Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The Virtual Brain Integrates Computational Modeling and Multimodal Neuroimaging

Brain function is thought to emerge from the interactions among neuronal populations. Apart from traditional efforts to reproduce brain dynamics from the micro- to macroscopic scales, complementary approaches develop phenomenological models of lower complexity. Such macroscopic models typically generate only a few selected-ideally functionally relevant-aspects of the brain dynamics. Importantly, they often allow an understanding of the underlying mechanisms beyond computational reproduction. Adding detail to these models will widen their ability to reproduce a broader range of dynamic features of the brain. For instance, such models allow for the exploration of consequences of focal and distributed pathological changes in the system, enabling us to identify and develop approaches to counteract those unfavorable processes. Toward this end, The Virtual Brain (TVB) ( www.thevirtualbrain.org ), a neuroinformatics platform with a brain simulator that incorporates a range of neuronal models and dynamics at its core, has been developed. This integrated framework allows the model-based simulation, analysis, and inference of neurophysiological mechanisms over several brain scales that underlie the generation of macroscopic neuroimaging signals. In this article, we describe how TVB works, and we present the first proof of concept.
Rayleigh-bénard convection

Abstract This paper presents a physicist's approach to Rayleigh-Benard convection widely illustrated with experimental results. The basis of the mechanism of the instability is simply presented with physical reasons for the existence of a critical threshold. A detailed examination of the spatial organization is made with discussion of ordered and disordered structures. Furthermore it is shown that the measurements of the local velocity give a good quantitative description of the convective state. A complete parallel between the Rayleigh-Benard convection near onset and a critical phenomenon is given in the framework of a mean field approach, including both spatial as well as temporal effects. Non-Boussinesq convection is presented as symmetry breaking, changing the second order transition into a (partially) first order transition. The last section is devoted to the ever present but still not completely understood question of the dynamics of the convective pattern; the importance of the existence and motio.
Dynamic Dependency Parsing

The inherent robustness of a system might be an important prerequisite for an incremental parsing model to the effect that grammaticality requirements on full sentences may be suspended or allowed to be violated transiently. However, we present additional means that allow the grammarian to model prefix-analyses by altering a grammar for non-incremental parsing in a controlled way. This is done by introducing underspecified dependency edges that model the expected relation between already seen and yet unseen words during parsing. Thus the basic framework of weighted constraint dependency parsing is extended by the notion of dynamic dependency parsing.
Functional significance and clinical phenotype of nontruncating mismatch repair variants of MLH1.

BACKGROUND & AIMS Germline mutations in mismatch repair genes are associated with hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer. A significant proportion of mutations are nontruncating and associated with a variability of clinical phenotype and microsatellite instability and with occasional presence of residual protein in tumor tissue that suggests impaired functional activity but not total lack of mismatch repair. To address pathogenic significance and mechanism of pathogenicity, we studied the functionality of 31 nontruncating MLH1 mutations found in clinically characterized colorectal cancer families and 3 other variations listed in a mutation database. METHODS Mutations constructed by site-directed mutagenesis were studied for protein expression/stability, subcellular localization, protein-protein interaction, and repair efficiency. The genetic and biochemical data were correlated with clinical data. Finally, comparative sequence analysis was performed to assess the value of sequence homology as a tool for predicting functional results. RESULTS Altogether, 22 mutations were pathogenic in more than one assay, 2 variants were impaired in one assay, and 10 variants acted like wild-type protein. Twenty of 34 mutations affected the quantity of MLH1 protein, whereas only 15 mainly amino-terminal mutations were defective in an in vitro repair assay. Comparative sequence analysis correctly predicted functional studies for 82% of variants. CONCLUSIONS Pathogenic nontruncating alterations in MLH1 may interfere with different biochemical mechanisms but generally more than one. The severe biochemical defects are mirrored by phenotypic characteristics such as early age at onset and high microsatellite instability, whereas variants with no or mild defects in functionality are associated with variable clinical phenotypes.
How Well Does the Traditional Sexual Script Explain Sexual Coercion

Summary Male use of sexual coercion against an unwilling female partner is all too prevalent in North American society. Several theorists, most notably feminist theorists, have hypothesized that socialization practices with respect to traditional gender roles and corresponding cultural attitudes, cause sexual coercion. Although not always labeled in this way, these theorists posit that the “traditional sexual script” supports and condones male sexual coercion against women and that this sexual script remains the normative dating script in our society. In this article, I first review the aspects of the traditional sexual script that have been theorized to promote and maintain sexual coercion. Then I review the results of a program of research 1 conducted in conjunction with colleagues and former Graduate Students, which tested the validity of this theory for understanding coercive sexual interactions between dating partners. I conclude that the traditional sexual script has proven useful as a framework for.
Design and performance testing of a 2.29-GB/s Rijndael processor

This contribution describes the design and performance testing of an Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) compliant encryption chip that delivers 2.29 GB/s of encryption throughput at 56 mW of power consumption in a 0.18-/spl mu/m CMOS standard cell technology. This integrated circuit implements the Rijndael encryption algorithm, at any combination of block lengths (128, 192, or 25 bits) and key lengths (128, 192, or 256 bits). We present the chip architecture and discuss the design optimizations. We also present measurement results that were obtained from a set of 14 test samples of this chip.
Fairness in Group Recommendations in the Health Domain

During the last decade, the number of users who look for health-related information has impressively increased. On the other hand, health professionals have less and less time to recommend useful sources of such information online to their patients. To this direction, we target at streamlining the process of providing useful online information to patients by their caregivers and improving as such the opportunities that patients have to inform themselves online about diseases and possible treatments. Using our system, relevant and high quality information is delivered to patients based on their profile, as represented in their personal healthcare record data, facilitating an easy interaction by minimizing the necessary manual effort. Specifically, in this paper, we propose a model for group recommendations following the collaborative filtering approach. Since in collaborative filtering is crucial to identify the correct set of similar users for a user in question, in addition to the traditional ratings, we pay particular attention on how to exploit healthrelated information for computing similarities between users. Our special focus is on providing valuable suggestions to a caregiver who is responsible for a group of users. We interpret valuable suggestions as suggestions that are both highly related and fair to the users of the group. In this line, we propose an algorithm for identifying the top-z most valuable recommendations, and present its implementation in MapReduce.
Distributed Optimal Control for Stability Enhancement of Microgrids With Multiple Distributed Generators

The distributed secondary control in a microgrid can be used for complementing the function of the primary droop-based control. However, its dynamic performance may be undesirable and furthermore it may introduce new less-damped modes to the system leading to oscillatory responses. Unfortunately, mechanism analysis of the undesirable dynamic performance and the possible oscillations, and more importantly, stabilization of the microgrid with the distributed secondary control have not been reported. To fill this gap, this paper first develops a unified small-signal dynamic model of the microgrid. Based on the developed model, a small-signal stability analysis is utilized to perform the aforementioned mechanism analysis. A distributed optimal controller is thereafter proposed to enhance the system stability and improve the system dynamic performance. The distributed optimal controller can coordinate multiple distributed generation units in the microgrid and exhibits robust performance under a wide range of operating conditions. Finally, theoretical analysis and time-domain simulation results on a benchmark microgrid system are provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed methods.
Focus group : a strategic guide to organizing, conducting and analyzing the focus group interview

The "Focus Group" provides a complete and clear framework for staging effective interview sessions, accurately interpreting their results and using them in successful marketing strategies. This book contains topics that include: the "second coming" of focus groups in marketing and market research; ethics in using focus groups; effective use of focus groups; conflict resolution in focus groups; and using focus group resources.
Aesthetic judgments in folksonomies as a criteria for organising knowledge

One of the most central challenges of knowledge organisation research and practice is the question of organising principles. Bliss proposed a consensus of experts as a criteria for knowledge organisation. Thereafter the complexity and ambiguity of criteria has become a subject of discussion, especially influenced by relativist philosophical theories. Hulme introduced already in 1911-1912 the notion of (literary) warrant to denote the (literary) criteria of organising knowledge. Hjorland has written about the limits of consensus and proposed (together with Albrechtsen) domain analysis as an approach for reaching pragmatic criteria. Even though the problems have been acknowledged, in practice, the veritable criteria are articulated only seldom. Feinberg [4] calls for a more explicit argumentation of criteria from the part of the designers of knowledge organisation systems, a view with which Hjorland concurs. The significance of the challenge is underlined by Gnoli who lists the problems related to ’viewpoint warrant’ (viewpoint as a criteria for organising knowledge) as a central challenge of future knowledge organisation research.The present study refers to aesthetics as exemplary of the problems related to viewpoints and knowledge organisation. Aesthetic judgments are essentially cultural and subjective, but same time people tend to expect others to concur with their own judgments [12]. In order to improve the explicity of the warranting factors (as [4] suggests) of aesthetic organisation of knowledge, the present study explores the possibilities to ground organisatory criteria on an empirical investigation of explicit aesthetic judgments of a group of people. This study discusses folksonomies as a source of aesthetic judgments and those judgments as a warrant for controlled organisation of knowledge. The question is whether folksonomies can be used as a source for aesthetic statements which can be used to warrant organisation of knowledge. Photosharing service Flickr is used as an example.
Optimal exploitation of the Constant Power Region of IPM Drives Based on Field Oriented Control

Interior Permanent Magnet (IPM) drives are particularly adapted to flux-weakening, then to constant power operation over a wide speed range. Most of the Space-Vector strategies for IPM are based on current vector control. Flux-weakening is obtained by setting the current reference according to the magnetic model of the motor. If the dc-link is not constant, an additional voltage loop is needed. By controlling the flux vector instead of the current vector, in the stator-field-oriented frame, the motor voltage is easily dominated. A control algorithm, based on stator field-orientation, is proposed and tested on an IPM drive designed for light EV traction. The full exploitation of the motor torque is obtained over a wide speed range at given inverter kVA. The case of spread on the dc-link voltage is also analyzed. Well matched discrete-time simulation and experimental results are reported.
NormFace: L2 Hypersphere Embedding for Face Verification

Thanks to the recent developments of Convolutional Neural Networks, the performance of face verification methods has increased rapidly. In a typical face verification method, feature normalization is a critical step for boosting performance. This motivates us to introduce and study the effect of normalization during training. But we find this is non-trivial, despite normalization being differentiable. We identify and study four issues related to normalization through mathematical analysis, which yields understanding and helps with parameter settings. Based on this analysis we propose two strategies for training using normalized features. The first is a modification of softmax loss, which optimizes cosine similarity instead of inner-product. The second is a reformulation of metric learning by introducing an agent vector for each class. We show that both strategies, and small variants, consistently improve performance by between 0.2% to 0.4% on the LFW dataset based on two models. This is significant because the performance of the two models on LFW dataset is close to saturation at over 98%.
Distributed scheduling algorithms to improve the performance of parallel data transfers

The cost of data transfers, and in particular of I/O operations, is a growing problem in parallel computing. A promising approach to alleviating this bottleneck is to schedule parallel I/O operations explicitly. We develop a class of decentralized algorithms for scheduling parallel I/O operations, where the objective is to reduce the time required to complete a given set of transfers. These algorithms, based on edge-coloring and matching of bipartite graphs, rely upon simple heuristics to obtain shorter schedules. We present simulation results indicating that the best of our algorithms can produce schedules whose length is within 2--20% of the optimal schedule, a substantial improvement on previous decentralized algorithms. We discuss theoretical and experimental work in progress and possible extensions.
C-terminal Phosphorylation of LKB1 Is Not Required for Regulation of AMP-activated Protein Kinase, BRSK1, BRSK2, or Cell Cycle Arrest*

The tumor suppressor protein kinase LKB1 exerts its effects by phosphorylating and activating AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) and members of the AMPK-related kinase family, such as the brain-specific kinases BRSK1/BRSK2 (SAD-B/SAD-A). LKB1 contains a conserved serine residue near the C terminus (Ser-431 in mouse LKB1) that is phosphorylated by cyclic AMP-dependent protein kinase and p90-RSK. Although some studies suggest that LKB1 is constitutively active and is not rate-limiting for activation of AMPK, others have suggested that phosphorylation of Ser-431 is necessary to allow LKB1 to phosphorylate and activate AMPK and other downstream kinases. Prompted by our discovery of an LKB1 splice variant (LKB1S) that lacks Ser-431, we have reinvestigated this question. In HeLa cells (which lack endogenous LKB1), co-expression with STRADα and MO25α of wild type LKB1, the S431A or S431E mutants of LKB1, or LKB1S gave equal levels of activation of endogenous AMPK. Similarly, recombinant STRADα·MO25α complexes containing these LKB1 variants were equally effective at phosphorylating and activating AMPK, BRSK1, and BRSK2 in cell-free assays. Finally, all four LKB1 variants and a truncated LKB1 lacking the C-terminal region altogether were equally effective at causing cell cycle arrest when co-expressed with STRADα and MO25α in the G361 melanoma cell line. Our results do not support the idea that phosphorylation of Ser-431 increases the ability of LKB1 to phosphorylate downstream targets.
Connecting Girls and Science: Constructivism, Feminism, and Science Education Reform. Ways of Knowing in Science and Mathematics Series.

"Connecting Girls and Science" shows readers the powerful results that can occur in secondary science classrooms when students' interest and curiosity about science are brought firmly to the center of the curriculum. In particular, author Elaine Howes demonstrates how girls can become more interested in learning science when such topics as pregnancy, childbirth, or sexism in science are included in classroom discussions. By listening to the concerns and interests of the students and using their input to help fashion a responsive science curriculum, Howes shows us how to reconnect students to science. Furthermore, if topics of particular interest to female students are stressed, Howes believes that it is not only possible to inspire girls to love science, but also to eradicate traditional gender divisions that may keep female students from pursuing careers in science.
Opiate withdrawal and the rat locus coeruleus: behavioral, electrophysiological, and biochemical correlates

We have compared the time course of the behavioral manifestations of opiate withdrawal to the in vivo activity of locus coeruleus (LC) neurons and to increases in the levels of G-proteins, adenylate cyclase, and cAMP-dependent protein kinase known to occur in the LC in opiate-dependent animals. Rats were given morphine by daily subcutaneous implantation of morphine pellets for 5 d. On the sixth day, morphine withdrawal was induced by subcutaneous administration of naltrexone, an opiate receptor antagonist, with additional doses given 6 and 24 hr later, conditions that resulted in sustained, maximal levels of withdrawal over the duration of the experiment. We found a striking parallel between the time courses of the behavioral signs and the increased activity of LC neurons during withdrawal, both of which appeared to follow 2 phases. There was an early, rapid phase, during which withdrawal signs and increased LC activity became most pronounced within 15–30 min after naltrexone administration, and then recovered rapidly by over 50% within 4 hr of withdrawal. Subsequently, there was a slower phase, during which the persisting withdrawal signs and elevated LC activity remained roughly constant from 4 to 24 hr and did not recover completely until after 72 hr of continuous withdrawal. Adenylate cyclase and cAMP-dependent protein kinase activities in isolated LC subcellular fractions, both elevated in dependent animals, recovered to control levels after 6 hr of withdrawal, in parallel with the rapid phase of withdrawal. Levels of G1 and Go, also elevated in dependent animals, remained only slightly elevated at 6 hr and returned to normal by 24 hr. Taken together, these data suggest that increased neuronal activity in the LC is associated temporally with the behavioral morphine withdrawal syndrome and that increased levels of G- proteins and an up-regulated cAMP system may contribute to the early withdrawal activation of these neurons.
Inactivation Gating of Kv4 Potassium Channels

Kv4 channels represent the main class of brain A-type K+ channels that operate in the subthreshold range of membrane potentials (Serodio, P., E. Vega-Saenz de Miera, and B. Rudy. 1996. J. Neurophysiol. 75:2174– 2179), and their function depends critically on inactivation gating. A previous study suggested that the cytoplasmic NH2- and COOH-terminal domains of Kv4.1 channels act in concert to determine the fast phase of the complex time course of macroscopic inactivation (Jerng, H.H., and M. Covarrubias. 1997. Biophys. J. 72:163–174). To investigate the structural basis of slow inactivation gating of these channels, we examined internal residues that may affect the mutually exclusive relationship between inactivation and closed-state blockade by 4-aminopyridine (4-AP) (Campbell, D.L., Y. Qu, R.L. Rasmussen, and H.C. Strauss. 1993. J. Gen. Physiol. 101:603–626; Shieh, C.-C., and G.E. Kirsch. 1994. Biophys. J. 67:2316–2325). A double mutation V[404,406]I in the distal section of the S6 region of the protein drastically slowed channel inactivation and deactivation, and significantly reduced the blockade by 4-AP. In addition, recovery from inactivation was slightly faster, but the pore properties were not significantly affected. Consistent with a more stable open state and disrupted closed state inactivation, V[404,406]I also caused hyperpolarizing and depolarizing shifts of the peak conductance–voltage curve (∼5 mV) and the prepulse inactivation curve (>10 mV), respectively. By contrast, the analogous mutations (V[556,558]I) in a K+ channel that undergoes N- and C-type inactivation (Kv1.4) did not affect macroscopic inactivation but dramatically slowed deactivation and recovery from inactivation, and eliminated open-channel blockade by 4-AP. Mutation of a Kv4-specifc residue in the S4–S5 loop (C322S) of Kv4.1 also altered gating and 4-AP sensitivity in a manner that closely resembles the effects of V[404,406]I. However, this mutant did not exhibit disrupted closed state inactivation. A kinetic model that assumes coupling between channel closing and inactivation at depolarized membrane potentials accounts for the results. We propose that components of the pore's internal vestibule control both closing and inactivation in Kv4 K+ channels.
A Functional Combinatorial Central Limit Theorem

The paper establishes a functional version of the Hoeffding combinatorial central limit theorem. First, a pre-limiting Gaussian process approximation is defined, and is shown to be at a distance of the order of the Lyapounov ratio from the original random process. Distance is measured by comparison of expectations of smooth functionals of the processes, and the argument is by way of Stein's method. The pre-limiting process is then shown, under weak conditions, to converge to a Gaussian limit process. The theorem is used to describe the shape of random permutation tableaux.
A Study on the Intention to Adopt Third Generation (3G) Wireless Service on a Small Community with Unique Culture: The Use of Hofstede Cultural Dimensions in Predicting the Interaction between Culture and the Technology Acceptance Model on Guam

Most of the prior studies conducted in mobile commerce and wireless service adoption are using the technology acceptance model as their theoretical foundation and are conducted in metropolis. To gain a better understanding on whether the findings of these adoption studies can be generalized in other regions, and in particular, those communities with a small population and have a unique cultural background, the author revisits the third generation 3G wireless adoption service issue using data collected from Guam. The result shows that the people on Guam have a different 3G wireless service adoption behavior compared with the people from Hong Kong. It is noted that perceived enjoyment plays a mediator role between the impacts of perceived service availability and social influence on the adoption intention. This result helps researchers and practitioners to gain insight for conducting adoption study for communities with a different cultural background, where their information and communication technology infrastructures are rapidly developing.