Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Identifying Object Categories from Event-Related EEG: Toward Decoding of Conceptual Representations

Multivariate pattern analysis is a technique that allows the decoding of conceptual information such as the semantic category of a perceived object from neuroimaging data. Impressive single-trial classification results have been reported in studies that used fMRI. Here, we investigate the possibility to identify conceptual representations from event-related EEG based on the presentation of an object in different modalities: its spoken name, its visual representation and its written name. We used Bayesian logistic regression with a multivariate Laplace prior for classification. Marked differences in classification performance were observed for the tested modalities. Highest accuracies (89% correctly classified trials) were attained when classifying object drawings. In auditory and orthographical modalities, results were lower though still significant for some subjects. The employed classification method allowed for a precise temporal localization of the features that contributed to the performance of the classifier for three modalities. These findings could help to further understand the mechanisms underlying conceptual representations. The study also provides a first step towards the use of concept decoding in the context of real-time brain-computer interface applications.
On Closed Nesting in Distributed Transactional Memory

Distributed Software Transactional Memory (D-STM) is a recent but promising model for programming distributed systems. It aims to present programmers with a simple to use abstraction (trans-actions), while maintaining performance and scalability similar to distributed ﬁne-grained locks. Any complications usually associated with such locks (i.e. distributed deadlock) are avoided. Building upon the previously proposed Transactional Forwarding Algorithm (TFA), we add support for closed nested transactions. We further discuss the performance implications of such nesting, and identify the cases where using nesting is warranted and the relevant parameters for such a decision. To the best of our knowledge, our work contributes the ﬁrst ever implementation of a D-STM system with support for closed nested transactions and partial aborts.
Cochlear efferent innervation and function

Purpose of reviewThis review covers topics relevant to olivocochlear-efferent anatomy and function for which there are new findings in papers from 2009 to early 2010. Recent findingsWork within the review period has increased our understanding of medial olivocochlear (MOC) mechanisms in outer hair cells, MOC-reflex tuning, MOC effects on distortion product otoacoustic emissions, the time course of MOC effects, MOC effects in psychophysical tests and on understanding speech, MOC effects in attention and learning, and lateral efferent function in binaural hearing. In addition, there are new insights into efferent molecular mechanisms and their effect on cochlear development. SummaryTechniques for measuring efferent effects using otoacoustic emissions are now well developed and have promise in clinical applications ranging from predicting which patients are susceptible to acoustic trauma to characterizing relationships between efferent activation and learning disabilities. To realize this promise, studies are needed in which these techniques are applied with high standards.
Frontal Cortical Asymmetry May Partially Mediate the Influence of Social Power on Anger Expression

When irritated by other people, powerful people usually tend to express their anger explicitly and directly, whereas people in less powerful positions are more likely not to show their feelings freely. The neural mechanism behind power and its influence on expression tendency has been scarcely explored. This study recorded frontal EEG activity at rest and frontal EEG activation while participants were engaged in a writing task describing an anger-eliciting event, in which they were irritated by people with higher or lower social power. Participants’ anger levels and expression inclination levels were self-reported on nine-point visual analog Likert scales, and also rated by independent raters based on the essays they had written. The results showed that high social power was indeed associated with greater anger expression tendency and greater left frontal activation than low social power. This is in line with the approach-inhibition theory of power. The mid-frontal asymmetric activation served as a partial mediator between social power and expression inclination. This effect may relate to the functions of the prefrontal cortex, which is in charge of information integration and evaluation and the control of motivation direction, as reported by previous studies.
Energy Efficient Computing Using Static-Dynamic Co-optimizations

Energy consumption is a primary concern of current day computing systems -- from handheld battery operated systems to servers in data centers connected to wall power. Research in academia as well as industry has focused on a variety of techniques for minimizing energy consumption while maintaining a good level of performance. The most effective techniques combine the best of static (or offline) and dynamic (or online/runtime) optimizations to obtain the best solution. Static optimizations can be more complex and can afford to take a global view of the application/computation being executed on the system -- however, such optimizations have to be conservative in nature because they cannot anticipate all the different scenarios that can appear at runtime. Dynamic optimizations have more information aboutthe application/computation for the given input -- however, since such optimizations have to have low overhead, they can afford to have only a local view of the computation/ application and the complexity of the optimization has to be relatively low. An additional direction that needs to be considered is to determine whether dynamic optimizationsshould be implemented in software or hardware. In this thesis, I present a study of three aspects of energy efficient computing that use a combination of static and dynamic optimizations to minimize energy consumption. The first aspect is to consider variability in the execution time of applications during scheduling for dynamic voltage frequency scaling (DVFS) capable systems to minimize energy consumption and yet maintain a desired level of performance. The main idea is to construct a schedule table offline and perform a simple table look-up at runtime. The second aspect is to consider application-level reliability for applications that can tolerate certain error in the outputs. I present the study of a profile-guided offline compilation strategy to identify critical instructions and a monitoring technique in software to handle corner cases at runtime. Finally, the third aspect of energy efficient computing I investigate is flexibility -- customizing the instruction sets of processors to improve energy efficiency. I study the benefits of compiler directedoptimizations for generating custom instructions which are executed within a modified processor pipeline and an architecture mechanism for detecting corner cases and to roll-back to a safe state. Additionally, I investigate the benefits of customizing the instruction set dynamically in hardware.
Surface Resistance of Dispersion Ceramics against Third Body Abrasion

Wear of the articulation partners in artificial joints for hip or knee is known to influence the in vivo survival rate of the implants. Wear amount can be strongly increased if third body wear occurs in the joint gap. Alumina ceramic is noted for a good wear resistance even under these worst case conditions. We tested the wear behaviour of the new dispersion ceramics ZTA (Zirconia Toughened Alumina) and ATZ (Alumina Toughened Zirconia) in comparison to alumina for the couplings ceramic on PE and ceramic on ceramic in a hip joint simulator in presence of third body particles.
Nrl-knockout mice deficient in Rpe65 fail to synthesize 11-cis retinal and cone outer segments.

PURPOSE To define rod and cone function further in terms of visual cycle mechanism, the retinal phenotype resulting from Rpe65 (retinoid isomerase I) deficiency in Nrl(-)(/)(-) mice having a single class of photoreceptors resembling wild-type cones was characterized and outcomes of retinoid supplementation evaluated. METHODS Rpe65(-)(/)(-)/Nrl(-)(/)(-) mice were generated by breeding Rpe65(-)(/)(-) and Nrl(-)(/)(-) strains. Retinal histology, protein expression, retinoid content, and electroretinographic (ERG) responses were evaluated before and after treatment with 11-cis retinal by intraperitoneal injection. Results Retinas of young Rpe65(-)(/-)/Nrl(-)(/-) mice exhibited normal lamination, but lacked intact photoreceptor outer segments at all ages examined. Rpe65, Nrl, and rhodopsin were not detected, and S-opsin and M/L-opsin levels were reduced. Retinyl esters were the only retinoids present. In contrast, Nrl(-)(/)(-) mice exhibited decreased levels of retinaldehydes and retinyl esters, and elevated levels of retinols. ERG responses were elicited from Rpe65(-)(/-)/Nrl(-)(/-) mice only at the two highest intensities over a 4-log-unit range. Significant retinal thinning and outer nuclear layer loss occurred in Rpe65(-)(/-)/Nrl(-)(/-) mice with aging. Administration of exogenous 11-cis retinal did not rescue retinal morphology or markedly improve ERG responses. CONCLUSIONS The findings provide clarification of reported cone loss of function in Rpe65(-)(/-)/Nrl(-)(/-) mice, now showing that chromophore absence results in destabilized cone outer segments and rapid retinal degeneration. The data support the view that rod-dominant retinas do not have a cone-specific mechanism for 11-cis retinal synthesis and have potential significance for therapeutic strategies for rescue of cone-rich retinal regions affected by disease in the aging human population.
Association of stress, salivary cortisol level, and periodontitis among the inmates of a central prison in Kerala

Background: The aim of this cross-sectional study was to evaluate the association between stress, salivary cortisol, and periodontitis among the inmates of the central prison. Materials and Methods: Seventy inmates were grouped depending on their pocket depth into Group A (pocket depth >4 mm and <6 mm), Group B (at least four sites with pocket depth ≥6 mm), and Group C (pocket depth ≤3 mm). The clinical parameters such as the oral hygiene index-simplified, gingival index, pocket depth, and the clinical attachment levels (CALs) were recorded. Stress was measured using the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress Scale along with prison time served. Saliva samples were collected, and cortisol levels were determined using electrochemiluminescence assay. Chi-square test was used for finding the association between the clinical parameters. The correlation between clinical parameters, stress, salivary cortisol levels, and time served was done using Pearson's rank correlation coefficient. Results: The CALs, the stress score and the salivary cortisol levels were significantly higher in Group B (P < 0.001). Pearson's correlation showed a positive correlation between stress, cortisol level, and pocket depth. A positive correlation which was statistically significant was obtained between salivary cortisol level and prison time served by the inmates. Conclusion: Within the limits of this study, it can be concluded that there is a positive relation between stress and periodontal disease. The study suggests that salivary cortisol level can be used as a marker to assess stress.
Using more than the oldest fossils: Dating Osmundaceae by three Bayesian clock approaches

A major concern in molecular clock dating is how to use information from the fossil record to calibrate genetic distances from DNA sequences. Here we apply three Bayesian dating methods that differ in how calibration is achieved—‘node dating’(ND) in BEAST, ‘total evidence’(TE) dating in MrBayes, and the ‘fossilised birth-death’(FBD) in FDPPDiv—to infer divergence times in the Osmundaceae or royal ferns. Osmundaceae have 13 species in four genera, two mainly in the Northern Hemisphere and two in South Africa and Australasia; they are the sister clade to the remaining leptosporangiate ferns. Their fossil record consists of at least 150 species in ∼17 genera and three extinct families. For ND, we used the five oldest fossils, while for TE and FBD dating, which do not require forcing fossils to nodes and thus can use more fossils, we included up to 36 rhizome and frond compression/impression fossils, which for TE dating were scored for 33 morphological characters. We also subsampled 10%, 25%, and 50% of the 36 fossils to assess model sensitivity. FBD-derived divergence dates were generally greater than ages inferred from ND dating; two of seven TE-derived ages agreed with FBD-obtained ages, the others were much younger or much older than ND or FBD ages. We favour the FBD-derived ages because they best match the Osmundales fossil record (including Triassic fossils not used in our study). Under the preferred model, the clade encompassing extant Osmundaceae (and many fossils) dates to the latest Palaeozoic to Early Triassic; divergences of the extant species occurred during the Neogene. Under the assumption of constant speciation and extinction rates, FBD yielded 0.0299 (0.0099–0.0549) and 0.0240 (0.0039–0.0495) for these rates, whereas neontological data yielded 0.0314 and 0.0339. However, FBD estimates of speciation and extinction are sensitive to violations in the assumption of continuous fossil sampling, therefore these estimates should be treated with caution. #
Texture Segmentation by Grouping Ellipse Ensembles via Active Contours

We address the problem of unsupervised segmentation of textural images by relying on morphological image representations and active contours. More precisely, starting with the assumption that textures are statistical ensembles of local image structures, known as textons, we first suggest to represent a texture image through a tree of ellipses, which are derived from the level lines of the image; we then investigate the statistical properties on the tree of ellipses and finally achieve a segmentation of the texture image by grouping all the ellipses into several subsets according to some statistical measurements. The grouping process is formulated as an energy minimizing problem and the solution is obtained by evolving an active contour based on Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence through a fast global minimization method. Thanks to the proposed ellipse-based features, the segmentation method can integrate local and global information in the image. The experiments on both synthesized and natural texture images validate the approach.
Research Paper: Patient Web Services Integrated with a Shared Medical Record: Patient Use and Satisfaction

OBJECTIVES This study sought to describe the evolution, use, and user satisfaction of a patient Web site providing a shared medical record between patients and health professionals at Group Health Cooperative, a mixed-model health care financing and delivery organization based in Seattle, Washington. DESIGN This study used a retrospective, serial, cross-sectional study from September 2002 through December 2005 and a mailed satisfaction survey of a random sampling of 2,002 patients. MEASUREMENTS This study measured the adoption and use of a patient Web site (MyGroupHealth) from September 2002 through December 2005. RESULTS As of December 2005, 25% (105,047) of all Group Health members had registered and completed an identification verification process enabling them to use all of the available services on MyGroupHealth. Identification verification was more common among patients receiving care in the Integrated Delivery System (33%) compared with patients receiving care in the network (7%). As of December 2005, unique monthly user rates per 1,000 adult members were the highest for review of medical test results (54 of 1,000), medication refills (44 of 1,000), after-visit-summaries (32 of 1,000), and patient-provider clinical messaging (31 of 1,000). The response rate for the patient satisfaction survey was 46% (n = 921); 94% of survey respondents were satisfied or very satisfied with MyGroupHealth overall. Patients reported highest satisfaction (satisfied or very satisfied) for medication refills (96%), patient-provider messaging (93%), and medical test results (86%). CONCLUSION Use and satisfaction with MyGroupHealth were greatest for accessing services and information involving ongoing, active care and patient-provider communication. Tight integration of Web services with clinical information systems and patient-provider relationships may be important in meeting the needs of patients.
The Relationship Between Eyewitness Confidence and Identification Accuracy: A New Synthesis

Summary The U.S. legal system increasingly accepts the idea that the confidence expressed by an eyewitness who identified a suspect from a lineup provides little information as to the accuracy of that identification. There was a time when this pessimistic assessment was entirely reasonable because of the questionable eyewitness-identification procedures that police commonly employed. However, after more than 30 years of eyewitness-identification research, our understanding of how to properly conduct a lineup has evolved considerably, and the time seems ripe to ask how eyewitness confidence informs accuracy under more pristine testing conditions (e.g., initial, uncontaminated memory tests using fair lineups, with no lineup administrator influence, and with an immediate confidence statement). Under those conditions, mock-crime studies and police department field studies have consistently shown that, for adults, (a) confidence and accuracy are strongly related and (b) high-confidence suspect identifications are remarkably accurate. However, when certain non-pristine testing conditions prevail (e.g., when unfair lineups are used), the accuracy of even a high-confidence suspect ID is seriously compromised. Unfortunately, some jurisdictions have not yet made reforms that would create pristine testing conditions and, hence, our conclusions about the reliability of high-confidence identifications cannot yet be applied to those jurisdictions. However, understanding the information value of eyewitness confidence under pristine testing conditions can help the criminal justice system to simultaneously achieve both of its main objectives: to exonerate the innocent (by better appreciating that initial, low-confidence suspect identifications are error prone) and to convict the guilty (by better appreciating that initial, high-confidence suspect identifications are surprisingly accurate under proper testing conditions).
The Effect of Online Social Networking on Facilitating Sense of Belonging among University Students Living Off Campus

The study examines how the use of online social networking sites can help social and academic integration among students who are living off campus. Research has shown that students who live off campus during the academic year experience greater difficulty with social integration, particularly in their first year. A survey was distributed among a cohort of 370 first year undergraduate students, measuring their sense of belonging to the institution and their attitudes towards student life. Students who lived on campus and who used social networking sites reported stronger sense of belonging than students living off campus. A significant interaction effect indicated that using social networking sites reduced the difference in sense of belonging between students living on and off campus. Scores on the attitude scale were significantly related to sense of belonging. The results suggest the use of online networking can aid social integration among students who do not have the advantage of the face-to-face interaction that takes place in residential life on campus.
Do mosquitoes filter the access of Plasmodium cytochrome b lineages to an avian host?

Many parasites show fidelity to a set of hosts in ecological time but not evolutionary time and the determinants of this pattern are poorly understood. Malarial parasites use vertebrate hosts for the asexual stage of their life cycle but use Dipteran hosts for the sexual stage. Despite the potential evolutionary importance of Dipteran hosts, little is known of their role in determining a parasite's access to vertebrate hosts. Here, we use an avian malarial system in Panama to explore whether mosquitoes act as an access filter that limits the range of vertebrate hosts used by particular parasite lineages. We amplified and sequenced Plasmodium mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from Turdus grayi (clay‐coloured robin) and from mosquitoes at the same study site. We trapped and identified to species 123 141 female mosquitoes and completed polymerase chain reaction (PCR) screening for Plasmodium parasites in 435 pools of 20 mosquitoes per pool (8700 individuals total) spanning the 11 most common mosquito species. Our primers amplified nine Plasmodium lineages, whose sequences differed by 1.72%–10.0%. Phylogenetic analyses revealed partial clustering of lineages that co‐occurred in mosquito hosts. However PAN3 and PAN6, the two primary parasite lineages of T. grayi, exhibited sequence divergence of 8.59% and did not cluster in the phylogeny. We detected these two lineages exclusively in mosquitoes from different genera — PAN3 was found only in Culex (Melanoconion) ocossa, and PAN6 was found only in Aedeomyia squamipennis. Furthermore, each of these two parasite lineages co‐occurred in mosquitoes with other Plasmodium lineages that were not found in the vertebrate host T. grayi. Together, this evidence suggests that parasite–mosquito associations do not restrict the access of parasites to birds but instead may actually facilitate the switching of vertebrate hosts that occurs over evolutionary time.
In Vivo Generated Th1 Cells Can Migrate to B Cell Follicles to Support B Cell Responses1

The description of Th1 and Th2 T cell subsets rationalized the inverse correlation between humoral and cell-mediated immunity. Although Th1 cells were described to support cell-mediated immune responses, their role in supporting certain B cell responses was firmly established. However, there is now a prevailing preconception that provision of B cell help is entirely the domain of Th2 cells and that Th1 cells lack this capacity. Previous studies demonstrated that immunization using aluminum hydroxide adjuvants induces Ag-specific Th2 responses, whereas incorporation of IL-12 with aluminum hydroxide produces a Th1 inducing adjuvant. By immunizing TCR transgenic recipient mice in this fashion, we have generated Ag-specific, traceable Th1 and Th2 cells in vivo and assessed their follicular migration and ability to support B cell responses. In this study we have shown that in vivo polarized Th1 and Th2 cells clonally expand to similar levels and migrate into B cell follicles in which they support B cell responses to a similar degree. Critically, we present direct evidence that in vivo polarized, IFN-γ secreting Th1 cells migrate into B cell follicles where they can interact with Ag-specific B cells.