Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
N400-like Magnetoencephalography Responses Modulated by Semantic Context, Word Frequency, and Lexical Class in Sentences

Words have been found to elicit a negative potential at the scalp peaking at approximately 400 ms that is strongly modulated by semantic context. The current study used whole-head magnetoencephalography (MEG) as male subjects read sentences ending with semantically congruous or incongruous words. Compared with congruous words, sentence-terminal incongruous words consistently evoked a large magnetic field over the left hemisphere, peaking at approximately 450 ms. Source modeling at this latency with conventional equivalent current dipoles (ECDs) placed the N400 m generator in or near the left superior temporal sulcus. A distributed solution constrained to the cortical surface suggested a sequence of differential activation, beginning in Wernicke's area at approximately 250 ms, spreading to anterior temporal sites at approximately 270 ms, to Broca's area by approximately 300 ms, to dorsolateral prefrontal cortices by approximately 320 ms, and to anterior orbital and frontopolar cortices by approximately 370 ms. Differential activity was exclusively left-sided until >370 ms, and then involved right anterior temporal and orbital cortices. At the peak of the N400 m, activation in the left hemisphere was estimated to be widespread in the anterior temporal, perisylvian, orbital, frontopolar, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices. In the right hemisphere, the orbital, as well as, weakly, the right anterior temporal cortices were activated. Similar but weaker field patterns were evoked by intermediate words in the sentences, especially to low-frequency words occurring in early sentence positions where there is little preceding context. The locations of the N400 m sources identified with the distributed solution correspond well with those previously demonstrated with direct intracranial recordings, and suggested by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). These results help identify a distributed cortical network that supports online semantic processing.
Ray tracing for modeling of small footprint airborne laser scanning returns

Airborne Laser Scanning (ALS) has been established as a valuable tool for the estimation of biophysical canopy variables, such as tree height and vegetation density. However, up to now most approaches are built upon empirical stand based methods for linking ALS data with the relevant canopy properties estimated by field work. These empirical methods mostly comprise regression models, where effects of site conditions and sensor configurations are contained in the models. Thus, these models are only valid for a specific study, which renders inter-comparison of different approaches difficult. Physically based approaches exist e.g. for the estimation of tree height and tree location, however systematic underestimation depending upon sampling and vegetation type remains an issue. Using a radiative transfer model that builds on the foundation of the Open-Source ray tracer povray we are simulating return signals for two ALS system settings (footprint size and laser wavelength). The tree crowns are represented by fractal models (L-systems), which explicitly resolve the position and orientation of single leafs. The model is validated using ALS data from an experiment with geometric reference targets. We were able to reproduce the effects of target size and target reflectance that were found in the real data with our modeling approach. A sensitivity study was carried out in order to determine the effect of properties such as beam divergence (0.5, 1, and 2 mrad), canopy reflectance (laser wavelength, 1064 and 1560 nm) on the ALS return statistics. Using the two laser wavelengths above, we were able to show that the laser wavelength will not significantly influence discrete return statistics in our model. It was found that first echo return statistics only differ significantly if the footprint size was altered by a factor of 4. Last return distributions were significantly different for all three modelled footprint sizes, and we were able to reproduce the effect of an increased number of ground returns for large footprint sizes. These forward simulations are a first step in the direction of physically based derivation of biophysical ALS data products and could improve the accuracy of the derived parameters by establishing correction terms.
Stat6 Regulation of In Vivo IL-4 Responses1

Although in vitro development of a Th2 response from naive CD4+ T cells is Stat6 dependent, mice immunized with a goat Ab to mouse IgD have been reported to produce a normal primary IL-4 response in Stat6-deficient mice. Experiments have now been performed with mice immunized with more conventional Ags or inoculated with nematode parasites to account for this apparent discrepancy. The ability of an immunogen to induce a primary in vivo IL-4 response in Stat6-deficient mice was found to vary directly with its ability to induce a strong type 2 cytokine-biased response in normal mice. Even immunogens, however, that induce strong primary IL-4 responses in Stat6-deficient mice induce poor memory IL-4 responses in these mice. Consistent with this, Stat6-deficient CD4+ T cells make relatively normal IL-4 responses when stimulated in vitro for 3 days with anti-CD3 and anti-CD28, but poor IL-4 responses if they are later restimulated with anti-CD3. Thus, Stat6 signaling enhances primary IL-4 responses that are made as part of a type 0 cytokine response (mixed type 1 and type 2) and is required for normal development or survival of Th2 memory cells.
Preparation and adsorption properties of a novel superabsorbent based on multiwalled carbon nanotubes–xylan composite and poly(methacrylic acid) for methylene blue from aqueous solution

A novel superabsorbent was prepared by the copolymerization reaction between multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs)–xylan composite and poly(methacrylic acid) (PMAA) in the presence of N,N′-methylenebisacrylamide as cross-linker and the redox initiation system (NH)4S2O8-anhydrous Na2SO3 as initiator for adsorbing methylene blue (MB) from aqueous solution. First, covalent modification of MWCNTs with a natural polymer xylan was achieved by the nucleophilic substitution reaction. The obtained xylan modified MWCNTs–xylan composite was characterized by transmission electron microscope, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectrometer, and thermal gravimetric analysis. The results indicated that the hydroxyl groups of xylan participated in the formation of MWCNTs–xylan composite, and MWCNTs–xylan composite contained 32% xylan and about four molecule chains of xylan were grafted onto 5,000 carbon atoms of MWCNTs sidewalls. Subsequently, a novel superabsorbent based on MWCNTs–xylan composite and PMAA was prepared and characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron microscope, and swelling test. The results proved that superabsorbent was successfully prepared by copolymerization reaction and found that the superabsorbent evidently presented three-dimensional network structure. Swelling process of superabsorbent complied with the Fick's law. Adsorption property of superabsorbent for MB was also systematically studied by investigating these parameters, such as superabsorbent dosage, initial MB concentration, contact time, ion strength, and pH. The superabsorbent presented a higher adsorption capacity and removal rate for MB. The adsorption data were fitted by Langmuir, Freundlich isotherm models, and four adsorption kinetic models. Freundlich isotherm model better fitted the equilibrium data than Langmuir, and adsorption kinetics could be well described by pseudo-second-order kinetic and intraparticle diffusion. These results indicated that the superabsorbent can be used as an efficient absorbent for removal of MB from aqueous solution. POLYM. COMPOS. , 35:1516–1528, 2014. © 2013 Society of Plastics Engineers
Contributions of Aspartate 49 and Phenylalanine 142 Residues of a Tight Binding Inhibitory Protein of β-Lactamases*

β-Lactamases are bacterial enzymes that hydrolyze β-lactam antibiotics to render them inactive. The β-lactamase inhibitor protein (BLIP) of Streptomyces clavuligerus, is a potent inhibitor of several β-lactamases, including the TEM-1 enzyme (K i = 0.6 nm). Evidence from the TEM-1/BLIP co-crystal suggests that two BLIP residues, Asp-49 and Phe-142, mimic interactions made by penicillin G when bound in the active site of TEM-1. To determine the importance of these two residues, a heterologous expression system for BLIP was established in Escherichia coli. Site-directed mutagenesis was used to change Asp-49 and Phe-142 to alanine, and inhibition constants (K i ) for both mutants were determined. Each mutation increases the K i for BLIP inhibition of TEM-1 β-lactamase approximately 100-fold. To address how these two positions effect the specificity of β-lactamase binding, K i values were determined for the interaction of wild-type BLIP, as well as the D49A and F142A mutants, with two extended spectrum β-lactamases (the G238S and the E104K TEM variants). Positions 104 and 238 are located in the BLIP/β-lactamase interface. Interestingly, the three BLIP proteins inhibited the G238S β-lactamase mutant to the same degree that they inhibited TEM-1. However, wild-type BLIP has a higher K i for the E104K β-lactamase mutant, suggesting that interactions between BLIP and β-lactamase residue Glu-104 are important for wild-type levels of BLIP inhibition.
Intranuclear actin bundles induced by dimethyl sulfoxide in interphase nucleus of Dictyostelium

Electron microscopic evidence demonstrated that dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) induces formation of giant intranuclear microfilament bundles in the interphase nucleus of a cellular slime mold, Dictyostelium. These giant bundles are approximately giant bundles are approximately 3 micrometer long, 0.85 micrometer wide, and composed of microfilaments 6 nm in diameter. Studies in which glycerinated cells were used showed that these microfilaments bind rabbit skeletal muscle heavy meromyosin, forming typical decorated "arrowhead" structures, and that this binding can be reverted by Mg-adenosine triphosphate. These data verify that the intranuclear microfilaments are the contractile protein actin, and that DMSO affects intranuclear actin, inducing the formation of such giant bundles. The intranuclear actin bundles appear at any developmental stage in two different species of cellular slime molds after treatment with DMSO. The native form of the intranuclear actin molecules and their possible functions are discussed, and it is proposed that the contractile protein has essential functions in the cell nucleus.
Indestructible Strong Unfoldability

Using the lottery preparation, we prove that any strongly unfoldable cardinal κ can be made indestructible by all <κ-closed κ+-preserving forcing. This degree of indestructibility, we prove, is the best possible from this hypothesis within the class of <κ-closed forcing. From a stronger hypothesis, however, we prove that the strong unfoldability of κ can be made indestructible by all <κ-closed forcing. Such indestructibility, we prove, does not follow from indestructibility merely by <κ-directed closed forcing. Finally, we obtain global and universal forms of indestructibility for strong unfoldability, finding the exact consistency strength of universal indestructibility for strong unfoldability. The unfoldable cardinals were introduced by Villaveces in [Vil98], along with their companion notion, the strongly unfoldable cardinals, which turn out to be the same as what Miyamoto [Miy98] independently introduced as the Hκ+ reflecting cardinals. These cardinals lie relatively low in the large cardinal hierarchy, somewhat above the weakly compact cardinals, and they relativize to L in the sense that every unfoldable cardinal is unfoldable in L and in fact strongly unfoldable there, as in L the two notions coincide. For this reason, the notions of unfoldability and strong unfoldability, although not equivalent, have the same consistency strength, bounded below by the totally indescribable cardinals and above by the
Frontostriatal Maturation Predicts Cognitive Control Failure to Appetitive Cues in Adolescents

Adolescent risk-taking is a public health issue that increases the odds of poor lifetime outcomes. One factor thought to influence adolescents' propensity for risk-taking is an enhanced sensitivity to appetitive cues, relative to an immature capacity to exert sufficient cognitive control. We tested this hypothesis by characterizing interactions among ventral striatal, dorsal striatal, and prefrontal cortical regions with varying appetitive load using fMRI scanning. Child, teen, and adult participants performed a go/no-go task with appetitive (happy faces) and neutral cues (calm faces). Impulse control to neutral cues showed linear improvement with age, whereas teens showed a nonlinear reduction in impulse control to appetitive cues. This performance decrement in teens was paralleled by enhanced activity in the ventral striatum. Prefrontal cortical recruitment correlated with overall accuracy and showed a linear response with age for no-go versus go trials. Connectivity analyses identified a ventral frontostriatal circuit including the inferior frontal gyrus and dorsal striatum during no-go versus go trials. Examining recruitment developmentally showed that teens had greater between-subject ventral-dorsal striatal coactivation relative to children and adults for happy no-go versus go trials. These findings implicate exaggerated ventral striatal representation of appetitive cues in adolescents relative to an intermediary cognitive control response. Connectivity and coactivity data suggest these systems communicate at the level of the dorsal striatum differentially across development. Biased responding in this system is one possible mechanism underlying heightened risk-taking during adolescence.
Veracity of information in twitter data: A case study

Twitter is a powerful real-time micro-blogging service and a platform where users communicate with each other instantaneously. Thus, tweets form an integral part of big data ecosystem. While this platform serves as an efficient information diffusion medium, it can also be used to spread misinformation intentionally or unintentionally, which can damage the reputation of an individual or a corporation. Misinformation could also be harmful to society in general. As veracity in big data gains more attention, it is also important to develop methods to estimate veracity of tweets. There are no definitive measures to determine the veracity of tweets from tweets themselves. Other information that are required to verify tweets may not be readily available. Hence, there is a need for such mechanisms to determine the level of accuracy of tweets from available data. In this paper we propose three quantitative measures we name as topic diffusion, geographic dispersion, and spam index as indicators of veracity of tweets. These measures are derived from tweets themselves independent of any corroborating data. The proposed measures are tested using tweets about oil companies as validators. To validate the proposed measures, information extracted from tweets are compared with information collected from official data sources. Our experiments show that the proposed measures were able to estimate the level of veracity among tweets in most topics we tested. We also found the measures useful to compare the veracity of different topics as points in a 3-dimensional space. Another application of veracity indices to positions of political candidates is also described.
Impact of Total Ionizing Dose on the Analog Single Event Transient Sensitivity of a Linear Bipolar Integrated Circuit

Total ionizing dose (TID) strongly affects the single event transient (SET) sensitivity of a bipolar linear voltage comparator (LM139). The general rule that transistors in the non-conducting state are the most sensitive to SETs was verified, with some exceptions. The mechanisms responsible for those exceptions were identified and explained using circuit analysis. In the non typical behavior, a correlation of the degradation of the amplifier stages with the shape of the transient output signal was established. Following total dose exposure the SETs generally exhibit a reduction in amplitude due to the degradation of the slew rate. However, in some cases the transient signal is amplified because degradation of either the current source or of the current gain of some transistors forces the output transistor to the edge of conduction, so that it behaves like a voltage amplifier and amplifies the parasitic transient signal. Laser testing demonstrates that ASET sensitivity also is affected by TID degradation of transistors that are not directly hit by the laser.
Wavelet thresholding via MDL for natural images

We study the application of Rissanen's (1989) principle of minimum description length (MDL) to the problem of wavelet denoising and compression for natural images. After making a connection between thresholding and model selection, we derive an MDL criterion based on a Laplacian model for noiseless wavelet coefficients. We find that this approach leads to an adaptive thresholding rule. While achieving mean-squared-error performance comparable with other popular thresholding schemes, the MDL procedure tends to keep far fewer coefficients. From this property, we demonstrate that our method is an excellent tool for simultaneous denoising and compression. We make this claim precise by analyzing MDL thresholding in two optimality frameworks; one in which we measure rate and distortion based on quantized coefficients and one in which we do not quantize, but instead record rate simply as the number of nonzero coefficients.
Real-time dwell scheduling of component-oriented phased array radars

A multi-function phased array radar must search and track suspicious targets in its surveillance space in a real-time fashion. This paper targets one of the most important issues in the design of modern phased array radars: real-time dwell scheduling. We propose a rate-based approach to schedule radar dwells in a real-time fashion. We show how to reserve radar resources to guarantee the minimum radar operation without sacrificing the stability of the system. The strength of our approach is verified by a series of simulation experiments based a real phased array radar for air defense frigates.
Charge Summing in Spectroscopic X-Ray Detectors With High-Z Sensors

The spectroscopic performance of photon counting detectors is limited by the effects of charge sharing between neighboring pixels and the emission of characteristic X-rays. For these reasons, an event can be either missed or counted more than once. These effects become more and more of a concern when pixel pitches are reduced, and for the technology available so far, this meant that there would always be a trade-off between a high spatial and a high spectral resolution. In this work, we present first measurements obtained with the new Medipix3RX ASIC, which features a network of charge summing circuits establishing a communication between pixels which helps to mitigate these effects. Combined with cadmium telluride sensors, we show that this new technology is successful at improving a detector's spectroscopic capabilities even at pixel pitches as small as 55 μm. At this pitch, we measure an energy response function similar to that observed for a pixel pitch of 165 μm in the absence of a charge summing circuitry. This amounts to an effective reduction of the pixel area by at least one order of magnitude at a comparable energy response. Additionally, we present synchrotron measurements at high X-ray fluxes, where significant pulse pile-up occurs, and provide first experimental evidence for a net benefit when balancing spectroscopic performance and high flux tolerance in charge summing mode.
Visually driven chaining of elementary swim patterns into a goal-directed motor sequence: a virtual reality study of zebrafish prey capture

Prey capture behavior critically depends on rapid processing of sensory input in order to track, approach, and catch the target. When using vision, the nervous system faces the problem of extracting relevant information from a continuous stream of input in order to detect and categorize visible objects as potential prey and to select appropriate motor patterns for approach. For prey capture, many vertebrates exhibit intermittent locomotion, in which discrete motor patterns are chained into a sequence, interrupted by short periods of rest. Here, using high-speed recordings of full-length prey capture sequences performed by freely swimming zebrafish larvae in the presence of a single paramecium, we provide a detailed kinematic analysis of first and subsequent swim bouts during prey capture. Using Fourier analysis, we show that individual swim bouts represent an elementary motor pattern. Changes in orientation are directed toward the target on a graded scale and are implemented by an asymmetric tail bend component superimposed on this basic motor pattern. To further investigate the role of visual feedback on the efficiency and speed of this complex behavior, we developed a closed-loop virtual reality setup in which minimally restrained larvae recapitulated interconnected swim patterns closely resembling those observed during prey capture in freely moving fish. Systematic variation of stimulus properties showed that prey capture is initiated within a narrow range of stimulus size and velocity. Furthermore, variations in the delay and location of swim triggered visual feedback showed that the reaction time of secondary and later swims is shorter for stimuli that appear within a narrow spatio-temporal window following a swim. This suggests that the larva may generate an expectation of stimulus position, which enables accelerated motor sequencing if the expectation is met by appropriate visual feedback.
Pneumococcal Infections in Humans Are Associated with Increased Apoptosis and Trafficking of Type 1 Cytokine-Producing T Cells

ABSTRACT Streptococcus pneumoniae infections are associated with considerable morbidity and mortality throughout the world. The immunopathology is characterized by an intense inflammatory reaction, including a strong acute-phase response and increased numbers of neutrophils in the circulation. However, little is known regarding the T-cell response during in vivo infections in humans. The purpose of this study was to test the hypothesis that activated T cells producing type 1 cytokines were engaged in the host response to pneumococcal infections. The phenotype and function of T cells were studied in 22 patients at admission to a department of infectious diseases and after antibiotic treatment for 1 week compared with an age-matched, healthy control group. Pneumococcal infections induced lymphopenia in the circulation due to the disappearance of activated T lymphocytes with a type 1 cytokine profile. In contrast, the numbers of naive T cells and interleukin-4-producing T cells did not change. Activated type 1 cytokine-producing cells reappeared in the circulation in relation to the treatment and clinical improvement. The underlying mechanisms during infection may include sequestration in the peripheral tissues and/or apoptosis. In fact, increased activation-induced apoptosis in the remaining peripheral lymphocytes and elevated levels of soluble Fas ligand were detected at admission to the hospital. In conclusion, these data suggest that activated T lymphocytes with a type 1 cytokine profile are highly engaged in the in vivo immune response to S. pneumoniae.