Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Manipulating maladaptive motivational memories via reconsolidation

Substance Use Disorders (SUDs), are generally viewed as disorders of maladaptive reward memory and motivation. In SUDs, memories formed during drug use associate environmental stimuli with the rewarding effects of drugs. These stimuli can subsequently trigger craving, highly motivated drug-seeking and relapse, even after years of abstinence. An exciting new approach to combatting these maladaptive memories is via reconsolidation, the process by which memories become briefly unstable upon recall in order to strengthen or update before restabilising. In Chapter 1, I review reward memory mechanisms in SUDs along with pharmacological and behavioural determinants of memory reconsolidation to identify potential drug targets for interfering with reconsolidation. In Chapter 2, I use meta-analysis to assess the effects of two classes of drugs; N-methyl D-aspartate (NMDAR) antagonists and β-Blockers on blocking reconsolidation of reward memory in rats and show that NMDAR antagonism is far more effective. Building on this knowledge, in Chapter 3, I show that 10mg of the NMDAR antagonist memantine in combination with the retrieval of smoking cue-drug memory does not affect relapse or craving in a group of quitting smokers. As this null finding may have represented either a failure to destabilise memories or inefficacy of memantine, in Chapter 4 I use a reward conditioning paradigm in hazardous drinkers to show that NMDAR antagonist Nitrous Oxide can interfere with reconsolidation of cue-alcohol memory, when administered after a reminder of learning that induces a negative prediction error. Chapter 5 builds on emerging evidence of the necessity of prediction error to destabilise memory, using guided expectancy violation to destabilise naturalistic cue-alcohol memories in hazardous drinkers. Subsequent disgust counterconditioning updated these memories, reducing motivational salience and liking of alcohol stimuli, with associated reduction in drinking. In Chapter 6 I discuss the research reported and suggest directions for further study.
Women in Science and Technology.

©1981 The University of North Carolina Press 0018-1498/81/640322-04$00.40/0 Although the numbers of women in today's work force and those enrolling in postsecondary training are increasing dramatically, relatively few are entering areas of science and technology (Vetter, 1975). Subsequently, the rate of occupational segregation by sex is as great today as it was at the turn of the century, according to recent results of three-year studies of institutional sexism and racism released by the nonprofit Council on Interracial Books for Children sponsored by the Carnegie Corporation (1975), a non-profit educational foundation. A major causal factor in this situation may be the long-standing stereotype of role expectation. In reviewing the work world, it was noted that there is an increase in demand for technically skilled employees, as well as increasing salaries in these fields. Minorities and women, however, have not been entering these fields, as evidenced by both enrollment in training programs and employment statistics.
Impact of postnatal depression on breastfeeding duration.

BACKGROUND Postnatal depression can cause adverse effects on both mother and infant, but its impact on breastfeeding duration is poorly understood. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between maternal postnatal depression and breastfeeding duration. METHODS A cohort of 1745 women was recruited on the postnatal wards of two large Australian obstetric hospitals. Self-report questionnaires were completed at recruitment, and at 2, 6, and 12 months postpartum. Breastfeeding status was determined at each follow-up, and the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale was used to screen for symptoms of depression. Diagnostic psychological interviews were conducted on a subsample of women at each interval. RESULTS Breastfeeding was initiated by 96 percent of the participants; at 2 months 79 percent were still breastfeeding, 57 percent at 6 months, and 22 percent at 12 months. Of the 18 percent of participants diagnosed with postnatal depression, the onset occurred before 2 months in 63 percent of cases. Median duration of breastfeeding was 26 weeks for women with early-onset depression, 28 weeks for women with late-onset depression, and 39 weeks for women without depression. After adjustment for confounding factors, early cessation of breastfeeding was found to be significantly associated with postnatal depression (adjusted hazard ratio 1.25, 95% CI 1.03-1.52). Onset of postnatal depression occurred before cessation of breastfeeding in most cases. CONCLUSIONS Postnatal depression has a significant negative impact on breastfeeding duration. Assistance with breastfeeding issues should be included in the management of postnatal depression.
Age‐related instability in spermatogenic cell nuclear and mitochondrial DNA obtained from Apex1 heterozygous mice

The prevalence of spontaneous mutations increases with age in the male germline; consequently, older men have an increased risk of siring children with genetic disease due to de novo mutations. The lacI transgenic mouse can be used to study paternal age effects, and in this system, the prevalence of de novo mutations increases in the male germline at old ages. Mutagenesis is linked with DNA repair capacity, and base excision repair (BER), which can ameliorate spontaneous DNA damage, decreases in nuclear extracts of spermatogenic cells from old mice. Mice heterozygous for a null allele of the Apex1 gene, which encodes apurinic/apyrimidinic endonuclease I (APEN), an essential BER enzyme, display an accelerated increase in spontaneous germline mutagenesis early in life. Here, the consequences of lifelong reduction of APEN on genetic instability in the male germline were examined, for the first time, at middle and old ages. Mutant frequency increased earlier in spermatogenic cells from Apex1+/− mice (by 6 months of age). Nuclear DNA damage increased with age in the spermatogenic lineage for both wild‐type and Apex1+/− mice. By old age, mutant frequencies were similar for wild‐type and APEN‐deficient mice. Mitochondrial genome repair also depends on APEN, and novel analysis of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) damage revealed an increase in the Apex1+/− spermatogenic cells by middle age. Thus, Apex1 heterozygosity results in accelerated damage to mtDNA and spontaneous mutagenesis, consistent with an essential role for APEN in maintaining nuclear and mtDNA integrity in spermatogenic cells throughout life. Mol. Reprod. Dev. 78:906–919, 2011. Published 2011. This article is a U.S. Government work and is in the public domain in the USA.
A Convex Analysis Framework for Blind Separation of Non-Negative Sources

This paper presents a new framework for blind source separation (BSS) of non-negative source signals. The proposed framework, referred herein to as convex analysis of mixtures of non-negative sources (CAMNS), is deterministic requiring no source independence assumption, the entrenched premise in many existing (usually statistical) BSS frameworks. The development is based on a special assumption called local dominance. It is a good assumption for source signals exhibiting sparsity or high contrast, and thus is considered realistic to many real-world problems such as multichannel biomedical imaging. Under local dominance and several standard assumptions, we apply convex analysis to establish a new BSS criterion, which states that the source signals can be perfectly identified (in a blind fashion) by finding the extreme points of an observation-constructed polyhedral set. Methods for fulfilling the CAMNS criterion are also derived, using either linear programming or simplex geometry. Simulation results on several data sets are presented to demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed method over several other reported BSS methods.
Collective Psychological Empowerment as a Model of Social Change: Researching Crowds and Power

The issue of psychological empowerment in crowd events has important implications for both theory and practice. Theoretically, the issue throws light on both intergroup conflict and the nature and functions of social identity. Practically, empowerment in collective events can feed into societal change. The study of empowerment therefore tells us something about how the forces pressing for such change might succeed or fail. The present article first outlines some limitations in the conceptualization of both identity and empowerment in previous research on crowd events, before delineating the elaborated social identity model of crowds and power. We then describe recent empirical contributions to the field. These divide into two areas of research: (1) empowerment variables and (2) the dynamics of such empowerment. We finally suggest how psychological empowerment and social change are connected through crowd action. We conclude with some recommendations for practice following from the research described.
Towards Simulating Architectural Patterns for Self-Aware and Self-Adaptive Systems

Novel models and tools are required to support the engineering of systems that are self-aware of their current situations and capable of dynamically modifying their behavior and structure using feedback loops. In this paper, with the help of a case study in the area of e-mobility and based on our past work in self-adaptive systems modeling, we introduce a new tool (i.e., an Eclipse-based simulation plug-in) that we are developing for engineering and simulating architectural patterns based on feedback loops. Our plug-in can facilitate modeling of self-adaptive patterns using UML 2, visual animation of behavior to expose run-time information, animating composite structure, model-level debugging, simulating event-driven models, and run-time prompting.
Autogenous leukocyte migration in human malignancies

The leukocyte migration test (L.M.T.) was utilized for in vitro study of cellmediated immunity in human malignancies. Tumor cells and autogenous peripheral blood leukocytes from 35 patients with various malignancies, who were not receiving any therapy, were studied. There was inhibition of the migration of the autogenous leukocytes in 18 of 20 patients with resectable tumors who had no evidence of hematogenous metastasis or widespread disease, whether the local lymph nodes were involved or not. However, the migration of autogenous leukocytes from patients with hematogenous metastasis or widespread disease was not inhibited in 14 of 15 patients whether the tumor cells were obtained from the primary or metastatic sites. The utilization of fresh, frozen‐thawed (dead) tumor cells, or tumor cell extracts gave almost the same results. This could indicate that localized tumors were recognized as antigenic by the presensitized autogenous leukocytes, resulting in the inhibition of the migration. This state seemed to disappear in the presence of hematogenous metastasis. Normal tissues did not inhibit the migration of the autogenous leukocytes, presumably because these had not been recognized as foreign or antigenic.
Hierarchical Self-organizing Maps System for Action Classification

We present a novel action recognition system that is able to learn how to recognize and classify actions. Our system employs a three-layered hierarchy of Self-Organizing Maps together with a supervised neural network for labelling the actions. We have evaluated our system in an experiments consisting of ten different actions from a publicly available data set. The results are encouraging with 83% correctly classified actions based on the actor’s spatial trajectory.
Changes in Alpha Band Eeg Activity in the Frontal Area after Stimulation with Music of Different Affective Content

This study investigated the stimulating effects of music. Twelve-channel EEGs (Fp1, Fp2, F7, F8, Fz, C3, C4, Pz, T5, T6, O1, O2) were recorded on 10 students during periods of baseline, premusic rest, music (stimulating or calming), and postmusic rest. The amplitude of the alpha-2 (9.6 to 11.4 Hz) band was lower during the rest session than that during the baseline session. In the music period the amplitude of alpha-2 band increased during both the stimulating and calm music. The frontal interhemispheric coherence values (F7-F8) of the alpha-2 band increased during the stimulating music session, while the coherence values did not change during the calm music. These findings implied close relationships between the interhemispheric transmission of information in the frontal areas and positive attention to stimulating music.
Endothelial repair process and its relevance to longitudinal neointimal tissue patterns: comparing histology with in silico modelling

Re-establishing a functional endothelium following endovascular treatment is an important factor in arresting neointimal proliferation. In this study, both histology (in vivo) and computational simulations (in silico) are used to evaluate neointimal growth patterns within coronary arteries along the axial direction of the stent. Comparison of the growth configurations in vivo and in silico was undertaken to identify candidate mechanisms for endothelial repair. Stent, lumen and neointimal areas were measured from histological sections obtained from eight right coronary stented porcine arteries. Two re-endothelialization scenarios (endothelial cell (EC) random seeding and EC growth from proximal and distal ends) were implemented in silico to evaluate their influence on the morphology of the simulated lesions. Subject to the assumptions made in the current simulations, comparison between in vivo and in silico results suggests that endothelial growth does not occur from the proximal and distal ends alone, but is more consistent with the assumption of a random seeding process. This may occur either from the patches of endothelium which survive following stent implantation or from attachment of circulating endothelial progenitor cells.
Narcissistic Traits and Explicit Self-Esteem: The Moderating Role of Implicit Self-View

Objective: Whilst the relationship between narcissism and self-esteem has been studied for a long time, findings are still controversial. The majority of studies investigated narcissistic grandiosity (NG), neglecting the existence of vulnerable manifestations of narcissism. Moreover, recent studies have shown that grandiosity traits are not always associated with inflated explicit self-esteem. The aim of the present study is to investigate the relationship between narcissistic traits and explicit self-esteem, distinguishing between grandiosity and vulnerability. Moreover, we consider the role of implicit self-esteem in qualifying these associations. Method: Narcissistic traits, explicit and implicit self-esteem measures were assessed among 120 university students (55.8% women, Mage = 22.55, SD = 3.03). Results: Results showed different patterns of association between narcissistic traits and explicit self-esteem, depending on phenotypic manifestations of narcissism. Narcissistic vulnerability (NV) was linked to low explicit self-evaluations regardless of one’s levels of implicit self-esteem. On the other hand, the link between NG and explicit self-esteem was qualified by levels of implicit self-views, such that grandiosity was significantly associated with inflated explicit self-evaluations only at either high or medium levels of implicit self-views. Discussion: These findings showed that the relationship between narcissistic traits and explicit self-esteem is not univocal, highlighting the importance of distinguishing between NG and NV. Finally, the study suggested that both researchers and clinicians should consider the relevant role of implicit self-views in conditioning self-esteem levels reported explicitly by individuals with grandiose narcissistic traits.
Factors influencing the adoption of mobile service in China: An integration of TAM

This study based on the technology acceptance model(TAM) and theory of planned be haviour (TPB) presents an extended TAM that integrates trust related construct (‘perceived credibility’) and resource-related constructs (‘perceived cost’) into the TAM to analyzing adoption behavior of mobile service . The proposed model was empirically tested using data collected from a survey of mobile service consumers. The structural equation modeling technique was used to evaluate the causal model and confirmatory factor analysis was performed to examine the reliability and validity of the measurement model. Our findings indicated that all variables except perceived ease of use significantly affected users’ behavioral intent ion . The implication of this work to both researchers and practitioners is discussed.
Real-time analysis of gene regulation by glucocorticoid hormones

There is increasing evidence that temporal factors are important in allowing cells to gain additional information from external factors, such as hormones and cytokines. We sought to discover how cell responses to glucocorticoids develop over time, and how the response kinetics vary according to ligand structure and concentration, and hence have developed a continuous gene transcription measurement system, based on an interleukin-6 (IL-6) luciferase reporter gene. We measured the time to maximal response, maximal response and integrated response, and have compared these results with a conventional, end point glucocorticoid bioassay. We studied natural glucocorticoids (corticosterone and cortisol), synthetic glucocorticoids (dexamethasone) and glucocorticoid precursors with weak, or absent bioactivity. We found a close correlation between half maximal effective concentration (EC50) for maximal response, and for integrated response, but with consistently higher EC50 for the latter. There was no relation between the concentration of ligand and the time to maximal response. A comparison between conventional end point assays and real-time measurement showed similar effects for dexamethasone and hydrocortisone, with a less effective inhibition of IL-6 seen with corticosterone. We profiled the activity of precursor steroids, and found pregnenolone, progesterone, 21-hydroxyprogesterone and 17-hydroxyprogesterone all to be ineffective in the real-time assay, but in contrast, progesterone and 21-hydroxyprogesterone showed an IL-6 inhibitory activity in the end point assay. Taken together, our data show how ligand concentration can alter the amplitude of glucocorticoid response, and also that a comparison between real-time and end point assays reveals an unexpected diversity of the function of glucocorticoid precursor steroids, with implications for human disorders associated with their overproduction.
Esterifications in Ionic Liquids with 1-Alkyl-3-Methylimidazolium Cation and Hydrogen Sulfate Anion: Conversion and Phase Equilibrium

The esterification of ethanol, 1-propanol and 1-butanol with acetic acid in three ionic liquids with HSO4 - anion and 1-alkyl-3-methylimidazolium cation was investigated. The ionic liquids are 1-methylimidazolium hydrogen sulfate (HMIM)(HSO4), 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium hydrogen sulfate (EMIM)(HSO4) and 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium hydrogen sulfate (BMIM)(HSO4), which have catalytic activity. Data and modeling on the reaction conversions and the distribution of the compounds between the phases is reported here. Trends for the change in the liquid-liquid equilibrium, with parameters like alkyl chain length on the cation or the alcohol, are discussed and used to estimate the phase behavior of similar esterification systems.
Improving the Effectiveness of Communication Headsets with Active Noise Reduction: Influence of Control Structure

For communication headsets equipped with active noise reduction (ANR), the performance of the control system may influence the communication signal reaching the ear. Conversely, the communication signal may perturb the operation of the ANR system. The interaction between the communication and control signals depends primarily on the control structure, and on the bandwidths and frequency responses of the signal channels. The effects are described for two circumaural communication headsets with similar passive, and active, noise reductions, one with an analog feedback control system and the other an adaptive digital feedforward control system. Measurements were conducted in a diffuse sound field, with the headsets mounted on a head and torso simulator. The frequency response of sound reproduced by the communication channel was measured when the ANR system was not operating, and when the control system was operating, with swept pure-tones, and broadband noise. The speech intelligibility was estimated for environmental noise shaped to represent the spectrum of speech, the noise within a tank, or the noise within an aircraft cockpit, by the Speech Transmission Index (STI). The STI and fidelity of sound reproduced by the communication channel of the device with a feed-forward control structure tended to exceed that of the more common feedback control structure. This appeared to be a consequence of the compromised frequency response of the earphone and drive electronics employed in the feedback control system to maintain stability of the feedback loop, as well as the presence of communication sounds sensed by the control microphone that were fed back into the controller. The lack of corruption of the communication signal by the feed-forward control system, together with the possibility of using electro-acoustic components with flat frequency responses, suggests that this control structure may be more consistent with the audio fidelity requirements of advanced auditory communication systems.
Modulation of immune dysfunction during murine leukaemia retrovirus infection of old mice by dehyroepiandrosterone sulphate (DHEAS)

Ageing, leukaemia and acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) are conditions with dysregulated cytokine production. As dehydroepiandrosterone sulphate (DHEAS) restored normal cytokine production in old mice its effects on retrovirally infected old mice were investigated. Retrovirus infection and ageing‐induced immune dysfunction. Murine retrovirus‐infected old C57BL/6 female mice consumed 0·22 or 0·44 μg of DHEAS/mouse/day beginning 2 weeks postinfection for 10 weeks. DHEAS largely prevented the retrovirus‐induced reduction in T‐cell and B‐cell mitogenesis. DHEAS supplement prevented loss of cytokines [interleukin‐2 (IL‐2) and interferon‐γ] secretion by mitogen‐stimulated splenocytes representing T helper 1 (Th1) cell phenotypes. It also suppressed the retrovirus‐induced, excessive production of cytokines (IL‐6 and IL‐10) by Th2 cells. The highest dose of DHEAS reduced IL‐6 production by splenocytes from uninfected old mice by 75% while increasing their IL‐2 secretion by nearly 50%. Thus immune dysfunction induced by ageing, even when exacerbated by murine retrovirus infection, was largely prevented by DHEAS.