Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Electrical Responses and Spontaneous Activity of Human iPS-Derived Neuronal Networks Characterized for 3-month Culture with 4096-Electrode Arrays

The recent availability of human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) holds great promise as a novel source of human-derived neurons for cell and tissue therapies as well as for in vitro drug screenings that might replace the use of animal models. However, there is still a considerable lack of knowledge on the functional properties of hiPSC-derived neuronal networks, thus limiting their application. Here, upon optimization of cell culture protocols, we demonstrate that both spontaneous and evoked electrical spiking activities of these networks can be characterized on-chip by taking advantage of the resolution provided by CMOS multielectrode arrays (CMOS-MEAs). These devices feature a large and closely-spaced array of 4096 simultaneously recording electrodes and multi-site on-chip electrical stimulation. Our results show that networks of human-derived neurons can respond to electrical stimulation with a physiological repertoire of spike waveforms after 3 months of cell culture, a period of time during which the network undergoes the expression of developing patterns of spontaneous spiking activity. To achieve this, we have investigated the impact on the network formation and on the emerging network-wide functional properties induced by different biochemical substrates, i.e., poly-dl-ornithine (PDLO), poly-l-ornithine (PLO), and polyethylenimine (PEI), that were used as adhesion promoters for the cell culture. Interestingly, we found that neuronal networks grown on PDLO coated substrates show significantly higher spontaneous firing activity, reliable responses to low-frequency electrical stimuli, and an appropriate level of PSD-95 that may denote a physiological neuronal maturation profile and synapse stabilization. However, our results also suggest that even 3-month culture might not be sufficient for human-derived neuronal network maturation. Taken together, our results highlight the tight relationship existing between substrate coatings and emerging network properties, i.e., spontaneous activity, responsiveness, synapse formation and maturation. Additionally, our results provide a baseline on the functional properties expressed over 3 months of network development for a commercially available line of hiPSC-derived neurons. This is a first step toward the development of functional pre-clinical assays to test pharmaceutical compounds on human-derived neuronal networks with CMOS-MEAs.
Investment Frameworks : De-biased Decision Making in Equity Investing

Because people are irrational in systematic and predictable ways, decision-making processes can be an important driver of investing success if they mitigate biases and enhance objectivity. However, there is little consensus on the best approach to making investment decisions. Many investors rely on informal intuitive decision making guided by unreliable mental narratives, which are automatically generated stories that seemingly explain the immediately available data points. Our perception of evidence is naturally distorted to be artificially coherent with these narratives, so this approach often leads to biased, overconfident choices. At the other end of the spectrum, “black box” quantitative, factor-based investing, driven by statistical inputs and purely algorithmic processes, typically forgoes the benefit of differentiated forward-looking views based on fundamental research and expertise.
Automatic Differentiation of Nonlinear AMPL Models

We describe favorable experience with automatic differentiation of mathematical programming problems expressed in AMPL, a modeling language for mathematical programming. Nonlinear expressions are translated to loop-free code, which makes analytically correct gradients and Jacobians particularly easy to compute — static storage allocation suffices. The nonlinear expressions may either be interpreted or, to gain some execution speed, converted to Fortran or C.
PID controller tuning using evolutionary algorithms

This paper presents the implementation of PID controller tuning using two sets of evolutionary techniques which are differential evolution (DE) and genetic algorithm (GA). The optimal PID control parameters are applied for a high order system, system with time delay and non-minimum phase system. The performance of the two techniques is evaluated by setting its objective function with mean square error (MSE) and integral absolute error (IAE). Both techniques will compete to achieve the globally minimum value of its objective functions. Meanwhile, reliability between DE and GA in consistently maintaining minimum MSE is also been studied. This paper also compares the performance of the tuned PID controller using GA and DE methods with Ziegler-Nichols method.
Development of a Risk Index for Serious Prescription Opioid‐Induced Respiratory Depression or Overdose in Veterans’ Health Administration Patients

Abstract Objective Develop a risk index to estimate the likelihood of life‐threatening respiratory depression or overdose among medical users of prescription opioids. Subjects, Design, and Methods A case‐control analysis of administrative health care data from the Veterans’ Health Administration identified 1,877,841 patients with a pharmacy record for an opioid prescription between October 1, 2010 and September 30, 2012. Overdose or serious opioid‐induced respiratory depression (OSORD) occurred in 817. Ten controls were selected per case (n = 8,170). Items for an OSORD risk index (RIOSORD) were selected through logistic regression modeling, with point values assigned to each predictor. Modeling of risk index scores produced predicted probabilities of OSORD; risk classes were defined by the predicted probability distribution. Results Fifteen variables most highly associated with OSORD were retained as items, including mental health disorders and pharmacotherapy; impaired drug metabolism or excretion; pulmonary disorders; specific opioid characteristics; and recent hospital visits. The average predicted probability of experiencing OSORD ranged from 3% in the lowest risk decile to 94% in the highest, with excellent agreement between predicted and observed incidence across risk classes. The model's C‐statistic was 0.88 and Hosmer–Lemeshow goodness‐of‐fit statistic 10.8 (P > 0.05). Conclusion RIOSORD performed well in identifying medical users of prescription opioids within the Veterans’ Health Administration at elevated risk of overdose or life‐threatening respiratory depression, those most likely to benefit from preventive interventions. This novel, clinically practical, risk index is intended to provide clinical decision support for safer pain management. It should be assessed, and refined as necessary, in a more generalizable population, and prospectively evaluated.
Factors Affecting Gross Efficiency in Cycling

Abstract There is little standardization of how to measure cycling gross efficiency (GE). Therefore, the purposes of these studies were to evaluate the effect of: i) stage duration, ii) relative exercise intensity, iii) work capacity and iv) a prior maximal incremental test on GE. Trained subjects (n=28) performed incremental tests with stage durations of 1-, 3-, and 6-min to establish the effect of stage duration and relative exercise intensity on GE. The effect of work capacity was evaluated by correlating GE with peak power output (PPO). In different subjects (n=9), GE was measured at 50% PPO with and without a prior maximal incremental test. GE was similar in 3- and 6-min stages (19.7±2.8% and 19.3±2.0%), but significantly higher during 1-min stages (21.1±2.7%), GE increased with relative exercise intensity, up to 50% PPO or the power output corresponding to the ventilatory threshold and then remained stable. No relationship between work capacity and GE was found. Prior maximal exercise had a small effect on GE measures; GE was lower after maximal exercise. In conclusion, GE can be determined robustly so long as steady state exercise is performed and RER ≤1.0.
Patients With Chronic Three-Vessel Disease in a 15-Year Follow-Up Study

AbstractGenetic and non-genetic predictors of 15-year survival in patients with chronic three-vessel disease (3VD) were investigated.Coronary angiography was performed on 810 subjects with symptoms of stable ischemic heart disease in 1998. The patients with 3VD were genotyped for 23 candidate polymorphisms covering the PPAR-RXR pathway, matrix metalloproteinase-2, renin–angiotensin–aldosterone system, endothelin-1, cytokine genes, MTHFR and APO E variants. Fifteen-year survival data were obtained from the national insurance registry. All data were available in the case of 150 patients with 3VD. Statistical analysis used stepwise Cox regression with dominant, recessive, or additive mode of genetic expression. Involved variables included age, sex, BMI, blood pressure, diabetes, ejection fraction, left main stenosis, previously diagnosed coronary stenosis, myocardial infarction in personal history, and coronary bypass along with polymorphisms pre-selected by log-rank tests.Out of the 23 polymorphisms, four were included in the model construction. SNP in the IL-6 gene rs1800795 (−174 G/C) has been found to be a significant predictor of survival. This SNP was in a linkage disequilibrium with rs1800797 (−597 G/A) in the same gene (D′ = 1.0), which was also found to constitute a significant predictor of survival when rs1800795 was not included in the model construction. Age, increased BMI, diabetes, low EF, and left main stenosis were also significant predictors in all models.Age, increased BMI, diabetes, low ejection fraction, left main stenosis, and genetic variation in the IL-6 promoter were established as significant independent risk factors for the survival of patients with three-vessel disease.
Decentralization of Collective Agreements and Rising Wage Inequality in Israel

This paper presents a systematic analysis of the decentralization of the Israeli system of collective bargaining and its contribution to the rise in earnings inequality. We quantitatively analyze all collective agreements that were signed between 1957 and 2003, and present the scale, scope, and timing of five dimensions of decentralization. The findings suggest that decentralization started in the mid-1970s when national agreements were less likely to be extended to nonunion employees; it was intensified in 1975-1980 when nationwide industrial agreements were supplanted by occupational and local agreements. Decentralization became fully consolidated by 1987 when peak-level agreements covering the entire private sector were no longer signed. We then present evidence (including time-series analyszs that control for union density and macroeconomic indicators) that the process of decentralization, especially the decline in the use of extension orders and the proliferation of local agreements, explains a significant part of the sharp rise in earnings inequality in Israel during 1970-2003.
Hypertool: A Programming Aid for Message-Passing Systems

Programming assistance, automation concepts, and their application to a message-passing system program development tool called Hypertool are discussed. Hypertool performs scheduling and handles the communication primitive insertion automatically, thereby increasing productivity and eliminating synchronization errors. Two algorithms, based on the critical-path method, are presented for scheduling processes statically. Hypertool also generates the performance estimates and other program quality measures to help programmers improve their algorithms and programs. >
Cross-Domain Contextualization of Sentiment Lexicons

The simplicity of using Web 2.0 platforms and services has resulted in an abundance of user-generated content. A significant part of this content contains user opinions with clear economic relevance-customer and travel reviews, for example, or the articles of well-known and respected bloggers who influence purchase decisions. Analyzing and acting upon user-generated content is becoming imperative for marketers and social scientists who aim to gather feedback from very large user communities. Sentiment detection, as part of opinion mining, supports these efforts by identifying and aggregating polar opinions-i.e., positive or negative statements about facts. For achieving accurate results, sentiment detection requires a correct interpretation of language, which remains a challenging task due to the inherent ambiguities of human languages. Particular attention has to be directed to the context of opinionated terms when trying to resolve these ambiguities. Contextualized sentiment lexicons address this need by considering the sentiment term's context in their evaluation but are usually limited to one domain, as many contextualizations are not stable across domains. This paper introduces a method which identifies unstable contextualizations and refines the contextualized sentiment dictionaries accordingly, eliminating the need for specific training data for each individual domain. An extensive evaluation compares the accuracy of this approach with results obtained from domain-specific corpora.
Low-complexity automatic speaker recognition in the compressed GSM AMR domain

This paper presents an experimental implementation of a low-complexity speaker recognition algorithm working in the compressed speech domain. The goal is to perform speaker modeling and identification without decoding the speech bitstream to extract speaker dependent features, thus saving important system resources, for instance, in mobile devices. The compressed bitstream values of the widely used GSM AMR speech coding standard are studied to identify statistics enabling fair recognition after a few seconds of speech. Using Euclidean distance measures on elementary statistical values such as coefficient of variation and skewness of nine standard GSM AMR parameters delivers recognition accuracies close to 100% after about 20 seconds of active speech for a database of 14 speakers recorded in a normal room environment.
THE Hα GALAXY SURVEY. VIII. CLOSE COMPANIONS AND INTERACTIONS, AND THE DEFINITION OF STARBURSTS

We consider the massive star formation properties, radial profiles, and atomic gas masses of those galaxies in our Hα Galaxy Survey that have close companion galaxies, in comparison with a matched control sample of galaxies without companions. Our analysis is based on Hα and continuum images of 327 disk galaxies that form a representative sample of the local universe. We find that the presence of a close companion raises the star formation rate by a factor of just below two, while hardly at all increasing the equivalent width of the Hα emission. This means that although statistically galaxies with close companions form stars at a higher rate, they do this over extended periods of time and not as bursts. We find no significant increase in the central concentration of the star formation as a result of the presence of a close companion. The fraction of truly interacting or merging galaxies is very small in the local universe, at around 2%, and possibly 4% of bright galaxies. Most of these interacting galaxies currently have unremarkable star formation properties. We also study the properties of the galaxies in the survey with the most extreme values for star formation indicators such as rate, equivalent width, star formation rate per area, and gas-depletion timescale. We find that each of these indicators favors a different subset of galaxies, and use this information to discuss critically the possible definitions of the term starburst to describe galaxies with enhanced star formation activity. We conclude that no one starburst definition can be devised that is objective and generally discriminant. Unless one restricts the use of the term “starburst” to a very small number of galaxies indeed, the term will continue to be used for a heterogeneous and wide-ranging collection of objects with no physical basis for their classification as starburst. Our overall conclusions are that (1) whereas the rare interacting and merging galaxies may have enhanced star formation, and vice versa, those galaxies with the highest star formation are often interacting or merging, the influence of the presence of a close companion on the star formation in galaxies is in general very small, and long lasting; and (2) the term “starburst” cannot be easily defined objectively and generally in physical terms.
FORMER MENTORS' PERCEPTIONS OF THE FAITH-BASED APPROACH TO REDUCING RECIDIVISM IMPLEMENTED BY THE MARINETTE-MENOMINEE JAIL OUTREACH, INC.

i Dedication . ii Acknowledgment . iii List of Tables . ix List of Figures . x List of Abbreviations and Definitions . xi CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION . 1 Background . 1 Situation to Self . 3 Problem Statement . 3 Purpose Statement . 4 Significance of the Study . 4 Research Questions . 5 Research Plan . 6 Limitations . 6 Limitations . 7 Delimitations . 8 CHAPTER TWO: LITERATURE REVIEW. 10 Overview. 10 Theoretical Framework . 10 Belief System Theory . 11 v Self-efficacy Theory . 12 The Bible . 15 Related Literature . 17 Untenable Methods and the Need for New Approaches . 17 Community and Para-professional Involvement . 19 Faith and Values-Based Approaches . 23 Forgiveness and Reconciliation . 26 Mentoring . 27 Aftercare and Reentry . 30 The Evangelical Faith-based Community and Volunteerism . 36 Engaged or Rejected by the Church . 39 Summary . 41 CHAPTER THREE: METHODOLOGY . 45 Overview. 45 Research Design . 45 Research Questions . 47 Setting and Sample Size . 48 Participants. 50 Procedures . 50 The Researcher's Role . 52 Data Collection . 53 Survey Validity . 53 vi Face Validity . 53 Semistructured Interviews . 54 Focus Group . 56 Data Analysis . 56 Horizontalization. 57 Clusters of Meaning. 57 Textual Descriptions. 57 Essential, Invariant Structure. 58 Trustworthiness . 58 Ethical Considerations . 59 Summary . 60 CHAPTER FOUR: FINDINGS . 61 Overview. 61 Restatement of the Purpose. 61 Mentor Surveys and Interviews . 62 Findings . 64 Contributions to Offenders’ Recidivism . 65 Theme 1: They all had a Story . 68 Theme 2: Importance of Family . 72 Theme 3: Connecting to Society . 76 Theme 4: Christ as our Savior . 82 Theme 5: Reasons for Change . 85 vii Theme 6: Engagement or Rejection by the Church. 89 Theme 7: Connecting to Outreach . 99 Expert Focus Group. 108 Focus Group Participant Profiles . 108 Focus Group Discussion and Perception . 109 Theme 8: Accountability . 112 Summary . 113 CHAPTER FIVE: DISCUSSION . 114 Overview. 114 Summary of the Findings . 114 Discussion . 117 Implications . 130 Limitations . 133 Rec
Empathy, distance, and blame: juror perceptions of black male homicide victims in capital cases

Abstract The courts have consistently struggled with the discriminatory imposition of the death penalty. This research employs data from the Capital Jury Project which seeks to identify arbitrariness in jurors’ decision-making. Results indicate that Black male victims are perceived to be the most likely to have a problem with drugs/alcohol and come from poor/deprived backgrounds and the least likely to be respected in the community and be perceived as innocent. Black male victims and their families also receive the least empathy from jurors, whom jurors feel the most distance from, and who are most to blame for their victimization. Results suggest the enduring racialization of violent crime and the continuing devaluation of the lives of Black males in American society.
Increased CO 2 stimulates reproduction in a coral reef fish

Ocean acidification is predicted to negatively impact the reproduction of many marine species, either by reducing fertilization success or diverting energy from reproductive effort. While recent studies have demonstrated how ocean acidification will affect larval and juvenile fishes, little is known about how increasing partial pressure of carbon dioxide (pCO2) and decreasing pH might affect reproduction in adult fishes. We investigated the effects of near-future levels of pCO2 on the reproductive performance of the cinnamon anemonefish, Amphiprion melanopus, from the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Breeding pairs were held under three CO2 treatments [Current-day Control (430 latm), Moderate (584 latm) and High (1032 latm)] for a 9-month period that included the summer breeding season. Unexpectedly, increased CO2 dramatically stimulated breeding activity in this species of fish. Over twice as many pairs bred in the Moderate (67% of pairs) and High (55%) compared to the Control (27%) CO2 treatment. Pairs in the High CO2 group produced double the number of clutches per pair and 67% more eggs per clutch compared to the Moderate and Control groups. As a result, reproductive output in the High group was 82% higher than that in the Control group and 50% higher than that in the Moderate group. Despite the increase in reproductive activity, there was no difference in adult body condition among the three treatment groups. There was no significant difference in hatchling length between the treatment groups, but larvae from the High CO2 group had smaller yolks than Controls. This study provides the first evidence of the potential effects of ocean acidification on key reproductive attributes of marine fishes and, contrary to expectations, demonstrates an initially stimulatory (hormetic) effect in response to increased pCO2. However, any long-term consequences of increased reproductive effort on individuals or populations remain to be determined.
Mexican Immigration to Southern California: Issues of Job Competition and Worker Mobility. Impacts of Immigration in California.

Currently the United States is experiencing one of the most massive waves of immigration in its history. The problem has grown so large that it has raised concerns among citizens that major action is necessary to protect American workers. Moreover, whether immigrants displace native-born workers depends on several additional factors, such as whether or not there is an imbalance in the demand for the type of labor immigrants provide and whether low-and high-skill labor are complements or substitutes.
Possible large-N transitions for complex Wilson loop matrices

It is shown that a very simple multiplicative random complex matrix model generalizes the large-N phase structure found in the unitary case: A perturbative regime is joined to a non-perturbative regime at a point where the smoothness of some quantities breaks down. A generic complex Wilson loop matrix in a field theory admitting a 't Hooft planar limit could display a phase transition in that limit as nonlinear effects become dominating over linear ones.
A fully abstract trace model for dataflow networks

A dataflow network consists of nodes that communicate over perfect FIFO channels. For dataflow networks containing only deterministic nodes, a simple and elegant semantic model has been presented by Kahn. However, for nondeterministic networks, the straight-forward generalization of Kahn's model is not compositional. We present a compositional model for nondeterministic networks, which is fully abstract, i.e., it has added the least amount of extra information to Kahn's model which is necessary for attaining compositionality. The model is based on traces.