis. In secretory cells, several exocytosis-coupled forms of endocytosis have been proposed including clathrin-mediated endocytosis, kiss-and-run endocytosis, cavicapture, and bulk endocytosis. These forms of endocytosis can be induced under different conditions, but their detailed molecular mechanisms and functions are largely unknown. We studied exocytosis and endocytosis in mast cells with both perforated-patch and whole-cell configurations of the patch clamp technique using cell capacitance measurements in combination with amperometric serotonin detection. We found that intact mast cells exhibit an early endocytosis that follows exocytosis induced by compound 48/80. Direct observation of individual exocytic and endocytic events showed a higher percentage of capacitance flickers (27.3%) and off-steps (11.4%) in intact mast cells than in dialyzed cells (5.4% and 2.9%, respectively). Moreover, we observed a type of endocytosis of large pieces of membrane that were likely formed by cumulative fusion of several secretory granules with the cell membrane. We also identified “large-capacitance flickers” that occur after large endocytosis events. Pore conductance analysis indicated that these transient events may represent “compound cavicapture,” most likely due to the flickering of a dilated fusion pore. Using fluorescence imaging of individual exocytic and endocytic events we observed that granules can fuse to granules already fused with the plasma membrane, and then the membranes and dense cores of fused granules are internalized. Altogether, our results suggest that stimulated exocytosis in intact mast cells is followed by several forms of compensatory endocytosis, including kiss-and-run endocytosis and a mechanism for efficient retrieval of the compound membrane of several secretory granules through a single membrane fission event.
Chemopreventive Actions of Blond and Red-Fleshed Sweet Orange Juice on the Loucy Leukemia Cell Line.

BACKGROUND Red-fleshed sweet orange juice (ROJ) comes from a new variety of citrus cultivated in Brazil that contains high levels of β-carotene and lycopene, and similar amounts of hesperidin (HSP) and nutrients, equivalently to blond orange juice (BOJ). Such bioactive compounds are associated with chemopreventive actions in several cancer cell lines. The purpose of this study was to examine the cytotoxicity, cell cycle, apoptosis, and cytokine secretion after BOJ, ROJ, and HSP treatment of a novel T acute lymphoblastic leukemia cell line, Loucy. MATERIALS AND METHODS Loucy cells were incubated for 24-h with BOJ, ROJ, and HSP, and the viability was measured using trypan blue. Cell cycling and apoptosis were assessed by propidium iodide (PI) and annexin V-FITC/PI flow cytometry, respectively. Secretion of cytokines IL-1α, IL1-β, IL-2, IL-4, IL-6, IL-10, IL-17A, IFNγ, TNFα, TGFβ, MIPα, and MIPβ was determined by ELISA array. RESULTS BOJ and ROJ treatments promoted Loucy cell cytotoxicity. Additionally, BOJ induced cell cycle arrest in the G0/G1 phase, and decreased the cell accumulation in the G2/M. ROJ decreased only the G0/G1 fraction, while HSP did not change the cell cycle. BOJ led to apoptosis in a different fashion of ROJ, while the first treatment induced apoptosis by increase of late apoptosis and primary necrotic fractions, the second increased early and late apoptosis, and primary necrotic fraction compared to positive controls. HSP had no effect on apoptosis. IL-6 and IL-10 were abrogated by all treatments. CONCLUSIONS Taking together, these results suggest potential chemopreventive effects of BOJ and ROJ on Loucy cells.
Internal marketing, teacher job satisfaction, and effectiveness of central Taiwan primary schools

In this study the effect of internal marketing on the job satisfaction of primary school teachers and the effectiveness of primary schools was tested. I used structural equation modeling to examine the relationships among internal marketing, job satisfaction, and school effectiveness, and data were collected from 521 teachers in Central Taiwan primary schools. The results showed that both internal marketing and job satisfaction had a direct positive relationship with school effectiveness and job satisfaction had a partial mediating role in the association between internal marketing and school effectiveness. The research implications are that those in charge of primary schools need to emphasize internal marketing strategies and realize, and take into account, the effect of job satisfaction in the relationship between internal marketing strategies of schools and their effectiveness.
Estimating Phosphene Maps for Psychophysical Experiments used in Testing a Cortical Visual Prosthesis Device

Visual prosthesis devices are being developed to restore vision for those with blindness. Researchers working in the field of visual prosthesis are taking different approaches to develop a practical device. Some are targeting the retina for stimulation, whereas at least one group is targeting the optical nerve, and our laboratory is developing a system for the visual cortex. To estimate the kind of response they might expect from a typical user, researchers are conducting psychophysical experiments on normally-sighted persons. The device being developed in our laboratory is a first generation visual prosthesis system, designed to test the limits of artificial visual pattern recognition. Targeting the visual cortex area with our first generation device has limitations including limitations in lateral cortical surface area for electrode implantation, surgical difficulties and the lack of understanding as to how to use an artificial interface for communication with the visual cortex. Here, we discuss the uncertainties related to visotopic mapping of the lateral surface of the occipital lobe in humans.
IPA Analysis of Cervicovaginal Fluid from Precancerous Women Points to the Presence of Biomarkers for the Precancerous State of Cervical Carcinoma

Despite large gaps in our knowledge on the intracellular mechanism leading to cervical cancer, the pathways induced by oncogenic high-risk Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) and those finally causing cervical cancer are increasingly being unraveled. Assuming that precancerous tissue is recognized and lysed by the immune system—which is in many cases incomplete because of the counteraction by the HPV virus—we hypothesize that several intracellular factors, involved in induction and development of precancerous lesions and/or cervical cancer are being released into the cervicovaginal fluid (CVF). These factors can then be seen as markers for the precancerous state, and when they persist they are indicative for an increased risk for cervical carcinoma. In a previous study, we analyzed the proteomic profiles of six CVF samples from women with different stages of precancerous lesions and compared these with the CVF proteomes from healthy women. Here, we extend these observations by investigating these proteomes by Ingenuity Pathway Analysis (IPA). We show that proteins in CVF from precancerous women are clearly more involved in pathways that make up the ‘hallmarks of cancer’, as compared to CVF proteins from healthy persons. Moreover, after literature search, proteins classified by IPA in the ‘cancer’ category, were more correlated with cervical cancer when they originated from CVF from precancerous women. Many of these proteins formed a network with angiotensin II as central mediator. The search for ‘network biomarkers’, rather than single biomarkers, could drastically increase specificity, sensitivity and prognostic value of cervical cancer diagnosis, making use of an easy to handle fluid, the CVF.
Fitting behaviors to pedestrian simulations

In this paper we present a data-driven approach for fitting behaviors to simulated pedestrian crowds. Our method annotates agent trajectories, generated by any crowd simulator, with action-tags. The aggregate effect of animating the agents according to the tagged trajectories enhances the impression that the agents are interacting with one another and with the environment. In a preprocessing stage, the stimuli which motivated a person to perform an action, as observed in a crowd video, are encoded into examples. Using the examples, non-linear, action specific influence functions are encoded into two-dimensional maps which evaluate, for each action, the relative importance of a stimulus within a configuration. At run time, given an agents stimuli configuration, the importance of each stimulus is determined and compared to the examples. Thus, the probability of performing each action is approximated and an action-tag is chosen accordingly. We fit behaviors to pedestrian crowds, thereby enhancing their natural appearance.
Superconformal field theories for compact G 2 manifolds

We present the construction of exactly solvable superconformal field theories describing type-II string models compactified on compact G2 manifolds. These models are defined by anti-holomorphic quotients of the form (CY × S1)/2, where we realize the Calabi-Yau as a Gepner model. In the superconformal field theory the 2 acts as charge conjugation implying that the representation theory of a (2,4,6,8,10) algebra plays an important role in the construction of these models. Intriguingly, in all three examples we study, including the quintic, the massless spectrum in the 2 twisted sector of the superconformal field theory differs from what one expects from the supergravity computation. This discrepancy is explained by the presence of a discrete NS-NS background two-form flux in the Gepner model.
Discrete Distribution Estimation under Local Privacy

The collection and analysis of user data drives improvements in the app and web ecosystems, but comes with risks to privacy. This paper examines discrete distribution estimation under local privacy, a setting wherein service providers can learn the distribution of a categorical statistic of interest without collecting the underlying data. We present new mechanisms, including hashed K-ary Randomized Response (KRR), that empirically meet or exceed the utility of existing mechanisms at all privacy levels. New theoretical results demonstrate the order-optimality of KRR and the existing RAPPOR mechanism at different privacy regimes.
Similarity Search in Time Series Databases

In many application domains, data can be represented as a series of values (time series). Examples include stocks, seismic signals, audio and many more. Similarity search in time series databases is an important research direction. Several methods have been proposed in order to provide algorithms for efficient query processing in the case of static time series of fixed length. Research in this field has focused on the development of effective transformation techniques, the application of dimensionality reduction methods and the design of efficient indexing schemes. These tools enable the process of similarity queries in time series databases. In the case where time series are continuously updated with new values (streaming time series), the similarity problem becomes even more difficult to solve, since we must take into consideration the new values of the series. The dynamic nature of streaming time series make the methods proposed for the static case inappropriate. To attack the problem, significant research has been performed towards the development of effective and efficient methods for streaming time series processing. In this article, we introduce the most important issues concerning similarity search in static and streaming time series databases, presenting fundamental concepts and techniques that have been proposed by the research community.
Preferential Increases in Nucleus Accumbens Dopamine after Systemic Cocaine Administration Are Caused by Unique Characteristics of Dopamine Neurotransmission

In vivo voltammetry was used to investigate the preferential increase of extracellular dopamine in the nucleus accumbens relative to the caudate-putamen after systemic cocaine administration. In the first part of this study, cocaine (40 mg/kg, i.p.) was compared with two other blockers of dopamine uptake, nomifensine (10 mg/kg, i.p.) and 3β-(p-chlorophenyl)tropan-2β-carboxylic acidp-isothiocyanatophenylmethyl ester hydrochloride (RTI-76; 100 nmol, i.c.v.), to assess whether the inhibitory mechanism of cocaine differed in the two regions. All three drugs robustly increased electrically evoked levels of dopamine, and cocaine elevated dopamine signals to a greater extent in the nucleus accumbens. However, kinetic analysis of the evoked dopamine signals indicated that cocaine and nomifensine increased the Km for dopamine uptake whereas the dominant effect of RTI-76 was a decrease inVmax. Under the present in vivoconditions, therefore, cocaine is a competitive inhibitor of dopamine uptake in both the nucleus accumbens and caudate-putamen. Whether the preferential effect of cocaine was mediated by regional differences in the presynaptic control of extracellular DA that are described by rates for DA uptake and release was examined next by a correlation analysis. The lower rates for dopamine release and uptake measured in the nucleus accumbens were found to underlie the preferential increase in extracellular dopamine after cocaine. This relationship explains the paradox that cocaine more effectively increases accumbal dopamine despite identical effects on the dopamine transporter in the two regions. The mechanism proposed for the preferential actions of cocaine may also mediate the differential effects of psychostimulant in extrastriatal regions and other uptake inhibitors in the striatum.
A novel access control framework for secure pervasive computing

Pervasive computing technology as the next generation of mobile computing has new and specific characteristics such as very high dynamicity, enormous heterogeneity, pervasive access to services and information, context-awareness, invisibility, respecting user intents, and ubiquity which demarcate it from other previous network technologies. The new properties of pervasive computing make traditional security systems inefficient and often unusable for the technology. In the domain of access control as the most important part of security systems, modern frameworks and methods must be designed and implemented to meet requirements of the technology and to provide suitable security for the pervasive computing environments. In this paper, we propose an access control framework for pervasive computing environments that controls accesses in the environment based on context and user intents.
Social pairing and female mating fidelity predicted by restriction fragment length polymorphism similarity at the major histocompatibility complex in a songbird

Female birds often copulate outside the pair‐bond to produce broods of mixed paternity, but despite much recent attention the adaptive significance of this behaviour remains elusive. Although several studies support the idea that extra‐pair copulations (EPCs) allow females to obtain ‘good genes’ for their offspring, many others have found no relationship between female mating fidelity and traits likely to reflect male quality. A corollary to the good genes hypothesis proposes that females do use EPCs to increase the quality of young, but it is the interaction between maternal and paternal genomes — and not male quality per se — that is the target of female choice. We tested this ‘genetic compatibility’ hypothesis in a free‐living population of Savannah sparrows (Passerculus sandwichensis) by determining whether females mated nonrandomly with respect to the major histocompatibility complex (Mhc). During both the 1994 and 1995 breeding seasons, female yearlings (but not older birds) avoided pairing with Mhc‐similar males (P < 0.005). The Mhc similarity between mates also predicted the occurrence of extra‐pair young in first broods (P < 0.007) and covaried with estimates of genome‐wide levels of similarity derived from multilocus DNA fingerprinting profiles (P = 0.007). The overall genetic similarity between adults tended to predict female mating fidelity, but with less precision than their Mhc similarity (P = 0.09). In contrast, females appeared insensitive to the size, weight or age of males, none of which explained variation in female mating fidelity. Taken together, these results are consistent with the hypothesis that females sought complementary genes for their offspring and suggest either that the benefits of heterozygosity (at the Mhc) drive female mating patterns or that the avoidance of inbreeding is an ultimate cause of social and genetic mate choice in Savannah sparrows.
Using Wavelet Support Vector Machine for Classification of Hyperspectral Images

Support Vector Machine (SVM) is a machine learning algorithm, which has been used recently for classification of hyperspectral images. SVM uses various kernel functions like RBF and polynomial to map the data into higher dimensional space to improve data separability. New kernel functions are used in this paper to classify hyperspectral images which are based on wavelet functions as named Wavelet-kernels. The experimental results indicate that Wavelet-kernels provide better classification accuracy than previous kernels.
The Role of Personality and Group Factors in Explaining Prejudice

There has been renewed attention to personality as an explanation of prejudice. For example, Altemeyer (1988) argued that individual differences in authoritarianism should predict levels of prejudice. The personality approach focuses on individuals' psychology as individuals. In contrast, social identity theory and self-categorization theory explain prejudice in terms of collective psychology in interplay with the realities of intergroup relationships and social life. Based on this alternative analysis, there is unlikely to be a simple relationship between individual differences and prejudice. A study is reported (N = 97) that examined (a) whether authoritarianism predicts prejudice when people act in terms of the shared normative characteristics of their group memberships and (b) the context dependence of the relationship between authoritarianism and prejudice. The implications of the results for a broader understanding of prejudice are discussed.
Image tag completion and refinement by subspace clustering and matrix completion

Tag-based image retrieval (TBIR) has drawn much attention in recent years due to the explosive amount of digital images and crowdsourcing tags. However, the TBIR applications still suffer from the deficient and inaccurate tags provided by users. Inspired by the subspace clustering methods, we formulate the tag completion problem in a subspace clustering model which assumes that images are sampled from subspaces, and complete the tags using the state-of-the-art Low Rank Representation (LRR) method. And we propose a matrix completion algorithm to further refine the tags. Our empirical results on multiple benchmark datasets for image annotation show that the proposed algorithm outperforms state-of-the-art approaches when handling missing and noisy tags.
Lack of an Association between CYP11B2 C-344T Gene Polymorphism and Ischemic Stroke: A Meta-Analysis of 7,710 Subjects

Background The association between aldosterone synthase (CYP11B2) C-344T gene polymorphism and ischemic stroke remains controversial and ambiguous. To better explain the association between CYP11B2 polymorphism and ischemic stroke risk, a meta-analysis was performed. Methods Based on comprehensive searches of Medline, Embase, Web of Science, CNKI and CBM databases, we identified and abstracted outcome data from all articles to evaluate the association between CYP11B2 polymorphism and ischemic stroke. The pooled odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were performed in all genetic models. Fixed or random effects model was separately used depending on the heterogeneity between studies. Publication bias was tested by Begg's funnel plot and Egger's regression test. Results A total of 12 studies including 3,620 ischemic stroke cases and 4,090 controls were identified. There was no statistical evidence of association between CYP11B2 C-344T polymorphism and ischemic stroke in all genetic models (allelic model: OR = 1.19, 95% CI = 0.95–1.49; additive model: OR = 1.43, 95% CI = 0.91–2.27; dominant model: OR = 1.30, 95% CI = 0.89–1.89; and recessive model: OR = 1.24, 95% CI = 0.96–1.60). On subgroup analysis by ethnicity, similarly results were found in both Asians and non-Asians. For Asians, the combined ORs and 95% CIs were (allelic model: OR = 1.07, 95% CI = 0.87–1.32; additive model: OR = 1.15, 95% CI = 0.77–1.71; dominant model: OR = 1.13, 95% CI = 0.92–1.38; and recessive model: OR = 1.09, 95% CI = 0.84–1.40). For none-Asians, the combined ORs and 95% CIs were (allelic model: OR = 1.58, 95% CI = 0.90–2.76; additive model: OR = 2.37, 95% CI = 0.79–7.05; dominant model: OR = 1.79, 95% CI = 0.77–4.19; and recessive model: OR = 1.80, 95% CI = 0.96–3.36). Conclusion The present meta-analysis suggested that CYP11B2 C-344T polymorphism was unlikely contribute to ischemic stroke susceptibility.
Attention to Features Precedes Attention to Locations in Visual Search: Evidence from Electromagnetic Brain Responses in Humans

Single-unit recordings in macaque extrastriate cortex have shown that attentional selection of nonspatial features can operate in a location-independent manner. Here, we investigated analogous neural correlates at the neural population level in human observers by using simultaneous event-related potential (ERP) and event-related magnetic field (ERMF) recordings. The goals were to determine (1) whether task-relevant features are selected before attention is allocated to the location of the target, and (2) whether this selection reflects the locations of the relevant features. A visual search task was used in which the spatial distribution of nontarget items with attended feature values was varied independently of the location of the target. The presence of task-relevant features in a given location led to a change in ERP/ERMF activity beginning ∼140 msec after stimulus onset, with a neural origin in the ventral occipito-temporal cortex. This effect was independent of the location of the actual target. This effect was followed by lateralized activity reflecting the allocation of attention to the location of the target (the well known N2pc component), which began at ∼170 msec poststimulus. Current source localization indicated that the allocation of attention to the location of the target originated in more anterior regions of occipito-temporal cortex anterior than the feature-related effects. These findings suggest that target detection in visual search begins with the detection of task-relevant features, which then allows spatial attention to be allocated to the location of a likely target, which in turn allows the target to be positively identified.