Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Cognitive Consilience: Primate Non-Primary Neuroanatomical Circuits Underlying Cognition

Interactions between the cerebral cortex, thalamus, and basal ganglia form the basis of cognitive information processing in the mammalian brain. Understanding the principles of neuroanatomical organization in these structures is critical to understanding the functions they perform and ultimately how the human brain works. We have manually distilled and synthesized hundreds of primate neuroanatomy facts into a single interactive visualization. The resulting picture represents the fundamental neuroanatomical blueprint upon which cognitive functions must be implemented. Within this framework we hypothesize and detail 7 functional circuits corresponding to psychological perspectives on the brain: consolidated long-term declarative memory, short-term declarative memory, working memory/information processing, behavioral memory selection, behavioral memory output, cognitive control, and cortical information flow regulation. Each circuit is described in terms of distinguishable neuronal groups including the cerebral isocortex (9 pyramidal neuronal groups), parahippocampal gyrus and hippocampus, thalamus (4 neuronal groups), basal ganglia (7 neuronal groups), metencephalon, basal forebrain, and other subcortical nuclei. We focus on neuroanatomy related to primate non-primary cortical systems to elucidate the basis underlying the distinct homotypical cognitive architecture. To display the breadth of this review, we introduce a novel method of integrating and presenting data in multiple independent visualizations: an interactive website (http://www.frontiersin.org/files/cognitiveconsilience/index.html) and standalone iPhone and iPad applications. With these tools we present a unique, annotated view of neuroanatomical consilience (integration of knowledge).
Making sense of microarray data distributions

MOTIVATION Typical analysis of microarray data has focused on spot by spot comparisons within a single organism. Less analysis has been done on the comparison of the entire distribution of spot intensities between experiments and between organisms. RESULTS Here we show that mRNA transcription data from a wide range of organisms and measured with a range of experimental platforms show close agreement with Benford's law (Benford, PROC: Am. Phil. Soc., 78, 551-572, 1938) and Zipf's law (Zipf, The Psycho-biology of Language: an Introduction to Dynamic Philology, 1936 and Human Behaviour and the Principle of Least Effort, 1949). The distribution of the bulk of microarray spot intensities is well approximated by a log-normal with the tail of the distribution being closer to power law. The variance, sigma(2), of log spot intensity shows a positive correlation with genome size (in terms of number of genes) and is therefore relatively fixed within some range for a given organism. The measured value of sigma(2) can be significantly smaller than the expected value if the mRNA is extracted from a sample of mixed cell types. Our research demonstrates that useful biological findings may result from analyzing microarray data at the level of entire intensity distributions.
Performance Assessment of Routing Strategies in Named Data Networking

Information Centric Networking (ICN) architectures are currently being investigated to orient the Future Internet towards a content centric paradigm, thus allowing the provisioning of more secure, efficient, and scalable services. In this work, we focus on the Named Data Networking (NDN) proposal to analyze the impact of several routing and forwarding strategies, which play a fundamental role in ICN. In particular, thanks to the recently devised ns-3 based NDN simulator, namely ndnSIM, we conduce an extensive simulation campaign using the GEANT topology as a core network. We monitor different distinctive metrics, such as file download time, server load reduction, hit ratio, hit distance, and communication overhead, in different topologies and traffic conditions. Simulation results show that the election of a single best forwarding strategy is a difficult task. Indeed, the pros and cons of each strategy are heavily influenced by the popularity distribution of contents, which, in turn, affects the effectiveness of the distributed caching mechanisms typically used in the NDN architecture.
Professional development and its impact on teacher and pupil learning: a community of practice case study in South Korea

The aim of this study was to explore teachers’ professional learning in a community of practice (CoP) in South Korea and its impact on teachers’ and pupils’ learning. The study employed qualitative research methods within a case study framework. Data were collected in South Korea from September 2014 to June 2015. A professor who created the CoP, 8 secondary school physical education teachers (as case-study teachers) and 41 pupils from 8 different schools participated in this study. Five different data collection tools were used: individual interviews, observations, focus group, open-ended questionnaires, and document analysis. Three key findings from this research are: 1) five different activities supported in the CoP helped teachers to develop both ‘pedagogies’ and ‘teachers’ characteristics’ and they impacted together on pupils’ learning; 2) teachers’ professional learning in the CoP was influenced by: retaining a focus on developing pedagogies together, professional intimacy between members, appropriate support from the professor, and temporal and spatial issues; and 3) teachers’ professional learning and its links to pupils’ learning were influenced by factors at the micro, meso and macro levels. Insights into the value of CoP theory are discussed and implications for the effectiveness of teachers’ professional learning identified.
Corporate Liquidity and Solvency

This paper studies the impact of both solvency and liquidity concerns on corporate finance. A firm optimally chooses capital structure, cash holdings, dividends and default while facing stochastic cash flows with two sources of uncertainty. The expected cash flows are uncertain and low profitability leads to solvency distress. Moreover, cash flows are subject to liquidity shocks that cause liquidity distress. Extending the contingent claims trade-off model with liquidity concerns offers a wide range of implications for corporate finance. The model provides a rationale for significant corporate cash reserves and produces a dynamic cash policy that is in line with empirical regularities. The optimal dividend distributions are smoothed relative to cash flows. Furthermore, we characterize a set of predictions on the relationship between cash holdings, dividends, leverage, and credit spreads.
The Performance of Global Brands in the 2008 Financial Crisis: A Test of Two Brand Value Measures

Previous literature has argued that high brand equity helps stabilize financial returns and reduce share price volatility. This research investigates how some of the strongest brands in the U.S. market fared in terms of financial performance during the Fall 2008 stock market downturn. Initial results using a financially based measure of brand value (Interbrand) show that, counter to expectations, these top brands did not outperform the market as a whole. However, the findings are in the hypothesized direction when an alternative, consumer-based brand equity measure (EquiTrend) is used to replicate the analysis. After first employing the three Fama–French factors to evaluate stock performance, we assess the added brand equity effect using both aforementioned measures. The consumer-based measure shows a significant incremental effect on stock performance after controlling for risk and financial fundamentals. Furthermore, this positive effect also applies to share volatility and firm betas. None of these effects hold for the financially based measure.
The novel HSP90 inhibitor AT13387 potentiates radiation effects in squamous cell carcinoma and adenocarcinoma cells

Overexpression of heat shock protein 90 (HSP90) is associated with increased tumor cell survival and radioresistance. In this study we explored the efficacy of the novel HSP90 inhibitor AT13387 and examined its radiosensitizing effects in combination with gamma-radiation in 2D and 3D structures as well as mice-xenografts. AT13387 induced effective cytotoxic activity and radiosensitized cancer cells in monolayer and tumor spheroid models, where low drug doses triggered significant synergistic effects on cell survival together with radiation. Furthermore, AT13387 treatment resulted in G2/M-phase arrest and significantly reduced the migration capacity. The expression of selected client proteins involved in DNA repair, cell-signaling and cell growth was downregulated in vitro, though the expression of most investigated proteins recurred after 8–24 h. These results were confirmed in vivo where AT13387 treated tumors displayed effective downregulation of HSP90 and its oncogenic client proteins. In conclusion, our results demonstrate that AT13387 is a potent new cancer drug and effective radiosensitizer in vitro with an excellent in vivo efficacy. AT13387 treatment has the potential to improve external beam therapy and radionuclide therapy outcomes and restore treatment efficacy in cancers that are resistant to initial therapeutic regimes.
WhatApp: Modeling mobile applications by domain names

Characterizing mobile traffic is important to network operators from a network performance and security standpoint. In many cases, such as a performance degradation or security threat, it is useful to know that traffic is being generated by a specific mobile application. Recent methods for identifying mobile traffic have relied on computationally expensive detailed inspection of HTTP flows which may not scale across large networks. This paper proposes a lightweight method to generate a probabilistic model of an application based on a distribution of domain names. We observe that a large portion of mobile applications have traffic to domain names that are critical to how the application functions. Network operators can use this model to verify if a set of one or more domain names is associated with a mobile application during a performance issue or security event. Based on analysis of real mobile network traffic, the model can correctly correlate domain names with associated applications at a rate of 90% in various scenarios. These results show that identifying applications by domain names via this lightweight solution is feasible and merits continued future work.
Teacher responsibility: shifting care from student to (professional) self?

Abstract The professionalisation of teaching in Australia is a policy shift that transpires within broader policy dynamics which are increasingly influenced by neoliberal logics. In this article we examine teacher responsibility through analysis of a new measure introduced in Victoria. This requires teachers to prove professional development hours in the area of teaching students with special needs in order to maintain their professional registration. Through our analysis of this policy move we draw out some tensions that emerge in relation to teacher responsibility, accountability and autonomy to reveal that (often hidden) neoliberal governing logics can operate to shift teachers’ focus from care of the student towards care of the (professional) self. With the theoretical support of Nel Noddings’ ‘ethic of care’, we argue that teacher responsibility to care can be torn between market-based regulations and the care of the student, paradoxically de-professionalising teachers’ work in the act of attempting to professionalise.
Visual projections routed to the auditory pathway in ferrets: receptive fields of visual neurons in primary auditory cortex

How does cortex that normally processes inputs from one sensory modality respond when provided with input from a different modality? We have addressed such a question with an experimental preparation in which retinal input is routed to the auditory pathway in ferrets. Following neonatal surgical manipulations, a specific population of retinal ganglion cells is induced to innervate the auditory thalamus and provides visual input to cells in auditory cortex (Sur et al., 1988). We have now examined in detail the visual response properties of single cells in primary auditory cortex (A1) of these rewired animals and compared the responses to those in primary visual cortex (V1) of normal animals. Cells in A1 of rewired animals differed from cells in normal V1: they exhibited larger receptive field sizes and poorer visual responsivity, and responded with longer latencies to electrical stimulation of their inputs. However, striking similarities were also found. Like cells in normal V1, A1 cells in rewired animals exhibited orientation and direction selectivity and had simple and complex receptive field organizations. Furthermore, the degree of orientation and directional selectivity as well as the proportions of simple, complex, and nonoriented cells found in A1 and V1 were very similar. These results have significant implications for possible commonalities in intracortical processing circuits between sensory cortices, and for the role of inputs in specifying intracortical circuitry.
Phase 1 Study of TLK286 (Telcyta) Administered Weekly in Advanced Malignancies

Purpose: To determine the dose-limiting toxicities, maximum tolerated dose, and pharmacokinetics of TLK286, a novel cancer prodrug, administered weekly. Patients and Methods: Patients with advanced malignancies were treated with TLK286 administered weekly by i.v. infusion over 30 min in escalating doses 60–960 mg/m2. A treatment cycle was defined as 3 weekly treatments. Patients underwent tumor assessments on day 43, and those patients receiving clinical benefit continued on treatment until disease progression or unacceptable toxicity. Safety was assessed by the WHO criteria. Results: Thirty-seven patients received 111 cycles of TLK286 at eight dose levels (median, 3 cycles; range, 1–16 cycles). In this study, TLK286 given weekly at 960 mg/m2 was well tolerated without dose-limiting toxicities. TLK286-related toxicities included grade 1–2 nausea and vomiting, fatigue and anemia. Nine of 31 evaluable patients continued therapy beyond day 43 and received a median of 5 cycles (range of 3–16 cycles) and experienced durable stable disease or minor tumor regression. Pharmacokinetic characteristics of TLK286 are described by an optimized two-compartment model. Mild to moderate renal or hepatic organ dysfunction did not impact the elimination of TLK286. Conclusions: TLK286 administered weekly at doses up to 960 mg/m2 were well tolerated. The safety and antitumor activity observed in a broad range of cancer types supports Phase 2 disease-specific investigations of TLK286 given weekly at 960 mg/m2.
Transforaminal Epidural Steroid Injection for Lumbosacral Radiculopathy: Preganglionic versus Conventional Approach

Objective The present study was undertaken to evaluate the effectiveness of transforaminal epidural steroid injection (TFESI) with using a preganglionic approach for treating lumbar radiculopathy when the nerve root compression was located at the level of the supra-adjacent intervertebral disc. Materials and Methods The medical records of the patients who received conventional TFESI at our department from June 2003 to May 2004 were retrospectively reviewed. TFESI was performed in a total of 13 cases at the level of the exiting nerve root, in which the nerve root compression was at the level of the supra-adjacent intervertebral disc (the conventional TFESI group). Since June 2004, we have performed TFESI with using a preganglionic approach at the level of the supra-adjacent intervertebral disc (for example, at the neural foramen of L4-5 for the L5 nerve root) if the nerve root compression was at the level of the supra-adjacent intervertebral disc. Using the inclusion criteria described above, 20 of these patients were also consecutively enrolled in our study (the preganglionic TFESI group). The treatment outcome was assessed using a 5-point patient satisfaction scale and by using a VAS (visual assessment scale). A successful outcome required a patient satisfaction scale score of 3 (very good) or 4 (excellent), and a reduction on the VAS score of > 50% two weeks after performing TFESI. Logistic regression analysis was also performed. Results Of the 13 patients in the conventional TFESI group, nine showed satisfactory improvement two weeks after TFESI (69.2%). However, in the preganglionic TFESI group, 18 of the 20 patients (90%) showed satisfactory improvement. The difference between the two approaches in terms of TFESI effectiveness was of borderline significance (p = 0.056; odds ratio: 10.483). Conclusion We conclude that preganglionic TFESI has the better therapeutic effect on radiculopathy caused by nerve root compression at the level of the supra-adjacent disc than does conventional TFESI, and the diffence between the two treatments had borderline statistical significance.
Ninja cursors: using multiple cursors to assist target acquisition on large screens

We propose the "ninja cursor" to improve the performance of target acquisition, particularly on large screens. This technique uses multiple distributed cursors to reduce the average distance to targets. Each cursor moves synchronously following mouse movement. We present the design and implementation of the proposed technique, including a method to resolve the ambiguity that results when multiple cursors indicate different targets simultaneously. We also conducted an experiment to assess the performance of the ninja cursor. The results indicate that it can generally reduce movement time. However, the performance is greatly affected by the number of cursors and target density. Based on these results, we discuss how our technique can be put into practical use. In addition to presenting a novel method to improve pointing performance, our study is the first to explore a variable number of cursors for performing pointing tasks.
‘We share similar struggles’: how a Vietnamese immigrant youth organizing program shapes participants’ critical consciousness of interracial tension

Abstract This article examines Homeward Bound, a political education youth organizing program for Vietnamese immigrant youth in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Inspired by Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy theory, the program sought to empower learners to challenge their pre-existing knowledge and experience of interracial relations. Drawing on data from observations, interviews, and document reviews, we describe the process by which the program shaped Vietnamese immigrant youth’s critical consciousness of Vietnamese/Asian-black interracial tension. While some participants expressed apprehension and prejudice toward African Americans, particularly in the early days of the program, by the end, participants demonstrated knowledge retained from lessons and activities on the shared history of Vietnamese immigrants and African Americans. Participants also identified roots of and offered solutions to interracial tension. This study illuminates the role of immigrant youth organizing programs in resolving interracial tension in multiracial contexts.
The effect of residual water on the survival of dried bacteria during storage.

The optimum water activity (aw ) for survival of dried bacteria has been determined by storing the organisms in water-vapour equilibrium with solutions of known aw value. The position of the optimum differed according to the composition of the suspending fluid, and the presence or absence of air in the storage atmosphere. For Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas fluorescens, dried in papain digest and stored in vacuo, survival at 0·07, 0·11 and 0·16 aw was somewhat better than at 0·00 aw and 0·22 aw . Survival at 0·33–0·53 aw was much less. For Salmonella newport dried in the same medium the optimum aw in vacuo was less clearly defined, but was well marked and close to 0·2 when stored in air. S. newport, when stored in vacuo, survived best at 0·22 aw after drying in a salts buffer or in dialysed horse serum, but in whole serum or the dialysable serum fraction survival was better at 0·00 aw . S. newport dried from water survived best at 0·00 aw in vacuo, but at 0·43 aw in air. In the presence of sucrose the effect of aw was relatively small. In the presence of glucose or arabinose survival at 0·00 aw was better than at 0·22 aw , which in turn was much better than at 0·43 aw . In the presence of all three sugars the differences between results in vacuo and in air were small.
Complex Networks : Information Theory and Collective Dynamics

In this report we briefly discuss about two aspects related to the understanding of complex networks’ structure and dynamics. First of all, is shown how we can use an Information theory approach to describe networks’ characteristics such as heterogeneity and assortativeness; in addition, some network models like “Random Graphs“ and “Lattice Networks“ are classified following that approach. After that, the collective dynamics will be presented with a focus on synchronization of identical, non-identical and chaotic oscillators.
Lung endothelial ADAM17 regulates the acute inflammatory response to lipopolysaccharide

Acute lung injury (ALI) is associated with increased vascular permeability, leukocyte recruitment, and pro‐inflammatory mediator release. We investigated the role of the metalloproteinase ADAM17 in endotoxin‐induced ALI with focus on endothelial ADAM17. In vitro, endotoxin‐mediated induction of endothelial permeability and IL‐8‐induced transmigration of neutrophils through human microvascular endothelial cells required ADAM17 as shown by inhibition with GW280264X or shRNA‐mediated knockdown. In vivo, ALI was induced by intranasal endotoxin‐challenge combined with GW280264X treatment or endothelial adam17‐knockout. Endotoxin‐triggered upregulation of ADAM17 mRNA in the lung was abrogated in knockout mice and associated with reduced ectodomain shedding of the junctional adhesion molecule JAM‐A and the transmembrane chemokine CX3CL1. Induced vascular permeability, oedema formation, release of TNF‐α and IL‐6 and pulmonary leukocyte recruitment were all markedly reduced by GW280264X or endothelial adam17‐knockout. Intranasal application of TNF‐α could not restore leukocyte recruitment and oedema formation in endothelial adam17‐knockout animals. Thus, activation of endothelial ADAM17 promotes acute pulmonary inflammation in response to endotoxin by multiple endothelial shedding events most likely independently of endothelial TNF‐α release leading to enhanced vascular permeability and leukocyte recruitment.
Solitary trichoepithelioma in an 8-year-old child: clinical, dermoscopic and histopathologic findings

Solitary trichoepithelioma (TE) is a rare, benign tumor of follicular origin that in certain cases is difficult to differentiate from basal cell carcinoma (BCC). We report the case of an 8-year-old girl with a pale pink, soft lesion on the neck. The clinical image of the lesion was equivocal, while some dermoscopic findings—blue-gray globules and arborizing vessels—could not exclude the presence of BCC from the differential diagnosis, although that would have been a very unlikely case considering the age of the patient. The histopathologic examination established the diagnosis of TE. Given the occasion of this challenging case we try to list the key clinical, dermoscopic and histopathological characteristics of TE and BCC in order to elucidate the differential diagnosis of these two entities.