Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A comparison of presentation levels to maximize word recognition scores.

BACKGROUND While testing suprathreshold word recognition at multiple levels is considered best practice, studies on practice patterns do not suggest that this is common practice. Audiologists often test at a presentation level intended to maximize recognition scores, but methods for selecting this level are not well established for a wide range of hearing losses. PURPOSE To determine the presentation level methods that resulted in maximum suprathreshold phoneme-recognition scores while avoiding loudness discomfort. RESEARCH DESIGN Performance-intensity functions were obtained for 40 participants with sensorineural hearing loss using the Computer-Assisted Speech Perception Assessment. Participants had either gradually sloping (mild, moderate, moderately severe/severe) or steeply sloping losses. Performance-intensity functions were obtained at presentation levels ranging from 10 dB above the SRT to 5 dB below the UCL (uncomfortable level). In addition, categorical loudness ratings were obtained across a range of intensities using speech stimuli. Scores obtained at UCL - 5 dB (maximum level below loudness discomfort) were compared to four alternative presentation-level methods. The alternative presentation-level methods included sensation level (SL; 2 kHz reference, SRT reference), a fixed-level (95 dB SPL) method, and the most comfortable loudness level (MCL). For the SL methods, scores used in the analysis were selected separately for the SRT and 2 kHz references based on several criteria. The general goal was to choose levels that represented asymptotic performance while avoiding loudness discomfort. The selection of SLs varied across the range of hearing losses. RESULTS Scores obtained using the different presentation-level methods were compared to scores obtained using UCL - 5 dB. For the mild hearing loss group, the mean phoneme scores were similar for all presentation levels. For the moderately severe/severe group, the highest mean score was obtained using UCL - 5 dB. For the moderate and steeply sloping groups, the mean scores obtained using 2 kHz SL were equivalent to UCL - 5 dB, whereas scores obtained using the SRT SL were significantly lower than those obtained using UCL - 5 dB. The mean scores corresponding to MCL and 95 dB SPL were significantly lower than scores for UCL - 5 dB for the moderate and the moderately severe/severe group. CONCLUSIONS For participants with mild to moderate gradually sloping losses and for those with steeply sloping losses, the UCL - 5 dB and the 2 kHz SL methods resulted in the highest scores without exceeding listeners' UCLs. For participants with moderately severe/severe losses, the UCL - 5 dB method resulted in the highest phoneme recognition scores.
Neither safety nor justice: the UK government response to domestic violence against immigrant women

Based on research findings, this article examines the extent to which Labour government's policy towards immigrant women experiencing domestic violence responds to their needs. The research itself was conducted in 2007 and included qualitative interviews with 30 South Asian women with no recourse to public funds due to their status as recent marriage migrants, who were living in the North West and Yorkshire regions of England. The working of a key concession within the Immigration Rules (2002) which theoretically offers an opportunity of exit to immigrant women facing domestic violence – the Domestic Violence Rule – is examined in light of the reality of South Asian women's experiences, including the nature of domestic violence they face, their patterns of help‐seeking, pathways out of the abusive relationship and their experience of service provision. The central thesis of this paper is that the effectiveness of this legislation is severely hampered by a failure to take into account the multiple dimensions of disadvantage that recent marriage migrants face.
The comparable size and overlapping nature of upper limb distal and proximal muscle representations in the human motor cortex

The purpose of this study was to determine the relative size and location of proximal and distal upper limb muscle representations in the human motor cortex. Motor‐evoked potentials (MEPs) evoked by transcranial magnetic stimulation were recorded in the proximal muscle anterior deltoid (AD) and in the distal muscles extensor carpi radialis (ECR) and first dorsal interosseus (1DI). The coil was moved in steps of 1 cm along a grid drawn on a tight‐fitting polyester cap placed on the subject's head. At each location, four stimuli were delivered at 1.2 times the active motor threshold (AMT), and MEPs averaged in real‐time. The peak‐to‐peak amplitude of each muscle's mean MEP was measured at each stimulation site. The area of a muscle's representation was measured by a pixel‐counting algorithm. The optimal point of each muscle's areal representation, which corresponds to the locus near which the largest MEPs are obtained, was determined by fitting a 3D Lorentzian function to the data points. The optimal point of distal muscles tended to be situated more laterally along the motor strip than that of proximal muscles. However, there was no statistically significant difference between the size of the areal representations and they overlapped considerably. Additionally, in another five subjects, using a small 45‐mm coil placed in a hyper‐focal orientation, maps were obtained at a stimulus intensity of 1.1–1.15 times the AMT of the muscle with the lowest threshold, usually the 1DI. Even in this very stringent condition, the mapped representations of the AD, ECR and 1DI overlapped, notwithstanding that sharp demarcations between borders were also apparent. These observations demonstrate that stimulus spread alone does not explain the overlap of muscle representations. These results show that commonly used proximal and distal upper‐limb muscles, taken individually, are controlled by motor cortical territories of approximately equal size that significantly overlap despite differences in the location of their optimal points.
The Development of Epistemological Theories: Beliefs About Knowledge and Knowing and Their Relation to Learning

There have been a number of research programs that have investigated students’ thinking and beliefs about the nature of knowledge and knowing, including definitions of knowledge, how knowledge is constructed, and how knowledge is evaluated. However, these different research programs have pursued varying definitions and conceptual frameworks and used quite different methodologies to examine students’ epistemological beliefs and thinking. In the first section of this article, we provide a critical and comprehensive review of these different research programs. In the second part of this article, we identify nine crucial theoretical and methodological issues that need to be resolved in future research on epistemological theories. As these issues are addressed in future research, there will be more consensus regarding the nature of epistemological theories, and their relation to cognition, motivation, and learning will be made more explicit.
Primary tumor- and metastasis-derived colon cancer cells differently modulate connexin expression and function in human capillary endothelial cells

A gradual loss of functional gap junction between tumor cells has been reported with colorectal cancer (CRC) progression. Here, we explored if colon cancer cells could also affect gap junctions in blood capillary cells. Human microvascular endothelial cells (HMEC) were cultured with two CRC cell lines established from a unique patient. SW480 cells, derived from the primary tumor, migrate much faster across HMEC monolayer than SW620 cells derived from a metastatic site. The motile SW480 cells highly express and release HSP27 that increases gap junction formation with HMEC. Soluble HSP27 phosphorylates the connexin Cx43 on serine residues and induces its interaction with the oncoprotein 14-3-3, which promotes Cx43 delivery at the plasma membrane. The factors secreted by less motile SW620 cells do not affect Cx43 expression but up-regulate the expression of the connexin Cx32 through an activation of the chemokine receptor CXCR2. In turn, SW620 secreted factors induce tubulogenesis and ATP release. Altogether, cell lines derived from CRC primary tumor and metastasis differentially adapt endothelial cell functions by modulating connexin expression through released mediators.
When Interviewers Desire to Confirm Negative Expectations: Self-Fulfilling Prophecies and Inflated Applicant Self-Perceptions

We investigated the moderating influence of interviewer goals (accuracy vs. expectation confirmation) on the effects of preinterview expectations in simulated employment interviews. Consistent with past findings, accuracy-motivated interviewers gathered information more thoroughly from their negative-expectation applicants, mitigating the effects of their expectations. In contrast, confirmation-goal interviewers (a) asked their negative-expectation applicants relatively few questions, leading them to perform relatively poorly; and (b) displayed greater interpersonal warmth toward them, in an apparent attempt to mask the social undesirability of their goal. The interaction of few questions asked and great interpersonal warmth led the negative-expectation applicants to overestimate greatly the quality of their performance. These findings point to the costs associated with having interviewers motivated to confirm negative preinterview expectations and illustrate more generally the critical moderating role of.
Presencia del padre y calidad de la interacción madre-hijo: un estudio comparativo en familias chilenas nucleares y monoparentales

Estudios recientes muestran la influencia de la presencia del padre en la salud mental familiar, incidiendo, entre otras variables, en el vinculo madre-hijo. Considerando este antecedente, se realizo un analisis comparativo de la calidad de la interaccion madre-hijo en diadas pertenecientes a familias chilenas nucleares y monoparentales de bajos ingresos. Se estudiaron 80 diadas, 40 pertenecientes a familias monoparentales a cargo de madre y 40 pertenecientes a familias nucleares. Las edades de los ninos estudiados varian entre 4 y 17 meses (M = 12.36, DE = 3.2) y las de las madres entre 15 y 44 anos (M = 26.74, DE = 7.53). Se evaluo la respuesta sensible materna y la calidad de la interaccion con el instrumento CARE-Index (Crittenden, 1997). Los resultados muestran interacciones de mayor calidad en las diadas pertenecientes a familias nucleares, con diferencias significativas y tamanos de efecto mediano en los aspectos cognitivos de la interaccion.
Physiological and Field Test Performance Changes of Community College Football Players Over a Season

This investigation evaluated the effect of a 10-game competitive season on selected physiological and field test measures of community college football players. Nineteen subjects (11 linemen and 8 backs) completed pre- and postseason testing. Linemen decreased body weight and both groups decreased % fat. Neither group had a change in &OV0312;O2max over the season. The linemen declined in strength, as evidenced by a decreased 1-RM bench press. Both groups had increases in 40-yd sprint speed. It was concluded that an in-season program of strength and cardiovascular training, combined with regular football practice, maintained aerobic capacity, decreased % fat, and increased speed for both groups, but resulted in decreased upper body strength in linemen over the time course of the season.
Improving Visit Cycle Time Using Patient Flow Analysis in a High–Volume Inner–City Hospital–Based Ambulatory Clinic Serving Minority New Yorkers

&NA; Patient waiting time and waiting room congestion are quality indicators that are related to efficiency of ambulatory care systems and patient satisfaction. Our main purpose was to test a program to decrease patient visit cycle time, while maintaining high–quality healthcare in a high–volume inner–city hospital–based clinic in New York City. Use of patient flow analysis and the creation of patient care teams proved useful in identifying areas for improvement, target, and measure effectiveness of interventions. The end result is reduced visit cycle time, improved provider team performance, and sustained patient care outcomes.
Emotional dimensions as determinants of self-focused attention

Negative emotions, and particularly sadness, have been found to induce self-focused attention among both depressed and normal individuals. However, positive emotion, such as happiness, is sometimes found to have a similar effect. The present study examines the effect of emotion on self-focus induction by looking separately at the emotional dimensions of valence and arousal. It postulates that arousal would be even more potent than valence in increasing self-focus, since it increases the salience of the self. Results of Experiment 1 showed that emotions that are both intense and negative, such as fear, induce the most self-focus, but pleasant relaxation also resulted in increased self-focusing. Experiment 2, using a similar design, replicated the arousal effect, and showed that fear and joy, the two most arousing emotions resulted in the most self-focus.
Emetor - An educational web-based design tool for permanent-magnet synchronous machines

An educational web-based design tool for permanent-magnet synchronous machines (PMSM) is presented in this article. This tool, named Emetor, has been developed to be used in an undergraduate course on permanent-magnet machines. The technical aspects behind the tool, such as the PMSM's design procedure and the program architecture are presented. The benefits of Emetor in an educational environment are described. Different learning activities are presented to illustrate the potential of Emetor, as well as its suitability for education.
Physical activity for primary and secondary prevention. Position paper of the Working Group on Cardiac Rehabilitation and Exercise Physiology of the European Society of Cardiology

There is now clear scientific evidence linking regular aerobic physical activity to a significant cardiovascular risk reduction, and a sedentary lifestyle is currently considered one of the five major risk factors for cardiovascular disease. In the European Union, available data seem to indicate that less than 50% of the citizens are involved in regular aerobic leisure-time and/or occupational physical activity, and that the observed increasing prevalence of obesity is associated with a sedentary lifestyle. It seems reasonable therefore to provide institutions, health services, and individuals with information able to implement effective strategies for the adoption of a physically active lifestyle and for helping people to effectively incorporate physical activity into their daily life both in the primary and the secondary prevention settings. This paper summarizes the available scientific evidence dealing with the relationship between physical activity and cardiovascular health in primary and secondary prevention, and focuses on the preventive effects of aerobic physical activity, whose health benefits have been extensively documented. Eur J Cardiovasc Prevention Rehab 10:319-327 © 2003 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
HRF Estimation in fMRI Data With an Unknown Drift Matrix by Iterative Minimization of the Kullback–Leibler Divergence

Hemodynamic response function (HRF) estimation in noisy functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) plays an important role when investigating the temporal dynamic of a brain region response during activations. Nonparametric methods which allow more flexibility in the estimation by inferring the HRF at each time sample have provided improved performance in comparison to the parametric methods. In this paper, the mixed-effects model is used to derive a new algorithm for nonparametric maximum likelihood HRF estimation. In this model, the random effect is used to better account for the variability of the drift. Contrary to the usual approaches, the proposed algorithm has the benefit of considering an unknown and therefore flexible drift matrix. This allows the effective representation of a broader class of drift signals and therefore the reduction of the error in approximating the drift component. Estimates of the HRF and the hyperparameters are derived by iterative minimization of the Kullback-Leibler divergence between a model family of probability distributions defined using the mixed-effects model and a desired family of probability distributions constrained to be concentrated on the observed data. The performance of proposed method is demonstrated on simulated and real fMRI data, the latter originating from both event-related and block design fMRI experiments.
Collaboration, Peer Review and Open Source Software

Open source software development may be superior to proprietary development because the open source organizational form naturally minimizes transactions costs associated with privately distributed information, thereby avoiding certain agency problems. This manifests itself in the ability of open source communities to encourage collaborative sharing of ideas and critical peer review. When these activities are important, the open source organizational form endogenously may do better than a proprietary organizational form. The desire to improve quality by circumventing such agency concerns may induce the founder of a software project to choose the open source form even though doing so foregoes potential profits, and this effect is magnified when there is an existing competing closed source project. The types of software best suited to open source development are identified.
Bringing cross-layer MIMO to today's wireless LANs

Recent years have seen major innovations in cross-layer wireless designs. Despite demonstrating significant throughput gains, hardly any of these technologies have made it into real networks. Deploying cross-layer innovations requires adoption from Wi-Fi chip manufacturers. Yet, manufacturers hesitate to undertake major investments without a better understanding of how these designs interact with real networks and applications. This paper presents the first step towards breaking this stalemate, by enabling the adoption of cross-layer designs in today's networks with commodity Wi-Fi cards and actual applications. We present OpenRF, a cross-layer architecture for managing MIMO signal processing. OpenRF enables access points on the same channel to cancel their interference at each other's clients, while beamforming their signal to their own clients. OpenRF is self-configuring, so that network administrators need not understand MIMO or physical layer techniques. We patch the iwlwifi driver to support OpenRF on off-the-shelf Intel cards. We deploy OpenRF on a 20-node network, showing how it manages the complex interaction of cross-layer design with a real network stack, TCP, bursty traffic, and real applications. Our results demonstrate an average gain of 1.6x for TCP traffic and a significant reduction in response time for real-time applications, like remote desktop.
The origin and fate of salivary urea and ammonia in man.

1. Saliva obtained from the parotid duct of normal and uraemic subjects had an average urea concentration of 86% of the plasma concentration whereas in mixed saliva obtained from the mouth the urea concentration was only 31% of the plasma concentration. Ammonia concentrations were low or unmeasurable in parotid saliva but varied between 0·6 and 26 mmol/kg in oral saliva, showing a positive correlation with the plasma urea concentration. 2. The urea in samples of mixed oral saliva incubated at 37°C disappeared by 290 min. Ammonia steadily increased during incubation; within the first 100 min, the increase could be largely accounted for by bacterial hydrolysis of urea, but later non-urea sources became relatively more important. 3. These findings suggest that the ammonia in mixed oral saliva is derived by bacterial hydrolysis of urea within the mouth. However, the concentration of ammonia plus urea nitrogen in oral saliva was only 76% of the urea nitrogen concentration of parotid saliva, which suggests that some ammonia is lost from the mouth by buccal absorption or by volatilization. 4. To assess the role of non-ionic diffusion of ammonia through the buccal mucosa, we studied the effect of pH on the disappearance of ammonia from buffered solutions retained in the mouth. Ammonia concentrations fell more rapidly at pH 9 than at pH 7, as also did those of hydrazine, a non-volatile analogue of ammonia which is known to be absorbed through other mucosae by non-ionic diffusion. These findings suggest that salivary ammonia is reabsorbed passively through the oral mucosa in the un-ionized phase.
Multiclass Data Segmentation Using Diffuse Interface Methods on Graphs

We present two graph-based algorithms for multiclass segmentation of high-dimensional data on graphs. The algorithms use a diffuse interface model based on the Ginzburg-Landau functional, related to total variation and graph cuts. A multiclass extension is introduced using the Gibbs simplex, with the functional's double-well potential modified to handle the multiclass case. The first algorithm minimizes the functional using a convex splitting numerical scheme. The second algorithm uses a graph adaptation of the classical numerical Merriman-Bence-Osher (MBO) scheme, which alternates between diffusion and thresholding. We demonstrate the performance of both algorithms experimentally on synthetic data, image labeling, and several benchmark data sets such as MNIST, COIL and WebKB. We also make use of fast numerical solvers for finding the eigenvectors and eigenvalues of the graph Laplacian, and take advantage of the sparsity of the matrix. Experiments indicate that the results are competitive with or better than the current state-of-the-art in multiclass graph-based segmentation algorithms for high-dimensional data.
Phenomenological overflow and cognitive access

Abstract I argue that the partial-report results Block cites do not establish that phenomenology overflows cognitive accessibility, as Block maintains. So, without additional argument, the mesh he sees between psychology and neuroscience is unsupported. I argue further that there is reason to hold, contra Block, that phenomenology does always involve some cognitive access to the relevant experience.
An Exploration of Chinese EFL Learners' Unwillingness to Communicate and Foreign Language Anxiety

This article reports the results of a study of the unwillingness to communicate, and anxiety of Chinese learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) in English language classrooms. A 70-item survey of 547 first-year undergraduate non-English majors revealed that (a) Most of the students were willing to participate in interpersonal conversations, but many of them did not like to risk using/speaking English in class; (b) more than one third of the students felt anxious in their English language classrooms, and they feared being negatively evaluated and were apprehensive about public speaking and tests; (c) their unwillingness to communicate and their foreign language anxiety correlated significantly with each other and with their self-rated English proficiency and access to English; and (d) many of the variables of interest were good predictors of the students' unwillingness to communicate and of their foreign language anxiety, which were also powerful predictors for each other.