Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Thalamocortical Dysrhythmia: A Theoretical Update in Tinnitus

Tinnitus is the perception of a sound in the absence of a corresponding external sound source. Pathophysiologically it has been attributed to bottom-up deafferentation and/or top-down noise-cancelling deficit. Both mechanisms are proposed to alter auditory thalamocortical signal transmission, resulting in thalamocortical dysrhythmia (TCD). In deafferentation, TCD is characterized by a slowing down of resting state alpha to theta activity associated with an increase in surrounding gamma activity, resulting in persisting cross-frequency coupling between theta and gamma activity. Theta burst-firing increases network synchrony and recruitment, a mechanism, which might enable long-range synchrony, which in turn could represent a means for finding the missing thalamocortical information and for gaining access to consciousness. Theta oscillations could function as a carrier wave to integrate the tinnitus-related focal auditory gamma activity in a consciousness enabling network, as envisioned by the global workspace model. This model suggests that focal activity in the brain does not reach consciousness, except if the focal activity becomes functionally coupled to a consciousness enabling network, aka the global workspace. In limited deafferentation, the missing information can be retrieved from the auditory cortical neighborhood, decreasing surround inhibition, resulting in TCD. When the deafferentation is too wide in bandwidth, it is hypothesized that the missing information is retrieved from theta-mediated parahippocampal auditory memory. This suggests that based on the amount of deafferentation TCD might change to parahippocampocortical persisting and thus pathological theta–gamma rhythm. From a Bayesian point of view, in which the brain is conceived as a prediction machine that updates its memory-based predictions through sensory updating, tinnitus is the result of a prediction error between the predicted and sensed auditory input. The decrease in sensory updating is reflected by decreased alpha activity and the prediction error results in theta–gamma and beta–gamma coupling. Thus, TCD can be considered as an adaptive mechanism to retrieve missing auditory input in tinnitus.
The Globular Cluster System of NGC 5128. II. Ages, Metallicities, Kinematics, and Formation

We present a study of the nearby postmerger giant elliptical galaxy NGC 5128 (Centaurus A), in which we use the properties of its globular cluster (GC) and planetary nebula (PN) systems to constrain its evolution. Using photometric and spectroscopic data for 215 GCs presented in Paper I, we study trends in age, metallicity, and kinematics for the GC system. We confirm that the GC metallicity distribution is bimodal and show that these two subpopulations have different properties. Using spectral line index measurements of the brightest clusters, we show that the metal-poor GCs have old ages like the Milky Way globular clusters while the metal-rich GCs have Hβ line strengths that could be interpreted as a mean age of ~5 Gyr. Both populations appear to have [Mg/Fe] ratios consistent with that of the Galactic GC system, although this quantity is not very well constrained. The kinematics of the metal-rich GCs are similar to those of the planetary nebulae, exhibiting significant rotation about a misaligned axis, while the metal-poor GCs have a higher velocity dispersion and show a weaker kinematic correlation with the field stars. The total gravitating mass of NGC 5128 derived from the GCs is in excellent agreement with the value derived from stellar (PN) kinematics. We suggest that these and other data support a picture in which the main body of NGC 5128 was formed 3-8 Gyr ago by the dissipational merger of two unequal-mass disk galaxies supplemented by the continual accretion of both gas-rich and gas-poor satellites.
Effect of Calcium Ion Removal, Ionic Strength, and Temperature on the Conformation Change in Calmodulin Protein at Physiological pH

The response of the calmodulin (CaM) protein as a function of calcium ion removal, ionic strength, and temperature at physiological pH condition was investigated using classical molecular dynamics simulations. Changing the ionic strength and temperature came out to be two of the possible routes for observing a conformation change in the protein. This behavior is similar to the conformation change observed in our previous study where a change in the pH was observed to trigger a conformation change in this protein. In the present study, as the calcium ions are removed from the protein, the protein is observed to acquire more flexibility. This flexibility is observed to be more prominent at a higher ionic strength. At a lower ionic strength of 150 mM with all the four calcium ions intact, the N- and C-lobes are observed to come close to a distance of 30 Å starting from an initial separation distance of 48 Å. This conformation change is observed to take place around 50 ns in a simulation of 100 ns. As a second parameter, temperature is observed to play a key role in the conformation change of the protein. With an increase in the temperature, the protein is observed to acquire a more compact form with the formation of different salt bridges between the residues of the N- and the C-lobes. The salt bridge formation leads to an overall lowering of the energy of the protein thus favoring the bending of the two lobes towards each other. The improper and dihedral terms show a significant shift thus leading to a more compact form on increasing the temperature. Another set of simulations is also performed at an increased temperature of 500 K to verify the reproducibility of the results. Thus a set of three possible alterations in the environmental conditions of the protein CaM are studied, with two of them giving rise to a conformation change and one adding flexibility to the protein.
Minimum maintenance cost routing in Cognitive Radio Networks

Cognitive Radio Networks (CRNs) are composed of frequency-agile radio devices that allow licensed (primary) and unlicensed (secondary) users to coexist, where secondary users opportunistically access channels without interfering with the operation of primary ones. From the perspective of secondary users, spectrum availability is a time varying network resource over which multi-hop end-to-end connections must be maintained. In this work, a theoretical outlook on the problem of routing secondary user flows in a CRN is provided. The investigation aims to characterize optimal sequences of routes over which a secondary flow is maintained. The optimality is defined according to a novel metric that considers the maintenance cost of a route as channels and/or links must be switched due to the primary user activity. Different from the traditional notion of route stability, the proposed approach considers subsequent path selections, as well. The problem is formulated as an integer programming optimization model and shown to be of polynomial time complexity in case of full knowledge of primary user activity. Properties of the problem are also formally introduced and leveraged to design a heuristic algorithm to solve the minimum maintenance cost routing problem when information on primary user activity is not complete. Numerical results are presented to assess the optimality gap of the heuristic routing algorithm.
Correlation of Thyroid Functions with Severity and Outcome of Pregnancy

Background: During normal pregnancy, changes in thyroid function are well documented; however, information regarding thyroid function in preeclampsia is scanty. Aim: The present study was planned to study thyroid hormones in mild and severe preeclamptic women and normotensive women and correlate them with outcome of pregnancy. Subject and Methods: Thyroid hormones were analyzed in mild (n = 50) and severe (n = 50) cases of preeclamptic women and normotensive women (n = 100). Results: Thyroid-stimulating hormone (TSH) and TT4 levels were higher in mild preeclampsia as compared with severe preeclampsia (P < 0.001 and P < 0.01, respectively). TT3 levels were lower in preeclampsia (more so in severe preeclamptics as compared with normotensive pregnant and non-pregnant women). Preeclamptic with raised TSH levels had significantly higher mean arterial blood pressure and low birth weight (BW). A negative correlation was observed between BW and TSH levels (r = 0.296, P < 0.001) and BW and TT4 levels. A positive correlation was observed between BW and TT3 levels. Conclusion: These findings indicate that there is a state of biochemical hypothyroidism that correlates with severity of preeclampsia and influences obstetric outcome in these women. Identification of thyroid hormone in pregnancy might be of help in predicting occurrence of preeclampsia.
Dwarf spheroidal satellites: are they of tidal origin?

The Milky Way and Andromeda must have formed through an initial epoch of substructure merging. As a result of fundamental physical conservation laws tidal-dwarf galaxies (TDGs) have likely been produced. Here we show that such TDGs appear, after a Hubble-time of dynamical evolution in the host dark-matter halo, as objects that resemble known dSph satellite galaxies. We discuss the possibility that some of the Milky Way’s satellites may be of tidal origin.
A Survey on Metamorphic Testing

A test oracle determines whether a test execution reveals a fault, often by comparing the observed program output to the expected output. This is not always practical, for example when a program's input-output relation is complex and difficult to capture formally. Metamorphic testing provides an alternative, where correctness is not determined by checking an individual concrete output, but by applying a transformation to a test input and observing how the program output “morphs” into a different one as a result. Since the introduction of such metamorphic relations in 1998, many contributions on metamorphic testing have been made, and the technique has seen successful applications in a variety of domains, ranging from web services to computer graphics. This article provides a comprehensive survey on metamorphic testing: It summarises the research results and application areas, and analyses common practice in empirical studies of metamorphic testing as well as the main open challenges.
The effects of task complexity, mode of interaction and L2 aptitude on the development of the present third person singular through recasts

The role of recasts, a corrective feedback technique, has received much attention from instructed SLA researchers. While a variety of factors have been identified as influencing their effectiveness in promoting L2 development, task complexity, mode of interaction and L2 aptitude are three potential moderator variables that have been the object of relatively little research. To fill these gaps, two studies were conducted. Study 1 investigated the combined effects of task complexity and recasts on modified output and development in knowledge of the present third person singular, the target construction. Study 2 explored the joint impact of mode of interaction and recasts on these outcome variables. Whether L2 aptitude influences these relationships was also examined. In both studies, 60 young learners, all Greek learners of English, were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions. In Study 1, the two groups completed tasks of differential cognitive complexity, with more or fewer reasoning demands. In Study 2, the two groups carried out tasks in different modalities, face-to-face versus computer-mediated. Recasts were provided in response to errors in the target construction. L2 development was gauged by an oral production test and a written production test in both studies, and Study 1 additionally included an elicited imitation test. The LLAMA test (Meara, 2005) was used as an index of L2 aptitude. In Study 1, students who completed less complex tasks achieved greater gains on the oral and written production tests. In Study 2, the face-to-face group demonstrated greater L2 improvement on both outcome measures. Correlational analyses showed that the gains of the learners who completed more complex tasks were related to learners' ability to recognize oral patterns (LLAMA D) and to associate sounds with symbols (LLAMA E). No correlation was found between aptitude and L2 gains in Study 2.
Chlorophyll a Fluorescence in Evaluation of the Effect of Heavy Metal Soil Contamination on Perennial Grasses

Chlorophyll a fluorescence gives information about the plant physiological status due to its coupling to the photosynthetic electron transfer chain and to the further biochemical processes. Environmental stresses, which acts synergistically, disturbs the photosynthesis. The OJIP test, elaborated by Strasser and co-workers, enables comparison of the physiological status of plants grown on polluted vs. control areas. The paper shows that the Chl a measurements are very useful tool in evaluating of heavy metal ions influence on perennial grasses, tested as potential phytoremediators. Among 5 cultivars tested, the highest concentration of Cd and Zn ions, not associated with the yield reduction, was detected in the biomass of tall fescue cv. Rahela. Chl a fluorescence interpreted as double normalized curves pointed out Rahela as the outstanding cultivar under the HM ions stress.
On Symmetries of Non-Plane Trees in a Non-Uniform Model

Binary trees come in two varieties: plane trees, often simply called binary trees, and non-plane trees, in which the order of subtrees does not matter. Nonplane trees find many applications; for example in modeling epidemics, in studying phylogenetic trees, and as models in data compression. While binary trees have been studied very extensively, non-plane trees still pose some challenges. Moreover, in most analyses a uniform probabilistic model is assumed; that is, a tree is selected uniformly from among all trees. Such a model limits significantly applications of the analysis. In this paper we study by analytic techniques non-plane trees in a non-uniform model. In our model, we grow the tree on n leaves by selecting randomly a leaf and appending two children to it. We can show that this is equivalent to an alternative model, also used to analyze the averagecase performance of binary search trees, that is more easily amenable to study by recurrences and generating functions. Here, one of the most important questions is the number of symmetries in such trees (i.e., the number of internal nodes with two isomorphic subtrees), or the sizes of such symmetric subtrees. We first present a functional-differential equation characterizing tree symmetries, and then analyze it. In this conference ∗This work was supported in part by NSF Center for Science of Information (CSoI) Grant CCF-0939370, and in addition by NSF Grants CCF-1524312, NIH Grant 1U01CA198941-01, and the NCN grant UMO-2013/09/B/ST6/02258. ∗Jacek Cichoń is with Department of Computer Science Faculty of Fundamental Problems of Technology, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Wroclaw, Poland (email: jacek.cichon@pwr.edu.pl) †Abram Magner is with Coordinated Science Lab at Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA, (email: anmagner@illinois.edu). ‡Krzysztof Turowski is with Dept. of Algorithms and System Modeling, at Gdańsk University of Technology, Gdansk, Poland, (email: krzturow@pg.gda.pl). §W. Szpankowski is with the Department of Computer Science, Purdue University, IN 47907, USA (e-mail: spa@cs.purdue.edu) paper we focus on the expected number of symmetries, the size of symmetric subtrees, and the tree entropy.
Price Rigidity: Causes and Macroeconomic Implications

The price adjustment process is crucial to almost any macroeconomic issue. Current macroeconomic literature freatures widely different models ranking from instantaneous price adjustment to completely rigid prices. Professor Andersen provides a comprehensive analysis of reasons why prices may fail to adjust instantaneously to changes in market conditions. This unified treatment will allow the reader to understand the mechanisms at work without becoming lost in technical details. This volume covers both real and nominal price rigidities and integrates existing results from the literature with new results on causes for failures of price adjustment. The analysis of real price rigidities includes inventories, customer markets, search and collusive behaviour. Due to the focus on macroeconmic implications, the analysis of nominal price rigidities is extensive and includes menu costs, informational problems, asynchronized price setting as well as the interaction between price and wage setting. Andersen's own theoretical work on imperfect information, a prime source of price and wage rigidity, is given prominence in the book. The volume is thus a combinatin of a valuable survey of the literature, and an original expression of future possible research avenues.
SCiFI - A System for Secure Face Identification

We introduce SCiFI, a system for Secure Computation of Face Identification. The system performs face identification which compares faces of subjects with a database of registered faces. The identification is done in a secure way which protects both the privacy of the subjects and the confidentiality of the database. A specific application of SCiFI is reducing the privacy impact of camera based surveillance. In that scenario, SCiFI would be used in a setting which contains a server which has a set of faces of suspects, and client machines which might be cameras acquiring images in public places. The system runs a secure computation of a face recognition algorithm, which identifies if an image acquired by a client matches one of the suspects, but otherwise reveals no information to neither of the parties. Our work includes multiple contributions in different areas: A new face identification algorithm which is unique in having been specifically designed for usage in secure computation. Nonetheless, the algorithm has face recognition performance comparable to that of state of the art algorithms. We ran experiments which show the algorithm to be robust to different viewing conditions, such as illumination, occlusions, and changes in appearance (like wearing glasses). A secure protocol for computing the new face recognition algorithm. In addition, since our goal is to run an actual system, considerable effort was made to optimize the protocol and minimize its online latency. A system - SCiFI, which implements a secure computation of the face identification protocol. Experiments which show that the entire system can run in near real-time: The secure computation protocol performs a preprocessing of all public-key cryptographic operations. Its online performance therefore mainly depends on the speed of data communication, and our experiments show it to be extremely efficient.
Nitrogen sources for the growth of marine microalgae: role of dissolved free amino acids

Dissolved free amino acids (DFAA) form a significant proportion of dissolved fixed nitrogen in marine waters and could provide an additional source of nitrogen for the growth of marine microalgae. With the advent of DFAA analysis by HPLC, recent studies of algal physiology, and an increased awareness of potential experimental errors, doubts are cast over the conclusion that marine microalgae are not net users of DFAA. Results obtained by testing the use of a few amino acids cannot be extrapolated; the full range of amino acids should be used in field experiments. A high rate of uptake of any one amino acid is not to be expected. It is more probable that a simultaneous uptake of several amino acids will occur at a lower rate. It is essential that environmental conditions be taken into account in interpretation of results from field experiments. Results from laboratory and field studies suggest that maximum rates of DFAA uptake would occur in dark conditions in waters depleted of dissolved inorganic nitrogen. Turbid estuaries and coastal waters would also be environments likely to induce a significant uptake of amino acids, because levels of nFA.4 i.n. sl~ch WB! P~S S ~ C :~! st;l. ~. ~! y high and the periods of enforced darkness due to turbidity are likely to induce the development of microalgal amino acid uptake systems.
WISP1 Is Increased in Intestinal Mucosa and Contributes to Inflammatory Cascades in Inflammatory Bowel Disease

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is mainly characterized by intestinal tissue damage, which is caused by excessive autoimmune responses poorly controlled by corresponding regulatory mechanisms. WISP1, which belongs to the CCN protein family, is a secreted matricellular protein regulating several inflammatory pathways, such as Wnt/β-catenin pathway, and has been reported in several diseases including cancer. Here we examined the expression, regulatory mechanisms, and functions of WISP1 in IBD. WISP1 mRNA and protein expression was upregulated in colonic biopsies and lamina propria mononuclear cells (LPMC) of IBD patients compared with those of healthy controls. Tumor necrosis factor- (TNF-) α induced WISP1 expression in LPMC from healthy controls. Consistently, WISP1 mRNA expression was downregulated in colonic biopsies from IBD patients who had achieved clinical remission with infliximab (IFX). Furthermore, WISP1 expression was also found to be increased in colons from 2,4,6-trinitrobenzenesulfonic acid- (TNBS-) induced mice compared with those from control mice. Further studies confirmed that administration of rWISP1 could aggravate TNBS-induced colitis in vivo. Therefore, we concluded that WISP1 is increased in IBD and contributes to the proinflammatory cascades in the gut.
Motion by curvature of planar networks II

We prove that the curvature flow of an embedded planar network of three curves connected through a triple junction, with fixed endpoints on the boundary of a given strictly convex domain, exists smooth until the lengths of the three curves stay far from zero. If this is the case for all times, then the evolution exists for all times and the network converges to the Steiner minimal connection between the three endpoints.
Making the Right Choices: Ethical Judgments among Educational Leaders.

Purpose – Scholars have adopted a multiple ethical paradigms approach in an attempt to better understand the bases upon which everyday ethical dilemmas are resolved by educational leaders. The aim of this study is to examine the ethical considerations in ethical judgments of aspiring principals.Design/methodology/approach – To examine the ethical considerations involved in school leadership decision making, a specially designed ethical perspective instrument was developed that draws on the multiple ethical paradigms. This exploratory instrument was pre‐tested for validity and reliability among school principals and students of educational administration. The research sample consisted of 52 participants in principal training programs in Israel.Findings – Negative correlations were found between choices reflecting values of fairness and those reflecting utilitarianism and care. In addition, negative correlations were found between choices reflecting values of community and those reflecting care, critique, a.