Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Emergence of the Independent Self: Autobiographical Memory as a Mediator of False Belief Understanding and Sociocultural Motive Orientation in Cameroonian and German Preschoolers

Applying a preschooler version of an instrument measuring implicit motives (Operant Multimotive Test), the authors investigated the interrelations of autobiographical memory, theory of mind, and implicit motives in the preschool years. Four- to 6-year-old children from Bamenda (Cameroon, N = 30) and Osnabrück (Germany, N = 52) were tested using a location false belief task, and a second order task as measures for theory of mind and a version of Wang and Leichtman’s task on children’s narratives as a measure of autobiographical memory coded with the Cognitive Complexity Scoring Manual. Regression analyses for mediator effects while controlling for moderating effects of culture show that cognitive complexity of autobiographical memory mediates the relationship of mentalistic abilities and sociocultural orientation of implicit motivation. Results are discussed within the framework of the independent-interdependent construal of the self.
Online Learning of Noisy Data with Kernels

We study online learning when individual instances are corrupted by adversarially chosen random noise. We assume the noise distribution is unknown, and may change over time with no restriction other than having zero mean and bounded variance. Our technique relies on a family of unbiased estimators for non-linear functions, which may be of independent interest. We show that a variant of online gradient descent can learn functions in any dot-product (e.g., polynomial) or Gaussian kernel space with any analytic convex loss function. Our variant uses randomized estimates that need to query a random number of noisy copies of each instance, where with high probability this number is upper bounded by a constant. Allowing such multiple queries cannot be avoided: Indeed, we show that online learning is in general impossible when only one noisy copy of each instance can be accessed.
Three different types of elementary school students' school achievements, perceived social support, school attitudes and behavior-adjustment problems.

Abstract The aim of this research was two fold. First is to compare three different types of primary schools (i.e., boarding primary, bussing primary, and regular) students' behavior-adjustment problems and second is to investigate the environmental and psychological predictors of these students' school success. The sample of the study consisted of 438 students of whom 203 were females (M^sub age^ = 11.24) and 235 were males (M^sub age^ = 11.46), recruited from the primary and secondary levels of eight years of compulsory education. Results showed that especially the primary level boarding school students` total adjustment scores were lower (S (2, 425) = 2.93, p Key Words Elementary School, Boarding School, Bussing School, Behavior-Adjustment Problems, School Achievement. With the implementation of eight years of compulsory education law, families from rural areas or families living in poverty started preferring boarding or bussing elementary schools for their children. These children who are living away from their families for education are protected by the state. There are 299 boarding schools with approximately 142.788 students and 6337 bussing schools with approximately 698.061 students (MillI Egitim Bakanligi, 2005). Even though these schools have a big share in the education system; unfortunately, there are only few studies that have been focusing in these schools or the students. In these rare studies, findings revealed that boarding (Ari, 2000; Guven, 1995) and bussing school (Altunsaray, 1996) students are not happy with the conditions of their schools. They think that physical resources of these schools are insufficient and they feel anxious about their future. The literature reveals that children separated from their families to get education have insufficient social support sources and negative attitudes towards schools. All of these negative factors have an impact on students' school achievements and adjustments (Kuperminc, Leadbeater, & Blatt, 2001; Levitt, Guacci-Franco & Levitt, 1994; Marchand, Poulson, & Rothlisberg, 2001; Wentzel, 1997). One of the most important aims of these schools is to support the children coming from lower socio-economic levels and help them to get a qualified education. It has been found that children growing up in poverty have lower academic success (Dubow & Ippolita, 1994; Duncan, Brooks-Gunn, & Klebanov, 1994; Pungello, Kupersmidt, Burchinal, & Patterson, 1996). In this research, elementary school students who attend at boarding, bussing, or regular schools were compared with regard to their total adjustments and behavior problems. Predictors of school success were also investigated. More specifically, the following questions were answered. 1. Is there any difference among these schools in terms of student behavior-adjustment problems? …
Japanese Homes Inside Out

ABSTRACT In studies about the Euro-American home, the creation of domestic boundaries is commonly associated with the need for privacy grounded in the supposed opposition between “private” and “public,” “individual” and “society. ” The large number of physical barriers such as gates, fences, balconies, and barred windows that screen contemporary Japanese dwellings from the outside world might, therefore, lead one to conclude that the Japanese home is of an extremely private nature. Through an ethnographic investigation conducted over a one-year period in thirty homes in the Kansai region (Osaka, Kobe, Kyoto, Nara), this article will challenge this view. It argues, firstly, that the specificity of Japanese notions of “inside” and “outside,” referring to close and distant networks of spatial and social relationships, need to be acknowledged, and, secondly, that boundaries between spaces are always fluid and constantly transgressed. More generally, this study also aims to demonstrate the strengths of anthropological research that examines how spaces are actually lived in, as opposed to studies that focus on visual and spatial divisions and tend to gloss over the complexity of every day social life.
Electrical connectivity analysis of a MEMS micropackage

A 3-D modular micropackage has been designed using MEMS technology that can provide electrical connectivity among dies or devices of diverse technological origin, while providing excellent mechanical protection and thermal management. The MEMS modules can be vertically integrated using a microbus card and channel concept to provide the necessary electronic connectivity. This significantly reduces interconnection lengths and the related transmission line effects. In this paper an analysis of the electrical connectivity of the proposed microbus card and channel system is presented. A lumped parameter frequency variant model of the interconnection path has been derived. Both time and frequency domain analysis has been carried out to obtain pulse propagation properties and frequency response results. The analysis shows that excellent high-speed interconnectivity at frequencies up to 10 GHz can be achieved with the proposed microbus card and channel interconnection system.
An Information Processing Model of Salary Determination in a Contour of Suburban School Districts1

This research discusses a formal model of the wage determination process at the interorganizational level using concepts advanced by Dunlop and Ross. In particular, teachers’ salary increases within a contour of suburban school districts over a nine year period are explained using a computer model of the decision making process. Each district’s salary policy is represented by an explicitly formulated set of rules which processes input information, mainly salary comparisons, into a specified choice. The rules reflect a two stage decision process in which first a school board determines a range within which a choice can be made and then selects a specific point within the range. The model was constructed using protocol data obtained from school board members while they remade past decisions using the same information they had previously employed in the actual situation. From tests of the model it appears that much of the Dunlop-Ross framework is appropriate for the study of teachers’ salaries. Within this framework some theories peculiar to teachers’ salaries are developed.
Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor Induction of Muscle-Derived Stem Cells Enhances Vascular Phenotype While Preserving Myogenic Potential

Background Previous work by our group and other laboratories have revealed that muscle-derived stem cells (MDSCs) may contain both myogenic and endothelial progenitors, making MDSCs a promising option for skeletal muscle regeneration. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) induction on the vascular and myogenic potential of MDSCs. Methods Muscle-derived stem cells were isolated from 4- to 8-week-old C57BL/6J mice using a preplate technique and recombinant human VEGFa was used as the induction agent. Cellular proliferation and migration were assessed using serial imaging and wound healing assays, respectively. Myosin heavy chain staining was performed to assess MDSC myotube formation. Vascular potential of MDSCs was measured by expression of CD31 and in vitro capillary tube formation. Results Vascular endothelial growth factor stimulation led to a dose-dependent increase in MDSC proliferation (P < 0.05) and migration kinetics (P < 0.01). Control MDSCs had low levels of baseline expression of CD31, which was significantly upregulated by VEGF stimulation. Similarly, MDSCs demonstrated a basal capability for capillary tube formation, which was significantly increased after VEGF induction as evidenced by increased branches (5.91 ± 0.58 vs 9.23 ± 0.67, P < 0.01) and total tube length (11.73 ± 0.97 vs 18.62 ± 1.57 mm, P < 0.01). Additionally, the myogenic potential of MDSCs as measured by fusion index remained unchanged with increasing concentration of VEGF up to 250 ng/mL (P = 0.77). Conclusions Vascular endothelial growth factor induction enhances MDSC proliferation, migration, and endothelial phenotypes without negatively impacting myogenic potential. These results suggest that VEGF stimulation may improve vascularization of MDSC-based strategies for skeletal muscle regeneration.
A Cross-Varietal Comparison of Deaccenting and Given Information: Implications for International Intelligibility and Pronounciation Teaching

Previous research has established that old or given information is often deaccented. The assumption is that unimportant information ought to be weakened and attenuated in speech. Consequently, given information is often deaccented and new information is usually accented in most varieties of English. However, some nonnative varieties, such as Singapore English (SE) appear not to deaccent given information. The present article seeks to investigate the apparent absence of deaccenting in SE by attempting a cross-varietal comparison with British English (BE). The data comprise three main categories of given information: repeated lexical items, anaphoric reference, and sentences that cue deaccenting by inference. Results indicate that SE speakers showed no acoustic evidence of prosodically attenuating given information unlike their BE counterparts and that in the informational domain, SE does not appear to have a comparable prosodic means of signaling new and given information. Implications are given for the international intelligibility of nonnative varieties of English that do not distinguish between new and old information via differences in accent placement. This article will also discuss ramifications for pronunciation teaching.
Leadership in a network of communities: a phenomenographic study

Purpose – Canada's Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Research and Technology Initiative (CRTI) uses an operating model that is unusual in government. It is created to enable cross‐boundary capability and capacity building and learning. Some consider it a model for other federal science initiatives. The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of leadership – and its relationship to perceived effectiveness – in this complex network of counter‐terrorism communities, where parts of the network are functioning better than others. At a more academic level, it explores whether complexity theory can inform leadership theory.Design/methodology/approach – This qualitative, empirical study uses phenomenography and elements of ethnography as methodologies. Data are gathered through interviews and observation.Findings – CRTI personnel refer to their initiative as a counter‐terrorism network of communities. The leader of each community works – without positional authority – with participants from m.
Ways of seeing, ways of knowing: ways of teaching, ways of learning about teaching

L'A. presente une analyse de l'influence d'une des etudes de cas de Gudmundsdottir (S.) (« Knowledge Use among Experienced Teachers : Four case Studies of High School Teaching », Doctoral dissertation, School of Education, Standford University, 1988) sur son approche ethnomethodologique des points de vue, des rapports au savoir, des facons d'enseigner et de l'experience acquise de l'enseignant, et de l'influence exercee sur d'autres chercheurs
Xiao-Xu-Ming Decoction Protects against Blood-Brain Barrier Disruption and Neurological Injury Induced by Cerebral Ischemia and Reperfusion in Rats

Xiao-Xu-Ming decoction (XXMD) is an effective prescription in the treatment of ischemic stroke, but the mechanisms involved are not well known. In the present study, 120 male Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly divided into 5 groups: sham control (sham), ischemia and reperfusion (IR), and IR plus 15, 30, and 60 g/kg/day XXMD. The stroke model was induced by 90 min of middle cerebral artery occlusion followed by reperfusion. The brain lesion areas were evaluated by 2,3,5-triphenyltetrazolium chloride staining, and neurological deficits were observed at different time points after reperfusion. Blood-brain barrier (BBB) disruption was evaluated by assessing brain water content and Evans blue content. Pathological changes in BBB ultrastructure were observed with transmission electron microscopy. MMP-9, -2, and VEGF expression levels were quantitatively determined by western blotting and immunohistochemistry. We found that XXMD (60 g/kg/day) treatment reduced cerebral infarct area, improved behavioral function, and attenuated ultrastructure damage and permeability of BBB following ischemia and reperfusion. Moreover, XXMD downregulated the expression levels of MMP-9, -2, and VEGF. These findings indicate that XXMD alleviates BBB disruption and cerebral ischemic injury, which may be achieved by inhibiting the expression of MMP-9, -2, and VEGF.
Uncoupling the Functions of CALM in VAMP Sorting and Clathrin-Coated Pit Formation

CALM (clathrin assembly lymphoid myeloid leukemia protein) is a cargo-selective adaptor for the post-Golgi R-SNAREs VAMPs 2, 3, and 8, and it also regulates the size of clathrin-coated pits and vesicles at the plasma membrane. The present study has two objectives: to determine whether CALM can sort additional VAMPs, and to investigate whether VAMP sorting contributes to CALM-dependent vesicle size regulation. Using a flow cytometry-based endocytosis efficiency assay, we demonstrate that CALM is also able to sort VAMPs 4 and 7, even though they have sorting signals for other clathrin adaptors. CALM homologues are present in nearly every eukaryote, suggesting that the CALM family may have evolved as adaptors for retrieving all post-Golgi VAMPs from the plasma membrane. Using a knockdown/rescue system, we show that wild-type CALM restores normal VAMP sorting in CALM-depleted cells, but that two non-VAMP-binding mutants do not. However, when we assayed the effect of CALM depletion on coated pit morphology, using a fluorescence microscopy-based assay, we found that the two mutants were as effective as wild-type CALM. Thus, we can uncouple the sorting function of CALM from its structural role.
Using Multidimensional Career Decision Instruments to Assess Career Decidedness and Implementation.

Multidimensional measures of career indecision have been constructed to aid in the differential diagnosis of career problems. This study examined the relative efficacy of individual scale scores on the Career Factors Inventory (CFI) and two calculations of the Career Deciion Scale (CDS-A and CDS-B) in predicting career decidedness and career implementation. Results from separate simultaneous regression analyses indicated that different scales of the CFI and the CDS-B made unique contributions to the prediction of career decidedness and implementation. On the other hand, only one predominant scale emerged in the CDS-A regression analyses. Results supported the use of individual subscales to identify antecedents of career indecision.
Age-Related Changes in Human Skin by Confocal Laser Scanning Microscope

Cutaneous aging is a complex biological phenomenon affecting the different constituents of the skin. Two independent processes, clinical and biological, affect the skin during aging. The first is called “chronological aging” and the second one, “extrinsic aging” or “photoaging”, which is the result of out-door exposure (such as solar irradiation). In this study, we mainly investigated the features of “chronological aging”.
L2 speech learning in adulthood and phonological short-term memory

Abstract The aim of the present study is to extend research on individual differences in cognitive ability and second language acquisition by exploring the relationship between PSTM and L2 speech learning in advanced EFL learners. The participants (N=60) were a subset of a larger group of Catalan-Spanish bilingual EFL learners participating in 10 60-minute high-variability phonetic training sessions on the perception of the 11 British English monophthongs. Perceptual accuracy was assessed at pre- and post-test through categorization and discrimination tasks based on 5 monophthongal vowels (/i: ɪ æ ʌ ɑ:/). PSTM capacity measures were obtained at post-test using a SNWR task consisting of CVC Catalan nonwords on the basis of which participants were assigned to either low or high PSTM capacity groups The high PSTM group was found to obtain higher accuracy scores and greater perceptual accuracy gains than the low PSTM group. These results suggest that PSTM may play a role in L2 speech learning and may be involved in learners’ ability to successfully form phonetic categories for L2 sounds.
Chaotic Pattern Alternations Can Reproduce Properties of Dominance Durations in Multistable Perception

We propose a pulse neural network that exhibits chaotic pattern alternations among stored patterns as a model of multistable perception, which is reflected in phenomena such as binocular rivalry and perceptual ambiguity. When we regard the mixed state of patterns as a part of each pattern, the durations of the retrieved pattern obey unimodal distributions. We confirmed that no chaotic properties are observed in the time series of durations, consistent with the findings of previous psychological studies. Moreover, it is shown that our model also reproduces two properties of multistable perception that characterize the relationship between the contrast of inputs and the durations.
The Magnetocaloric Effect of Heusler Microwires in Low and High Magnetic Fields

We are dealing with the influence of Hopkinson effect on magnetocaloric effect in glass-coated Ni-Mn-In-Co microwires in the given contribution. We have shown that although the entropy change is smaller in low fields, the refrigerant capacity per unit of applied field is three times higher for low field (300 Oe) comparing to that of 30 kOe. This points to the fact that Hopkinson effect can be employed to increase the efficiency of magnetocaloric effect.
Hyper-Sharpening: A First Approach on SIM-GA Data

This paper aims at defining a new paradigm (hypersharpening) in remote sensing image fusion. In fact, due to the development of new instruments, thinking only in terms of pansharpening is reductive. Even though some expressions as hyperspectral (HS) pansharpening already exist, there is not a suitable definition when multispectral/hyperspectral data are used as source to extract spatial details. After defining the hypersharpening framework, we draw the readers' attention to its peculiar characteristics, by proposing and evaluating two hypersharpening methods. Experiments are carried out on the data produced by the updated version of SIM-GA imager, designed by Selex ES, which is composed by a panchromatic camera and two spectrometers in the VNIR and SWIR spectral ranges, respectively. Owing to the different resolution factors among panchromatic, VNIR and SWIR data sets, we can apply hypersharpening to fuse SWIR data to VNIR resolution. Comparisons of hypersharpening with “traditional” pansharpening show hypersharpening is more effective.
How Awareness of Possible Evidence Induces Forthcoming Counter‐Interrogation Strategies

Summary We propose that suspects' counter-interrogation strategies vary as a function of their perception of the interrogator's knowledge about the events in question. The present study investigates the verbal behavior of guilty and innocent suspects when they are aware that there may be incriminating evidence against them. Participants (N = 143) took part in either a simulated act of terrorism or a benign task. They were then interviewed about their activities. Participants were randomly assigned to receive no additional information or to be informed that an investigative team may have collected evidence from surveillance cameras. Results suggest that when alerted to possible evidence against them, guilty suspects adopt either extremely withholding or extremely forthcoming verbal strategies. Theoretical implications of these results are discussed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Phenomenological Incorporation of Nonlinear Dendritic Integration Using Integrate-and-Fire Neuronal Frameworks

It has been discovered recently in experiments that the dendritic integration of excitatory glutamatergic inputs and inhibitory GABAergic inputs in hippocampus CA1 pyramidal neurons obeys a simple arithmetic rule as , where , and are the respective voltage values of the summed somatic potential, the excitatory postsynaptic potential (EPSP) and the inhibitory postsynaptic potential measured at the time when the EPSP reaches its peak value. Moreover, the shunting coefficient in this rule only depends on the spatial location but not the amplitude of the excitatory or inhibitory input on the dendrite. In this work, we address the theoretical issue of how much the above dendritic integration rule can be accounted for using subthreshold membrane potential dynamics in the soma as characterized by the conductance-based integrate-and-fire (I&F) model. Then, we propose a simple I&F neuron model that incorporates the spatial dependence of the shunting coefficient by a phenomenological parametrization. Our analytical and numerical results show that this dendritic-integration-rule-based I&F (DIF) model is able to capture many experimental observations and it also yields predictions that can be used to verify the validity of the DIF model experimentally. In addition, the DIF model incorporates the dendritic integration effects dynamically and is applicable to more general situations than those in experiments in which excitatory and inhibitory inputs occur simultaneously in time. Finally, we generalize the DIF neuronal model to incorporate multiple inputs and obtain a similar dendritic integration rule that is consistent with the results obtained by using a realistic neuronal model with multiple compartments. This generalized DIF model can potentially be used to study network dynamics that may involve effects arising from dendritic integrations.