Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Feedforward Inhibition of Projection Neurons by Fast-Spiking GABA Interneurons in the Rat Striatum In Vivo

Discharge activities and local field potentials were recorded in the orofacial motor cortex and in the corresponding rostrolateral striatum of urethane-anesthetized rats. Striatal projection neurons were identified by antidromic activation and fast-spiking GABAergic interneurons (FSIs) by their unique characteristics: briefer spike and burst responses. Juxtacellular injection of neurobiotin combined with parvalbumin immunohistochemistry validated this identification. Spontaneous activities and spike responses to cortical stimulation were recorded during both states of cortical activity: slow waves and desynchronization. Both FSI and projection neurons spontaneously discharged synchronously with slow waves at the maximum of cortical activity, but, on average, FSIs were much more active. Cortical desynchronization enhanced FSI activity and facilitated their spike responses to cortical stimulation, whereas opposite effects were observed regarding projection neurons. Experimental conditions favoring FSI discharge were always associated with a decrease in the firing activity of projection neurons. Spike responses to cortical stimulation occurred earlier (latency difference, 4.6 ms) and with a lower stimulation current for FSIs than for projection neurons. Moreover, blocking GABAA receptors by local picrotoxin injection enhanced the spike response of projection neurons, and this increase was larger in experimental conditions favoring FSI responses. Therefore, on average, FSIs exert in vivo a powerful feedforward inhibition on projection neurons. However, a few projection neurons were actually more sensitive to cortical stimulation than FSIs. Moreover, picrotoxin, which revealed FSI inhibition, preferentially affected projection neurons exhibiting the weakest sensitivity to cortical stimulation. Thus, feedforward inhibition by FSIs filters cortical information effectively transmitted by striatal projection neurons.
Einstein–de Sitter model re-examined for newly discovered Type Ia supernovae

The consistency of the Einstein–de Sitter model with the Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) recently observed by the Hubble Space Telescope is examined. The model shows a reasonable fit to the observations, if account is taken of the extinction of SN light by the intergalactic metallic dust ejected from the SN explosions. Although the fit to the new data is considerably worse than that of earlier data, it can still be regarded as acceptable. We should wait for more accurate observations at higher redshifts (as expected from forthcoming space missions such as SNAP and the James Webb Space Telescope) before ruling out a model that seems to explain all the other existing observations well (some even better than the favoured ΛCDM model), is consistent with beautiful theoretical ideas such as inflation and cold dark matter, and is not as speculative as the models of dark energy.
What's the True Hourly Cost of Offshoring?

Most companies have learned that cost calculations for offshore outsourcing shouldn't be limited to hourly wages. Looking at salaries alone, you could naively hope for cost reductions of up to 90 percent. However, don't underestimate the cost of knowledge transfer, travel, attrition, miscommunication, and so on. But does an opportunity for cost reduction still exist? To answer this question, researchers delved into the collaboration between a Dutch software company and an Indian vendor. They gathered evidence for direct costs and quantified perceptions of indirect costs associated with an in-house team in the Netherlands and the outsourced offshore team in India. The offshore team's true hourly costs took three years to become comparable with those of the in-house team. Getting close to the break-even point took five years. Learning costs due to offshore employee turnover were the primary cost factor to get under control.
Warming mediates the relationship between plant nutritional properties and herbivore functional responses

Abstract Quantifying the per capita effects of invasive alien species is crucial for assessing their ecological impact. A major challenge to risk assessment of invasive species was to understand the factors that cause per capita effects to vary in different ecological contexts, particularly in a warming world. By conducting functional response experiments, we estimated the per capita effects (attack rate and maximum feeding rate) of an invasive herbivorous snail, Pomacea canaliculata, toward ten host plant species. We tested whether variation in these effects is related to plant nutritional and physical properties (total N and dry matter content (DMC)) and examined how increasing temperature can shift these relationships. We observed stronger per capita effects (i.e., higher attack rate and maximum feeding rate) by the snail on plants with higher total N, but no direct relationship was found with DMC. A significant interaction effect of total N and DMC on the attack rate indicated that DMC probably adjusted the feeding indirectly. Warmer temperatures reduced correlations between snail functional responses and host plant nutritional properties (total N) by increasing maximum feeding rate for plants of low nutrition, but there was no such effect on attack rates. However, given the nonreplacement design used in our study, the nonsignificant effect of temperature on the attack rate should be caveated. Our result suggests that characterizing the per capita effects of herbivores using functional responses can reveal the mechanisms by which climate change may alter herbivore–plant interactions and, thus, the ecological impacts of introduced herbivores.
Evidence for Chimney Breakout in the Galactic Supershell GSH 242–03+37

We present new high-resolution neutral hydrogen (H I) images of the Galactic supershell GSH 242-03+37. These data were obtained with the Parkes Radiotelescope as part of the Galactic All-Sky Survey (GASS). GSH 242-03+37 is one of the largest and most energetic H I supershells in the Galaxy, with a radius of 565 ± 65 pc and an expansion energy of 3 × 1053 ergs. Our images reveal a complicated shell with multiple chimney structures on both sides of the Galactic plane. These chimneys appear capped by narrow filaments about 1.6 kpc above and below the Galactic midplane, confirming structures predicted in simulations of expanding supershells. The structure of GSH 242-03+37 is extremely similar to the only other Galactic supershell known to have blown out of both sides of the plane, GSH 277+00+36. We compare the GASS H I data with X-ray and Hα images, finding no strong correlations.
Patterns of Early Rejection in Renal Retransplantation: A Single-Center Experience

It has been reported that kidney retransplant patients had high rates of early acute rejection due to previous sensitization. In addition to the acute antibody-mediated rejection (ABMR) that has received widespread attention, the early acute T-cell-mediated rejection (TCMR) may be another important issue in renal retransplantation. In the current single-center retrospective study, we included 33 retransplant patients and 90 first transplant patients with similar protocols of induction and maintenance therapy. Analysis focused particularly on the incidence and patterns of early acute rejection episodes, as well as one-year graft and patient survival. Excellent short-term clinical outcomes were obtained in both groups, with one-year graft and patient survival rates of 93.9%/100% in the retransplant group and 92.2%/95.6% in the first transplant group. Impressively, with our strict immunological selection and desensitization criteria, the retransplant patients had a very low incidence of early acute ABMR (6.1%), which was similar to that in the first transplant patients (4.4%). However, a much higher rate of early acute TCMR was observed in the retransplant group than in the first transplant group (30.3% versus 5.6%, P < 0.001). Acute TCMR that develops early after retransplantation should be monitored in order to obtain better transplant outcomes.
Genetic and Epigenetic Factors at COL2A1 and ABCA4 Influence Clinical Outcome in Congenital Toxoplasmosis

Background Primary Toxoplasma gondii infection during pregnancy can be transmitted to the fetus. At birth, infected infants may have intracranial calcification, hydrocephalus, and retinochoroiditis, and new ocular lesions can occur at any age after birth. Not all children who acquire infection in utero develop these clinical signs of disease. Whilst severity of disease is influenced by trimester in which infection is acquired by the mother, other factors including genetic predisposition may contribute. Methods and Findings In 457 mother-child pairs from Europe, and 149 child/parent trios from North America, we show that ocular and brain disease in congenital toxoplasmosis associate with polymorphisms in ABCA4 encoding ATP-binding cassette transporter, subfamily A, member 4. Polymorphisms at COL2A1 encoding type II collagen associate only with ocular disease. Both loci showed unusual inheritance patterns for the disease allele when comparing outcomes in heterozygous affected children with outcomes in affected children of heterozygous mothers. Modeling suggested either an effect of mother's genotype, or parent-of-origin effects. Experimental studies showed that both ABCA4 and COL2A1 show isoform-specific epigenetic modifications consistent with imprinting. Conclusions These associations between clinical outcomes of congenital toxoplasmosis and polymorphisms at ABCA4 and COL2A1 provide novel insight into the molecular pathways that can be affected by congenital infection with this parasite.
Understanding academic identity conflicts in the public university: Importance of work ideologies

Our study explores the prevalence of academic identity conflicts in a public university by focusing on the work ideologies academics draw upon when reflecting on the purpose of higher education and academic work. Framing the study are three related propositions: (1) public universities face unique identity problems arising from pressures to align the institution and its academic workforce around a commercial ethos and student as consumer principles; (2) work ideologies play a key role in understanding academic identity conflicts by highlighting the competing and contradictory beliefs on which higher education and academic work is (should be) organised; and (3) academics voice work ideologies consistent with their positions in the university hierarchy. Academic responses to an online survey indicated professors and lecturers shared a deep-seated antipathy to a market ethos that reduces higher education to a narrow economic function. Implications and challenges associated with viewing academic identity conflicts from a work ideologies perspective are considered.
Application of Verbal Intelligence in Dialog Systems for Multimodal Interaction

In this paper we present a prototypical dialog system adaptive to verbal user intelligence. Verbal intelligence (VI) is the ability to analyze information and to solve problems using language-based reasoning. VI can be analyzed by the number of reused words, lemmas, n-grams, cosine similarity and other features. Here we concentrate on the application of VI in a human-computer interaction (HCI) and how this value can be used by the dialog management to adapt the dialog flow, and complexity at run-time. In our work complexity as well as informative value of presented information can be reduced or increased when encountering human-computer interaction by individually adapting to a lower or higher verbally intelligent user. Especially in intelligent environments, where user's may rely on speech as their primary interaction modality, the adaptation of system instructions to the the user's VI could prove helpful.
Beyond Size and Sector: A View from Overseas

For an outsider, Australia’s highly regulated system’ of awards might be expected to have pronounced and distinctive effects on the conduct of industrial relations in the workplace. When compared with countries whose industrial relations are based more on voluntary regulation through collective bargaining, the conciliation and arbitration system has been seen as imposing relative uniformity on industrial relations arrangements in the workplace. Comparatively underdeveloped industrial relations structures and processes at the workplace are widely held to be a further product of the arbitration and conciliation system. And a system governed by a set of institutional arrangements that have developed their own logic is alleged to be too rigid to promote and facilitate change. The publication of Industrial Relations at IVork by Callus, Morehead, Cully and Buchanan, which reports the findings of the first comprehensive survey of industrial relations in Australian workplaces, provides an opportunity to confront these rudimentary hypotheses. As the next section of the article indicates, these views have powerful proponents within Australia itself. The section outlines the context of the survey, both in terms of the debate over industrial relations reform in Australia and the broader controversy across countries over the merits of more or less regulated systems of employment and industrial relations. The survey covered all sectors of the economy with the exception of agriculture, forestry, fishing, hunting and defence. Face-to-face interviews were conducted at 2004 workplaces with twenty or more employees. In each case a general manager was interviewed and, where present, a personnel and industrial relations specialist and a union delegate. In addition, telephone interviews were conducted with managers at 349 smaller workplaces employing between five and nineteen employees. This latter was one of several innovative aspects of the survey’s design which are discussed in the penultimate section of this article. The middle three sections investigate how far the evidence in the workplace survey supports the suspicions of an outsider about the impact of the arbitration and conciliation system on industrial relations in the workplace. Considering uniformity first, the survey findings point to a wide diversity in management structures and practice, in union organization and activity and in the ways in which management and employees interact. Furthermore, the effects of organizational variables such as size, sector and ownership on
Why Minimally Guided Teaching Techniques Do Not Work: A Reply to Commentaries

In this reply to commentaries on the Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark (2006) paper, we not only reemphasize the importance of randomized, controlled experimental tests of competing instructional procedures, but also indicate that altering one variable at a time is an essential feature of a properly controlled experiment. Furthermore, we also emphasize that variable must be relevant to the issue at hand with its effects explainable by our knowledge of human cognitive architecture. We reject the view that the presentation of relevant information should be reduced in favor of teaching learners how to find information. Lastly, we indicate that we believe a new educational psychology has been developed that has the potential to rapidly change our field.
Market Conditions and Retirement of Physical Capital: Evidence Fron Oil Tankers

The endogeneity of capital retirements is studied for the particular case of oil tankers from 1979--1989. A model is estimated to examine the effect of changes in market conditions on the price and scrappage of tankers. Energy price rises had a major impact on the value of ships and on which ships were scrapped. A simple model is able to account for many features of the market. We use the information implicit in second-hand prices to ease the computational burden for the model that is estimated.
User experience quality in multi-touch tasks

In this paper, we present an updated set of experimental tasks and measures for large multi-touch (MT) input devices. In addition to a multi-user condition, we have employed an updated set of tasks, as well as subjective measures for user enjoyment. In the first experiment (a target acquisition task with two moving targets), the MT was more efficient than the mouse. Surprisingly, we found that the reduced accuracy of MT did not affect the perceived usability, or the enjoyment of the users. In the second experiment (a multiple shapes docking task), the MT was again more efficient and enjoying than the mouse. In the two-user condition, we found that performance and enjoyment was always higher than the single-user conditions, regardless of input device and task. Besides the quantitative results, we observed that users employed diverse interaction strategies in the MT condition, such as bi-manual input. The proposed tasks and the results support the use of MT in entertainment applications (multimedia and video-games), collaborative work, and scientific visualizations with complex data.
The Diffusion of Support in an Online Social Movement: Evidence from the Adoption of Equal-Sign Profile Pictures

In March of 2013, 3 million Facebook users changed their profile picture to one of an equals sign to express support of same-sex marriage. We demonstrate that this action shows complex diffusion characteristics congruent with threshold models, with most users observing several of their friends changing their profile picture before taking the action themselves. While the number of friends played a role in the adoption dynamics, so did demographic characteristics and the general propensity of the individual to change their profile picture. We show via simulation that the adoption curve is consistent with a heterogeneous-threshold model, in which the probability of adoption depends on both the number of friends and the susceptibility of the individual.
A grounded theory case study examining the impact on policy actors of their engagement and interactions with educational policy implementation processes

In the field of Education there appears to be a gap in the literature examining policy implementation process from the viewpoint of educational stakeholders. This thesis attempts to address that gap by examining the impact on site based policy actors of the implementation of a policy in the form of a new mathematics curriculum. This dissertation endeavours to answer the question of how the interactions and engagement of policy actors with policy implementation processes are impacted by and impact such processes. The research approach adopted is that of a case study using a Classic Grounded Theory Methodology. This approach permits the data to be approached from a conceptually neutral position, allowing theoretical understanding to be built from the concepts that emerge from the analysis. The theoretical model developed from this grounded theory analysis is then filtered through two conceptual lenses, social cognition and affect/emotion, to determine an understanding of their theoretical relevance to the interactions and engagement of policy actors with policy processes. This study adds to the understanding of how policy processes unfold in a site based setting. In particular, it gives recognition to the affective responses of policy actors as they engage and interact with policy processes and how those responses may impinge on those processes.
Methylmercury neurotoxicity independent of PCB exposure.

It is unclear whether the SDA long-term morbidity results (10) are coherent with mortality results. Among individuals who were symptom-free at the start of the study, there was an association between increased symptoms and PM. These risk estimates were 40-fold greater than those estimated for smoking. There were no analyses presented for those individuals who had symptoms at the start of the study, but became symptom-free at the end of the study. This analysis is just as important as the analysis of incidence of new symptoms. If both showed an association with PM, the results would not be internally coherent (1). I presented evidence showing why reduced lung function could be a confounder in these studies and that it meets the criteria for confounding. First, reduced lung function must be a risk factor for increased mortality (1). Second, reduced lung function must be correlated with between-city variations in PM2.5, although the relationship shown in Figure 3 (1) could only be tested with the ecologically based exposure measures used in that study. Third, reduced lung function should not be on the same causal pathway as PM2 5 for mortality; the point of the example shown in Figure 4 (1) was to suggest that important differences occur in the distribution of risk factors between cities, with lung function being one of many possible risk factors. I do not believe that adjustment for a few individual-level risk factors has adequately addressed the complex overall potential for confounding in these studies. We all realize that we can never make all groups completely comparable, but between-city differences in PM2 5 concentrations are so small and relative risks so low that these studies are particularly susceptible to even slightly confounded results. I believe this paper (1) and the questions raised by Kuinzli and Tager are in line with the scientific process of verification and refutation. They have led to further discussion that will hopefully lead to additional testing. However, it is disappointing that Kunzli and Tager chose to question the integrity of the author's motivation based on affiliation. Judgment on whether or not my critique clouds the complex issues around PM2.5 and mortality should be determined not by my affiliation but solely on the scientific merits of the argument. I thank John Bukowski, Wendy Huebner, Mark Nicolich, and Rob Schnatter for their stimulating discussions and input.
Application of Gas Sensor Arrays in Assessment of Wastewater Purification Effects

A gas sensor array consisting of eight metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) type gas sensors was evaluated for its ability for assessment of the selected wastewater parameters. Municipal wastewater was collected in a wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) in a primary sedimentation tank and was treated in a laboratory-scale sequential batch reactor (SBR). A comparison of the gas sensor array (electronic nose) response to the standard physical-chemical parameters of treated wastewater was performed. To analyze the measurement results, artificial neural networks were used. E-nose—gas sensors array and artificial neural networks proved to be a suitable method for the monitoring of treated wastewater quality. Neural networks used for data validation showed high correlation between the electronic nose readouts and: (I) chemical oxygen demand (COD) (r = 0.988); (II) total suspended solids (TSS) (r = 0.938); (III) turbidity (r = 0.940); (IV) pH (r = 0.554); (V) nitrogen compounds: N-NO3 (r = 0.958), N-NO2 (r = 0.869) and N-NH3 (r = 0.978); (VI) and volatile organic compounds (VOC) (r = 0.987). Good correlation of the abovementioned parameters are observed under stable treatment conditions in a laboratory batch reactor.
Dissipation of Magnetic Flux in Primordial Star Formation: From Run-away Phase to Mass-Accretion Phase

We investigat et he dissipation of magnetic flux in primordial star-forming clouds throughout their collapse, including the run-away collapse phase as well as the accretion phase. We solve the energy equation and the non-equilibrium chemical reactions in th ec ollapsing gas, in order to obtain the radial distribution of the ionized fraction during the collapse. As a result, we find that the ionized fraction is high enough for the magnetic field to couple with the gas throughout evolution of the cloud. This result suggests that the jet formation from protostars as well as the activation of magneto–rotational instability in the accretion disk are enabled in the presence of the cosmological seed magnetic flux proposed by Langer, Puget, and Aghanim (2003, Phys. Rev. D67, 43505).