Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Neural dynamics of feedforward and feedback processing in figure-ground segregation

Determining whether a region belongs to the interior or exterior of a shape (figure-ground segregation) is a core competency of the primate brain, yet the underlying mechanisms are not well understood. Many models assume that figure-ground segregation occurs by assembling progressively more complex representations through feedforward connections, with feedback playing only a modulatory role. We present a dynamical model of figure-ground segregation in the primate ventral stream wherein feedback plays a crucial role in disambiguating a figure's interior and exterior. We introduce a processing strategy whereby jitter in RF center locations and variation in RF sizes is exploited to enhance and suppress neural activity inside and outside of figures, respectively. Feedforward projections emanate from units that model cells in V4 known to respond to the curvature of boundary contours (curved contour cells), and feedback projections from units predicted to exist in IT that strategically group neurons with different RF sizes and RF center locations (teardrop cells). Neurons (convex cells) that preferentially respond when centered on a figure dynamically balance feedforward (bottom-up) information and feedback from higher visual areas. The activation is enhanced when an interior portion of a figure is in the RF via feedback from units that detect closure in the boundary contours of a figure. Our model produces maximal activity along the medial axis of well-known figures with and without concavities, and inside algorithmically generated shapes. Our results suggest that the dynamic balancing of feedforward signals with the specific feedback mechanisms proposed by the model is crucial for figure-ground segregation.
Networks for generating and for validating ideas: The social side of creativity

Abstract In recent years, research has recognized that creativity is a social process. By communicating with others, individuals get access to novel perspectives and unique knowledge, and they can get political support for their ideas by ensuring that they meet others’ standards. Based on the different function of idea-related communication, we expected the structure of idea-generation networks to differ from that of idea-validation networks. Specifically, we expected different effects of leadership status and tenure. Our results indicated some differences in the structure of the two networks. This leads to the recommendation that future research on idea-related communication and creativity needs to distinguish the different phases of the creative process.
Using Immunotoxicity Information to Improve Cancer Risk Assessment for Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon Mixtures

Estimating cancer risk from environmental mixtures containing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) is challenging. Ideally, each mixture would undergo toxicity testing to derive a cancer slope factor (CSF) for use in site-specific cancer risk assessments. However, this whole mixture approach is extremely costly in terms of finances, time, and animal usage. Alternatively, if an untested mixture is “sufficiently similar” to a well-characterized mixture with a CSF, the “surrogate” CSF can be used in risk assessments. We propose that similarity between 2 mixtures could be established using an in vitro battery of genotoxic and nongenotoxic tests. An observed association between carcinogenicity and immunosuppression of PAHs suggests that the addition of immune suppression assays may improve this battery. First, using published studies of benzo[a]pyrene (BaP) and other PAHs, we demonstrated a correlation between the derived immune suppression relative potency factors (RPFs) for 9 PAHs and their respective cancer RPFs, confirming observations published previously. Second, we constructed an integrated knowledge map for immune suppression by BaP based on the available mechanistic information. The map illustrates the mechanistic complexities involved in BaP immunosuppression, suggesting that multiple in vitro tests of immune suppression involving different processes, cell types, and tissues will have greater predictive value for immune suppression in vivo than a single test. Based on these observations, research strategies are recommended to validate a battery of in vitro immune suppression tests that, along with tests for genotoxic and other nongenotoxic modes of cancer action, could be used to establish “sufficient similarity” of 2 mixtures for site-specific cancer risk assessments.
Randomized clinical trial of laparoscopic versus open abdominal rectopexy for rectal prolapse

The objectives of this study were to compare both subjective clinical outcomes and the objective stress response of laparoscopic and open abdominal rectopexy in patients with full‐thickness rectal prolapse. Abdominal rectopexy for patients with rectal prolapse is well suited for a laparoscopic approach as no resection or anastomosis is necessary.
Fitting Markovian Arrival Processes by Incorporating Correlation into Phase Type Renewal Processes

This paper presents a novel MAP fitting method. As many recent fitting methods, it is based on the separate fitting of the distribution of the inter-arrival times and the correlation structure of the arrival process. We assume that a Phase-type(PH) distribution representing the inter-arrival times is available. Our procedure obtains a MAP featuring the prescribed PH distributed inter-arrival times and capturing several correlation measures as accurately as possible. The correlation measures being used during the fitting are the joint moments of two inter-arrival times (including higher order ones). Contrary to other available MAP fitting methods, the proposed method does not only fit the lag-1, but also higher lag joint moments. The special MAP structure used for fitting enables to formulate the fitting problem as a non-negative least-squares problem for which efficient numerical implementations exist. Several numerical examples are presented to demonstrate that our method can be used in various practical applications.
The Effect of Arthrodesis, Implant Stiffness, and Time on the Canine Lumbar Spine

Study Design Canine posterior lumbar instrumentation and fusion. Objectives To study effects of implant rod size and time on the stiffness of related spine construct elements. Summary of Background Data The ideal stiffness of posterior spinal implants to successfully treat clinical instability or deformity with minimal side effects is unknown. Methods Twenty-six canines were divided into 7 groups: control, and 6 or 12-month survival after sham or lumbar L3-5 arthrodesis (facet, posterior, and posterolateral) with either 4.76 or 6.35 mm diameter rod-pedicle screw instrumentation. Axial flexion-compression stiffness of the L3-5 segment components and axial compression stiffness of the bypassed and adjacent anterior column elements were measured. Results Posterior instrumentation initially increased flexion-compression stiffness of the L3-5 segment more than the intrinsic stiffness of the implant due to control of spinal column flexion buckling. Sham operation did likewise, apparently by posterior scar tissue tethering. The percent contribution of the implant construct to instrumented segment stiffness was significantly less at 6 months without further change from 6 to 12 months; 14% and 22% for 4.76 and 6.35 mm rod constructs, respectively. Spinal column as well as posterior column stiffness after fusion was independent of rod size at 6 months and increased at 12 months in only the 4.76 mm rod group. Bypassed L4 vertebral body stiffness decreased significantly at 6 months, was not rod size dependent and changed little between 6 and 12 months. Bypassed disk stiffness responded in a biphasic manner, apparently increasing at 6 months with significant decrease from 6 to 12 months. Adjacent disk compression stiffness progressively decreased over time independent of rod size, also decreasing after sham operation. Conclusions Both rod sizes were associated with 100% fusion and produced similar changes in bypassed bone and disks, and adjacent disks. There was delayed fusion stress shielding by 6.35 mm rod constructs.
How much input is enough? Correlating comprehension and child language input in an endangered language

Abstract In situations of language endangerment, the ability to understand a language tends to persevere longer than the ability to speak it. As a result, the possibility of language revival remains high even when few speakers remain. Nonetheless, this potential requires that those with high levels of comprehension received sufficient input as children for the activation of speech to occur in later life. In many areas of Australia, input to children of traditional Aboriginal languages is rarely monolingual, but rather often mixed with a contact variety of English. Thus, it is not clear whether children receive enough input to later become active speakers of the traditional languages. This paper reports on a study which tested the relationship between language comprehension and child language input. A vocabulary test of 40 items was administered to 52 Gurindji participants in five age groups. Participants were asked to listen to a Gurindji word and choose a corresponding picture. The test items were graded as high, medium or low frequency on the basis of their use in a corpus of Gurindji child-input speech. We found that age and frequency of use in child-directed speech significantly altered the chance of a correct response.
Impact of Security Measures on the Usefulness of Knowledge Management Systems

Knowledge Management (KM) has been recognized as a critical management strategy in generating competitive advantage for the organization. In order to protect organizational knowledge stored in or transferred through company’s Knowledge Management Systems (KMS), information security controls have to be incorporated into these systems. However, overly strict controls may adversely impact the perceived usefulness of the system and consequently its usability. This research examines the impact of security measures on perceived usefulness of KMS. More specifically, we investigated the impact of security training, security policy and technology on the perceived usefulness of KMS. Security self-efficacy, perceived personal responsibility, content quality, and perceived ease of use were included as mediating factors. The proposed research model was tested empirically through a survey of 51 IT professionals working at a large public university who are currently using a secure knowledge repository. Results show that security training impacts perceived personal responsibility directly and through security self-efficacy of the user. KMS security level affects perceived ease of use both directly and through content quality of the system. As expected, perceived personal responsibility and perceived ease of use impact perceived usefulness of the KMS. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.
Successful School Leadership: What is it and Who Decides?

Arguments presented in this paper and the evidence from the Tasmanian Successful School Principals Project support broadening what counts for successful schools and school leadership. This broadening needs to embrace student outcomes, including non-cognitive social outcomes such as student empowerment. In examining who should provide the evidence for successful school leadership the need for triangulation, that is, multiple sources of evidence, became clear. Research employing only principal perceptions of success, especially on the importance of and improvement in student outcomes, should be examined much more critically than has occurred in the past.
An Efficient Wideband Channel Emulator Based on Orthogonal Function Expansion

In this paper we propose an architecture for the development of a single input-single output (SISO) time-variant wideband channel emulator based on orthogonal functions. The proposal is adequate for hardware implementation of the stochastic wideband channel model with separable Scattering Function, allowing a big reduction on the implementation complexity when compared to direct approaches. This gain comes from the channel orthogonalization concept in which only a reduced set of artificial paths - as opposed to the large set of physical paths are implemented. This approach allows a fully characterization of the channel statistics and ensures a predefined performance in terms of the mean square error (MSE), which can not be achieved by any direct channel emulator approach.
miR-194 as a Predictor for Adenoma Recurrence in Patients with Advanced Colorectal Adenoma after Polypectomy

microRNAs (miRNA) are promising predictors in colorectal cancer (CRC). We investigated whether miRNAs could predict adenoma recurrence in patients with advanced colorectal adenoma (ACRA) after polypectomy. miRNA expression profiling was performed by miRNA microarray to identify recurrence-related miRNAs. Candidate miRNAs extracted from formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded blocks of patients with ACRA were measured using real-time PCR. Logistic regression analysis was conducted to investigate whether validated miRNA expression profiles were independent from other known adenoma recurrence risk factors. The prognostic values of six miRNAs and three independent risk factors were assessed by the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis. The expressions of six candidate miRNAs were significantly decreased from levels in normal colorectal tissue compared with ARCA with adenoma recurrence (RACRA) in this retrospective cohort. However, only miRNA (miR)-194 emerged as a practical predictor. The sensitivity and specificity of miR-194 as a predictor were 71.0% and 78.0%, respectively, at a cutoff value of 0.1311 in the retrospective cohort. Sensitivity and specificity were 76.1% and 77.2%, respectively, in the prospective cohort using the same cutoff value. Low expression levels of miR-194, adenoma size ≥2 cm, and ≥3 adenomas were independent risk factors for adenoma recurrence. Moreover, low expression of miR-194 was a better predictor of adenoma recurrence than the adenoma size and numbers according to ROC curve analysis. miR-194 may be an independent predictor for adenoma recurrence in patients with ACRA after polypectomy. Cancer Prev Res; 7(6); 607–16. ©2014 AACR.
The History of Special Education: From Isolation to Integration

This comprehensive volume examines the facts, characters and events that shaped this field in Western Europe, Canada and the United States. From the first efforts to teach disabled people in early-Christian and medieval eras to such current mandates as Public Law 94-142, this study assesses the development of special education as a formal discipline. The book presents a four-part narrative that traces its emergence in detail, from 16th-century Spain through the Age of Enlightenment in 17th-century France and England to 18th-century issues in Europe and North America of placement, curriculum and early intervention. The status of teachers in the 19th century, and social trends and the movement toward integration in 20th-century programmes are considered as well.
Identification of a NCR+/NKG2D+/LFA‐1low/CD94− immature human NK cell subset

CD56bright natural killer (NK) cells, generated in vitro from CD34+ hematopoietic progenitor cells, were characterized after a 30‐day culture with flt3 ligand plus IL‐15. Virtually, all CD56bright cells expressed CD117, CD25, natural cytotoxicity receptors (NCRs), NKG2D, CD161, and CD244, while only a subset expressed CD18‐CD11a (LFA‐1), and CD94 molecule, defining an immature CD56bright/NCRs+/NKG2D+/LFA‐1−/CD94− subset. Another small subset of cells expressing CD94 but not LFA‐1 integrin was also identified, suggesting that during NK differentiation LFA‐1 might be upregulated later than CD94. To verify this hypothesis in vivo, we evaluated the NK cell expression of LFA‐1 in both peripheral and umbilical cord blood samples. Interestingly, in these blood fluids, we have identified a lineage negative CD34−/LFA‐1low/NKp46dim/NKG2Ddim/CD94− subset that resembled an immature stage of NK cells present in lymph nodes. Altogether, the results indicate that CD18‐CD11a integrin, as well as CD11b in mice, may be a useful marker to identify immature stages of NK cell differentiation. © 2009 International Society for Advancement of Cytometry
Innate Immune Responses in the Neutrophils of Community Dwelling and Nursing Home Elders.

OBJECTIVE To evaluate innate immune responses of older disabled nursing home residents that may contribute to infectious disease susceptibility, we compared surface markers and signaling efficiency of neutrophils from nursing home residents and community dwelling elders. DESIGN Observational pilot study. SETTING Five New Haven, CT area nursing homes and the greater New Haven community. PARTICIPANTS 15 nursing home residents and 43 community dwelling elders. MEASUREMENTS Neutrophils were isolated and Toll-like receptor (TLR) and β2 integrin expression on the surface of unstimulated neutrophils were measured via flow cytometry. Chemokine induction was determined by Quantitative PCR. RESULTS Surface expression of TLR4 was elevated among nursing home residents compared to community dwellers (mean percent positive cells 33.91 [SE 2.75] vs. 15.67 [SE 1.58], p<0.001), while expression of the β2 integrins CD11b and CD18 was significantly lower (mean fluorescent intensity 460.8 [SE 49.1] vs. 632.9 [SE 29.5] for CD11b and 59.6 [SE 7.9] vs. 137.6 [SE 4.6] for CD18, p<0.0001). Neutrophils from nursing home residents produced substantially reduced levels of chemokines at baseline and after stimulation. CONCLUSIONS Because integrins are an important pathway to phagocyte signaling and contribute to adherence and locomotion of neutrophils, reduced β2 integrin expression may contribute to impaired responses to stimulation and reduced adhesive properties in PMN from nursing home residents. Since integrin CD11b has been shown to negatively regulate TLR4 response, it is plausible that lower levels of CD11b contribute to elevated expression of TLR4.
Reconceptualizing Research on College Student Peer Culture

This article introduces to higher education Bronfenbrenner's ecology model of development. The model reflects reciprocal influences of individuals and their environments and offers needed advances in understanding, studying, and influencing college student peer groups. The authors describe the model, draw illustrations from research, and analyze its implications for higher education research and practice.
International Education and IB Programmes

It has been suggested that the International Baccalaureate Organization could be expected to ‘influence’ as many as 100 million people in the foreseeable future. This article focuses on some of the cultural dissonances that may be produced from attempts to ‘clone’ on to non-Eurocentric models, educational systems and methodologies designed to accommodate cultural norms in another part of the world. Cultures are dynamic entities and a certain repositioning of defining characteristics may be regarded as an acceptable, even desirable, consequence of adopting IB programmes and methodologies. This article argues that such outcomes need to be the product of intentional design and not accidental byproducts.
Cognitive Categorization and Subjective Rivalry Among Retailers in a Small City

The authors report the results of 2 studies conducted to measure the cognitive structures underlying perceived competitive relationships among retailing firms in a small city. Drawing from recent research on cognitive categorization, they first discuss the theoretical importance of studying subjective rivalry and then explain how categorization processes influence perceived competitive boundaries among firms. The results of Study 1 suggest that cognitive categories of firms are perceived to be largely independent sets of organizations. The results of Study 2 suggest that middle-level categories represent a psychological inflection point differentiating rivals from nonrivals. The authors discuss the implications of these data for studying how managers make sense of competitive structures
Sequential Transfer in Multi-armed Bandit with Finite Set of Models

Learning from prior tasks and transferring that experience to improve future performance is critical for building lifelong learning agents. Although results in supervised and reinforcement learning show that transfer may significantly improve the learning performance, most of the literature on transfer is focused on batch learning tasks. In this paper we study the problem of sequential transfer in online learning, notably in the multi-armed bandit framework, where the objective is to minimize the total regret over a sequence of tasks by transferring knowledge from prior tasks. We introduce a novel bandit algorithm based on a method-of-moments approach for estimating the possible tasks and derive regret bounds for it.
The Effect of Intertrial Conditioned Stimuli in Autoshaping

Three autoshaping experiments, using pigeon subjects, examined the effect of presenting an S+ or an S− on acquisition to a different conditioned stimulus (CS). Experiment 1 found that signalling intertrial food with an S+ or an S− allowed acquisition of responding to the target-CS; however, that acquisition was slower when the signal was the S+. Experiment 2 found that even when the S+ or S− were presented without food in the intertrial interval, acquisition was slower in the group receiving the S+. Experiment 3 found that a similar, but weaker effect occurred when the S+ or S− stimuli were presented in the session prior to target-CS training, rather than intermixed. These results have implications for the interpretation of experiments that use a signalling manipulation to assess the interaction of CS and context in Pavlovian conditioning; they suggest that signalling unconditioned stimuli (USs) may have consequences other than that of modulating context-US learning.
Two-Point Correlation Functions of X-Ray-Selected Clusters of Galaxies: Theoretical Predictions for Flux-Limited Surveys

We have developed a model to describe two-point correlation functions of clusters of galaxies in X-ray flux limited surveys. Our model properly takes into account nonlinear gravitational evolution of mass fluctuations, redshift-space distortion due to linear peculiar velocity fields and to fingers-of-god, cluster abundance, and bias evolution on the basis of the Press-Schechter theory, the light-cone effect, and the selection function due to the X-ray flux, temperature, and luminosity limits. Applying this model in representative cosmological models, we present quantitative predictions for X-ray-selected samples that should be feasible from future surveys with the X-ray satellites, including Astro-E, Chandra, and XMM. The comparison of these predictions and the observed cluster clustering will generate important cosmological constraints that complement the cluster abundance and the cosmic microwave background.