Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Short γ-ray bursts and gravitational waves from dynamically formed merging binaries

Merging binary systems consisting of two collapsed objects are among the most promising sources of high frequency gravitational wave, GW, signals for ground based interferometers. Double neutron star or black hole/neutron star mergers are also believed to give rise to short hard bursts (SHBs) a subclass of gamma ray bursts. SHBs might thus provide a powerful way to infer the merger rate of two-collapsed object binaries. Under the hypothesis that most SHBs originate from double neutron star or black hole/neutron star mergers, we outline here a method to estimate the incidence of merging events from dynamically formed binaries in globular clusters and infer the corresponding GW event rate that can be detected with Advanced LIGO/Virgo. In particular, a sizeable fraction of detectable GW events is expected to be coincident with SHBs. The beaming and redshift distribution of SHBs are reassessed and their luminosity function constrained by using the results from recent SHB observations. We confirm that a substantial fraction of SHBs occur at low redshifts, where the merging of systems formed in globular clusters through dynamical interactions is expected.
Are Crises Good for Long-Term Growth? The Role of Political Institutions

This paper provides empirical evidence for the importance of institutions in determining the outcome of crises on long-term growth. Once unobserved country-specific effects and other sources of endogeneity are accounted for, political institutions affect growth through their interaction with crises. The results suggest that only countries with strong democracies, high levels of political competition and external constraints on government can potentially benefit from crises and use them as opportunities to enhance long-term output per capita and productivity growth.
Dynamic electrophysiological connectomics

The human brain can be divided into multiple areas, each responsible for different aspects of behaviour. For a century we have been developing techniques to non-invasively map these areas and their associated functions, a discipline now known as neuroimaging. In recent years the field has undergone a paradigm shift to investigate how the brain communicates with itself; it is widely regarded that healthy brain function relies upon efficient connectivity between different functional areas, and the neuroimaging field has been revolutionised by our ability to estimate this connectivity. Studies into communication between spatially separate locations in the brain have revealed a series of robust functional networks which govern mental processes. However these studies have been based on the temporal averaging of minutes or even hours of data to give us a generalised ’snapshot’ of connectivity. Increasing evidence shows us that these connections are dynamic in space, time and frequency and so the next generation of of neuroimaging methods, which capture this 5-dimensional connectivity will prove to be key tools in the investigation of brain networks and ultimately their breakdown in disease. In this thesis we introduce novel methods to capture non-stationarity using magnetoencephalography (MEG), an imaging modality which measures the changes in extracranial magnetic fields associated with neuronal current flow. MEG is a direct measurement of neural activity and has an excellent temporal resolution, which makes it attractive for non-invasively tracking dynamic functional connections. However there are many technical limitations which can confound assessment of functional connectivity which have to be addressed. In Chapters 2 and 3 we introduce the theory behind MEG; specifically how it is possible to measure the femtoTelsa changes in magnetic field generated by the brain and how to project these data to generate a 3-dimensional picture of current in the brain. Chapter 4 reviews some of popular methods of assessing functional connectivity and how to control for the influence of artefactual functional connections erroneously produced during source projection. Chapter 5 introduces a pipeline to assess functional connections across time, space and frequency and in Chapter 6 we apply this pipeline to show that resting state networks, measured using ’static’ metrics are in fact comprised of a series of rapidly forming and dissolving subnetwork connections. Finally, Chapter 7 introduces a pipeline to track dynamic network behaviour simultaneously across the entire brain volume and shows that networks can be characterised by their temporal signatures of connectivity.
Local application of low-dose insulin in improving wound healing after deep burn surgery

The clinical effects of local application of low-dose insulin in improving wound healing after deep burn self-skin transplantation surgery were examined. Fifty-eight patients with deep burns were selected and randomly divided into 3 groups. In the blank control group, normal saline was injected to the subcutaneous tissue of wounds; in large dose insulin group, 1.0 µ long-term suspended zinc insulin was locally injected; and in the low-dose insulin group, 0.1 µ long-term suspended zinc insulin was locally injected. The healing effects were compared. After 7 and 14 days of treatments, wound surface area in the low-dose group was significantly smaller than in the other groups, and differences were statistically significant (P<0.05); wound healing duration and infection rate for patients in the low-dose group were significantly lower, class A healing rate was significantly improved, and the differences were statistically significant (P<0.05). Insulin resistance index (HOMA-IR) in the low-dose group was significantly lower, insulin secretion index (HOMA-β) and the insulin sensitivity index (HOMA-ISI) significantly increased. The expression levels of vascular endothelial growth factor and tumor necrosis factor-α in local tissue for the low-dose group were significantly higher than those in the other two groups. Differences were statistically significant (P<0.05). In conclusion, local application of low-dose insulin can effectively improve wound healing after deep burn surgeries.
A Server Caching Strategy in Client-Server Database Systems

A server caching strategy is proposed based on LRU, which uses the replaced page-id as the major information rather than the request page-id. So the server cache is seen to clients as a long virtual client LRU cache extended to the server. Since the replaced page-id is only sent to the server by piggybacking whenever a new page fetch request is sent, its additional overheads are minimal. We show that the proposed strategy reveals good performance characteristics on diverse situations such as single and multiple clients as well as various access patterns.
Antecedent short-term central nervous system administration of estrogen and progesterone alters counterregulatory responses to hypoglycemia in conscious male rats.

The aim of this study was to test the hypothesis that antecedent short-term administration of estradiol or progesterone into the central nervous system (CNS) reduces levels of neuroendocrine counterregulatory hormones during subsequent hypoglycemia. Conscious unrestrained male Sprague-Dawley rats were studied during randomized 2-day experiments. Day 1 consisted of an 8-h lateral ventricle infusion of estradiol (1 mug/mul; n = 9), progesterone (1 mug/mul; n = 9), or saline (0.2 mul/min; n = 10). On day 2, a 2-h hyperinsulinemic (30 pmol.kg(-1). min(-1)) hypoglycemic (2.9 +/- 0.2 mM) clamp was performed on all rats. Central administration of estradiol on day 1 resulted in significantly lower plasma epinephrine levels during hypoglycemia compared with saline, whereas central administration of progesterone resulted in increased levels of plasma norepinephrine and decreased levels of corticosterone both at baseline and during hypoglycemia. Glucagon responses during hypoglycemia were unaffected by prior administration of estradiol or progesterone. Endogenous glucose production following day 1 estradiol was significantly lower during day 2 hypoglycemia, and consequently, the glucose infusion rate to maintain the glycemia was significantly greater after estradiol administration compared with saline. These data suggest that 1) CNS administration of both female reproductive hormones can have rapid effects in modulating levels of counterregulatory hormones during subsequent hypoglycemia in conscious male rats, 2) forebrain administration of reproductive hormones can significantly reduce pituitary adrenal and sympathetic nervous system drive during hypoglycemia, 3) reproductive steroid hormones produce differential effects on sympathetic nervous system activity during hypoglycemia, and 4) reduction of epinephrine resulted in significantly blunted metabolic counterregulatory responses during hypoglycemia.
Nongenomic actions of steroid hormones in reproductive tissues.

I. Introduction II. Nongenomic Actions of Estrogens A. Granulosa cells B. Endometrial cells C. Oocytes D. Spermatozoa III. Nongenomic Actions of P A. Granulosa cells B. Oocytes C. Spermatozoa IV. Nongenomic Actions of Androgens A. Sertoli cells B. Oocytes V. Signal Transduction Pathways Involved in Nongenomic Steroid Effects A. Ca2+ signal generation and amplification B. Ca2+ signal transduction C. The PTK system D. The GABAA-like receptor/Cl− channel VI. Cross-Talk Between the Nongenomic and Genomic Responses of Cells to Steroids VII. Conclusions
Transfer Learning for Semisupervised Collaborative Recommendation

Users’ online behaviors such as ratings and examination of items are recognized as one of the most valuable sources of information for learning users’ preferences in order to make personalized recommendations. But most previous works focus on modeling only one type of users’ behaviors such as numerical ratings or browsing records, which are referred to as explicit feedback and implicit feedback, respectively. In this article, we study a Semisupervised Collaborative Recommendation (SSCR) problem with labeled feedback (for explicit feedback) and unlabeled feedback (for implicit feedback), in analogy to the well-known Semisupervised Learning (SSL) setting with labeled instances and unlabeled instances. SSCR is associated with two fundamental challenges, that is, heterogeneity of two types of users’ feedback and uncertainty of the unlabeled feedback. As a response, we design a novel Self-Transfer Learning (sTL) algorithm to iteratively identify and integrate likely positive unlabeled feedback, which is inspired by the general forward/backward process in machine learning. The merit of sTL is its ability to learn users’ preferences from heterogeneous behaviors in a joint and selective manner. We conduct extensive empirical studies of sTL and several very competitive baselines on three large datasets. The experimental results show that our sTL is significantly better than the state-of-the-art methods.
Neural Correlates of Emotional Reactivity in Sensation Seeking

High sensation seeking has been linked to increased risk for drug abuse and other negative behavioral outcomes. This study explored the neurobiological basis of this personality trait using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). High sensation seekers (HSSs) and low sensation seekers (LSSs) viewed high- and low-arousal pictures. Comparison of the groups revealed that HSSs showed stronger fMRI responses to high-arousal stimuli in brain regions associated with arousal and reinforcement (right insula, posterior medial orbitofrontal cortex), whereas LSSs showed greater activation and earlier onset of fMRI responses to high-arousal stimuli in regions involved in emotional regulation (anterior medial orbitofrontal cortex, anterior cingulate). Furthermore, fMRI response in anterior medial orbitofrontal cortex and anterior cingulate was negatively correlated with urgency. Finally, LSSs showed greater sensitivity to the valence of the stimuli than did HSSs. These distinct neurobiological profiles suggest that HSSs exhibit neural responses consistent with an overactive approach system, whereas LSSs exhibit responses consistent with a stronger inhibitory system.
Oligonucleotides Tethered to a Short Polyguanylic Acid Stretch Are Targeted to Macrophages: Enhanced Antiviral Activity of a Vesicular Stomatitis Virus-Specific Antisense Oligonucleotide

ABSTRACT The poor membrane permeability of oligonucleotides is one of the major problems of antisense technology. Here we report the construction of designer oligonucleotides for targeted delivery to macrophages. The oligonucleotides tethered to a 10-mer poly(G) sequence at their 3′ ends were recognized by scavenger receptors on macrophages and were taken up about 8- to 10-fold as efficiently as those oligonucleotides that either lacked a poly(G) tail or that contained a 10-mer poly(C) tail instead of the poly(G) tail. The enhanced uptake of poly(G) constructs was inhibited in the presence of poly(G) and other known ligands of the scavenger receptor. The bioefficacy of poly(G)-mediated targeting of antisense oligonucleotides (ANS) was demonstrated by using vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) as a model system. The ability of ANS directed against the translation initiation site of N protein mRNA of VSV to inhibit virus replication was assessed. The ANS with the 10-mer poly(G) sequences (ANS-G) brought about significant inhibition of VSV replication in J774E cells (a murine monocyte/macrophage cell line) and Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cell transfectants expressing scavenger receptors. The ANS lacking a 10-mer poly(G) stretch were ineffective. The inhibition of VSV replication due to ANS-G was completely abrogated in the presence of 10-mer poly(G), indicating that the antisense effect of the ANS-G molecule was a consequence of scavenger receptor-mediated enhanced uptake. Importantly, antisense molecules linked exclusively by natural phosphodiester bonds were as bioeffective as those synthesized with a mixed backbone of phosphodiester and phosphorothioate. Taken together, these results suggest that macrophage-directed designer ANS against infective agents may simply be obtained by adding a short stretch of guanylic acid sequence to the desired specific ANS during solid-phase synthesis. This nucleic acid-based strategy, which utilizes homogeneous preparation of ANS, may find applications in directed manipulation of macrophage metabolism for a variety of purposes as well as in therapy of a broad spectrum of macrophage-related disorders amenable to the antisense approach.
What do OECD countries cut first at a time of fiscal adjustments? A dynamic panel data approach.

Following the present atmosphere of budgetary cuts we analyze the effects of fiscal consolidation on the composition of government expenditures by functions. Using a dynamic voter group decision model and exploiting the panel structure of the dataset â€“ 26 OECD countries over the period 1970-1997- by GMM estimation we find that fiscal adjustments protect social expenditure. Nevertheless, we find that among social expenditure, those being also productive such as education and health are even more protected than those not being productive as social welfare expenditure. Moreover, fiscal adjustments do not fall primarily over the most productive expenditure, transport and communications, but over defense and economic services.
Psychometric properties of the AQ Aggression Scale in Chilean students.

BACKGROUND The Buss and Perry Aggression Questionnaire (AQ) evaluates aggressive behaviours and is used to assess manifestations of aggression. METHODS At different points in time, 346 Chilean university students participated in the validation of the instrument, whose convergent validity was shown in relation to the scales of Psychological Aggression and Physical Aggression of the Conflict Tactics Scale 2 (CTS- 2), and the Salvo Impulsivity Scale. Discriminant validity was found when comparing the scores obtained from a group of students categorized as "Violent" with those of a control group, after a screening test. RESULTS The AQ scale has appropriate psychometric properties in terms of internal consistency, test-retest reliability, convergent validity and discriminant validity. Four principal factors were obtained in the confirmatory factor analysis. CONCLUSIONS The AQ can be used in Chile to assess aggressive behaviours. Challenges for future research are discussed.
Journal of Graph Algorithms and Applications Effects of Sociogram Drawing Conventions and Edge Crossings in Social Network Visualization

This paper describes a within-subjects experiment. In this experiment, the effects of different spatial layouts on human sociogram perception are examined. We compare the relative effectiveness of five sociogram drawing conventions in communicating underlying network substance, based on user task performance and personal preference. We also explore the impact of edge crossings, a widely accepted readability aesthetic. Both objective performance and subjective questionnaire measures are employed in the study. Subjective data are gathered based on the methodology of Purchase et al. [70], while objective data are collected through an online system. We found that 1) both edge crossings and drawing conventions pose significant effects on user preference and task performance of finding groups, but neither has much impact on the perception of actor status. On the other hand, node positioning and angular resolution may be more important in perceiving actor status. In visualizing social networks, it is important to note that the techniques that are highly preferred by users do not necessarily lead to best task performance. 2) subjects have a strong preference of placing nodes on the top or in the center to highlight importance , and clustering nodes in the same group and separating clusters to highlight groups. They have tendency to believe that nodes on the top or in the center are more important, and nodes in close proximity belong to the same group. Some preliminary recommendations for sociogram design and hypotheses about human reading behavior are proposed.
A quantitative framework to evaluate the attraction-production controversy

Artificial reefs have been proposed as a tool to mitigate impacts on natural reefs, augment natural fish production, and divert detrimental harvesting activities from sensitive natural habitats. The efficacy of this strategy depends on the extent to which artificial reefs contribute to new production or simply redistribute fish during or after settlement. Small coral reef fishes are ideal study subjects because redistribution is most likely during the larval stage, given limited dispersal of benthic stages. We develop a model that incorporates the simultaneous effects of habitat augmentation, competition among reefs for larval settlers, and post-settlement density-dependence, and propose two experimental approaches for evaluating the effects of artificial reefs on local production of natural reefs. One is based on small-scale studies using replicated patch reefs, the other on unreplicated studies using larger reefs and the Before-After-Control-Impact Paired Series (BACIPS) design. Using field data for six fish species, we estimated spatial and temporal variance and thus statistical power of both designs. Power varied among species, but in most cases was sufficiently high to detect local reductions in density of 10–40% with modest levels of replication (6–20 patch reefs or sampling dates). 2002 International Council for the Exploration of the Sea. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.
Voicing “Kenyanness” in the everyday: disrupting traditional broadcasting tropes through participatory digital storytelling

ABSTRACT The violence ensuing from the disputed 2007 elections in Kenya exposed the deep fragmentation within the nation-state and became a significant fissure for simmering tensions among the country’s 42 language groups. These events evinced the hegemony in media ownership and unmasked the recurrent motifs of the elites’ selfish stranglehold on the mediascape. Premised on Jenkins’ (2006) thoughts on convergence culture and Carpentier’s (2011) views on maximalist media participation, the article discusses two user-generated content texts: the Project 10 documentary series and the Capture Wales project. It proposes that, compared to traditional media, to a greater extent and in varying degrees, these two user-generated content projects offer greater participatory spaces for ordinary people to tell their everyday narratives, and that this provides a framework that could intervene in, or disrupt, existing tropes, strangleholds and motifs in the Kenyan broadcasting-scape. Although these two projects provide a framework for the Utaifa Mashinani Masimulizi ya UKenya digital narratives project initiated by the author, it is argued that the two projects still manifest instances of skewed power relationships towards media elites at the expense of ordinary people. The article therefore discusses how these interventions can be independent, sustainable and empower ordinary people.
Ischemic Stroke in Young Adults and Preexisting Psychiatric Disorders

AbstractPrevious studies showed that psychiatric disorders such as major depression, bipolar disorders, and alcohol misuse are associated with an increased risk of ischemic stroke. However, the link between psychiatric disorders and stroke in the young population is rarely investigated.Using the Taiwan National Health Insurance Research Database, 2063 young adults aged between 18 and 45 years with ischemic stroke and 8252 age- and sex-matched controls were enrolled in our study between 1998 and 2011. Participants who had preexisting psychiatric disorders were identified.After adjusting for preexisting physical disorders and demographic data, patients with ischemic stroke had an increased risk of having preexisting psychiatric disorders, including bipolar disorder (odds ratio [OR]: 2.23, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.06∼4.67), unipolar depression (OR: 2.15, 95% CI: 1.62∼2.86), anxiety disorders (OR: 2.63, 95% CI: 1.87∼3.69), and alcohol use disorders (OR: 2.86, 95% CI: 1.79∼4.57). Young ischemic stroke (age ≥30 years) was related to the risk of preexisting unipolar depression (OR: 1.49, 95% CI: 1.05∼2.11), anxiety disorders (OR: 1.99, 95% CI: 1.33∼2.97), and alcohol use disorders (OR: 2.54, 95% CI: 1.55∼4.14); very young stroke (age <30 years) was only associated with the risk of preexisting unipolar depression (OR: 4.15, 95% CI: 1.47∼11.72). Patients who had experienced ischemic stroke at age younger than 45 years had a higher risk of having pre-existing bipolar disorder, unipolar depression, anxiety disorders, and alcohol use disorders than those who did not after adjusting for demographic data and stroke-related medical comorbidities.
Root-Shoot Signaling crosstalk involved in the shoot growth promoting action of rhizospheric humic acids

ABSTRACT Numerous studies have shown the ability of humic substances to improve plant development. This action is normally reflected in an enhancement of crop yields and quality. However, the mechanisms responsible for this action of humic substances remain rather unknown. Our studies have shown that the shoot promoting action of sedimentary humic acids is dependent of its ability to increase root hydraulic conductivity through signaling pathways related to ABA, which in turn is affected in roots by humic acids in an IAA-NO dependent way. Furthermore, these studies also indicate that the primary action of humic acids in roots might also be physical, resulting from a transient mild stress caused by humic acids associated with a fouling-cleaning cycle of wall cell pores. Finally the role of alternative signal molecules, such as ROS, and corresponding signaling pathways are also discussed and modeled in the context of the above-mentioned framework.