Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Role of Self-Compassion in Goal Pursuit and Well-Being Among University Freshmen

We examined the role of self-compassion in freshmen students' goal pursuit and well-being across the first year of university. Multilevel analyses of 1 week of daily diary assessment revealed that individuals high in self-compassion appeared to be less vulnerable to the affective consequences of thwarted goal progress. We also found that trait self-compassion moderated the relation of autonomous goal motivation to negative affect, such that autonomous motivation was especially related to low negative affect for students high in self-compassion. Longitudinally, we found that self-compassion was associated with positive changes in life satisfaction, identity development, and decreases in negative affectivity over the academic year. In summary, we suggest that self-compassion is an adaptive trait for new college students.
Neuromotor markers of risk for schizophrenia.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the possibility of using neuromotor deviation (NMD) as an individual-orientated, early life marker for increased risk for schizophrenia. METHOD Previous findings based on systematic examination of NMD are summarised concerning schizophrenia patients and individuals at heightened genetic risk for schizophrenia. RESULTS Significantly increased rates of NMD are found in patients with schizophrenia, both after and long before disease onset. Neuromotor deviation can be efficiently studied at all ages from infancy to adulthood, and is typically not in itself stigmatising. Neuromotor deviation may represent an unstable characteristic of individuals from infancy to middle-to-late childhood, possibly attaining greater stability thereafter. Neuromotor deviation may also be more stable over time in the high-risk offspring of parents with schizophrenia than in other children. Neuromotor deviation in childhood predicts subsequent serious mental disturbance in genetic high-risk children. The efficiency of NMD for predicting schizophrenia in unselected samples is unknown, as is the optimal age(s) for assessing NMD to predict schizophrenia in high-risk and normal-risk groups. Neuromotor deviation is also found in the well relatives of schizophrenia patients, individuals developing a broad range of mental and physical disorders, and mentally normal individuals in the general population. CONCLUSIONS Neuromotor deviation should definitely be included in batteries of methods for identifying individuals with notably heightened risk of schizophrenia. However, NMD is not pathognomonic for schizophrenia, and the investigation of NMD during childhood and adolescence must thus be used judiciously in order to avoid possible stigmatisation. Further research should be done concerning the specific forms and developmental timing of NMD as related to schizophrenia.
Router with centralized buffer for network-on-chip

Network-on-Chip (NoC) architectures are proposed as a possible solution to the wiring challenge. Both NoC performance and energy budget depend heavily on the routers' buffer resources. This paper introduces a centralized buffer structure, which dynamically allocates buffer resources according to network traffic conditions. This centralized buffer management scheme increases the buffer utilization and decreases the overall buffer use on an average of 50% in our case study analysis compared to a fixed buffer assignment strategy. The area overhead can be traded-off against the flexibility of on-demand buffer management.
A comparison of range test method-linear sampling method for microwave imaging

Range test method (RTM) is a qualitative imaging algorithm, which is based on analytic extensibility of the scattered electric field. Although detailed analysis of the RTM can be found in the mathematical literature, the method is not well-analyzed from an engineering perspective. In particular, the numerical performance of RTM is not compared with the other well-known shape reconstruction methods. In this direction, this paper present a numerical comparison of the RTM with the linear sampling method (LSM). To this aim, scattered electric fields for several configurations are produced synthetically via a 2D method of moments (MoM) code. After corrupting the scattered field data with a synthetic noise, the noisy fields are supplied to both LSM and RTM and binary shape reconstructions are obtained. Quality of the reconstruction results are evaluated with the well-known Jaccard index. Obtained reconstructions show that the RTM is also a promising qualitative approach for microwave imaging applications.
Dexmedetomidine decreases halothane anesthetic requirements in rats.

alpha 2-Adrenergic agonists, such as clonidine, reduce the dose requirements for halothane. Medetomidine is more selective as a full agonist for central alpha 2-adrenoceptors than clonidine and is available as both an active (d) and an inactive (l) isomer. We have used the d-isomer to probe the mediating mechanism for the MAC-sparing effect of this alpha 2-agonist in rats. The dose of halothane which rendered 50% of animals insensitive to a painful stimulus (halothane MAC) was determined in rats (150-200 g) before and after d- or l-medetomidine, 10, 30 and 100 micrograms/kg or saline i.p. To determine whether alpha 2-adrenoreceptors mediated the MAC-sparing effect of dexmedetomidine (d-medetomidine), cohorts of rats (n = 6 for each dose) were pretreated with idazoxan, 10 mg/kg i.p., the highly selective alpha 2-antagonist. To determine whether dexmedetomidine's MAC-reducing action was mediated in part through either opiate or adenosine receptors, groups of rats were pretreated with either naltrexone, 5 mg/kg i.p., an opiate antagonist; or 8-phenyltheophylline (8-PT), 2.5 mg/kg i.p., an A1 adenosine antagonist. To determine whether postsynaptic mechanisms mediate the anesthetic-sparing effect of dexmedetomidine, rats were depleted of central norepinephrine stores with 6-OHDA and 4 days later MAC was determined before and after each dose of dexmedetomidine. Dexmedetomidine dose-dependently decreased MAC for halothane such that at the highest dose, halothane could be discontinued for up to 30 min without eliciting a response to tail-clamping. Idazoxan completely prevented the MAC-reducing action of dexmedetomidine, while naltrexone and 8-PT were without effect. (ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
A pr 2 00 3 1 Cosmic Rays from PeV to ZeV , Stellar Evolution , Supernova Physics and Gamma Ray Bursts

The recent success of a proposal from some time ago to explain the spectrum of cosmic rays allows some strong conclusions to be made on the physics of supernovae: In the context of this specific proposal to explain the origin of cosmic rays, the mechanism for exploding supernovae of high mass has to be the one proposed by Bisnovatyi-Kogan more than 30 years ago, which was then based on a broader suggestion by Kardashev: A combination of the effects of rotation and magnetic fields explodes the star. Interestingly, this step then leads inevitably to some further suggestions, useful perhaps for the study of gamma ray bursts and the search of a bright standard candle in cosmology.
Understanding Process From Within: An Argument for ‘Withness’-Thinking

If our task is simply that of theorizing process, then there are many brilliant writers and thinkers in the recent past to turn to. But as I see it, these writers are mostly oriented toward helping us think about process ‘from the outside’, about processes that we merely observe as happening ‘over there’. But if we are to rethink appropriate styles of empirical research, then we need a different form of engaged, responsive thinking, acting, and talking, that allows us to affect the flow of processes from within our living involvement with them. Crucially, this kind of responsive understanding only becomes available to us in our relations with living forms when we enter into dialogically structured relations with them. It remains utterly unavailable to us as external observers. I will call this kind of thinking, ‘thinking-from-within’ or ‘withness-thinking’, to contrast it with the ‘aboutness-thinking’ that is more familiar to us. What we can gain in our understandings-from-within, is a subsidiary awareness (Polanyi) of certain ‘action guiding feelings’ that can play a role in giving us an anticipatory sense of at least the style or the grammar of what is to come next in the ongoing process in which we happen to be involved, feelings which are lost in descriptions ‘from the outside’.
Interactive Realistic Digital Avatars - Revisiting the Uncanny Valley

The 40-year-old Uncanny Valley theory is influential in the discussion surrounding acceptance of realistic graphical agents. This theory was formulated by observing robots. While it has been shown to be valid when observing digital characters, little has been studied about acceptance when people interact with avatars, rather than simply observe a recording. The emerging technology that will soon be able to create realistic avatars challenges the conventional view built on this theory, that affinity is a function of ‘appearance’, necessitating a reevaluation of the dimensions of the problem. We introduce a broader theoretical foundation with an additional dimension, namely interactivity. Studies that have validated the Uncanny Valley used still images or clips from existing media, but did not explore interactivity. In this study we suggest that interactivity operates on an independent, orthogonal dimension to ‘appearance’, and that interaction can ‘overcome the valley’ in affinity due to matching and common human non-verbal cues. We hypothesize that these cause the user to process the avatar differently. We contribute to the literature a new way to theorize the relationship between avatar realism and affinity, including both avatar appearance and interaction, and outline a research design to study this relationship.
Functional Locus of Intensity Effects in Choice Reaction Time Tasks

Long reaction times (RT) paradoxically occur with extremely loud auditory stimuli (Van der Molen & Keuss, 1979, 1981) or with ultrabright and large visual stimuli (Jaśkowski & Wlodarczyk, 2006) when the task requires a response choice. Van der Molen and Keuss (1981) hypothesized that this effect results from an arousal-driven elongation of response-selection processes. We tested this hypothesis using visual stimuli and chronopsychophysiological markers. The results showed that the latency of both early (P1 recorded at Oz) and late (P300) evoked potentials decreased monotonically with intensity. In contrast, the latency of stimulus-locked lateralized readiness potentials (LRP) abruptly increased for the most intense stimuli, thus mirroring the reaction time–intensity relationship. Response-locked LRPs revealed no dependency on intensity. These findings suggest that the processes responsible for the van der Molen-Keuss effect influence processing stages that are completed before the onset of LRP. The van de.
Protective Effects of Total Flavones of Elaeagnus rhamnoides (L.) A. Nelson against Vascular Endothelial Injury in Blood Stasis Model Rats

The aim was to evaluate the protective effects of total flavones of Elaeagnus rhamnoides (L.) A. Nelson (TFE) against vascular endothelial injury in blood stasis model rats and explore the potential mechanisms preliminarily. The model of blood stasis rat model with vascular endothelial injury was induced by subcutaneous injection of adrenaline combined with ice-water bath. Whole blood viscosity (WBV), histological examination, and prothrombin time (PT), activated partial thromboplastin time (APTT), and fibrinogen (FIB) were measured. Meanwhile, the levels of Thromboxane B2 (TXB2), 6-keto-PGF1α, von Willebrand factor (vWF), and thrombomodulin (TM) were detected. In addition, Quantitative Real-Time PCR (qPCR) was performed to identify PI3K, Erk2, Bcl-2, and caspase-3 gene expression. The results showed that TFE can relieve WBV, increase PT and APTT, and decrease FIB content obviously. Moreover, TFE might significantly downregulate the levels of TXB2, vWF, and TM in plasma and upregulate the level of 6-keto-PGF1α in plasma. Expressions of PI3K and Bcl-2 were increased and the expression of caspase-3 was decreased by TFE pretreatment in the rat model. Consequently, the study suggested that TFE may have the potential against vascular endothelial injury in blood stasis model rats induced by a high dose of adrenaline with ice-water bath.
Agencies and non-departmental public bodies

Abstract The emergence of Britain's ‘Next Steps’ agencies has spawned a new movement in theorizing about administrative organizations, and the practical example and the seeming theoretical excitement have influenced reformers in many other countries. But there is an older tradition of scholarship about administrative organizations that understands that many other sorts of deviant or ‘irregular’ public bodies have been in use for centuries in Britain and elsewhere. Moreover the executive agency model gets diluted as it travels away from Britain, and it then becomes more like some of those other forms. Some contributions to agencification theory are more accommodating than others about this. It is the contention of this article that many such resemblances do exist, and that all students of administrative organization would benefit if more effort could be devoted to searching for common ground between the executive agencies and non-departmental public bodies generally.
Energy optimization through traffic aggregation in wireless networks

Cellular networks can provide pervasive data access for smartphones, but also consume lots of energy, because the cellular interface has to stay in high power state for a long time (called long tail problem) after a data transmission. In this paper, we propose to reduce the tail energy by aggregating the data traffic of multiple nodes using their P2P interfaces. This traffic aggregation problem is formalized as finding the best task schedule to minimize energy. We first propose an A* search algorithm, which can reduce the search space for finding the optimal schedule offline, and then introduce an online traffic aggregation algorithm. We have implemented the online traffic aggregation algorithm on Android smartphones, and have built a small testbed. Trace-driven simulations and Experimental results show that our traffic aggregation algorithm can significantly reduce the energy and delay.
The Fifth edition of the Apa Publication Manual: Why its Statistics Recommendations are so Controversial

The fifth edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA) draws on recommendations for improving statistical practices made by the APA Task Force on Statistical Inference (TFSI). The manual now acknowledges the controversy over null hypothesis significance testing (NHST) and includes both a stronger recommendation to report effect sizes and a new recommendation to report confidence intervals. Drawing on interviews with some critics and other interested parties, the present review identifies a number of deficiencies in the new manual. These include lack of follow-through with appropriate explanations and examples of how to report statistics that are now recommended. At this stage, the discipline would be well served by a response to these criticisms and a debate over needed modifications.
Does Aerobic Exercise Decrease Brain Activation

In the present study, participants were randomly assigned to an exercise or a nonexercise group to measure brain activation (spontaneous EEG activity), affect, and cognitive functioning before and after a 15-min treatment period. Exercisers (a) sat quietly for 5 min, (b) exercised for 15 min, (c) recovered for 5 min, and (d) completed a 15-min vigilance task. Nonexercisers did not exercise. There was a significant (a) Condition × Band × Time interaction for EEG activity, (b) Condition × Time interaction for Activation-Deactivation Adjective Checklist (AD ACL) scores, and (c) Condition × Time interaction for reaction times (RTs). Post hoc tests showed (a) no significant group effects at the baseline and 15-min vigilance periods, and (b) significant group effects at the postexercise and 5-min vigilance periods. Exercisers had lower levels of brain activation (i.e., more theta and alpha activity and less beta activity), higher AD ACL scores, and slower RTs than nonexercisers during these periods.
Generic immunosuppression in transplantation: current evidence and controversial issues

The overall success of organ transplantation in the 21st century has been predicated, in part, on the use of newer, more potent, and selective immunosuppressive agents. However, the high cost of lifelong immunosuppression represents a financial burden for many patients. In the past 15 years, regulatory agencies in Europe and America have approved several generic immunosuppressants. One concern is whether the conversion between innovator and generic immunosuppressants will prove to be problematic. This manuscript aims to compare and contrast the bioequivalence requirements among regulatory authorities in the USA, Europe, and Canada, evaluate published studies of generic immunosuppressants in transplant recipients, summarize consensus statements made by transplant organizations and discuss how to engage patients in discussion regarding the choice between innovator and generic immunosuppressants.
Identification of DRG-1 As a Melanoma-Associated Antigen Recognized by CD4+ Th1 Cells

Immunotherapy has emerged as a promising strategy for the treatment of metastatic melanoma. Clinical studies have demonstrated the feasibility of cancer immunotherapy using tumor antigens recognized by CD8+ T cells. However, the overall immune responses induced by these antigens are too weak and transient to induce tumor regression in the majority of patients who received immunization. A growing body of evidence suggests that CD4+ T helper (Th) cells play an important role in antitumor immunity. Therefore, the identification of MHC class II-restricted tumor antigens capable of stimulating CD4+ T cells may provide opportunities for developing effective cancer vaccines. To this end, we describe the identification of developmentally regulated GTP-binding protein 1 (DRG-1) as a melanoma-associated antigen recognized by HLA-DR11-restricted CD4+ Th1 cells. Epitope mapping analysis showed that the DRG1248-268 epitope of DRG-1 was required for T cell recognition. Reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction revealed that DRG-1 was highly expressed in melanoma cell lines but not in normal tissues. DRG-1 knockdown by lentiviral-based shRNA suppressed melanoma cell proliferation and soft agar colony formation. Taken together, these data suggest that DRG-1 plays an important role in melanoma cell growth and transformation, indicating that DRG1 may represent a novel target for CD4+ T cell-mediated immunotherapy in melanoma.
The predictors of internet addiction behaviours for Taiwanese elementary school students

Although there has been considerable research which has explored factors related to internet addiction, few studies have investigated elementary school students’ involvement in this behaviour pattern. Participants in the present study were 1045 children in grades 3 to 6 from elementary schools in Taiwan. Students completed surveys on their use of the internet, and an internet addiction scale as well as a depression indicator. Results showed that children’s time and frequency of using the internet, gender, and depression accounted for 39.2% of the variance in internet addiction. However, when a narrower criterion was applied to children’s internet addiction, only 10.9% of students fulfilled this criterion. For this group, grade and conduct-social problems together accounted for 17.1% of the variance in internet addiction. Implications for prevention and intervention are discussed.
Outer Retinal Tubulation: A Case Series.

PURPOSE The advent of spectral domain optical coherence tomography has led to superb imaging capabilities in addition to enhanced visualization of the retinal layers. Such advancements have led to the identification of a variety of new retinal conditions, including outer retinal tubulations (ORTs). ORTs are ovoid hyporeflective spaces located in the outer retina. The pathogenesis is unclear but seems to involve sublethal injury to the photoreceptors leading to a compensatory reorganization of the photoreceptor layer with the neighboring ellipsoid zone resulting in a hyperreflective border surrounding a central lumen. Most ORTs have been linked to wet age-related macular degeneration; however, these peculiar structures are now seen in a myriad of retinal disorders. CASE REPORTS Our cases will highlight the wide variety of clinical presentations associated with outer retinal tubulations. The clinical presentations include two cases of wet age-related macular degeneration, a case of presumed ocular histoplasmosis syndrome, a case of central areolar choroidal dystrophy, and a case of pathological myopia. CONCLUSIONS By correctly differentiating outer retinal tubulations from other masqueraders, unnecessary referrals and interventions can be minimized. Understanding the various disease entities associated with outer retinal tubulation could give further insight into the mechanism and formation of these structures.
Executive coaching: An outcome study.

While executive coaching continues to mushroom as a practice area, there has been little outcome research. This articles presents the results of a study that explored factors influencing the choice of a coach, executives’ reactions to working with a coach, the pros and cons of both internal and external coaches, the focus of executive coaching engagements, indications of successful coaching engagements, coaching tools executives favored, and the sustainability of coached executives’ learning and behavior change. The author also raises a question about which executives are most likely to benefit from this development resource and presents a typology for gauging this issue. ________________________________________________________________ Karol M. Wasylyshyn, Psy.D. , is president of Leadership Development Forum, a management consulting firm specializing in applications of psychology in business. She is a member of the coaching faculty in The Wharton School’s Advanced Management Program, an adjunct professor of clinical psychology at Widener University and was appointed to the University’s Board of Trustees in 1995. Since 1982, Wasylyshyn has profiled and coached hundreds of senior executives from every global sector. She is also in clinical practice. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Karol M. Wasylyshyn, 431 Chestnut Street, Pennsylvania 19106 or kwasylyshyn@erols.com.
Antimalarial drug discovery: old and new approaches

SUMMARY New drugs against malaria are greatly needed. Many approaches to antimalarial drug discovery are available. These approaches must take into account specific concerns, in particular the requirement for very inexpensive and simple to use new therapies and the need to limit the cost of drug discovery. Among important efforts that are currently ongoing are the optimization of therapy with available drugs, including the use of combination therapy, the development of analogs of existing agents, the discovery of natural products, the use of compounds that were originally developed against other diseases, the evaluation of drug resistance reversers, and the consideration of new chemotherapeutic targets. The last category benefits from recent advances in malaria research technologies and genomics and is most likely to identify new classes of drugs. A number of new antimalarial therapies will likely be needed over the coming years, so it is important to pursue multiple strategies for drug discovery.