Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Evidence for a Common Representation of Decision Values for Dissimilar Goods in Human Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex

To make economic choices between goods, the brain needs to compute representations of their values. A great deal of research has been performed to determine the neural correlates of value representations in the human brain. However, it is still unknown whether there exists a region of the brain that commonly encodes decision values for different types of goods, or if, in contrast, the values of different types of goods are represented in distinct brain regions. We addressed this question by scanning subjects with functional magnetic resonance imaging while they made real purchasing decisions among different categories of goods (food, nonfood consumables, and monetary gambles). We found activity in a key brain region previously implicated in encoding goal-values: the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) was correlated with the subjects' value for each category of good. Moreover, we found a single area in vmPFC to be correlated with the subjects' valuations for all categories of goods. Our results provide evidence that the brain encodes a “common currency” that allows for a shared valuation for different categories of goods.
From elevated freeways to surface boulevards: neighborhood and housing price impacts in San Francisco

Freeway “deconstruction” marks an abrupt shift in urban policy. Priorities are shifting away from designing cities to enhance mobility toward promoting livability. This paper investigates the neighborhood, traffic, and housing price impacts of replacing elevated freeways with surface boulevards in two corridors of San Francisco in California, USA: Embarcadero along the city's eastern waterfront and Central Freeway/Octavia Boulevard serving a predominantly residential neighborhood west of downtown. Using informant interviews, literature reviews, and statistical analyses, the research suggests that freeway conversions generally gentrifies neighborhoods, although policies like affordable housing mandates can temper displacement effects. Empirical evidence on residential sales transactions reveals that the disamenity effects of proximity to a freeway have for the most part given way to amenity benefits once roadways are converted to landscaped multiway boulevards. It is concluded that freeway‐to‐boulevard conversions have yielded net positive benefits without seriously sacrificing transportation performance.
Chronic intravenous injections of antigen induce and maintain tolerance in T cell receptor‐transgenic mice

Antigen‐specific T cell tolerance can be induced by systemic injection of high‐dose antigen. In particular, a single intravenous (i.v.) injection of influenza virus hemagglutinin peptide in HNT‐TCR transgenic mice induces T cell tolerance through thymocyte apoptosis as well as anergy and deletion of peripheral CD4+ T cells. We now show that this tolerance is reversed after 8 weeks probably due to the short in vivo half‐life of the peptide. Since durable tolerance is required for this strategy to be of therapeutic value, we tested whether weekly i.v. injections of peptide (up to 12 weeks) could maintain the CD4+ T cell tolerance. Each injection induces a profound deletion of thymocytes, although their level recovers before the next injection. Therefore, during the treatment period, the thymus undergoes cycles of contraction/expansion. In the periphery, the number of CD4+ T cells is stably decreased and the persisting CD4+ T cells are hyporeactive both in vitro and in vivo. This tolerance is essentially peripheral since comparable results were obtained in thymectomized HNT‐TCR mice injected weekly. Our data show that stable antigen‐specific tolerance can be induced by repeated i.v. injections of antigen. These findings might have implications for the treatment of T cell‐mediated autoimmune diseases.
Combining ability analysis for yield and its components in bread wheat

Combining ability was analyzed using a half diallel of nine parents in bread wheat revealed the importance of both additive as well as non-additive genetic variances for control of various traits viz . days to heading, days to maturity, plant height, tillers per plant, flag leaf area, peduncle length, spike length, number of spikelets per spike, number of grains per spike, grain yield per spike, 1000 grain weight, biological yield per plant and grain yield per plant. However, the ratio of σ 2 gca/ σ 2 sca revealed preponderance of non-additive gene actions in almost all the traits like number of grains per spike, grain yield per spike, 1000 grain weight, biological yield per plant, grain yield per plant, tillers per plant, flag leaf area, peduncle length, spike length and number of spikelets per spike. Parents, GW 404, MP 4010 and GW 366 were the good general combiners, whereas crosses GW 366 x GW 11, Raj 4037 x GW 496 and GW 322 x GW 404 were found to be best specific combiners for grain yield per plant and some of the yield contributing traits viz . tillers per plant, spike length, number of grain per spike and biological yield per plant. However on the basis of per se performance and significant sca effects for grain yield per plant and some of its important components, hybrids GW 366 x GW 11, GW 322 x GW 404 and HI 1544 x MP 4010 were considered to be most promising for further exploitation in breeding programmes.
Interfacility Transfers of Noncritically Ill Children to Academic Pediatric Emergency Departments

OBJECTIVES: We aimed to characterize the demographics, diagnoses, and management of transferred patients who were directly discharged from the emergency department (ED) or admitted less than 24 hours. METHODS: We conducted a retrospective, cross-sectional study of patients classified as interfacility ED transfers over a 12-month period in the Pediatric Health Information System database, an administrative database of 42 tertiary care pediatric US hospitals. The primary study outcomes were ED resource utilization at the receiving facility with a focus on children who were discharged directly from the ED or admitted less than 24 hours. RESULTS: Overall, 24 905 interfacility transfers were identified, accounting for 1.3% of the ED volume of these academic pediatric centers. Of these, 24.7% were discharged directly from the ED and 17.0% were admitted for less than 24 hours. Among those directly discharged from the ED, the 3 most common complaints were orthopedic problems, nonsurgical abdominal pain, and viral gastroenteritis; 20.7% received no medical or procedural intervention. Among those admitted for less than 24 hours, the 3 most common complaints were orthopedic problems, traumatic head injury, and gastrointestinal conditions. CONCLUSIONS: A significant proportion of interfacility transfers to academic pediatric EDs is discharged directly from the ED or is admitted for less than a day. These patients and their clinical outcomes provide insight into the educational needs and medical capabilities of referring hospitals and clinicians.
Effect of radiation dosage on the synergism between radiation and estrogen in the production of mammary cancer in the rat.

An experiment was designed to determine the effect of radiation dosage on the synergism between radiation and estrogen in the production of mammary cancer. Female A × C rats had their left mammary chain exposed to graded doses of X-radiation while under anesthetic with urethan or sodium pentobarbital. The rats had previously been hysterectomized and exposed to estrogen by implantation with cholesterol pellets containing 25% diethylstilbestrol. The control animals were implanted with cholesterol pellets containing no diethylastilbestrol or were not implanted with pellets. Some of the animals died in the 24 hr following irradiation. These deaths were independent of the anesthetic used, but there was a positive dose-response curve for radiation. In terms of median survival time, the highest doses of radiation produced the shortest survival times, and those animals receiving estrogen also had the shortest survival times. Overall growth was also inhibited by both of the agents used. With radiation alone, there was an increase in benign tumors with a dose-response curve, but the increase in mammary cancers was not significantly proportionate to dose. No significant difference was observed in the incidence of tumor in any of the glands in each mammary chain. The cholesterol carrier in the pellets used did not affect the synergism between estrogen and radiation for mammary carcinogenesis; however, synergism between radiation and diethylstilbestrol administration is apparent. Malignant mammary tumors were relatively rare in groups that did not receive diethylstilbestrol. The synergism is dependent for its optimal expression on the amount of radiation given.
Nav1.5 regulates breast tumor growth and metastatic dissemination in vivo

Voltage-gated Na+ channels (VGSCs) mediate action potential firing and regulate adhesion and migration in excitable cells. VGSCs are also expressed in cancer cells. In metastatic breast cancer (BCa) cells, the Nav1.5 α subunit potentiates migration and invasion. In addition, the VGSC-inhibiting antiepileptic drug phenytoin inhibits tumor growth and metastasis. However, the functional activity of Nav1.5 and its specific contribution to tumor progression in vivo has not been delineated. Here, we found that Nav1.5 is up-regulated at the protein level in BCa compared with matched normal breast tissue. Na+ current, reversibly blocked by tetrodotoxin, was retained in cancer cells in tumor tissue slices, thus directly confirming functional VGSC activity in vivo. Stable down-regulation of Nav1.5 expression significantly reduced tumor growth, local invasion into surrounding tissue, and metastasis to liver, lungs and spleen in an orthotopic BCa model. Nav1.5 down-regulation had no effect on cell proliferation or angiogenesis within the in tumors, but increased apoptosis. In vitro, Nav1.5 down-regulation altered cell morphology and reduced CD44 expression, suggesting that VGSC activity may regulate cellular invasion via the CD44-src-cortactin signaling axis. We conclude that Nav1.5 is functionally active in cancer cells in breast tumors, enhancing growth and metastatic dissemination. These findings support the notion that compounds targeting Nav1.5 may be useful for reducing metastasis.
T-cell regulation of murine IgA synthesis

In studies reported here, the polyclonal activator lipopolysaccharide was used to stimulate the synthesis and secretion of IgM, IgA, and IgG in cultures of mouse lymphoid cells. The total immunoglobulin of each class which resulted was measured by specific double-antibody radioimmunoassays. The effect of Con A-activated T cells from various tissues on such immunoglobulin synthesis was then assessed. Variations in regulatory T-cell activity among the various lymphoid tissues for IgA but not for IgM or IgG was observed. In particular, Peyer's patches T cells were found to contain a high level of IgA T-cell helper activity compared to that of spleen or peripheral lymph node. The independent variation of T-cell regulatory activity for IgA as compared to that for IgM and IgG among the different tissues is most consistent with there being a separate subset of T cells specifically regulating IgA. The significance of these findings for the understanding of the secretory immune system is discussed.
Computing Strong Game-Theoretic Strategies and Exploiting Suboptimal Opponents in Large Games

Designing successful agents in large multiagent strategic settings is a challenging problem for several reasons. First, many games of interest are far too large to be solved (for a relevant game-theoretic solution concept) by the best current algorithms. For example, no-limit Texas Hold’em has approximately 10 states in its game tree, while the best algorithms for computing a Nash equilibrium only scale to games with around 10 states. A second challenge is that it is not even clear that our goal should be computing a Nash equilibrium in the first place. In games with more than two players (or two-player games that are not zero sum), playing a Nash equilibrium has no performance guarantee. Furthermore, even in twoplayer zero-sum games, we can often obtain significantly higher payoffs by learning to exploit mistakes of a suboptimal opponent than by playing a Nash equilibrium. The standard paradigm for addressing the first challenge is to first approximate the full game with a strategically similar, but significantly smaller game, and then to solve this smaller abstract game. All of this computation is done offline in advance, and the strategies are then looked up in a table for actual game play. We have developed new algorithms for improving each step of this paradigm. In particular, we propose new algorithms for computing equilibria in several classes of games and new techniques for performing game abstraction, as well as new approaches for addressing the problem of the strategies we compute being overfit to the abstraction and a new approach for addressing the problem of interpreting actions of the opponent that have been removed from the abstraction. We also propose approaches for extracting human-understandable knowledge from the computed strategy files. In addition, we propose a new paradigm in which relevant portions of the game are solved in real time in much finer degrees of granularity than the abstract game which is solved offline. We have demonstrated that this new paradigm can lead to significantly stronger performance in no-limit Texas Hold’em. We also propose an approach that uses this real-time solver to create an endgame database which can be integrated with our offline equilibrium solver in order to dramatically improve the algorithm’s performance, enabling us to solve games with significantly less abstraction for the initial betting rounds. In the final portion of the proposal, we address the second challenge by proposing new algorithms for effectively learning to exploit unknown opponents in large games after only a small number of interactions. Furthermore, we propose new algorithms for exploiting opponents that are able to guarantee a good performance in the worst case even against strong dynamic opponents.
Tissue-specific reduction in splicing efficiency of IKBKAP due to the major mutation associated with familial dysautonomia.

We recently identified a mutation in the I-kappa B kinase associated protein (IKBKAP) gene as the major cause of familial dysautonomia (FD), a recessive sensory and autonomic neuropathy. This alteration, located at base pair 6 of the intron 20 donor splice site, is present on >99.5% of FD chromosomes and results in tissue-specific skipping of exon 20. A second FD mutation, a missense change in exon 19 (R696P), was seen in only four patients heterozygous for the major mutation. Here, we have further characterized the consequences of the major mutation by examining the ratio of wild-type to mutant (WT:MU) IKBKAP transcript in EBV-transformed lymphoblast lines, primary fibroblasts, freshly collected blood samples, and postmortem tissues from patients with FD. We consistently found that WT IKBKAP transcripts were present, albeit to varying extents, in all cell lines, blood, and postmortem FD tissues. Further, a corresponding decrease in the level of WT protein is seen in FD cell lines and tissues. The WT:MU ratio in cultured lymphoblasts varied with growth phase but not with serum concentration or inclusion of antibiotics. Using both densitometry and real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction, we found that relative WT:MU IKBKAP RNA levels were highest in cultured patient lymphoblasts and lowest in postmortem central and peripheral nervous tissues. These observations suggest that the relative inefficiency of WT IKBKAP mRNA production from the mutant alleles in the nervous system underlies the selective degeneration of sensory and autonomic neurons in FD.Therefore, exploration of methods to increase the WT:MU IKBKAP transcript ratio in the nervous system offers a promising approach for developing an effective therapy for patients with FD.
Effect of transferrin on hypomyelination induced by iron deficiency

We have used a model of iron deficiency in the rat to analyze the effects of a disruption in iron availability on oligodendroglial cell (OLGc) maturation and myelinogenesis and to explore the possible beneficial influence of an intracranial injection (ICI) of apotransferrin (aTf) at 3 days of age on this process. Studies carried out on postnatal days 17 and 24 showed that iron deficiency produced a decrease in myelin proteins and lipids at 24 days of age. Immunohistochemistry showed that in untreated iron‐deficient (ID) rats, the immunoreactivity of anti–adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) and anti‐MBP antibodies decreased markedly with reference to normal controls, whereas in ID rats treated with an ICI of aTf, the immunoreactivity of these markers increased. A similar situation occurred with the immunoreactivity of H‐ferritin. In primary OLGc cultures from ID rats, there was a high number of cells positive to the antibody against the polysialylated form of the cell surface glycoprotein NCAM (PSA‐NCAM) compared with in OLGc cultures prepared from normal controls or from ID animals treated with aTf. The number of MBP+ cells in cultures from ID rats increased after treatment with aTf. The presence of lipid rafts evaluated with a specific anti–protein prion cellular (PrPc) antibody showed a smaller number of PrPc‐positive structures in ID rat cultures. Treatment of the ID animals with a single ICI of aTf stimulated myelination, producing a significant correction in the different biochemical parameters affected by ID. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Experimental Investigation of Relative Permeability Upscaling from the Micro-Scale to the Macro-Scale

During this reporting period, achieved the milestone of using Optical Coherence Imaging (OCI) to image to the back of the first layer of grains in a sandstone sample. This was the first time that OCI was used to image through sandstone. Information on grain geometry was obtained as deep as 400 microns into the sample. This report also describes the work performed to achieve the milestone on the measurement of interfacial area per volume, capillary pressure and saturation in two dimensional micromodels structures that are statistically similar to real porous media. This report contains the first quantitative experimental measurements of interfacial area per volume in any system.
Investigating the effects of changes in light quality on different life history stages of seagrasses

V List of Figures and Tables . X Research outputs . XV CHAPTER 1 . 1 1. General introduction . 1 1.1 Light quality . 1 1.2 Light quality elicits numerous responses in terrestrial plants . 1 1.3 Light quality shifts in terrestrial ecosystems . 2 1.4 Light quality shifts in aquatic ecosystems . 3 1.5 Seagrass responses to light . 4 1.6 Seagrasses have different reproduction strategies . 7 1.7 Thesis aims and hypotheses . 7 Thesis structure. 9 CHAPTER 2 . 10 2. Exploring the variability in light quality that seagrasses receive across a local estuarinecoastal gradient . 10 2.
Declining hailstorm frequency in China during 1961–2015 and its potential influential factors

Based on 55 years (from 1961 to 2015) of ground‐based hailstorm and atmospheric sounding observations, the climatological characteristics of hailstorms in China, along with potential influencing factors, were analysed. We found that hailstorms exhibit large spatial and temporal variability, with the peak occurring in spring in south China, and in summer in north China. The Tibetan Plateau (TTP) is a region with high hailstorm frequency. Overall, the frequency of hailstorms has decreased over the 55 years, although there was an increase from 1961 to 1985. In terms of diurnal variability, while hailstorm frequency peaks in the afternoon in most of China, it peaks during the night or early morning in southwest China. The magnitude of the peak increased during the 1960s and 1970s, and then decreased afterwards. Hailstorms are negatively correlated with daily mean temperature but are positively correlated with diurnal temperature range, convective available potential energy (CAPE) and totals–totals index. The increase of hailstorms during the period from 1961 to 1985 is mainly correlated with the increase in CAPE over the TTP region, while the decrease of hailstorms afterwards is correlated with all four convective parameters. The finding has significant implications for the potential impact of increasing greenhouse gases on climatological changes in hailstorm.
The Effects of Antagonist Prefatigue on Agonist Torque and Electromyography

This study assessed the effects of hamstring prefatigue on peak torque, peak power, time to peak torque, knee angle of peak torque, and electromyography (EMG) activity of the hamstrings and quadriceps group during knee extensions at angular velocities of 60°, 180°, and 300°·s−1. Twenty Division I wrestlers performed 5 maximal knee extensions in pre-fatigued and nonfatigued conditions of the hamstring group. This study demonstrated that when the hamstrings were prefatigued, the quadriceps produced significant decreases in peak torque of 1.7% (p < 0.05), peak power of 11% (p < 0.05), and rate to peak torque of 6.4% (p < 0.01) as compared with the nonfatigued state. When the hamstrings were prefatigued, they produced a 25% greater amount of EMG activity during knee extension (p < 0.01) than when not prefatigued. There was no significant difference in quadriceps EMG activity whether the hamstring group was prefatigued or not (p > 0.05). The decrease in quadriceps peak torque during the prefatigued condition was more pronounced (p < 0.01) at an angular velocity of 60°·s−1 than at 180° or 300°·s−1. In other words, prefatiguing the antagonist appears to be most detrimental to torque output of the quadriceps in the condition that most closely replicates the speed at which “isotonic” weight training occurs (60°·s−1) and suggests a limitation to agonist-antagonist superset training.
The Effect of Boreal Late Autumn Snow Cover over Western and Central China on the Northern Hemisphere Wintertime Blocking Frequency

AbstractThe impact of snow cover in western and central China during late autumn on wintertime blocking occurrence is investigated using reanalysis data. The study results show that wintertime atmospheric circulations affected by late autumn snow cover anomalies form favorable conditions for increased blocking frequency (BF), especially in the North Pacific and North Atlantic. Evidence is also presented that the stratosphere-troposphere interactions are the key mechanism of the lag response of wintertime North Pacific and North Atlantic BFs to the late autumn snow cover. That is, positive anomalous snow cover can induce a dipole anomaly in the geopotential height field over the lower stratosphere, due to the decrease of the 300-1000-hPa thickness and the concurrent variation between the East Asian plateau jet and the polar front jet. The associated positive geopotential height anomalies are located over northwestern Eurasia. Meanwhile, western and central China features remarkably negative geopotential he.
Formalizing and Querying Heterogeneous Documents with Tables

This paper explores the application and extension of XML technology for formalizing and querying heterogeneous documents containing text and tables. Specifically, it analyzes the pros and the cons of embedding the formalization into the original document to obtain an XML Master document that improves traceability while enabling making explicit interpretation of tables separately, in a modular fashion. This work is relevant for formalizing, representing, and manipulating (domainspecific) content in legacy semi-structured documents, and for authoring new documents with tables that should be simultaneously human readable and machine processable.