Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Alterations in default mode network connectivity during pain processing in borderline personality disorder.

CONTEXT Recent neuroimaging studies have associated activity in the default mode network (DMN) with self-referential and pain processing, both of which are altered in borderline personality disorder (BPD). In patients with BPD, antinociception has been linked to altered activity in brain regions involved in the cognitive and affective evaluation of pain. Findings in healthy subjects indicate that painful stimulation leads to blood oxygenation level-dependent signal decreases and changes in the functional architecture of the DMN. OBJECTIVES To connect the previously separate research areas of DMN connectivity and altered pain perception in BPD and to explore DMN connectivity during pain processing in patients with BPD. DESIGN Case-control study. SETTING University hospital. PARTICIPANTS Twenty-five women with BPD, including 23 (92%) with a history of self-harm, and 22 age-matched control subjects. INTERVENTIONS Psychophysical assessment and functional magnetic resonance imaging during painful heat vs neutral temperature stimulation. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE Connectivity of DMN as assessed via independent component analysis and psychophysiological interaction analysis. RESULTS Compared with control subjects, patients with BPD showed less integration of the left retrosplenial cortex and left superior frontal gyrus into the DMN. Higher BPD symptom severity and trait dissociation were associated with an attenuated signal decrease of the DMN in response to painful stimulation. During pain vs neutral, patients with BPD exhibited less posterior cingulate cortex seed region connectivity with the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. CONCLUSIONS Patients with BPD showed significant alterations in DMN connectivity, with differences in spatial integrity and temporal characteristics. These alterations may reflect a different cognitive and affective appraisal of pain as less self-relevant and aversive as well as a deficiency in the switching between baseline and task-related processing. This deficiency may be related to everyday difficulties of patients with BPD in regulating their emotions, focusing mindfully on 1 task at a time, and efficiently shifting their attention from one task to another.
Compensatory role of PspA, a member of the phage shock protein operon, in rpoE mutant Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium

σE is an alternative sigma factor that responds to and ameliorates extracytoplasmic stress. In Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium (S. Typhimurium), σE is required for oxidative stress resistance, stationary‐phase survival and virulence in mice. Microarray analysis of stationary‐phase gene expression in rpoE mutant bacteria revealed a dramatic increase in expression of pspA, a member of the phage shock protein (psp) operon. The psp operon can be induced by filamentous bacteriophages or by perturbations of protein secretion, and is believed to facilitate the maintenance of proton motive force (PMF). We hypothesized that increased pspA expression may represent a compensatory response to the loss of σE function. Increased pspA expression was confirmed in rpoE mutant Salmonella and also observed in a mutant lacking the F1F0 ATPase. Alternatively, expression of pspA could be induced by exposure to CCCP, a protonophore that disrupts PMF. An rpoE pspA double mutant strain was found to have a stationary‐phase survival defect more pronounced than that of isogenic strains harbouring single mutations. The double mutant strains were also more susceptible to killing by CCCP or by a bactericidal/permeability‐increasing protein (BPI)‐derived anti‐microbial peptide. Using fluorescence ratio imaging, differences were observed in the Δψ of wild‐type and rpoE or pspA mutant bacteria. These findings suggest that pspA expression in S. Typhimurium is induced by alterations in PMF and a functional σE regulon is essential for the maintenance of PMF.
Bacteraemia in adults due to glucose non-fermentative Gram-negative bacilli other than P. aeruginosa.

BACKGROUND Glucose non-fermentative Gram-negative bacilli other than P. aeruginosa (NF) are emerging pathogens. AIM To evaluate the epidemiology, clinical characteristics, predictors of acquisition, and outcome of bacteraemia due to NF. DESIGN Retrospective analysis of prospectively recorded data. METHODS We reviewed episodes of NF bacteraemia in patients older than 14 years, recorded through a blood culture surveillance program. Patients were identified at the time of their bacteraemia and prospectively followed. RESULTS Between January 1991 and December 2000, 296 episodes of NF bacteraemia were detected: 87% were due to Acinetobacter sp. , Pseudomonas sp. other than P. aeruginosa, or Stenotrophomonas maltophilia. The global incidence (0.87 cases per 1000 discharges) remained stable during the study period. Patients were of all ages and both sexes, and 282/296 (95.3%) had some predisposing underlying disease or condition, the most common being haematological malignancies without transplantation (85/296, 28.7%), treatment with steroids (78/296, 26.3%), and transplantation (bone marrow or solid organ) (70/296, 23.6%). Fifty (16.9%) were neutropenic. The most common sources of bacteraemia were central venous catheter infection (117/296, 39.5%) and unknown primary site (97/296, 32.8%). Sixty-one episodes (20.6%) were community-acquired and 235 (79.4%) were nosocomial. Forty-three patients (14.5%) died. Pneumonia (RR 1.5, 95%CI 1.1-14.2), age<65 (RR 3.1, 95%CI 1.4-10.3), hospitalization in the intensive care unit (ICU) (RR 3.2, 95%CI 1.3-9.8), rapidly fatal disease (RR 4.9, 95%CI 3.1-12.6), and severe sepsis (RR 9.8, 95%CI 1.6-19.7) were independent predictors of death. Factors predicting the probability that an episode of nosocomial bacteraemia was due to NF included: rapidly fatal disease (RR 1.23, 95%CI 1.02-4.1), age<65 (RR 2.05, 95%CI 1.4-3), hospitalization in the ICU (RR 2.06, 95%CI 1.4-3, and pneumonia (RR 2.1, 95%CI 1.05-4.8). DISCUSSION NF bacteraemia mainly affects patients with malignant haematological disease, with and without transplantation, and patients in the ICU. The most common known source is a central venous catheter, though many sources are unknown. Mortality is relatively low, and depends on the severity of the underlying disease.
Evaluation of the Efficacy of ME1111 in the Topical Treatment of Dermatophytosis in a Guinea Pig Model

ABSTRACT The treatment of dermatophytoses, including onychomycosis, has come a long way over the past few decades with the introduction of oral antifungals (e.g., terbinafine and itraconazole). However, with these advancements in oral therapies come several undesirable effects, such as kidney and liver toxicity, along with drug-drug interactions. Consequently, there is a need for new topical agents that are effective against dermatophytosis. ME1111 is a topical antifungal under development. In this study, the in vivo efficacy of ME1111 was compared to that of ciclopirox in the topical treatment of dermatophytosis caused by Trichophyton mentagrophytes using a guinea pig model. Animals were treated with the topical antifungals starting at 3 days postinfection, with each agent being applied once daily for seven consecutive days. After the treatment period, the clinical and mycological efficacies were evaluated. The data showed that both antifungals demonstrated significant clinical and mycological efficacies; however, ME1111 showed clinical efficacy superior to that of ciclopirox (46.9% and 25.0%, respectively, with a P value of <0.001). The potent efficacy of ME1111 could be attributed to its properties, such as low keratin binding.
Gephyrin expression and clustering affects the size of glutamatergic synaptic contacts

We have recently shown that disrupting the expression and post‐synaptic clustering of gephyrin in cultured hippocampal pyramidal cells, by either gephyrin RNAi (RNA interference) or over‐expression of a dominant negative gephyrin‐enhanced green fluorescent protein (EGFP) fusion protein, leads to decreased number of post‐synaptic gephyrin and GABAA receptor clusters and to reduced GABAergic innervation of these cells. On the other hand, increasing gephyrin expression led to a small increase in the number of gephyrin and GABAA receptor clusters and to little or no effect on GABAergic innervation. We are now reporting that altering gephyrin expression and clustering affects the size but not the density of glutamatergic synaptic contacts. Knocking down gephyrin with gephyrin RNAi, or preventing gephyrin clustering by over‐expression of the dominant negative gephyrin‐enhanced green fluorescent protein fusion protein, leads to larger post‐synaptic PSD‐95 clusters and larger pre‐synaptic glutamatergic terminals. On the other hand, over‐expression of gephyrin leads to slightly smaller PSD‐95 clusters and pre‐synaptic glutamatergic terminals. The change in size of PSD‐95 clusters were accompanied by a parallel change in the size of NR2‐NMDA receptor clusters. It is concluded that the levels of expression and clustering of gephyrin, a protein that concentrates at the post‐synaptic complex of the inhibitory synapses, not only has homotypic effects on GABAergic synaptic contacts, but also has heterotypic effects on glutamatergic synaptic contacts. We are proposing that gephyrin is a counterpart of the post‐synaptic glutamatergic scaffold protein PSD‐95 in regulating the number and/or size of the excitatory and inhibitory synaptic contacts.
Mechanisms of Choice Behavior Shift Using Cue-approach Training

Cue-approach training has been shown to effectively shift choices for snack food items by associating a cued button-press motor response to particular food items. Furthermore, attention was biased toward previously cued items, even when the cued item is not chosen for real consumption during a choice phase. However, the exact mechanism by which preferences shift during cue-approach training is not entirely clear. In three experiments, we shed light on the possible underlying mechanisms at play during this novel paradigm: (1) Uncued, wholly predictable motor responses paired with particular food items were not sufficient to elicit a preference shift; (2) Cueing motor responses early – concurrently with food item onset – and thus eliminating the need for heightened top–down attention to the food stimulus in preparation for a motor response also eliminated the shift in food preferences. This finding reinforces our hypothesis that heightened attention at behaviorally relevant points in time is key to changing choice behavior in the cue-approach task; (3) Crucially, indicating choice using eye movements rather than manual button presses preserves the effect, thus demonstrating that the shift in preferences is not governed by a learned motor response but more likely via modulation of subjective value in higher associative regions, consistent with previous neuroimaging results. Cue-approach training drives attention at behaviorally relevant points in time to modulate the subjective value of individual items, providing a mechanism for behavior change that does not rely on external reinforcement and that holds great promise for developing real world behavioral interventions.
The Rent Gap and Transformation of the Built Environment: Case Studies in Malmö 1860–1985

ABSTRACTThe theory of rent gap has received much attention in the 1980's literature on gentrification and urban renewal. Two shortcomings in this literature are the neglect of other formulations than Neil Smith's and the lack of empirical research efforts to put the theory to a test. This paper attempts to alleviate these shortcomings by first presenting a comparison of alternative formulations of rent gap theory, and then presenting the results of an empirical effort to test the theory with historical data on six areas in Malmo, Sweden. These results corroborate the theory, but suggest some modifications.
PKI Mesh Trust Model Based on Trusted Computing

Different organizations or countries maybe adopt different PKI trust model in real applications. On a large scale, all certification authorities (CA) and end entities construct a huge mesh network. PKI trust model exhibits unstructured mesh network as a whole. However, mesh trust model worsens computational complexity in certification path processing when the number of PKI domains increases. This paper proposes an enhanced mesh trust model for PKI. Keys generation and signature are fulfilled in Trusted Platform Module (TPM) for higher security level. An algorithm is suggested to improve the performance of certification path processing in this model. This trust model is less complex but more efficient and robust than the existing PKI trust models.
Incorporating Source-Language Paraphrases into Phrase-Based SMT with Confusion Networks

To increase the model coverage, source-language paraphrases have been utilized to boost SMT system performance. Previous work showed that word lattices constructed from paraphrases are able to reduce out-of-vocabulary words and to express inputs in different ways for better translation quality. However, such a word-lattice-based method suffers from two problems: 1) path duplications in word lattices decrease the capacities for potential paraphrases; 2) lattice decoding in SMT dramatically increases the search space and results in poor time efficiency. Therefore, in this paper, we adopt word confusion networks as the input structure to carry source-language paraphrase information. Similar to previous work, we use word lattices to build word confusion networks for merging of duplicated paths and faster decoding. Experiments are carried out on small-, medium- and large-scale English-Chinese translation tasks, and we show that compared with the word-lattice-based method, the decoding time on three tasks is reduced significantly (up to 79%) while comparable translation quality is obtained on the large-scale task.
“Wrong place to get help”: A field experiment on luxury stores and helping behavior

Abstract Three experiments were conducted in field settings. It was hypothesized that luxury stores may act as environmental reminders of materialism and that helpfulness would vary according to the presence or absence of such cues. Study 1 (N = 80) indicated that consumers coming out of famous brand stores displayed less helpfulness, as compared to mere passersby. Study 2 (N = 112) showed passersby were less helpful near a luxury brand store than in an ordinary street with no shops. In Study 3 (N = 360), passersby were less helpful when walking down a street lined with highly exclusive stores, as compared to streets with ordinary stores or no stores. Results, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.
Development of microarray‐based diagnostics of voles and shrews for use in biodiversity monitoring studies, and evaluation of mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase I vs. cytochrome b as genetic markers

Molecular methods are widely used for species identification of mammals. In particular, the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene sequence has proven helpful for this purpose. Microarray technology can now open up new perspectives for biodiversity monitoring. With microarrays, many thousands of genetically based characteristics can be tested on one microscopic glass slide called a ‘chip’. A ‘Mammalia‐Chip’, for example, could include redundant diagnostic markers to unambiguously identify all European mammal species. Of broader use, and therefore economically more relevant, could be a ‘Biodiversity‐Chip’, containing diagnostic features to distinguish key species in the taxa of bacteria, lichen, molluscs, insects, fungi, mammals, etc. An important prerequisite for any mixed‐phyla chip is a standardization of methods. One of the most promising genes as a universal marker for all eukaryotes is cytochrome oxidase I. We show that cytochrome oxidase I is adequate for the discrimination of different species of voles and shrews with cluster analysis. Based on these results we present a diagnostic microarray‐chip using cytochrome oxidase I sequences for the identification of three species of Sorex (Soricidae, Insectivora) and four species of Microtus (Arvicolinae, Rodentia). We conclude that cytochrome oxidase I can be used as an alternative marker to cytochrome b in a mixed‐phyla chip, or both genes can be used in combination to enhance redundance and thus robustness of a specific chip including small mammals.
Low-power, low-storage-overhead chipkill correct via multi-line error correction

Due to their large memory capacities, many modern servers require chipkill correct, an advanced type of memory error detection and correction, to meet their reliability requirements. However, existing chipkill-correct solutions incur high power or storage overheads, or both because they use dedicated error-correction resources per codeword to perform error correction. This requires high overhead for correction and results in high overhead for error detection. We propose a novel chipkill-correct solution, multi-line error correction, that uses resources shared across multiple lines in memory for error correction to reduce the overhead of both error detection and correction. Our evaluations show that the proposed solution reduces memory power by a mean of 27%, and up to 38% with respect to commercial solutions, at a cost of 0.4% increase in storage overhead and minimal impact on reliability.
The Role of Risk Aversion and Intertemporal Substitution in Dynamic Consumption-Portfolio Choice with Recursive Utility

The objective of this paper is to understand the implications for consumption and portfolio choice of the separation of an investor’s risk aversion and elasticity of intertemporal substitution that is made possible by recursive utility, in contrast to expected utility, where the two are governed by the same parameter. In particular, we study exactly how risk aversion and elasticity of intertemporal substitution affect optimal dynamic consumption and portfolio decisions. For a three-date, discrete-time model with a stochastic interest rate, we obtain an exact analytic solution for the optimal consumption and portfolio policies. We find that, in general, the consumption and portfolio decisions depend on both risk aversion and the elasticity of intertemporal substitution. Only in the case where the investment opportunity set is constant, is the optimal portfolio weight independent of the elasticity of intertemporal substitution. We also find that the size of risk aversion relative to unity determines the sign of the intertemporal hedging component in the optimal portfolio, while elasticity of intertemporal substitution affects only the magnitude of the hedging component.
Informatics Concepts and Computational Thinking in K-12 Education: A Lithuanian Perspective

: Informatics or Computer Science is important subject in nowadays school education. Informatics can be presented as a discipline for understanding technology in a deeper way – the understanding behind computer programs. Bringing Informatics to schools means preparing young people to be creators of information technology – not only to be users of technological devices. To achieve that, we need to introduce Informatics concepts to primary, basic (K-9) and secondary education (K-12). From the other side, we need to help people to solve problems by using technology and developing computational thinking in various areas. The paper presents a short overview of Informatics education at schools of Lithuania with focus on future modern Informatics and Information Technology curriculum for K-12 education. The importance of informal education of Informatics concepts and computational thinking through contests is discussed as well. Few examples of short tasks for understanding Informatics concepts and developing computational thinking skills are presented.
Questions About Lattice Enabled Nuclear Reactions : Experiments , Theories and Computations

Abstract — Technical questions about the science of Lattice Enabled Nuclear Reactions (LENR) are posed and addressed. Factors relevant to the experimental study of LENR are dealt with first. They include the variety of stimuli applied to, and results measured from, LENR experiments. Experimental reproducibility, controllability and reliability are considered, as are new parametric studies and the use of new laboratory tools. Theoretical and computational opportunities, which are closely related, are discussed. An approach to assessing existing LENR theories is outlined. Computational tools to evaluate rates and energies from LENR theories, and to quantify the characteristics and properties of materials for LENR are surveyed. Analysis and mining of data from LENR experiments are touted.
Do Charter Schools Improve Student Achievement?

This article presents findings from a lottery-based study of the impacts of a broad set of 33 charter middle schools across 13 states on student achievement. To estimate charter school impacts, we compare test score outcomes of students admitted to these schools through the randomized admissions lotteries with outcomes of applicants who were not admitted. We find that impacts varied considerably across schools and students, with more positive impacts for more disadvantaged schools and students and more negative impacts for the more advantaged. On average across the schools in the study, the impacts of charter middle schools on student achievement were negative but not statistically significant, regardless of whether we examined the impact of the offer of admission or actual attendance at these schools.
Representation of Autism in Leading Newspapers in China: A Content Analysis

The public’s lack of understanding and the public’s misconceptions about autism in China contribute to the underdiagnosis and undertreatment of the disorder and the stigma associated with it. Mass media are the primary channel through which people learn about autism. This article examines how leading newspapers in China covered autism in the 10-year period of 2003 through 2012 through a framing analysis. It finds that while autism has received increased media attention, it is increasingly framed as a family problem—family members are cited or quoted more than any other sources and the responsibility of dealing with autism is ultimately assigned to families. Autistic people are largely silenced unless they are autistic savants with special talents. The use of the scientific discourse and the human-interest discourse both decrease over time in percentage, while the use of other discourses such as the public relations discourse becomes more dominant.
“It’s a Different Kind of Reading”

Through a qualitative analysis of data collected over four years of design-based research on the implementation of a reform-oriented mathematics curriculum, this study describes two sixth-grade teachers’ changing views of the role and place of reading in mathematics instruction. The findings reveal the evolution of the teachers’ perspective on mathematics instruction from one that did not include reading toward one in which reading was viewed as integral to students’ mathematics learning. The teachers’ views on reading in mathematics at the end of the project lend empirical support to theoretical propositions for a disciplinary literacy approach to mathematics instruction. At the same time, their views nuance such propositions by highlighting differences between the reading demands of school mathematics texts and those of disciplinary texts.