Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Quantifying network properties in multi-electrode recordings: spatiotemporal characterization and inter-trial variation of evoked gamma oscillations in mouse somatosensory cortex in vitro

Linking the structural connectivity of brain circuits to their cooperative dynamics and emergent functions is a central aim of neuroscience research. Graph theory has recently been applied to study the structure-function relationship of networks, where dynamical similarity of different nodes has been turned into a “static” functional connection. However, the capability of the brain to adapt, learn and process external stimuli requires a constant dynamical functional rewiring between circuitries and cell assemblies. Hence, we must capture the changes of network functional connectivity over time. Multi-electrode array data present a unique challenge within this framework. We study the dynamics of gamma oscillations in acute slices of the somatosensory cortex from juvenile mice recorded by planar multi-electrode arrays. Bursts of gamma oscillatory activity lasting a few hundred milliseconds could be initiated only by brief trains of electrical stimulations applied at the deepest cortical layers and simultaneously delivered at multiple locations. Local field potentials were used to study the spatio-temporal properties and the instantaneous synchronization profile of the gamma oscillatory activity, combined with current source density (CSD) analysis. Pair-wise differences in the oscillation phase were used to determine the presence of instantaneous synchronization between the different sites of the circuitry during the oscillatory period. Despite variation in the duration of the oscillatory response over successive trials, they showed a constant average power, suggesting that the rate of expenditure of energy during the gamma bursts is consistent across repeated stimulations. Within each gamma burst, the functional connectivity map reflected the columnar organization of the neocortex. Over successive trials, an apparently random rearrangement of the functional connectivity was observed, with a more stable columnar than horizontal organization. This work reveals new features of evoked gamma oscillations in developing cortex.
Effect size, practical importance, and social policy for children.

Real decisions for real children are influenced by the papers developmentalists write, regardless of whether we ever intended our papers to be used in the policy arena. Yet most social scientists seldom analyze data in ways that are most useful to policymakers. The primary purpose of this paper is to share three ideas concerning how to evaluate the practical importance of a finding or set of findings. First, for research to be most useful not only in the policy arena but also more generally, significance tests need to be accompanied by effect size estimates. The practical importance of an effect size depends on the scientific context (i.e., measurement, design, and method) as well as the empirical literature context. Second, researchers need to use all existing data when weighing in on a policy debate; here, meta-analyses are particularly useful. Finally, researchers need to be careful about embracing null or small findings, because effects may well be small due to measurement problems alone, particularly early in the history of a research domain.
Attachment and emotion regulation in middle childhood: changes in affect and vagal tone during a social stress task

ABSTRACT In middle childhood, more securely attached children show better emotion regulation when assessed as general tendencies (e.g. coping style), but studies looking at emotion in response to specific stressors have revealed mixed results. This study examined how attachment security, avoidance, and ambivalence – assessed with a story stem task (99 children, 9–11 years old) – relate to dynamic indices of affective and autonomic responses (baseline, reactivity, recovery). Reports of positive and negative affect, and high-frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV), were assessed during a social stressor task. Securely attached children did not show reactivity effects, although they did show greater recovery of positive affect after the task ended. Avoidant children showed both less reactivity and recovery of negative affect, suggesting a dampened emotional response. Ambivalent children showed more reactivity and more recovery of negative affect. Autonomic response changes were only evident for ambivalent children, who showed less suppression of HF-HRV variability under stress.
Evolved digital ecosystems: Dynamic steady state, not optimal fixed point

Traditional models of ecosystems often assume that the species composing an unperturbed ecosystem become fixed so that only the relative abundances of the species change over time. Such ecosystems are said to have reached an optimal fixed point. However, recent work has suggested that neutral evolutionary processes can significantly alter the species composition of an ecosystem, allowing the ecosystem to exist in a dynamic steady state. Here, we investigate the stability of ecosystems and the nature of the equilibrium that forms using the digital evolution platform Avida, tracking evolving ecosystems over thousands of generations. We find that the communities that form are remarkably stable, and do not experience a significant loss of diversity in the long run even in experimental treatments where the communities suffer catastrophic population bottlenecks. When diversity rebounds, ecological communities are reconstituted in a different form than the one that was destroyed, but this difference is comparable to the difference the system would have accumulated if it had been left untouched. Thus, digital ecological communities exist in a dynamic steady state, which ultimately eliminates the effect of historical disturbances.
Tellegen's principle into practice

The transposition principle, also called Tellegen's principle, is a set of transformation rules for linear programs. Yet, though well known, it is not used systematically, and few practical implementations rely on it. In this article, we propose explicit transposed versions of polynomial multiplication and division but also new faster algorithms for multipoint evaluation, interpolation and their transposes. We report on their implementation in Shoup's NTL C++ library.
Effect of measuring ambulatory blood pressure on sleep and on blood pressure during sleep

Abstract Objective: To assess whether recording of ambulatory blood pressure at night causes arousal from sleep and a change in the continuous blood pressure recorded simultaneously. Design: Repeated measurement of blood pressure with two ambulatory blood pressure machines (Oxford Medical ABP and A&D TM2420) during continuous measurement of beat to beat blood pressure and continuous electroencephalography. Setting: Sleep reseach laboratory. Subjects--Six normal subjects. Main outcome measures: The duration of electroencephalographic arousal and the beat to beat changes in blood pressure produced by the measurement of ambulatory blood pressure; the size of any changes that this arousal and change in blood pressure produced in the blood pressure recorded by the ambulatory machine. Results: Both ambulatory blood pressure machines caused arousal from sleep: the mean duration of arousal was 16 seconds (95% range 0-202) with the ABP and 8 seconds (0-73) with the TM2420. Both also caused a rise in beat to beat blood pressure. During non-rapid eye movement sleep, this rise led to the ABP machine overestimating the true systolic blood pressure during sleep by a mean of 10 (SD 14.8) mm Hg and the TM2420 by a mean of 6.3 (8.2) mm Hg. On average, diastolic pressure was not changed, but measurements in individual subjects changed by up to 23 mm Hg. These changes varied in size among subjects and stages of sleep and were seen after measurements that did not cause any electroencephalographic arousal. Conclusions: Ambulatory blood pressure machines cause appreciable arousal from sleep and therefore alter the blood pressure that they are trying to record. This effect should be taken into account when recordings of blood pressure at night are interpreted in clinical work and epidemiological research.
Imagining is Not Doing but Involves Specific Motor Commands: A Review of Experimental Data Related to Motor Inhibition

There is now compelling evidence that motor imagery (MI) and actual movement share common neural substrate. However, the question of how MI inhibits the transmission of motor commands into the efferent pathways in order to prevent any movement is largely unresolved. Similarly, little is known about the nature of the electromyographic activity that is apparent during MI. In addressing these gaps in the literature, the present paper argues that MI includes motor execution commands for muscle contractions which are blocked at some level of the motor system by inhibitory mechanisms. We first assemble data from neuroimaging studies that demonstrate that the neural networks mediating MI and motor performance are not totally overlapping, thereby highlighting potential differences between MI and actual motor execution. We then review MI data indicating the presence of subliminal muscular activity reflecting the intrinsic characteristics of the motor command as well as increased corticomotor excitability. The third section not only considers the inhibitory mechanisms involved during MI but also examines how the brain resolves the problem of issuing the motor command for action while supervising motor inhibition when people engage in voluntary movement during MI. The last part of the paper draws on imagery research in clinical contexts to suggest that some patients move while imagining an action, although they are not aware of such movements. In particular, experimental data from amputees as well as from patients with Parkinson’s disease are discussed. We also review recent studies based on comparing brain activity in tetraplegic patients with that from healthy matched controls that provide insights into inhibitory processes during MI. We conclude by arguing that based on available evidence, a multifactorial explanation of motor inhibition during MI is warranted.
Stressed Memories: How Acute Stress Affects Memory Formation in Humans

Stressful, aversive events are extremely well remembered. Such a declarative memory enhancement is evidently beneficial for survival, but the same mechanism may become maladaptive and culminate in mental diseases such as posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Stress hormones are known to enhance postlearning consolidation of aversive memories but are also thought to have immediate effects on attentional, sensory, and mnemonic processes at memory formation. Despite their significance for our understanding of the etiology of stress-related mental disorders, effects of acute stress at memory formation, and their brain correlates at the system scale, remain elusive. Using an integrated experimental approach, we probed the neural correlates of memory formation while participants underwent a controlled stress induction procedure in a crossover design. Physiological (cortisol level, heart rate, and pupil dilation) and subjective measures confirmed acute stress. Remarkably, reduced hippocampal activation during encoding predicted stress-enhanced memory performance, both within and between participants. Stress, moreover, amplified early visual and inferior temporal responses, suggesting that hypervigilant processing goes along with enhanced inferior temporal information reduction to relay a higher proportion of task-relevant information to the hippocampus. Thus, acute stress affects neural correlates of memory formation in an unexpected manner, the understanding of which may elucidate mechanisms underlying psychological trauma etiology.
Protein flexibility in the light of structural alphabets

Protein structures are valuable tools to understand protein function. Nonetheless, proteins are often considered as rigid macromolecules while their structures exhibit specific flexibility, which is essential to complete their functions. Analyses of protein structures and dynamics are often performed with a simplified three-state description, i.e., the classical secondary structures. More precise and complete description of protein backbone conformation can be obtained using libraries of small protein fragments that are able to approximate every part of protein structures. These libraries, called structural alphabets (SAs), have been widely used in structure analysis field, from definition of ligand binding sites to superimposition of protein structures. SAs are also well suited to analyze the dynamics of protein structures. Here, we review innovative approaches that investigate protein flexibility based on SAs description. Coupled to various sources of experimental data (e.g., B-factor) and computational methodology (e.g., Molecular Dynamic simulation), SAs turn out to be powerful tools to analyze protein dynamics, e.g., to examine allosteric mechanisms in large set of structures in complexes, to identify order/disorder transition. SAs were also shown to be quite efficient to predict protein flexibility from amino-acid sequence. Finally, in this review, we exemplify the interest of SAs for studying flexibility with different cases of proteins implicated in pathologies and diseases.
Mostly-Unsupervised Statistical Segmentation of Japanese: Applications to Kanji

Given the lack of word delimiters in written Japanese, word segmentation is generally considered a crucial first step in processing Japanese texts. Typical Japanese segmentation algorithms rely either on a lexicon and grammar or on pre-segmented data. In contrast, we introduce a novel statistical method utilizing unsegmented training data, with performance on kanji sequences comparable to and sometimes surpassing that of morphological analyzers over a variety of error metrics.
Stochastic Emulation with Enhanced Partial Replication Strategy for Seismic Response Estimation

: Modern performance-based earthquake engineering practices typically entail a large number of time-consuming nonlinear time history simulations to appropriately incorporate excitation and model uncertainties in the decision making process. Surrogate modeling techniques have emerged as attractive tool for alleviating this computational burden, while allowing for the use of high-fidelity numerical models to describe hysteretic structural response. A key challenge arises in this setting for accurately capturing the aleatoric uncertainty associated with the seismic hazard. This uncertainty is typically expressed as high-dimensional or non-parametric uncertainty (depending on the approach adopted for modeling ground motion time histories), and so cannot be easily incorporated within standard surrogate modeling frameworks. Recent work has shown how stochastic emulation techniques can be leveraged to address this challenge, utilizing Gaussian Process regression (GP) as foundational surrogate model technique. Established formulation requires, for some of the parametric configurations examined, the replication of the simulations to capture the aleatoric response variability. The simulations with replications are leveraged to inform a secondary GP to describe the heteroscedastic aleatoric variability, whereas all simulations and the secondary GP are then used to establish a primary GP for predicting the response distribution. This formulation has two challenges: (i) it requires replications for some of the configurations; (ii) it only uses the configurations with replications to inform the secondary GP development. Here, an enhancement is proposed to address both these challenges: a GP-based approximation is first established for the median response, and leveraging this approximation, all simulations are utilized for developing the secondary GP. Case study examples demonstrate the benefits of the alternative formulation and the fact that it addresses both aforementioned challenges.
Nonsymmetric Macdonald polynomials and Demazure characters

We establish a connection between a specialization of the nonsymmetric Macdonald polynomials and the Demazure characters of the corresponding affine Kac-Moody algebra. This allows us to obtain a representation-theoretical interpretation of the coefficients of the expansion of the specialized symmetric Macdonald polynomials in the basis formed by the irreducible characters of the associated finite Lie algebra.
Consequences of ignoring or mis-judging the size effect in concrete design codes and practice

Except for huge unreinforced structures, Weibull’s statistical size effect is weak in concrete structures. The size effect source is principally energetic, caused by stress redistribution due to a large fracture process zone size or large cracks formed before maximum load. It is shown that an unbiased statistical analysis of the existing database for shear of R.C. beams without stirrups supports the energetic size effect theory, and that the size effect, albeit milder, afflicts beams with stirrups, too. Known though has this type of size effect been for two decades, it has been mostly ignored in design codes as well as practice. What are the consequences? —overdesign of many small structures but, more seriously, unacceptable risk for large ones. A tolerable failure probability of engineering structures is 10 per lifetime, and collapse statistics indicate that this has indeed been true for small structures. Probabilistic analysis calibrated by a large statistical database confirms this level of failure probability for shear of reinforced concrete beams without stirrups < 0.2 m deep. However, if the size effect is ignored (as in ACI code), the failure probability is shown to increase drastically—to 10 for beams 1 m deep (and nearly as much for the unrealistic formulae of CEB, fib and JSCE underestimating the size effect). This finding roughly matches several statistics showing that very large structures have been collapsing with a frequency roughly 10-times greater than small ones. This is unacceptable. Now that no longer just a handful of theoreticians, but entire scientific societies and concrete fracture committees (IA-FraMCoS, ASCE-EMD, ACI Comm. 446), are convinced of the inevitability of energetic size effect in brittle failures of concrete structures, the engineering societies ignoring or severely underestimating the size effect in their design codes, and perhaps even design firms, are exposed to legal risk when another collapse occurs.
Mining the most interesting rules

Several algorithms have been proposed for finding the “best,” “optimal,” or “most interesting” rule(s) in a database according to a variety of metrics including confidence, support, gain, chi-squared value, gini, entropy gain, laplace, lift, and conviction. In this paper, we show that the best rule according to any of these metrics must reside along a support/confidence border. Further, in the case of conjunctive rule mining within categorical data, the number of rules along this border is conveniently small, and can be mined efficiently from a variety of real-world data-sets. We also show how this concept can be generalized to mine all rules that are best according to any of these criteria with respect to an arbitrary subset of the population of interest. We argue that by returning a broader set of rules than previous algorithms, our techniques allow for improved insight into the data and support more user-interaction in the optimized rule-mining process.
CHARACTERISTICS AND DETERMINANTS OF CHILD LABOUR IN CAMEROON

This study aims at understanding the phenomenon of child labour in Cameroon. In particular, we investigate characteristics and determinants of child labour. Using data from the Cameroonian survey on employment and informal sector, we find evidence of a division of child labour within households which is around sex and kinship relations, and which varies according to the type of household. The study also shows that child labour is determined by both the internal and external factors to the household. The time of work of children is a variable of adjustment dictated by the necessity of going beyond the level of subsistence income.
Gaussian Process Preference Elicitation

Bayesian approaches to preference elicitation (PE) are particularly attractive due to their ability to explicitly model uncertainty in users' latent utility functions. However, previous approaches to Bayesian PE have ignored the important problem of generalizing from previous users to an unseen user in order to reduce the elicitation burden on new users. In this paper, we address this deficiency by introducing a Gaussian Process (GP) prior over users' latent utility functions on the joint space of user and item features. We learn the hyper-parameters of this GP on a set of preferences of previous users and use it to aid in the elicitation process for a new user. This approach provides a flexible model of a multi-user utility function, facilitates an efficient value of information (VOI) heuristic query selection strategy, and provides a principled way to incorporate the elicitations of multiple users back into the model. We show the effectiveness of our method in comparison to previous work on a real dataset of user preferences over sushi types.
Influence of Attachment Style on Major Psychological Capacities to Lead

ABSTRACT Addressing psychological literature's deficiency in research on the early development of leaders in everyday life (e.g., leaders in the workplace, leaders in social settings, leaders in organizational settings), this study assumed that central psychological capacities required for such leaders can be predicted and explained by J. Bowlby's (1969) attachment theory concerning developmental processes in infancy. The authors administered a series of questionnaires to 402 participants. The authors analyzed data by using structural equation modeling. Findings indicate a potential-to-lead construct that forms in infancy. The results fully supported the authors’ main arguments: that secure attachment style influences the potential to lead and that this capacity is essential for leadership as measured by leadership ranking.
Association of Patient Recall, Satisfaction, and Adherence to Content of an Electronic Health Record (EHR)–Generated After Visit Summary: A Randomized Clinical Trial

Objective: Most electronic health record (EHR) systems have the capability of generating a printed after-visit summary (AVS), but there has been little research on optimal content. We conducted a qualitative study and a randomized trial to understand the effect of AVS content on patient recall and satisfaction. Methods: Adult primary care patients (n = 272) with at least 1 chronic condition were randomly assigned to 4 AVS content conditions: minimum, intermediate, maximum, or standard AVS. Demographics and health literacy were measured at an index clinic visit. Recall and satisfaction were measured by telephone 2 days and 2 to 3 weeks after the clinic visit. Results: Average age was 52 years; 75% of patients were female, 61% were Hispanic, and 21% were African American, and 64% had adequate health literacy. Average medication recall accuracy was 53% at 2 days and 52% at 3 weeks, with no significant difference among groups at either time. Satisfaction with AVS content was high and did not differ among groups. Recall of specific content categories was low and unrelated to group assignment. Health literacy was unrelated to recall and satisfaction. Conclusion: Primary care patients like to receive an AVS, but the amount of information included does not affect content recall or satisfaction with the information.