Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Paradoxical Isopotentiality: A Spatially Uniform Noise Spectrum in Neocortical Pyramidal Cells

Membrane ion channels and synapses are among the most important computational elements of nerve cells. Both have stochastic components that are reflected in random fluctuations of the membrane potential. We measured the spectral characteristics of membrane voltage noise in vitro at the soma and the apical dendrite of layer 4/5 (L4/5) neocortical neurons of rats near the resting potential. We found a remarkable similarity between the voltage noise power spectra at the soma and the dendrites, despite a marked difference in their respective input impedances. At both sites, the noise levels and the input impedance are voltage dependent; in the soma, the noise level increased from σ = 0.33 ± 0.28 mV at 10 mV hyperpolarization from the resting potential to σ = 0.59 ± 0.3 at a depolarization of 10 mV. At the dendrite, the noise increased from σ = 0.34 ± 0.28 to σ = 0.56 ± 0.30 mV, respectively. TTX reduced both the input impedance and the voltage noise, and eliminated their voltage dependence at both locations. We describe a detailed compartmental model of a L4/5 neuron with simplified electrical properties that successfully reproduces the difference in input impedance between dendrites and soma and demonstrates that spatially uniform conductance-base noise sources leads to an apparent isopotential structure which exhibits a uniform power spectra of voltage noise at all locations. We speculate that a homogeneous distribution of noise sources insures that variability in synaptic amplitude as well as timing of action potentials is location invariant.
Pyruvate Decarboxylase : An Indispensable Enzyme for Growth of Saccharomyces cerevisiae on Glucose

In Sacchuromyces cerevisiue, the structural genes PDCI, PDCS and PDC6 each encode an active pyruvate decarboxylase. Replacement mutations in these genes were introduced in a homothallic wild-type strain, using the dominant marker genes APT1 and TnSble. A pyruvate-decarboxylase-negative (Pdc ) mutant lacking all three PDC genes exhibited a three-fold lower growth rate in complex medium with glucose than the isogenic wild-type strain. Growth in batch cultures on complex and defined media with ethanol was not impaired in Pdcstrains. Furthermore, in ethanol-limited chemostat cultures, the biomass yield of Pdc and wild-type S. cerevisiae were identical. However, PdcS. cerevisiue was unable to grow in batch cultures on a defined mineral medium with glucose as the sole carbon source. When aerobic, ethanol-limited chemostat cultures (D = 0.10 h ') were switched to a feed containing glucose as the sole carbon source, growth ceased after approximately 4 h and, consequently, the cultures washed out. The mutant was, however, able to grow in chemostat cultures on mixtures of glucose and small amounts of ethanol or acetate (5% on a carbon basis). No growth was observed when such cultures were used to inoculate batch cultures on glucose. Furthermore, when the mixed-substrate cultures were switched to a feed containing glucose as the sole carbon source, wash-out occurred. It is concluded that the mitochondrial pyruvate dehydrogenase complex cannot function as the sole source of acetyl-CoA during growth of S. cerevisiae on glucose, neither in batch cultures nor in glucose-limited chemostat cultures.
Sleep timing is linked to sociosexuality: Evidence from German, Polish, Slovak, and Spanish females

Given the known relationship between eveningness and sociosexuality among females, the aims of this study were: (a) to analyze this relationship in four countries using midsleep time on free days and morning affect measures of morningness–eveningness and (b) to test the role of dark personality and other relevant control variables in this relationship. Data from 1483 females were collected from Poland, Spain, Germany, and Slovakia. Adjusting for age, relationship status, country, age at first intercourse, and Dark Triad traits, the most universal findings were that females with later sleep timing were less sociosexually restricted (3% shared variance with sociosexuality). Sleep timing played a greater role in sociosexuality compared to morning affect. This finding showed that Dark Triad personality is not involved in association between morningness–eveningness and sociosexuality and it added a value to the importance of sleep–wake habits in mating preferences.
Serum Immunoglobulin and Transferrin Levels After Childhood Splenectomy

IgG, IgA, IgM, and transferrin levels were measured in sera from a group of children who had been subjected to splenectomy in the previous 10 years. In those children splenectomized for hereditary spherocytosis, idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, or traumatic rupture, mean IgM levels were significantly lower and mean transferrin levels were significantly higher than in sera from control children. Children splenectomized for thalassaemia major had a significantly raised mean IgG level, while children splenectomized for portal hypertension had a raised mean IgA level. However, IgG and IgA levels in patients who had suffered splenic rupture did not differ from control values. The finding of high transferrin levels after splenectomy supports the concept of an immunological function for this protein in addition to its iron-binding capacity.
Forward and Backward Intergenerational Goods: Why Is Social Security Good for the Environment?

This paper studies the ability of nonmarket institutions to invest optimally in forward intergenerational goods (FIGs), such as education and the environment, when agents are selfish or exhibit paternalistic altruism. We show that backward intergenerational goods (BIGs), such as social security, play a crucial role in sustaining investment in FIGs: without them investment is inefficiently low, but with them optimal investment is possible. We also show that making the provision of BIGs mandatory crowds out the voluntary provision of FIGs, and that population aging can increase investment in FIGs.
Nodule Formation and Desmoplasia in Medulloblastomas—Defining the Nodular/Desmoplastic Variant and Its Biological Behavior

Among the variants of medulloblastoma in the current WHO classification of nervous system tumors, the desmoplastic variant, which has been reported to constitute 5%–25% of pediatric medulloblastomas, is defined by its nodular collections of neurocytic cells bounded by desmoplastic internodular zones. We have studied the frequency, morphological features and biological behavior of medulloblastomas in two contemporaneous SIOP/UKCCSG trial cohorts of children with medulloblastomas, CNS9102 (n = 315) and CNS9204 (n = 35), focusing on tumors with nodular and desmoplastic phenotypes. In children aged 3–16 years (CNS9102), the nodular/desmoplastic medulloblastoma represented 5% of all tumors, while in infants aged <3 years (CNS9204) this variant represented 57% of medulloblastomas. Using iFISH to detect molecular cytogenetic abnormalities in medulloblastomas with a nodular architecture, we demonstrated distinct genetic profiles in desmoplastic and non‐desmoplastic (classic and anaplastic) tumors; in particular, abnormalities of chromosome 17 occurred in the latter, but not the former. Significantly different outcomes were demonstrated for classic, nodular/desmoplastic and large cell/anaplastic medulloblastomas in both cohorts. In conclusion, the nodular/desmoplastic medulloblastoma appears to have clinical, genetic and biological characteristics that set it apart from other variants of this tumor.
Flight of the FINCH Through the Java Wilderness

We describe Fertile Darwinian Bytecode Harvester (FINCH), a methodology for evolving Java bytecode, enabling the evolution of extant, unrestricted Java programs, or programs in other languages that compile to Java bytecode. Our approach is based upon the notion of compatible crossover, which produces correct programs by performing operand stack-based, local variables-based, and control flow-based compatibility checks on source and destination bytecode sections. This is in contrast to existing work that uses restricted subsets of the Java bytecode instruction set as a representation language for individuals in genetic programming. We demonstrate FINCH's unqualified success at solving a host of problems, including simple and complex regression, trail navigation, image classification, array sum, and tic-tac-toe. FINCH exploits the richness of the Java virtual machine architecture and type system, ultimately evolving human-readable solutions in the form of Java programs. The ability to evolve Java programs will hopefully lead to a valuable new tool in the software engineer's toolkit.
Effect of gender on the manifestations of celiac disease: Evidence for greater malabsorption in men

Objective Because celiac disease is a female-predominant disease we investigated the influence of gender on clinical manifestations of the disease in the United States. Material and methods Data were obtained on biopsy-proven adult patients with celiac disease from a database of patients seen between 1981 and 2001 in a University-based referral center. Z scores were calculated to adjust for age, ethnicity and gender using the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey database as controls. Results The cohort consisted of 323 patients (211 F, 112 M). Men had a shorter duration of symptoms than women (p=0.006). There was no gender difference in the age at diagnosis or mode of presentation. Body mass index (BMI), mean hemoglobin and ferritin values were lower in women than in men, but the Z scores for these values were not significantly different, indicating that the differences are physiological. All lipid values were low (negative Z scores). Men had lower total cholesterol (162.0±46.5mg/dl) compared to women (181.0±40.0mg/dl), p=0.02 and lower Z scores (−1.10±1.1) compared to women (−0.71±0.9), p=0.04. Men had lower bone density T scores at the radius (p=0.07). Autoimmune diseases were present in 30.7% with a female to male ratio of 1:1, compared to the general population in which 3.2% have autoimmune diseases with a female predominance. Conclusions Most gender differences in celiac disease are physiological. However, men have indirect evidence of greater malabsorption than females and have female-predominant associated diseases when they present with celiac disease.
FACTORS INFLUENCING CONSUMERS' ATTITUDE TOWARDS E-COMMERCE PURCHASES THROUGH ONLINE SHOPPING

Online shopping is the process of buying goods and services from merchants who sell on the internet. Shoppers can visit web stores from the comfort of their homes and shop as they sit in front of the computer. The main purpose of this study is to determine the factors influencing consumers’ attitude towards e-commerce purchases through online shopping. The study also investigate how socio-demographic (age, income and occupation), pattern of online buying (types of goods, e-commerce experience and hours use on internet) and purchase perception (product perception, customers’ service and consumers’ risk) affect consumers’ attitude towards online shopping. Convenience sampling method was conducted in this study and the sample comparison of 100 respondents in Taman Tawas Permai, Ipoh. Data were collected via self-administered questionnaire which contains 15 questions in Part A (respondents’ background and their pattern of using internet and online buying), 34 questions in Part B (attitude towards online purchase) and 36 questions in Part C (purchase perception towards online shopping). One-way ANOVA were used to assess the differences between independent variable such as age, income, occupation and pattern of online buying (type of goods) and dependant variable such as attitude towards online shopping. The findings revealed that there is no significant difference in attitude towards online shopping among age group (F = 1.020, p 0.05). The research finding also showed that there is no significant difference in attitude towards online shopping among occupation group (F = 1.607, p 0.05). This study also indicated that there is a significant relationship between product perception and attitude towards online shopping among the respondents (r = 0.471**, p 0.05). Further study should explore other factors that influencing consumers’ attitude towards e-commerce purchases through online shopping with a broader range of population and high representative sampling method.
Accessing drug treatment courts do age, race or gender matter?

To ensure equitable access to diversion from custody, Canadian drug treatment courts should accept referrals whose age, gender, and Indigenous race proportions are similar to probation or custody admissions. Of particular concern are Indigenous offenders, who are over-represented in Canada’s community and institutional corrections systems. To examine the influence of these extra-legal factors, we assessed referrals to the Winnipeg, Manitoba drug treatment court (N = 288). Provincial corrections data from Statistics Canada’s adult key indicator report, eight years of official records drug court data (2006–2014), and local male sentenced inmate admission data were analyzed. Age, gender, and Indigenous status did not influence referral. Indigenous male referrals to the drug treatment courts were generally higher risk than females or other males. Correctional institutions data showed that Indigenous male inmates had more convictions for violence and higher street gang membership rates, thus attempting to increase drug court referral poses significant challenges. In Manitoba, substantial custody reductions of offenders overall and Indigenous male offenders in particular will require more radical solutions than the drug court.
On the Capacity of Large-MIMO Block-Fading Channels

We characterize the capacity of Rayleigh block-fading multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channels in the noncoherent setting where transmitter and receiver have no a priori knowledge of the realizations of the fading channel. We prove that unitary space-time modulation (USTM) is not capacity-achieving in the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime when the total number of antennas exceeds the coherence time of the fading channel (expressed in multiples of the symbol duration), a situation that is relevant for MIMO systems with large antenna arrays (large-MIMO systems). This result settles a conjecture by Zheng & Tse (2002) in the affirmative. The capacity-achieving input signal, which we refer to as Beta-variate space-time modulation (BSTM), turns out to be the product of a unitary isotropically distributed random matrix, and a diagonal matrix whose nonzero entries are distributed as the square-root of the eigenvalues of a Beta-distributed random matrix of appropriate size. Numerical results illustrate that using BSTM instead of USTM in large-MIMO systems yields a rate gain as large as 13% for SNR values of practical interest.
CONTENT DELIVERY IN THE MOBILE INTERNET

Over the last decade the cellular phone industry and the World Wide Web have experienced a phenomenal growth as people around the world have embraced these technologies at a remarkable rate. Today, most major wireless service providers in the United States, Europe, and Japan offer wireless Internet services and many Internet companies provide content that has been adapted to suit the limited display, bandwidth, memory, and processing power of small devices. Another emerging trend, related to wireless Internet, has to do with how users manage the gigantic information flow that the Internet provides. Realizing that users are being overwhelmed with information, several Web content providers offer an alternative way for users to access content. In the new service model, users are allowed to switch their data access model from browsing and navigation to notifications or alerts. Instead of periodically browsing through the Web sites for potentially useful information, an increasing number of users are adopting the model where they register for information in which they are interested. These users provide a callback address usually in the form of an email address, a cell-phone number, or a pager number, depending on the perceived importance of the information. Whenever the relevant event occurs, it triggers an alert, which causes the content provider to send a notification to the user. Examples of some US companies that provide such notifications include Yahoo Mobile, MSN Mobile, AOL Anywhere, and InfoSpace. All of these services allow users to subscribe to alerts for stock quotes, news, sports scores, lottery, horoscope, calendar events etc. Understanding how people use wireless browsing and notification services is critical for content providers and wireless ISPs. In this chapter, we focus on characteristics of wireless Web workloads. This is a new subject that has not been widely studied due to very limited availability of such traces. Therefore, we base our discussions largely on the analyses that we conducted using traces collected at a popular commercial Web site specifically designed for mobile clients. We hope that our work on the understanding 1 2 CHARACTERIZING WEB WORKLOAD FOR MOBILE CLIENTS of the dynamics of wireless Web is just a beginning, and other researchers will step forward to provide more data points to enhance the knowledge about this important research topic. The organization of this chapter is as follows. In Section 1.1, we motivate the need to understand user workloads, and describe a set of workload …
Orthography, Phonology, Morphology, and Meaning

This book is a treasure trove of information on word recognition in a variety of languages. It contains 21 chapters by distinguished scholars from the United States, Canada, Israel, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Taiwan, and Serbia. Languages considered include English, Hebrew, French, Italian, Dutch, Serbo-Croatian, Persian, Japanese, and Chinese. Some of the chapters contain new data while others review previously published research. There are at least two different ways, in principle, in which a printed word could be recognized. First, the word could be treated purely as a visual symbol. In this view, we recognize that cur stands for the concept “cat” in much the same way that we recognize the numeral 7. We do not take advantage of the relationships between the letters in the printed ’ word and the linguistic form of the spoken word. A second method of word recognition, which could be used instead of, or in addition, to the first, involves translation of the printed letters into a linguistic format. That is, we use the information that c stands for the phoneme /k/, a for /a? /, and t for /t/. In this view, the visual information is quickly translated into a linguistic form so as to make contact with the reader’s store of linguistic knowledge. Reading is only incidentally visual. If this second process plays an important part in word recognition, we would expect the structural characteristics of a language, such as its phonology and morphology, to affect the reading of that language. The first view of reading has many influential advocates, especially within the field of education (e.g., Smith, 1985). However, the research evidence discussed in this book strongly favors the second view. Reading, it appears, is largely a linguistic ability. The first section of the book, “Language and orthography”, opens with an excellent chapter by Ignatius Mattingly on writing systems and linguistic awareness. Mattingly argues that there are two primary types of writing systems syllabic and segmental (or alphabetic). There have been no purely logographic systems; even Chinese, which is often considered a logography, represents phonological information to some degree. This fact favors the idea that reading is necessarily a linguistic activity and that writing is very different from pictures. Mattingly further discusses how the structural properties of a language encourage the discovery of syllables, on the one hand, or segments, on the other. The orthography, once learned, shapes users’ conceptions of the language. Mattingly’s chapter sets the stage for a discussion of how differences among writing systems affect the reading process. This discussion centers around the orthographic depth hypothesis. According to this hypothesis, languages with a “deep” or irregular orthography encourage the use of the first of the two word recognition processes described
Amyloid precursor protein controls cholesterol turnover needed for neuronal activity

Perturbation of lipid metabolism favours progression of Alzheimer disease, in which processing of Amyloid Precursor Protein (APP) has important implications. APP cleavage is tightly regulated by cholesterol and APP fragments regulate lipid homeostasis. Here, we investigated whether up or down regulation of full‐length APP expression affected neuronal lipid metabolism. Expression of APP decreased HMG‐CoA reductase (HMGCR)‐mediated cholesterol biosynthesis and SREBP mRNA levels, while its down regulation had opposite effects. APP and SREBP1 co‐immunoprecipitated and co‐localized in the Golgi. This interaction prevented Site‐2 protease‐mediated processing of SREBP1, leading to inhibition of transcription of its target genes. A GXXXG motif in APP sequence was critical for regulation of HMGCR expression. In astrocytes, APP and SREBP1 did not interact nor did APP affect cholesterol biosynthesis. Neuronal expression of APP decreased both HMGCR and cholesterol 24‐hydroxylase mRNA levels and consequently cholesterol turnover, leading to inhibition of neuronal activity, which was rescued by geranylgeraniol, generated in the mevalonate pathway, in both APP expressing and mevastatin treated neurons. We conclude that APP controls cholesterol turnover needed for neuronal activity.
Slow Feature Analysis on Retinal Waves Leads to V1 Complex Cells

The developing visual system of many mammalian species is partially structured and organized even before the onset of vision. Spontaneous neural activity, which spreads in waves across the retina, has been suggested to play a major role in these prenatal structuring processes. Recently, it has been shown that when employing an efficient coding strategy, such as sparse coding, these retinal activity patterns lead to basis functions that resemble optimal stimuli of simple cells in primary visual cortex (V1). Here we present the results of applying a coding strategy that optimizes for temporal slowness, namely Slow Feature Analysis (SFA), to a biologically plausible model of retinal waves. Previously, SFA has been successfully applied to model parts of the visual system, most notably in reproducing a rich set of complex-cell features by training SFA with quasi-natural image sequences. In the present work, we obtain SFA units that share a number of properties with cortical complex-cells by training on simulated retinal waves. The emergence of two distinct properties of the SFA units (phase invariance and orientation tuning) is thoroughly investigated via control experiments and mathematical analysis of the input-output functions found by SFA. The results support the idea that retinal waves share relevant temporal and spatial properties with natural visual input. Hence, retinal waves seem suitable training stimuli to learn invariances and thereby shape the developing early visual system such that it is best prepared for coding input from the natural world.
Finite Element Modeling of CARBON nanoTUBES

A finite e lement model is developed to study the mechanical behavior of nano-structured materials. The model serves as a link between computational chemistry and solid mechanics by substituting discrete molecular structures with an equivalent continuum model. The model reported here is a continuation of a previous model, which was developed by the authors and was applied to determine the effective stiffness of a graphene sheet. The pre sent model is developed by bending the previously developed graphene sheet model around its vertical edge to form a single wall carbon nanotube, which, then, has been characterized to find its mechanical properties. Index Term-carbon nanotubes, finite element, modeling, CNT, characterization.