Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Region‐specific gene expression in early postnatal mouse thalamus

Previous studies in the developing mouse thalamus have demonstrated that regional identity is established during early stages of development (Suzuki‐Hirano et al. J. Comp. Neurol. 2011;519:528–543). However, the developing thalamus often shows little resemblance to the anatomical organization of the postnatal thalamus, making it difficult to identify genes that might mediate the organization of thalamic nuclei. We therefore analyzed the expression pattern of genes that we have identified as showing regional expression in embryonic thalamus on postnatal days (P) 6–8 by using in situ hybridization. We also identified several genes expressed only in the postnatal thalamus with restricted expression in specific nuclei. We first demonstrated the selective expression of neurotransmitter‐related genes (vGlut2, vGAT, D2R, and HTR2C), identifying the neurotransmitter subtypes of cells in this region, and we also demonstrated selective expression of additional genes in the thalamus (Steel, Slitrk6, and AI852580). In addition, we demonstrated expression of genes specific to somatosensory thalamic nuclei, the ventrobasal posterior nuclei (VP); a visual thalamic nucleus, the dorsal lateral geniculate nucleus (dLGN); and an auditory thalamic nucleus, the medial geniculate body (MGB) (p57Kip, Nr1d1, and GFRα1). We also identified genes that are selectively expressed in multiple different nuclei (Foxp2, Chst2, and EphA8). Finally, we demonstrated that several bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) and their inhibitors are expressed in the postnatal thalamus in a nucleus‐specific fashion, suggesting that BMPs play roles in the postnatal thalamus unrelated to their known role in developmental patterning. Our findings provide important information for understanding the mechanisms of nuclear specification and connectivity during development, as well as their maintenance in adult thalamus. J. Comp. Neurol. 519:544–561, 2011. © 2010 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
INTRAOPERATIVE USE OF HANDHELD SPECTRAL DOMAIN OPTICAL COHERENCE TOMOGRAPHY IMAGING IN MACULAR SURGERY

Purpose: To describe the intraoperative use of handheld spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SDOCT) imaging in macular surgery. Design: Prospective, observational case series. Methods: A handheld SDOCT device was used to obtain preincision optical coherence tomography imaging in patients undergoing vitrectomy for macular diseases. After removal of the internal limiting membrane or the epiretinal membrane, repeat intraoperative imaging was obtained. Spectral domain optical coherence tomography findings were characterized. Results: An efficient technique was established for obtaining intraoperative SDOCT imaging. A total of eight patients were included in the study. Four patients underwent surgery for macular hole, three patients for epiretinal membrane, and one for vitreomacular traction. Comparison of the preincision and intraoperative SDOCT images demonstrated distinct changes in retinal contour and macular hole configuration. Intraoperative SDOCT imaging identified additional membranes in two patients. Conclusion: The intraoperative use of handheld SDOCT imaging provides an efficient method for visualizing macular pathology. This technology may, in certain cases, help confirm or identify diseases that may be difficult to visualize during surgery.
Weak Theory in an Unfinished World

This article suggests the value of a kind of cultural theory that attends to the cultural poesis of forms of living. Its objects are textures and rhythms, trajectories, and modes of attunement, attachment, and composition. The point is not to judge the value of these objects or to somehow get their representation "right" but to wonder where they might go and what potential modes of knowing, relating, and attending to things are already present in them.
G6PD deficiency: a classic example of pharmacogenetics with on-going clinical implications

That primaquine and other drugs can trigger acute haemolytic anaemia in subjects who have an inherited mutation of the glucose 6‐phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) gene has been known for over half a century: however, these events still occur, because when giving the drug either the G6PD status of a person is not known, or the risk of this potentially life‐threatening complication is under‐estimated. Here we review briefly the genetic basis of G6PD deficiency, and then the pathophysiology and the clinical features of drug‐induced haemolysis; we also update the list of potentially haemolytic drugs (which includes rasburicase). It is now clear that it is not good practice to give one of these drugs before testing a person for his/her G6PD status, especially in populations in whom G6PD deficiency is common. We discuss therefore how G6PD testing can be done reconciling safety with cost; this is once again becoming of public health importance, as more countries are moving along the pathway of malaria elimination, that might require mass administration of primaquine. Finally, we sketch the triangular relationship between malaria, antimalarials such as primaquine, and G6PD deficiency: which is to some extent protective against malaria, but also a genetically determined hazard when taking primaquine.
Generalized Learning of Visual-to-auditory Substitution in Sighted Individuals

Visual-to-auditory substitution involves delivering information about the visual world using auditory input. Although the potential suitability of sound as visual substitution has previously been demonstrated, the basic mechanism behind crossmodal learning is largely unknown; particularly, the degree to which learning generalizes to new stimuli has not been formally tested. We examined learning processes involving the use of the image-to-sound conversion system developed by Meijer [Meijer, P., 1992. An experimental system for auditory image representations. IEEE Trans Biom Eng. 39 (2), 112-121. ] that codes visual vertical and horizontal axes into frequency and time representations, respectively. Two behavioral experiments provided training to sighted individuals in a controlled environment. The first experiment explored the early learning stage, comparing performance of individuals who received short-term training and those who were only explicitly given the conversion rules. Both groups performed above chance, suggesting an intuitive understanding of the image–sound relationship; the lack of group difference indicates that this intuition could be acquired simply on the basis of explicit knowledge. The second experiment involved training over a three-week period using a larger variety of stimuli. Performance on both previously trained and novel items was examined over time. Performance on the familiar items was higher than on the novel items, but performance on the latter improved over time. While the lack of improvement with the familiar items suggests memory-based performance, the improvement with novel items demonstrated generalized learning, indicating abstraction of the conversion rules such that they could be applied to interpret auditory patterns coding new visual information. Such generalization could provide a basis for the substitution in a constantly changing visual environment. Generalization Sighted Training Rule learning Explicit knowledge 1. Introduction Our experience of the world is largely multimodal. We are able to perceive multiple sensory events as a single event not only because the perceptual system can integrate information gathered from different sensory modalities, but also because it allows one to extract information from one sensory modality and apply it to another modality. Sensory substitution involves replacing one sensory input by another, and is based on the idea that information from one sensory modality generates percepts related to those induced by a different sensory modality. Pioneering work in sensory substitution
CBT for Occupational Stress in Health Professionals: Introducing a Schema-Focused Approach

Part I: Introduction. Defining and Conceptualizing Stress. A Cognitive Behavioural Model of Occupational Stress. Part II: Standard Interventions for Occupational Stress. Assessment and Treatment Strategies for Occupational Stress. Organizational Strategies for Managing Stress at Work. Secondary Level Cognitive and Behavioural Interventions for Normative Levels of Stress. Tertiary Level Cognitive Behavioural Interventions for Work-related Anxiety. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Other Work-related Anxiety Syndromes. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Work-related Depression and Other Stress Syndromes. Theresa: A Case of Performance Anxiety. Patrick: A Case of Depression Linked to Perfectionism. Colin: A Case of Health Anxiety. Part III: A Schema-focused Approach to Occupational Stress. A Schema-focused Model of Occupational Stress. Work Dysfunctions and Their Associated Early Maladaptive Schemata and Coping Styles. A Schema-focused Approach to Treating Work Dysfunctions. Conceptualizing and Treating a Case of Workaholism and Burnout Using the Schema-focused Approach. Occupation as Re-enactment: Adaptive or Maladaptive? Discussion and Conclusions.
Accessing a hard to reach population: reflections on research with young carers in Ireland

In keeping with developments in children's rights, research is increasingly including the views of children. Accessing a hard to reach population of children can, however, raise significant ethical and methodological challenges for researchers. Negotiating access through gatekeepers, securing parental consent and limits on confidentiality are central issues in the recruitment process of children. This paper is based on a qualitative study of young carers in the Irish population. It outlines the methodological approaches employed to access a representative sample of young carers and the measures taken to fulfil ethical obligations. In the recruitment phase of the study, researchers attempted to strike a balance between two sometimes competing requirements, the need to protect children from harm and to respect children's competence. This paper reflects on the success and limitations of the approaches adopted towards achieving this balance, exploring the use of gatekeepers as a method to identify and recruit a hidden population, and revisiting the measures taken to comply with the ethical requirements of parental consent and limits on confidentiality.
Noisy Activation Functions

Common nonlinear activation functions used in neural networks can cause training difficulties due to the saturation behavior of the activation function, which may hide dependencies that are not visible to vanilla-SGD (using first order gradients only). Gating mechanisms that use softly saturating activation functions to emulate the discrete switching of digital logic circuits are good examples of this. We propose to exploit the injection of appropriate noise so that the gradients may flow easily, even if the noiseless application of the activation function would yield zero gradient. Large noise will dominate the noise-free gradient and allow stochastic gradient descent toexplore more. By adding noise only to the problematic parts of the activation function, we allow the optimization procedure to explore the boundary between the degenerate (saturating) and the well-behaved parts of the activation function. We also establish connections to simulated annealing, when the amount of noise is annealed down, making it easier to optimize hard objective functions. We find experimentally that replacing such saturating activation functions by noisy variants helps training in many contexts, yielding state-of-the-art or competitive results on different datasets and task, especially when training seems to be the most difficult, e.g., when curriculum learning is necessary to obtain good results.
Adverse effects of the media portrayed thin-ideal on women and linkages to bulimic symptomatology.

Although researchers have postulated that the thin-ideal body image portrayed in the media contributes to eating pathology among females, little research has directly examined the effects of these images on women. The central aim of the present study was to experimentally assess the effects of exposure to the thin-ideal on women's affect, body satisfaction, and endorsement of the thin-ideal stereotype. The secondary aim was to link these putative mediators to bulimic symptomatology. Female undergraduates (N = 157) were randomly exposed to pictures from magazines containing either ultra-thin models, average-sized models, or no models. Results indicated that exposure to the thin-ideal produced depression, stress, guilt, shame, insecurity, and body dissatisfaction. Further, multiple regression analyses indicated that negative affect, body dissatisfaction, and subscription to the thin-ideal predicted bulimic symptoms.
Computer algorithms for automated detection and analysis of local Ca2+ releases in spontaneously beating cardiac pacemaker cells

Local Ca2+ Releases (LCRs) are crucial events involved in cardiac pacemaker cell function. However, specific algorithms for automatic LCR detection and analysis have not been developed in live, spontaneously beating pacemaker cells. In the present study we measured LCRs using a high-speed 2D-camera in spontaneously contracting sinoatrial (SA) node cells isolated from rabbit and guinea pig and developed a new algorithm capable of detecting and analyzing the LCRs spatially in two-dimensions, and in time. Our algorithm tracks points along the midline of the contracting cell. It uses these points as a coordinate system for affine transform, producing a transformed image series where the cell does not contract. Action potential-induced Ca2+ transients and LCRs were thereafter isolated from recording noise by applying a series of spatial filters. The LCR birth and death events were detected by a differential (frame-to-frame) sensitivity algorithm applied to each pixel (cell location). An LCR was detected when its signal changes sufficiently quickly within a sufficiently large area. The LCR is considered to have died when its amplitude decays substantially, or when it merges into the rising whole cell Ca2+ transient. Ultimately, our algorithm provides major LCR parameters such as period, signal mass, duration, and propagation path area. As the LCRs propagate within live cells, the algorithm identifies splitting and merging behaviors, indicating the importance of locally propagating Ca2+-induced-Ca2+-release for the fate of LCRs and for generating a powerful ensemble Ca2+ signal. Thus, our new computer algorithms eliminate motion artifacts and detect 2D local spatiotemporal events from recording noise and global signals. While the algorithms were developed to detect LCRs in sinoatrial nodal cells, they have the potential to be used in other applications in biophysics and cell physiology, for example, to detect Ca2+ wavelets (abortive waves), sparks and embers in muscle cells and Ca2+ puffs and syntillas in neurons.
T cell responses to a mixture of Mycobacterium tuberculosis peptides with complementary HLA‐DR binding profiles

The T cell response to a mixture of eight peptides derived from sequences of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis 16‐, 19‐ and 38‐kD antigens (MTBmix‐8) has been studied. The peptides were selected on the basis of complementary binding to nine HLA‐DR molecules (HLA‐DR1 to DR9). MTBmix‐8 at 6.25 and 50 μg/ml gave rise to significant stimulation (P < 0.05) of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) from healthy tuberculin‐positive and both untreated and treated diseased subjects, but not in any of a control group of healthy tuberculin‐negative subjects. MTB‐mix‐8 stimulated proliferation of PBMC from healthy tuberculin‐positive individuals at lower concentrations than the individual component peptides. However, the maximal stimulation achieved was only slightly higher than that achieved with individual peptides. MTBmix‐8 also stimulated the production of interferon‐gamma (IFN‐γ) in vitro. Using the mean ± 2 s.d. of the values for IFN‐γ production in the tuberculin‐negative population as a cut‐off, MTBmix‐8 at 6.25 μg/ml was able to detect infection with a sensitivity of 100% in untreated patients, 87% in treated patients, and 82% in tuberculin‐positive controls. The corresponding figures for the most potent single peptide (16p91–110) were: 66% in untreated patients, 71% in treated patients and only 42% in controls. Thus, using the IFN‐γ‐based assay, which has the additional advantages of speed and does not require radioactivity, the mixture of peptides is more sensitive than single peptides in diagnosing infection.
Semantic Matchmaking as Non-Monotonic Reasoning: A Description Logic Approach

Matchmaking arises when supply and demand meet in an electronic marketplace, or when agents search for a web service to perform some task, or even when recruiting agencies match curricula and job profiles. In such open environments, the objective of a matchmaking process is to discover best available offers to a given request. We address the problem of matchmaking from a knowledge representation perspective, with a formalization based on Description Logics. We devise Concept Abduction and Concept Contraction as non-monotonic inferences in Description Logics suitable for modeling matchmaking in a logical framework, and prove some related complexity results. We also present reasonable algorithms for semantic matchmaking based on the devised inferences, and prove that they obey to some commonsense properties. Finally, we report on the implementation of the proposed matchmaking framework, which has been used both as a mediator in e-marketplaces and for semantic web services discovery.
Modeling of scalable TCP for AQM design in high speed networks

A new transport protocol, scalable TCP, based on a multiplicative-increase multiplicative-decrease congestion avoidance algorithm, has been proposed recently to overcome the inability of Standard TCP to utilize the full bandwidth in high-speed networks. This paper employs a novel approach to derive a dynamic model of scalable TCP that is necessary for the analytical design of active queue management schemes for such networks
Gender Difference in Falls among Adults Treated in Emergency Departments and Outpatient Clinics

Background This study examined the impact of gender on age-related increase for falls and injurious falls resulting in head injuries/fractures among adults, using data from both emergency department and clinic visits. We also estimated the percentages of falls treated in points of entry outside of emergency departments. Methods The study population consisted of 259,611 adults seen at emergency department, inpatient, and/or outpatient facilities between January, 2007 and June, 2012 at a US medical center. Rates of falls and injurious falls with head injuries/fractures were calculated by age and gender. Results After using both emergency department and clinic visit data, medically consulted falls and injurious falls resulting in head injuries/fractures increased with age for females aged ≥ 18 years. For males, these rates declined, reached the lowest point at age of 65-74, and then increased again. Thirty-nine percent of females and 63% of males treated their falls in clinics, instead of emergency departments. Conclusion Gender disparity of medically consulted falls and related injuries exits among adults. Age and gender targeted fall injury prevention interventions need further development. Significant numbers of fall-related injuries were treated at clinics; future research is needed to determine whether fall injury surveillance should be expanded to include outpatient clinics.
Physical One-Way Functions

Modern cryptographic practice rests on the use of one-way functions, which are easy to evaluate but difficult to invert. Unfortunately, commonly used one-way functions are either based on unproven conjectures or have known vulnerabilities. We show that instead of relying on number theory, the mesoscopic physics of coherent transport through a disordered medium can be used to allocate and authenticate unique identifiers by physically reducing the medium's microstructure to a fixed-length string of binary digits. These physical one-way functions are inexpensive to fabricate, prohibitively difficult to duplicate, admit no compact mathematical representation, and are intrinsically tamper-resistant. We provide an authentication protocol based on the enormous address space that is a principal characteristic of physical one-way functions.
Why do We Die? Economics, Biology and Aging

Why do we die? Why, to be more precise, do we age, in the sense that our mortality rate rises rapidly in a terminal phase of life? One way to illustrate the effect of aging on longevity is to calculate the life expectancy of nine-year-olds if they could sustain their current mortality rate. For the US population in 2003, this life expectancy would be just over 7,000 years (see Centers for Disease Control 2006). That is, we would not be immortal, because there is still a constant positive probability of dying. Our lives would be vastly longer, however, if mortality risks did not increase with age. In fact, 2 percent of the population of nine-yearolds would live to almost 30,000 years of age. Mortality has been modeled as endogenous within economics. Previous literature has taken
Private Benefits of Managerial Control, Government Ownership, and Acquirer Returns: Evidence from the Chinese State‐Controlled Listed Companies

This article examines how government ownership affects the relationship between private benefits of managerial control, measured as excessive overhead expenses, and profitability of acquirers. A total of 246 merger and acquisition (M&A) events from Chinese state-controlled listed companies (CSCLCs) between 2001 and 2006 constitutes the analytical sample. Under a low level of government shareholding, private benefits of managerial control positively correlated with acquirer announcement returns. However, there was no relationship between private benefits of managerial control and acquirer announcement returns under a high level of government shareholding. The implications of these findings for scholarship and practice are discussed. Copyright © 2011 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Resume Cet article examine comment la propriete de l'Etat influence la relation entre les benefices prives du controle de gestion, evalues en frais generaux excessifs, et la rentabilite des acquereurs. L'echantillon analytique est constitue d'un total de 246 evenements de fusions et d'acquisitions (M&A) d'entreprises etatiques chinoises cotees en bourse (CSCLCs) de 2001 a 2006. Les resultats empiriques demontrent que lorsque le niveau de participation du gouvernement est bas, les benefices prives du controle de gestion sont positivement correles aux retours d'annonce des acquereurs. Mais lorsque le niveau de participation du gouvernement est eleve, il n'y a aucune relation entre les benefices prives du controle de gestion et les retours d'annonce des acquereurs. Copyright © 2011 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
RESEARCH NOTE Some evidence against the assumption that approval of family planning is associated with frequency of spouses' discussion of the subject

Much previous work on the relationship between respondent's reported frequency of discussion with spouse about family planning and correctness of reporting spouse's approval of family planning has led to the conclusion that discussion promotes approval. In this paper, data from the 1998 Kenya Demographic and Health Surveys are used to show that a focus on the relationship between frequency of discussion and correctness of reporting partner's disapproval of family planning leads to sceptical conclusions about the effects of discussion in improving knowledge of partner's attitude or in promoting approval.