Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
A Canard Mechanism for Localization in Systems of Globally Coupled Oscillators

Localization in a discrete system of oscillators refers to the partition of the population into a subset that oscillates at high amplitudes and anotherthat oscillates at much loweramplitudes. Motivated by experimental results on the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction, which oscillates in the relaxation regime, we study a mechanism of localization in a discrete system of relaxation oscillators globally coupled via inhibition. The mechanism is based on the canard phenomenon for a single relaxation oscillator: a rapid explosion in the amplitude of the limit cycle as a parameter governing the relative position of the nullclines is varied. Starting from a parameter regime in which each uncoupled oscillatorhas a lar ge amplitude and no otherper iodic orotherstable solutions, we show that the canard phenomenon can be induced by increasing a global negative feedback parameter γ, with the network then partitioned into low and high amplitude oscillators. For the case in which the oscillators are synchronous within each of the two such populations, we can assign a canard-inducing critical value of γ separately to each of the two clusters; localization occurs when the value for the system is between the critical values of the two clusters. We show that the larger the cluster size, the smaller is the corresponding critical value of γ, implying that it is the smallerclusterthat oscillates at large amplitude. The theory shows that the above results come from a kind of self-inhibition of each cluster induced by the local feedback. In the full system, there are also effects of interactions between the clusters, and we present simulations showing that these nonlocal interactions do not destroy the localization created by the self-inhibition.
Design and control of an indoor micro quadrotor

Progresses in sensor technology, data processing and integrated actuators has made the development of miniature flying robots fully possible. Micro VTOL systems represent a useful class of flying robots because of their strong capabilities for small-area monitoring and building exploration. In this paper we describe the approach that our lab has taken to micro VTOL evolving towards full autonomy, and present the mechanical design, dynamic modelling, sensing, and control of our indoor VTOL autonomous robot OS4.
Estimating causal effects in trials involving multitreatment arms subject to non‐compliance: a Bayesian framework

Summary. Data analysis for randomized trials including multitreatment arms is often complicated by subjects who do not comply with their treatment assignment. We discuss here methods of estimating treatment efficacy for randomized trials involving multitreatment arms subject to non‐compliance. One treatment effect of interest in the presence of non‐compliance is the complier average causal effect, which is defined as the treatment effect for subjects who would comply regardless of the treatment assigned. Following the idea of principal stratification, we define principal compliance in trials with three treatment arms, extend the complier average causal effect and define causal estimands of interest in this setting. In addition, we discuss structural assumptions that are needed for estimation of causal effects and the identifiability problem that is inherent in this setting from both a Bayesian and a classical statistical perspective. We propose a likelihood‐based framework that models potential outcomes in this setting and a Bayes procedure for statistical inference. We compare our method with a method‐of‐moments approach that was proposed by Cheng and Small in 2006 by using a hypothetical data set, and we further illustrate our approach with an application to a behavioural intervention study.
Frontal sinuses and head-butting in goats: a finite element analysis

SUMMARY Frontal sinuses in goats and other mammals have been hypothesized to function as shock absorbers, protecting the brain from blows during intraspecific combat. Furthermore, sinuses are thought to form through removal of `structurally unnecessary' bone. These hypotheses were tested using finite element modeling. Three-dimensional models of domesticated goat (Capra hircus) skulls were constructed, with variable frontal bone and frontal sinus morphology, and loaded to simulate various head-butting behaviors. In general, models with sinuses experienced higher strain energy values (a proxy for shock absorption) than did models with unvaulted frontal bones, and the latter often had higher magnitudes than models with solid vaulted frontal bones. Furthermore, vaulted frontal bones did not reduce magnitudes of principal strain on the surface of the endocranial cavity relative to models with unvaulted frontal bones under most loading conditions. Thus, these results were only partially consistent with sinuses, or the bone that walls the sinuses, acting as shock absorbers. It is hypothesized that the keratinous horn sheaths and cranial sutures are probably more important for absorbing blows to the head. Models with sinuses did exhibit a more `efficient' distribution of stresses, as visualized by histograms in which models with solid frontal bones had numerous unloaded elements. This is consistent with the hypothesis that sinuses result at least in part from the removal of mechanically unnecessary bone.
Stripes within Words Affect Reading

In a series of eight studies it is shown that the first peak in the horizontal autocorrelation of the image of a word (which captures the similarity in shape between the neighbouring strokes of letters) determines (i) the appearance of the words as striped; (ii) the speed with which the words are read, both aloud and silently; and (iii) the speed with which a paragraph of text can be searched. By subtly distorting the horizontal dimension of text, and thereby reducing the first peak in the horizontal autocorrelation, it is shown that the speed of word recognition can be increased. The increase in speed is greater in poor readers.
Targeting adiponectin for cardioprotection

Adiponectin is an adipose tissue-derived plasma protein which has a reduced concentration in subjects with obesity-related diseases. Adiponectin has antidiabetic and anti-inflammatory characteristics, which lead to beneficial actions on various obesity-linked complications. Recent experimental findings have shown that adiponectin contributes to protection against cardiac remodelling after pressure overload and cardiac injury following ischaemia–reperfusion. Thus, adiponectin could emerge as a potential cardioprotective agent for the treatment of several pathological heart conditions.
Long-Term U.S. Infrastructure Returns and Portfolio Selection

Our understanding of the long-term return behavior and portfolio characteristics of public infrastructure investments is limited by a relatively short history of empirical data. We re-construct U.S. listed infrastructure index returns by mapping their monthly performance to received systematic and industry risk factors from 1927 through 2010. Our findings reveal that the infrastructure returns in recent years may understate the tail-risk that investors could experience over the long-term, however, this tail-risk is commensurate with holding a broad portfolio of U.S. stocks. For mean-variance and mean-CVaR investors, we report the benefits of holding public infrastructure assets in investment portfolios.
Regulation of Freezing Tolerance and Flowering in Temperate Cereals: The VRN-1 Connection1[W][OA]

In winter wheat (Triticum spp.) and barley (Hordeum vulgare) varieties, long exposures to nonfreezing cold temperatures accelerate flowering time (vernalization) and improve freezing tolerance (cold acclimation). However, when plants initiate their reproductive development, freezing tolerance decreases, suggesting a connection between the two processes. To better understand this connection, we used two diploid wheat (Triticum monococcum) mutants, maintained vegetative phase (mvp), that carry deletions encompassing VRN-1, the major vernalization gene in temperate cereals. Homozygous mvp/mvp plants never flower, whereas plants carrying at least one functional VRN-1 copy (Mvp/−) exhibit normal flowering and high transcript levels of VRN-1 under long days. The Mvp/− plants showed reduced freezing tolerance and reduced transcript levels of several cold-induced C-REPEAT BINDING FACTOR transcription factors and COLD REGULATED genes (COR) relative to the mvp/mvp plants. Diploid wheat accessions with mutations in the VRN-1 promoter, resulting in high transcript levels under both long and short days, showed a significant down-regulation of COR14b under long days but not under short days. Taken together, these studies suggest that VRN-1 is required for the initiation of the regulatory cascade that down-regulates the cold acclimation pathway but that additional genes regulated by long days are required for the down-regulation of the COR genes. In addition, our results show that allelic variation in VRN-1 is sufficient to determine differences in freezing tolerance, suggesting that quantitative trait loci for freezing tolerance previously mapped on this chromosome region are likely a pleiotropic effect of VRN-1 rather than the effect of a separate closely linked locus (FROST RESISTANCE-1), as proposed in early freezing tolerance studies.
Physician Quality and Health Care for the Poor and Uninsured

Adverse health outcomes for uninsured patients have been attributed to their health status and to the quality of treatment received. A question about treatment that remains unexplored is whether physicians treating the uninsured are more likely to have characteristics indicative of lower quality than physicians treating insured patients. Using education, training, experience, and board certification to measure physician quality, we find that uninsured and Medicaid patients are treated by lower-quality physicians both because of the hospitals these patients attend and because of sorting within hospitals. The effects are statistically significant, but small.
Cortical Dynamics of Sensorimotor Integration during Grasp Planning

Our sensorimotor interactions with objects are guided by their current spatial and perceptual features, as well as by learned object knowledge. A fresh red tomato is grasped differently than a soft overripe tomato, even when those objects possess the same spatial metrics of size and shape. Objects' spatial and perceptual features need to be integrated during grasping, but those features are analyzed in two anatomically distinct neural pathways. The anterior intraparietal sulcus (aIPS) might support the integration of those features. We combine transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) interference, EEG recordings, and psychophysical methods to test aIPS causal contributions to sensorimotor integration, characterizing the dynamics of those contributions during motor planning. Human subjects performing grasping movements were provided with visual information about a target object, namely spatial and pictorial cues, whose availability and information value were independently modulated on each trial. Maximally informative visual cues, irrespective of their spatial or perceptual nature, led to enhanced motor preparatory activity early during movement planning, and to stronger spatial congruency between finger trajectories and target object. Disturbing aIPS activity with single-pulse TMS within 200 ms after object presentation reduced those electrophysiological and behavioral indices of enhanced motor planning. TMS interference with aIPS also disturbed subjects' ability to use learned object knowledge during motor planning. These results indicate that aIPS is necessary for the fast generation of a new motor plan on the basis of both spatial and pictorial cues. Furthermore, as learned object knowledge becomes available, aIPS comes to strongly depend on this prior information for structuring the motor plan.
Full-duplex bidirectional MIMO: Achievable rates under limited dynamic range

In this paper we consider the problem of full-duplex bidirectional communication between a pair of modems, each with multiple transmit and receive antennas. The principal difficulty in implementing such a system is that, due to the close proximity of each modem's transmit antennas to its receive antennas, each modem's outgoing signal can exceed the dynamic range of its input circuitry, making it difficult—if not impossible—to recover the desired incoming signal. To address these challenges, we consider systems that use pilot-aided channel estimates to perform transmit beamforming, receive beamforming, and interference cancellation. Modeling transmitter/receiver dynamic-range limitations explicitly, we derive tight upper and lower bounds on the achievable sum-rate, and propose a transmission scheme based on maximization of the lower bound, which requires us to (numerically) solve a nonconvex optimization problem. In addition, we derive an analytic approximation to the achievable sum-rate, and show, numerically, that it is quite accurate.
Inter-element orientation and distance influence the duration of persistent contour integration

Contour integration is a fundamental form of perceptual organization. We introduce a new method of studying the mechanisms responsible for contour integration. This method capitalizes on the perceptual persistence of contours under conditions of impending camouflage. Observers viewed arrays of randomly arranged line segments upon which circular contours comprised of similar line segments were superimposed via abrupt onset. Crucially, these contours remained visible for up to a few seconds following onset, but eventually disappeared due to the camouflaging effects of surrounding background line segments. Our main finding was that the duration of contour visibility depended on the distance and degree of co-alignment between adjacent contour segments such that relatively dense smooth contours persisted longest. The stimulus-related effects reported here parallel similar results from contour detection studies, and complement previous reported top–down influences on contour persistence (Strother et al., 2011). We propose that persistent contour visibility reflects the sustained activity of recurrent processing loops within and between visual cortical areas involved in contour integration and other important stages of visual object recognition.
48-hour wireless oesophageal pH-monitoring in children: are two days better than one?

BACKGROUND Use of a catheter-free, radio telemetric, oesophageal pH-monitoring system in paediatric clinical practice allows patients to follow a more normal physiological pattern of activities and causes less discomfort. At our institution, placement of the capsule is done under general anaesthesia, which restricts the child's activity during the first day. The aim of this study was to determine whether oesophageal pH-measurements should be performed over 48 hours or whether 24-hour measurement provides sufficient and reliable results. CHILDREN AND METHODS The study included 24 consecutive children with symptomatic gastro-oesophageal reflux problems who had undergone upper gastrointestinal endoscopies under general anaesthesia. The radio-transmitting Bravo capsule was introduced transorally and placed above the diaphragm at a width of two vertebral bodies. Oesophageal acid exposure was monitored via a portable receiver for 48 hours. The children's symptoms during measurements were registered. Wilcoxon signed rank test for paired samples was used after power analysis. RESULTS The capsule was successfully attached to the oesophageal mucosa in all cases with minor technical problems in only one patient. The 48-hour pH-monitoring was completed in 23 patients. The median percentage time with an oesophageal pH of less than 4 was 5.4 +/- 6.8 for the first 24 hours and 5.8 +/- 7.4 for the 48-hour measurement. The DeMeester score was 20.5 +/- 23.7 and 22.2 +/- 25.7, respectively. CONCLUSIONS Ambulatory pH-monitoring using the wireless system is feasible and safe. It was well-tolerated by the children. There was no statistical difference between the pH-measurements or DeMeester scores during the first 24 hours compared with the 48-hour measurements. Individual variations were noted but had no clinical significance except in two patients. Our results support the use of pH-measurement for a period of 24 hours only.
Crustal and upper mantle structure beneath south‐western margin of the Arabian Peninsula from teleseismic tomography

We image the lithospheric and upper asthenospheric structure of western continental Yemen with 24 broadband stations to evaluate the role of the Afar plume on the evolution of the continental margin and its extent eastward along the Gulf of Aden. We use teleseismic tomography to compute relative P wave velocity variations in south‐western Yemen down to 300 km depth. Published receiver function analysis suggest a dramatic and localized thinning of the crust in the vicinity of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, consistent with the velocity structure that we retrieve in our model. The mantle part of the model is dominated by the presence of a low‐velocity anomaly in which we infer partial melting just below thick Oligocene flood basalts and recent off‐axis volcanic events (from 15 Ma to present). This low‐velocity anomaly could correspond to an abnormally hot mantle and could be responsible for dynamic topography and recent magmatism in western Yemen. Our new P wave velocity model beneath western Yemen suggests the young rift flank volcanoes beneath margins and on the flanks of the Red Sea rift are caused by focused small‐scale diapiric upwelling from a broad region of hot mantle beneath the area. Our work shows that relatively hot mantle, along with partial melting of the mantle, can persist beneath rifted margins after breakup has occurred.
A web-based versus paper questionnaire on alcohol and tobacco in adolescents.

OBJECTIVE Our study was aimed at comparing health behavior data collected from a Web-based self-administered questionnaire (Web SAQ) versus a paper-and-pencil self-administered questionnaire and assessing the feasibility of the application. MATERIALS AND METHODS One hundred and ninety (n = 190) pupils (ages 14-16 years) of senior high schools anonymously completed a questionnaire, with demographics and queries about lifestyle, alcohol, and tobacco use. For each class, the adolescents were randomly assigned to complete either the paper version of the questionnaire or the equivalent Web-based one, which used a customized platform developed for the purposes of this survey. RESULTS Females who filled out the Web SAQ required significantly less time and completed a significantly higher percentage of its items. Although the majority of questions on tobacco and alcohol did not differ significantly across the two administration modes, there were gender-related differences in some sensitive information. Male adolescents on the Web SAQ accounted higher per hour drink consumption (r = 0.27, p = 0.015) and more numerous episodes of inebriety (r = 0.26, p = 0.010), whereas females seemed to state a younger age of alcohol onset (r = 0.33, p = 0.002). Females were more likely to report being monthly smokers on the Web SAQ (odds ratio = 0.37). Adolescents felt significantly less observed and females referred being more independent while compiling the Web SAQ. CONCLUSIONS The findings of the study suggest that differences in reporting of some behavior of adolescents when using a Web SAQ do exist, despite the small-to-medium effect sizes. Exploiting the Web requires further investigation for extensive comprehension of the reasons for such differences.
Joint Indoor Localization and Radio Map Construction with Limited Deployment Load

One major bottleneck in the practical implementation of received signal strength (RSS) based indoor localization systems is the extensive deployment efforts required to construct the radio maps through fingerprinting. In this paper, we aim to design an indoor localization scheme that can be directly employed without building a full fingerprinted radio map of the indoor environment. By accumulating the information of localized RSSs, this scheme can also simultaneously construct the radio map with limited calibration. To design this scheme, we employ a source data set that possesses the same spatial correlation of the RSSs in the indoor environment of interest. The knowledge of this data set is then transferred to a limited number of calibration fingerprints and one or several RSS observations with unknown locations, in order to perform direct localization of these observations using manifold alignment. We test two different source data sets, namely a simulated radio propagation map and the environment's plan coordinates. For moving users, we exploit the correlation of their observations to improve their localization accuracy. The online testing in two indoor environments shows that the plan coordinates achieve better results than the simulated radio maps, and a negligible degradation with 70-85 percent reduction in the calibration load.
Role of µ, κ, and δ Opioid Receptors in Tibial Inhibition of Bladder Overactivity in Cats

In α-chloralose anesthetized cats, we examined the role of opioid receptor (OR) subtypes (µ, κ, and δ) in tibial nerve stimulation (TNS)-induced inhibition of bladder overactivity elicited by intravesical infusion of 0.25% acetic acid (AA). The sensitivity of TNS inhibition to cumulative i.v. doses of selective OR antagonists (cyprodime for µ, nor-binaltorphimine for κ, or naltrindole for δ ORs) was tested. Naloxone (1 mg/kg, i.v., an antagonist for µ, κ, and δ ORs) was administered at the end of each experiment. AA caused bladder overactivity and significantly (P < 0.01) reduced bladder capacity to 21.1% ± 2.6% of the saline control. TNS at 2 or 4 times threshold (T) intensity for inducing toe movement significantly (P < 0.01) restored bladder capacity to 52.9% ± 3.6% or 57.4% ± 4.6% of control, respectively. Cyprodime (0.3–1.0 mg/kg) completely removed TNS inhibition without changing AA control capacity. Nor-binaltorphimine (3–10 mg/kg) also completely reversed TNS inhibition and significantly (P < 0.05) increased AA control capacity. Naltrindole (1–10 mg/kg) reduced (P < 0.05) TNS inhibition but significantly (P < 0.05) increased AA control capacity. Naloxone (1 mg/kg) had no effect in cyprodime pretreated cats, but it reversed the nor-binaltorphimine–induced increase in bladder capacity and eliminated the TNS inhibition remaining in naltrindole pretreated cats. These results indicate a major role of µ and κ ORs in TNS inhibition, whereas δ ORs play a minor role. Meanwhile, κ and δ ORs also have an excitatory role in irritation-induced bladder overactivity.
EFFECT OF NUTRITION EDUCATION INTERVENTION ON THE MEDITERRANEAN DIET QUALITY OF CAMPUS CUPBOARD USERS

by Patricia Smith The rate of food insecurity within the collegiate population is four times greater than the national average. The purpose was to educate students on the Mediterranean Diet (MD) and teach them to use items from the Campus Cupboard (CC). Forty subjects were assigned to the control or experimental group. A 5-week nutrition education session was provided to the experimental group. MD adherence was measured using Mediterranean Diet Quality Index (KIDMED) and Mediterranean Diet Score Tool (MDST) . Subject’s height, weight, BMI, and BP were recorded at the baseline and at the end of seven weeks.A significant difference was observed in weight preto post-intervention for the experimental group. After the seven week intervention the KIDMED scores and MDST scores increased in intervention group by 1.55 and 0.77, respectively. Results suggest the intervention did not significantly change the dietary patterns, BMI, or BP.