Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Visuomotor transformations underlying arm movements toward visual targets: a neural network model of cerebral cortical operations

We propose a biologically realistic neural network that computes coordinate transformations for the command of arm reaching movements in 3-D space. This model is consistent with anatomical and physiological data on the cortical areas involved in the command of these movements. Studies of the neuronal activity in the motor (Georgopoulos et al., 1986; Schwartz et al., 1988; Caminiti et al., 1990a) and premotor (Caminiti et al., 1990b, 1991) cortices of behaving monkeys have shown that the activity of individual arm-related neurons is broadly tuned around a preferred direction of movements in 3-D space. Recent data demonstrate that in both frontal areas (Caminiti et al., 1990a,b, 1991) these cell preferred directions rotate with the initial position of the arm. Furthermore, the rotation of the population of preferred directions precisely corresponds to the rotation of the arm in space. The neural network model computes the motor command by combining the visual information about movement trajectory with the kinesthetic information concerning the orientation of the arm in space. The appropriate combination, learned by the network from spontaneous movement, can be approximated by a bilinear operation that can be interpreted as a projection of the visual information on a reference frame that rotates with the arm. This bilinear combination implies that neural circuits converging on a single neuron in the motor and premotor cortices can learn and generalize the appropriate command in a 2-D subspace but not in the whole 3-D space. However, the uniform distribution of cell preferred directions in these frontal areas can explain the computation of the correct solution by a population of cortical neurons. The model is consistent with the existing neurophysiological data and predicts how visual and somatic information can be combined in the different processing steps of the visuomotor transformation subserving visual reaching.
SpEnD: Linked Data SPARQL Endpoints Discovery Using Search Engines

In this study, a novel metacrawling method is proposed for discovering and monitoring linked data sources on the Web. We implemented the method in a prototype system, named SPARQL Endpoints Discovery (SpEnD). SpEnD starts with a "search keyword" discovery process for finding relevant keywords for the linked data domain and specifically SPARQL endpoints. Then, these search keywords are utilized to find linked data sources via popular search engines (Google, Bing, Yahoo, Yandex). By using this method, most of the currently listed SPARQL endpoints in existing endpoint repositories, as well as a significant number of new SPARQL endpoints, have been discovered. Finally, we have developed a new SPARQL endpoint crawler (SpEC) for crawling and link analysis.
Reward-Spatial View Representations and Learning in the Primate Hippocampus

The primate anterior hippocampus (which corresponds to the rodent ventral hippocampus) receives inputs from brain regions involved in reward processing, such as the amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex. To investigate how this affective input may be incorporated into primate hippocampal function, we recorded neuronal activity while rhesus macaques performed a reward-place association task in which each spatial scene shown on a video monitor had one location that, if touched, yielded a preferred fruit juice reward and a second location that yielded a less-preferred juice reward. Each scene had different locations for the different rewards. Of 312 neurons analyzed in the hippocampus, 18% responded more to the location of the preferred reward in different scenes, and 5% responded to the location of the less-preferred reward. When the locations of the preferred rewards in the scenes were reversed, 60% of 44 hippocampal neurons tested reversed the location to which they responded, showing that the reward-place associations could be altered by new learning in a few trials. The majority (82%) of these 44 hippocampal neurons tested did not respond to reward associations in a visual discrimination, object-reward association task. Thus, the primate hippocampus contains a representation of the reward associations of places “out there” being viewed. By associating places with the rewards available, the concept that the primate hippocampus is involved in object-place event memory is now extended to remembering goals available at different spatial locations. This is an important type of association memory.
Gabapentin-Induced Urinary Incontinence: A Rare Side Effect in Patients with Neuropathic Pain

Gabapentin is a first-line agent for neuropathic pain management and has a favorable safety profile. The literature includes a few cases of gabapentin-induced incontinence, and most of them involved patients with epilepsy who were between the ages of 12 and 43 years. Herein, we present three patients with neuropathic pain due to different diagnoses, and, to our knowledge, these are the oldest reported cases of urinary incontinence caused by gabapentin therapy. A 56-year-old female patient who underwent hip arthroplasty developed a sciatic nerve injury and neuropathic pain postoperatively. Ten days after she began taking gabapentin to relieve her pain, she experienced daily urinary incontinence. In another instance, a 63-year-old female patient was diagnosed with complex regional pain syndrome, and seven days after the initiation of gabapentin therapy, urinary incontinence developed. In addition, a 66-year-old male patient with neuropathic pain due to cervical disc pathology complained of urinary incontinence after the onset of gabapentin therapy. After discontinuing this drug, the incontinence symptoms resolved in these patients on the seventh, the first, and the second days, respectively. Physicians who administer gabapentin should inform their patients about the potential risk of gabapentin-induced incontinence and its negative impact on quality of life.
Subregional Pathology of the Amygdala Complex and Entorhinal Region in Surgical Specimens From Patients With Pharmacoresistant Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

The hippocampus, amygdala complex, and entorhinal region represent anatomically linked limbic structures of the mesiotemporal lobe. Chronic seizures and mnestic deficits in patients with pharmacoresistant mesial temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) appear to correlate with distinct patterns of histopathological alterations in these areas. The complex anatomical organization of the amygdala and entorhinal region, however, render a detailed neuropathological evaluation of surgical specimens difficult. In this study, we present a combined cytoarchitectonical, pigmentarchitectonical, myelinarchitectonical, and immunohistochemical reconstruction of the amygdala, entorhinal region, and hippocampus from surgical TLE specimens (n = 20) in order to analyze their regional and cellular patterns of pathology. Anterior mesiotemporal lobes dissected in different spatial planes were obtained from 4 autopsy control patients and used for the characterization of neuroanatomical landmarks. Lateral, basal, and granular subnuclei of the amygdala were consistently identified in the surgical specimens. Major histopathological alterations included neuronal cell loss as revealed by extracellular lipofuscin accumulation, glial satellitosis, as well as cellular and fibrillary gliosis. The regional distribution of neuropathological changes varied considerably between different subnuclei but the lateral nucleus was more often involved than basal and granular nuclei. These amygdala nuclei appeared to be more severely affected compared to the adjacent entorhinal region. In addition, patients presenting with secondary generalized tonic-clonic seizures showed significantly more damage in mesiotemporal structures. Pathological alterations in the amygdala and entorhinal region were found to be associated with Ammon's horn sclerosis in most but not all cases. Our findings reveal the amygdala as a major target for epilepsy-associated neuronal cell damage. Significant variations in the lesional pattern among patients with chronic TLE would also be compatible with different spreading pathways of epileptogenic activity within the mesial temporal lobe.
Sensing, assessing, and augmenting threat detection: behavioral, neuroimaging, and brain stimulation evidence for the critical role of attention

Rapidly identifying the potentially threatening movements of other people and objects—biological motion perception and action understanding—is critical to maintaining security in many civilian and military settings. A key approach to improving threat detection in these environments is to sense when less than ideal conditions exist for the human observer, assess that condition relative to an expected standard, and if necessary use tools to augment human performance. Action perception is typically viewed as a relatively “primitive,” automatic function immune to top-down effects. However, recent research shows that attention is a top-down factor that has a critical influence on the identification of threat-related targets. In this paper we show that detection of motion-based threats is attention sensitive when surveillance images are obscured by other movements, when they are visually degraded, when other stimuli or tasks compete for attention, or when low-probability threats must be watched for over long periods of time—all features typical of operational security settings. Neuroimaging studies reveal that action understanding recruits a distributed network of brain regions, including the superior temporal cortex, intraparietal cortex, and inferior frontal cortex. Within this network, attention modulates activation of the superior temporal sulcus (STS) and middle temporal gyrus. The dorsal frontoparietal network may provide the source of attention-modulation signals to action representation areas. Stimulation of this attention network should therefore enhance threat detection. We show that transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) at 2 mA accelerates perceptual learning of participants performing a challenging threat-detection task. Together, cognitive, neuroimaging, and brain stimulation studies provide converging evidence for the critical role of attention in the detection and understanding of threat-related intentional actions.
A time varying filtering theory for constrained traffic regulation and dynamic service guarantees

By extending the filtering theory under the (min, +)-algebra to the time varying setting, we solve the problem of constrained traffic regulation and develop a calculus for dynamic service guarantees. For a constrained traffic regulation problem with maximum tolerable delay d and maximum buffer size q, the optimal regulator that generates the output traffic conforming to a subadditive envelope f and minimizes the number of discarded packets is a concatenation of the g-clipper with g(t)=min[f(t+d), f(t)+q] and the maximal f-regulator. The g-clipper is a bufferless device which optimally drops packets as necessary in order that its output be conformant to an envelope g. The maximal f-regulator is a buffered device that delays packets as necessary in order that its output be conformant to an envelope f. The f-regulator is a linear time invariant filter with impulse response f, under the (min, +)-algebra. To provide dynamic service guarantees in a network, we develop the concept of a dynamic server as a basic network element. Dynamic servers can be joined by concatenation, "filter bank summation" and feedback to form a composite dynamic server, we also show that dynamic service guarantees for multiple input streams sharing a work conserving link can be achieved by a dynamic SCED (service curve earliest deadline) scheduling algorithm, if an appropriate admission control is enforced.
Spitzer imaging of i′‐drop galaxies: old stars at z≈ 6

We present new evidence for mature stellar populations with ages >100 Myr in massive galaxies (Mstellar > 1010 M⊙) seen at a time when the Universe was less than 1 Gyr old. We analyse the prominent detections of two z≈ 6 star-forming galaxies (SBM03#1 and #3) made at wavelengths corresponding to the rest-frame optical using the Infrared Array Camera camera onboard the Spitzer Space Telescope. We had previously identified these galaxies in Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) / Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey (GOODS) images of Chandra Deep Field South through the ‘i′-drop’ Lyman-break technique, and subsequently confirmed the identification spectroscopically with the Keck telescope. The new Spitzer photometry reveals significant Balmer/4000-A discontinuities, indicative of dominant stellar populations with ages >100 Myr. Fitting a range of population synthesis models (for normal initial mass functions) to the HST/Spitzer photometry yields ages of 250–650 Myr and implied formation redshifts zf≈ 7.5–13.5 in presently-accepted world models. Remarkably, our sources have best-fitting stellar masses of 1.3–3.8 × 1010 M⊙ (95 per cent confidence) assuming a Salpeter IMF. This indicates that at least some galaxies with stellar masses >20 per cent of those of a present-day L* galaxy had already assembled within the first Gyr after the Big Bang. We also deduce that the past average star formation rate must be comparable to the current observed rate (SFRUV~5–30 M⊙ yr−1), suggesting that there may have been more vigorous episodes of star formation in such systems at higher redshifts. Although a small sample, limited primarily by Spitzer's detection efficiency, our result lends support to the hypothesis advocated in our earlier analyses of the Ultra Deep Field and GOODS HST/ACS data. The presence of established systems at z≈ 6 suggests that long-lived sources at earlier epochs (z > 7) played a key role in reionizing the Universe.
Hubble Space Telescope WFPC2 Imaging of Three Low Surface Brightness Dwarf Elliptical Galaxies in the Virgo Cluster

Utilizing the F814W and F300W filters, Hubble Space Telescope Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) images were taken of three low surface brightness dwarf elliptical galaxies in the Virgo Cluster. The intent of the observations was to determine the small-scale structure in these enigmatic galaxies and to attempt to learn something about the nature of their giant branches through the detection of luminosity fluctuations. In two of the three studied galaxies, V7L3 and V1L4, the luminosity fluctuations in the inner, constant surface brightness regions were unambiguously detected. At the nominal distance of the Virgo Cluster, the measured luminosity fluctuations in the F814W band yields a density of 2–10 red giants per pixel. In the most extreme of these two cases, V7L3, we derive a surface density of giant stars of ∼3 per 10 pc2. Using the observed B-V and V-I colors as a constraint, we could find no model that would reproduce the observed fluctuation signal and blue colors if there were a significant population of M giants in these systems. Overall, our results are consistent with a mean spectral type of K0–K2, which implies a relatively metal-poor population. The third system, V2L8, did not have a detectable fluctuation signal, which possibly implies that it is not in the Virgo Cluster. Interestingly, this system is highly nucleated. Our observations have resolved this nucleus, and if V2L8 is in Virgo, then we have discovered what is likely the smallest bulge measured to date, having an effective radius of only 50 pc. This bulge is quite red (as red as giant ellipticals), and it is entirely possible that this nucleated dwarf elliptical galaxy, in fact, is a very large galaxy located in the background. As such, it is highly reminiscent of the manner in which Malin 1 was discovered. Optical spectroscopy of this nucleus is required to confirm this. Finally, we find no evidence for small-scale clumping of stars in any of the studied systems at this much-improved spatial resolution. This implies that these systems are dynamically well relaxed and that the physical cause of their observed low surface brightnesses is their low density. When imaged at the high spatial resolution of the WFPC2 (∼6 pc pixel-1), the galaxies are easy to look right through without even knowing that they are present in the very middle of the WFPC2 frame. They appear only as elevated "sky noise. "
Using student views to develop a formative assessment policy in a sixth-form History department

This project sought to explore the views of sixth-form history students concerning the efficacy of their department’s formative assessment policy, and builds on my part 2 research into student views of self and peer marking. The project first consisted of a literature review in order to provide the grounding needed to adapt the department’s current assessment policy. This policy was then implemented by all staff in the department at the start of the academic year. Questionnaires and group interviews were carried out to explore how the students responded to this policy, with the intention that their responses would then be mediated by staff to produce an adapted policy for the start of the next academic year. One of the key findings of this project was that despite increased student confidence in self assessment, students still reported considerable reliance on the teacher. Among other conclusions drawn, it will ultimately be suggested that to further shift the balance of power in assessment away from the teacher, students need greater ownership not only over the assessment of their work, but also the assessment policy itself. Therefore, although the original aim of the project was for the staff to redraft the department’s assessment policy based on student views, instead the outcome developed into a decision to give students a role in regularly revising the policy, encouraging a more organic and embedded approach. Although this approach to policy-making in general is far from novel, it is rarely applied specifically to formative assessment, where educationalists tend to empower students within the narrow boundaries of teacher-determined assessment activities. It is still often the teacher ultimately who ‘owns’ and ‘provides’ formative assessment activities, with students required only to play their ascribed role. Therefore, this approach contrasts considerably with some of the contemporary literature that sees formative assessment as a concern of teacher pedagogy rather than student ownership.
New Communication Technologies in Developing Countries

Contents: Introduction: Technology in Developing Countries. The Power of Information Technology. Theories and Applications of Information Technologies. India: A Case Study. India's Border Nations, ASEAN, and Pacific Communities: Case Studies. Latin America: A Case Study. Arab Nations: A Case Study. Conclusions and Recommendations.
Distractor interference stays constant despite variation in working memory load

Previous studies have shown that working memory (WM) plays an important role in selective attention, so that high WM load leads to inefficient distractor inhibition, in comparison with low WM load. In the present study, we examined the effect of WM on distractor processing while the extent of attentional focus was held constant. Our results show that WM load affected distractor processing only when it was positively correlated with the extent of attentional focus. When the latter was held constant, the effect of WM became negligible. Furthermore, when low WM load was paired with a wide attentional focus and high WM load was matched with a narrow attentional focus, greater distractor processing was found when the WM load was low than when it was high. These results suggest that efficient distractor inhibition may require only minimal WM resources and that the effect of WM on distractor processing is more complex than has previously been assumed.
Networked eLearning and Collaborative Knowledge Building: Design and Facilitation

This paper addresses the core goals for educators to stimulate participation across diversity (including life trajectories and culture) and motivate learners to engage in negotiation of meaning and knowledge building dialogue in the processes of networked learning. The paper reports on a Danish masters online course on networked learning for educators that attempted to realize these goals. The participating teacher learned important methods, including moderation, through experience, guided by a teacher educator whose instructional design was based on communities of practice for participants with different backgrounds, cultures, age, and prerequisites in a shared learning endeavor on the Web. The experience supports a twofold foundation for instructional design: the learning theoretical concept of Etienne Wenger (1998) and an orientation toward participant cultures in terms of experiences and competencies, in order to facilitate collaborative knowledge building online.
Suppressive effect of Ginkgo biloba extract (EGb 761) on topsin induced ovarian toxicity and oxidative stress in albino rats

Topsin is a fungicide used against a wide range of pathogens in field crops, fruits, ornamentals and vegetables. The present work studied the effect of topsin on the ovary of Wistar rats and the possible ameliorative role of Ginko biloba extract (EGB). Many histopathological changes were seen in the ovary of rats after treatment with topsin. The number of ovarian follicles decreased and most of them degenerated which accompanied by increased of atretic follicles. Topsin significantly decreased the levels of both LH and FSH and increased estradiol. Histochemical results revealed an increase in carbohydrate content and decrease in total protein in the ovarian tissue. Moreover, topsin led to significant increase of LPO and CAT activity and nonsignificant increase of SOD. Treating animals with topsin and EGB effectively alleviated topsininduced ovarian toxicity. In conclusion, this study provides evidence that topsin adversely damages ovarian tissue through increasing oxidative stress, while EGB treatment effectively attenuates the toxicity and oxidative effect of topsin in the ovary.
Evaluation of a simulation-based dynamic traffic assignment model in off-line use

ITS technologies that provide information to drivers can be an effective means of using the existing transportation infrastructure more efficiently. Dynamic traffic assignment (DTA) models can play a critical role in the design of information provision systems by modeling how drivers react to information (descriptive use), and also in determining the optimal traffic state, which can be the goal of the information provision strategy (prescriptive use). DTA models based on the latter principle can also be of great value in off-line operational planning tasks. This paper describes some experiences with off-line applications of this kind of model. The DTA model consists of two independent components: a routing model and a traffic simulation model. These two models are executed iteratively in a feedback scheme that progressively improves the assignment of vehicles to paths until approximate user-equilibrium conditions are achieved. Model predictions are compared to empirical traffic counts, with very positive results.