Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Impulsive spherical gravitational waves

Penrose's identification with warp provides the general framework for constructing the continuous form of impulsive gravitational wave metrics. We present the two-component spinor formalism for the derivation of the full family of impulsive spherical gravitational wave metrics which brings out the power in identification with warp and leads to the simplest derivation of exact solutions. These solutions of the Einstein vacuum field equations are obtained by cutting Minkowski space into two pieces along a null cone and re-identifying them with warp which is given by an arbitrary nonlinear holomorphic transformation. Using two-component spinor techniques we construct a new metric describing an impulsive spherical gravitational wave where the vertex of the null cone lies on a worldline with constant acceleration.
Evolution of Premotor Cortical Excitability after Cathodal Inhibition of the Primary Motor Cortex: A Sham-Controlled Serial Navigated TMS Study

Background Premotor cortical regions (PMC) play an important role in the orchestration of motor function, yet their role in compensatory mechanisms in a disturbed motor system is largely unclear. Previous studies are consistent in describing pronounced anatomical and functional connectivity between the PMC and the primary motor cortex (M1). Lesion studies consistently show compensatory adaptive changes in PMC neural activity following an M1 lesion. Non-invasive brain modification of PMC neural activity has shown compensatory neurophysiological aftereffects in M1. These studies have contributed to our understanding of how M1 responds to changes in PMC neural activity. Yet, the way in which the PMC responds to artificial inhibition of M1 neural activity is unclear. Here we investigate the neurophysiological consequences in the PMC and the behavioral consequences for motor performance of stimulation mediated M1 inhibition by cathodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). Purpose The primary goal was to determine how electrophysiological measures of PMC excitability change in order to compensate for inhibited M1 neural excitability and attenuated motor performance. Hypothesis Cathodal inhibition of M1 excitability leads to a compensatory increase of ipsilateral PMC excitability. Methods We enrolled 16 healthy participants in this randomized, double-blind, sham-controlled, crossover design study. All participants underwent navigated transcranial magnetic stimulation (nTMS) to identify PMC and M1 corticospinal projections as well as to evaluate electrophysiological measures of cortical, intracortical and interhemispheric excitability. Cortical M1 excitability was inhibited using cathodal tDCS. Finger-tapping speeds were used to examine motor function. Results Cathodal tDCS successfully reduced M1 excitability and motor performance speed. PMC excitability was increased for longer and was the only significant predictor of motor performance. Conclusion The PMC compensates for attenuated M1 excitability and contributes to motor performance maintenance.
Appetitive and Aversive Olfactory Learning in Humans Studied Using Event-Related Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging

We combined event-related functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) with olfactory classical conditioning to differentiate the neural responses evoked during appetitive and aversive olfactory learning. Three neutral faces [the conditioned stimuli (CS+)] were repetitively paired with pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant odors [the unconditioned stimuli (UCS)] in a partial reinforcement schedule. A fourth face was never paired to odor [the nonconditioned stimulus (CS−)]. Learning-related neural activity, comparing unpaired (face only) CS+ stimuli with CS−, showed valence-independent activations in rostral and caudal orbitofrontal cortex (OFC). Medial OFC responded to the appetitive (app) CS+, whereas lateral OFC responded to the aversive (av) CS+. Within nucleus accumbens, neural responses showed divergent activation profiles that increased with time in response to the appCS+ but decreased in response to the avCS+. In posterior amygdala, responses were elicited by the appCS+, which habituated over time. In temporal piriform cortex, neural responses were evoked by the avCS+, which progressively increased with time. These results highlight regional and temporal dissociations during olfactory learning and imply that emotionally salient odors can engender cross-modal associative learning. Moreover, the findings suggest that the role of human primary (piriform) and secondary olfactory cortices transcends their function as mere intermediaries of chemosensory information processing.
Correlates of hippocampal neuron number in Alzheimer's disease and ischemic vascular dementia

The cornu ammonis 1 region of the hippocampus (CA1) sector of hippocampus is vulnerable to both Alzheimer's disease (AD)‐type neurofibrillary degeneration and anoxia–ischemia. The objective of this article is to compare number and size of neurons in CA1 in AD versus ischemic vascular dementia. Unbiased stereological methods were used to estimate the number and volume of neurons in 28 autopsy‐derived brain samples. For each case, the entire hippocampus from one cerebral hemisphere was sliced into 5mm slabs (5–7 slabs/case), cut into 50μm sections, and stained with gallocyanine. Using the optical dissector, we systematically sampled the number and size of neurons throughout the extent of CA1 and CA2. The total number of neurons was significantly less in AD compared with ischemic vascular dementia (p < 0.02), but there was no significant difference in neuron size. The greatest loss of neurons was observed in two cases with combined AD and hippocampal sclerosis. Regardless of causative diagnosis, the number of CA1 neurons correlates with magnetic resonance imaging–derived hippocampal volume (r = 0.72; p < 0.001) and memory score (r = 0.62; p < 0.01). We conclude that although CA1 neuron loss is more consistently observed in AD than ischemic vascular dementia, severity of loss shows the expected correlation with structure and function across causative subtype. Reductions in magnetic resonance imaging–derived hippocampal volume reflect loss, rather than shrinkage, of CA1 neurons. Ann Neurol 2005;57:896–903
Do you hear my attitude? prosodic perception of social affects in Mandarin

Social affects are, on the contrary to emotions, some voluntary controls expressed within the prosody, and contribute to build the meaning in the speech acts. The present work was set up to examine the perception of Chinese social affects by native subjects, but in the long term aims for the method of attitudinal prosody teaching. A speech corpus was designed with the variation of length, tone location and syntactic structures of utterances, and has been incorporated with 19 social affects. The perceptual experiment reveals that the social affects were globally well recognized; "declaration" and "disappointment" were the best recognized; "confidence" and "irony" were the less recognized. All social affects listed were clustered into seven groups, coherently in terms of cognitive/mental processing.
In wild tobacco, Nicotiana attenuata, variation among bacterial communities of isogenic plants is mainly shaped by the local soil microbiota independently of the plants' capacity to produce jasmonic acid

The phytohormone jasmonic acid (JA) plays a central role in defense against necrotrophic pathogens and herbivores in Nicotiana attenuata. Recently Santhanam et al.1 showed that JA does not have a major role in shaping the root- and shoot associated bacterial communities, though a few taxa differed among control (empty vector, EV) plants and plants impaired in their capacity to produce JA (irAOC). In this addendum, we provide additional data showing that the composition of the plant bacterial communities is mainly shaped by tissue type. The qualitative data analysis revealed that at the order level, 5 bacterial OTUs formed a core community found in all tissues irrespective of genotypes, while 9 OTUs were different among roots and shoots. The heterogeneity among individual plants was high masking the potential genotype effect on bacterial communities. Using a culture-dependent approach, 3 of 18 bacterial taxa retrieved either only from one of the genotypes or from both had a growth promoting effect on EV and irAOC seedlings. The data suggest that the local soil niche in which the roots grows is a major driver of the variability in root bacterial communities recruited by different individuals, and the plant growth-promoting effects of some taxa are independent of the genotype.
Rational points near manifolds and metric Diophantine approximation

This work is motivated by problems on simultaneous Diophantine approximation on manifolds, namely, establishing Khintchine and Jarnik type theorems for submanifolds of R^n. These problems have attracted a lot of interest since Kleinbock and Margulis proved a related conjecture of Alan Baker and V.G. Sprindzuk. They have been settled for planar curves but remain open in higher dimensions. In this paper, Khintchine and Jarnik type divergence theorems are established for arbitrary analytic non-degenerate manifolds regardless of their dimension. The key to establishing these results is the study of the distribution of rational points near manifolds -- a very attractive topic in its own right. Here, for the first time, we obtain sharp lower bounds for the number of rational points near non-degenerate manifolds in dimensions n>2 and show that they are ubiquitous (that is uniformly distributed).
White noise approach to the low density limit of a quantum particle in a gas

The white noise approach to the investigation of the dynamics of a quantum particle interacting with a dilute and in general non-equilibrium gaseous environment in the low density limit is outlined. The low density limit is the kinetic Markovian regime when only pair collisions (i.e., collisions of the test particle with one particle of the gas at one time moment) contribute to the dynamics. In the white noise approach one first proves that the appropriate operators describing the gas converge in the sense of appropriate matrix elements to certain operators of quantum white noise. Then these white noise operators are used to derive quantum white noise and quantum stochastic equations describing the approximate dynamics of the total system consisting of the particle and the gas. The derivation is given ab initio, starting from the exact microscopic quantum dynamics. The limiting dynamics is described by a quantum stochastic equation driven by a quantum Poisson process. This equation then applied to the derivation of quantum Langevin equation and linear Boltzmann equation for the reduced density matrix of the test particle. The first part of the paper describes the approach which was developed by L. Accardi, I.V. Volovich and the author and uses the Fock-antiFock (or GNS) representation for the CCR algebra of the gas. The second part presents the approach to the derivation of the limiting equations directly in terms of the correlation functions, without use of the Fock-antiFock representation. This approach simplifies the derivation and allows to express the strength of the quantum number process directly in terms of the one-particle $S$-matrix.
People living with HIV/AIDS in the city of Bangkok: quality of life and related factors.

OBJECTIVE To assess the quality of life and factors related to quality of life among people living with HIV/AIDS in Bangkok, Thailand. MATERIAL AND METHOD A cross-sectional survey research was conducted among 138 people aged over 18 years living with HIV/AIDS in Bangkok. The sample was selected by purposive sampling from HIV infected persons who attended the HIV clinic at the hospitals in Bangkok. Data were collected by self-administered questionnaires from June to July 2010 and analyzed by frequency, percentage, mean, standard deviation, Chi-square test and Pearson Product Moment Correlation Coefficient. RESULTS The finding revealed that of the people living with HIV/AIDS, 67.4% reported a moderate level with respect to quality of life and 32.6% reported a good level concerning the quality of life. Factors related to quality of life were age, education level, monthly income, self-esteem,family relationships and social support (p < 0.05). CONCLUSION All of the people living with HIV/AIDS reported having a moderate to good quality of life. From research results, responsible organizations should establish activities to promote self-esteem, family relationships and social support for people living with HIV/AIDS to enhance the quality of life of infected persons. Increasing public awareness to better understand basic needs such as family relationships and social support and providing HIV/AIDS education to the community were deemed important.
Understanding customers' repeat purchase intentions in B2C e‐commerce: the roles of utilitarian value, hedonic value and perceived risk

Customer loyalty or repeat purchasing is critical for the survival and success of any store. By focusing on online stores, this study investigates the repeat purchase intention of experienced online buyers based on means‐end chain theory and prospect theory. In the research model, both utilitarian value and hedonic value are hypothesised to affect repeat purchase intention positively. Perceived risk is hypothesised to affect repeat purchase intention negatively and moderate the effects of utilitarian and hedonic values on repeat purchase intention. Utilitarian value is proposed as a formative second‐order construct formed by product offerings, product information, monetary savings and convenience. Hedonic value is also proposed as a formative second‐order construct formed by the six hedonic benefits that have been identified in prior research. Data collected from 782 Yahoo! Kimo customers provide strong support for the research model. The results indicate that both the utilitarian value and hedonic value are positively associated with buyers' repeat purchase intention. A higher level of perceived risk reduces the effect of utilitarian value and increases the effect of hedonic value on repeat purchase intention. Implications for theory and practice and suggestions for future research are provided.
The role of gut-liver axis in the pathogenesis of liver cirrhosis and portal hypertension

Because of the anatomical position and its unique vascular system, the liver is susceptible to the exposure to the microbial products from the gut. Although large amount of microbes colonize in the gut, translocation of the microbes or microbial products into the liver and systemic circulation is prevented by gut epithelial barrier function and cleansing and detoxifying functions of the liver in healthy subjects. However, when the intestinal barrier function is disrupted, large amount of bacterial products can enter into the liver and systemic circulation and induce inflammation through their receptors. Nowadays, there have been various reports suggesting the role of gut flora and bacterial translocation in the pathogenesis of chronic liver disease and portal hypertension. This review summarizes the current knowledge about bacterial translocation and its contribution to the pathogenesis of chronic liver diseases and portal hypertension.
Efficient Phrase-Table Representation for Machine Translation with Applications to Online MT and Speech Translation

In phrase-based statistical machine translation, the phrase-table requires a large amount of memory. We will present an efficient representation with two key properties: on-demand loading and a prefix tree structure for the source phrases. We will show that this representation scales well to large data tasks and that we are able to store hundreds of millions of phrase pairs in the phrase-table. For the large Chinese‐ English NIST task, the memory requirements of the phrase-table are reduced to less than 20MB using the new representation with no loss in translation quality and speed. Additionally, the new representation is not limited to a specific test set, which is important for online or real-time machine translation. One problem in speech translation is the matching of phrases in the input word graph and the phrase-table. We will describe a novel algorithm that effectively solves this combinatorial problem exploiting the prefix tree data structure of the phrase-table. This algorithm enables the use of significantly larger input word graphs in a more efficient way resulting in improved translation quality.
Learning Control Policies in System Dynamics Models

Advances in artificial intelligence and optimal control provide increasingly better algorithms for controlling dynamical systems. These algorithms can be applied for policy design in system dynamics models. In this paper we introduce some basic solution concepts and apply the Q-learning algorithm to a simple dynamic model from system dynamics literature to demonstrate potential value of such cross-fertilization. We also extend a state aggregation and partitioning algorithm that may increase the efficiency of basic reinforcement learning models in application to continuous time and space problems. Simulation analysis demonstrates the value of this approach and offers guidelines for future research.
Financing Labor

Financial market imperfections can have significant impact on employment decisions of firms. We illustrate the economic importance of this channel by demonstrating that the responsiveness of employment decisions to firms’ financial health is quantitatively similar to the much-studied responsiveness of investment decisions to cash-flows. We use a collage of three ‘quasi-experiments’ used previously in the investment-cash flow and finance-growth literatures to trace the effects of finance on employment. Our results suggest that financial constraints and the availability of credit play an important role in firm-level employment decisions, as well as aggregate unemployment outcomes. JEL classification:
An Autopsy Case of Minamata Disease (Methylmercury Poisoning)—Pathological Viewpoints of Peripheral Nerves

The outbreak of methylmercury poisoning in the geographic areas around Minamata Bay, Kumamoto, Japan in the 1950s has become known as Minamata disease. Based on earlier reports and extensive pathological studies on autopsied cases at the Kumamoto University School of Medicine, destructive lesions in the anterior portion of the calcarine cortex and depletion predominantly of granular cells in the cerebellar cortex came to be recognized as the hallmark and diagnostic yardstick of methylmercury poisoning in humans. As the number of autopsy cases of Minamata disease increased, it became apparent that the cerebral lesion was not restricted to the calcarine cortex but was relatively widespread. Less severe lesions, believed to be responsible for the motor symptoms of Minamata patients, were often found in the precentral, postcentral, and lateral temporal cortices. These patients also frequently presented with signs of sensory neuropathy affecting the distal extremities. Because of few sufficiently comprehensive studies, peripheral nerve degeneration has not been universally accepted as a cause of the sensory disturbances in Minamata patients. The present paper describes both biopsy and autopsy findings of the peripheral nerves in a male fisherman who died at the age of 64 years and showed the characteristic central nervous system lesions of Minamata disease at autopsy. A sural nerve biopsy with electron microscopy performed 1 month prior to his death showed endoneurial fibrosis and regenerated myelin sheaths. At autopsy the dorsal roots and sural nerve showed endoneurial fibrosis, loss of nerve fibers, and presence of Büngner's bands. The spinal cord showed Wallerian degeneration of thefasciculus gracilis (Goll's tract) with relative preservation of neurons in sensory ganglia. These findings support the contention that there is peripheral nerve degeneration in Minamata patients due to toxic injury from methylmercury.
Clinical Outcomes with Alternative Dosing Strategies for Piperacillin/Tazobactam: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

Objectives A better dosing strategy can improve clinical outcomes for patients. We sought to compare the extended or continuous infusion with conventional intermittent infusion of piperacillin/tazobactam, investigating which approach is better and worthy of recommendation for clinical use. Methods Articles were gathered from PubMed, Web of Science, ProQuest, Science Direct, Cochrane, two Chinese literature databases (CNKI, Wan Fang Data) and related ICAAC and ACCP conferences. Randomized controlled and observational studies that compared extended or continuous infusion with conventional intermittent infusion of piperacillin/tazobactam were identified from the databases above and analyzed. Two reviewers independently extracted and investigated the data. A meta-analysis was performed using Revman 5.2 software. The quality of each study was assessed. Sensitivity analysis and publication bias were evaluated. Results Five randomized controlled trials and nine observational studies were included in this study. All included studies had high quality and no publication bias was found. Compared to the conventional intermittent infusion approach, the extended or continuous infusion group had a significantly higher clinical cure rate (OR 1.88, 95% CI 1.29-2.73, P = 0.0009) and a lower mortality rate (OR 0.67, 95% CI 0.50-0.89, P = 0.005). No statistical difference was observed for bacteriologic cure (OR 1.40, 95% CI 0.82-2.37, P = 0.22) between the two dosing regimens. The sensitivity analysis showed the results were stable. Conclusions Our systematic review and meta-analysis suggested that the extended or continuous infusion strategy of piperacillin/tazobactam should be recommended for clinical use considering its higher clinical cure rate and lower mortality rate in comparison with conventional intermittent strategy. Data from this study could be extrapolated for other β-lactam antimicrobials. Therefore, this dosing strategy could be considered in clinical practice.
On Stabilized Branch-and-Price for Constrained Tree Problems

We consider a rather generic class of network design problems in which a set or subset of given terminal nodes must be connected to a dedicated root node by simple paths and a variety of resource and/or quality of service constraints must be respected. These extensions of the classical Steiner tree problem on a graph can be well modeled by a path formulation in which individual variables are used for all feasible paths. To solve this formulation in practice, branch-and-price is used. It turns out, however, that a naive implementation of column generation suffers strongly from certain degeneracies of the pricing subproblem, leading to excessive running times. After analyzing these computational problems, we propose two methods for stabilizing column generation by using alternative dual-optimal solutions. This stabilized branch-and-price is practically tested on the rooted delay-constrained Steiner tree problem and a quota-constrained version of it. Results indicate that the new stabilization methods in general speed up the solution process dramatically, far more than a piecewise linear stabilization to which we compare. Furthermore, our stabilized branch-and-price exhibits on most test instances a better performance than a so far leading mixed integer programming approach based on a layered graph model and branch-and-cut. As the new stabilization technique utilizing alternative dual-optimal solutions is generic in the sense that it easily adapts to the inclusion of a large variety of further constraints and different objective functions, the proposed method is highly promising for a large class of network design problems.