Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Inhibition of Schwann cell myelination in vitro by antibody to the L1 adhesion molecule

The specific axonal and Schwann cell surface molecules that mediate the initiation of myelination have not been identified. We have used cocultures of purified rat dorsal root ganglion neurons and Schwann cells and purified polyclonal antibodies to the L1 adhesion molecule to study the role of L1 in myelin formation. Schwann cells were first arrested in a basal-lamina-free premyelination stage (by serum/ascorbate deprivation), then manipulated to allow basal lamina deposition and myelination (by serum/ascorbate addition) in the absence or presence of anti-L1. Using electron microscopy, immunocytochemistry, and myelin sheath quantitation after Sudan-black staining, we determined the effect of anti-L1 on (1) basal lamina formation, (2) the segregation by Schwann cells of axons into a 1:1 relationship, (3) galactocerebroside (Gal-C) expression, (4) laminin deposition, and (5) myelin formation. Anti-L1 strongly blocked myelin formation, Gal-C expression, and axon segregation but did not block basal lamina formation. In controls, elongated Schwann cell processes completely covered the axons and exhibited uniform surface staining for laminin; in anti-L1-treated cultures, shortened Schwann cells, intensely stained for laminin, were observed in clusters separated by unstained lengths of axons. When 50 micrograms/ml exogenous purified laminin was added to the medium, Schwann cell length and laminin staining were similar in control and treated cultures. However, the inhibition of myelination of anti-L1 was not altered by the addition of laminin. Myelination was also inhibited with antigen-binding fragments (Fab) of polyclonal anti- L1, but an antibody to liver membranes did not block myelination. These results indicate that L1 is involved in the linear extension of Schwann cell processes along axons, the engulfment of axons, and the induction of myelin-specific components within the Schwann cell. We conclude that anti-L1 prevents myelination by blocking these events rather than by blocking basal lamina deposition.
Authenticating Mobile Device Users Through Image Selection | NIST

Adequate user authentication is a persistent problem, particularly with mobile devices such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), which tend to be highly personal and at the fringes of an organization's influence. Yet these devices are being used increasingly in military and government agencies, hospitals, and other business settings, where they pose a risk to security and privacy, not only from sensitive information they may contain, but also from the means they typically offer to access such information over wireless networks. User authentication is the first line of defence for a mobile device that falls into the hands of an unauthorized individual. However, motivating users to enable simple PIN or password mechanisms and periodically update their authentication information is difficult at best. This paper describes a general-purpose mechanism for authenticating users through image selection. The underlying rationale is that image recall is an easy and natural way for users to authenticate, removing a serious barrier to users' compliance with corporate policy. The approach described distinguishes itself from other attempts in this area in several ways, including style dependent image selection, password reuse, and embedded salting, which collectively overcome a number of problems in employing knowledge-based authentication on mobile devices.
Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas Globalization and Monetary Policy Institute Capital Goods Trade and Economic Development

Almost 80 percent of capital goods production in the world is concentrated in 10 countries. Poor countries import most of their capital goods. We argue that international trade in capital goods has quantitatively important effects on economic development through two channels: (i) capital formation and (ii) aggregate TFP. We embed a multi country, multi sector Ricardian model of trade into a neoclassical growth model. Barriers to trade result in a misallocation of factors both within and across countries. We calibrate the model to bilateral trade flows, prices, and income per worker. Our model matches several trade and development facts within a unified framework. It is consistent with the world distribution of capital goods production, crosscountry differences in investment rate and price of final goods, and crosscountry equalization of price of capital goods and marginal product of capital. The crosscountry income differences decline by more than 50 percent when distortions to trade are eliminated, with 80 percent of the change in each country's income attributable to change in capital. Autarky in capital goods results in an income loss of 17 percent for poor countries, with all of the loss stemming from decreased capital. The views in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, or the Federal Reserve System.
Characterization of the burst stabilization protocol for the RR/RR CICQ switch

Input buffered switches with virtual output queueing (VOQ) can be unstable when presented with unbalanced loads. Existing scheduling algorithms, including iSLIP for input queued (IQ) switches and round robin (RR) for combined input and crossbar queued (CICQ) switches, exhibit instability for some schedulable loads. We investigate the use of a queue length threshold and bursting mechanism to achieve stability without requiring internal speed-up. An analytical model is developed to prove that the burst stabilization protocol achieves stability and to predict the minimum burst value needed as a function of offered load. The analytical model is shown to have very good agreement with simulation results. These results show the advantage of the RR/RR CICQ switch as a contender for the next generation of high-speed switches.
The evolution of communication in adaptive agents

The field of adaptive behavior holds that higher-level cognitive skills arise from the more primitive ability of an agent to adapt to its environment. Although many behaviors have been studied in this bottom-up fashion (e.g., obstacle avoidance, wandering, environment exploration, food collection, planning, predator avoidance, locomotion, action selection, flocking, etc.), relatively few people have studied communication as adaptive behavior. In this dissertation, I explore how communication can be understood as an adaptation by agents to their environment. I begin by looking at behavior-based methods for agent evolution, and propose a connectionist version of subsumption which supports learning. I reject this as a method of evolving communication, however, because of certain assumptions the approach requires. I then turn to evolutionary programming, a population-based search technique, and show how it can be used to evolve agents with far fewer assumptions. With this background, I move on to the evolution of communication. I begin with a set of independent agents, instantiated as recurrent neural networks. After arguing against systems which use discrete symbols to evolve communication, I supply my agents with a number of continuous communications channels. The agents use these channels to initiate real-valued signals which propagate through the environment, decaying over distance, perhaps being perturbed by environmental noise. Initially, the agents' signals appear random; over time, a structure emerges as the agents learn to communicate task-specific information about their environment. I demonstrate how different communication schemes can evolve for a task, and then discover a commonality between the schemes in terms of information passed between agents. From this I discuss what it means to communicate, and describe how a semantics emerges in the agents' signals relative to their task domain.
Daclatasvir Combined with Peginterferon Alfa-2A and Ribavirin in Japanese Patients Infected with Hepatitis C Genotype 1

Background New direct-acting antiviral agents are currently being developed to treat chronic HCV. The efficacy and safety of daclatasvir combined with peginterferon alfa-2a (alfa-2a) and ribavirin were assessed in a randomized, double-blind Phase IIa study of Japanese patients with chronic HCV genotype-1 infection. Methods Japanese patients who were treatment-naive (n=25) or prior null (n=12) or partial (n=5) responders received once-daily daclatasvir 10 mg or 60 mg or placebo in combination with alfa-2a and ribavirin. Daclatasvir recipients with a protocol-defined response (HCV RNA<15 IU/ml at week 4 and undetectable at week 12) were treated for 24 weeks; placebo recipients and patients without a protocol-defined response were treated for 48 weeks. Results Sustained virological response at 24 weeks post-treatment (SVR24) was achieved by 89% and 100% of treatment-naive patients receiving daclatasvir 10 mg and 60 mg, respectively, versus 75% in placebo recipients. Virological failure was more frequent in prior non-responder patients, with 50% and 78% achieving SVR24 in daclatasvir 10 mg and 60 mg groups, respectively. Adverse events occurred with similar frequency among treatment groups and were consistent with the adverse event profile of alfa-2a/ribavirin alone. The most commonly reported adverse events included pyrexia, alopecia, anaemia, lymphopenia, neutropenia, pruritus and diarrhoea. Three patients discontinued treatment due to anaemia. Conclusions Daclatasvir combined with alfa-2a/ribavirin in treatment-naive patients showed greater efficacy than alfa-2a/ribavirin alone and was generally well tolerated. The 60-mg dose of daclatasvir achieved the highest rates of SVR24 in both treatment-naive and non-responder populations and will be evaluated in a Phase III clinical trial.
Robust Signature-Based Geometric Invariant Copyright Protection

The most significant bit (MSB)-plane of an image is least likely to change by the most signal processing operations. Watermarking techniques are, however, unable to exploit the MSB-plane, as embedding any information there introduces the highest distortion. This paper presents a novel rotation, scale, and translation (RST)-resistant multi-bit logo-based copyright protection scheme using the most significant gray-scale bits at the region-of-interest, automatically selected by the invariant centroid (1C) of the image. How the RST-attack can be reversed using the 1C and geometric moments has been proposed. During verification, the test image is restored to its approximate original through reversing any possible RST attack before calculating signature. To avoid any bias, a new MSB-based attack has also been proposed. Experimental results have clearly demonstrated the superiority of the proposed scheme.
STUDIES ON TUBERCULIN FEVER

Fever is a hallmark of tuberculin hypersensitivity. Ever since the dassic papers of von Pirquet (1) and the clinico-pathologic observations of Rich (2), fever has been recognized as a cardinal sign of tuberculous infection. The actual events, however, that lead to elevated body temperature in this disease have remained obscure. Many manifestations of tuberculin hypersensitivity, like the skin test, have been attributed to allergy of the delayed type, of which indeed, this disease is the prototype (reviewed in reference 3). On the other hand, tuberculous infection also gives rise to a variety of circulating antibodies whose role in producing any specific manifestations of this form of hypersensitivity is uncertain (4-7). In regard to fever, a circulating endogenous pyrogen has been noted during experimental fever induced by tuberculin in rabbits sensitized by infection with BCG (bacillus Calmette Gu6rin) (8, 9). Subsequent in vitro experiments have suggested that blood leukocytes (10), alveolar macrophages (11), and Kupffer cells of the liver (12) may be sources of this material. By employing the techniques of passive transfer, the work to be reported here has attempted to define the role of various cells as well as of serum factors in mediating tuberculin-induced fever. In addition, the ability of tuberculin to activate certain specific cell types (exudate granulocytes and peritoneal macrophages) in vitro has been investigated.
Left Atrial Remodeling and Function in Advanced Heart Failure With Preserved or Reduced Ejection Fraction

Background—Left atrial (LA) structure and function are altered in most heart failure (HF) patients, but there may be fundamental differences in LA properties between HF with preserved (HFpEF) and reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF). Methods and Results—One hundred ninety-eight HF patients (51% HFpEF, New York Heart Association 3.1±0.7) and 40 HF-free controls underwent catheterization, echocardiography, and follow-up. Compared with controls, HF patients had larger and more dysfunctional left atria. At identical mean LA pressure (20 versus 20 mm Hg; P=0.9), HFrEF patients had larger LA volumes (LA volume index 50 versus 41 mL/m2; P<0.001), whereas HFpEF patients had higher LA peak pressures, lower LA minimal pressures, higher LA stiffness (0.79 versus 0.48 mm Hg/mL; P<0.001), greater LA pulsatility (19 versus 13 mm Hg; P<0.001), and higher wall stress variations. Despite smaller LA volumes, better function, and less mitral regurgitation, HFpEF patients had more atrial fibrillation (42 versus 26%; P=0.02). LA dysfunction was associated with increased pulmonary vascular resistance and right ventricular dysfunction in both HF phenotypes. After a median follow-up of 350 days, 31 HFpEF and 28 HFrEF patients died. LA function (total LA EF) was associated with lower mortality in HFpEF (hazard ratio 0.43; 95% confidence interval, 0.2–0.9; P<0.05), but not in HFrEF. Conclusions—HFrEF is characterized by greater eccentric LA remodeling, whereas HFpEF by increased LA stiffness, which might contribute to greater atrial fibrillation burden. LA function is associated with pulmonary vascular disease and right HF in both HF phenotypes, but is associated with outcome more closely in HFpEF, supporting efforts to improve LA function in this cohort.
Thermomonas fusca sp. nov. and Thermomonas brevis sp. nov., two mesophilic species isolated from a denitrification reactor with poly(epsilon-caprolactone) plastic granules as fixed bed, and emended description of the genus Thermomonas.

Previously, 22 aerobic Gram-negative bacteria were isolated from biofilms growing on granules of the synthetic polyester poly(epsilon-caprolactone); the granules were used as a fixed bed in a denitrification reactor. All the strains showed similar fatty acid profiles. The 16S rRNA gene sequences of five strains were phylogenetically related to Thermomonas spp. Repetitive extragenic palindromic DNA-PCR (REP-PCR) fingerprinting revealed four groups, and DNA hybridizations between representative strains showed that the strains belonged to two new species within the genus Thermomonas, for which the names Thermomonas fusca (type strain LMG 21737(T)=DSM 15424(T)) and Thermomonas brevis (type strain LMG 21746(T)=DSM 15422(T)) are proposed. Both species are able to grow at low temperatures, but not at 50 degrees C, and are non-haemolytic. Both species can be differentiated by several other phenotypic features from earlier described species of the genus Thermomonas. Cell extracts contain mainly branched fatty acids, with C(15 : 0) iso, C(17 : 1) iso omega9c, C(11 : 0) iso 3OH and C(11 : 0) iso as main constituents. The G+C content of the DNA of the novel species is between 67.6 and 68.7 mol%.
Organization of texture segregation processing in primate visual cortex

Abstract We investigated the intracortical organization of neuronal mass activity that is related to texture segregation on the basis of orientation contrast. Evoked potentials were recorded to a stimulus, signalling a contribution from texture segregation-sensitive mechanisms by means of specific response components. The specific components could only be recorded when textons had a spatial organization that leads to the percept of image segmentation. Equivalent dipole estimations of the specific response components suggested the presence of texture segregation-related activity in the primary visual cortex. These results were corroborated by current-source-density analysis of intracortical recordings in the awake monkey. A specific involvement of layers 2/3 and 5 of area 17 in the global process of image segmentation could be demonstrated.
Fully Incremental 3D Delaunay Refinement Mesh Generation

The classical meshing problem is to construct a triangulation of a region that conforms to the boundary, is as coarse as possible, and is constructed from simplices having bounded aspect ratio. In this paper we present a fully incremental Delaunay re nement algorithm. The algorithm is an extension of one introduced by Ruppert. The algorithm is fully incremental in the sense that it does not need any preprocessing to nd an initial Delaunay triangulation or an initial re nement to re ne away all encroached simplices of input faces. The paper includes a careful statement of the algorithm, an outline of a proof of correctness even when the input may be degenerate, and bounds on the mesh size. The input angle assumption has been relaxed to arccos 1 2 p 2 70AE for all but dihedral angles.
Dealing with Newcomers

In the face of inevitable turnover, every online community must incorporate successive generations of newcomers to survive. Without replacing the members who leave, a community will eventually wither away. However, incorporating newcomers into an existing community can be a difficult endeavor. Newcomers have not yet developed the commitment to the group felt by old-timers. As a result, they are more likely to leave in the face of even minor adversity. They have less motivation to be helpful to the group or to display good organizational citizenship characteristic of many old-timers (Organ & Ryan, 1995). In addition, for reasons of either ignorance or maliciousness, they may behave in ways that can be harmful to the group. They do not yet know the norms guiding behavior in the group and in their ignorance, may perform actions that offend other group members or otherwise undercut the smooth functioning of the group. For example, when participating in Wikipedia, the open source encyclopedia, new editors may fail to follow the policy of writing with a neutral point of view, or they may add content already determined to belong in another article by a consensus of more experienced editors. Because they lack experience, when newcomers try to participate, they imperil the work other community members have already performed. For example, they may introduce bugs in an open source development project, cause the (virtual) death of fellow guild members in an online role playing game, or ask redundant questions in disscussion groups.
Shifted intrinsic connectivity of central executive and salience network in borderline personality disorder

This case study describes 1 year of the psychoanalytic psychotherapy using clinical data, a standardized instrument of the psychotherapeutic process (Psychotherapy process Q-Set, PQS), and functional neuroimaging (fMRI). A female dysthymic patient with narcissistic traits was assessed at monthly intervals (12 sessions). In the fMRI scans, which took place immediately after therapy hours, the patient looked at pictures of attachment-relevant scenes (from the Adult Attachment Projective Picture System, AAP) divided into two groups: those accompanied by a neutral description, and those accompanied by a description tailored to core conflicts of the patient as assessed in the AAP. Clinically, this patient presented defense mechanisms that influenced the relationship with the therapist and that was characterized by fluctuations of mood that lasted whole days, following a pattern that remained stable during the year of the study. The two modes of functioning associated with the mood shifts strongly affected the interaction with the therapist, whose quality varied accordingly ("easy" and "difficult" hours). The PQS analysis showed the association of "easy" hours with the topic of the involvement in significant relationships and of "difficult hours" with self-distancing, a defensive maneuver common in narcissistic personality structures. In the fMRI data, the modes of functioning visible in the therapy hours were significantly associated with modulation of the signal elicited by personalized attachment-related scenes in the posterior cingulate (p = 0.017 cluster-level, whole-volume corrected). This region has been associated in previous studies to self-distancing from negatively valenced pictures presented during the scan. The present study may provide evidence of the possible involvement of this brain area in spontaneously enacted self-distancing defensive strategies, which may be of relevance in resistant reactions in the course of a psychoanalytic psychotherapy.
Sensation Seeking as It Relates to Burnout Among Emergency Medical Personnel: A Texas Study

Abstract Introduction: Burnout among emergency medical personnel (emergency medical personne) is suspected, but largely unsupported in the literature. An investigation of the phenomenon of burnout and factors contributing to its existence are essential steps in designingeffective interventions. Research Questions: Three research questions were proposed: 1) Are EMP sensation seekers as measured by Arnett's Inventory of Sensation Seeking? 2) Are EMP burnt out as measured by Revicki's Work-Related Strain Inventory? 3) Is there a relationship between sensation seeking and burnout among EMP? Methods: Emergency medical personnel attending a statewide conference in Texas, USA in late 1996 completed 425 survey instruments measuring sensation seeking and burnout as well as demographic items. Survey instruments were included in each registrant's conference package. Completed surveys were deposited anonymously in labeled receptacles throughout the statewide conference site. Data collection ceased at the end of the conference. Results: Emergency Medical Personne had significantly higher sensation–seeking total and intensity sub–scale scores than the general public. Full–time employees reported more sensation–seeking than volunteers or part–time employees. The younger the Emergency Medical Personne, the greater were their reported sensation seeking tendencies. Emergency Medical Personne reported more burnout in 1996 than in 1991. The older the Emergency Medical Personne, the lower was the reported level of burnout. Emergency Medical Personne who sought counseling for a work–related event reported more burnout than those who did not. Paid full–time Emergency Medical Personne reported higher burnout than did volunteers. There was a weak but positive correlation between sensation seeking and burnout, suggesting that these two dimensions may be unrelated. Conclusion: The field of emergency medical services attracts sensation seekers, and Emergency Medical Personne today report more burnout than their counterparts did in 1991. Although Emergency Medical Personne appear to be high in sensation seeking, this dimension alone does not protect them from the effects of burnout.