Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Sexually dimorphic activation of dopaminergic areas depends on affiliation during courtship and pair formation

For many species, dyadic interaction during courtship and pair bonding engage intense emotional states that control approach or avoidance behavior. Previous studies have shown that one component of a common social brain network (SBN), dopaminergic areas, are highly engaged during male songbird courtship of females. We tested whether the level of activity in dopaminergic systems of both females and males during courtship is related to their level of affiliation. In order to objectively quantify affiliative behaviors, we developed a system for tracking the position of both birds during free interaction sessions. During a third successive daily interaction session, there was a range of levels of affiliation among bird pairs, as quantified by several position and movement parameters. Because both positive and negative social interactions were present, we chose to characterize affiliation strength by pair valence. As a potential neural system involved in regulating pair valence, the level of activity of the dopaminergic group A11 (within the central gray) was selectively reduced in females of positive valence pairs. Further, activation of non-dopaminergic neurons in VTA was negatively related to valence, with this relationship strongest in ventral VTA of females. Together, these results suggest that inhibition of fear or avoidance networks may be associated with development of close affiliation, and highlight the importance of negative as well as positive emotional states in the process of courtship, and in development of long-lasting social bonds.
Stability of switched and hybrid systems

This paper outlines some preliminary work on the stability analysis of switched and hybrid systems. The hybrid systems considered are those that combine continuous dynamics, represented by differential or difference equations, with finite dynamics usually thought of as being a finite automaton. Here, we concentrate on the continuous dynamics and model the finite dynamics as switching among finitely many continuous systems. We introduce multiple Lyapunov functions as a tool for analyzing Lyapunov stability of such "switched systems". We use iterated function systems theory as a tool for Lagrange stability. We also discuss the case where the switched systems are indexed by an arbitrary compact set. <<ETX>>
Changes in leaf trichomes and epicuticular flavonoids during leaf development in three birch taxa.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Changes in number of trichomes and in composition and concentrations of their exudates throughout leaf development may have important consequences for plant adaptation to abiotic and biotic factors. In the present study, seasonal changes in leaf trichomes and epicuticular flavonoid aglycones in three Finnish birch taxa (Betula pendula, B. pubescens ssp. pubescens, and B. pubescens ssp. czerepanovii) were followed. METHODS Trichome number and ultrastructure were studied by means of light, scanning and transmission electron microscopy, while flavonoid aglycones in ethanolic leaf surface extracts were analysed by high-pressure liquid chromatography. KEY RESULTS Density of both glandular and non-glandular trichomes decreased drastically with leaf expansion while the total number of trichomes per leaf remained constant, indicating that the final number of trichomes is established early in leaf development. Cells of glandular trichomes differentiate before those of the epidermis and produce secreted material only during the relatively short period (around 1-2 weeks) of leaf unfolding and expansion. In fully expanded leaves, glandular trichomes appeared to be at the post-secretory phase and function mainly as storage organs; they contained lipid droplets and osmiophilic material (probably phenolics). Concentrations (mg g(-1) d. wt) of surface flavonoids decreased with leaf age in all taxa. However, the changes in total amount ( microg per leaf) of flavonoids during leaf development were taxon-specific: no changes in B. pubescens ssp. czerepanovii, increase in B. pendula and in B. pubescens ssp. pubescens followed by the decline in the latter taxon. Concentrations of most of the individual leaf surface flavonoids correlated positively with the density of glandular trichomes within species, suggesting the participation of glandular trichomes in production of surface flavonoids. CONCLUSIONS Rapid decline in the density of leaf trichomes and in the concentrations of flavonoid aglycones with leaf age suggests that the functional role of trichomes is likely to be most important at the early stages of birch leaf development.
Segment-Phrase Table for Semantic Segmentation, Visual Entailment and Paraphrasing

We introduce Segment-Phrase Table (SPT), a large collection of bijective associations between textual phrases and their corresponding segmentations. Leveraging recent progress in object recognition and natural language semantics, we show how we can successfully build a high-quality segment-phrase table using minimal human supervision. More importantly, we demonstrate the unique value unleashed by this rich bimodal resource, for both vision as well as natural language understanding. First, we show that fine-grained textual labels facilitate contextual reasoning that helps in satisfying semantic constraints across image segments. This feature enables us to achieve state-of-the-art segmentation results on benchmark datasets. Next, we show that the association of high-quality segmentations to textual phrases aids in richer semantic understanding and reasoning of these textual phrases. Leveraging this feature, we motivate the problem of visual entailment and visual paraphrasing, and demonstrate its utility on a large dataset.
ITI-Signals and Prelimbic Cortex Facilitate Avoidance Acquisition and Reduce Avoidance Latencies, Respectively, in Male WKY Rats

As a model of anxiety disorder vulnerability, male Wistar-Kyoto (WKY) rats acquire lever-press avoidance behavior more readily than outbred Sprague-Dawley rats, and their acquisition is enhanced by the presence of a discrete signal presented during the inter-trial intervals (ITIs), suggesting that it is perceived as a safety signal. A series of experiments were conducted to determine if this is the case. Additional experiments investigated if the avoidance facilitation relies upon processing through medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). The results suggest that the ITI-signal facilitates acquisition during the early stages of the avoidance acquisition process, when the rats are initially acquiring escape behavior and then transitioning to avoidance behavior. Post-avoidance introduction of the visual ITI-signal into other associative learning tasks failed to confirm that the visual stimulus had acquired the properties of a conditioned inhibitor. Shortening the signal from the entirety of the 3 min ITI to only the first 5 s of the 3 min ITI slowed acquisition during the first four sessions, suggesting the flashing light (FL) is not functioning as a feedback signal. The prelimbic (PL) cortex showed greater activation during the period of training when the transition from escape responding to avoidance responding occurs. Only combined PL + infralimbic cortex lesions modestly slowed avoidance acquisition, but PL-cortex lesions slowed avoidance response latencies. Thus, the FL ITI-signal is not likely perceived as a safety signal nor is it serving as a feedback signal. The functional role of the PL-cortex appears to be to increase the drive toward responding to the threat of the warning signal. Hence, avoidance susceptibility displayed by male WKY rats may be driven, in part, both by external stimuli (ITI signal) as well as by enhanced threat recognition to the warning signal via the PL cortex.
Automated termination proofs for logic programs by term rewriting

There are two kinds of approaches for termination analysis of logic programs: “transformational” and “direct” ones. Direct approaches prove termination directly on the basis of the logic program. Transformational approaches transform a logic program into a Term Rewrite System (TRS) and then analyze termination of the resulting TRS instead. Thus, transformational approaches make all methods previously developed for TRSs available for logic programs as well. However, the applicability of most existing transformations is quite restricted, as they can only be used for certain subclasses of logic programs. (Most of them are restricted to well-moded programs.) In this article we improve these transformations such that they become applicable for any definite logic program. To simulate the behavior of logic programs by TRSs, we slightly modify the notion of rewriting by permitting infinite terms. We show that our transformation results in TRSs which are indeed suitable for automated termination analysis. In contrast to most other methods for termination of logic programs, our technique is also sound for logic programming without occur check, which is typically used in practice. We implemented our approach in the termination prover AProVE and successfully evaluated it on a large collection of examples.
Treatment outcome of tacrine therapy depends on apolipoprotein genotype and gender of the subjects with Alzheimer's disease

We studied the effects of apolipoprotein E (APOE) genotype and gender on clinical response to tacrine in patients with mild to moderate Alzheimer's disease (AD). We analyzed data from a previously reported 30-week, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of tacrine, in which APOE genotypes were determined from previously collected plasma samples. Patients were assigned to placebo or tacrine with daily dosages of 80, 120, or 160 mg/day. The outcome measures were Alzheimer's Disease Assessment Scale-Cognitive Component, Clinician Interview Based Impression, Mini-Mental State Examination, and the Caregiver-rated Clinical Global Impression of Change. An intent-to-treat (ITT) analysis of patients with available genotypes (n = 528) did not reveal response differences by genotype, although the effect size was twice as large in the ϵ2-3 as theϵ4 group (-2.62 versus -1.25). The association of treatment effect with APOE genotype varied significantly according to gender (p< 0.002 for ITT; p < 0.05 for evaluables). The treatment effect was larger in the ϵ2-3 compared with ϵ4 women (ITT, 4.24 points, p = 0.03; evaluable, 7.20 points, p = 0.01). In contrast, treatment effect size was not different between ϵ2-3 andϵ4 of men with AD. APOE genotype and gender may predict response to tacrine in patients with AD.
Current concepts in the management of Helicobacter pylori infection—The Maastricht 2‐2000 Consensus Report

Significant progress and new insights have been gained in the 4 years since the first Maastricht Consensus Report, necessitating an update of the original guidelines. To achieve this, the European Helicobacter Pylori Study Group organized a meeting of specialists and experts from around the world, representatives from National Gastroenterology Societies and general practitioners from Europe to establish updated guidelines on the current management of Helicobacter pylori infection. The meeting took place on 21–22 September 2000.
Differences Between Lesbians and Heterosexual Women in Disordered Eating and Related Attitudes

ABSTRACT This study examined differences between lesbians and heterosexual women on disordered eating, awareness and internalization of cultural attitudes concerning thinness, and body esteem concerning weight, physical condition, and sexual attractiveness. In this community sample, lesbians exhibited higher levels of body esteem concerning sexual attractiveness and lower levels of internalization of cultural standards. No differences were found on awareness of cultural standards, disordered eating, or body esteem concerning either weight or physical condition. Implications are discussed.
On the Detection of Mixture Distributions with applications to the Most Biased Coin Problem

This paper studies the trade-off between two different kinds of pure exploration: breadth versus depth. The most biased coin problem asks how many total coin flips are required to identify a "heavy" coin from an infinite bag containing both "heavy" coins with mean $\theta_1 \in (0,1)$, and "light" coins with mean $\theta_0 \in (0,\theta_1)$, where heavy coins are drawn from the bag with probability $\alpha \in (0,1/2)$. The key difficulty of this problem lies in distinguishing whether the two kinds of coins have very similar means, or whether heavy coins are just extremely rare. This problem has applications in crowdsourcing, anomaly detection, and radio spectrum search. Chandrasekaran et. al. (2014) recently introduced a solution to this problem but it required perfect knowledge of $\theta_0,\theta_1,\alpha$. In contrast, we derive algorithms that are adaptive to partial or absent knowledge of the problem parameters. Moreover, our techniques generalize beyond coins to more general instances of infinitely many armed bandit problems. We also prove lower bounds that show our algorithm's upper bounds are tight up to $\log$ factors, and on the way characterize the sample complexity of differentiating between a single parametric distribution and a mixture of two such distributions. As a result, these bounds have surprising implications both for solutions to the most biased coin problem and for anomaly detection when only partial information about the parameters is known.
Does High C-reactive Protein Concentration Increase Atherosclerosis? The Whitehall II Study

Background C-reactive protein (CRP), a marker of systemic inflammation, is associated with risk of coronary events and sub-clinical measures of atherosclerosis. Evidence in support of this link being causal would include an association robust to adjustments for confounders (multivariable standard regression analysis) and the association of CRP gene polymorphisms with atherosclerosis (Mendelian randomization analysis). Methodology/Principal Findings We genotyped 3 tag single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) [+1444T>C (rs1130864); +2303G>A (rs1205) and +4899T>G (rs 3093077)] in the CRP gene and assessed CRP and carotid intima-media thickness (CIMT), a structural marker of atherosclerosis, in 4941 men and women aged 50–74 (mean 61) years (the Whitehall II Study). The 4 major haplotypes from the SNPs were consistently associated with CRP level, but not with other risk factors that might confound the association between CRP and CIMT. CRP, assessed both at mean age 49 and at mean age 61, was associated both with CIMT in age and sex adjusted standard regression analyses and with potential confounding factors. However, the association of CRP with CIMT attenuated to the null with adjustment for confounding factors in both prospective and cross-sectional analyses. When examined using genetic variants as the instrument for serum CRP, there was no inferred association between CRP and CIMT. Conclusions/Significance Both multivariable standard regression analysis and Mendelian randomization analysis suggest that the association of CRP with carotid atheroma indexed by CIMT may not be causal.
Novel Classification System for Classifying Cognitive Workload Levels Under Vague Visual Stimulation

This paper presents a novel method for classifying four different levels of cognitive workload. The workload levels are generated using visual stimuli degradation. Electroencephalogram (EEG) signals recorded from 16 subjects were used for workload classification. The proposed solution includes preprocessing of EEG signals and feature extraction based on statistical features. This is followed by variable selection using stepwise regression and multiclass linear classification. The presented method achieved an average classification accuracy of 93.4%. The effect of EEG channel selection on the classification accuracy is also investigated. In comparison with the existing work, we show that the proposed solution is more accurate and computationally less demanding.
Prepregnancy body mass and weight gain during pregnancy in India and sub-Saharan Africa

Significance Because India—home to one fifth of all births—has no monitoring system for maternal health, basic facts about maternal nutrition are unknown. Using statistically adjusted nationally representative survey data, this paper presents, to my knowledge, the first estimates of prepregnancy body mass and weight gain during pregnancy in India and compares them with sub-Saharan Africa: 42.2% of Indian women are underweight when they begin pregnancy compared with 16.5% of African women. In both regions, women gain little weight during pregnancy, but because of prepregnancy deficits, Indian women end pregnancy weighing less than African women do at the beginning. Deficits in maternal nutrition could help explain the Asian enigma, the puzzle of why Indian children are much smaller than their relative wealth predicts. Despite being wealthier, Indian children are significantly shorter and smaller than African children. These differences begin very early in life, suggesting that they may in part reflect differences in maternal health. By applying reweighting estimation strategies to the Demographic and Health Surveys, this paper reports, to my knowledge, the first representative estimates of prepregnancy body mass index and weight gain during pregnancy for India and sub-Saharan Africa. I find that 42.2% of prepregnant women in India are underweight compared with 16.5% of prepregnant women in sub-Saharan Africa. Levels of prepregnancy underweight for India are almost seven percentage points higher than the average fraction underweight among women 15–49 y old. This difference in part reflects a previously unquantified relationship among age, fertility, and underweight; childbearing is concentrated in the narrow age range in which Indian women are most likely to be underweight. Further, because weight gain during pregnancy is low, averaging about 7 kg for a full-term pregnancy in both regions, the average woman in India ends pregnancy weighing less than the average woman in sub-Saharan Africa begins pregnancy. Poor maternal health among Indian women is of global significance because India is home to one fifth of the world’s births.
A Differentiation Account of Recognition Memory: Evidence from fMRI

Differentiation models of recognition memory predict a strength-based mirror effect in the distributions of subjective memory strength. Subjective memory strength should increase for targets and simultaneously decrease for foils following a strongly encoded list compared with a weakly encoded list. An alternative explanation for the strength-based mirror effect is that participants adopt a stricter criterion following a strong list than a weak list. Behavioral experiments support the differentiation account. The purpose of this study was to identify the neural bases for these differences. Encoding strength was manipulated (strong, weak) in a rapid event-related fMRI paradigm. To investigate the effect of retrieval context on foils, foils were presented in test blocks containing strong or weak targets. Imaging analyses identified regions in which activity increased faster for foils tested after a strong list than a weak list. The results are interpreted in support of a differentiation account of memory and are suggestive that the angular gyrus plays a role in evaluating evidence related to the memory decision, even for new items.
Practice of Epidemiology Marginal Structural Cox Models for Estimating the Association Between β-Interferon Exposure and Disease Progression in a Multiple Sclerosis Cohort

Longitudinal observational data are required to assess the association between exposure to β-interferon medications and disease progression among relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (MS) patients in the “real-world” clinical practice setting. Marginal structural Coxmodels (MSCMs) can provide distinct advantages over traditional approaches by allowing adjustment for time-varying confounders such as MS relapses, as well as baseline characteristics, through the use of inverse probability weighting.We assessed the suitability of MSCMs to analyze data from a large cohort of 1,697 relapsing-remitting MS patients in British Columbia, Canada (1995–2008). In the context of this observational study, which spanned more than a decade and involved patients with a chronic yet fluctuating disease, the recently proposed “normalized stabilized” weights were found to be the most appropriate choice of weights. Using this model, no association between β-interferon exposure and the hazard of disability progression was found (hazard ratio = 1.36, 95% confidence interval: 0.95, 1.94). For sensitivity analyses, truncated normalized unstabilized weights were used in additional MSCMs and to construct inverse probability weight-adjusted survival curves; the findings did not change. Additionally, qualitatively similar conclusions from approximation approaches to the weighted Cox model (i.e., MSCM) extend confidence in the findings.
Revisiting Asset Pricing Puzzles in an Exchange Economy

We show that several well-known asset pricing puzzles are largely mitigated if we endow the representative agent with an arbitrarily small minimum consumption level. This allows us to solve the model for parameter values where the standard "Lucas tree" model is not defined. For these parameters, disasters become more important, and the market risk premium therefore higher, even though consumption is less risky. Our model yields reasonable risk premia, Sharpe ratios, and discount rates; excess price volatility; and a high market price-dividend ratio. We derive closed-form solutions for all variables of interest. The Author 2011. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for Financial Studies. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org. , Oxford University Press.
Chili (Capsicum annuum L.) in southern Benin: production constraints, varietal diversity, preference criteria and participatory evaluation

Chili (Capsicum annuum L.) is an economically important spice widely cultivated in Benin. In order to document its diversity and identify the best performing varieties which could meet producers’ and consumers’ needs, surveys were conducted in thirty-one villages randomly selected in southern Benin. Ten production constraints of agronomic nature were identified among which the most important were attacks of insects on fruits, viral infection, early fall of the plant’s organs (leaves, flowers, fruits) and anthracnose. The number of varieties identified varies from 3 to 8 (5 on average) per village and from 1 to 7 (2 on average) per household. The distribution and extent analysis revealed that out of 5 varieties on average cultivated per village, only two are cultivated by many households and on large areas. The average rate of varietal diversity loss is 23.53% per village. Farmers’ varietal preference criteria (17 in total) identified and prioritized were essentially agronomical characters (86.89% of the responses) and the most important were related to the post-harvest storage aptitude of the fruits, the productivity and the seed germination capacity. A participatory evaluation of the varieties has led to identification of the best performing ones per trait of economic importance. Throughout surveyed sites, 197 accessions of farmer-named landraces were collected and their agromorphological characterisation is recommended for clarification of synonymies and breeding purposes.