Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Bilateral Orbital Prefrontal Cortex Lesions in Rhesus Monkeys Disrupt Choices Guided by Both Reward Value and Reward Contingency

The orbital prefrontal cortex (PFo) operates as part of a network involved in reward-based learning and goal-directed behavior. To test whether the PFo is necessary for guiding behavior based on the value of expected reward outcomes, we compared four rhesus monkeys with two-stage bilateral PFo removals and six unoperated controls for their responses to reinforcer devaluation, a task that assesses the monkeys' abilities to alter choices of objects when the value of the underlying food has changed. For comparison, the same monkeys were tested on a standard test of flexible stimulus-reward learning, namely object reversal learning. Relative to controls, monkeys with bilateral PFo removals showed a significant attenuation of reinforcer devaluation effects on each of two separate assessments, one performed shortly after surgery and the other ∼19 months after surgery; the operated monkeys were also impaired on object reversal learning. The same monkeys, however, were unimpaired in acquisition of object discrimination learning problems and responded like controls when allowed to choose foods alone, either on a food preference test among six different foods or after selective satiation. Thus, satiety mechanisms and the ability to assign value to familiar foods appear to be intact in monkeys with PFo lesions. The pattern of results suggests that the PFo is critical for response selection based on predicted reward outcomes, regardless of whether the value of the outcome is predicted by affective signals (reinforcer devaluation) or by visual signals conveying reward contingency (object reversal learning).
Perinatally administered losartan augments renal ACE2 expression but not cardiac or renal Mas receptor in spontaneously hypertensive rats

Since the identification of the alternative angiotensin converting enzyme (ACE)2/Ang‐(1‐7)/Mas receptor axis, renin‐angiotensin system (RAS) is a new complex target for a pharmacological intervention. We investigated the expression of RAS components in the heart and kidney during the development of hypertension and its perinatal treatment with losartan in young spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR). Expressions of RAS genes were studied by the RT‐PCR in the left ventricle and kidney of rats: normotensive Wistar, untreated SHR, SHR treated with losartan since perinatal period until week 9 of age (20 mg/kg/day) and SHR treated with losartan only until week 4 of age and discontinued until week 9. In the hypertrophied left ventricle of SHR, cardiac expressions of Ace and Mas were decreased while those of AT1 receptor (Agtr1a) and Ace2 were unchanged. Continuous losartan administration reduced LV weight (0.43 ± 0.02; P < 0.05 versus SHR) but did not influence altered cardiac RAS expression. Increased blood pressure in SHR (149 ± 2 in SHR versus 109 ± 2 mmHg in Wistar; P < 0.05) was associated with a lower renal expressions of renin, Agtr1a and Mas and with an increase in ACE2. Continuous losartan administration lowered blood pressure to control levels (105 ± 3 mmHg; P < 0.05 versus SHR), however, only renal renin and ACE2 were significantly up‐regulated (for both P < 0.05 versus SHR). Conclusively, prevention of hypertension and LV hypertrophy development by losartan was unrelated to cardiac or renal expression of Mas. Increased renal Ace2, and its further increase by losartan suggests the influence of locally generated Ang‐(1‐7) in organ response to the developing hypertension in SHRs.
The LRP Toolbox for Artificial Neural Networks

The Layer-wise Relevance Propagation (LRP) algorithm explains a classifier's prediction specific to a given data point by attributing relevance scores to important components of the input by using the topology of the learned model itself. With the LRP Toolbox we provide platform-agnostic implementations for explaining the predictions of pretrained state of the art Caffe networks and stand-alone implementations for fully connected Neural Network models. The implementations for Matlab and python shall serve as a playing field to familiarize oneself with the LRP algorithm and are implemented with readability and transparency in mind. Models and data can be imported and exported using raw text formats, Matlab's . mat files and the . npy format for numpy or plain text.
Regulation of Microtubule Dynamics by Extracellular Signals: cAMP-dependent Protein Kinase Switches Off the Activity of Oncoprotein 18 in Intact Cells

Oncoprotein 18 (Op18, also termed p19, 19K, metablastin, stathmin, and prosolin) is a recently identified regulator of microtubule (MT) dynamics. Op18 is a target for both cell cycle and cell surface receptor-coupled kinase systems, and phosphorylation of Op18 on specific combinations of sites has been shown to switch off its MT-destabilizing activity. Here we show that induced expression of the catalytic subunit of cAMP-dependent protein kinase (PKA) results in a dramatic increase in cellular MT polymer content concomitant with phosphorylation and partial degradation of Op18. That PKA may regulate the MT system by downregulation of Op18 activity was evaluated by a genetic system allowing conditional co-expression of PKA and a series of kinase target site–deficient mutants of Op18. The results show that phosphorylation of Op18 on two specific sites, Ser-16 and Ser-63, is necessary and sufficient for PKA to switch off Op18 activity in intact cells. The regulatory importance of dual phosphorylation on Ser-16 and Ser-63 of Op18 was reproduced by in vitro assays. These results suggest a simple model where PKA phosphorylation downregulates the MT-destabilizing activity of Op18, which in turn promotes increased tubulin polymerization. Hence, the present study shows that Op18 has the potential to regulate the MT system in response to external signals such as cAMP-linked agonists.
The Effects of Read Alouds on Student Comprehension

The focus of this study was to determine how interactive read alouds effect student comprehension with the claim being that they increase comprehension scores. Through the use of observation, interviews, questionnaires, and comprehension questions, data was collected. When given questions after three read alouds and three independent readings, student comprehension scores were higher following the read alouds for below average and average readers. There was no difference in scores for the above average readers. The implications of this study include using read alouds as a support in intermediate grades, average and below average readers preferring read alouds to independent reading, and using interactive read alouds to help engage students and enhance the discussion of text. Document Type Thesis Degree Name MS in Literacy Education Department Education First Supervisor Joellen Maples Subject Categories Education This thesis is available at Fisher Digital Publications: http://fisherpub.sjfc. edu/education_ETD_masters/351 Running head: EFFECTS OF READ ALOUDS ON STUDENT COMPREHENSION 1 The Effects of Read Alouds on Student Comprehension
LC-MS/MS Determination and Pharmacokinetic Study of Pedunculoside in Rat Plasma after Oral Administration of Pedunculoside and Ilex rotunda Extract

Ilex rotunda is widely used to treat many disorders as a traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) containing 4%–5% pedunculoside (PDC). A rapid, selective, and sensitive liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry method (LC-MS/MS) was developed and validated to determine PDC in rat plasma by using 3β,19α-dihydroxyurs-12-en-28-oic acid 28-β-D-glucopyranosyl ester (DEOG) as an internal standard. The analytes were extracted by protein precipitation and eluted on a C18 chromatography column using a mobile phase of methanol–H2O (70:30, v/v) delivered at a flow rate of 0.6 mL/min. Detection was performed using positive ion electrospray ionization in multiple reaction monitoring modes. The assay was linear over the concentration range of 0.60 ng/mL to 200 ng/mL, with a quantification limit of 0.60 ng/mL. Intra-day and inter-day precisions (%RSD) ranged from 2.12 to 9.51 for PDC, whereas the accuracy was within −7.83%~9.40%. The validated method was successfully applied to the pharmacokinetic study of PDC in rat plasma after oral administration of pure PDC and Ilex rotunda extract (IRE). Pharmacokinetic parameters of PDC in IRE, such as Cmax, AUC0–t, AUC0–∞, t1/2z, and CLz/F, statistically differed from those of the pure monomer (p < 0.01). However, Tmax and MRT showed no significant differences between the two groups. Results suggested that other coexisting components in IRE may decrease the absorption of PDC. Compound-compound interactions between PDC and other herbal extract components can alter the pharmacokinetic behavior of PDC. The study will be helpful in providing references for understanding the action mechanism and clinical application of Ilex rotunda.
Playing the Man, Not the Ball

A challenging question can prompt a variety of responses from politicians in their attempt to save face. Criticising the interviewer is one such tactic identified in previous research. The focus here was on this form of personalisation: responses directed personally at the interviewer, often used as a substitute for a straight answer (i.e., playing the man, not the ball). Sampling online interview videos, our analysis revealed a broad range of personalisations: many critical, but also non-critical, including flattery, banter, and advice to calm down. These tactics are discussed as effective responses, which can disarm, wrong-foot, neutralise, or beguile interviewers, often shifting control towards the politician. Furthermore, personalised rhetoric appears more widespread than previously suggested—featuring in the communicative style of many mainstream British politicians. A new typology of personalisation is proposed, designed to fit within the existing overall equivocation typology for the benefit of future empirical research.
XVCL: a tutorial

XVCL (XML-based Variant Configuration Language) is a general-purpose mark-up language for configuring variants in programs and other types of documents. We can apply XVCL to configure variants in a variety of software assets such as software architecture, program code, test cases, technical and user-level program documentation or requirement specifications. The principles of the XVCL have been thoroughly tested in practice. XVCL is based on the same concepts as the frame technology [1]. Frame technology has been extensively applied in industry to manage variants and evolve multi-million-line, COBOL-based, information systems. An independent analysis showed that frame technology has reduced large software project costs by over 84% and their times-to-market by 70%, when compared to industry norms [1, 2]. At the same time, we found that the principles of XVCL are not easy to communicate. In this paper, we describe a subset of XVCL. We trust this subset of XVCL is easy to understand and still effectively communicates essential XVCL concepts. To illustrate the XVCL method, we further describe an XVCL solution to handling variants in a Notepad system.
Conflict resolution by random estimated costs

Conflict resolution is an important part of many intelligent systems such as production systems, planning tools and cognitive architectures. For example, the ACT-R cognitive architecture (Anderson and Lebiere, 1998) uses a powerful conflict resolution theory that allowed for modelling many characteristics of human decision making. The results of more recent works, however, pointed to the need of revisiting the conflict resolution theory of ACT-R to incorporate more dynamics. In the proposed theory the conflict is resolved using the estimates of the expected costs of production rules. The method has been implemented as a stand alone search program as well as an add-on to the ACT-R architecture replacing the standard mechanism. The method expresses more dynamic and adaptive behaviour. The performance of the algorithm shows that it can be successfully used as a search and optimisation technique.
Identification and tracking of players in sport videos

In this paper, we propose a novel framework to automatically perform player tracking and identification for sport videos filmed by a single pan-tilt-zoom camera from the court view. The proposed scheme is separated into three parts. The first part is to detect players by a deformable part model. The second part is to recognize jersey numbers by gradient differences and optical character recognition. The final part applies particle filters to track players. Experimental results demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed algorithm and the feasibility for sports video analysis.
Multimodal emotion recognition using EEG and eye tracking data

This paper presents a new emotion recognition method which combines electroencephalograph (EEG) signals and pupillary response collected from eye tracker. We select 15 emotional film clips of 3 categories (positive, neutral and negative). The EEG signals and eye tracking data of five participants are recorded, simultaneously, while watching these videos. We extract emotion-relevant features from EEG signals and eye tracing data of 12 experiments and build a fusion model to improve the performance of emotion recognition. The best average accuracies based on EEG signals and eye tracking data are 71.77% and 58.90%, respectively. We also achieve average accuracies of 73.59% and 72.98% for feature level fusion strategy and decision level fusion strategy, respectively. These results show that both feature level fusion and decision level fusion combining EEG signals and eye tracking data can improve the performance of emotion recognition model.
Relationship Lending in the Interbank Market and the Price of Liquidity

This paper empirically investigates the effect of interbank relationship lending on banks' access to liquidity. Our analysis is based on German interbank payment data which we use to create a panel of unsecured overnight loans between 1079 distinct borrower-lender pairs. The data shows that banks rely on repeated interactions with the same counterparties to trade liquidity. For the price of liquidity, we find that in the run-up to the recent financial crisis of 2007/08 relationship lenders charged already higher interest rates to their borrowers after controlling for other bank specific characteristics and general market conditions. By contrast, during the crisis borrowers paid on average lower rates to their relationship lenders compared to spot lenders. The observed interest rate differences are statistically and economically significant and in line with theory that relationship lenders have private information about the creditworthiness of their close borrowers.
International Journal of Nephrology and Renovascular Disease Dovepress Obesity, Hypertension, and Chronic Kidney Disease

Obesity is a major risk factor for essential hypertension, diabetes, and other comorbid conditions that contribute to development of chronic kidney disease. Obesity raises blood pressure by increasing renal tubular sodium reabsorption, impairing pressure natri-uresis, and causing volume expansion via activation of the sympathetic nervous system and renin−angiotensin−aldosterone system and by physical compression of the kidneys, especially when there is increased visceral adiposity. Other factors such as inflammation, oxidative stress, and lipotoxicity may also contribute to obesity-mediated hypertension and renal dysfunction. Initially, obesity causes renal vasodilation and glomerular hyperfiltration, which act as compensatory mechanisms to maintain sodium balance despite increased tubular reabsorption. However, these compensations, along with increased arterial pressure and metabolic abnormalities, may ultimately lead to glomerular injury and initiate a slowly developing vicious cycle that exacerbates hypertension and worsens renal injury. Body weight reduction, via caloric restriction and increased physical activity, is an important first step for management of obesity, hypertension, and chronic kidney disease. However, this strategy may not be effective in producing long-term weight loss or in preventing cardiorenal and metabolic consequences in many obese patients. The majority of obese patients require medical therapy for obesity-associated hypertension, metabolic disorders, and renal disease, and morbidly obese patients may require surgical interventions to produce sustained weight loss.
Note on informational masking (L)

Informational masking (IM) has a long history and is currently receiving considerable attention. Nevertheless, there is no clear and generally accepted picture of how IM should be defined, and once defined, explained. In this letter, consideration is given to the problems of defining IM and specifying research that is needed to better understand and model IM.
When the ARM weakly consistent memory model meets speculation: is it necessary?

Aggressive memory-level-parallelism techniques have provided significant performance gain in Distributed Share Memory Designs. In this paper, we reevaluate speculative memory ordering in the context of Chip Multi-Processors (CMPs) and power-limited computation. We evaluate relative performance between Sequential Consistency, Total Store Order and Relaxed Memory Order on a selection of modern workloads to predict the performance of the ARM weakly consistent memory model.
Money, Sex and Happiness: An Empirical

The links between income, sexual behavior and reported happiness are studied using recent data on a sample of 16,000 adult Americans. The paper finds that sexual activity enters strongly positively in happiness equations. Higher income does not buy more sex or more sexual partners. Married people have more sex than those who are single, divorced, widowed or separated. The happiness-maximizing number of sexual partners in the previous year is calculated to be 1. Highly educated females tend to have fewer sexual partners. Homosexuality has no statistically significant effect on happiness.
Explaining variation in student efforts towards using math and science knowledge in engineering contexts

ABSTRACT Previous research suggests that in classes that take an integrated approach to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education, students tend to engage in fulfilling goals of their engineering design challenges, but only inconsistently engage with the related math and science content. The present research examines these inconsistences by focusing on student engagement, or effort, towards math and science concepts while working on an engineering challenge, through the lens of expectancy-value theory. Specifically, we examine how students’ perceptions of the value of math and science and expectancy for success with the math and science relate to the efforts they put towards using math and science while working on engineering challenges. Our results suggest that subjective task value significantly predicts efforts towards both math and science, whereas neither expectancy, nor the interaction between expectancy and value predicted effort. We argue that integrated learning environments need to help students understand how the domains of math, science, and engineering support their work in fulfilling the engineering project design goals. In other words, we argue that we, as educators, must help students to recognise the value of each of the domains addressed within STEM integrated learning environments. This paper discusses strategies for accomplishing this goal.
Comparison of Neural Networks Based Direct Inverse Control Systems for a Double Propeller Boat Model

This paper presents the thorough evaluation and analysis on the direct inverse neural networks based controller systems for a double-propeller boat model. Two direct inverse controller systems that were designed with and without feedback were implemented on a double propeller boat model using two neural networks based control approaches, namely the back-propagation based neural controller (BPNN-controller) and the self-organizing maps based neural controller (SOM-controller). Then, the resulted control errors of the systems were compared. Simulation results revealed that the direct inverse control without feedback produced lower error compared to the direct inverse control with feedback. Another important finding from the study was that the SOM-controller is superior to the BPNN-controller in terms of control error and training computational cost.
Sunyaev-Zel'dovich cluster reconstruction in multiband bolometer camera surveys

We present a new method for the reconstruction of Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) galaxy clusters in future SZ-survey experiments using multiband bolometer cameras such as Olimpo, APEX, or Planck. Our goal is to optimise SZ-Cluster extraction from our observed noisy maps. None of the algorithms used in the detection chain is tuned using prior knowledge of the SZ-Cluster signal, or other astrophysical sources (Optical Spectrum, Noise Covariance Matrix, or covariance of SZ Cluster wavelet coefficients). First, a blind separation of the different astrophysical components that contribute to the observations is conducted using an Independent Component Analysis (ICA) method. This is a new application of ICA to multichannel astrophysical data analysis. Then, a recent non linear filtering technique in the wavelet domain, based on multiscale entropy and the False Discovery Rate (FDR) method, is used to detect and reconstruct the galaxy clusters. We use the Source Extractor software to identify the detected clusters. The proposed method was applied on realistic simulations of observations that we produced as mixtures of synthetic maps of the four brightest light sources in the range 143 GHz to 600 GHz namely the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect, the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies, the extragalactic InfraRed point sources and the Galactic Dust Emission. We also implemented a simple model of optics and noise to account for instrumental effects. Assuming nominal performance for the near future SZ-survey Olimpo, our detection chain recovers 25% of the cluster of mass larger than 10 14 M ⊙ , with 90% purity. Our results are compared with those obtained with published algorithms. This new method has a high global detection efficiency in the high-purity/low completeness region, being however a blind algorithm (i.e. without using any prior assumptions on the data to be extracted).
Resilience at Work - Extending knowledge of resilience in the work context

14 Studie 1. 25 Methoden . 25 Stichprobe . 25 Messverfahren . 25 Statistische Verfahren . 27 Ergebnisse . 28 Diskussion Studie 1 . 35 Studie 2. 37 Methoden . 37 Stichprobe . 37 Statistische Verfahren . 37 Ergebnisse . 38 Diskussion Studie 2 . 38 Gesamtdiskussion. 38 Study 2: The relation of resilience and CSE with work-related behaviors: Investigating appraisal and affect as underlying mechanisms in a daily diary study . 42 Abstract . 43. 43 Method . 51 Sample . 51 Study Procedure . 52 Measures . 52 Analysis . 54 Results . 54 Discussion . 59 Study 3: Resilience and Regulatory Focus: A distal-proximal approach to work related outcomes . 64 Abstract . 65. 65 Method . 76 Sample . 76 Procedure . 76 Measures . 76