Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Single trial analysis of slow cortical potentials: a study on anticipation related potentials

Objective. Abundant literature suggests the use of slow cortical potentials (SCPs) in a wide spectrum of basic and applied neuroscience areas. Due to their low signal to noise ratio, these potentials are often studied using grand-average analysis, which conceals trial-to-trial information. Moreover, most of the single trial analysis methods in the literature are based on classical electroencephalogram (EEG) features ([1–30] Hz) and are likely to be unsuitable for SCPs that have different signal properties (such as having the signal's spectral content in the range [0.2–0.7] Hz). In this paper we provide insights into the selection of appropriate parameters for spectral and spatial filtering. Approach. We study anticipation related SCPs recorded using a web-browser application protocol and a full-band EEG (FbEEG) setup from 11 subjects on two different days. Main results. We first highlight the role of a bandpass with [0.1–1.0] Hz in comparison with common practices (e.g., either with full dc, just a lowpass, or with a minimal highpass cut-off around 0.05 Hz). Secondly, we suggest that a combination of spatial-smoothing filter and common average reference (CAR) is more suitable than the spatial filters often reported in the literature (e.g., re-referencing to an electrode, Laplacian or CAR alone). Thirdly, with the help of these preprocessing steps, we demonstrate the generalization capabilities of linear classifiers across several days (AUC of 0.88 ± 0.05 on average with a minimum of 0.81 ± 0.03 and a maximum of 0.97 ± 0.01). We also report the possibility of further improvements using a Bayesian fusion technique applied to electrode-specific classifiers. Significance. We believe the suggested spatial and spectral preprocessing methods are advantageous for grand-average and single trial analysis of SCPs obtained from EEG, MEG as well as for electrocorticogram. The use of these methods will impact basic neurophysiological studies as well as the use of SCPs in the design of neuroprosthetics.
Frequencies of Mutations in the Connexin 26 Gene (GJB2) in Two Populations of Iran (Tehran and Tabriz)

hearing loss has been considered to be a very heterogeneous disorder, mutations in Gap junction beta 2 (GJB2) gene encoding Connexin 26 (Cx26) protein are the major cause of autosomal recessive and sporadic non-syndromic deafness in many populations. In this study, we have investigated the prevalence of the GJB2 gene mutations using nested PCR pre screening strategy and direct sequencing method. Two hundred and seventy two hearing impaired subjects were studied from 210 families obtained from two large cities of Iran (Tehran and Tabriz). Twenty four different genetic variants were identified. Cx26 mutations were found in 53 of the 210 families (25.2%) including T8M, 35delG, W24X, R32H, V37I, E47X, 167delT, delE120, Y136X, R143W, R184P, 235delC and V27I+E114G. Homozygosity and compound heterozygos- ity for the Cx26 mutations were found in 39 of 210 (18.5%) families. Homozygosity for the 35delG mutation was the most common that causes hearing loss in 28 (13.3%) patients. Six novel variants H16R, E101E, K102Q, G200R, 327delG and G130A were detected in this study. As a conclusion, the present survey revealed that the rate of mutation in Cx26 gene in our area is lower than in Europe; nevertheless, this rate is regarded as a considerable cause of deafness in the cited provinces in Iran.
The Socio-Economic Gap in University Drop Out

It has been shown in the recent literature on widening participation that in England a disadvantaged pupil has as much a chance of attending a university as a more advantaged student, provided that s/he manages to reach a sufficient level of achievement at the secondary school level. This finding leads to an important conclusion of no genuine socio-economic gap in university participation once prior attainments have been taken into account. The current article investigates whether the same conclusion can be reached with respect to university drop-out. Using a combination of school and higher education administrative data sets, we are able to show that there is indeed a sizeable and statistically significant gap in the rate of withdrawal after the first year of university between the most advantaged and disadvantaged English students. This socio-economic gap in university drop-out remains even after allowing for their personal characteristics, prior achievement and institution choice. Our results thus suggest that the use of raw drop out rates in the English university 'league table' as one of the main indicators of university efficiency can be quite misleading given that the ranking of universities by drop out rate would change markedly if the prior attainment of students were taken fully into account.
Age-Related Loss in Bone Mineral Density of Rats Fed Lifelong on a Fish Oil-Based Diet Is Avoided by Coenzyme Q10 Addition

During aging, bone mass declines increasing osteoporosis and fracture risks. Oxidative stress has been related to this bone loss, making dietary compounds with antioxidant properties a promising weapon. Male Wistar rats were maintained for 6 or 24 months on diets with fish oil as unique fat source, supplemented or not with coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10), to evaluate the potential of adding this molecule to the n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid (n-3 PUFA)-based diet for bone mineral density (BMD) preservation. BMD was evaluated in the femur. Serum osteocalcin, osteopontin, receptor activator of nuclear factor-κB ligand, ostroprotegerin, parathyroid hormone, urinary F2-isoprostanes, and lymphocytes DNA strand breaks were also measured. BMD was lower in aged rats fed a diet without CoQ10 respect than their younger counterparts, whereas older animals receiving CoQ10 showed the highest BMD. F2-isoprostanes and DNA strand breaks showed that oxidative stress was higher during aging. Supplementation with CoQ10 prevented oxidative damage to lipid and DNA, in young and old animals, respectively. Reduced oxidative stress associated to CoQ10 supplementation of this n-3 PUFA-rich diet might explain the higher BMD found in aged rats in this group of animals.
Creating Space for Effective Political Engagement in Development

Most members of the development community, and especially those in multilateral and bilateral organizations, agree that politicians are centrally important to development. Fewer agree, however, on how to ensure effective political engagement in development programs and reforms. It is questionable whether many practitioners or theoreticians even have clear ideas about what effective political engagement looks like. Terms like political will and political commitment lack clarity and operational import; it is unclear what they are and even more unclear how to foster them. This chapter attempts to shed light on why such a key issue is poorly understood and to suggest ideas for thinking about it.
Emotional responses to haptic stimuli in laboratory versus travelling by bus contexts

The present aim was to study if emotional ratings of haptic stimuli are affected by different contexts. A touchscreen device was used to produce 8 stimuli in laboratory and travelling by bus conditions. The stimuli were varied by amplitude, burst number and rise time. 10 participants were to rate the stimuli using four emotion related bipolar scales: pleasantness, arousal, approachability, and dominance. The results showed that the stimuli were rated as more pleasant, less arousing, and less dominant in the bus than in the laboratory. The stimuli with three bursts and high amplitudes were rated as significantly more unpleasant, arousing, and dominating than the low amplitude stimuli with one burst. The results suggest that simple haptic stimulation can evoke different emotional responses. The results can be utilized when designing, for example, pleasant or dominating haptic feedback.
A study on the consumer's perception of front-of-pack nutrition labeling

The goal of this research is to investigate the present situation for front of pack labeling in Korea and the perception of consumers for the new system of labeling, front of pack labeling, based on the consumer survey. We investigated the number of processed foods with front of pack labeling in one retailer in Youngin-si. And we also surveyed 1,019 participants nationwide whose ages were from 20 to 49; the knowledge of nutrition labeling, the knowledge of 'front of pack labeling', and the opinion about the labeling system. The data were analyzed using SAS statistics program. The results were as follows: 13.4% of processed foods had front of pack labeling, and 16.8% of the consumers always checked the nutrition labeling, while 32.7% of the consumers seldom checked it. In addition, 44.3% of the consumers think that 'front of pack labeling' is necessary, and 58.3% of the consumers think it is important to show the percentage of daily value as a way of 'front of pack labeling'. However, 32% of the consumer think the possibility of 'front of pack labeling' is slim. Meanwhile, 58.3% of the consumers think that it is important to have the color difference according to contents. The number of favorite nutrients in the front of pack was four or five. It seems that the recognition of current nutrition labeling has the influence on the willingness of using the future 'front of pack labeling'. Along with our study, the policy for 'front of pack labeling' has to be updated and improved constantly since 'front of pack labeling' helps consumer understand nutrition facts.
A Variable Ultraluminous Supersoft X-Ray Source in “The Antennae”: Stellar-Mass Black Hole or White Dwarf?

The Chandra monitoring observations of "The Antennae" (NGC 4038/4039) have led to the discovery of a variable, luminous, supersoft source (SSS). This source is detected only at energies below 2 keV and, in 2002 May, reached count rates comparable to those of the nine ultraluminous X-ray sources (ULXs) detected in these galaxies. Spectral fits of the SSS data give acceptable results only for a ~90-100 eV blackbody spectrum with an intrinsic absorption column of NH ~ (2-3) × 1021 cm-2. For a distance of 19 Mpc, the best-fit observed luminosity increases from 1.7 × 1038 ergs s-1 in 1999 December to 8.0 × 1038 ergs s-1 in 2002 May. The intrinsic, absorption-corrected, best-fit luminosity reaches 1.4 × 1040 ergs s-1 in 2002 May. The assumption of unbeamed emission would suggest a black hole of ≳100 M☉. However, if the emission is blackbody at all times, as suggested by the steep soft spectrum, the radiating area would have to vary by a factor of ~103, inconsistent with gravitational energy release from within a few Schwarzschild radii of a black hole. Viable explanations for the observed properties of the SSS are provided by anisotropic emission from either an accreting nuclear-burning white dwarf or an accreting stellar-mass black hole.
Dynamic Audit Services for Outsourced Storages in Clouds

In this paper, we propose a dynamic audit service for verifying the integrity of an untrusted and outsourced storage. Our audit service is constructed based on the techniques, fragment structure, random sampling, and index-hash table, supporting provable updates to outsourced data and timely anomaly detection. In addition, we propose a method based on probabilistic query and periodic verification for improving the performance of audit services. Our experimental results not only validate the effectiveness of our approaches, but also show our audit system verifies the integrity with lower computation overhead and requiring less extra storage for audit metadata.
Information Disclosure and Unraveling in Matching Markets

This paper explores information disclosure in matching markets, e.g., the informativeness of transcripts given out by universities. We show that the same, "benchmark," amount of information is disclosed in essentially all equilibria. We then demonstrate that if universities disclose the benchmark amount of information, students and employers will not find it profitable to contract early; if they disclose more, unraveling will occur.
Predictive Control Using an FPGA With Application to Aircraft Control

Alternative and more efficient computational methods can extend the applicability of model predictive control (MPC) to systems with tight real-time requirements. This paper presents a system-on-a-chip MPC system, implemented on a field-programmable gate array (FPGA), consisting of a sparse structure-exploiting primal dual interior point (PDIP) quadratic program (QP) solver for MPC reference tracking and a fast gradient QP solver for steady-state target calculation. A parallel reduced precision iterative solver is used to accelerate the solution of the set of linear equations forming the computational bottleneck of the PDIP algorithm. A numerical study of the effect of reducing the number of iterations highlights the effectiveness of the approach. The system is demonstrated with an FPGA-in-the-loop testbench controlling a nonlinear simulation of a large airliner. This paper considers many more manipulated inputs than any previous FPGA-based MPC implementation to date, yet the implementation comfortably fits into a midrange FPGA, and the controller compares well in terms of solution quality and latency to state-of-the-art QP solvers running on a standard PC.
Examination of the Abscission-Associated Transcriptomes for Soybean, Tomato, and Arabidopsis Highlights the Conserved Biosynthesis of an Extensible Extracellular Matrix and Boundary Layer

Abscission zone (AZ) development and the progression of abscission (detachment of plant organs) have been roughly separated into four stages: first, AZ differentiation; second, competence to respond to abscission signals; third, activation of abscission; and fourth, formation of a protective layer and post-abscission trans-differentiation. Stage three, activation of abscission, is when changes in the cell wall and extracellular matrix occur to support successful organ separation. Most abscission research has focused on gene expression for enzymes that disassemble the cell wall within the AZ and changes in phytohormones and other signaling events that regulate their expression. Here, transcriptome data for soybean, tomato and Arabidopsis were examined and compared with a focus not only on genes associated with disassembly of the cell wall but also on gene expression linked to the biosynthesis of a new extracellular matrix. AZ-specific up-regulation of genes associated with cell wall disassembly including cellulases (beta-1,4-endoglucanases, CELs), polygalacturonases (PGs), and expansins (EXPs) were much as expected; however, curiously, changes in expression of xyloglucan endotransglucosylase/hydrolases (XTHs) were not AZ-specific in soybean. Unexpectedly, we identified an early increase in the expression of genes underlying the synthesis of a waxy-like cuticle. Based on the expression data, we propose that the early up-regulation of an abundance of small pathogenesis-related (PR) genes is more closely linked to structural changes in the extracellular matrix of separating cells than an enzymatic role in pathogen resistance. Furthermore, these observations led us to propose that, in addition to cell wall loosening enzymes, abscission requires (or is enhanced by) biosynthesis and secretion of small proteins (15–25 kDa) and waxes that form an extensible extracellular matrix and boundary layer on the surface of separating cells. The synthesis of the boundary layer precedes what is typically associated with the post-abscission synthesis of a protective scar over the fracture plane. This modification in the abscission model is discussed in regard to how it influences our interpretation of the role of multiple abscission signals.
Understanding Productivity: Lessons from Longitudinal Microdata

This paper reviews research that uses longitudinal microdata to document productivity movements and to examine factors behind productivity growth. The research explores the dispersion of productivity across firms and establishments, the persistence of productivity differentials, the consequences of entry and exit, and the contribution of resource reallocation across firms to aggregate productivity growth. The research also reveals important factors correlated with productivity growth, such as managerial ability, technology use, human capital, and regulation. The more advanced literature in the field has begun to address the more difficult questions of the causality between these factors and productivity growth.
Cognitive ornithology: the evolution of avian intelligence

Comparative psychologists interested in the evolution of intelligence have focused their attention on social primates, whereas birds tend to be used as models of associative learning. However, corvids and parrots, which have forebrains relatively the same size as apes, live in complex social groups and have a long developmental period before becoming independent, have demonstrated ape-like intelligence. Although, ornithologists have documented thousands of hours observing birds in their natural habitat, they have focused their attention on avian behaviour and ecology, rather than intelligence. This review discusses recent studies of avian cognition contrasting two different approaches; the anthropocentric approach and the adaptive specialization approach. It is argued that the most productive method is to combine the two approaches. This is discussed with respects to recent investigations of two supposedly unique aspects of human cognition; episodic memory and theory of mind. In reviewing the evidence for avian intelligence, corvids and parrots appear to be cognitively superior to other birds and in many cases even apes. This suggests that complex cognition has evolved in species with very different brains through a process of convergent evolution rather than shared ancestry, although the notion that birds and mammals may share common neural connectivity patterns is discussed.
Decoding Spike Trains Instant by Instant Using Order Statistics and the Mixture-of-Poissons Model

In the brain, spike trains are generated in time and presumably also interpreted as they unfold in time. Recent work (Oram et al., 1999; Baker and Lemon, 2000) suggests that in several areas of the monkey brain, individual spike times carry information because they reflect an underlying rate variation. Constructing a model based on this stochastic structure allows us to apply order statistics to decode spike trains instant by instant as spikes arrive or do not. Order statistics are time-consuming to compute in the general case. We demonstrate that data from neurons in primary visual cortex are well fit by a mixture of Poisson processes; in this special case, our computations are substantially faster. In these data, spike timing contributed information beyond that available from the spike count throughout the trial. At the end of the trial, a decoder based on the mixture-of-Poissons model correctly decoded about three times as many trials as expected by chance, compared with approximately twice as many as expected by chance using the spike count only. If our model perfectly described the spike trains, and enough data were available to estimate model parameters, then our Bayesian decoder would be optimal. For four-fifths of the sets of stimulus-elicited responses, the observed spike trains were consistent with the mixture-of-Poissons model. Most of the error in estimating stimulus probabilities is attributable to not having enough data to specify the parameters of the model rather than to misspecification of the model itself.
Partitioning Species Diversity across Landscapes and Regions: A Hierarchical Analysis of α, β, and γ Diversity

Species diversity may be additively partitioned within and among samples (α and β diversity) from hierarchically scaled studies to assess the proportion of the total diversity (γ) found in different habitats, landscapes, or regions. We developed a statistical approach for testing null hypotheses that observed partitions of species richness or diversity indices differed from those expected by chance, and we illustrate these tests using data from a hierarchical study of forest‐canopy beetles. Two null hypotheses were implemented using individual‐ and sample‐based randomization tests to generate null distributions for α and β components of diversity at multiple sampling scales. The two tests differed in their null distributions and power to detect statistically significant diversity components. Individual‐based randomization was more powerful at all hierarchical levels and was sensitive to departures between observed and null partitions due to intraspecific aggregation of individuals. Sample‐based randomization had less power but still may be useful for determining whether different habitats show a higher degree of differentiation in species diversity compared with random samples from the landscape. Null hypothesis tests provide a basis for inferences on partitions of species richness or diversity indices at multiple sampling levels, thereby increasing our understanding of how α and β diversity change across spatial scales.
Bonding and Dominance in Securities Markets: Cross-Listing and Corporate Governance

This paper questions the bonding hypothesis on cross-listing - namely, the idea that firms may list on a foreign stock market with a view to renting that market's superior corporate governance system. A critical review of extant evidence reveals that an opposite, "avoiding hypothesis" more aptly describes firms' cross-listing behavior in this regard. The dominant factor in global cross-listing patterns appears to be informational distance, which comprises aspects of geographical and cultural distance. The greater the distance between an issuer's origin and destination markets the greater are the hurdles to utilizing the destination market's regulatory regime. Drawing on recent advances in psychological research, this paper concretizes the notion of cultural distance in the context of corporate governance. Potential effects of such distance are demonstrated using Korean corporate governance as a representative case of Confucian governance. The paper concludes with a discussion of home-market dominance in price formation processes of cross-listed stocks.
The Effect of Income on Religiousness

How does income affect religiousness? Using self-collected survey data, we estimate the effects of income on religious behaviour. As a source of exogenous income variation we use a change in the eligibility criteria for a government cash transfer in Ecuador and apply a regression discontinuity strategy to estimate causal effects. We find significant effects of income on religiousness. Households that earn more go to church more often. Households that earn more are also more likely to be members of an evangelical community rather than of the mainstream catholic church.
What Drives the Owner-Occupied and Rental Housing Markets? Evidence from an Estimated DSGE Model

Most dynamic stochastic general equilibrium (DSGE) models with a housing market do not explicitly include a rental market and assume a tight mapping between house prices and rents over the business cycle. However, rents are much smoother than house prices in the data. We match this feature of the data by adding both an owner‐occupied housing market and a rental market in a standard DSGE model. The intertemporal preference shock accounts for more than half of the variation in house prices and contributes to residential investment fluctuations through the liquidity constraint, and nominal rigidity in rental contracts captures the variation in the price‐rent ratio.