Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Role of 5-HTTLPR Polymorphism in the Development of the Inward/Outward Personality Organization: A Genetic Association Study

Reciprocity with primary caregivers affects subjects' adaptive abilities toward the construction of the most useful personal meaning organization (PMO) with respect to their developmental environment. Within cognitive theory the post-rationalist approach has outlined two basic categories of identity construction and of regulation of cognitive and emotional processes: the Outward and the Inward PMO. The presence of different, consistent clinical patterns in Inward and Outward subjects is paralleled by differences in cerebral activation during emotional tasks on fMRI and by different expression of some polymorphisms in serotonin pathways. Since several lines of evidence support a role for the 5-HTTLPR polymorphism in mediating individual susceptibility to environmental emotional stimuli, this study was conducted to investigate its influence in the development of the Inward/Outward PMO. PMO was assessed and the 5-HTTLPR polymorphism investigated in 124 healthy subjects who were subdivided into an Inward (n = 52) and an Outward (n = 72) group. Case-control comparisons of short allele (S) frequencies showed significant differences between Inwards and Outwards (p = 0.036, χ2 test; p = 0.026, exact test). Genotype frequencies were not significantly different although values slightly exceeded p≤0.05 (p = 0.056, χ2 test; p = 0.059, exact test). Analysis of the 5-HTTLPR genotypes according to the recessive inheritance model showed that the S/S genotype increased the likelihood of developing an Outward PMO (p = 0.0178, χ2 test; p = 0.0143, exact test; OR = 3.43, CI (95%) = 1.188–9.925). A logistic regression analysis confirmed the association between short allele and S/S genotypes with the Outward PMO also when gender and age were considered. However none of the differences remained significant after correction for multiple testing, even though using the recessive model they approach significance. Overall our data seem to suggest a putative genetic basis for interindividual differences in PMO development.
Closing in on an infectious etiology of motor neuron disease

The initial report1 of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) complicating HIV infection occurred just 4 years after the first reports of AIDS in 1981. In subsequent years, contrary to the anticipated inexorable progression of motor neuron disease (MND), disease stabilization or recovery was often observed. In 2001, 7 HIV-seropositive individuals with an ALS-like disorder whose MND was reversed with antiretroviral therapy were reported in Neurology®. 2,3 In an accompanying editorial, Jubelt and Berger4 remarked that retroviruses were “ideal candidates to cause classic ALS because they replicate by synthesizing a DNA copy (the provirus) that can persist by integration into the host's cellular DNA. ” Furthermore, it was noted that HTLV-1, another retrovirus, although typically associated with spastic paraparesis, could be associated with anterior horn cell disease.4 While attention was focused on HIV as the potential causative retrovirus, Bowen et al.5 in this issue of Neurology suggest that the association of HIV with MND occurs as a consequence of the activation of the human endogenous retrovirus K (HERV-K) and demonstrate apparent disease stabilization with aggressive antiretroviral treatment that led to a decline in blood HERV-K levels. However, the study was small, conducted in only 5 individuals with HIV infection and MND; in 3, antiretroviral therapy reversed neurologic symptoms and in 2, the disease progression was slowed.
Effect of Navigation Speed and VR Devices on Cybersickness

“Cybertravel” in virtual reality (VR) system can easily provoke cyber-sickness as there are no vestibular cues available during visual optic flow. This study examined the effect of navigation speed as well as the use of different VR devices for navigation on cybersickness. Participants experience street navigation while they are standing still. Four conditions: CAVE (cave automatic virtual environment) and HMD (head-mounted display) x 10 m/s and 24 m/s, were tested while participants perform a counting task. Results showed that higher navigation speed leads to increase in ratings of severity of cybersickness measured by simulator sickness questionnaire (SSQ) and miserable score (MISC). A difference in cybersickness ratings between VR devices is also observed with experimental order effect.
Constructivism: Can directed mutation improve on classical neural selection?

Quartz & Sejnowski (Q&S) find flaws in standard theories of neural selection, which they propose to repair by introducing Lamarckian mechanisms for anatomical refinement that are analogous to directed mutation in evolution. The reversal of cause and effect that these mechanisms require is no more plausible in an explanation of cognition than it is in an explanation of evolution.
Signal Grass (Brachiaria decumbens) Toxicity in Grazing Ruminants

Signal grass (Brachiaria decumbens) is a highly productive tropical grass that is widespread through South America, Australia, Indonesia, Vanuatu and Malaysia due to its adaptation to a wide range of soil types and environments. Animal production from these B. decumbens pastures is highly variable due to sporadic outbreaks of photosensitisation associated with low growth rates of young animals, anorexia and wasting. The identification of B. decumbens toxicity through clinical signs may grossly underestimate the impact and severity of the disease. Affected animals without clinical signs have elevated serum liver enzyme concentrations resulting from blockage of the bile ducts by birefringent crystals, identified as calcium salts of steroidal saponins found in leaves and stems. The concentrations of the steroidal saponins vary through the year and within the plant. Young, green leaves contain 5–10 times the saponin concentration of mature leaves indicating that B. decumbens pastures are likely to be more toxic during sprouting and early growth. Previous exposure, selective grazing, and avoiding toxic leaves may partly explain apparent resistance of some animals to B. decumbens toxicity. Further research is needed to define growing conditions that produce elevated saponin levels and to investigate the impact of B. decumbens on rumen function.
The First Detections of the Extragalactic Background Light at 3000, 5500, and 8000 Å. II. Measurement of Foreground Zodiacal Light

We present a measurement of the absolute surface brightness of the zodiacal light (3900-5100 Å) toward a fixed extragalactic target at high ecliptic latitude based on moderate-resolution (~1.3 Å pixel-1) spectrophotometry obtained with the du Pont 2.5 m Telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. This measurement and contemporaneous Hubble Space Telescope data from the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 and Faint Object Spectrograph comprise a coordinated program to measure the mean flux of the diffuse extragalactic background light (EBL). The zodiacal light at optical wavelengths results from scattering by interplanetary dust so that the zodiacal light flux toward any extragalactic target varies seasonally with the position of the Earth. This measurement of zodiacal light is therefore relevant to the specific observations (date and target field) under discussion. To obtain this result, we have developed a technique that uses the strength of the zodiacal Fraunhofer lines to identify the absolute flux of the zodiacal light in the multiple-component night-sky spectrum. Statistical uncertainties in the result are 0.6% (1 σ). However, the dominant source of uncertainty is systematic errors, which we estimate to be 1.1% (1 σ). We discuss the contributions included in this estimate explicitly. The systematic errors in this result contribute 25% in quadrature to the final error in our coordinated EBL measurement, which is presented in the first paper of this series.
A systematic review of neurobiological and clinical features of mindfulness meditations

Background Mindfulness meditation (MM) practices constitute an important group of meditative practices that have received growing attention. The aim of the present paper was to systematically review current evidence on the neurobiological changes and clinical benefits related to MM practice in psychiatric disorders, in physical illnesses and in healthy subjects. Method A literature search was undertaken using Medline, ISI Web of Knowledge, the Cochrane collaboration database and references of retrieved articles. Controlled and cross-sectional studies with controls published in English up to November 2008 were included. Results Electroencephalographic (EEG) studies have revealed a significant increase in alpha and theta activity during meditation. Neuroimaging studies showed that MM practice activates the prefrontal cortex (PFC) and the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and that long-term meditation practice is associated with an enhancement of cerebral areas related to attention. From a clinical viewpoint, Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) has shown efficacy for many psychiatric and physical conditions and also for healthy subjects, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) is mainly efficacious in reducing relapses of depression in patients with three or more episodes, Zen meditation significantly reduces blood pressure and Vipassana meditation shows efficacy in reducing alcohol and substance abuse in prisoners. However, given the low-quality designs of current studies it is difficult to establish whether clinical outcomes are due to specific or non-specific effects of MM. Discussion Despite encouraging findings, several limitations affect current studies. Suggestions are given for future research based on better designed methodology and for future directions of investigation.
Predicting Stock Returns Using Industry-Relative Firm Characteristics

Better proxies for the information about future returns contained in firm characteristics such as size, book-to-market equity, cash flow-to-price, percent change in employees, and various past return measures are obtained by breaking these explanatory variables into two industry-related components. The components represent (1) the difference between firms' own characteristics and the average characteristics of their industries (within-industry variables), and (2) the average characteristics of firms' industries (across-industry variables). Each variable is reliably priced within-industry and measuring the variables within-industry produces more precise estimates than measuring the variables in their more common form. Contrary to Moskowitz and Grinblatt [1999], we find that within-industry momentum (i.e., the firm's past return less the industry average return) has predictive power for the firm's stock return beyond that captured by across-industry momentum. We also document a significant short-term (one-month) industry momentum effect which remains strongly significant when we restrict the sample to only the most liquid firms.
Criticality of defects in cyclic dependent components

(Background) Software defects that most likely will turn into system and/or business failures are termed critical by most stakeholders. Thus, having some warnings of the most probable location of such critical defects in a software system is crucial. Software complexity (e.g. coupling) has long been established to be associated with the number of defects. However, what is really challenging is not in the number but identifying the most severe defects that impact reliability. (Research Goal) Do cyclic related components account for a clear majority of the critical defects in software systems? (Approach) We have empirically evaluated two non-trivial systems. One commercial Smart Grid system developed with C# and an open source messaging and integrated pattern server developed with Java. By using cycle metrics, we mined the components into cyclic-related and non-cyclic related groups. Lastly, we evaluated the statistical significance of critical defects and severe defect-prone components (SDCs) in both groups. (Results) In these two systems, results demonstrated convincingly, that components in cyclic relationships account for a significant and the most critical defects and SDCs. (Discussion and Conclusion) We further identified a segment of a system with cyclic complexity that consist almost all of the critical defects and SDCs that impact on system's reliability. Such critical defects and the affected components should be focused for increased testing and refactoring possibilities.
Automated Analysis and Synthesis of Authenticated Encryption Schemes

Authenticated encryption (AE) schemes are symmetric-key encryption schemes ensuring strong notions of confidentiality and integrity. Although various AE schemes are known, there remains significant interest in developing schemes that are more efficient, meet even stronger security notions (e.g., misuse-resistance), or satisfy certain non-cryptographic properties (e.g., being patent-free). We present an automated approach for analyzing and synthesizing blockcipher-based AE schemes, significantly extending prior work by Malozemoff et al. (CSF 2014) who synthesize encryption schemes satisfying confidentiality only. Our main insight is to restrict attention to a certain class of schemes that is expressive enough to capture several known constructions yet also admits automated reasoning about security. We use our approach to generate thousands of AE schemes with provable security guarantees, both known (e.g., variants of OCB and CCM) and new. Implementing two of these new schemes, we find their performance competitive with state-of-the-art AE schemes.
Evaluation of Five Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assays and an Agar Gel Immunodiffusion Test for Detection of Antibodies to Small Ruminant Lentiviruses

ABSTRACT In the framework of the Dutch control program for small ruminant lentiviral (SRLV) infections, too many drawbacks were encountered with respect to serological testing. To improve the quality of testing, five enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) and an agar gel immunodiffusion test (AGIDT) were evaluated. The focus was on the sensitivity, specificity, and variances of the commercially available tests. Clear differences were found among the tests in analytical and diagnostic sensitivity and overall diagnostic performance, whereas no significant differences in specificity were found. For serodiagnosis of sheep with clinical symptoms of maedi-visna virus (MVV) (histopathologically confirmed), one ELISA was significantly more sensitive than the other ELISAs and than the AGIDT, while for asymptomatic sheep originating from infected flocks, three ELISAs and the AGIDT demonstrated similar performance. The diagnostic performance appeared to be related to animal species and virus infection (MVV or caprine arthritis encephalitis virus [CAEV]) as well as the phase of infection/progression of disease. Receiver operating characteristic analysis, demonstrating the diagnostic potential of tests irrespective of defined cutoffs, again revealed clear differences between tests with respect to diagnostic performance for detection of antibodies against CAEV or MVV. An indirect ELISA, of which the solid phase is sensitized with a combination of the core protein p27 of MVV produced in Escherichia coli and a peptide derived from the transmembrane protein gp46, appeared to be the test of choice for serodiagnosis of SRLV infections in sheep and goats.
Convex Recovery From Interferometric Measurements

This paper discusses some questions that arise when a linear inverse problem involving <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$Ax = b$</tex-math></inline-formula> is reformulated in the interferometric framework, where quadratic combinations of <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$b$</tex-math></inline-formula> are considered as data in place of <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$b$</tex-math></inline-formula>. First, we show a deterministic recovery result for vectors <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$x$</tex-math></inline-formula> from measurements of the form <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$(Ax)_i \overline{(Ax)_j}$</tex-math> </inline-formula> for some left-invertible <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$A$</tex-math></inline-formula>. Recovery is exact, or stable in the noisy case, when the couples <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$(i,j)$ </tex-math></inline-formula> are chosen as edges of a well-connected graph. One possible way of obtaining the solution is as a feasible point of a simple semidefinite program. Furthermore, we show how the proportionality constant in the error estimate depends on the spectral gap of a data-weighted graph Laplacian. Second, we present a new application of this formulation to interferometric waveform inversion, where products of the form <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$(Ax)_i \overline{(Ax)_j}$</tex-math></inline-formula> in frequency encode generalized cross correlations in time. We present numerical evidence that interferometric <italic>inversion</italic> does not suffer from the loss of resolution generally associated with interferometric imaging, and can provide added robustness with respect to specific kinds of kinematic uncertainties in the forward model <inline-formula><tex-math notation="LaTeX"> $A$</tex-math></inline-formula>.
The formation history of elliptical galaxies

We take advantage of the largest high-resolution simulation of cosmic structure growth ever carried out - the Millennium Simulation of the concordancecold dark matter (CDM) cosmogony - to study how the star formation histories, ages and metallicities of elliptical galaxies depend on environment and on stellar mass. We concentrate on a galaxy formation model which is tuned to fit the joint luminosity/colour/morphology distribution of low-redshift galaxies. Massive ellipticals in this model have higher metal abundances, older luminosity- weighted ages and shorter star formation time-scales, but lower assembly redshifts, than less massive systems. Within clusters the typical masses, ages and metal abundances of ellipticals are predicted to decrease, on average, with increasing distance from the cluster centre. We also quantify the effective number of progenitors of ellipticals as a function of present stellar mass, finding typical numbers below two for M∗ < 10 11 M� , rising to approximately five for the most massive systems. These findings are consistent with recent observational results that suggest 'down-sizing' or 'antihierarchical' behaviour for the star formation history of the elliptical galaxy population, despite the fact that our model includes all the standard elements of hierarchical galaxy formation and is implemented on the standard, � CDM cosmogony.
A Simulation Study of the Model Evaluation Criterion MMRE

The mean magnitude of relative error, MMRE, is probably the most widely used evaluation criterion for assessing the performance of competing software prediction models. One purpose of MMRE is to assist us to select the best model. In this paper, we have performed a simulation study demonstrating that MMRE does not always select the best model. Our findings cast some doubt on the conclusions of any study of competing software prediction models that use MMRE as a basis of model comparison. We therefore recommend not using MMRE to evaluate and compare prediction models. At present, we do not have any universal replacement for MMRE. Meanwhile, we therefore recommend using a combination of theoretical justification of the models that are proposed together with other metrics proposed in this paper.
Directed genomic integration, gene replacement, and integrative gene expression in Streptococcus thermophilus

Several pGEM5- and pUC19-derived plasmids containing a selectable erythromycin resistance marker were integrated into the chromosome of Streptococcus thermophilus at the loci of the lactose-metabolizing genes. Integration occurred via homologous recombination and resulted in cointegrates between plasmid and genome, flanked by the homologous DNA used for integration. Selective pressure on the plasmid-located erythromycin resistance gene resulted in multiple amplifications of the integrated plasmid. Release of this selective pressure, however, gave way to homologous resolution of the cointegrate structures. By integration and subsequent resolution, we were able to replace the chromosomal lacZ gene with a modified copy carrying an in vitro-generated deletion. In the same way, we integrated a promoterless chloramphenicol acetyltransferase (cat) gene between the chromosomal lacS and lacZ genes of the lactose operon. The inserted cat gene became a functional part of the operon and was expressed and regulated accordingly. Selective pressure on the essential lacS and lacZ genes under normal growth conditions in milk ensures the maintenance and expression of the integrated gene. As there are only minimal repeated DNA sequences (an NdeI site) flanking the inserted cat gene, it was stably maintained even in the absence of lactose, i.e., when grown on sucrose or glucose. The methodology represents a stable system in which to express and regulate foreign genes in S. thermophilus, which could qualify in the future for an application with food.
Modafinil for the treatment of diminished responsiveness in a patient recovering from brain surgery

Primary objective: This case report reviews the history and post-operative status of a 77-year-old woman who underwent transcallosal resection of an intra-ventricular haemorrhagic subependymoma and who remained in a deep post-operative state of lethargy and listlessness. Main outcome measures: Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS) and detailed clinical observations. Results: The patient (GCS = 8) was initiated on methylphenidate 20 mg per day on the 6th day after surgery, but treatment was discontinued 2 days later due to elevated blood pressure and persistent tachycardia. Pemoline 37.5 mg per day was initiated, but treatment was stopped after 3 days due to lack of response. Treatment with modafinil 400 mg per day was initiated on the 11th day after surgery and the patient's consciousness level rapidly improved on the 14th day. On the 16th day after surgery, she was completely alert (GCS = 15). Conclusions: Modafinil appeared to be beneficial for improving wakefulness and responsiveness in a patient with central nervous system trauma in the post-operative state.
Kidney Developmental Genes in Wilms ' Tumor Abnormal RNA Expression of 11 p 15 Imprinted Genes and Updated

Wilms’ tumor (WT) is caused by abnormal development of embryonal kidney cells. WT cells are frequently affected by deletions or functional inactivation of maternal alleles at chromosome 11p15, which indicates that the loss of maternally expressed genes in this region plays an important role in WT pathogenesis. Maternally expressed genes indeed exist within an imprinted region at 11p15.5. Among these, BWR1Cis highly expressed in fetal but not in adult kidney, which suggests that it may fulfil an important role in kidney development. Here, we demonstrate that the lack of BWR1C expression is common in WT. Its homology with the proapoptotic geneTDAG51 suggests that the loss of BWR1Cexpression may be relevant in WT development. In addition, the analysis of the expression of other 11p15 imprinted genes and kidney-developmentally regulated genes indicates thatIGF2 overexpression, inappropriate coexpression of RET and GDNF and, in some cases, down-regulation of CDKN1Cmay also play an important role in the pathogenesis of WT. Our results add new elements to the understanding of the biological basis of WT, which may have implications for WT diagnosis and therapy.