Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Mediofrontal event‐related potentials following observed actions reflect an action prediction error

Both execution and observation of erroneous actions have been shown to increase the activity of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) as reflected in characteristic event‐related potential (ERP) components labelled error‐related negativity (ERN) and observer error‐related negativity (oERN), respectively. Whereas these labels implicate a modulation of both components by response accuracy, recent findings suggest a more general involvement of the ACC in the detection of unexpected events. In previous studies, a lower frequency of erroneous as compared with correct observed actions resulted in lower expectation of erroneous actions. The present study investigates whether ERPs following observed actions are modulated by response accuracy or violation of expectation. Sixteen human subjects observed a virtual person whose actions in a game were expected or unexpected. Action expectation was independent of accuracy. In both conditions, subjects observed correct and incorrect actions equally often. Whereas ERPs were not modulated by accuracy, we found an enhanced amplitude of a negative frontocentral ERP component in the time window of the oERN for unexpected as compared with expected observed actions, which we suggest reflects an action prediction error. These results propose that the function of the ACC in performance monitoring depends less on accuracy of actions but rather on predictions and their violations. Future research will have to clarify whether the present ERP modulations revealed a feature of the oERN or whether they represent a distinct component.
Detection and characterization of extended-spectrum β-lactamases in Salmonella enterica strains of healthy food animals in Spain

Objectives: To carry out the characterization of the genes encoding extended-spectrum b-lactamases (ESBLs) and their genetic environments in four expanded-spectrum cephalosporin-resistant Salmonella enterica isolates (serovars: two Virchow, one Enteritidis, one Rissen) recovered during the monitoring programmes performed in Spain by the VAV Network from faecal samples of pigs, poultry and laying hens at the slaughterhouse level. Methods: The presence and characterization of ESBL genes as well as their genetic environments in the four S. enterica isolates were investigated by PCR and sequencing. The presence of other resistance genes was also analysed by PCR and sequencing. Results: Three avian S. enterica isolates (two Virchow and one Enteritidis) harboured the blaCTX-M-9 gene combined with blaTEM-1b. The blaCTX-M-9 gene was included in these three isolates in a class 1 integron with the following 5 0 ! 3 0 structure: integron 1 variable region (dfrA16-aadA2 gene cassettes)-qacED1sul1-orf513-blaCTX-M-9-orf3-like-orf1005. The sul2 gene was also detected in these three blaCTX-M-9containing isolates and tet(A) in one of them. The two serovar Virchow isolates showed an indistinguishable PFGE pattern, although they were recovered from different animal species (broiler and laying hen). A porcine ESBL-positive isolate (serovar Rissen) harboured the blaSHV-12 gene combined with blaTEM-1b. This blaSHV-12-containing isolate also harboured the tet(A), aadA and sul1 genes. Conclusions: The emergence of ESBL-producing S. enterica isolates among food animals is described for the first time in Spain, with those of the CTX-M group being the predominant ESBLs detected.
Genomic Breed Composition of Selection Signatures in Brangus Beef Cattle

Cattle breeding routinely uses crossbreeding between subspecies (Bos taurus taurus and Bos taurus indicus) to form composite breeds, such as Brangus. These composite breeds provide an opportunity to identify recent selection signatures formed in the new population and evaluate the genomic composition of these regions of the genome. Using high-density genotyping, we first identified runs of homozygosity (ROH) and calculated genomic inbreeding. Then, we evaluated the genomic composition of the regions identified as selected (selective sweeps) using a chromosome painting approach. The genomic inbreeding increased at approximately 1% per generation after composite breed formation, showing the need of inbreeding control even in composite breeds. Three selected regions in Brangus were also identified as Angus selection signatures. Two regions (chromosomes 14 and 21) were identified as signatures of selection in Brangus and both founder breeds. Five of the 10 homozygous regions in Brangus were predominantly Angus in origin (probability >80%), and the other five regions had a mixed origin but always with Brahman contributing less than 50%. Therefore, genetic events, such as drift, selection, and complementarity, are likely shaping the genetic composition of founder breeds in specific genomic regions. Such findings highlight a variety of opportunities to better control the selection process and explore heterosis and complementarity at the genomic level in composite breeds.
Logit and Tobit Model Analysis for Determinants of Common Bean Seed Replacement and Its Rate in Southern Ethiopia

The objective of this study was to identify determinants of haricot bean seed replacement and rate of its use in Boricha district of Southern Ethiopia. Data were collected from 162 randomly selected common bean farmers through multistage sampling techniques. Inferential statistics namely the Logit model and the Tobit model were used to identify determinants of seed replacement among respondents and the extent of replacement rate respectively. Among 162 farmers, 105 replaced certified seed of haricot bean at least once in the past three years whereas 57 farmers did not use certified seed in the same period but used home saved seeds. On average seed replacers change their seed stock 1.82 times every three years. The results revealed that, household size, livestock ownership, frequency of contact with extension agent, membership in social organizations, distance from formal certified seed and respondents’ opinion on affordability of certified seed price were positively and significantly influenced seed replacement. Negative but significant influence of household head age on seed replacement decision was found. The rate of replacement of certified seed was influenced positively by perception about seed price, haricot bean farming experience, cash income from farm, contact with development agent, livestock ownership, membership in social organizations, and distance from formal certified seed source while age of household head negatively influence replacement rate. Therefore, the findings suggest that seed replacement and its replacement rate should be improved by enhancing asset ownership, delivering input on-time, improving packaging volume based on farmers demand and providing extension service. Key w ords: Common bean farmers, Logit, Multistage, Seed replacement, Tobit
Structure of layer IV in the somatosensory neocortex of the rat: Description and comparison with the mouse

The cytoarchitecture of layer IV of SmI neocortex of the rat has been studied in sections parallel and perpendicular to layer IV. The neurons of layer IV are arranged into discrete multicellular units, called barrels, which we have previously described in both mouse and rat. Using the barrels as markers, it is possible to outline precisely a cytoarchitectonic field—the barrel field—which (1) is confined to SmI. (2) has a consistent appearance from hemisphere to hemisphere, and (3) contains at least 220 barrels. A special region of the barrel field has been identified—the posteromedial barrel subfield (PMBSF)—in which the barrels are arranged in five rows and are larger than elsewhere. However, in contrast to other barrels in the rat barrel field and to the barrels that make up the PMBSF in the mouse, the PMBSF barrels in the rat are filled with small neurons nearly throughout the thickness of layer IV.
Improving Offensive Performance through Opponent Modeling

Although in theory opponent modeling can be useful in any adversarial domain, in practice it is both difficult to do accurately and to use effectively to improve game play. In this paper, we present an approach for online opponent modeling and illustrate how it can be used to improve offensive performance in the Rush 2008 football game. In football, team behaviors have an observable spatio-temporal structure, defined by the relative physical positions of team members over time; we demonstrate that this structure can be exploited to recognize football plays at a very early stage of the play using a supervised learning method. Based on the teams’ play history, our system evaluates the competitive advantage of executing a play switch based on the potential of other plays to increase the yardage gained and the similarity of the candidate plays to the current play. In this paper, we investigate two types of play switches: 1) whole team and 2) subgroup switching. Both types of play switches improve offensive performance, but by only modifying the behavior of a key subgroup of offensive players, we improve on the yardage gained.
GSK-3β suppresses HCC cell dissociation in vitro by upregulating epithelial junction proteins and inhibiting Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway

Glycogen synthase kinase-3β (GSK-3β) is required in the expression of epithelial junction proteins. It was found downregulated in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) tissues. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of GSK-3β in modulating the metastatic behaviors of human HCC cell lines in vitro. In this study, the expression level of GSK-3β was measured in 4 human HCC cell lines, and the small interfering RNA (siRNA) vectors against or plasmids encoding GSK-3β were used to evaluate the responses of target cells to the knockdown or overexpression of this kinase, respectively. Our results showed that GSK-3β expression was significantly lower in human HCC cell lines with high metastatic potential than that in HCC cell lines without metastatic characteristics or in a normal human liver cell line. The knockdown of GSK-3β by siRNA led to a decreased expression of the epithelial junction molecules (ZO-1, E-cadherin) and an increase in the expression of a mesenchymal cell marker (α-SMA) and a gene transcription factor (β-catenin), resulting in enhanced tumor cell dissemination. In contrast, gain-of-function studies revealed that ectopic expression of GSK-3β reduced invasive and migratory abilities of HCC cells accompanied by decreased HCC cell proliferation and induced apoptosis. More importantly, downregulation of GSK-3β led to an increase in the expression and accumulation of β-catenin in the nuclei, promoting gene transcription. In conclusion, GSK-3β might play a vital role in suppressing HCC dissociation by preventing the disassembly of cancer cell epithelial junctional complex via the GSK-3β/β-catenin pathway.
A new multi-class SVM based on a uniform convergence result

We introduce a support vector machine devoted to the approximation of multi-class discriminant functions. Its training procedure consists in minimizing an expression of the guaranteed risk. This bound is significantly tighter than the former ones, which should make the implementation of the structural risk minimization inductive principle in the context of multi-class discrimination better grounded.
Improving Transgender Policy for a More Equitable Workplace

Sex and gender categories have become more fluid in recent years. With evolving understandings of sexual orientation and gender identity, public administrators are confronted with questions of how to craft policy and make decisions based on new conceptions of sex and gender for transgender employees. Policy and practice is especially challenging in the workplace where sex and gender encompass both personal and professional dimensions. Within the public sector, the federal government is recognized as a leader on these issues, and this work examines federal transgender policy to answer the following questions: 1) how are federal agencies addressing transgender issues in the workplace through formal policy? and 2) what can be done to improve future transgender policy? To gain a better understanding of what constitutes an effective transgender workplace policy, we conducted a qualitative content analysis of nine transgender plans from the following federal agencies: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Internal Revenue Service, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, United States Office of Special Counsel, United States Department of Interior, United States Department of Labor, United States Environmental Protection Agency, and United States Office of Personnel Management. Our analysis includes the identification of major themes within the nine policy documents. From this analysis, we propose best practices and future policy directions, as well as suggest ways of expanding the limited scholarship on transgender issues in the public sector.
The Scale for Emotional Blunting in Patients with Frontotemporal Dementia

Emotional blunting may underlie many of the behavioral features of frontotemporal dementia (FTD). The Scale for Emotional Blunting (SEB) was evaluated in 12 patients with early FTD, 12 patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD), and 12 normal controls. There were overall group differences on the SEB, and the FTD patients had greater emotional blunting than the AD patients. The SEB had good inter-rater reliability and a sensitivity of 92%, and a specificity of 83.5% for FTD. These findings suggest that the SEB may be a good instrument for the early detection and quantification of emotional blunting in patient with FTD.
Local Governments ' efficiency : is there anything new after Troika ' s intervention in Portugal ?

The austerity policies being implemented in many European countries and in Portugal, particularly as a consequence of the bailout agreement signed between the Portuguese Government and the Troika, bring measures to increase performance and reduce costs. The analysis of Local Governments’ efficiency and the assessment of its determinants is highly relevant for policy purposes. The aim of this research is to evaluate the efficiency of the 278 mainland municipalities in Portugal with a two-stage procedure, combining DEA methods in a first phase with fractional response models in the second stage. The analysis is performed for 2010 and 2015, before and after the Troika’s intervention in Portugal. Results show a similar pattern for both years, in the two stages. Performing a Chow test, no structural change occurred from 2010 to 2015, suggesting that the reforms implemented in municipalities did not succeed.
Prostatic pathology reporting in the UK: development of a national external quality assurance scheme

Aims: To develop a baseline picture of prostatic pathology reporting in the UK, identify areas of particular difficulty and assess the feasibility of a national external quality assurance scheme based on prostatic biopsy specimens using the same format as the National Health Service breast pathology scheme, as recommended by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence.
The Effect of Forest Institution Connectedness, Incentive Participation Program, and Social Capital on Public Participation and Welfare as Mediators of Forest Management in Baluran National Park

The effect of forest institution connectedness, incentive participation program, and social capital on public participation and welfare as mediators of forest management were conducted in the forest conservation area of Baluran National Park, East Java, Indonesia. The problem facing this area is that the five buffer villages of Wonorejo, Sumber Waru, Sumber Anyar, Bajul Mati, and Watu Kebo exploit the forest? s resources for their own economic reasons. The purposes of this research are to analyze and explain: (1) the effect of the forest institutions connectedness on public participation; (2) how welfare mediates forest institutions connectedness to public participation; (3) the effect of incentive participation programs on public participation; (4) how welfare mediates the effect of incentive participation programs on public participation; (5) the social effect capital on public participation; (6) how welfare mediates social capital? s effect toward public participation; and (7) welfare? s effect on public participation. The survey method and questionnaires were used for a proportional random sampling of 170 respondents. They are 120 households that were members of the forestry community training center and 50 respondents from the staff of Baluran National Park. Validity and reliability testing of instruments and hypothesis were performed using WarpPLS 5.0 software. The results show: (1) forest institutions connectedness to public participation does not contribute positive significant effect; (2) the effect of forest institution that is related to public participation has been fully mediated by welfare; (3) incentive participation programs have a positive significant effect on public participation; (4) welfare partially mediates the effect of incentive participation programs on public participation; (5) social capital has a positive significant effect on public participation; (6) welfare mediates social capital? s effect on public participation; and (7) welfare has a positive significant effect toward optimizing public participation in forest conservation management in the Baluran National Park. Practical implications of this research are: (1) the contribution of nontimber forest products as a proportion of families? income is between 12.99% and 28.46%; and (2) based on the classification of public participation especially in four programs (participation in planning program, implementation, benefit-sharing, and evaluation and monitoring) that are low level at 47.1%, middle level at 33.5%, and high level at 19.4%.
Is ectopic expression caused by deregulatory mutations or due to gene‐regulation leaks with evolutionary potential?

It has long been thought that gene expression is tightly regulated in multicellular eukaryotes, so that expression profiles match functional profiles. This conception emerged from the assumption that gene activity is synonymous with gene function. This paradigm was first challenged by comparative protein electrophoresis studies showing extensive differences in expression patterns among related species. The paradigm is now being challenged by evolutionary transcriptomics using microarray technologies. Most gene expression profiles display features that lack any obvious functional significance. The so‐called “ectopic” expression refers to the expression of genes at times and locations where the target gene is not known to have a function. However, ectopic expression might be associated with genuine function even if this function is not essential or has yet to be ascertained. Alternatively, ectopic expression might come about as a superfluous by‐product of regulatory systems, which would call for a revision of prevailing ideas about the specificity of gene regulation. We herein review available evidence for ectopic expression and the hypotheses proposed for its origin and evolution. We propose that ectopic expression must be regarded as part of an integrated phenotypic whole. It seems likely that ectopic expression represents a leak in the evolution of regulatory systems, but one that is endowed with considerable evolutionary possibilities. BioEssays 27:592–601, 2005. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Synthesizing Expressive Music Through the Language of Conducting

This article presents several novel methods that have been developed to interpret and synthesize music to accompany conducting gestures. The central technology used in this project is the Conductor's Jacket, a sensor interface that gathers its wearer's gestures and physiology. A bank of software filters extracts numerous features from the sensor signals; these features then generate real-time expressive effects by shaping the note onsets, tempos, articulations, dynamics, and note lengths in a musical score. The result is a flexible, expressive, real-time musical response. This article features the Conductor's Jacket software system and describes in detail its architecture, algorithms, implementation issues, and resulting musical compositions.
"He doesn't ask for help because he is from China" - How people make sense of communication behaviour in global virtual teams

Global virtual teams (GVT) continue to struggle with the challenges of communication. In order to understand and study GVT actors’ behaviour in GVTs, it is imperative to understand what they attribute their own and others’ communication behaviour to. We examined a multinational corporation, with its headquarters in Europe and conducted 11 interviews with GVT actors. With our qualitative research we investigated how GVT members explain their own as well as others’ communication behaviour in GVT. This study enriches the existing GVT literature by providing information on how actors make sense of their own social world in a different way than they make sense of their co-workers’ social world. We show that there is a mismatch in the types of explanations given for the interviewee’s own communication behaviour and others’ communication behaviour. One example of the mismatch is that GVT actors tended to explain their own constructive communication behaviour, but placed greater emphasis on explaining other persons’ defensive and negative communication behaviour. Another example is that GVT actors explain others’ communication behaviour with the other persons’ cultural background, but not their own communication behaviour. Our study contributes to research on communication behaviour in GVTs.
Public Health Surveillance of Dental Pain via Twitter

On Twitter, people answer the question, “What are you doing right now? ” in no more than 140 characters. We investigated the content of Twitter posts meeting search criteria relating to dental pain. A set of 1000 tweets was randomly selected from 4859 tweets over 7 non-consecutive days. The content was coded using pre-established, non-mutually-exclusive categories, including the experience of dental pain, actions taken or contemplated in response to a toothache, impact on daily life, and advice sought from the Twitter community. After excluding ambiguous tweets, spam, and repeat users, we analyzed 772 tweets and calculated frequencies. Of the sample of 772 tweets, 83% (n = 640) were primarily categorized as a general statement of dental pain, 22% (n = 170) as an action taken or contemplated, and 15% (n = 112) as describing an impact on daily activities. Among the actions taken or contemplated, 44% (n = 74) reported seeing a dentist, 43% (n = 73) took an analgesic or antibiotic medication, and 14% (n = 24) actively sought advice from the Twitter community. Twitter users extensively share health information relating to dental pain, including actions taken to relieve pain and the impact of pain. This new medium may provide an opportunity for dental professionals to disseminate health information.