Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Neural Markers of Categorization in 6-Month-Old Infants

Little is known of the neural processes that underlie concept-formation abilities in human infants. We investigated category-learning processes in infants both by using a common behavioral measure and by recording the brain's electrical activity (event-related potentials, or ERPs). ERPs were recorded while 6-month-olds viewed cat images during training, followed by novel cat images interspersed with novel dog images during test. The data indicate that distinct neural signals correspond with learning of a category presented during familiarization, preferential responding to a novel category, and representation of category exemplars at multiple levels of in-clusiveness. The results suggest that fundamental components of the neural architecture supporting object categorization are functional within the first half-year of postnatal life, before infants acquire language and young children engage in formal learning of semantic categories. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for models of category learning and development.
Variability analysis for sub-100 nm PD/SOI CMOS SRAM cell

We have studied the impacts of floating body effect, device leakage, and gate oxide tunneling leakage on the read and write stability of a PD/SOI CMOS SRAM cell under Vt, L and W variations in sub-100 nm technology for the first time. The floating body effect is shown to degrade the read stability while improving the write stability. On the other hand, the gate-to-body tunneling current improves the read stability while degrading the write stability. It is also shown that the use of high-Vt cell transistors can improve the read and write stability without causing significant performance degradation.
Drainage after total thyroidectomy or lobectomy for benign thyroidal disorders

ObjectiveThis prospective randomized clinical trial was conducted to evaluate the necessity of drainage after total thyroidectomy or lobectomy for benign thyroidal disorders.MethodsA total of 116 patients who underwent total thyroidectomy or lobectomy for benign thyroidal disorders were randomly allocated to be drained or not. Operative and postoperative outcomes including operating time, postoperative pain assessed by visual analogue scale (VAS), total amount of intramuscular analgesic administration, hospital stay, complications, necessity for re-operation and satisfaction of patients were all assessed.ResultsThe mean operating time was similar between two groups (the drained and non-drained groups). The mean VAS score was found to be significantly low in the non-drained group patients in postoperative day (POD) 0 and POD 1. The mean amount of intramuscular analgesic requirement was significantly less in the non-drained group. One case of hematoma, two cases of seroma and three cases of transient hypoparathyroidism occurred in the non-drained group, whereas one case of hematoma, two cases of seroma, two cases of wound infections and two cases of transient hypoparathyroidism occurred in the drained group. No patient needed re-operation for any complication. The mean hospital stay was significantly shorter and the satisfaction of patients was superior in the non-drained group.ConclusionThese findings suggest that postoperative complications cannot be prevented by using drains after total thyroidectomy or lobectomy for benign thyroid disorders. Furthermore, the use of drains may increase postoperative pain and the analgesic requirement, and prolong the hospital stay. In the light of these findings, the routine use of drains might not be necessary after thyroid surgery for benign disorders.
Failure of Intravenous Nitroglycerin to Prevent Intraoperative Myocardial Ischemia during Fentanyl–Pancuronium Anesthesia

Twenty patients undergoing coronary artery bypass grafting under fentanyl-pancuronium anesthesia were studied. Continuous electrocardiographic (ECG) recording by a Holter Monitor was utilized to determine the incidence of ECG changes of myocardial ischemia during the precardiopulmonary bypass period and to determine the efficacy of an intravenous nitroglycerin (iv NTG) infusion for preventing ischemic ECG changes. Patients in Group 1 (n = 9) received a 0.5 μg · kg-1 · min-1 iv NTG infusion 20 min prior to induction of anesthesia and throughout the study. Patients in Group 2 (n = 11) received placebo. A randomized double-blind protocol was employed. Anesthesia was induced with fentanyl 3 μg · kg-1 · min-1. After fentanyl 25 μg/kg and pancuronium 0.1 μg/kg, the trachea was intubated. After fentanyl 50 μg/kg surgery commenced. Prior to induction of anesthesia, iv NTG caused significant decreases in mean arterial pressure and pulmonary capillary wedge pressure, whereas placebo had no effect. However, subsequent to induction of anesthesia, hemodynamics in the two groups were identical. Fifty per cent of patients developed ECG changes of myocardial ischemia during the period from induction of anesthesia to commencement of cardiopulmonary bypass. The incidence of ischemic ECG changes was virtually identical in Group 1 (5/9) and Group 2 (5/11). Ischemic ECG changes were associated with increases in heart rate, mean arterial pressure, and rate pressure product, and decreases in the endocardial viability ratio (DPTI/SPTI). Increases in pulmonary capillary wedge pressure were not associated with myocardial ischemia. Fentanyl-pancuronium anesthesia, as administered in this study, was associated with a high incidence of myocardial ischemia. Ischemia was related to deteriorating myocardial oxygen balance resulting from the cardiovascular effects of anesthetic induction, endotracheal intubation, and surgery. Intravenous NTG was not superior to placebo for the prevention of ECG changes of myocardial ischemia during fentanyl-pancuronium anesthesia for coronary artery surgery.
Applying the Unfolding Model of Turnover and Job Embeddedness to the Retirement Decision Process

APPLYING THE UNFOLDING MODEL OF TURNOVER AND JOB EMBEDDEDNESS TO THE RETIREMENT DECISION PROCESS Tiffany M. Bennett, Ph.D. George Mason University, 2010 Dissertation Director: Lois E. Tetrick, Ph.D. By 2016, over 23% of the workforce is expected to be 55 and older (Toossi, 2007), within the timeframe in which they will consider leaving the workforce, to retire, thus creating a potential crisis for employers. This creates an urgent need to understand how employees decide when to retire. By understanding the retirement decision-making process, organizations can help to retain employees for a longer period of time while planning their workforce accordingly. In this dissertation, I present a model outlining the retirement decision process. This model contributes to the retirement literature on how retirees follow different paths in the decision-making process leading to retirement. This new model, based on the unfolding model of turnover (T. W. Lee & Mitchell, 1994) accounts for more contextual factors that have proved more difficult to assess in traditional retirement research and includes a newer construct, job embeddedness, which plays a role in the retirement decision-making process.
A compact two-dimensional grating coupler used as a polarization splitter

We demonstrate a novel polarization splitter based on a two-dimensional grating etched in a silicon-on-insulator waveguide. The device couples orthogonal modes from a single-mode optical fiber into identical modes of two planar ridge waveguides. The extinction ratio is better than 18 dB in the wavelength range of 1530-1560 nm and the coupling efficiency is approximately 20%. The device is very compact and couples light only to transverse-electric modes of the planar waveguides. Therefore, it may be used in a polarization diversity configuration to implement a polarization insensitive photonic integrated circuit based on photonic crystal waveguides.
Short seed extractors against quantum storage

In the classical privacy amplification problem Alice and Bob share information that is only partially secret towards an eavesdropper Charlie. Their goal is to distill this information to a shorter string that is completely secret. The classical privacy amplification problem can be solved almost optimally using extractors. An interesting variant of the problem, where the eavesdropper Charlie is allowed to keep quantum information rather than just classical information, was introduced by Konig, Maurer and Renner. In this setting, the eavesdropper Charlie may entangle himself with the input (without changing it) and the only limitation Charlie has is that it may keep at most b qubits of storage. A natural question is whether there are classical extractors that are good even against quantum storage. Recent work has shown that some classical extractors miserably fail against quantum storage. At the same time, it was shown that some other classical extractors work well even against quantum storage, but all these extractors had a large seed length that was either as large as the extractor output, or as large as the quantum storage available to the eavesdropper. In this paper we show that a modified version of Trevisan's extractor is good even against quantum storage, thereby giving the first such construction with logarithmic seed length. The technique we use is a combination of Trevisan's approach of constructing an extractor from a black-box pseudorandom generator, together with locally list-decodable codes and previous work done on quantum random access codes.
The utility of early end-tidal capnography in monitoring ventilation status after severe injury.

BACKGROUND An arterial CO2 (Paco2) of 30 mm Hg to 39 mm Hg has been shown to be the ideal target range for early ventilation in trauma patients; however, this requires serial arterial blood gases. The use of end-tidal capnography (EtCO2) has been recommended as a surrogate measure of ventilation in the prehospital arena. This is based on the observation of close EtCO2 Pa(CO2) correlation in healthy patients, yet trauma patients frequently suffer from impaired pulmonary ventilation/perfusion. Thus, we hypothesize that EtCO2 will demonstrate a poor reflection of actual ventilation status after severe injury. METHODS Prospective observational study on consecutive intubated trauma patients treated in our emergency department (ED) during 9 months. Arterial blood gas values and concomitant EtCO2 levels were recorded. Regression was used to determine the strength of correlation among all trauma patients and subgroups based on injury severity (Abbreviated Injury Score and Injury Severity Score) and physiologic markers of perfusion status (lactate, shock index, and arterial base deficit). RESULTS During 9 months, 180 patients were evaluated. The EtCO2 Paco2 correlation was poor at R2 = 0.277. Patients ventilated in the recommended EtCO2 (range, 35 to 40) were likely to be under ventilated (Pa(CO2) > 40 mm Hg) 80% of the time, and severely under ventilated (Pa(CO2) > 50 mm Hg) 30% of the time. Correlation was best for patients with isolated traumatic brain injury and worst for those with evidence of poor tissue perfusion. CONCLUSION EtCO2 has low correlation with Pa(CO2), and therefore should not be used to guide ventilation in intubated trauma patients in the ED. Better strategies for guiding prehospital and ED ventilation are needed.
Elevated serum lipids in veterans with combat-related chronic posttraumatic stress disorder.

AIM To assess possible differences in serum cholesterol, low density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL-C), high density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL-C), triglycerides, arteriosclerosis index, established risk factor (ERF) of arteriosclerosis, and 10-year risk for coronary disease according to the Adult Treatment Panel III (ATP-III) between veterans with combat-related posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and a control group consisting of patients with major depressive disorder. METHOD We determined serum cholesterol, LDL-C, HDL-C, and triglycerides in the patients with PTSD (n = 103) and patients with major depressive disorder (n = 92), using the enzyme-assay method. AI, ERF, and ATP-III were calculated from cholesterol, LDL-C, and HDL-C levels. The groups were matched in age and body mass index (BMI). Patients with major depressive disorder were chosen as a control group because they do not have changes in serum lipids. RESULTS Patients with combat-related PTSD had higher mean concentration of cholesterol (6.2+/-1.1 mmol/L vs 5.3+/-0.9 mmol/L; p<0.001), LDL-C (3.9+/-0.7 mmol/L vs 3.5+/-1.0 mmol/L; p = 0.005), and triglycerides (2.9+/-2.3 mmol/L vs 1.5+/-0.5 mmol/L; p<0.001), and lower HDL-C (1.0+/-0.3 mmol/L vs 1.3+/-0.2 mmol/L; p<0.001) than the control group. Arteriosclerosis index (4.2+/-1.2 vs 3.7+/-1.7; p = 0.050), ERF (6.4+/-1.9 vs 5.5+/-2.4; p = 0.010), and ATP-III (12.1+/-3.3 vs 10.2+/-3.8; p<0.001) were higher in PTSD than in the control group. CONCLUSION Elevated concentrations of serum lipids are associated with combat-related PTSD. This may imply that patients with combat-related PTSD are under a higher risk for arteriosclerosis.
Investigation of the nanomechanical and tribological properties of dental materials

This study utilises nanoindentation and nanoscratch for testing the human enamel and dentine and three biocompatible dental filling materials: epoxy nanocomposite, glass ionomer, and silver amalgam. Nanoindentation gave hardness and Young's modulus. Nano-scratch gave critical load in the scratch test, and resistance to sliding wear. The results show that the silver amalgam filling has a higher modulus of elasticity, hardness and wear resistance than the nanocomposite. These relatively nondestructive mechanical characterisation techniques may assist in better understanding the mechanical behaviour of the dental fillers and thus facilitate the design of robust fillers with excellent mechanical properties.
Bond Yields and the Federal Reserve

Bond yields respond to policy decisions by the Federal Reserve and vice versa. To learn about these responses, I model a high‐frequency policy rule based on yield curve information and an arbitrage‐free bond market. In continuous time, the Fed’s target is a pure jump process. Jump intensities depend on the state of the economy and the meeting calendar of the Federal Open Market Committee. The model has closed‐form solutions for yields as functions of a few state variables. Introducing monetary policy helps to match the whole yield curve, because the target is an observable state variable that pins down its short end and introduces important seasonalities around FOMC meetings. The volatility of yields is “snake shaped,” which the model explains with policy inertia. The policy rule crucially depends on the two‐year yield and describes Fed policy better than Taylor rules.
LACASA: A Layered Architecture for Cooperative Active Safety Applications

The future of Intelligent Transportation Systems is intertwined with the development, implementation, and penetration of distributed sensing and communications networks. We propose a general, cooperative, holistic active safety framework, LACASA, that can make immediate and signicant impacts on safety as part of a stand-alone driver assistance systems in vehicles. The cooperative modularity of the framework is such that as the market penetration of V2V and V2I sensing and networking improves, the safety benets of the system grow tangibly as well. The LACASA framework draws on recent results into the predictability and responsiveness of drivers in various situations, as well as improvements in machine vision and articial intelligence.
Avoiding Untimely Implantable Cardioverter/Defibrillator Implantation by Intensified Heart Failure Therapy Optimization Supported by the Wearable Cardioverter/Defibrillator—The PROLONG Study

Background Optimal timing of implantation of an implantable cardioverter/defibrillator (ICD) after newly diagnosed heart failure is unclear given that late reverse remodelling may occur. We aimed to analyze left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) after diagnosis of an LVEF ≤35% during optimization of heart failure drug therapy. Methods and Results One hundred fifty‐six patients with newly diagnosed LVEF ≤35% receiving a wearable cardioverter/defibrillator (WCD) were analyzed. WCD was prescribed for 3 months until first re‐evaluation. Indications for prolongation of WCD wearing period instead of ICD implantation were: (1) LVEF at 3‐month visit 30% to 35%; (2) increase in LVEF of ≥5% compared to the last visit; and (3) nonoptimized heart failure medication. Mean LVEF was 24±7% at diagnosis and 39±11% at last follow‐up (mean, 12±10 months). Whereas 88 patients presented a primary preventive ICD indication (LVEF ≤35%) at 3‐month follow‐up, only 58 showed a persistent primary preventive ICD indication at last follow‐up. This delayed improvement in LVEF was related to nonischemic origin of cardiomyopathy, New York Heart Association functional class at baseline, heart rate, better LVEF after 3 months, and higher dosages of mineralocorticoid receptor antagonist. Twelve appropriate WCD shocks for ventricular tachycardia/ventricular fibrillation occurred in 11 patients. Two patients suffered from ventricular tachycardia/ventricular fibrillation beyond 3 months after diagnosis. Conclusions A relevant proportion of patients with newly diagnosed heart failure shows recovery of LVEF >35% beyond 3 months after initiation of heart failure therapy. To avoid untimely ICD implantation, prolongation of WCD period should be considered in these patients to prevent sudden cardiac death while allowing left ventricular reverse remodeling during intensified drug therapy.
Performance Evaluation of Dynamic Circuit Specialization on Xilinx FPGAs

Dynamic Circuit Specialization (DCS) is a technique used to optimize FPGA applications when some of the inputs, called parameters, are infrequently changing compared to other inputs. For every change of parameter input values, a specialized FPGA configuration is generated during run time and the FPGA is reconfigured with a specialized bitstream. We examine how the performance of the DCS technique evolves with the advent of newer Xilinx FPGA architectures. The performance of the DCS technique is evaluated on three different Xilinx FPGA architectures: Virtex-II Pro, Virtex-5 and Zynq SoC. We have used a 16-tap, 8-bit FIR filter as a parameterized design, with the filter coefficients as the parameters of the FIR design.
Gamma knife surgery for atypical meningiomas.

OBJECT Complete resection is the optimal treatment for atypical meningiomas (AMs) but its feasibility depends on the tumor site. The object of this study was to assess the effect of gamma knife surgery (GKS) on AM. METHODS In 15 patients 21 AMs were treated by GKS. Four patients had residual lesions and 10 patients had recurrent tumors after one or more microsurgical interventions. Three patients were treated twice with GKS because of tumor tissue outside the treatment volume, either at the margin or at a distant location. The median clinical and neuroimaging follow-up period was 35 months (range 21-67 months). Ten tumors shrank 6 to 12 months after GKS, 10 remained stable, and one grew. Between 18 and 36 months after GKS, four patients had a distant recurrence, and two had a margin recurrence. In one of these cases, an additional local recurrence was demonstrated 1 year later, and the patient underwent standard radiotherapy. No patient suffered persistent adverse effects after radiosurgery. CONCLUSIONS After early tumor shrinkage, high recurrence rates were demonstrated both at the treatment margin and at distant locations in cases treated for AM. There was only one recurrence within the GKS radiation field. For small- and medium-sized AMs GKS may be a safe adjunct to other treatment modalities.
Evaluating Real-Time VAR Forecasts with an Informative Democratic Prior

This paper proposes Bayesian forecasting in a vector autoregression using a democratic prior. This prior is chosen to match the predictions of survey respondents. In particular, the unconditional mean for each series in the vector autoregression is centered around long-horizon survey forecasts. Heavy shrinkage toward the democratic prior is found to give good real-time predictions of a range of macroeconomic variables, as these survey projections are good at quickly capturing endpoint-shifts.
Combining Categorization-based and Corpus-based Approaches for CLIR

Whether or not we can use existing concept taxonomies to help cross-lingual information retrieval (CLIR) is an open question. This paper investigates an interlingual approach that uses the MeSH categories in the medical domain to index bilingual documents and queries and to measure their relevance based on a category-level matching. We conducted bilingual retrieval experiments on a new corpus (Springer) of medical documents and queries, in the languages of English and German. We also evaluated several high-performing corpus-based learning methods and a machine translation (MT) based approach using SYSTRAN, a commercial system with strong results on CLIR benchmarks. Our results on Springer show that the categorization-based approach significantly outperformed the MT-based approach, but underperformed the corpus-based methods due to the loss of detailed information from the category-level indexing. Combining the output of categorization-based retrieval and corpus-based retrieval yielded a significant performance improvement over using either alone.
Hypocretin (Orexin) Regulates Glutamate Input to Fast-Spiking Interneurons in Layer V of the Fr2 Region of the Murine Prefrontal Cortex

We studied the effect of hypocretin 1 (orexin A) in the frontal area 2 (Fr2) of the murine neocortex, implicated in the motivation-dependent goal-directed tasks. In layer V, hypocretin stimulated the spontaneous excitatory postsynaptic currents (EPSCs) on fast-spiking (FS) interneurons. The effect was accompanied by increased frequency of miniature EPSCs, indicating that hypocretin can target the glutamatergic terminals. Moreover, hypocretin stimulated the spontaneous inhibitory postsynaptic currents (IPSCs) on pyramidal neurons, with no effect on miniature IPSCs. This action was prevented by blocking 1) the ionotropic glutamatergic receptors; 2) the hypocretin receptor type 1 (HCRTR-1), with SB-334867. Finally, hypocretin increased the firing frequency in FS cells, and the effect was blocked when the ionotropic glutamate transmission was inhibited. Immunolocalization confirmed that HCRTR-1 is highly expressed in Fr2, particularly in layer V–VI. Conspicuous labeling was observed in pyramidal neuron somata and in VGLUT1+ glutamatergic terminals, but not in VGLUT2+ fibers (mainly thalamocortical afferents). The expression of HCRTR-1 in GABAergic structures was scarce. We conclude that 1) hypocretin regulates glutamate release in Fr2; 2) the effect presents a presynaptic component; 3) the peptide control of FS cells is indirect, and probably mediated by the regulation of glutamatergic input onto these cells.
DNA Fingerprinting of Mycobacterium tuberculosis Isolates from Epidemiologically Linked Case Pairs

DNA fingerprinting was used to evaluate epidemiologically linked case pairs found during routine tuberculosis (TB) contact investigations in seven sentinel sites from 1996 to 2000. Transmission was confirmed when the DNA fingerprints of source and secondary cases matched. Of 538 case pairs identified, 156 (29%) did not have matching fingerprints. Case pairs from the same household were no more likely to have confirmed transmission than those linked elsewhere. Case pairs with unconfirmed transmission were more likely to include a smear-negative source case (odds ratio [OR] 2.0) or a foreign-born secondary case (OR 3.4) and less likely to include a secondary case <15 years old (OR 0.3). Our study suggests that contact investigations should focus not only on the household but also on all settings frequented by an index case. Foreign-born persons with TB may have been infected previously in high-prevalence countries; screening and preventive measures recommended by the Institute of Medicine could prevent TB reactivation in these cases.