Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Vocabulary Size in Speech May Be an Early Indicator of Cognitive Impairment

Little is known about the relationship between mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and changes to language abilities. Here, we used the revised Hasegawa Dementia Scale (HDS-R) to identify suspected MCI in elderly individuals. We then analyzed written and spoken narratives to compare the language abilities between study participants with and without MCI in order to explore the relationship between cognitive and language abilities, and to identify a possible indicator for the early detection of MCI and dementia. We recruited 22 people aged 74 to 86 years (mean: 78.32 years; standard deviation: 3.36). The participants were requested to write and talk about one of the happiest events in their lives. Based on HDS-R scores, we divided the participants into 2 groups: the MCI Group comprised 8 participants with a score of 26 or lower, while the Healthy Group comprised 14 participants with a score of 27 or higher. The transcriptions of both written and spoken samples for each participant were used in the measurement of NLP-based language ability scores. Our analysis showed no significant differences in writing abilities between the 2 groups in any of the language ability scores. However, analysis of the spoken narrative showed that the MCI Group had a significantly larger vocabulary size. In addition, analysis of a metric that signified the gap in content between the spoken and written narratives also revealed a larger vocabulary size in the MCI Group. Individuals with early-stage MCI may be engaging in behavior to conceal their deteriorating cognition, thereby leading to a temporary increase in their active spoken vocabulary. These results indicate the possible detection of early stages of reduced cognition before dementia onset through the analysis of spoken narratives.
Knowledge and Appraisal in the Cognition-Emotion Relationship

Abstract Recently there has been considerable theoretical and empirical work attempting to identify specific cognitive dimensions that shape the emotional response. However, this work has almost universally neglected an important theoretical distinction between two types of cognition relevant to emotion: knowledge and appraisal. Knowledge has to do with the facts of an adaptational encounter, whereas appraisal defines the personal significance of an encounter for well-being. In the shaping of an emotion, knowledge is a distal variable which requires an additional process of appraisal to produce an emotion; appraisal is a proximal variable which directly influences whether an emotion will be generated, and if so, its kind and intensity. In this article we examine the distinctions between knowledge and appraisal that are relevant to the emotion process, and how the failure to consider them muddies theoretical and empirical work. We examine a number of putative appraisal dimensions prominent in current theor.
Good intentions, bad habits, and effects of forming implementation intentions on healthy eating

A field experiment demonstrated that forming implementation intentions was effective in changing complex everyday behavior, in this case establishing a healthier diet. Implementation intentions concerned a specific plan for when and howto act. The effect of implementation intentions was additive to the prediction of healthy eating by behavioral intentions to eat healthily. Implementation intentions were pitted against individual differences in counterintentional (unhealthy) habits. The effects of implementation intentions and counterintentional habits were independent, suggesting that implementation intentions did not break the negative influence of unhealthy habits, and yet managed to make those with unhealthy habits eat healthier in habit-unrelated respects. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Using Fuzzy Ontology to Improve Similarity Assessment: Method and Evaluation

Assessing semantic similarity is a fundamental requirement for many AI applications. Crisp ontology (CO) is one of the knowledge representation tools that can be used for this purpose. Thanks to the development of semantic web, CO‐based similarity assessment has become a popular approach in recent years. However, in the presence of vague information, CO cannot consider uncertainty of relations between concepts. On the other hand, fuzzy ontology (FO) can effectively process uncertainty of concepts and their relations. This paper aims at proposing an approach for assessing concept similarity based on FO. The proposed approach incorporates fuzzy relation composition in combination with an edge counting approach to assess the similarity. Accordingly, proposed measure relies on taxonomical features of an ontology in combination with statistical features of concepts. Furthermore, an evaluation approach for the FO‐based similarity measure named as FOSE is proposed. Considering social network data, proposed similarity measure is evaluated using FOSE. The evaluation results prove the dominance of proposed approach over its respective CO‐based measure.
Priority queue classes with priority update

A limitation in the design of the interface of C++ standard priority queues is addressed. The use of priority queues in Dijkstra’s shortest path search algorithm is used as an example. Priority queues are often implemented using heaps. There is a problem, as it may be necessary to change the priority of an element while it is in the queue, but ﬁnding the element from within a heap is costly. The problem may be solved by keeping track, in a variable that is outside the heap, of the position of the element in the heap. Unfortunately, this is impossible with the template class interface used by the C++ standard library priority queue. In this research, the problem is analysed in detail. Four interface designs and corresponding implementations are suggested. They are compared experimentally to each other and the C++ design.
Efferent projections of the subthalamic nucleus in the squirrel monkey as studied by the PHA‐L anterograde tracing method

The organization of the efferent connections of the subthalamic nucleus was studied in the squirrel monkey (Saimiri sciureus) by using the lectin Phaseolus vulgaris‐leucoagglutinin (PHA‐L) as an anterograde tracer. At the level of the basal forebrain, anterogradely labeled fibers and axon terminals were mostly found in the striatopallidal complex and the substantia innominata. In cases in which the PHA‐L injection sites were placed in the central or the lateral third of the subthalamic nuclus, numerous anterogradely labeled fibers were seen to arise from the injection loci and innervate massively the globus pallidus. At pallidal levels the fibers formed bands lying parallel and adjacent to the medullary laminae. The number and the complexity of the topographical organization of these bands varied with the size and the location of the PHA‐L injection site. When examined at a higher magnification, the bands of subthalamopallidal fibers appeared as rich plexuses of short axon collaterals with small bulbous enlargements that closely surrounded the cell bodies and primary dendrites of pallidal cells. In contrast, PHA‐L injection involving the medial tip of the subthalamic nucleus did not produce bandlike fiber patterns in the globus pallidus. Instead, the labeled fibers formed a diffuse plexus occupying the ventral part of the rostral pole of the globus pallidus as well as the subcommissural pallidal region. The substantia innominata contained a moderate number of labeled fibers and axon terminals following injection of PHA‐L in the medial tip of the subthalamic nucleus. A small to moderate number of anterogradely labeled fibers were seen in the putamen after all PHA‐L injections. These subthalamostriatal fibers were long, linear, and branched infrequently. At midbrain level the substantia nigra contained a significant number of anterogradely labeled fibers and axon terminals following PHA‐L injection in the subthalamic nucleus. The subthalamonigral fibers descended along the ventromedial part of the cerebral peduncle and swept laterally to reach their target. Most of these fibers formed small plexuses along the base of the pars reticulata, whereas a few others ascended along the cell columns of the pars compacta that impinged deeply within the pars reticulata. More caudally in the brainstem, a small number of fibers occurred in the area of the pedunculopontine nucleus and in the periaqueductal gray. These findings indicate that besides its well‐known connection with the pallidum, the subthalamic nucleus gives rise to widespread projections to other components of the basal ganglia in primates.
Decrease in Anogenital Distance among Male Infants with Prenatal Phthalate Exposure

Prenatal phthalate exposure impairs testicular function and shortens anogenital distance (AGD) in male rodents. We present data from the first study to examine AGD and other genital measurements in relation to prenatal phthalate exposure in humans. A standardized measure of AGD was obtained in 134 boys 2–36 months of age. AGD was significantly correlated with penile volume (R = 0.27, p = 0.001) and the proportion of boys with incomplete testicular descent (R = 0.20, p = 0.02). We defined the anogenital index (AGI) as AGD divided by weight at examination [AGI = AGD/weight (mm/kg)] and calculated the age-adjusted AGI by regression analysis. We examined nine phthalate monoester metabolites, measured in prenatal urine samples, as predictors of age-adjusted AGI in regression and categorical analyses that included all participants with prenatal urine samples (n = 85). Urinary concentrations of four phthalate metabolites [monoethyl phthalate (MEP), mono-n-butyl phthalate (MBP), monobenzyl phthalate (MBzP), and monoisobutyl phthalate (MiBP)] were inversely related to AGI. After adjusting for age at examination, p-values for regression coefficients ranged from 0.007 to 0.097. Comparing boys with prenatal MBP concentration in the highest quartile with those in the lowest quartile, the odds ratio for a shorter than expected AGI was 10.2 (95% confidence interval, 2.5 to 42.2). The corresponding odds ratios for MEP, MBzP, and MiBP were 4.7, 3.8, and 9.1, respectively (all p-values < 0.05). We defined a summary phthalate score to quantify joint exposure to these four phthalate metabolites. The age-adjusted AGI decreased significantly with increasing phthalate score (p-value for slope = 0.009). The associations between male genital development and phthalate exposure seen here are consistent with the phthalate-related syndrome of incomplete virilization that has been reported in prenatally exposed rodents. The median concentrations of phthalate metabolites that are associated with short AGI and incomplete testicular descent are below those found in one-quarter of the female population of the United States, based on a nationwide sample. These data support the hypothesis that prenatal phthalate exposure at environmental levels can adversely affect male reproductive development in humans.
Availability and consistency tradeoffs in the Echo distributed file system

The use of server replication to increase the availability of remote servers in a system of workstations is discussed. Tradeoffs between consistency of replication and caching versus availability are considered for the Echo distributed file system which uses two different replication techniques, one at the upper levels of the hierarchical name space, the name service, and another at the lower levels of the name space, the file volume service. The two replication techniques provide different guarantees of consistency between their replicas and, therefore, different levels of availability. Echo also caches data from the name service and file volume service in client machines (e.g. workstations), with the cache for each service having its own cache consistency guarantee that mimics the guarantee on the consistency of the replicas for that service. The replication and caching consistency guarantees provided by each service are appropriate for its intended use. <<ETX>>
Collective Justice Perceptions in Group-Oriented Cultures: Proposal of a New Construct

The concept of organizational justice has been basically conceptualized as an individual level concern. However, the concern of organizational justice has not only arisen from individual level issues, but also from group and/or collective level issues. Based on this multi-level perspective, we attempt to propose the concept of collective justice perceptions. Collective justice perception is more likely to be associated with group-oriented cultures (e.g., in East Asia) and are also expected to be a meaningful and useful construct in organizational justice research. Collective justice perceptions refer to a distinct group-level cognition about whether a group as a whole is treated fairly within the organization. This new construct is different in numerous ways from procedural justice climate which has been proposed by some researchers (e.g., Naumann and Bennett, 2000). Based on various conceptualization of collective justice perceptions, we offer several testable propositions regarding this concept. We also discuss measurement issues and implications for theory and practice.
A systematic review of measures of self-reported adherence to unsupervised home-based rehabilitation exercise programmes, and their psychometric properties

Background Adherence is an important factor contributing to the effectiveness of exercise-based rehabilitation. However, there appears to be a lack of reliable, validated measures to assess self-reported adherence to prescribed but unsupervised home-based rehabilitation exercises. Objectives A systematic review was conducted to establish what measures were available and to evaluate their psychometric properties. Data sources MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO CINAHL (June 2013) and the Cochrane library were searched (September 2013). Reference lists from articles meeting the inclusion criteria were checked to ensure all relevant papers were included. Study selection To be included articles had to be available in English; use a self-report measure of adherence in relation to a prescribed but unsupervised home-based exercise or physical rehabilitation programme; involve participants over the age of 18. All health conditions and clinical populations were included. Data extraction Descriptive data reported were collated on a data extraction sheet. The measures were evaluated in terms of eight psychometric quality criteria. Results 58 studies were included, reporting 61 different measures including 29 questionnaires, 29 logs, two visual analogue scales and one tally counter. Only two measures scored positively for one psychometric property (content validity). The majority of measures had no reported validity or reliability testing. Conclusions The results expose a gap in the literature for well-developed measures that capture self-reported adherence to prescribed but unsupervised home-based rehabilitation exercises.
Multilingual Lexicon Bootstrapping - Improving a Lexicon Induction System Using a Parallel Corpus

We address the task of improving the quality of lexicon bootstrapping, i.e., of expanding a semantic lexicon on a given corpus. A main problem of iterative bootstrapping techniques is the fact that lexicon quality degrades gradually as more and more false terms are added. We propose to exploit linguistic variation between languages to reduce this problem of semantic drift with a knowledge-lean and language-independent ensemble method. Our results on English and German show that lexicon bootstrapping benefits significantly from the multilingual symbiosis.
Drinking-related problems in the United States: description and trends, 1984-1990.

OBJECTIVE This study uses two national alcohol surveys to assess rates of drinking problems from 1984 to 1990, to examine any changes in reports of drinking problems within demographic subgroups, and to evaluate the role of alcohol use versus demographic variables in predicting drinking problems in the 1990 survey only. METHOD Data were obtained from two national alcohol surveys that utilized household probability samples within the 48 contiguous states in 1984 and 1990. Weights to adjust for design effects and nonresponse were applied to both samples of current drinkers. RESULTS No significant changes were found for reports of three or more dependence symptoms (6.7% in 1984, 7.6% in 1990) or two or more social consequences (10.9% in 1984, 12.8% in 1990). Significant increases in reports of two or more social consequences were found for younger people, never married individuals and respondents who were not employed. A significant increase in reports for three or more dependence symptoms was also found for the unemployed group. Based on a cross-sectional analysis of the 1990 survey only, alcohol use variables were significant predictors of drinking problems. With the exception of younger age, demographic characteristics did not significantly predict alcohol problems. CONCLUSIONS Although drinking problems are pervasive, they may not be sensitive to immediate changes in alcohol consumption. One explanation may be the changing social climate around drinking to which most drinkers have been, and are continuing to be, exposed.
Interferon production by leukocytes infiltrating the lungs of mice during primary influenza virus infection

Lung fluids and leukocytes were obtained from unprimed C3H mice by transpleural lavage at intervals after infection with influenza A/Hong Kong/68 virus and were tested for interferon activity. Lavage fluid interferon titers correlated directly with lung virus titers and with initial increases in leukocyte yields from infected lungs. In contrast to cultured lymph node cells from infected animals or leukocytes from lungs of uninfected mice, washed leukocytes obtained from the lungs of mice infected 2 to 6 days earlier produced interferon spontaneously in culture. The physiochemical, biological, and antigenic properties of both the interferon in lavage fluids and that produced by lung lavage leukocytes were similar and characteristics of alpha interferon. Fractionation studies indicated that macrophages and T lymphocytes were primarily responsible for the interferon produced in culture. The early presence and significant numbers of interferon-producing leukocytes in infected lungs suggests that these cells have an early role in defense against influenza virus infection.
Crossing the Implementation Line: The Mutual Constitution of Technology and Organizing Across Development and Use Activities

A growing number of studies suggest that technological change and organizational change must be closely linked at the microsocial level of analysis. This is because technologies become constitutive features of the organizing process when they are marshaled in communicative interaction and the organizing process becomes a constitutive feature of technologies when it shapes the form and function of newly developed artifacts. However, most extant research has explicitly linked technological change to activities surrounding a technology's development and organizational change to activities surrounding a technology's use. This paper suggests that when researchers view technological and organizational change as discontinuous events separated by the act of implementation they discredit the important role that organizations play in the development of technologies and that the material features of technologies play in the process of organizing. To overcome this empirically inaccurate tendency we must cross the artificial empirical and theoretical divide, which I term the implementation line, existing between our studies of technology development and use. In so doing, I outline a framework that treats technological and organizational change as mutually constitutive in nature. I conclude by suggesting that organizational communication researchers are uniquely positioned to study the mutual constitution of technology and organizing and suggest several avenues for investigating the interrelations between these phenomena.
Protosyntactic Devices in the Acquisition of Italian Free Morphology

This article concerns the production of schwa-like elements (Monosyllabic Place Holders, MPHs) before lexical items in early utterances of Italian children. These elements perform the function of protomorphemes, a role testified to by several facts, including the complementary distribution between them and free grammatical morphemes over time. These findings consistently support the idea that functional categories emerge very early and that virtually no "prefunctional" stage needs to be hypothesized for early combinatorial speech. The purpose of this article is twofold: (a) to show that MPHs do not stem from imitation but actually retain important grammatical properties of functional free morphemes, and {b) to show that in the development of free morphology certain syntactic (positional) properties, via the MPH strategy, emerge before full assessment of morphophonological paradigms take place. This implies that learning morphology cannot be conceived of solely as proceeding through a series of inferences .
COIM: An object‐process based method for analyzing architectures of complex, interconnected, large‐scale socio‐technical systems

There is growing evidence for the relevance of human behavioral factors in successful development of new products, processes, and services. The evidence is even clearer when the forces affecting the development and evolution of long‐lived, large, and open complex socio‐technical systems are examined. Methods that study the architecture of these systems can help scholars and practitioners to better understand, manage, and develop socio‐technical systems. We propose an approach and a method to address these needs that is grounded in the theory of systems architecture and builds on the strengths of Object Process Methodology (OPM) and the process for representing Complex Large‐scale Interconnected Open Socio‐technical (CLIOS) systems. We do so by integrating these methods into the CLIOS‐OPM Integrated Method (COIM). COIM is conducive to studying a system's architecture and its evolution, as it is enhanced by a set of qualitative methods for answering questions about the reasons (why) and process (how) of change in human‐made systems over time. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Advertising and Culture

Over the past 40 decades, spurred by McLuhan’s prediction and the growing importance of international marketing and communication in a shrinking world, studies on the role of advertising as it relates to culture have grown. Despite the increased interest on the subject, few, if any studies, have dealt with an African country. This article serves as an attempt to bridge that gap. The article used semiotic analysis to explore the cultural values conveyed in 500-plus advertisements in the Nigerian mass media. This semiotic analysis of the 500-plus advertisements determined that, excluding texts, the most common symbols found in Nigerian advertisements were photos of human beings and products. The study also found that Nigerian advertisements did not employ well-established Nigerian ethnic or national symbols. For example, most of the advertisements did not use or combine any of the major or minor Nigerian languages.
The BLK "21" Programme In Germany: A "Gestaltungskompetenz"-Based Model For Education For Sustainable Development.

This article aims to describe the German BLK ‘21’ Programme (State—Federal States Commission for Educational Planning and Research Promotion [BLK]) which supported the introduction of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) into schools from 1999 to 2004. Its political basis, conceptualisation, implementation and results are described. Furthermore, the article gives an overview of the growing international significance of ESD and its perspectives in Germany.