Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
The accuracy of verbal reports about the effects of stimuli on evaluations and behavior

Four experiments are reported, each having the following design: (1) Components ofa complex stimulus situation were manipulated; (2) subjects responded to the situation in some fashion? evaluational, judgmental, or behavioral; and (3) subjects were asked what effect, if any, the manipulated stimulus components had had upon their responses. The results indicate that people's reports are highly inaccurate. Stimulus components with substantial effects on responses were reported to have had no effect on responses, and stimulus components with little or no effect were reported to have had substantial effects. The results indicate that research which relies on people's introspective reports about the causes of their behavior may have little value as a guide to the true causal influences.
Recurrent temporal networks and language acquisition—from corticostriatal neurophysiology to reservoir computing

One of the most paradoxical aspects of human language is that it is so unlike any other form of behavior in the animal world, yet at the same time, it has developed in a species that is not far removed from ancestral species that do not possess language. While aspects of non-human primate and avian interaction clearly constitute communication, this communication appears distinct from the rich, combinatorial and abstract quality of human language. So how does the human primate brain allow for language? In an effort to answer this question, a line of research has been developed that attempts to build a language processing capability based in part on the gross neuroanatomy of the corticostriatal system of the human brain. This paper situates this research program in its historical context, that begins with the primate oculomotor system and sensorimotor sequencing, and passes, via recent advances in reservoir computing to provide insight into the open questions, and possible approaches, for future research that attempts to model language processing. One novel and useful idea from this research is that the overlap of cortical projections onto common regions in the striatum allows for adaptive binding of cortical signals from distinct circuits, under the control of dopamine, which has a strong adaptive advantage. A second idea is that recurrent cortical networks with fixed connections can represent arbitrary sequential and temporal structure, which is the basis of the reservoir computing framework. Finally, bringing these notions together, a relatively simple mechanism can be built for learning the grammatical constructions, as the mappings from surface structure of sentences to their meaning. This research suggests that the components of language that link conceptual structure to grammatical structure may be much simpler that has been proposed in other research programs. It also suggests that part of the residual complexity is in the conceptual system itself.
Investigation of the antifungal activity of carvacrol against strains of Cryptococcus neoformans

Abstract Background: Cryptococcus neoformans is the etiologic agent of opportunistic systemic fungal infection cryptococcosis, which affects individuals with compromised immune systems. Thus, natural products research has become important, since monoterpenes such as carvacrol, a promising molecule in the search antifungal agents, have shown significant biological activity. Objective: The study aimed to investigate the antifungal activity and mode of action of carvacrol against strains of C. neoformans. Methods: The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) was determined by microdilution method. Minimum fungicidal concentration (MFC) was performed by seeding technique on solid media. Studying the mode of action was performed using broth microdilution. Results: The MIC ranged from 25 to 81 μg/mL and the MFC ranged from 25 to 102 μg/mL. Carvacrol bonded to exogenous ergosterol and cholesterol. Discussion: The results suggest that carvacrol has antifungal activity against C. neoformans and its mode of action is related to fungal membrane instability. Conclusions: The phytoconstituent carvacrol may eventually become a drug; however, further studies are needed to elucidate its mechanism.
Cell Type–specific Gaba a Receptor–mediated Tonic Inhibition in Mouse Neocortex Preparation of Brain Slices

Cell type–specific GABA A receptor–mediated tonic inhibition in mouse neocortex. Activity of extrasynaptic GABA A receptors mediating tonic inhibition is thought to play an important role for the excitability of the mammalian cerebral cortex. However, little is known about the cell type–specific expression of tonic inhibition in particular types of cortical interneurons. Here, we used transgenic mice expressing green fluorescent protein (GFP) in somatostatin-positive (SOM) interneurons and investigated tonic inhibition in SOM interneurons versus pyramidal cells in neocortical layers 2/3. In brain slices, pyramidal cells showed a tonic current of 66 Ϯ 19 pA in response to the ␦-subunit selective GABA A agonist THIP (1 ␮M). On the other hand, tonic inhibition was absent in SOM interneurons (8 Ϯ 1 pA) in response to THIP. As opposed to pyramidal cells, SOM interneurons were also insensitive to the ␦-subunit preferring neuro-steroid allotetrahydrodeoxycorticosterone (THDOC) (100 nM) and to elevated endogenous GABA levels in the slice. Finally, SOM inter-neurons received only 45% of the phasic charge transfer during GABA A receptor–mediated synaptic activity compared with pyrami-dal cells. Altogether, our study indicates that SOM interneurons receive relatively weak inhibitory input and cannot be brought under the influence of tonic inhibition. The major inhibitory neurotransmitter GABA mediates its actions mainly via GABA A and GABA B receptors in the mammalian CNS (Bettler and Tiao 2006; Farrant and Nusser 2005). It is generally accepted that GABA exerts fast localized actions at inhibitory synapses via GABA A receptors clustered in the postsynaptic membrane, termed phasic inhibition, as well as slower diffuse actions via peri-or extrasynaptic GABA A receptors, leading to tonic inhibition. Although tonic inhibition has been studied in principal cells of the hippocam-pus and neocortex (Brickley et al. 2001; Drasbek and Jensen 2006; Nusser and Mody 2002), little is known about tonic inhibition in identified GABAergic interneurons. Interneurons in the neocortex are a complex, heterogenous population of cells that exert local GABAergic inhibition in all neocortical layers. Although no definitive interneuron classification has emerged based on electrophysiological, neurochem-ical, or morphological markers, peptides such as parvalbumin and somatostatin (SOM) distinguish sets of interneurons that exert perisomatic or dendritic inhibition of the target cell, respectively. Furthermore, in the hippocampus and in the neocortex, SOM-positive interneurons are thought to provide feedback inhibition (Kapfer et al. 2007). Because tonic inhibition has not been studied in SOM-positive interneurons, we here used transgenic " GIN " mice that express enhanced green fluorescent …
Effects of inclusion level and adaptation period on nutrient digestibility and digestible energy of wheat bran in growing-finishing pigs

Objective This experiment was to evaluate the effect of different inclusion levels and adaptation periods on digestible energy (DE) and the apparent total tract digestibility (ATTD) of chemical constituents in diets supplemented with wheat bran. Methods Thirty-six crossbred barrows with an initial body weight of 85.0±2.1 kg were allotted to 6 diets in a completely randomized block design with 6 pigs per diet. Diets included a corn-soybean basal diet and 5 additional diets which were formulated by replacing corn and soybean meal in control diet with 15%, 25%, 35%, 45%, or 55% wheat bran. The experiment lasted for 34 d, and feces were collected from d 8 to 13, 15 to 20, 22 to 27, and 29 to 34 respectively. Results The results showed no interaction effects between inclusion level and adaptation period on the concentration of DE and the ATTD of gross energy (GE) and crude protein (CP) in wheat bran. The DE value and ATTD of GE in wheat bran decreased (p<0.05) significantly as the inclusion level of wheat bran increased, but no difference in the ATTD of CP was observed. The ATTD of CP in wheat bran increased (p<0.10) significantly as the adaptation period for pigs was prolonged. In addition, the concentration of DE and the ATTD of GE in wheat bran decreased linearly (p<0.05) when pigs were fed either an increased level of wheat bran or given an increased adaptation period to the diets. Conclusion Wheat bran showed a negative effect on the concentration of DE and ATTD of GE and CP as the inclusion level increased. A longer adaptation period can gradually increase the DE value and ATTD of GE and CP in wheat bran, and at least 14 to 21 d of adaptation might be recommended for growing-finishing pigs fed the high-fiber diets with wheat bran.
Neuroanatomical Correlates of Suicide in Psychosis: The Possible Role of von Economo Neurons

Suicide is the most important incident in psychiatric disorders. Psychological pain and empathy to pain involves a neural network that involves the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) and the anterior insula (AI). At the neuronal level, little is known about how complex emotions such as shame, guilt, self-derogation and social isolation, all of which feature suicidal behavior, are represented in the brain. Based on the observation that the ACC and the AI contain a large spindle-shaped cell type, referred to as von Economo neuron (VEN), which has dramatically increased in density during human evolution, and on growing evidence that VENs play a role in the pathophysiology of various neuropsychiatric disorders, including autism, psychosis and dementia, we examined the density of VENs in the ACC of suicide victims. The density of VENs was determined using cresyl violet-stained sections of the ACC of 39 individuals with psychosis (20 cases with schizophrenia, 19 with bipolar disorder). Nine subjects had died from suicide. Twenty specimen were available from the right, 19 from the left ACC. The density of VENs was significantly greater in the ACC of suicide victims with psychotic disorders compared with psychotic individuals who died from other causes. This effect was restricted to the right ACC. VEN density in the ACC seems to be increased in suicide victims with psychosis. This finding may support the assumption that VEN have a special role in emotion processing and self-evaluation, including negative self-appraisal.
Valutazione del disagio mentale e dello stress percepito tra gli studenti universitari

Introduction. The principal aims of this study are: to find the stress levels and the psychological uneasiness perceived in our sample; to draw a profile of the subjects more vulnerable to psychological stress; to find what has more influence on the development of psychological uneasiness; to find the main causes that lead to a delay in the help-seeking by a sample of 1067 first-year college students. Materials and methods. The evaluation of the perceived stress was made by Stress-related Vulnerability Scale (SVS). The anamnestic and clinical information was collected using a multiple choice questionnaire. A descriptive analysis of all the data collected was made and the principal links between variables and the SVS scores were detected. Finally the reasons of the unexpressed help-seeking were investigated. All the data was analysed using SPSS software. Results. About 5% of the sample showed a pathological level of stress using the SVS, 40.3% perceived in the last year such a psychological uneasiness to feel the need of a psychological/psychiatric support but just 43% of them went to a psychiatrist/psychologist. The mean reasons of this "gap" turn out to be: "cost" and "distrust". The variables associated with high level of stress and psychological uneasiness, between the other, are the status of "non-resident student" and a conflictual family atmosphere. Conclusions. In this sample the psychological uneasiness associated to high level of stress shows a significant percentage. Nevertheless the level of unexpressed help-seeking turned out to be high for multiple reasons.
Silent information regulator 1 protects the liver against ischemia–reperfusion injury: implications in steatotic liver ischemic preconditioning

Ischemia–reperfusion (IR) injury is an important problem in liver surgery especially when steatosis is present. Ischemic preconditioning (PC) is the only surgical strategy that has been applied in patients with steatotic livers undergoing warm ischemia. Silent information regulator 1 (SIRT1) is a histone deacetylase that regulates various cellular processes. This study evaluates the SIRT1 implication in PC in fatty livers. Homozygous (Ob) Zucker rats were subjected to IR and IR + PC. An additional group treated with sirtinol or EX527 (SIRT1 inhibitors) before PC was also realized. Liver injury and oxidative stress were evaluated. SIRT1 protein levels and activity, as well as other parameters involved in PC protective mechanisms (adenosine monophosphate protein kinase, eNOS, HSP70, MAP kinases, apoptosis), were also measured. We demonstrated that the protective effect of PC was due in part to SIRT1 induction, as SIRT1 inhibition resulted in increased liver injury and abolished the beneficial mechanisms of PC. In this study, we report for the first time that SIRT1 is involved in the protective mechanisms induced by hepatic PC in steatotic livers.
Assimilative demands: The psychological impact of legal decisions on lesbians’ lives

Covering, a construct that has been absent from the empirical psychological literature, is the pressure to or act of downplaying characteristics associated with a stigmatized identity (Goffman, 1963). This research investigated the covering demand in lesbian-identified women drawing on four related literatures: acculturation, discrimination, stigma, and selfconcealment. The objectives of this research were to examine the impact of structural, legal covering demands on psychological domains and develop a grounded understanding of these demands in lesbian women. A mixed-method approach was utilized. Forty-six lesbianidentified women recruited from community venues participated in the quasi-experiment and focus groups, and five also engaged in follow-up in depth interviews. The results showed that the covering demand affects emotional reactions in these lesbian women and that they adopt multiple strategies for coping with these demands in everyday life. These findings provide initial support for the conceptualization of the covering demand as a potential everyday, minority stressor.
EMDR: Promising Treatment for Co-Occurring Eating Disorders and Childhood Sexual Abuse

The purpose of this study was to explore the use of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) with clients who have an eating disorder co-occurring with a history of childhood sexual abuse. Qualitative interviews were conducted with nine mental health clinicians who work primarily in the outpatient setting using EMDR with their clients. These audio-recorded interviews took place over a period of three weeks and the data were analyzed using grounded theory methodology. The most common themes that emerged were client-therapist relationship, stabilization of eating disorder, chronology of treatment, grounding, and dissociation. Given the high co-occurrence of childhood sexual abuse and eating disorders, the serious and pernicious nature of eating disorders, and the growing body of research that points to EMDR as a highly successful method for treating a variety of conditions including trauma, it is important that research into the use of EMDR with this population be continued.
A qualitative and quantitative study of the hepatic pigmented macrophage aggregates during the breeding cycle of ohrid trout, Salmo letnica Kar. (Teloestei, Salmonidae)

It is well known that factors such as aging and water quality may influence pigmented macrophages (PMacs) in fishes, but it is not established yet if PMacs undergo seasonal and breeding dependent variations. This study explored this caveat and reports qualitative histological and stereological data on liver PMacs from wild female Ohrid trout, Salmo letnica, during the annual breeding cycle. Data showed that a minority of PMacs contained melanin and that the vast majority of them contained only hemosiderin or hemosiderin and lipofuscin/ceroid pigment. It was suggested that this is the normal scenario for the species. One remarkable result was the demonstration of a striking increase, after spawning, of the relative and total volumes of the hepatic macrophages, both parenchyma and stroma located. Because the melano PMacs did not vary, those changes were due to fluctuations in the hemosiderin‐laden PMacs. We concluded that Ohrid trout presented a pigment composition in liver macrophages that differed from other fish, including salmonids, where most liver phagocytes essentially display melanin. Our quantitative data support interspecies differences in the amount of liver macrophages and also that after spawning expansion of the macrophage pool is crucial and most likely connected with the needs of liver remodeling (leading to a decrease in hepatic mass). So, we suggested that the hormonal (sex steroidal) constellation influenced the liver macrophage pool. Additionally, we proved that the use of fish liver macrophages for biomonitoring should take into account the considerable natural breeding/seasonal dependent variations that are expected to occur. Microsc. Res. Tech., 2008. © 2008 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.
Equine disease surveillance, April to June 2006

Equine infectious anaemia, including an update on the situation in Ireland Information from postmortem examinations at the Donkey Sanctuary — These are among matters discussed in the quarterly equine disease surveillance report for April to June 2006, prepared by defra, the Animal Health Trust and the British Equine Veterinary Association
Pyrosequencing reveals diverse fecal microbiota in Simmental calves during early development

From birth to the time after weaning the gastrointestinal microbiota of calves must develop into a stable, autochthonous community accompanied by pivotal changes of anatomy and physiology of the gastrointestinal tract. The aim of this pilot study was to examine the fecal microbiota of six Simmental dairy calves to investigate time-dependent dynamics of the microbial community. Calves were followed up from birth until after weaning according to characteristic timepoints during physiological development of the gastrointestinal tract. Pyrosequencing of 16S rRNA gene amplicons from 35 samples yielded 253,528 reads clustering into 5410 operational taxonomic units based on 0.03 16S rRNA distance. Operational taxonomic units were assigned to 296 genera and 17 phyla with Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, and Proteobacteria being most abundant. An age-dependent increasing diversity and species richness was observed. Highest similarities between fecal microbial communities were found around weaning compared with timepoints from birth to the middle of the milk feeding period. Principal coordinate analysis revealed a high variance particularly in samples taken at the middle of the milk feeding period (at the age of approximately 40 days) compared to earlier timepoints, confirming a unique individual development of the fecal microbiota of each calf. This study provides first deep insights into the composition of the fecal microbiota of Simmental dairy calves and might be a basis for future more detailed studies.
Lifted Aggregation in Directed First-Order Probabilistic Models

As exact inference for first-order probabilistic graphical models at the propositional level can be formidably expensive, there is an ongoing effort to design efficient lifted inference algorithms for such models. This paper discusses directed first-order models that require an aggregation operator when a parent random variable is parameterized by logical variables that are not present in a child random variable. We introduce a new data structure, aggregation parfactors, to describe aggregation in directed first-order models. We show how to extend Milch et al.'s C-FOVE algorithm to perform lifted inference in the presence of aggregation parfactors. We also show that there are cases where the polynomial time complexity (in the domain size of logical variables) of the C-FOVE algorithm can be reduced to logarithmic time complexity using aggregation parfactors.
The effect of impact direction on the structural capacity of the proximal femur during falls

As with any structure, the structural capacity of the proximal femur depends on the applied loads and these can vary as a function of impact direction during a fall. However, despite its potential importance in hip fracture risk assessment, the relative importance of impact direction is unknown. To investigate the role of impact direction in hip fracture, we developed a detailed finite element model of the proximal femur. We analyzed four loading configurations that represent a range of possible falls on the greater trochanter. Our results indicate that a change in the angle between the line of action of the applied force and the axis of the femoral neck from 0° (representing a direct lateral impact) to 45° (representing a posterolateral impact) reduced structural capacity by 26%. This weakening of the femur with changes in impact direction is comparable to the weakening associated with 2–3 decades of age‐related bone loss. Our result elucidates the independent contribution of fall mechanics to hip fracture risk by identifying an aspect of the fall (the direction of impact) that is an important determinant of fall severity. The results can also be incorporated into a refined clinical method for assessment of hip fracture risk that accounts for the complex interactions between fall severity and bone fragility.
Document classification utilising ontologies and relations between documents

Two major types of relational information can be utilized in automatic document classification as background information: relations between terms, such as ontologies, and relations between documents, such as web links or citations in articles. We introduce a model where a traditional bag-of-words type classifier is gradually extended to utilize both of these information types. The experiments with data from the Finnish National Archive show that classification accuracy improves from 70% to 74% when the General Finnish Ontology YSO is used as background information, without using relations between documents.
Age-related changes in monochromatic wave aberrations of the human eye.

PURPOSE To investigate the relations between age and the optical aberrations of the whole eye. The eye's optical quality, as measured by the modulation transfer function (MTF), degrades with age, but the MTF does not provide a means to assess the contributions of individual aberrations, such as coma, spherical aberration, and other higher order aberrations to changes in optical quality. The method used in this study provides measures of individual aberrations and overall optical quality. METHODS Wave aberrations in 38 subjects were measured psychophysically using a spatially resolved refractometer. Data were fit with Zernike polynomials up to the seventh order to provide estimates of 35 individual aberration terms. MTFs and root mean square (RMS) wavefront errors were calculated. Subjects ranged in age from 22.9 to 64.5 years, with spherical equivalent corrections ranging from +0.5 to -6.0 D. RESULTS Overall RMS wavefront error (excluding tilts, astigmatism, and defocus) was significantly positively correlated with age (r = 0.33, P = 0.042). RMS error for the highest order aberrations measured (fifth through seventh order) showed a strong positive correlation with age (r = 0.57, P = 0.0002). Image quality, as quantified by the MTF, also degraded with age. CONCLUSIONS Wave aberrations of the eye increase with age. This increase is consistent with the loss of contrast sensitivity with age observed by other investigators.