Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Unravelling the Intrinsic Functional Organization of the Human Lateral Frontal Cortex: A Parcellation Scheme Based on Resting State fMRI

Human and nonhuman primates exhibit flexible behavior. Functional, anatomical, and lesion studies indicate that the lateral frontal cortex (LFC) plays a pivotal role in such behavior. LFC consists of distinct subregions exhibiting distinct connectivity patterns that possibly relate to functional specializations. Inference about the border of each subregion in the human brain is performed with the aid of macroscopic landmarks and/or cytoarchitectonic parcellations extrapolated in a stereotaxic system. However, the high interindividual variability, the limited availability of cytoarchitectonic probabilistic maps, and the absence of robust functional localizers render the in vivo delineation and examination of the LFC subregions challenging. In this study, we use resting state fMRI for the in vivo parcellation of the human LFC on a subjectwise and data-driven manner. This approach succeeds in uncovering neuroanatomically realistic subregions, with potential anatomical substrates including BA 46, 44, 45, 9 and related (sub)divisions. Ventral LFC subregions exhibit different functional connectivity (FC), which can account for different contributions in the language domain, while more dorsal adjacent subregions mark a transition to visuospatial/sensorimotor networks. Dorsal LFC subregions participate in known large-scale networks obeying an external/internal information processing dichotomy. Furthermore, we traced “families” of LFC subregions organized along the dorsal–ventral and anterior–posterior axis with distinct functional networks also encompassing specialized cingulate divisions. Similarities with the connectivity of macaque candidate homologs were observed, such as the premotor affiliation of presumed BA 46. The current findings partially support dominant LFC models.
Sertoli Cells Maintain Leydig Cell Number and Peritubular Myoid Cell Activity in the Adult Mouse Testis

The Sertoli cells are critical regulators of testis differentiation and development. In the adult, however, their known function is restricted largely to maintenance of spermatogenesis. To determine whether the Sertoli cells regulate other aspects of adult testis biology we have used a novel transgenic mouse model in which Amh-Cre induces expression of the receptor for Diphtheria toxin (iDTR) specifically within Sertoli cells. This causes controlled, cell-specific and acute ablation of the Sertoli cell population in the adult animal following Diphtheria toxin injection. Results show that Sertoli cell ablation leads to rapid loss of all germ cell populations. In addition, adult Leydig cell numbers decline by 75% with the remaining cells concentrated around the rete and in the sub-capsular region. In the absence of Sertoli cells, peritubular myoid cell activity is reduced but the cells retain an ability to exclude immune cells from the seminiferous tubules. These data demonstrate that, in addition to support of spermatogenesis, Sertoli cells are required in the adult testis both for retention of the normal adult Leydig cell population and for support of normal peritubular myoid cell function. This has implications for our understanding of male reproductive disorders and wider androgen-related conditions affecting male health.
GLOBALLY OPTIMAL PARAMETER ESTIMATES FOR NONLINEAR DIFFUSIONS BY ALEKSANDAR MIJATOVIĆ

This paper studies an approximation method for the log-likelihood function of a nonlinear diffusion process using the bridge of the diffusion. The main result (Theorem 1) shows that this approximation converges uniformly to the unknown likelihood function and can therefore be used efficiently with any algorithm for sampling from the law of the bridge. We also introduce an expected maximum likelihood (EML) algorithm for inferring the parameters of discretely observed diffusion processes. The approach is applicable to a subclass of nonlinear SDEs with constant volatility and drift that is linear in the model parameters. In this setting, globally optimal parameters are obtained in a single step by solving a linear system. Simulation studies to test the EML algorithm show that it performs well when compared with algorithms based on the exact maximum likelihood as well as closed-form likelihood expansions.
Paying Too Much and Being Happy about It: Existence, Causes, and Consequences of Tariff-Choice Biases

A common assumption underlying the analysis of consumers' choices among optional tariffs is that consumers choose the tariff that maximizes their surplus and, thus, the tariff that leads to the lowest billing rate for a given amount of usage. Yet there is evidence that many users prefer a flat rate even though their billing rate would be lower with a pay-per-use tariff (flat-rate bias), and some users prefer a pay-per-use tariff even though they would save money with a flat rate (pay-per-use bias). The authors conduct four empirical analyses based on three different data sets. They show that the flat-rate bias is more important and has a greater regularity and time persistence than the pay-per-use bias. They classify potential causes of the flat-rate bias as “insurance effect,” “taxi meter effect,” “convenience effect,” and “overestimation effect” and show that the insurance, the taxi meter, and the overestimation effects lead to a flat-rate bias. They provide evidence that underestimation of usage is a major cause of the pay-per-use bias. They show that the flat-rate bias does not significantly increase customer churn and thus results in a short- and long-term profit increase. In contrast, the pay-per-use bias largely increases churn so that in the long run, the additional short-term profit is offset by higher churn.
Efficient Methods for Several Classes of Ambiguous Stochastic Programming Problems Under Mean-MAD Information

We consider decision making problems under uncertainty, assuming that only partial distributional information is available - as is often the case in practice. In such problems, the goal is to determine here-and-now decisions, which optimally balance deterministic immediate costs and worst-case expected future costs. These problems are challenging, since the worst-case distribution needs to be determined while the underlying problem is already a difficult multistage recourse problem. Moreover, as found in many applications, the model may contain integer variables in some or all stages. Applying a well-known result by Ben-Tal and Hochman (1972), we are able to efficiently solve such problems without integer variables, assuming only readily available distributional information on means and mean-absolute deviations. Moreover, we extend the result to the non-convex integer setting by means of convex approximations (see Romeijnders et al. (2016a)), proving corresponding performance bounds. Our approach is straightforward to implement using of-the-shelf software as illustrated in our numerical experiments.
Store-Operated Ca2+ Entry (SOCE) and Purinergic Receptor-Mediated Ca2+ Homeostasis in Murine bv2 Microglia Cells: Early Cellular Responses to ATP-Mediated Microglia Activation

Microglia activation is a neuroinflammatory response to parenchymal damage with release of intracellular metabolites, e.g., purines, and signaling molecules from damaged cells. Extracellular purines can elicit Ca2+-mediated microglia activation involving P2X/P2Y receptors with metabotropic (P2Y) and ionotropic (P2X) cell signaling in target cells. Such microglia activation results in increased phagocytic activity, activation of their inflammasome and release of cytokines to sustain neuroinflammatory (so-called M1/M2 polarization). ATP-induced activation of ionotropic P2X4 and P2X7 receptors differentially induces receptor-operated Ca2+ entry (ROCE). Although store-operated Ca2+ entry (SOCE) was identified to modulate ROCE in primary microglia, its existence and role in one of the most common murine microglia cell line, BV2, is unknown. To dissect SOCE from ROCE in BV2 cells, we applied high-resolution multiphoton Ca2+ imaging. After depleting internal Ca2+ stores, SOCE was clearly detectable. High ATP concentrations (1 mM) elicited sustained increases in intracellular [Ca2+]i whereas lower concentrations (≤100 μM) also induced Ca2+ oscillations. These differential responses were assigned to P2X7 and P2X4 activation, respectively. Pharmacologically inhibiting P2Y and P2X responses did not affect SOCE, and in fact, P2Y-responses were barely detectable in BV2 cells. STIM1S content was significantly upregulated by 1 mM ATP. As P2X-mediated Ca2+ oscillations were rare events in single cells, we implemented a high-content screening approach that allows to record Ca2+ signal patterns from a large number of individual cells at lower optical resolution. Using automated classifier analysis, several drugs (minocycline, U73122, U73343, wortmannin, LY294002, AZ10606120) were tested on their profile to act on Ca2+ oscillations (P2X4) and sustained [Ca2+]i increases. We demonstrate specific drug effects on purinergic Ca2+ pathways and provide new pharmacological insights into Ca2+ oscillations in BV2 cells. For example, minocycline inhibits both P2X7- and P2X4-mediated Ca2+-responses, and this may explain its anti-inflammatory action in neuroinflammatory disease. As a technical result, our novel automated bio-screening approach provides a biomedical engineering platform to allow high-content drug library screens to study neuro-inflammation in vitro.
Constraints of the Clumpiness of Dark Matter Halos through Heating of the Disk Galaxies

Motivated by the presence of numerous dark matter clumps in the Milky Way's halo, as expected from the cold dark matter cosmological model, we conduct numerical simulations to examine the heating of the disk. We construct a fairly realistic initial Galaxy model with a stable thin disk. The disk interacts with dark matter clumps for about 5 Gyr. Three physical effects are examined: the mass spectrum of the dark matter clumps, the initial thickness of the galactic disk, and the spatial distribution of the clumps. We find that the massive end of the mass spectrum determines the amount of disk heating. Thicker disks suffer less heating. There is a certain thickness at which the heating due to the interaction with the clumps is saturated. The spatial distribution of the clumps plays an important role in disk heating. We adopt two different spatial distributions of the clumps. The first, which mimics the primordial distribution of the clumps at the epoch of the collapse of the halo, is proportional to the underlying halo density distribution. Recent cosmological simulations, however, yield depletion of the clumps within the extent of the disk in the present-day galaxies. Therefore, we construct the second distribution, which has the same number density of the clumps as the prediction for the cosmological simulations within the disk region. Our numerical simulations show that the first distribution produces considerable disk heating, while the latter does not. These results suggest that at early epochs, or in cases where many clumps are surviving until the present, the disk should have suffered considerable heating in the earlier epochs of their evolution.
How the Autonomic Nervous System and Driving Style Change With Incremental Stressing Conditions During Simulated Driving

This paper reports on the autonomic nervous system (ANS) changes and driving style modifications as a response to incremental stressing level stimulation during simulated driving. Fifteen subjects performed a driving simulation experiment consisting of three driving sessions. Starting from a first session where participants performed a steady motorway driving, the experimental protocol includes two additional driving sessions with incremental stress load. More specifically, the first stressing load consists of randomly administering mechanical stimuli to the vehicle during a steady motorway driving by means of a series of sudden and unexpected skids, such as those produced by a strong wind gust. These skids were supposed to produce in the driver a given level of stress. In order to assess this mental workload, dedicated psychological tests were performed. The second stressing load implied an incremental psychological load, consisting of a battery of time pressing arithmetical questions, added to the mechanical stimuli. For the whole experimental session, the driver's physiological signals and the vehicle's mechanical parameters were recorded and analyzed. In this paper, the ANS changes were investigated in terms of heart rate variability, respiration activity, and electrodermal response along with mechanical information such as that coming from steering wheel angle corrections, velocity changes, and time responses. Results are satisfactory and promising. In particular, significant statistical differences were found among the three driving sessions with an increasing stress level both in ANS responses and mechanical parameter changes. In addition, a good recognition of these sessions was carried out by pattern classification algorithms achieving an accuracy greater than 90%.
Throughput Guarantees Through Maximal Scheduling in Wireless Networks

We address the question of providing throughput guarantees through distributed scheduling, which has remained an open problem for some time. We consider a simple distributed scheduling strategy, maximal scheduling, and prove that it attains a guaranteed fraction of the maximum throughput region in arbitrary wireless networks. The guaranteed fraction depends on “interference degree” of the network which is the maximum number of sessions that interfere with any given session in the network and do not interfere with each other. Depending on the nature of communication, the transmission powers and the propagation models, the guaranteed fraction can be lower bounded by the maximum link degrees in the underlying topology, or even by constants that are independent of the topology. The guarantees also hold in networks with multicast communication and an arbitrary number of frequencies. We prove that the guarantees are tight in that they can not be improved any further with maximal scheduling.
Delayed CO 2 emissions from ocean ridges as the cause of late-Pleistocene glacial cycles

The coupled 100,000 year variations in ice volume, temperature, and atmospheric CO2 during the late Pleistocene are generally considered to arise from a combination of changes in orbital forcing, ice dynamics, and ocean circulation. It has also been argued that volcanic contributions induced by changes in glaciation influence atmospheric CO2 and act as a feedback upon variations in glaciation. Beyond acting as a feedback, here it is suggested that ocean ridge volcanism plays an important role in generating late-Pleistocene 100 ky glacial cycles. Opposing pressure variations associated with deglaciation on land and rising sea level would merely cause offsetting volcanic CO2 contributions except that anomalies in the flux of CO2 from ocean ridges require tens-of-thousands of years, or longer, to ascend from the base of the melt zone and emit into the ocean. A simple model involving temperature, ice, and CO2 is presented that oscillates at ∼100 ky time scales when incorporating a delayed CO2 contribution from ridges, even if the feedback accounts for only a small fraction of total changes in CO2. Oscillations become phase-locked with insolation forcing from changes in Earth’s orbit and, under certain parameterizations, transition from ∼40 ky to larger ∼100 ky oscillations during the mid-Pleistocene Transition in response to modulations in the amplitude of obliquity. This novel description of Pleistocene glaciation should be testable through ongoing advances in understanding the circulation of carbon in the solid earth.
Timing penalties associated with cache sharing

Although important from software performance perspective, the behavior of memory caches is not captured by the common approaches to modeling of software performance, where the software performance models tend to treat operation durations as constants despite the fact that the operations compete for memory caches. Incorporating memory cache models into software performance models is hindered by the fact that existing cache models do not provide information about timings and penalties, but only about hits and misses. The paper outlines the relationship of cache events and cache timings on a real computer architecture, indicating that the existing practice of modeling cache miss penalties as constants is not sufficient to model software performance faithfully.
Principals' Application of Instructional Leadership Practices for Secondary School Effectiveness in Oyo State.

This study ascertained the principals’ application of instructional leadership practices for secondary school effectiveness in Oyo State. Two research questions guided the study and two null hypotheses were tested. The descriptive survey research design was adopted for the study. The population of the study comprised 8,701 which were made of 969 principals and 7,732 teachers in public secondary school principals in Oyo State. Proportionate Stratified sampling technique was used to draw 871 respondents which were made up of 97 principals and 774 teachers. Two versions of a 18 items questionnaire titled ‘‘Principals’ Application of Instructional Leadership Practices Questionnaire (PAILPQI)’’ and PAILPQII’’ respectively’’ were used as the instrument for data collection. The instruments were subjected to face validation by three experts; two in Department of Educational Management and Policy and the other in Measurement and Evaluation from the Department of Educational Foundations, all from Nnamdi Azikiwe University. The Cronbach alpha was used to ascertain the reliability of the instruments which yielded the index value of 0.82 and 0.76 for PAILPQI and PAILPQII respectively. Mean and standard deviation were used to answer the research questions, while ztest was used to test the null hypotheses at 0.05 level of significance. The findings of the study revealed among others that there is no significant difference in the mean rating of principals and teachers on principals’ application of instructional supervision practices for secondary school effectiveness in secondary schools in Oyo State. Based on the findings, it was recommended among others that school principals should regularly monitor teachers’ instructional delivery and their level of compliance to school schedules in order to enhance teachers’ commitment to teaching. 32
Feature-to-Code Traceability in Legacy Software Variants

Existing similar software variants, developed by ad-hoc reuse technique such as left clone-and-own right, represent a starting point to build a software product line (SPL) core assets. To re-engineer such legacy software variants into an SPL for systematic reuse, it is important to be able to identify a mapping between features and their implementing source code elements in different variants. Information Retrieval (IR) methods have been used widely to support this mapping in a single software product. This paper proposes a new approach to improve the performance of IR methods when they are applied to a collection of software variants. The novelty of our approach is twofold. On the one hand, it exploits what software variants have in common and how they differ to improve the accuracy of IR results. On the other hand, it reduces the abstraction gap between features and source code by introducing an intermediate level called left code-topic right, for increasing the number of retrieved links that are relevant. We have applied our approach to a collection of seven variants of a large-scale system by using the ArgoUML-SPL modeling tool. The experimental results showed that our approach outperforms conventional application of IR methods as well as the most recent and relevant work on the subject.
Analysis of hospitalized burned patients in bandar abbass, iran.

This study was conducted to determine the causes and outcomes of burn in patients referred to Shahid Mohammadi Hospital in Bandar Abbass, southern Iran, in which 212 burned patients were assessed from March 2007 to March 2008 . Mean age of patients was 22.14 yr. Heat contact was the main cause of burn with 92.5%. 49.1% of total burns occurred among less than 20 yr old people. Mortality rate was 10.4%. Most of burns occurred at home. An educational program is necessary to prevent thermal burning at home.
Crustal structure under the central High Atlas Mountains ( Morocco ) from geological and gravity data

Seismic wide angle and receiver function results together with geological data have been used as constraints to build a gravity-based crustal model of the central High Atlas of Morocco. Integration of a newly acquired set of gravity values with public data allowed us to undertake 2–2.5D gravity modelling along two profiles that cross the entire mountain chain. Modelling suggests moderate crustal thickening, and a general state of Airy isostatic undercompensation. Localized thickening appears restricted to the vicinity of a north-dipping crustal-scale thrust fault, that offsets the Moho discontinuity and defines a small crustal root which accounts for the minimum Bouguer gravity anomaly values. Gravity modelling indicates that this root has a northeasterly strike, slightly oblique to the ENE general orientation of the High Atlas belt. A consequence of the obliquity between the High Atlas borders and its internal and deep structure is the lack of correlation between Bouguer gravity anomaly values and topography. Active buckling affecting the crust, a highly elevated asthenosphere, or a combination of both are addressed as side mechanisms that help to maintain the high elevations of the Atlas mountains. D 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
The factors influencing members' continuance intentions in professional virtual communities — a longitudinal study

The advance of internet technology has stimulated the rise of professional virtual communities (PVCs). The objective of PVCs is to encourage people to exploit or explore knowledge through websites. However, many virtual communities have failed due to the reluctance of members to continue their participation in these PVCs. Motivated by such concerns, this study formulates and tests a theoretical model to explain the factors influencing individuals' intention to continue participating in PVCs' knowledge activities. Drawing from the information system and knowledge management literatures, two academic perspectives related to PVC continuance are incorporated in the integrated model. This model posits that an individual's intention to stay in a professional virtual community is influenced by a contextual factor and technological factors. Specifically, the antecedents of PVC members' intention to continue sharing knowledge include social interaction ties capital and satisfaction at post-usage stage. These variables, in turn, are adjusted based on the confirmation of pre-usage expectations. A longitudinal study is conducted with 360 members of a professional virtual community. Results indicate that the contextual factor and technological factors both exert significant impacts on PVC participants' continuance intentions.