Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Influence of Assessment Methods on Subjective and Objective Memory Impairment

Evidence regarding the relationship between subjective memory complaints (SMCs) and objective memory functioning remains mixed; assessment methods may underlie this inconsistency. In this study, 94 participants aged 40 and above completed two measures of SMCs (open-ended self-reports, and a questionnaire) and memory tests (Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test and Rey Complex Figure Test). Canonical correlation analysis showed no significant associations between any measures of memory and SMCs, regardless of the assessment method employed. Possible explanations for this result and the influence of study limitations are discussed.
Mapping Quantitative Trait Loci Affecting Biochemical and Morphological Fruit Properties in Eggplant (Solanum melongena L.)

Eggplant berries are a source of health-promoting metabolites including antioxidant and nutraceutical compounds, mainly anthocyanins and chlorogenic acid; however, they also contain some anti-nutritional compounds such as steroidal glycoalkaloids (SGA) and saponins, which are responsible for the bitter taste of the flesh and with potential toxic effects on humans. Up to now, Quantitative Trait Loci (QTL) for the metabolic content are far from being characterized in eggplant, thus hampering the application of breeding programs aimed at improving its fruit quality. Here we report on the identification of some QTL for the fruit metabolic content in an F2 intraspecific mapping population of 156 individuals, obtained by crossing the eggplant breeding lines “305E40” × “67/3. ” The same population was previously employed for the development of a RAD-tag based linkage map and the identification of QTL associated to morphological and physiological traits. The mapping population was biochemically characterized for both fruit basic qualitative data, like dry matter, °Brix, sugars, and organic acids, as well as for health-related compounds such chlorogenic acid, (the main flesh monomeric phenol), the two peel anthocyanins [i.e., delphinidin-3-rutinoside (D3R) and delphinidin-3-(p- coumaroylrutinoside)-5-glucoside (nasunin)] and the two main steroidal glycoalkaloids, solasonine, and solamargine. For most of the traits, one major QTL (PVE ≥10%) was spotted and putative orthologies with other Solanaceae crops are discussed. The present results supply valuable information to eggplant breeders on the inheritance of key fruit quality traits, thus providing potential tools to assist future breeding programs.
Situated cognition and knowledge : a contribution towards conceptual clarity for knowledge management

Knowledge management has emerged as a growing field of practice and research but the concept of knowledge itself remains vague. This is an unsatisfactory situation that may well hinder the development of knowledge management theory and practice. In this paper Alexander et. al.’s (1991) educational knowledge framework is combined with Clancey’s (1997a) work on situated cognition to provide a clear framework for knowledge management. This provides us with the critical distinction between knowledge as situationally dependent and enacted human capacity, and knowledge representations. ‘Knowledge’ can thus only be managed indirectly, through managing human talent, a process that should be integrated with the management of knowledge representations.
How to Utilize Interflow Network Coding in VANETs: A Backbone-Based Approach

It is particularly challenging to design an efficient routing protocol for vehicular ad hoc networks due to the vehicle movement, limited wireless resources, and lossy feature of the wireless channel. We propose a protocol which uses common backbone vehicles for different traffic flows, as well as employs interflow network coding to encode packets at the backbone vehicles. A reliably connected backbone is selected by taking into account vehicle movement dynamics and link quality between vehicles. By using interflow network coding at the backbone vehicles, the protocol is able to reduce the number of generated packets by 25% in most cases compared with the conventional routing approach. As a result, the proposed protocol can provide a high packet delivery ratio, low overhead, and low delay. We show the effectiveness of the protocol using theoretical analysis and computer simulations.
Influence of Resistance Training on Blood Pressure in Patients with Metabolic Syndrome and Menopause

Abstract This study investigated the chronic and acute influence of resistance exercise on blood pressure in women with metabolic syndrome before and after climacteric. Twenty sedentary women, nine non-menopausal (RNM) and 11 menopausal (RM), performed training for 12 weeks. Meanwhile, 23 controls, 11 not menopausal (CNM) and 12 menopausal (CM), remained sedentary. Blood pressure was measured before and after the training period in conditions of rest and after a session of exercise. Training promoted variations in blood pressure at rest from 116±13 to 118±10 mmHg (p=0.73) and from 128±12 mmHg to 120±11mmHg (p=0.12) in RNM and RM, respectively. CNM and CM varied from 115±11 to 116±12 mmHg (p=0.9) and from 115±14 mmHg to 116±13 mmHg (p=0.74). Blood pressure values in one acute session did not differ between groups (p>0.05). Resistance training did not improve blood pressure in women with metabolic syndrome, regardless of climacteric.
In Search of Homo Economicus: Cognitive Noise and the Role of Emotion in Preference Consistency

Understanding the role of emotion in forming preferences is critical in helping firms choose effective marketing strategies and consumers make appropriate consumption decisions. In five experiments, participants made a set of binary product choices under conditions designed to induce different degrees of emotional decision processing. The results consistently indicate that greater reliance on emotional reactions during decision making is associated with greater preference consistency and less cognitive noise. Additionally, the results of a meta-analytical study based on data from all five experiments further show that products that elicit a stronger emotional response are more likely to yield consistent preferences.
Additive neuroprotective effects of minocycline with creatine in a mouse model of ALS

The known neuroprotective effects of minocycline and creatine in animal models of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) led us to examine whether the combination of these agents would result in increased neuroprotection. As previously reported, we confirmed in ALS mice that either minocycline or creatine treatment results in improvement in motor performance and extended survival. We report that combination of minocycline and creatine resulted in additive neuroprotection, suggesting this to be a novel potential strategy for the treatment of ALS. To our knowledge, this is the first report demonstrating additive neuroprotection of a combinatorial approach in a mouse model of ALS. Adding relevancy to our findings, minocycline and creatine, are relatively safe, cross the blood–brain barrier, and are currently available for human evaluation.
Interaural Phase and Level Difference Sensitivity in Low-Frequency Neurons in the Lateral Superior Olive

The lateral superior olive (LSO) is believed to encode differences in sound level at the two ears, a cue for azimuthal sound location. Most high-frequency-sensitive LSO neurons are binaural, receiving inputs from both ears. An inhibitory input from the contralateral ear, via the medial nucleus of the trapezoid body (MNTB), and excitatory input from the ipsilateral ear enable level differences to be encoded. However, the classical descriptions of low-frequency-sensitive neurons report primarily monaural cells with no contralateral inhibition. Anatomical and physiological evidence, however, shows that low-frequency LSO neurons receive low-frequency inhibitory input from ipsilateral MNTB, which in turn receives excitatory input from the contralateral cochlear nucleus and low-frequency excitatory input from the ipsilateral cochlear nucleus. Therefore, these neurons would be expected to be binaural with contralateral inhibition. Here, we re-examined binaural interaction in low-frequency (less than ∼3 kHz) LSO neurons and phase locking in the MNTB. Phase locking to low-frequency tones in MNTB and ipsilaterally driven LSO neurons with frequency sensitivities <1.2 kHz was enhanced relative to the auditory nerve. Moreover, most low-frequency LSO neurons exhibited contralateral inhibition: ipsilaterally driven responses were suppressed by raising the level of the contralateral stimulus; most neurons were sensitive to interaural time delays in pure tone and noise stimuli such that inhibition was nearly maximal when the stimuli were presented to the ears in-phase. The data demonstrate that low-frequency LSO neurons of cat are not monaural and can exhibit contralateral inhibition like their high-frequency counterparts.
Non-Bayesian Additive Regularization for Multimodal Topic Modeling of Large Collections

Probabilistic topic modeling of text collections is a powerful tool for statistical text analysis based on the preferential use of graphical models and Bayesian learning. Additive regularization for topic modeling (ARTM) is a recent semiprobabilistic approach, which provides a simpler inference for many models previously studied only in the Bayesian settings. ARTM reduces barriers to entry into topic modeling research field and facilitates combination of topic models. In this paper we develop the multimodal extension of ARTM approach and implement it in BigARTM open source project for online parallelized topic modeling. We demonstrate the ability of non-Bayesian regularization to combine modalities, languages and multiple criteria to find sparse, diverse, and interpretable topics.
NLGbAse: A Free Linguistic Resource for Natural Language Processing Systems

Availability of labeled language resources, such as annotated corpora and domain dependent labeled language resources is crucial for experiments in the field of Natural Language Processing. Most often, due to lack of resources, manual verification and annotation of electronic text material is a prerequisite for the development of NLP tools. In the context of under-resourced language, the lack of copora becomes a crucial problem because most of the research efforts are supported by organizations with limited funds. Using free, multilingual and highly structured corpora like Wikipedia to produce automatically labeled language resources can be an answer to those needs. This paper introduces NLGbAse, a multilingual linguistic resource built from the Wikipedia encyclopedic content. This system produces structured metadata which make possible the automatic annotation of corpora with syntactical and semantical labels. A metadata contains semantical and statistical informations related to an encyclopedic document. To validate our approach, we built and evaluated a Named Entity Recognition tool, trained with Wikipedia corpora annotated by our system.
Interactions between landscape changes and host communities can regulate Echinococcus multilocularis transmission

An area close to the Qinghai-Tibet plateau region and subject to intensive deforestation contains a large focus of human alveolar echinococcosis while sporadic human cases occur in the Doubs region of eastern France. The current review analyses and compares epidemiological and ecological results obtained in both regions. Analysis of rodent species assemblages within quantified rural landscapes in central China and eastern France shows a significant association between host species for the pathogenic helminth Echinococcus multilocularis, with prevalences of human alveolar echinococcosis and with land area under shrubland or grassland. This suggests that at the regional scale landscape can affect human disease distribution through interaction with small mammal communities and their population dynamics. Lidicker's ROMPA hypothesis helps to explain this association and provides a novel explanation of how landscape changes may result in increased risk of a rodent-borne zoonotic disease.
Generalized sphere packing bound: Basic principles

Kulkarni and Kiyavash recently introduced a new method to establish upper bounds on the size of deletion-correcting codes. This method is based upon tools from hypergraph theory. The deletion channel is represented by a hypergraph whose edges are the deletion balls (or spheres), so that a deletion-correcting code becomes a matching in this hypergraph. Consequently, a bound on the size of such a code can be obtained from bounds on the matching number of a hypergraph. Classical results in hypergraph theory are then invoked to compute an upper bound on the matching number as a solution to a linear-programming problem: the problem of finding fractional transversals. The method by Kulkarni and Kiyavash can be applied not only for the deletion channel but also for other channels, and in particular for those where the error spheres sizes are not all the same. This paper studies this method in its most general setup. We first show that if the error channel is regular and symmetric then the upper bound by this method coincides with the well-known sphere packing bound and thus is called here the generalized sphere packing bound. Even though this bound is explicitly given by a linear programming problem, finding its exact value may still be a challenging task. The art of finding the exact upper bound or slightly weaker ones is the assignment of weights to the hypergraph's vertices in a way that the satisfy the constraints in the linear programming problem. Every valid assignment yields an upper bound and the goal is to find assignments that provide strong upper bounds. We show that for graphs which satisfy a monotonicity property it is possible to find a general formula for such an assignment. Lastly, in order to simplify the complexity of the linear programming, we present a technique based upon graph automorphisms that in many cases can significantly reduce the number of variables and constraints in the linear programming problem. All of our results will be demonstrated and calculated for the Z channel which will be a case study in our work.
Robust Three-View Triangulation Done Fast

Estimating the position of a 3-dimensional world point given its 2-dimensional projections in a set of images is a key component in numerous computer vision systems. There are several methods dealing with this problem, ranging from sub-optimal, linear least square triangulation in two views, to finding the world point that minimized the L2-reprojection error in three views. This leads to the statistically optimal estimate under the assumption of Gaussian noise. In this paper we present a solution to the optimal triangulation in three views. The standard approach for solving the three-view triangulation problem is to find a closed-form solution. In contrast to this, we propose a new method based on an iterative scheme. The method is rigorously tested on both synthetic and real image data with corresponding ground truth, on a midrange desktop PC and a Raspberry Pi, a low-end mobile platform. We are able to improve the precision achieved by the closed-form solvers and reach a speed-up of two orders of magnitude compared to the current state-of-the-art solver. In numbers, this amounts to around 300K triangulations per second on the PC and 30K triangulations per second on Raspberry Pi.
Improvements to Conservative and Optimistic Register Coalescing ?

Register coalescing is used, as part of register allocation, to reduce the number of register copies. Developing e (cid:14) cient register coalescing heuristics is particularly important to get rid of the numerous move instructions introduced by code transformations such as static single assignment, among others. The challenge is to ﬁnd a good trade-o (cid:11) between a too aggressive strategy that could make the interference graph uncolorable, possibly increasing the spill (transfer to memory), and a too conservative strategy that preserves colorability but leaves too many moves. The two main approaches are “iterated register coalescing” by George and Appel and “optimistic coalescing” by Park and Moon. The ﬁrst one coalesces moves, one by one, in a conservative way. In the second one, moves are ﬁrst coalesced regardless of the colorability, then some coalescings are undone to reduce spilling. Previous experiments show that optimistic coalescing outperforms conservative coalescing. We show that, with a more involved conservative strategy, incremental conservative coalescing can be as e (cid:14) cient as optimistic coalescing. We also develop a more aggressive optimistic approach with a di (cid:11) erent de-coalescing phase. The combination of the two approaches leads to about 10% improvements compared to traditional optimistic coalescing.
Final Solution, The Fate of the Jews 1933–1949

Cesarani’s last book is mainly based on an array of previously published literature and so in that sense does not break new ground. Perhaps the greatest attraction of his work is his impressive skill as a writer. His vivid descriptions of Jews deported from the West to the ghettos and camps in German-occupied Poland have an emotional impact on the reader that transcends anything that can be conveyed by statistical summaries or formulas cast in social science jargon. Using the diary of a Jewish teenager in Vienna in 1938, Cesarani recalls for the reader how:
Associations Between Grit, Motivation, and Achievement in High School Students

In the present study, we examined the extent to which grit’s 2 components, consistency of interests and perseverance of effort, overlap with future-oriented motivation, relate to other motivational variables including self-efficacy, task values, and goal orientations, and predict achievement in high school students (N = 190) controlling for motivational variables. Exploratory factor analyses revealed that grit was empirically distinct from, and relatively weakly related to, the future-oriented motivation variables future time perspective and instrumentality. The perseverance of effort component of grit was more strongly correlated with self-efficacy, task values, and goal orientations than was consistency of interests. When controlling for motivational variables, perseverance of effort emerged as a significant predictor of end-of-semester grades, but consistency of interests did not. However, self-efficacy was a stronger predictor of grades than either of the grit components. Together, these results suggest that grit is distinct from future oriented motivation, and that perseverance of effort is more strongly associated with motivation and achievement than is consistency of interests for high school students.
Characteristics of effective psychological treatments of depression: a metaregression analysis

Abstract Although many meta-analyses have shown that psychological therapies are effective in the treatment of depression, no comprehensive metaregression analysis has been conducted to examine which characteristics of the intervention, target population, and study design are related to the effects. The authors conducted such a metaregression analysis with 83 studies (135 comparisons) in which a psychological treatment was compared with a control condition. The mean effect size of all comparisons was 0.69 (95% confidence interval = 0.60–0.79). In multivariate analyses, several variables were significant: Studies using problem-solving interventions and those aimed at women with postpartum depression or specific populations had higher effect sizes, whereas studies with students as therapists, those in which participants were recruited from clinical populations and through systematic screening, and those using care-as-usual or placebo control groups had lower effect sizes.
Symbolic Control of Visual Attention

The present study reports four pairs of experiments that examined the role of nonpredictive (i.e., task-irrelevant) symbolic stimuli on attentional orienting. The experiments involved a simple detection task, an inhibition of return (IOR) task, and choice decision tasks both with and without attentional bias. Each pair of experiments included one experiment in which nonpredictive arrows were presented at the central fixation location and another experiment in which non-predictive direction words (e.g., “up,” “down,” “left,” “right”) were presented. The nonpredictive symbolic stimuli affected responses in all experiments, with the words producing greater effects in the detection task and the arrows producing greater effects in the IOR and choice decision tasks. Overall, the present findings indicate that there is a strong connection between the overlearned representations of the meaning of communicative symbols and the reflexive orienting of visual attention.
The Heat of the Moment: Modeling Interactions Between Affect and Deliberation

Drawing on diverse lines of research in psychology, decision making, and neuroscience, we develop a model in which a person’s behavior is determined by an interaction between deliberative processes that assess options with a broad, goal-based perspective, and affective processes that encompass emotions and motivational drives. Our model provides a framework for understanding many departures from rationality discussed in the literature, and captures the familiar feeling of being “of two minds. ” Most importantly, by focusing on factors that moderate the relative influence of the two processes, our model generates a variety of novel testable predictions. We apply our model to time preferences, risk preferences, and social preferences. Acknowledgements: For useful comments, we thank David Laibson, Roland Benabou, Andrew Caplin, Andrew Schotter, Antonio Rangel, John Hamman, Shane Frederick, Joachim Vosgerau, and seminar participants at Princeton University, Duke University, New York University, UC Berkeley, University of Chicago, MIT, and the 2004 ASSA meetings in San Diego. We also thank Christoph Vanberg for valuable research assistance. For financial support, Loewenstein thanks the Integrated Study of the Human Dimensions of Global Change at Carnegie Mellon University (NSF grant # SBR-9521914), and O’Donoghue thanks the National Science Foundation (grant SES-0214043).
Sepsis and AKI in Clinical Emergency Room Patients: The Role of Urinary NGAL

Background. Few studies have investigated the predictive properties of urinary (u) NGAL as an AKI marker in septic population. Objectives. This study evaluated the efficacy of uNGAL as predictor of AKI and death in septic patients admitted to the clinical emergency room (ER). Methodology. We prospectively studied patients with sepsis admitted to the ER. Urine was analyzed for NGAL within the first 24 hours after admission (classified as NGAL1), between 24 and 48 h (NGAL2), and at moment of AKI diagnosis (NGAL3). Results. Among 168 septic patients admitted to ER, 72% developed AKI. The uNGAL and its relationship with creatinine (Cr) were high in septic patients but statistically higher in those with sepsis and AKI. The uNGAL1 and uNGAL2, as well as uNGAL1/uCr1 and uNGAL2/uCr2, were good predictors for AKI (AUC-ROC 0.73, 0.70, 0.77, and 0.84, resp.). The uNGAL1 and uNGAL1/uCr1 were poor predictors for death (AUC-ROC 0.66 and 0.68, resp.), whereas uNGAL2 and uNGAL2/uCr2 were better predictors (AUC-ROC 0.70 and 0.81, resp.). Conclusion. The uNGAL is highly sensitive but nonspecific predictor of AKI and death in septic patients admitted into ER.